Hot Picks: Secrets And Lies

Seconds later, Ramon came out and said, “The car is waiting. Lovely to meet you, Cinnia.”

He and Vera disappeared like a snuffed flame leaving a wisp of burned friendship hanging in the air.

Henri sat down across from Cinnia at the high-top table, mouth relaxed, but she had the sense he was laughing at her ill-disguised panic. He signaled to the butler to freshen their drinks.

“Where do you think he’s taking her?” she asked as the butler left.

“The nearest hotel with a vacant room, I imagine.”

She shouldn’t have asked.

“Why does it bother you?”

“It doesn’t.”

“You’re judging,” he accused. “Why?”

She wanted to deny it. She considered herself open-minded and forward thinking. She didn’t slut-shame. Women had needs and Vera was no one’s victim.

“Vera can do whatever she wants. I don’t like the idea that you’re judging me by her choices, though.” She hated it. Avery’s awful accusations came back to her and she felt raw all over again. Worse even, as she thought of this man who lived like this thinking she wanted a shortcut to the same lifestyle. “I don’t sleep with men for a swag bag. I have a job. I buy what I need and if I can’t afford something, I live without it.”

“What do you do?” He looked like he was asking out of politeness, not like he really believed her speech on self-sufficiency.

She almost blurted “funeral arrangements” just to put him off.

“I have a business degree and I’m a qualified financial advisor, but my focus is estate planning and trust management.”

His stall of surprise was painful in how loudly it spoke of his having underestimated her.

“I’m a very boring person,” she said, wishing she could be more smug at defying his assumptions about her, but she only felt the difference in their stations more keenly. He had obviously written her off as trifling. And yes, she was trying to climb higher than where she’d wound up, but through honest hard work. Still, she would never reach his level and that put him well beyond her reach.

Not that she wanted him.

Did she?

With an uncomfortable sting in her blood, she picked up her champagne then remembered she had decided to stop drinking now that Vera was gone. She took a sip of water instead.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” he admitted.

“You thought I was a secretary? Airline hostess? Model? Even if I was, those are all honest careers in their own right.”

“They are. And you could model. You’re very beautiful.”

“So could you. You have a face so nice, God made it twice.”

He snorted. “Point to you,” he conceded with a grimace. “I absolutely hate to be reduced to ‘one of the Sauveterre twins.’ We are all more than we appear on the surface, aren’t we?”

Oh, the bastard, now she couldn’t hate him unequivocally.

“Is it bad?” she asked, feeling compelled to do so. “I mean, I see things online all the time that I know have to be pure rubbish. The same nonsense that shows up about all celebrities, saying you’re having an alien’s baby or whatever. Does it bother you, though? Do you resent being famous because of an accident of birth?”

He took a moment to answer.

“I don’t resent being who I am. I don’t talk about my family—” his gaze shot to hers in warning to stay well back “—but I wouldn’t trade them for anything. The attention is a pain in the ass and not something we invite. It annoys me, but I’ve learned to pick my battles.” He said it flatly, but the nail beds of his fingers were white where he gripped his glass.

“Well, I—” She stopped herself, holding out a hand. “Message received about your family,” she assured him. “You’ve earned the right to privacy. But I hope she’s well. Your sister, I mean.”

She was tempted to say more, weirdly yearning to explain that his family’s pain had rippled out to her in the strangest way. She’d been as taken as anyone with the Sauveterre twins. The girls were a little younger than her, but they had seemed like an ideal worth emulating, living much larger than Cinnia even though her family had been doing quite well in those days.

Then Trella had been kidnapped and she’d been terrified for the girl. Of course, she had been compelled to follow the rest of the family’s exploits forevermore. She was as curious as anyone about why his youngest sister had dropped out of the public eye in her teens. Had she gone into rehab? A madhouse? A nunnery? Theories abounded, but Cinnia kept her lips sealed against asking for the truth.

Against asking him if he was still dealing with the fallout.

The butler brought another plate of hors d’oeuvres, this one with tiny deviled quail eggs, caviar and stuffed olives and a whipped salmon mousse with narrow fingers of toasted bread. It was exquisite and she kept her gaze on it to hide how thinking of his past had altered her perception of him. She wanted to dismiss him as a womanizer who should be avoided, but he was human. He’d been hurt. Scarred.

“Why estate planning?”

She dragged her gaze off the plate, heart taking a skip as she met his gaze.

“Many reasons. I started looking into it after my father died. There was a lot to untangle and as I learned what he could have done, I kept wondering why he hadn’t set it up this way or that. My mother would have had it easier if he’d shown some foresight. Looking at it as a career, I saw it was flexible, something you could do without a lot of overhead. You can even work from home if you have to. Everyone needs a will, whether they know it or not. And it’s one of those things that if you’re good and fast, you can make a decent living. I didn’t see a downside beyond its lack of sex appeal.”

“Which you more than make up for in being yourself.”

He said it with gentle mockery. She knew he meant it as over-the-top flattery, but her cheeks still warmed. She tried to hide how affected she was with a dry “I try.”

The fireworks started and they turned to watch.

She was more aware of him than the performance. He was very charismatic with his air of aloof charm and hint of a French accent. He was also subtly demonstrative, lightly caressing her wrist as he drew her attention to the flotilla of boats coming in to watch.

Everything he did made her very aware of herself. Her breaths felt deliberate, her skin sensitized, her movements a dance of grace. She was being seduced and he wasn’t even making an effort to do it. Her mind drifted to thoughts of kissing him. Feeling his weight against her.

Her skin warmed, her nipples tingled and she pressed her knees together to ease the ache in the fork of her thighs.

She was sorry when the fireworks ended and her excuse for being here was over.

“Oh, no,” she said quickly, declining the butler’s offer to bring strawberries and cream with a fresh bottle of champagne as he removed their plate of finger foods.

“Do not worry about your figure,” Henri said, nodding to the butler.

“I’m worried about my survival. I’m allergic. I have a pen for emergencies and everything.” She nodded at her clutch.

“It’s that bad?” He held up a hand to halt the butler.

“I nearly died at a sleepover once, because my friend didn’t want to fess up that she’d stolen a bottle of her dad’s best wine for homemade sangria.” She rolled her eyes, making light of what a frightening near miss she’d had.

He refused the strawberries and told the butler he would press the call button when they were ready for more champagne.

“Have them if you want them,” Cinnia protested. “It’s not so bad I can’t watch someone else eat them.”

He tucked his chin, leaning forward as the butler closed the door behind himself. “But I can’t kiss you if I’ve eaten them. Can I?”

His words made her ears ring. She stole a long, subtle inhale, holding his gaze while she tried not to let him see how easily he sent her blood pressure into the stratosphere.

“Remaining hopeful?” Her gaze dropped to his mouth.

“Very much so.”

She forced herself to slide off her tall chair, excusing herself to the attached powder room. Time to go, she told her reflection. The woman in the mirror was entirely too heavy lidded, her defenses against Henri thinning by the second.

When she returned, Henri was inside the suite. The lighting fell in subdued angles off the wall sconces and from the patio lanterns below the balcony, setting an intimate tone while the music inside the club pulsed in muted rhythm through the walls.

Henri had raided his swag bag for a box of chocolate truffles with a Belgian label and was opening one wrapped in gold foil. A ball of discarded foil was already on the table next to the box.

“I have a sweet tooth,” he admitted ruefully, offering the truffle.

“No, thanks. I’ll, um, go. This was nice. Thank you.” She stuck out her hand, feeling like an idiot the moment she did it.

He set aside the chocolate and brought out his phone. “I’ll order the car and take you.”

“I can manage.”

He gave her a pithy look. “I meant it about not feeling obligated. I can drive you home without attacking you. I’ve made my appearance here. I don’t plan to stay.”

It wasn’t him she was worried about. She was half-tempted to ask him to find the nearest vacant hotel room. Vera’s voice was playing in her head, extolling the virtues of being a modern woman who owned her sexuality. You eat if you’re hungry, don’t you?

Cinnia was sexually hungry. She put it down to the excitement of dressing up for an extravagant evening, the soft breeze caressing her skin and champagne relaxing her. Henri was very attractive and she would bet any money he easily satisfied the most exotic of appetites.

“I think it’s best if we end it here.” She felt like a coward and couldn’t help looking at his mouth again. She wanted him to kiss her. She really did. Her blood thickened in her arteries, throbbing with anticipation.

He quirked his lips. “If you tell me you have an allergy to chocolate, I’m going to be disappointed.”

“I’ll survive,” she murmured, recognizing that she was consenting to a kiss. “My affairs are in order if I don’t. And what a story to tell my grandchildren if I do.” She said it to be cheeky, to keep this light and disguise that she was intrigued by him.

His breath rushed out in an incredulous ha, but he wasn’t deterred. He crowded close, hands opening on her waist and drawing her forward into him.

“I’d best make it memorable then.”

She wore low kitten heels and he was very tall, well over six feet and overwhelming as he bent his head to brush his mouth against hers.

She clutched his shoulders for balance, shivering lightly, head instantly swimming. Was that it? She swallowed and wet her lips then parted them, inviting a more thorough goodbye than that.

He started to smile and she knew his move had been a deliberate tease to make her want more. He moved in like a damned marauder then covered her mouth fully, angling to plunder. Claiming.

She curled her fingers against his shoulders, feeling them tense as he drew her closer. She moaned as she kissed him back, quickly over her head and suddenly drowning. He buffeted her senses, filling her brain with the faint scent of aftershave and masculinity, enfolding her as she melted under a flood of arousal. His tongue came into her mouth and she tasted dark chocolate and darker intention.

He wanted her. She could feel how hard he was against her stomach. Her own body grew hot and achy in seconds. Longing struck her loins and she looped her arms fully around his neck to mash her breasts against his chest.

Too much, she thought as she did it, knowing it was a signal of receptiveness, but it was pure instinct. Wanton need.

She drew back, gasped once for air, then found herself kissing him again. Just once more. Okay twice. The third time she might have found her willpower, but the solidness of a wall arrived at her back. He ran his lips down her throat and slid his hand to cradle her breast.

“Oh,” she breathed, loving the gentle way he massaged, then found her nipple through the fringe, circling and teasing. Her knee came up to his thigh of its own accord, making space for him to settle against her aching mons.

He growled his approval and ran his hand up her thigh, taking the hem of her dress up to her waist, hooking his forearm behind her knee and caressing her bottom as she picked her hips up off the wall and met his suggestive thrust.

He kissed her deeply, tongue delving into her mouth as he fondled her breast and the skin of her bottom exposed by her thong. They rocked in mock lovemaking, their sighs too low to be heard over the noise of the crowd and music drifting in from the open doors of the balcony.

This was so not her. She liked sex, but she had never behaved like this. It had never felt like this. She might actually climax fooling around fully clothed, grinding herself against him if he kept up that perfectly delicious rhythm. The hard length of him was right where it needed to be, rubbing against her most sensitized flesh. She was so turned on and really tempted to let it happen. It was like they were dancing. The song’s beat was picking up, growing more intense. Tension was gathering in her abdomen and lower, in the flesh he was stimulating so erotically.

Dropping her head back against the wall, she bit her bottom lip, one hand bracing on his shoulder. They had to stop. They were practically in public and she was so close!

He whispered something in French that sounded like encouragement and reached one hand to lock the door. “It’s okay. Come.”

“I’m not—”

“Oui, chérie, you are. Very close. I can feel you trembling. It’s exciting. Come.”

She wanted to tell him he didn’t know how she felt, but he kissed her like he had the first time, barely grazing her mouth so she turned her head, seeking further contact and clinging to his lips with her own.

“Let me give you this,” he whispered as he broke away and shifted to bring his hand between them, gently tracing her tender flesh through the damp layer of black silk.

She stopped breathing. Anticipation held her very still as he drew light patterns over the silk of her thong. Her entire being narrowed to the touch of his fingertip, which was so light, yet made her throb with need. She waited in agony for his caress to steal beneath the elastic and…

“Mmm,” she moaned when he finally did it.

“You like?” He stroked her exactly the way she needed, unhurried, kissing and drawing away, stoking her arousal, kissing her more deeply, gently penetrating, then whispering praise, promising to make it so good for her. “Come. I want you to.”

She was going out of her mind, but his control was equally crazy making. She wanted to let go but she couldn’t stand that he was doing this to her.

“Do you have a condom?” she gasped when he let her breathe again.

He stilled, eyes a silvery glimmer in the low light, gaze burning into hers.

“You want to make love?” he asked on a rasp.

Oh, please. His hand was in her knickers. He knew what she wanted. She was dying. But she wanted climaxing to be something they did together.

She slid her hands down to his fly, hands shaking so much with anticipation she was clumsy as she tried to open his pants.

He removed his hand and hooked her thong to peel it down, letting her leg drop so the silk slid to her ankles. Then he shrugged out of his suspenders and finished opening his pants, bringing a condom from his pocket before he hitched his pants low on his hips and revealed himself.

It ought to have been the moment she woke up and realized this was way beyond where it was supposed to go. Across the suite, the doors were open to a crowd of famous faces, hidden just below the rail.

Her world became a narrow, shadowed one where her blood was on fire. Every breath she drew was filled with his spicy, masculine scent. She admired the shape of him in the low light as she watched him roll the condom down his length. She was so filled with anticipation her loins clenched in pangs of yearning.

He nudged his feet between hers, stepping the thong off her ankle as he settled against her again, the heat of his body a type of deliverance. She gathered her skirt and lifted her leg, hooking her calf against his buttocks, offering herself. He bent his knees and glided to caress, teasing her a moment, wetting the tip before he nudged for entry. He pressed, finding no resistance, and thrust smoothly into her slick channel, so she dug her nails into the back of his neck and made a keening noise at the intensity of his thickness filling her.

“Hurt?” he grunted with surprise, pulling back a little.

“Oh, no,” she breathed. “So good.” She tightened her foot into the back of his thigh, urging him deeper.

He growled a noise of agreement and pressed all the way in, giving her a moment to greet his intrusion with little rippling hugs of her inner muscles, joyous at the invasion of that hot, hard length. So rock hard. They kissed like that, joined, barely moving as they stood against the wall, tongues laving against each other, bodies quaking with holding back, hot, so hot.

She had never been so overcome by desire that she stood against a damned wall with a stranger. She had never felt so desperate for more. She nudged to signal him that he was making her wait too long. Her arousal was a screaming pitch of need.

He breathed a soft laugh against her mouth and began to move with heavy purpose, not rough, but thorough, drawing out each movement so the pleasure went to its furthest degree each time, dragging tingles to the tips of her extremities. It was so sweet it made her teeth ache. She kept thinking it couldn’t possibly get better, then he thrust heavily, landing deep, and it was fantastic.

She ceased thinking about where she was or who he was. Their lovemaking became her entire focus. Nothing mattered except that he was moving within her in that exquisitely perfect way. It was earthy and uncivilized, yet so finely tuned it was art. She wanted him with her in this place where he’d propelled her, where nothing existed except this pleasure.

She ran her tongue up his neck and sucked his earlobe and angled to take him as deeply as she could. She kissed him back with abandon and brought his hand up under her dress to her breast, then slid her own under his shirt to caress his tense stomach. She whispered, “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

He said something in French, his whole body shaking, as though he was in the same state of straining to hold back because this was too good to release.

“You’re killing me, chérie. I can’t hold on. Are you ready?”

“I don’t want it to end,” she gasped, turning her open mouth against his neck and gently biting as the crisis threatened.

“Neither do I, but—ah!”

“Yes. Oh, Henri.”

“Oui. Ensemble. Maintenant.” He thrust harder. Faster.

Glory rose up in a gathering wave, locking them together in ecstatic culmination.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS WEEKS after the nightclub before Henri found himself in London again. He hadn’t stopped thinking about Cinnia Whitley and he didn’t know why. Their evening together had followed exactly the pattern he’d assumed it would and it wasn’t a new one.

Well, he usually closed an encounter with more grace, but she was the one who had disappeared when he’d stepped away to take what he thought might be an emergency call from his sister.

Regardless, it wasn’t as if Ramon was giving a second thought to her friend Vera, so he didn’t know why he couldn’t stop thinking about Cinnia. Maybe it was because she hadn’t behaved as predictably as her friend.

Vera had posted the selfie she’d taken with the four of them when they’d first entered the hospitality suite. She was using her rub with a Sauveterre to gain some celebrity status of her own. Absolutely nothing new and he didn’t even bother feeling disgusted by it.

Cinnia hadn’t shared the selfie to her own account, though. The one online quote he’d found attributed to her about him was “I met him briefly. There’s nothing else to say.”

Not one to kiss and tell, obviously.

Neither was he, so he appreciated her discretion.

Of course, what could one say about their lovemaking without sounding like a blatant liar or an overly romantic poet? He liked an involved partner and always did what he could to ensure the woman got as much from their lovemaking as he did. But to say he and Cinnia had had sex, or had given each other an orgasm, was to completely understate the act.

He kept rationalizing what had made it seem so powerful. She’d been resisting their attraction in a slow burn that had made her capitulation all the sweeter. The partially public location had held a titillating appeal. Their chemistry was very compatible.

As he’d leaned against the soft cushion of her body, barely able to keep his knees from buckling, he’d been… He wanted to call it empty, but even though he’d felt drained, he’d also felt utterly satisfied.

At peace.

All the responsibilities that weighed on him were still there. He hadn’t stopped caring about them, but in that moment of euphoria, he’d accepted it all. If that was what had made him into the man who could be there with that woman, forehead tilted against the wall, cheek pressed to hers, inhaling her scent and twitching with reaction long after the pulses of orgasm had faded, feeling the very light stroke of her fingertips at his spine…

So be it.

Then he had heard Trella’s ringtone and his demanding life had rushed back in to consume him. He had stepped away from Cinnia and straightened himself, snatching up the phone and answering it without visuals, stepping outside in case Trella was in crisis and he needed to talk her down.

Looking back, he knew he had reacted almost like a shock victim, rushing to get on with his life after a collision that had nearly taken his life. His head had been spinning, his body firing with adrenaline.

Since then, he had been telling himself he was wrong. Their lovemaking hadn’t been anywhere near so profound as he recollected. Even if it had been the best sex of his life with a woman who possessed an ounce of discretion, so what? He wasn’t in the market for a relationship and given the life he led, never would be.

At best, he might have stretched their association into the rest of the weekend, if she hadn’t disappeared like the fire bell had rung. When he had realized she hadn’t just ducked into the ladies’ room, he had told himself it was for the best and asked for his order of strawberries.

The berries had been both sweet and tart, imprinting on his memory a little deeper with each bite. He suspected he would think of her every time he glimpsed a strawberry for a very long time and would wonder if she was managing to stay away from them.

Why? Such a ridiculous question to clog up his brain.

And yet, weeks later, as he entered a party he had no desire to attend and spotted her, his first thought was so far so good. She was alive and well, not having succumbed to fruit poisoning.

Her blond hair was gathered in a knot and held in place with a couple of sticks, but a few delicate spirals fell around her face. Her shoulders were bared by her white summer dress, her heels an attractive spike that showed off her legs. She wore only a pair of silver hoop earrings for jewelry.

She was as casually beautiful as he remembered, her expression serene as she listened to a man who wasn’t her date, but looked like he wanted to be.

As was his habit, Henri had insisted his security be given the finalized guest list before he accepted the invitation. If people wanted him to show up to their affairs, they complied. That’s how he had known Cinnia would be here and he’d made himself take a full ten minutes of sober second thought before he’d accepted the invite himself—without a plus one, as she had also done.

His heart started to thud with male need as he looked at her. He knew what lurked beneath that air of containment and he’d be damned if that gangly pontificator would discover it, as well.