Forbidden Fantasies Bundle Read online

  “Tying your…wrists?” He was clearly struggling to understand her words. He thrust up into her, meeting her downward stroke with wonderful force.

  “Rick, help me…with my fantasies,” she managed to say. “Make them real.”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, filling her, claiming her, reaching up into her, deep and demanding. She wasn’t sure he had even grasped what she meant.

  There was something in his face, a feeling, a need she met when they made love this way. She wished she could photograph him, catch this expression. And then she caught it—the double image she strove for in her photographs. There was Rick’s desire, his drive to have her and to please her—that was obvious—but beneath that was…loneliness.

  Rick was lonely. And, furthermore, so was she. She felt her soul rise up to say, “Me, too,” the connection an arrow shooting through them both, pinning them together. And she wanted more than anything to make him happy, to be with him, to let him make her happy, too.

  But that was too much. And way too soon. They were making love, enjoying their physical connection, nothing more. She closed her eyes and focused on what was real—her body rocking on his, in the open air, his thumb stroking her higher and higher, bringing that delicious rush of release ever closer.

  Feel this. Feel him. This was what she wanted. To share this pleasure, this driving urge, this mind-blowing burst of ecstasy. Not to settle in, lock on to one man. She pushed away the impulse, but it rang in her like the finest crystal goblet tapped to capture silent attention.

  Rick called out her name, thrust upward and released himself inside her, pushing her into climax, too. She cried out, her voice sharp in the quiet meadow, rolling on the breeze like the sensations washing through her, wave after wave, until finally she collapsed onto Rick’s chest.

  He held her and their hearts banged at each other through ribs and muscle and skin, both of them breathing hard.

  Samantha relaxed into an easy peace on top of Rick, who stroked her back, soft and slow. She wanted a picture of this—something to hang on to forever as a memory—but she couldn’t move a muscle.

  “I bet we’ve got a frame or two left,” Rick said, as if he’d read her mind. She felt him extend a hand, grab the camera and hold it above their bodies. She wiggled into his armpit and he angled the lens to catch them just to the collarbone.

  She imagined the proof sheets of this day—sun-kissed desert vistas, rising red cliffs, the creek from all angles, the wildlife they’d captured, Rick’s snap of her mud-streaked face and now the two of them together. Stalking the wild climax. Forever proof of their lovemaking in the woods.

  She cuddled into him, comfortable and so happy. Then she noticed her leg itched. Then the itch moved. She leaned up to check and found ants crawling on her legs and his. “Ants!” she said and brushed them off her shins and Rick’s thighs.

  “I can fix that,” he said, rising to swing her into his arms and stride toward the creek.

  “What are you doing?”

  He only grinned and kept walking.

  “Don’t you dare. It’ll be too—” Before she could say cold, icy water brushed her bare bottom and Rick was up to his thighs in the creek. She squealed.

  “It’ll feel good in a second.” He stepped into a deep spot and they both went under. The water went from frigid to brisk to mellow in the five seconds it took to reach the bottom and thrust up from the rocky creek bed.

  Breaking the surface, Samantha threw herself onto her back to float, the sun deliciously warm on her water-chilled face.

  For a few minutes, they floated and played, splashing each other and holding on tight, until they wearied and scrambled onto a flat boulder together to let the sun soothe their chill-bumped skin.

  It was lovely and lazy on the warm sandstone. After a bit, Samantha rose on her elbow to look down at Rick, who lay with his eyes closed looking gorgeous—a sun-bronzed god sent to earth to pleasure women. Well, one particular woman. Water gleamed on his skin and clear diamonds of it were suspended in his chest hair.

  Even with his eyes closed, she could see the lonely man she’d caught in her mind’s eye. Something in her wanted to answer the emptiness in him. Had it come from losing his brother? Had that made him feel lonely and lost?

  She felt close to him. Maybe that wasn’t good, considering how limited their relationship had to be, but she wanted to understand him even better. “It must have been so hard on you to lose your brother,” she said. “Were you close?”

  Rick’s eyes flew open. “Whoa, where did that come from?”

  She couldn’t tell him what she’d seen in his face. “I was just wondering about what you told me before. I mean about your brother being killed. And how that must have affected you. You said your parents were wrecked, but how about you?”

  “It affected me, sure. We weren’t exactly close…Brian wasn’t what he seemed. Hell, it’s complicated.”

  She waited. She could feel him struggling with his own emotions. “Tell me, Rick. Please.”

  For a second, he disappeared from behind his eyes, hiding out as he’d seemed to do that first day, and off and on since, going from interested to watchful, easygoing to intense. Friendly, but not fully present, and very wary.

  But then he returned to her, as if dragged by an intimacy he couldn’t resist, like an animal drawn from the forest by the warmth of a campfire on a cold night.

  “Brian didn’t get shot helping a client,” he said. He pushed himself to a sit, grabbed a pebble and tossed it into the creek, watching the ripples swell outward. He didn’t look at her, just continued speaking, his arm on one bent knee. “He went there to buy coke.”

  “Really?” she asked, sitting up to be sure he knew he had her full attention.

  “Oh, yeah. His client was a low-level dealer and Brian already owed him for a grand’s worth of product he’d ‘borrowed’ to sell to his yuppie friends, but snorted instead. He showed up wanting more, can you believe it?”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “Yeah. My brother had cojones. But the dealer was already in deep with his supplier, who sent someone to whack them both. Nine millimeter. Mowed them both down in seconds.”

  “How awful.”

  “Yeah.” He shifted his body to look at her now. “I knew one of the cops on the case and he kept the drug angle out of the report, so it looked like just a drive-by. Better for my parents. They think Brian was so brave helping that poor innocent client in that deadly neighborhood.” His smile was crooked.

  “You protected them,” she said. He’d prevented them from hearing hard truths about their older—and favored—son. She understood that impulse. She was doing the same in a way with her own parents. If they knew about Bedroom Eyes, what pride they had in their only child would fade to black, she was certain. Better they didn’t know.

  “Did the client get your brother hooked on drugs?”

  Rick gave a silent laugh. “No. Brian managed that all on his own. My brother liked things to go easy and feel good. Drugs were a shortcut to that. He liked shortcuts. That’s why he chose criminal defense. Lots of rich scum happy to pay plenty to stay out of prison.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. Brian wasn’t a bad guy. He was always good to me. Loaned me money, found me a job once, sent me his friends’ cars to work on. He just didn’t mind working the system to get what he wanted.” He paused. “He sort of got lost.” He shot her a look full of anguish.

  “It happens sometimes,” she said.

  “Yeah. But I didn’t step in. I was too busy taking my own shortcuts. Not drugs, but anything else that felt good or wild or fun.” He tossed another rock, this one more fiercely.

  “You couldn’t live your brother’s life for him,” she said gently. “If you’d tried, he’d probably have told you to go to hell.”

  “Did you know him?” He was trying to joke, but she could tell her reassurance hadn’t gotten past the barrier in his eyes. He felt responsible for letti
ng his brother’s life end the way it had. I think you earn love and guard it with everything in you. That was Rick’s belief and, in his mind, he’d let his brother down. Her heart ached for him. Here was the source of the pain and loneliness she’d seen. It was Rick’s self-imposed exile because he didn’t think he deserved love.

  “And after he died, you changed your life?” He’d gone into the army, she recalled.

  “I turned it around, yeah. Brian’s chance to straighten out, do the right thing, get married, have a family, all that was gone—” he snapped his fingers “—like that. So I had to make up for it, do what he couldn’t do.” His sense of mission burned in his eyes.

  “If it’s what you really want. For yourself, I mean.”

  “Sure. Everyone wants to find someone special and settle down. You do, too, right?” His gaze dug in with surprising urgency.

  “Eventually, sure.”

  “When you finish making waves?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Who says you can’t do that with one particular person? You splash around, but you have company.” He shrugged, as if it were a lighthearted idea, but she felt the weight of deep interest in his words.

  She answered slowly. “I don’t work that way, Rick. When I was with Barry, I gave up what I wanted, forgot who I was, just went along with him and how he saw me.”

  “Barry was a prick. The right guy wouldn’t do that to you.” His words were low and slow and there were a million emotions in his eyes.

  Did Rick want to be that guy? Was that what he was hinting at? She was startled by how wonderful that felt, warm and right, like a sturdy pilot light flaring to life deep inside.

  Too soon. And all wrong.

  She had to stick with what she was sure of—the heat between them and all the fun they could have.

  “For now, I’m exploring,” she said and smiled over at him. They sat together on this sun-drenched rock, as naked as Adam and Eve in the first garden, and she didn’t want to waste one beautiful minute of it. “And that’s where you come in.”

  She pushed on his shoulders so he would lie back and she lay over him, pleased when she felt him go hard under her.

  He resisted for a second, as if he wanted to say something more serious to her, but she kissed his mouth, blocking his words and felt lust wash through him. “Did you say come?” he murmured, his eyes gleaming with renewed heat.

  “Oh, yeah.” This was what she wanted. To keep making love with Rick, to explore her fantasies with this wonderful man. Any more than that would be foolish to imagine—greedy, really. This was more than enough.

  What if there’s more here? The idea shivered through her like a premonition or a dream, but she pushed it away and kissed the lips of her Adam, her highwayman, her cowboy, her artist, her Rick.

  13

  “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?” Rick’s partner stared at him as if he were covered in spots or wore a sequined gown.

  “Nothing. Went up to Oak Creek for some pictures.” And had sex with Samantha. Lots of it.

  “That explains the sunburn, but not the…” Trudeau scratched his own neck to indicate something on Rick’s.

  Rick touched the tender spot he’d tried to hide with his collar—a love bite Samantha’d marked him with during the last frenzied round before they’d headed for home.

  Realization dawned in his partner’s face. “Ah, you and Samantha did the deed. I’m impressed.”

  No. He was shocked, plain and simple, Rick could tell and guilt shot through him like a shotgun shell, big and destructive. He’d blown it, he knew already. The closer he and Samantha had gotten to home, the more the implications of what he’d done had trickled into his awareness and they’d kept him awake most of the night.

  “Drop it,” he said, low, shooting a look across the station, not wanting to be overheard.

  “Okay, but I get the details later, pal.”

  “So the electronics gear checked out?” Rick spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. He studied the printout Trudeau had handed him.

  “Bought and paid for. Looks like Mad Man Sylvestri’s electronics depot is a straight-ahead business, though they could launder money through it easy enough.”

  “The construction crew is working up there this week. I’ll keep an eye out, but I don’t get what he’s up to. I’m still sleeping in the studio, but there’s been no late-night action.”

  Bad choice of words. He’d half expected Samantha to show last night at Bedroom Eyes—he’d moved to the satin-covered bed in studio one, tucked up against the castle backdrop. She had fantasies she wanted to act out, for God’s sake. When she didn’t appear, he was both relieved and disappointed.

  Also a bad sign.

  Even though the mattress was far better than that damn futon in Mona’s shop, he’d slept little, working out whether he should tell Samantha what was going on, maybe ask for her help with the investigation, or head straight for the lieutenant’s office and resign over his breach of conduct.

  He felt ripped apart, and his brain wasn’t working worth a damn. He had to figure this out, do the right thing somehow.

  “The bookkeeper’s twitchy,” he continued, needing to fill Mark in, “but if there are double books, Samantha knows nothing about them.”

  “You sound pretty sure of that.” Mark raised a brow.

  He bristled. “And…?”

  “Relax. Sleeping with the woman doesn’t make her innocent, West, that’s all I’m saying.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” he snapped.

  “Chill. You’ll do your job.”

  “I will. Yeah.” He realized he was leaning from foot to foot, head thrust forward like he expected Mark to throw the first punch. Hell, he half wanted him to.

  Rick had granted himself a window of private time up there at the creek, but in the cold light of the case, he saw he’d been wrong. Way wrong.

  “What about your tail on Sylvestri?” he asked, backing away, forcing the tension out of his voice. “Anything there?”

  “Oddly enough, the guy’s spending a lot of time at the yarn shop, though we did pick up a debate over the cut—of what we don’t know—at that strip club, Moons. Lots of strangely worded cell calls. Something’s about to break, I can feel it. Anything at the other shops?”

  “From what I’ve seen, Mirror, Mirror is clear.”

  “All of it?” His partner honed in on him.

  “Yeah, all of it,” he said, but his belly churned with acid. Mark doubted his judgment. And he had good reason. Rick wanted everyone at the center to be clear of Sylvestri’s crap. Bianca, too, who, he was reasonably certain, was clueless. Had his hope that the Mirror, Mirror crew was innocent compromised his investigative skills? Dulled his instincts?

  He was sure as hell distracted by this thing he had for Samantha. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Now that he’d had sex with her, it was even worse. He felt as though he traveled in a cloud. Had he lost his edge, tripping over his own dick?

  “Whatever’s happening there, I’m on it, all right?” he said, rubbing his face, weary and worried.

  “Get some sleep, man. You look wiped. The case will come together.”

  He was wiped. Torn up inside. Besides sorting out what to do, he’d kept going through their time at the creek and how great it had been.

  For the first time, the idea of settling down with one woman for the rest of his life felt real. He wanted it. Not just because it was time, not just for Brian, but because he wanted to be with her. Samantha. Just her.

  She was smart and kind and full of life and she just made him feel good, as if he had a place in the world, as if he belonged. As if he were home. He could see waking up with her every day and coming back to her every night.

  But that was impossible. Even if the case didn’t stand between them, Samantha wanted to explore, for God’s sake. Crazy. Knowing what was out there, he wished he could tell her just to forget it, stick with him. He’d be whatever she needed him to be. He’d said t
hat from the day he’d stood at her counter with his beat-up portfolio.

  But that was crazy, too.

  He was who he was—a good cop who put the job first.

  He looked around the squad room at the officers who trusted him with their lives and knew what he had to do.

  He had to end this thing with Samantha.

  He’d had a weekend off the clock. And now he was back on duty. He’d phrase it in a way she’d understand. Or maybe he’d just let it drop, be friendly, but back off. Maybe she’d want that, too. She hadn’t come last night, after all. Maybe she’d realized they’d had a good time and that was enough. He hoped so. He couldn’t stand putting any more hurt in those clear blue eyes. He said goodbye to Mark and headed off to do the right thing.

  SAMANTHA WOKE ON Monday morning feeling great. Her sore muscles reminded her of all the fabulous sex they’d had in Sedona and her brain bubbled over with fantasies she would soon be exploring with her man.

  The ride home in the golden dusk had been dreamy and they’d kept grinning at each other, laughing for no reason, all the way to her place.

  I just might surprise you tonight, she’d teased, kissing him through the driver’s window before she skipped up to her place. He’d agreed to sleep on the fairy-tale bed, so why not?

  But she’d been tired and had decided to save it for the next night so she could choose a costume and arrange everything first. She couldn’t wait to talk to Rick about it.

  But he wasn’t in the studio as she’d expected when she breezed in early, excited to see him, but a little nervous, too. Must have gone home to shower or run an errand or something.

  She checked the calendar, reviewed some orders, made certain Rick’s marketing call list was ready for him, all the while watching for him like a girl expecting her prom date.

  Finally she saw him, heading in from the parking lot and her entire body trembled with pleasure. Her man. He looked so handsome, extra-tan from their day in the high-desert sun, and so tall. She wanted to meet him halfway and hug the hell out of him, but decided that was a little too eager, even for her.