crept up her throat, warming the skin beneath his fingertips.
“You like thinking of me as an object, a toy you can play with, don’t you? But if you give me the money…and help me…” She shut her eyes. “I—I’ll try not to let myself care what you think.”
She was so soft. His blood pumped at an alarming rate. His breathing was so shallow and quick, he couldn’t get enough air.
“I want my thousand dollars now.”
“A thousand dollars. You’d better be good. You’d better do—anything.”
“Oh, dear.” Then she said, “You got it!”
He pulled out his wallet, counted ten bills and laid them across her open palm. She took her time, folding them. In slow motion, she set them down one by one on the table.
That done, she lifted her gaze from the ten green bills. Squaring her shoulders, she faced him, wild emotion flaring in her pale face. “Go ahead,” she whispered, fighting to keep her voice steady. Her body went stiff.
Instead of seizing her as a girl in her business, no doubt, expected, he knelt at her feet as if in worship, his fingertips starting at her toes. Tracing the arch of her narrow foot, he noted how she quivered, goose-flesh springing beneath his lightest touch. When his hand reached the top of her thigh, he forced her legs open.
“My, my…a natural blonde.”
His gaze climbed, fixed on her face. “I have a thing for blondes.”
Her eyes were closed. Was she pretending he was someone else? Brand maybe? Or imagining this wasn’t happening? What was she thinking? He had to know. She had to know she was with him. For some inane reason that was vital. More vital than sex itself.
“Open your eyes,” he commanded.
Her cheeks flamed. Her black lashes fluttered reluctantly.
“Are you sure about this?” he demanded.
Her eyes clung to his in mute desperation, but she nodded.
“Smile, then.”
Her bottom lip wobbled, but she tried. Dear God, she tried. Despite her smile, a tear trickled down her flushed face.
He jerked his hand away. The fact that she didn’t want to look at him, that when she forced that tremulous smile, she wept, angered him. Had she wept in that shack with those goons?
“A girl of your…er…talents ought to be able to act like she wants it…as bad as her client.”
More tears welled. “I’m trying. It’s just that with you…” Her smile died. Her control slipped. She lifted her nose in outrage, stared down its length. Her wet, dilated eyes cut him like daggers. “With you, it’s difficult.”
“More difficult than with other men?” he growled.
“I imagine so.”
“You did say…anything,” he reminded her, trying not to show the dark jealous emotion that had begun to gnaw at him. “And I have a lifetime of fantasies. The girls in my dreams never cry.”
“Would I be the girl of your dreams…if I didn’t cry?”
“No way.”
A blink brought more of the same liquid pooling in those beautiful eyes. “Then turn off the light if you can’t handle a real girl’s tears.”
“Can’t handle—”
She stabbed at the switch behind her. Darkness enveloped them. Then she reached for him. “Dream on,” she whispered.
He felt her shaking, felt her reluctance, knew she was still crying. When he kissed her, she shuddered.
She didn’t want to do this. And, damn it, he wanted her to.
Why the hell did that matter? He would handle it.
She’d sold herself. This was business. He could use her any way he liked.
“What’s your name?” he demanded even as his hand blindly touched her wet cheek to comfort her.
After a breathless pause, she said quaveringly, “Willa.”
More than sex, he wanted to hold her close, to make her feel safe—which was ludicrous.
“I’ve never paid a woman for sex before.”
“You’re the first for me, too.”
Guilt crept over him. If she was telling the truth, if she wasn’t a whore, some desperate need he knew nothing about was driving her to this.
She was a whore. Of course, she was a whore.
He’d bought companies, ruined men of far more worth than she.
His gut knotted.
“Get into bed,” he growled.
As her bare feet scampered in the dark, pictures of a naked golden girl in a dozen way-out fantasies flipped in his imagination.
Sheets rustled. He heard her reluctant sigh.
He was as hard and hot as a brick just out of the kiln.
He couldn’t wait.
She didn’t want him.
Why the hell did that matter?
5
Willa de Mello was afraid of the dark, afraid of going to sleep, afraid of bad dreams. Especially when there was a big bad wolf lounging in the stuffed armchair right beside her.
So, she lay in the dark and wondered how in the world she would get away from Luke McKade. Not that she was really worried. For all his macho bravado, the big, oversexed lug was a pussycat…at least compared to Brand.
She’d known he wouldn’t force her to do it. Not if she didn’t want to. A man like him lived for challenges. He was so conceited he truly believed it would be child’s play to win her, before he bedded her.
Willa was a cat lover. Thus, she understood predators. Cats liked to stalk and wait, to play a bit with their prey. They savored the chase, anticipating the treat. In his mind the treat was a yellow-haired party girl. A lot of men had been fooled by her hair color and sexy looks.
Ha! This was one lady who wasn’t about to serve herself on a silver platter to another oversexed rogue, even if he had paid a thousand dollars for the meal. Under different circumstances, he might have been fun. Not tonight. But Brand, what he’d nearly done, had changed Willa forever. Willa’s secret agenda was a matter of life and death.
Not that McKade wasn’t attractive, if a girl went for tall dark and disturbingly handsome and rich and powerful, which did have a certain appeal to a fan of Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters’ novels. But Willa was way too disillusioned and in way too much trouble to take on a new man, especially another know-it-all bully who thought the worst of her. All her life she’d been misunderstood. If her appearance didn’t get her into trouble, then her wacky responses to life and literature did.
What she’d been looking for was someone who believed in her, who accepted her—who respected her, who saw past her sexpot, dumb-blond good looks. She’d known she had to have a man who didn’t mind a woman who was a little different. A man who didn’t expect her to be a deb or a Martha. Here in Laredo, the highest class debs were known as Marthas and Marthas were the equivalents of New Orleans Mardis Gras queens. And Willa had thought, until tonight’s rude awakening, she’d found such a man in Brand.
Desperate moments. Wild impulses. Reckless deeds.
She was used to this sort of thing. Like a cat, she would land on her feet.
It isn’t just you anymore though. You can’t keep flying by the seat of your pants, Willa dear.
Her