Flash of Death

“Mmm. Better,” he murmured. “I’ve been itching to do that all day.”

“Really?”

He took her face in his big hands and tilted it up to his. “Really.”

She tensed as his head lowered toward hers. He paused, his mouth inches from hers, and breathed, “Don’t overthink this.”

Right. Live in the moment. Go for it. Carpe diem. His lips touched hers and the platitudes fled in the face of this stunningly sexy man kissing her. His mouth was warm and smooth and confident, and in about ten seconds, he’d blasted past all her experience in kissing. His lips parted hers and his tongue tested her teeth. She gasped at the invasion and he took immediate advantage of it to taste her more deeply.

His arms tightened around her, lifting her against his big, warm body. A hand slid up her back to her head, cradling it in a large palm and drawing her even further into the kiss. And then he was kissing her with his whole body. Whether that was him moving against her or her moving against him she couldn’t tell and didn’t care. Her dress gaped open in the back and his hand burned her bare flesh as it dipped inside the gown. She was shocked when his hand slid down to cup her derriere and … Oh, God, she’d forgotten she was wearing that silly thong Sunny’d talked her into. Something about panty lines ruining the lie of the gown.

He made a sound of surprised approval.

“What?” she blurted.

“I didn’t peg you for a naughty-lingerie kind of girl.”

Painfully aware of the drawer full of cotton granny panties across the room, she didn’t disabuse him of the notion. For the first time all day, she was grateful for the tiny scrap of spandex and lace nestled a little too intimately in her nether regions. Trent’s finger traced the thin line of the thong downward and she groaned in pleasure and embarrassment.

“You’re overthinking,” he warned laughingly. “Let go and enjoy yourself.”

Her knees did buckle then. He caught her up against him with ease and kissed her with gusto until her knees would bear her weight again. “Ahh, you’re going to be a joy to seduce. So artless. So natural. Such a nice young lady.”

“Is that bad?” she asked, frowning up at two of him swimming in her gaze. She did believe she was officially buzzed.

“Not at all.” His fingers slipped under the shoulders of the lined gown with its built-in shelf bra. Which meant she wasn’t wearing a blessed thing under the gown. Except that sexy little black thong, of course. He hooked the red silk and slipped it off her shoulders, kissing her skin as it was revealed. The gown whispered down her body to the floor in a bloodred puddle and she shivered. Whether it was the cool air on her skin or Trent’s hot mouth on her skin that caused it, she couldn’t say.

“You’re magnificent, Chloe. How is it some man hasn’t snatched you up and made you his?”

She blinked up at Trent as he straightened and shrugged off his tuxedo jacket. Nope, no padding in them there shoulders. His starched, white shirt clung to a physique that could make a girl weep with appreciation. Realizing belatedly that she was all but drooling at him, she answered, enunciating carefully so she wouldn’t slur her words, “I’m too boring. And neat. Men hate neat.”

Trent laughed as he stripped off his cummerbund and tossed it aside. “That’s not how I hear it. Most men love a woman who’ll pick up after them. When I settle down, I’ll hire a butler to do the job. It’ll save on resentment from the ladies in my life.”

Ladies. Plural. Of course a man like him had scads of women chasing after him. “I’m just one more in a long string of conquests, aren’t I?” she accused. Who knew whiskey brought out such a brutally honest streak in her?

He laughed lightly. “Never. You’re one of a kind, Chloe Jordan.”

At least he knew her full name. The way she heard it, that was an exception for most pick-up artists. For surely, this man was a master of the art. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to care as his hands slid over her ribs and cupped her breasts, lifting them and testing their weight. She wasn’t all that stacked, although she’d always privately thought her breasts were rather nicely shaped. Trent seemed to think so, too, as his mouth captured one pert, rosy peak and sucked gently. Lightning bolts started at his mouth and spread outward through her body.

“Oh, my,” she sighed. “That’s lovely.”

A strong arm swept behind her knees and she was tipped on her side all of a sudden as he picked her up and laid her on the bed. The down comforter gave beneath her weight, and the room spun lightly around her. And then Trent was there, stretched out beside her, propped up on one elbow, yanking the knot out of his bow tie with his free hand. Shirt studs went flying as he jerked his shirt free of his trousers and all but tore it off.

She reached up to help push the shirt off his shoulders and gaped as acres of tanned chest appeared before her eyes. “Yowza,” she breathed.

He laughed heartily and she glared up at him. “Are you laughing at me?” she demanded.

“Yes, I am. It has been a while since I’ve gotten that sort of reaction out of a woman from taking off my shirt.”

“Do you only date blind women?” she retorted.

He leaned close to kiss her lightly before answering, “No. Jaded ones. Like I said, you’re one of a kind.”

“Hey. I didn’t fall off the pumpkin truck yesterday, you know. I live in San Francisco and work at a very upscale address. Of course, I’m going to take that company down, but—”

He stopped her rambling with his mouth against hers. She wasn’t sure how he got his trousers off or how the covers got thrown back, but in a moment, she was lying on her back on Egyptian cotton sheets with a thread count so high they felt like velvet against her skin, and Trent was stretched out in all his naked, unconcerned glory beside her.

“Please tell me you’re a little bit drunk, too,” she muttered.

He grinned, flashing that million-dollar smile at her again. “I’m drunk on you, baby.”

She rolled her eyes and he laughed back at her. He really was incorrigible. But then the smile faded from his eyes, leaving them a dark, smoky gray that pierced through her whiskey-induced fog like high-beam headlights. All of a sudden, heat radiated from him. A promise of sex so steamy it would burn away all the fog and bring the night down around them.

Her breath caught on a gasp as, without breaking his gaze into her eyes, his hand traveled down the valley between her breasts, across the flat plane of her belly, and hooked inside the thong that was her only remaining defense. His fingers slid across soft flesh that was so sensitive she thought she was going to come apart this very second.

And then his fingers dipped lower, sliding across strangely swollen flesh that raged with lust in response to his touch. “Whoa!” she exclaimed.

He froze against her. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong!”

“Then why did you yell for me to stop?” he asked cautiously.

It took her whiskey-fuzzed brain a moment to sort that one out. Then she blurted, “Oh. I get it. No. I was reacting to how great that felt. You know. As in, whoa, that’s awesome, dude.”

He burst out laughing. “So you don’t want me to stop?”

“No!”

“You have no idea how glad I am to hear that,” he murmured. For a second time, the humor fled from his gaze, leaving behind a raw, sexual hunger in his eyes that completely undid her. Men never looked at her like that. And certainly not men like him.

He whisked the thong off her and it joined her other clothes somewhere across the room. And then he did that surrounding her thing again, all muscle and heat and impatient man. The room spun more wildly now. Where the whiskey stopped and the intoxication of this man making love to her took over, she couldn’t rightly say. It was a heady cocktail, though.

His muscular thigh nudged hers apart and she tensed. He stared down at her as if waiting for her to say something.

“I’m overthinking again, aren’t I?” she mumbled.

“Relax. Enjoy. Let go.”

His voice was so darned seductive. It was so easy to sink into the pleasure of the moment, to lose herself in the whirling lights and giddy lust dancing around her and in her.

His other thigh joined the first one, and he levered her legs wide apart. This time she arched toward him with a soft cry of need. If she was going to do this, then by golly, she was really going to go for it. She flung caution to the wind and launched herself toward him. He caught her up against his shockingly hard body and kissed her deeply. And then he took her. There wasn’t another word for it. He invaded boldly, filling her to the point of delicious discomfort, and then he made her his. Fast then slow, gently and then with driving force, he made love to her.

When she would have closed her eyes, embarrassed over how wantonly she was throwing herself at him, he wouldn’t stand for it and made her open her eyes to look at him. When she would have shrunk away from the hoarse cries of pleasure torn from her own throat, he kissed her until she gave those cries to him. And when he drove her to release a second and even a third time, he ripped away any last vestiges of inhibition she might have clung to, with the sheer excess of pleasure he gave her.

Her entire being was raw and exposed to him. He played her body and soul like the master artist he was before he finally joined her in one last, shattering climax. It tore his name from her throat on a primal note she’d never sung before. It was, in a word, magnificent. And better yet, she wasn’t alone.

He collapsed beside her on the now-damp sheets, breathing heavily. She rolled over and pushed up on his chest to stare down at him, and that was when the full broadside of the whiskey hit her. Dizzy and reckless, she retained just enough reason to know this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a girl like her. One not to be missed.

“If I let you rest a little, do you think we could do that again?” she asked.

A broad grin spread across his face.

She added hastily, “Well, not that exactly. There’s something else I’ve always wanted to try …”

“Do tell. What does a nice girl like you think about alone in the deep of night?”

And in her whiskey-induced honesty, she told him. Every lurid, naughty detail of every lurid, naughty fantasy she’d ever had. By the time she was finished, his eyes blazed with desire and his body was obviously more than eager to play along.

“I don’t think we can get to all of that tonight, Chloe, but we can definitely make a dent in your list.” He rolled out of bed and fetched her discarded panty hose. With quick efficiency, he tied her wrists together and then to the headboard and knelt between her knees, his eyes burning with dark fire.

“Let’s see just how far you’re willing to go, my nice, normal little accountant.”

Chapter 2

Trent slipped out of the hotel’s delivery entrance in the last dark before dawn. He couldn’t sleep anyway, and there was no sense humiliating Chloe by strolling out through the hotel lobby in his rumpled tuxedo for all the staff to see.

Normally, he would’ve spent the night in her bed and enjoyed a morning-after brunch with her, but he had a hunch that, after last night, she’d just as soon wake up alone. For one thing, she was going to have a hell of a hangover. And, if she was telling the truth and had never done any of the things they’d done together last night, he’d lay odds she was going to suffer a rather large dose of morning-after embarrassment. He hadn’t been kidding when he called her a nice girl.

Who’d have guessed such a prim-and-proper lady would be such a wildcat after a few shots of whiskey? She’d pushed even a few of his sexual boundaries last night, and that was saying something. He’d spent most of his post-pubescent life enjoying the favors of beautiful women. But he’d never met one quite like Chloe Jordan, all sweet and virginal in public, and jaw-droppingly not virginal in private.

He crossed the street, stopping at the spot where the SUV had nearly run her down last night. As he’d thought. Not a skid mark in sight. That vehicle had accelerated toward her. Now why would anyone be out to hurt an uptight accountant who lived and worked half a continent away?

And more importantly, who would want to kill her?

Frowning, he returned to his own suite in the men’s club where the wedding had been held. His family owned the apartment, and he used it when he was in town. As its dark wood, leather and Ralph Lauren décor surrounded him, he breathed in the easy, old-world elegance with guilty pleasure. Most of the time he shunned the trappings of his family’s wealth. He was much more likely to be found in a shack on a beach, waxing a surfboard than lounging in high-end men’s clubs. And frankly, he was more at ease in the shack. People were more real there. Had a better sense of what really mattered in life.

Being diagnosed with his illness in his second year of college had put everything in perspective for him. Life was too short to waste doing things or being around people who made him crazy.

But he had to admit, this condo’s luxury was nice once in a while.

He took a six-jet steam shower to work out the worst of the kinks from last night’s athletics with Chloe, and shaved and dressed quickly. Then he sat down at the walnut desk in the corner and made a phone call to Winston Ops.

It was the headquarters of a private, corporate intelligence network for all of the many Winston Enterprises companies around the world. The duty controller, a computer genius named Novak from somewhere in eastern Europe, took his call.

“Trent Hollings, here. I need you to run a quick background check for me on Chloe Jordan.”

“Sunny’s sister?” Novak asked, surprised.

“I think someone tried to kill her last night.”

“Are you serious?” Novak exclaimed.

“As a heart attack.”

The duty controller instantly shifted into all-business mode. “Got it. So, we’re looking for enemies in her life.” Trent heard clacking keys in the background as Novak typed furiously. “How was the wedding?”

“Great party,” Trent answered. “Can’t remember the last time I saw Aiden so happy. He’s a lucky man.”

“Maybe you should find yourself a nice girl and settle down, too.”

He laughed. “Not me. I’ll never slow down enough for any girl to catch me.”

“When you least expect it, one’s gonna come along and trip you all up, buddy.”

Visions of a blonde accountant blowing his mind in bed flashed through his head. “Nah,” Trent replied. “Not me. It’s not like I can give any girl a life evenly faintly resembling normal.” Hell, he couldn’t even promise to give a girl children. With his inherited disorder, careful genetic counseling would be necessary to ensure that his condition—spinal muscular atrophy—wasn’t passed on to his offspring.

“Okay, Trent. I’ve got a preliminary report on our girl. She’s a certified public accountant. Just finished a master’s degree in forensic accounting. Company called Paradeo filed a W-2 on her about six months ago. But they’re an investment firm, not forensic accountants.”

She’d said she was freelancing. And there’d been that reference to taking a company down. Must be investigating her employer for someone else. “Where’s this Paradeo company headquartered?”

“San Francisco. No satellite offices. Anything else you need to know right away, Trent?”

“Do you see anything at a glance that could explain someone trying to run her down in a large SUV?”

“Other than some rich, pissed-off CEO she might have put in jail? Nope. You don’t suppose it has anything to with Code X, do you?” Novak asked.

The controller’s question made Trent’s blood run cold. That was the one place he’d been mentally avoiding going this morning. He’d known it would give him exactly the headache he felt coming on. “I don’t know. Keep digging and let’s see what you come up with before we go there.”

“Roger. I’m on it.”

Trent paced the spacious room restlessly. He never had been able to sit still even before he’d accepted the experimental stem cell therapies that were both his miracle cure and the heart of the Code X project. Toss in a liberal dose of stress and worry now, and he could forget sitting down, let alone being still. He changed out of the clothes he’d donned only minutes before and into running gear. It was early enough that he should be able to stretch his legs a little without anyone seeing him.

He jogged down the stairs, too jumpy to wait for the elevator, and restrained himself until he’d cleared the lobby of the club. But when he hit the sidewalk, he couldn’t contain the bursting energy any longer. He exploded into motion, sprinting down the street with strides that grew longer and faster with every step. In moments he was flying along at twenty-five miles per hour, the wind ripping through his hair and making his eyes water. God, it felt good.

Every time he ran like this, he remembered the early onset of his disease, the progressive muscle weakness, the loss of tendon strength, the continuous respiratory infections, the pain. And the fear. Not knowing what had been wrong with him was the worst of all as his body had literally wasted away before his eyes. It had taken over a year to get the diagnosis. SMA usually showed up in infants and small children, and it threw the doctors off when his case waited until adulthood to present itself.

A delivery truck backed out of an alley in front of him and he dodged around it with a lightning-fast move a professional football player would have envied.

He accelerated again, reveling in the flow of muscles and sinew and blood working in extraordinary harmony, his quick twitch muscles reacting completely off the charts for a normal human. But then, he wasn’t normal at all. Not anymore. Not since Jeff Winston had called and suggested that there might be a radical cure for Trent’s disease. It was highly experimental and had side effects, of course. He’d grabbed on to the lifeline his old friend had thrown him and never looked back. He was entirely and for the rest of his life a creature of Code X.

He ran for nearly an hour, slowing only when people began to emerge onto the streets and he risked someone seeing him race along at world-class sprinter speed for block after block.

He’d turned around to head back to the club when the cell phone in the breast pocket of his skin-tight running shirt vibrated. He slowed to a walk to take the call. It was his boss and friend, Jeff Winston.

“Hey, Jeff. What’s up?”

“Couldn’t you at least sound out of breath after tearing around like you do?” Jeff groused.

Thankfully, along with his quick twitch muscles had come extraordinarily quick oxygen uptake. “Sorry, bro. I’ll try to huff and puff a little. What can I do for you? It’s early for you to be up, isn’t it?”

“I need you here at the club ASAP. Take a cab.”

“I can get there about as fast if I run.”

“I don’t need you drawing any attention to yourself just now,” Jeff answered in clipped tones.

“What’s going on?” Trent was alarmed. It was completely unlike Jeff to be this terse.

“When you get back.”

Trent spotted a taxi stand and jogged to it at normal human speed, chafing at the slowness of the pace. He jumped into the first cab in line and gave the club’s address. Had Novak uncovered something else about Chloe? Something that would explain her attempted murder? What on earth could it be?

The first thing Chloe became aware of was that her brain felt twice its normal size inside a skull that hadn’t expanded one bit. Every beat of her heart sent throbbing pain through her head. As she swam slowly toward consciousness, she registered lying on her stomach among wildly tangled sheets and blankets, which was strange. Usually she was a quiet, neat sleeper who didn’t disturb her bed much. And the rest of it registered. She was naked.

That startled her the rest of the way to full consciousness. She never slept in the buff. What if there was a fire and she had to race outside to safety? She rolled over onto her back and groaned as her entire body protested, sore. God, she felt like she’d been run over by a truck. Vague memory of that exact thing nearly happening tickled the edges of her fuzzy brain.

Memory of Trent came back to her. He’d been such a smooth operator, and she’d been so blessed eager to have him seduce her. Where was he now? Peeling one eyelid open, she groaned as sunlight creeping insidiously past the curtains pierced her skull like a sword. Agonizing pain exploded behind both eyes. No sign of Trent. He and his sexy tuxedo and bedroom eyes were gone. It was as if he’d never been here and knocked her world completely off its foundation.

The old hurt stabbed at her heart. Everybody always left her. Every time she took a chance on caring about someone, she ended up all alone. Her parents. Her foster families. Even Sunny. They all abandoned her sooner or later. An urge to cry nearly overcame her. Was it too much just to want a normal life? To find a nice man, settle down in a modest home, have a few kids and a dog, and be happy?

By way of an answer, her stomach gave a mighty, and threatening, heave. Moaning in pain, she forced herself upright and ran for the toilet. After duly worshipping at the throne of the porcelain god and emptying what little remained in her stomach from last night’s binge, she felt a few inches further away from death. But that wasn’t saying much. A shower sounded good, but the idea of listening to the pounding of water sent her back to bed showerless.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a hangover, and she’d never had one that even began to compare to this. Prepared to sleep for another, oh, decade, she crawled back into bed and threw an arm across her eyes.

A jangling noise that nearly split her skull in two made her swear and dive for her cell phone on the nightstand. “‘Lo,” she grumbled.

“Hey, sis! I missed you leaving the party last night.”

Oh, God. Did Sunny have to sound so darned perky this morning? “Sorry. I drank a little too much champagne, and then some guys lit up cigars. The smoke made me nauseous, so I snuck out early.”

“Rats. I was hoping some hot guy picked you up and took you back to his place.”

Visions of the hot guy who’d knocked her off her feet, and then brought her back to her room and knocked her world completely out of orbit flashed into her mind.

Oh. My. God. Had she really asked him to … Had they really … She would never be able to look anyone from this wedding in the eye again … And she could never, ever, face him again … Mortification almost sent her back to the toilet a second time.

“Chloe? Are you still there?”

Her brain engaged belatedly. “Uhh, yeah. I’m here. Why are you calling me, anyway? Aren’t you supposed to be on your honeymoon?”

“Aiden and I are at the airport. He won’t tell me where we’re going, but Jeff loaned us the Winston jet to get there. I just wanted to say goodbye. Aiden says I won’t have phone service where we’re headed.”

“Wow. Sounds private and sexy. Have fun, eh?”

“It’s my honeymoon and my hubby’s a hottie. How can I not have fun?” Sunny retorted, laughing.

The cheerful sound nearly made Chloe’s eyeballs fall right out of her head. She pressed a hand to them to hold them in. “Love you, baby sis.”

“Love you, big sis.”

Chloe groaned as she disconnected the call and turned her cell phone completely off. She prayed to sleep off the mother of all hangovers before she had to go back to San Francisco tomorrow. And then she prayed fervently that Trent Hollings would leave town today and go somewhere far, far away. Forever. There was no way she could ever look him in the eye after what they—what she—had done last night.

She took a solemn vow then and there never to touch alcohol again as long as she lived. The idea of losing all her inhibitions like that again made her positively ill. Who’d have guessed a few shots of whiskey would turn her into such a slut?