Too Wicked to Keep

With a grimace, he entered the apartment and shut the door behind him. Lady instantly struggled out of her arms, bounced to the ground and made a beeline for the new guy. Her internal motor turned up to its highest setting, Lady coiled around his legs, basting his pants with her soft, dark fur. He sidestepped with an amazing amount of grace, but he’d met his match. The cat anticipated his moves, and no matter how much dancing he did in the foyer, Lady wouldn’t let him get away.

“What is she, in heat or something?”

“You do have that effect on women,” Abby quipped, shaking the bag of treats up at Black Jack, who seemed much more interested in his companion’s obsession with the new guy than he did in the tuna-flavored crunchies.

“It’s a curse,” Daniel said, balancing on one foot to avoid stepping on Lady’s serpentine tale. “Know how to break it?”

She snorted. If she knew how to fight the allure that was Daniel Burnett, she wouldn’t be in this situation at all, would she?

“Just pet her,” she advised. “If cats think you don’t like them, they never leave you alone.”

“So if you like them, they ignore you?”

“Pretty much.” She slid a footstool to the cabinet and climbed up to collect Black Jack, but he had no interest in coming down. He lifted his big furry body and backed into a corner with a hiss.

“Oh, really?” she challenged, annoyed. Her pets weren’t accustomed to guests of the male persuasion, but she didn’t expect open hostility. “No treats for you, you nasty traitor.”

“Talking to me or the cat?”

Daniel was directly behind her. She gasped, surprised he’d come so near without her hearing him—without her feeling him. He had Lady curled up in his arms, her eyes at half-mast while he scratched her chin. Abby couldn’t remember her cat ever looking quite so hypnotized.

She remembered the sensation very well.

“Give me a second and I’ll get you set up in the guest room,” she said, turning so she could back her way down the stool—but not before he took a bold look at her ass, which was right at his eye level.

“Is that my only option?”

His voice was silk and sensuality, not unlike the sound emanating from the back of her cat’s throat. She allowed herself a split second to fantasize about him caressing her as he did her pet, but then skewered him with an exasperated look that was more for herself than for him.

Daniel exuded sex to strangers. To a woman who’d experienced the skill of his sly hands, wicked tongue and generous mouth, his allure was doubly powerful.

With their shared past, her attraction to him wasn’t rational. It was chemical.

“Unless you want to sleep out here on the couch with the cats, yes, Daniel, that’s your only option.”

“If we skip the sleeping part, do my choices expand?”

His shamelessness was both infuriating and exhilarating. He had no boundaries, no limits. She couldn’t help but laugh. She’d never met anyone like him and she doubted that once he left, she’d ever meet anyone like him again.

At least, not if she could help it.

“Sorry, but that’s the best I can offer.”

He eyed her couch and then the cat, who was now stretching up and burrowing her head beneath his chin. “The guest room will be fine.”

“Good choice. Make yourself at home and I’ll show you around in a few minutes.”

Abby went into her bedroom, kicked off her high heels, then unhooked her earrings as she sauntered into her bathroom to take off her makeup and brush her teeth. Thinking it might not be a good idea to show Daniel into the bedroom while she was still wearing the sexy black dress, she pulled out her most modest pajamas, a full-length top and pants in a hazy pearl silk that she’d gotten from her mother for her last birthday.

She kept the lights off, her ear tuned for any sound of Daniel moving around her apartment, maybe looking through her things, trying to find some clue about her current life that he could use to his advantage.

He could look all he wanted—he wouldn’t find much. When she’d moved out of the brownstone she’d shared with Marshall, she’d left most of her possessions behind. The house had belonged to his family and most of the furnishings had been theirs, too. Shamed by her behavior before the wedding, she’d wrapped herself up in his world, in his things. When he died, she realized how much of herself she’d lost.

Once she’d started to come out of the fog of sadness, she’d decided to get her own place. She’d ignored her mother’s offer to pay for an interior designer, opting instead to fill the apartment herself with furniture and knickknacks that she’d picked out on her own. Even the cats were new, adopted from a shelter. She still had a few things to remind her of Marshall—like the T-shirt he used to wear to bed that she kept in a tissue-lined box in her closet—but mostly, this places was hers and hers alone.

But now, Daniel was here. In her life. In her home. Was he still in her heart, too?

She reached behind to undo the zipper of her dress and nearly jumped out of her skin when her hand met his.

“Here, let me.”

She moved to step away, but stopped. She couldn’t keep running. She’d found Daniel not only so he could help her retrieve her grandmother’s painting, but also so she could face his part in her crazy past and put it to rest. If she couldn’t endure his touch, how would she ever prove to herself that he no longer held sway over her heart, body or soul?

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