Forbidden Fantasies Bundle Page 32

  Zoë began to tremble.

  To steady her, he pressed the palm of his free hand against her buttocks and drew her close. “Do you want me to stop?”

  Her nails dug into his shoulders. “No.”

  ZOË WASN’T SURE that she had spoken the word out loud. She didn’t want him to stop. Ever. She put more effort into it. “No.”

  Evidently he heard her because he increased the pressure of his finger until she could feel him enter her. Not nearly far enough. The silk of her panties was preventing him from going deep the way she wanted him to, and there was an enormous feeling of emptiness growing inside of her. It was making her tremble.

  As if in response, he pressed his mouth to her waist and she felt the quick, sharp probe of his tongue in her navel. If he hadn’t had her so firmly pressed against him, she was sure she would have melted into a pool on the floor.

  “All night long, I’ve been wondering what you might be wearing under those jeans.”

  Zoë threaded her fingers through his hair. Her research had told her that men thought about things like that. That’s why she’d bought them. Rory had convinced her that Jed would like them. For one second, she felt a little trickle of guilt. Then Ethan pushed his finger into her a little deeper.

  “Ohhh,” she moaned and swayed.

  In one smooth movement, he rose, lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed.

  “Let’s try this,” he murmured as he laid her back against the pillows. He spread her legs apart and then slid down until his face was between her thighs. For a moment, he did nothing.

  Zoë dug her fingers into the sheets and waited. Desire built and anticipation turned into a painful ache before he pressed his mouth to her thigh. That wasn’t where she wanted him, but the string of wet, openmouthed kisses was coming closer, and closer….

  For one blissful second, she felt his breath warm against the wetness of her panties. Arrows of sensation shot through her. But then he turned his attention to her other thigh.

  If she could have found the strength, she would have hit him. She began to writhe on the sheets, but he clamped his hands on her thighs to hold her still. Intense pleasure mixed with the pain of wanting, needing more. “Please.”

  With one finger he traced her cleft and once more pressed against her center. Then he pushed his finger into her again—but still not far enough.

  She arched, straining against his hands. “Please,” she gasped again.

  Just when she thought that she couldn’t stand the delightful agony a second longer, he put his mouth where his finger had been and began to use his teeth and tongue on her. Every sensation was so intense—the heat of his breath, the press of his tongue. She could even feel the scrape of his teeth through the thin silk. Once again, flames coursed through her body, and all she could think was more.

  MORE. HE NEEDED MORE. He had to have all of her. Jed had never before felt this driving need to take, to possess. Whatever plan he’d had to make love to her slowly had burned up in the heat that they’d created together. He retrieved a condom and got rid of his clothes. Fingers fumbling, he sheathed himself. All the while he barely took his eyes off of her. She was watching him, her eyes half-closed. Her skin was porcelain-white in the moonlight, that slash of red the only thing still covering her. She quite simply bewitched him.

  Oh, yes. He wanted more. He wanted all of her. Lowering himself over her, he pushed aside the thin swatch of red silk and drove himself in.

  She wrapped arms and legs around him, drawing him into her deeper and deeper. Together, they raced. When they finally reached the peak of pleasure and soared over it, he wasn’t quite sure who had claimed whom.

  11

  JED FOUND RYDER ALONE in the kitchen of the apartment he kept above the offices of his security firm. Jensen, Ryder’s office manager and sometime butler, had been waiting to give Jed the key to the elevator when he arrived.

  “You look like hell,” Ryder said as he shoved a mug of coffee across the counter.

  Jed ran a hand through his hair and glanced down at the clothes he was wearing. He’d changed into some fresh Ethan Blair clothes that he’d had in the room, but he hadn’t taken the time to shower or shave. “I wanted to get out of there before Zoë woke up.”

  Ryder regarded him steadily. “It saves on the awkward morning-after stuff.”

  “Yeah.” Restless, he paced to the window as he sipped coffee. He’d hated like hell leaving her there. But what choice had he had?

  The same choices he’d had when he’d dragged her into this mess, a voice at the back of his mind said.

  He turned back to Ryder. “Your men are there?”

  “They’re waiting for her in the lobby. I sent them as soon as you called and said you were on your way. When she comes down, they’ll explain that Ethan Blair sent them.”

  “I want her kept safe,” Jed said.

  “You won’t get any argument from me.”

  Ryder’s slight emphasis on the word me wasn’t lost on Jed.

  “I know. I know that I’m the one who’s put her in danger. But I’m not going to go near her again until it’s over.”

  “You don’t think she’ll come looking for you?” Ryder asked.

  “No.” Jed took another sip of his coffee. “I told her she’d never see Ethan Blair again.”

  Ryder’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t tell her that you and Ethan Blair are one and the same?”

  “No. I was going to and then it got complicated.”

  Ryder shot him a look. “Sooo…what if she comes looking for Jed Calhoun?”

  Jed took another drink of his coffee. “I think she’s over him.”

  “According to Sierra, that might not be the case. She lost her concentration at work when you didn’t call her.”

  “Sierra said that?” Jed asked.

  Ryder nodded. “It got so bad, Sierra decided Zoë needed a night out—that’s why they were at the Blue Pepper. She even arranged for Zoë to borrow some clothes from Sierra’s sister, Rory. They’re about the same size.”

  Had she worn that lace top hoping to see Jed again? And what about the red panties? A whirl of emotions he couldn’t quite name shot through him. Or had she worn them hoping to meet someone new? “She may be over Jed Calhoun now that she’s met Ethan Blair.”

  “Maybe you should have told her the truth.”

  Jed set his mug down on the counter so hard that some sloshed out. “Maybe. I told myself I was thinking about her safety. At first. Then all I was thinking about was her. I can’t be in the same room with her and not lose brain cells. And I can’t seem to keep my hands off of her.” He paused and shot a furious look at his friend. “I don’t expect you to understand. Hell, I barely understand it myself.”

  Ryder’s grin spread across his features and turned into a laugh that filled the room. After putting down his mug, he crossed to Jed and patted him on the shoulder. “Oh, I understand all right. The same thing happened to me from the moment that I first set eyes on Sierra. I picked her up in a bar and kissed her before I even introduced myself.”

  Some of the anger and frustration in Jed started to ease. An odd kind of warmth moved through him as he thought of Zoë being distracted at work because of him. “So she couldn’t stop thinking about me.”

  Ryder grinned at him. “About Jed. I wonder if she’ll be thinking about Ethan now.”

  Jed frowned. “Just as soon as I can take a shower, wash the dye out of my hair and ditch these colored contacts, Ethan will be gone and he’s not coming back.”

  “Too much competition, huh?”

  The look in Jed’s eyes had Ryder holding up both hands defensively. “I won’t say another word. I promise. Just…” He backed away a few steps. “How does it feel to be in competition with yourself?”

  Jed fisted his hands at his side. “It sucks.” Especially when he couldn’t go near her as either man.

  Ryder’s expression sobered. “Yes, I suppose it would.”

  “I hav
e to call her as Ethan Blair and tell her that there are two men in the lobby waiting for her.”

  Ryder nodded. “First, why don’t you show me what’s in the envelope your friend Gage sent you? You did bring it?”

  Jed drew the envelope out of his pocket.

  Ryder spread the contents out on the counter and studied them for a moment. Then he shot a smile at Jed. “If we’re lucky, we should be able to finesse our way into Bailey Montgomery’s office tonight.”

  ZOË KNEW EVEN AS SHE drifted up through layers of sleep that she was alone in the bed. Each time that she’d drifted awake before there’d been Ethan’s hard, hot body pressed against hers. And each time she’d turned to him in the night, he’d made love to her again.

  Heaven help her, but she wanted him again right now. She stretched out her hand, but all she could feel was cool sheets. And the sun was shining into the room. She could feel the warmth, see it dancing beyond her eyelids. It was morning, and she didn’t want to face it yet.

  Fighting off her growing awareness, she concentrated hard on slipping back into the oblivion of sleep. The scent of coffee wasn’t helping one bit. Opening one eye, she made out the black carafe on the nightstand and the yellow daffodil in a vase. Then the phone next to it rang.

  Shoving the hair out of her eyes, Zoë sat up and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

  “You’re awake?”

  Zoë drew up her knees and clasped her free arm around them. A British accent shouldn’t sound so sexy, and a man’s voice shouldn’t be able to make her insides melt.

  “Where are you?” she asked.

  “I don’t have much time. There are two men waiting for you in the lobby. Bodyguards. They’ll be with you 24/7 until I can clear this matter up and make sure that you are safe.”

  Zoë didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure she could get any sound past the lump in her throat.

  “Take care, Zoë.”

  For a while she just sat there listening to the dial tone. Was every single man she spent the night with going to walk away from her?

  How many more men did she intend to have a one-night stand with? Making love with two men in three days might not go into the Guinness World Records, but for her it was definitely on the wild side. And what had it gotten her?

  Absolutely mind-blowing sex for one thing. And she didn’t regret a moment of it.

  Slowly she smiled. She’d thought that nothing could surpass what Jed Calhoun had done to her in that hammock. But last night with Ethan…Resting her head on her knees, she let the images, the feelings, wash over her. They’d made love twice more after that first time. It was the last time that played itself over in her mind. He’d been so gentle, so thorough. Just thinking about it had heat building in her again.

  Shaking her head to clear it, she reached for the carafe and poured herself a cup. Instead of reliving the fantasy, she should be considering the consequences. There would be a price to pay.

  Taking a sip of her coffee, Zoë made herself look around the room. Her camisole was on a nearby chair, her panties were a bright splash of red against the cream-colored carpet. The bed looked as if a battle had been fought on it.

  Well, the battle was over, and now it was time to assess the damage. She’d desired and acted on those desires with two men. It wasn’t as though she’d stopped wanting one of them before she’d moved on to the next one. Because she hadn’t. Jed had moved on; he’d obviously stopped wanting her.

  She thought of Jed Calhoun, the gray-green eyes that always seemed to be laughing, the tousled hair bleached by the sun, and those hard, demanding hands. As the thrill moved through her, an image filled her mind. Jed, wearing nothing but cutoff shorts, was leaning against a tree, willing her to come to him. If he were standing in the bedroom doorway right now, she would go to him. Better still, she would beckon him to join her in bed. Her blood was already heating and racing at the thought.

  And if Ethan were standing there? In her mind, the image of Jed receded a bit, and she pictured a man with straighter posture, darker hair, and bright blue, serious eyes behind black-rimmed glasses. A hunger filled her and with it came an ache that had her gripping her knees even more tightly.

  She would beckon to Ethan, too, and beg him to make love to her again—just as she’d begged him more than once during the night. Zoë shut her eyes. But she couldn’t quite erase the images of the two men.

  In fact, they were both walking toward the bed. She felt a lick of fire along her nerve endings. And she felt another hotter flame spring to life deep inside of her. Ethan reached her first. He knelt on the bed and taking her by the hand, drew her to her knees. She knelt facing him, her body nearly brushing against his. His eyes were so dark but she could see herself in them. Though she couldn’t take her gaze away from his, she knew the moment that Jed climbed onto the bed behind her.

  Ethan’s hands rested at her throat, and then his mouth lowered to hers at the same moment that Jed’s hands settled at her waist.

  This was a fantasy, she thought. It was happening entirely in her mind. But the heat coursing through her was very real. And so were the other sensations—the gentle movement of Ethan’s tongue as it danced with hers, the tremor that moved through her when Jed’s hand covered her breast.

  Then Jed drew her close so that she felt every hard plane and angle of his body against her back. The slap of heat nearly rocked her.

  Ethan moved closer, too—until her body was pressed tightly between the two men.

  She really should put a stop to this.

  As if in answer to the thought, Ethan moved one hand to the nape of her neck and abruptly changed the angle of the kiss. His mouth became hard, demanding. His tongue was no longer gentle. She lifted her hands and gripped his shoulders to pull him closer. His tongue explored her mouth as if there were some flavor there that she was hiding from him and that he was bent on discovering. The sudden scrape of his teeth had her moaning.

  As if determined to regain her attention, Jed slipped the hand that had been resting at her waist in between Ethan’s body and hers and moved it lower and lower until he slipped his finger between her legs. Pleasure exploded through her as she began to move against the pressure he was creating.

  When Ethan dragged his mouth from hers and took it on a slow journey down her throat, she said, “More.”

  And for the life of her, she didn’t know which man she was talking to. Both of them?

  Jed increased the rhythm and pressure of his finger, and Ethan moved his mouth down her throat to her breast. Pleasure built to a flashpoint. She thought she could hear murmurs, the sounds of one man and then the other saying her name. The world narrowed to the two men and the sensations they brought to her.

  They could have asked anything of her and she would have given it. She wanted—no, she needed—both of them inside of her. Right now.

  “Don’t stop. Please.”

  It was Ethan’s hair she shoved her hands into. It was Jed’s teeth that sank into that spot he’d discovered at the base of her neck. It was Ethan’s hands that slid around and began to knead her buttocks. But it was Jed’s fingers that slid into her and began to move.

  Zoë began to move, too, and the orgasm built slowly in a tidal wave that widened as it gathered force. Pleasure burst through her in a series of explosions that sent her flying and had her crying out one man’s name and then the other. And then she was falling back onto the bed.

  Trapped in the aftershocks of the orgasm, she couldn’t stop trembling and she had to concentrate on breathing in and out. For a while there, oxygen hadn’t seemed important at all. Nothing else had but the two men.

  Two men. What had happened to her? She’d never expected her decision to make love just once to Jed Calhoun would lead to this.

  Now her life seemed to consist of bed hopping from one fantasy to another—making love with a perfect stranger, making love with two men at once.

  What was next?

  Opening her eyes, she aimed a look i
n the direction of the heavens. “That was strictly rhetorical. Forget I asked.”

  Then she risked a cautious look around the bedroom. Yes, she was alone. Her little romp with Jed and Ethan had been a pure fantasy. Sitting up, she pounded a fist into the bed because she should be feeling relieved about that, not disappointed.

  But she was going to get a grip. She probably wouldn’t see Ethan ever again. But she would have to try to see Jed again. The realization had her opening her eyes wide. Until this minute, she’d completely forgotten the envelope that Rad had delivered with the wine bottle last night. Quickly, she crawled out of the bed and located her bag in the living room of the suite. But she didn’t find the envelope.

  It had been there when she’d arrived. She’d checked while Ethan had been in the bathroom. Immediately she began to search the suite. In the bedroom, she dropped down on her hands and knees and looked under the bed, the chair and the nightstand. Then she rose and conducted a thorough search of the bathroom and finally the living room.

  Ten minutes later she had convinced herself that the envelope hadn’t fallen on the floor or slipped beneath the cushions on the sofas. It wasn’t anywhere in the suite.

  The message that someone had given her to deliver to Jed was definitely gone. With a sinking heart, Zoë sat down on the edge of the coffee table and stared out the window. There was only one person who could have taken the envelope. Ethan Blair.

  Clearly, she was still wearing rose-colored glasses when it came to men. Ethan Blair must have known she had that envelope all the time. She’d been on the patio when Rad had delivered it, and there were spaces between the screens. She would have been visible from the street.

  She thought of his words: I felt the same thing…. Will you let me make love to you?

  Had he seduced her to get the envelope intended for Jed Calhoun? Did the two men have some connection that she wasn’t aware of?