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Damn! Why the hell did I just ask that?! Seriously? Such a nice moment. Why did my big mouth have to go and ruin it?

  I hold my breath, waiting for his usual shutdown.

  His head lifts, his eyes open, and he gazes up at me from under his wet lashes. But—thank heavens—he’s not mad. He’s not shutting down.

  What he does is rest his chin on my knee again, and he answers me. “Junior high. Eighth grade. She was a new transfer. Had a crush on a jock who sat behind me in Spanish class. But he didn’t notice her. So, she talked me into pretending I was crazy about her, and she wasn’t into me. Jocks love to go after what others crave, to prove they’re kings who can get anything they want. It was the first con we pulled together.”

  “What did you get in return for winning her the jock?”

  “A diamond bracelet she got as a birthday gift from her dad.” He lifts a shoulder. “She’s from a well-off family.”

  I knew it.

  “Why does she pull crimes with you then? If she doesn’t need the money?”

  He lifts his chin and cocks an eyebrow at me. “Why do you and Mel do it? Neither of you are hard-pressed for cash, either.”

  “Were you hard-pressed for cash when you started?” I ask, evading. “You grew up in foster care, didn’t you?”

  He blinks, looks down for a minute, and then treads backward, relaxing his limbs until he’s floating on the water, face turned up to the sky. “When I was eleven, my parents left for the Middle East on a humanitarian volunteer trip. They never came back. A year later, it came over the news that they had been kidnapped by terrorists, only to be blown to bits from an air strike aimed at the terrorist camp where they were being held.”

  “Jesus.” I inhale in sharp sympathy. “That’s awful.”

  “My mom’s only sibling was an unstable alcoholic, and my dad was the outcast of his family,” he continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “So, yeah, I spent about three years in foster care before I ran away, turning tricks and counting cards to pay for school and an apartment. Nadine was always with me. She’s better than me at this, you know? A natural. I respect her enough to admit that. We got rich quick. And lost it all just as quickly. Because I got greedy.”

  I hate that Nadine is the one who was with him in the time when he had no one else. I hate the reverence and adoration in his voice when he speaks of her. I hate that I’ve lived twenty-two years not knowing he existed. “That’s a good bad, though, isn’t it?” I say. “To learn early the mistakes to avoid. A tough way to learn, I agree. But a lesson is a lesson, yeah?”

  He stares pensively up at the sky. I know he’s no longer here with me. He’s gone somewhere else. So, I press my palms to the ground and wait for him to return.

  After an indeterminable extension of silence, he blinks, flips over, and swims up to me again. Faster than I can react, he grips me by the waist, lifts me off the edge, and dunks me into the pool with him. Our bodies crash together with a huge splash.

  I shriek, right before my head goes underwater. In seconds I manage to resurface and spew a spray of chlorine water as I whip off my askew glasses. “You wanker!” I jab my glasses at him.

  With a challenging arch to his brow, he dives backward, flips over like a bloody dolphin, and swims down to the other end of the pool.

  A frustrated grumble in my throat, I wade back to where I’d been sitting and set my glasses down. I haul off my soaked camisole and throw that down, too, then pick up the gauntlet and chase him across the pool.

  He’s far ahead of me, of course, so by the time I get to the other end, he’s waiting for me with cool patience, his elbows propped back on the coving, a smirk on his lips.

  Before I can hurl a thorny ball of curses at him, he asks, “How’s your sight without your glasses?”

  “I have simple myopia.”

  He squints, contemplative. “That’s nearsightedness, right?”

  I scowl and take my frustration out in facts. “Yes. Hyperopia is farsightedness. When astigmatism is attached to either of these—myopia or hyperopia—a vision aid is almost always needed. And if a person has mixed astigmatism, they’re completely dependent on their glasses. Astigmatism is known to be caused by having an oddly shaped cornea, or by the shape of the lens inside the eye. This corneal aberration causes vision to be blurred or distorted, regardless of distance.”

  By the end of my lengthy tirade, he’s grinning. “So…that means you can see, right?”

  Embarrassment has me ducking my head. Dammit. Give my mouth an inch and it takes a yard. “Yes. I can see you.”

  In a fluid motion, he kicks one leg out, locks it around my waist, and pulls me through the water to him. All without moving an inch from the wall.

  From the unexpected attack, I crash up against him, the water lapping violently around us.

  “What about from this distance?”

  I’m breathless as I gasp out, “Even better. Perfect.”

  “And what do you see?”

  I study him for a brief moment. “Heat. Lust. Desire.” I inhale a trembling breath. “For me.”

  As I make to wrap my arms around his neck, he moves faster than I believe possible and switches us around so I’m against the wall of the pool, and he’s in front of me.

  He grips the back of my thighs and steers me to wrap my legs around him. “And, how does that make you feel?”

  I give him the total and complete truth. “Like I’m…on fire.”

  The water might be cool, but it’s got zero effect on the roaring fire that he sets ablaze in me with his touches.

  There’s no waiting. No hesitation. No blinks. He just grabs my face and steals my breath, seizes my tongue, captivates my mouth. He comes in and stays in. He comes hard and stays hard.

  I’m all his, and he knows it.

  One hand slides between us, down my leggings, into my knickers. And there’s no break in movement when his fingers glide through my folds, a lone finger plunging inside.

  I gasp in his mouth at the intrusion but rotate on his hand, loving the feel of it. His fingers work magic, without him ever breaking the kiss.

  As pleasure heightens, my legs tighten around him, but he refuses to free my mouth. His finger pumps in and out of me while his thumb caresses my swollen clit, driving me out of my mind, greedily eating up all my noises of pleasure.

  Soon, I feel it approaching. The insane sensation from the other night.

  Orgasm draws closer and closer, gripping me in all the secret places on my body, all the curves and crevices. My fingernails dig into his shoulders. And then, I implode, a groan of ecstasy ripping from my throat and escaping down his.

  I want to scream my pleasure to the sky, but he won’t let me. I want to praise his name, but he won’t let me. He just keeps on kissing me, taking my nail-digging and leg-cinching with equanimity.

  Only when I’m back to earth and all in one piece does he free my mouth.

  I punch his shoulder. “You!”

  “What?”

  “You ate all my sounds!”

  His smile is slow and languorous as it stretches across his face. “You don’t like me eating your sex noises?”

  “I—”

  Do I? Don’t I? What am I crocking about, anyway? He just blew my mind with his fingers.

  “I don’t know.”

  Head dipping, he kisses one corner of my mouth. “They’re my noises.” He kisses the other corner. “I can do whatever the hell I want with them.”

  Withdrawing his hand from my knickers, he brings it up between us to cup and squeeze my breast through the soaked lace of my bra.

  “I want to touch you,” I blurt out.

  His mouth descends to my cleavage, licking and sucking. “Then touch me.”

  I hesitate, whimpering from his focused attention to my breasts. The only sexual move I know is the one from the show I watched with Collin last night. I know the facts, of course, but this is…different. In person. I think it’s time I start reading more fiction. Romantic fiction. Erotica
, to be exact. There’s nothing I want more than to please Jaxon, and I have absolutely no idea how to do that.

  I must’ve been hesitating too long, because I’m jolted from my worries when he takes my right hand, rubs it down his chest, and shoves it down the waistband of his boxer briefs.

  “Touch me, Timber,” he orders my cleavage.

  I’m frozen for a moment, but then I bite my lip and curl my fingers around the throbbing rigid member inside his boxer briefs. Hard as steel but at the same time smooth as velvet.

  With an impatient movement, he pushes the underwear down his hips, giving me a heart-hammering underwater visual of my fingers wrapped around his impressive girth.

  Dumbly, I ask, “What do I do?”

  He kisses up my neck and nibbles my earlobe. “Stroke me.”

  I begin to stroke him, testing. “Like this?”

  “Yeah.” He sucks in a sharp breath. “Tighten your grip for me, beautiful. And squeeze the head when you come up.”

  “Like this?”

  “Mmm, yeah, exactly like that.” He rests his forehead against mine, his eyes closed, his breath labored. “Just keep doing that.”

  I do. And I observe. Watching in fascination how a simple motion of my hand can control every hitch in his breath. Spurred on by my awe, I deviate from his instructions and run my own set of tests and experiments. A twist of the fingers here, a rub of the thumb there, a squeeze here, and a tug there.

  He doesn’t object, not at all. He responds even more intensely.

  It’s magic, this sex thing. I’m so mesmerized by the control and the manipulation and the physical responses. Amazing. I want to do this to him forever. But he’s losing control more and more by the second. He’s gripping my hair, and he’s biting my jaw. He’s kissing me and then he’s not. He’s sucking hard on my breasts, leaving bright red marks.

  I add my other hand, so I’m fisting him with both, twisting in conflicting directions with each stroke upward.

  “Ahh— Whoa! Tim— Holy shh—” His body stiffens against me as he garbles a trail mix of nonsensical words. “Timber, stop. Shit, no. I don’t want to— Fffu— It’s over.”

  He grips the wall on either side of me, buries his face in my neck, and releases a long, agonizing groan as his cock pulses hard in my fists.

  I watch as white spurts fire from the head, dissipating instantaneously in the water. It’s so beautiful. Every bit of this is beautiful.

  Tenderly, I release him and tuck him back into his boxers.

  After a long, long moment, he lifts his head from the crook of my neck, and I think he’s going to kiss me and thank me, but instead, his eyes narrow on me with accusation. “You did it again.”

  I’m confused. “What?”

  “You gamed me.”

  Seriously? “How? I’ve…never done that before.”

  “Bullshit.” He shakes his head. “That’s the best hand job I’ve ever had in my entire life, and you expect me to believe it’s your first time?”

  “I was experimenting!” I defend. “I swear to God, I’ve never done that before.”

  “You were ex-peri-menting?” His tone is laden with distrust and skepticism.

  “It’s the truth, Jaxon.”

  He watches me. Searches. Studies.

  I don’t break eye contact. It’s important he sees the truth.

  In the bigger picture, we both really are conning each other. But in this small moment, real is here, and I want him to know it.

  After an insane length of staring and searching, he blinks the doubt away, leans in, and kisses me. “Okay. I believe you. And if your experiments are always this mind-blowing, I’m volunteering to be your lab rat.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “Quick change of plans.” Jaxon bursts into the bathroom on Collin and me.

  We both pause and turn our attention to him.

  He takes in our positions.

  A shirtless Collin is seated on a closed loo, and I’m standing between his legs so I can properly apply concealer to his facial bruises.

  “What do you mean change of plans?” Collin prompts when Jaxon just stands there watching us.

  In a crisp black shirt with a gray vest and skinny white tie, his hair styled with bouncy flourish, Jaxon King is the picture of debonair.

  He checks his watch. “Yineris is on the move. She somehow found out the value of the vase, and now she’s got a sale set up. My guess is her idiot ex-husband blabbed to someone he thought he could trust.”

  “When’s the sale?” Collin asks.

  “Sale’s set to happen at a location near the city hall at the butt crack of dawn when the buyer lands at a private airport. The buyer just wants to get in and out of the country, so Yineris checked into a hotel to be close. Penthouse suite. She has only one guard with her.”

  “The penthouse suite?” Collin blows out a breath. “That’s harder—and riskier—to break into than a mansion in the hills, Jaxon. And how the hell do I land her at a hotel without looking like a creeper, anyway?”

  “Did you read her profile at all?” Jaxon appears wholly unfazed. “Yineris is obviously not the type to eat dinner in her room at a five-star hotel. She’s a confident show-off who likes to be seen. Trust me, she’s gonna be dining and mingling downstairs.”

  “And if she’s not?”

  “We switch to Plan B.” He taps the face of his watch and turns to leave. “We’ll have to leave right now in order to get to the city in good time. Leave nothing behind. You can finish putting on your lipstick and mascara in the car.”

  “Suck my dick, prick,” Collin spits. But Jaxon is already gone.

  “Wait. What’s Plan B?” I ask Collin.

  He shakes his head. “We never know.”

  “How can you not know?” I ask, incredulous.

  He gives a deep, awe-inspired chuckle. “Because Jaxon is Plan B.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Smack in the middle of the hotel restaurant, seated at the best table where everyone is forced to notice her, is Yineris da Costa. Just as Jaxon predicted.

  The photos had lied. They’d let us believe she was pretty. But she’s not pretty. Not at all. Yineris da Costas is stupidly stunning.

  With her pore-less skin, waist-length black hair, bright emerald eyes, and plump, pouty lips, the forty-nine-year-old divorcée appears fifteen years younger than her true age. She’s tall, svelte, leggy. Built like a goddess. Rich is written in soft italics all over her strapless red gown and the diamonds twinkling in her ears, around her neck, and hanging off her wrists.

  “Hot damn,” Collin murmurs as he brushes past us, as though we’re complete strangers to him. “Seems I won’t be needing liquid courage, after all.”

  We’re at the double-door entrance to the hotel restaurant, waiting patiently for our table. Instead of making reservations prior to our arrival, Jaxon calculatedly decided it was better just to show up and pretend the decision to dine here is last minute, knowing we’ll have to wait for a table to become available. This allows him ample time to study, assess, and evaluate Yineris in person before we sit down and go ahead with the plan.

  “Only fools rush in,” he’d explained.

  As far as the plan goes, we’re not supposed to know Collin. Jaxon and I are traveling lovers on a date, and Collin is a wealthy, sauntering American playboy traveling solo for business.

  Thus, we were waiting at the restaurant ten minutes before him. We watch as he brushes past us at the entrance and struts toward the bar situated at the opposite end of the expansive dining room. His shoulders are squared with confidence and self-importance, his signature smirk on his lips. His eyelids dip lazily as he tosses winks and come-hither stares to every salivating female he passes.

  He exudes sex and carnality, sin and lust. Collin Cumberland is in full-on con mode, and holy shite he’s hot! I mean, I’ve seen him in action before but never like this. In a room overflowing with wealthy, puff-chested men, he stands out like a platinum-haired sex d
emon in a suit made of fire.

  “Look away, Timber,” Jaxon warns through a whisper, his lips pressed to my temple as though he’s planting a kiss there. “Or I’ll make sure you die a virgin.”

  My jaw drops. How does he know? How does he know I’m 100 percent turned on right now by Collin’s sexy persona? “But— He’s so— Wow.”

  “I know he’s so wow. That’s why I brought him.” Jaxon’s arm around my waist flexes. “I didn’t, however, bring you here to get wet for him.”

  Oh. My. God. Did he really just say that? “I didn’t— It’s not—”

  “You either want him, or you want me, but you can’t have both,” Jaxon cuts through my stammer. “Choose, a better man would say. But I’m not a better man. I’m the best man. And I’m not giving you a chance to choose. Because I already chose you.”

  Sweet Virgin Mary.

  I stop breathing, and the thoughtless act affects my ability to speak.

  Mercifully, a hostess materializes and saves me. “Mr. Cussler, thank you for waiting.” Her English rolls off her tongue as if it’s her first language. “A table just became available. If you could just wait a few more minutes, we can have it ready for you.”

  A curt nod is all Jaxon gives, coming off as pompous and uppity, mimicking the attitude of every other man in this ostentatious restaurant. Blending in is paramount.

  Although he’s not looking in her direction, I know he’s watching Yineris, who’s just signed a receipt before sticking it into the bill folder. All the while she’s throwing glances over to the bar, curiosity in the arch of her brow as she bites her bottom lip.

  I follow her gaze and almost smile when I realize what—or rather, who— has captured her attention. Collin. Of course.

  He’s leaning against the bar, a whiskey glass in one hand, his attention directed at a buxom bottle blonde who’s so close to him her breasts are touching his chest. Her eyes are glazed over as she gazes up at him as if he’s a god.

  His answering smile is crooked and welcoming, but his gaze keeps flicking over her shoulder and across the room.

  I trace the path of his gaze.

  Yep. Straight to Yineris.