Tabloid Affair, Secretly Pregnant!

Her mouth opened, to gasp or deny, only nothing came of it but a slow leaking breath that might have been regret. She would have given Nate anything. Done anything he asked.

If he’d decided to use her as a means of payback or revenge or whatever motivated him back then, he would have found no resistance. Only the eager willingness of a girl desperate for him to see her as a woman. And the repercussions…“Brandt would have gone nuts.”

Nate let out a bark of laugher. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t concern for your brother that stopped me.”

A tide of warmth washed through her and she stole a glimpse his way. Her hero, always and in the most unconventional ways. Only he’d walked away from her as if their friendship meant nothing. “Where’ve you been all this time?”

Her quietly posed question brought a pause, and the faint lines around his eyes lost their laughter. “The last six months I’ve spent mostly in Germany.” He shifted in the nest, stretching out one long leg before them. “Babysitting a new venture that didn’t take off the way I’d anticipated.”

It wasn’t what she’d meant. She’d been thinking more of where he’d been for the past ten years. They’d been close. They’d been friends. And then one day, he just wasn’t. Except now he was back. Asking her to be the friend he needed to help him.

“Do you want to tell me what this is all about?”

Nate ran a wide palm over the heavy line of his jaw. “Honestly, I’d like to get out of your little home-away-from-home here.”

Pushing to his feet, he dug into his pocket for a handful of bills he then tucked under the champagne bottle left atop the rolling cart. “What do you say?” Catching her hand, he pulled her up with him. “Strength in numbers, right? We head back into the reception and give ’em something to talk about?”

It was tempting. Made even more so by the warmth radiating up her arm from Nate’s casual touch. She didn’t want it to end, but as he led her out into the kitchen access hall Payton’s steps dragged.

Nate turned, seemingly amused by her hesitance. “What?”

“I need to think about this.”

The idea of the talk surrounding her laced with something other than pity was thrilling, and the opportunity to spend some time with Nate again—well, she didn’t quite know how she felt about that. If it was even possible for her to pretend to have a relationship with him at the same time she was pretending her attraction wasn’t sincere. What she did know was that Nate wasn’t a man to ask for favors lightly.

He needed her.

Still, a decision of this magnitude deserved at least one night’s consideration. “Give me the evening and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Ahead the door to the ballroom opened a crack as a waiter or someone prepared to back through it. Payton took a step in retreat, only to have Nate draw her to a stop.

“Here’s the thing, Payton.” His blue eyes had her now, cool and deep and dangerous. Captivating. “I’ve already thought about it. This is a prime opportunity and the results will benefit us both.”

He’d already—“What?”

His loose grasp on her hand shifted, tightened as though he thought she might bolt. “Trust me,” he urged in a tone of pure seductive persuasion.

Her chin shot up. She’d known Nate back when he was cultivating that tone and, while she couldn’t say she was exactly immune, she wasn’t wholly susceptible either. “No.”

He could forget about luring her in the way he did every other man, woman and child on the planet. She knew how he operated and the last thing she needed was another overbearing man trying to control her.

She wasn’t one of his devotees—some Wall Street junkie determined to live as Nate lived and follow in the footsteps of the financially infallible. And she wasn’t one of his bimbos either, hanging on his arm and every whim. She was Payton Liss, determined to secure her independence, and she wasn’t giving into this man just because his voice stroked like rough velvet over her every independent thought!

The corner of his mouth quirked up a degree and something about his smile, one she’d seen countless times before and knew promised pure mayhem, put all her senses on alert. Her stomach jumped and she tried to escape.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” she gasped, backing down the hall with Nate matching her step for step, still holding her hands captive within his. She glanced over her shoulder, and nervous laughter erupted with the realization she’d somehow ended up moving toward the ballroom rather than away. Stupid.

“Come on…trust me.”

That grin!

“I don’t trust you,” she shot back, her pulse rocketing in response to the predatory intent blazing in his eyes. She’d be a fool to trust a man leering at her like that—as if she’d made his week with this little game of cat and mouse.

“You should,” he cajoled, this time taking a step into her space. “I’ve got a knack for making things work.”

Payton peered up at him as he drew her closer—to the point where their feet tangled, legs touched. He was so bad. So incredibly, unrepentantly bad.

“You’re arrogant,” she accused, laughing as she nearly stumbled into his chest.

“You like it,” he challenged, with a pointed jut of his chin, just daring her denial. But, God help her, she couldn’t. She’d always loved his crazy confidence. Nate’s unwavering ability to fly in the face of convention and come out on top. He was free and, contrary to popular opinion, didn’t take himself too seriously…so neither did she. Only, if Nate pulled her any closer, “serious” would become inevitable.

Her hands moved ineffectually to his chest. “What are you—?”

But then the door to the ballroom pushed fully open and, with an expertly maneuvered tug, Nate caught her up against the hard-cut planes of his body in a hold so provocatively intense she couldn’t think of anything beyond the miracle of its fit. Ice-blue eyes slid over her in a chilling caress that left her skin pebbled with goose bumps.

Flashing a quick wink, he caught the back of her neck. “Trust me. I’ve done this before.”

Lips parted in protest, Payton didn’t manage a word before he moved in and, with deadly accuracy, captured her mouth beneath his.

Chapter Three

THE kiss was blatant and intense, a showy play of passion that bowed her in a delicate arch, caged by the unyielding iron and steel of Nate’s powerful frame. Firm, smooth lips moved over hers in a back and forth rub so skillfully seductive she could only sigh under their assault. Give into the idea that, if she wasn’t going to escape the spotlight as she’d planned, there were plenty worse things than being exposed while discovering what it was to be kissed by Nate Evans.

It was all consuming.

There was something undeniable in his touch, something chemical, instinctual and wholly unexpected. She didn’t understand it—couldn’t defend against it as, locked in his hold, her body and mind pushed into overdrive.

Eyes closed, fingers flared at his shoulders, she tried to brace against the curl of anticipation licking through her belly. Remind herself that Nate’s mouth sliding against her own was just for show. For whomever had opened the ballroom door—the door that remained open if the volume of the music spilling into the hallway around them was any indicator. It was a kiss for the gossips. For their individual self-serving interests. But not for their hearts or souls or even their libidos. Only the deafening rush of blood speeding past her ears—the heat of it surging through her veins, awakening her body in ways she couldn’t deny—suggested otherwise.

Any second he would stop. Pull away and take this fantasy, a lifetime in the making, with him. But until then…

Payton clutched at the hand-stitched lapels of his jacket, her body curving into his. She’d call it a good show, call it anything Nate needed to hear, but the honest truth was no fantasy had ever measured up to this moment and, audience or not, she couldn’t control her physical reaction to a kiss she’d dreamed of since she was thirteen.

Her fingers skimmed over the contours of his broad shoulders, following the column of his neck until they threaded into the thick silk of the curls at the base of his skull. The forbidden luxury of her hands in his hair, coupled with the seductive pull of his mouth against her own, was too much—too good, everything and not enough all at once—and drove a soft, pleading moan past her lips.

Nate stilled, his mouth fused with hers.

Oh, no, he’d heard her. Heard the sound of desire in a kiss scripted for deceit. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe—couldn’t quell the frantic beating of her heart or her desperation to take this insanity further.

And then a breath, warm and wet, slipped between her suspended lips, carrying the gruff response to her needy plea. “Payton.”

Tension charged the air around them, a current jumping from each point of contact to the next.

What was this?

The arms that held her circled tighter, slipping into something wholly different than the embrace of a moment ago. Into a slow, sensual exploration of his hands across her body.

Heat radiated from his touch like a hot claim, waking her every nerve. Every sense. Every desire.

She needed to stop.

Nate obviously read her renegade moan as a call to spur him further. To up the charade. Only Payton was already in over her head. Her body couldn’t decipher the real from the imitation. And—as his tongue licked at the corner of her lips, eliciting a shudder that racked her from top to toe, had her opening wider to the exquisite sensation of Nate Evans seducing her with his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, and the soft rumble of his groan sounding between them—she slipped beneath reason, drowning in need. She wanted him. More than his kiss. She wanted everything he could give her, show her.

Only, already it was ending. His lips eased from hers by degrees until only the barest brush of skin and breath kept contact. That lingering touch, suggesting he, too, was hesitant to break away.

A kiss so carnal, so hot, couldn’t have been—

Don’t be stupid. Of course, it could.

She was dealing with notorious Nate, playboy extraordinaire and on a worldwide scale as she heard it. She was out of her league. Out of her mind. And potentially spoiled for life because of one insane, staged make out she hadn’t had the sense of self-preservation to defend against.

But Nate had caught her off guard. And within the decadent span of that kiss, every fine strand of lingering attraction toward the boy he’d been wove and wound itself into an indestructible tether to the man he was now.

Oh, she was in such trouble.

Breath ragged, she tried to focus on the shadowed planes of the face only inches above her. Taking in the harsh drawn features she knew so well—the strong cut of his jaw, chiseled lips, that once-broken nose—she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. To see his thoughts or risk he’d see hers.

Gaze fixed on the breadth of the shoulders shielding her from the reception, she waited for him to step back and reveal his latest conquest. Then it would be over.

Only she didn’t want the seduction to end.

Her hands slipped down to his chest, palms pressed flat against the definition of pure masculine form. If he could sneak up on her like that, she could grope him a bit while she got her breath back. It was only fair. Except the feel of his hard-packed physique beneath her hands wasn’t doing much to calm her. The flex and pull of his layered muscles. The beads of his nipples. Hard and enticing. Forbidden little playthings that, once found, she couldn’t leave alone.

Nate’s hands clamped around her wrists, stilling her shameless exploration as his breath punched out in a cough.

What a fool to think this could be hers.

Pulling herself together, she managed to make light of a situation that was anything but. “You could have warned me,” she laughed, praying the sound was more convincing than it felt.

A second passed. And then another. Her eyes closed against the rising ache in her chest. The crazy sense of despair she didn’t have any right to. She wanted more. Wanted to be the kind of woman a man like Nate took home. But he’d already said it once. She was the good girl.

He took her chin between his finger and thumb. Her gaze lifted to his and her breath caught. Strain deepened the lines etched around his mouth and blatant hunger darkened his eyes. His jaw jumped with a tension she couldn’t believe.

“Warned you? No.” His gruff voice was low and serious, not the jovial Nate she knew so well. He held her gaze, considering, and then slowly the corner of his mouth turned up. And closing the distance between them, he answered, “I don’t think I could have.”

Hell, this was Payton Liss twining her arms around his neck, melting into his kiss with a breathy sigh—a sound that was all sex and need, and doing very bad things to his imagination. Brandt’s little sister whose grown-up curves burned against his body, heating his blood like liquid fire. Miss Off-Limits herself, with her fingers wound tight in his hair, opening that lush mouth of hers in a sweetly seductive invitation, begging him to take. And he wanted to take. To hell with however many sets of eyes were trained on them through the open door at the end of the hall.

Except, as of that moment, Nate didn’t want to share.

He didn’t want to play pretend. He didn’t want anything but the private continuation of the kiss that just blew his mind. There had to be a hundred reasons why giving into the need surging through his veins was a bad idea. Only, he couldn’t think of one. All he could see, and with a sudden, vivid clarity, was that Payton Liss belonged in his bed.

The music faded, quieting to a muffled hum that resonated through the hallway around them.

Straightening, Nate shot a glance over his shoulder. The door to the ballroom had closed—whoever opened it having come, seen their fill and left. Whether they’d recognized Payton he had no idea, but they’d seen someone in a rather conspicuous dress. Which was enough for today.

His focus turned back to the unexpected lure in his arms, his gaze touching on each delicate feature of her upturned face. Lingering on her mouth as the brush of his thumb across her kiss-swollen bottom lip set off an all too satisfying shudder.

He wanted her. As he couldn’t remember wanting before. And she was willing, in his arms, looking up at him with eyes asking for one thing. More.

Only with a woman like Payton, more could mean way more than what he had to offer. She didn’t know the score and didn’t play for fun. He couldn’t risk her reading promises he had no intention of delivering on into the kiss they’d just shared.

“You know I’m not the right kind of guy for you, Payton.”

It was a warning. Plain and simple. To both of them.

One he fully expected her to heed.

“Maybe I don’t want the ‘right kind of guy’.” She swallowed, the color rushing to her cheeks as she held his stare. “Maybe, this once, I want the kind of guy who can give me a night no one else would dare.”

Chapter Four

HER words shot like an electric current straight to his groin. Nate was a man accustomed to taking what he wanted, how he wanted it. Because of who Payton was, he’d been willing to exercise more restraint than he ever did. But with that soft-spoken gauntlet thrown, there was no going back. “Then we need to get out of this hall. Now.”

Her eyes lit, the seductive curve of her lips stretching as she reached for his lapel, urging him back toward her storage closet. “The nest.”

He let out a bark of disbelieving laughter and stopped her with a firm hold at her wrist. Spun her back with a tug. “Not a chance, princess. For what no one else would dare…we’re going to want a bed to land on.”

With that promise hanging between them, he grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the kitchen doors just as a busboy stepped out pushing an empty clearing cart. Nate caught him and slapped a fifty with his business card into the kid’s palm. “Get your manager and tell him I want the best room you’ve got…in the next five minutes.”

Four and a half minutes later they were alone in the Executive Suite, Payton’s toes breezing inches above the carpet as Nate crossed to the bedroom, his mouth covering hers in an urgent, possessive claim staked with tongue and teeth and lips. Suspended in his hold, she caught the dizzying spin of the room from the corner of her eye an instant before her shoulders met the damask.

Oh, God, yes. They were feet from a bed and Nate had backed her against a wall instead.

Heart slamming, her fingers balled in the fabric of his shirt as she opened to the slow thrust of his tongue. Followed the measured retreat. And moaned as he thrust again, her body flaming to life with the knowledge this was real. More than some fantasy. More than a charade. Her every sense heightened and homed in on him, drowning her in the taste, touch and smell of Nate. The sound of his ragged breath. The look of hunger in his eyes before he went to her throat—his mouth devouring the sensitive spot where neck sloped into shoulder with an assault of gentle suction and grazing teeth, swirling tongue and hot, wet breath that infused every cell of her being with sensual achiness.

His hands covered her breasts in a kneading caress and then, fingers curling into the neckline of her dress, he pulled the fabric down, releasing them to perch atop the bunched taffeta. Groaning with pure male satisfaction, he pressed his mouth to the top of one mound and then the other, making her feel as though she were the gift to him, rather than the other way around.

“You’re so soft.”

And he was hard, every bit of him firm and taut, solid-packed man making her feel like a fragile doll in his grasp. This was the man of her every forbidden fantasy, exceeding them all with his kiss alone. This was Nate. And there was no way that kiss was as good as it got.

“Please,” she gasped, asking for more of something she couldn’t imagine but knew he could give.

“Please?” he growled, lips caressing the swell of her breast, the wet trail of his tongue miraculously teasing cool and searing hot in equal measure.

“Please, I want you.” For so long and for so many reasons.

His head lifted and she saw the challenge rising, the glint of seductive mischief blazing in the blue of his eyes. “Just me?” he taunted, his hands sliding down her hips, over the curve of her bottom to the backs of her thighs. “Or me…doing things no one else would dare?”

Her breath caught, her lips parting for a response she couldn’t fathom. And somehow, amid the overwhelming desire and surging lust, a whisper of delighted laughter slipped free.

How could she be laughing when her body was about to burst into flames? She’d never known a seduction like this. Never thought it could be playful and exciting and hot and insane all at once. But then she’d never been with Nate. And thinking about the man whose mouth should be classified as a weapon of mass destruction, she realized he was all of those things and more.

She didn’t know what to expect from a night with him, particularly one he seemed to have taken as a challenge. Or exactly how far out of her league she was. All she knew was no man had ever looked at her the way he was looking at that moment. As if there was no part of her he wouldn’t possess.

And God help her, she wanted him to have her. “Yes.”

Hands slipping down the contours of his chest, over the ridged terrain of his abs, she curled her fingers beneath his cummerbund.

“Yes, she says,” he chuckled gruffly, the hands at the backs of her thighs fisting in the excess fabric of her skirt. Lifting. Handful above gathered handful, until the heat of his palms covered her bare skin. “I used to think those curls of yours were the only untamed things about you. But it’s not true.” He licked and sucked at the tender swells, making them plump with his attentions. “You’re wild.”

A surge of pleasure having nothing to do with sex shot through her at his statement. Simple confirmation of what she’d hoped, needed to believe all along. He could see her—who she really was—when no one else had even thought to look. He was the only one.

She needed him, just one person who didn’t get swept up in the tide of lies and rumors, the sea of untruths that even she perpetuated. One person who saw the faulted, fallible girl hiding behind all the muted perfection and stifling ‘right’ choices. He hadn’t judged. Hadn’t told. Hadn’t done anything but laugh or chuck her under the chin when the real girl behind the princess snuck out to visit him.

“You could always see me,” she whispered as those big hands moved over her legs from back to front. Torturously close and painfully far from where she wanted him to be.

Nate took a knee, and, with the layers of tulle and taffeta bunched over his arms, slowly pushed the mess of it above her waist. “Good God, this is a lot of skirt.” Skimming a hand up her leg, he found the scrap of her lingerie. Made an appreciative sound that had her body instantly responding.

“Without a lot beneath it.” He caught her knee and hooked it over one broad shoulder, taking her weight in his hands as her balance shifted to her standing leg.

“Nate!” she protested, unfamiliar with such intimate vulnerability—but the only response from beneath her skirts was a shocking, open-mouthed kiss that burned through the fragile silk between them and stunned her silent. She hadn’t been expecting it—she’d thought he’d slip her panties down and take her against the wall. That was as daring as her imagination had gotten, but this—she’d been totally unprepared for the mind-blowing effect of a man at his knees before her.

Her breath held through the first languid sweeps of his tongue, then escaped on a cry at the teasing bite and soft nuzzle of a man whose powers of seduction knew no limits. Never had she dreamed of anything like the hot, wet sensation of Nate’s forbidden kiss skillfully coaxing her along the path of pleasure. His hands covered her bottom, giving it a hot, firm grasp that started the slow slide of molten desire through her core. His tongue stroked with a gradual increase of pressure until something too long restrained pulled hard at the reins of her control. Her fingers clutched his shoulders, knotted into his hair then shot back again—seeking purchase, a hold, an anchor amid the rising tide of her lust.

“Oh, God!” she cried, sucking air in desperate gulps as her body coiled tight beneath his ministrations. “I don’t…I can’t…” Her hands flew to her face as her knee buckled. But Nate had her, took her weight in his arms as he moved with the rhythm of her hips. Sodden silk gave way beneath the press of his tongue at her entrance, a cruel tease that left her panting, pleading for a release just beyond her grasp. And then, with a low growl, he held her to him as his rough kiss took her over the edge and through the free fall of pleasured abandon.

Releasing her leg from his shoulder, he set her back to her feet.

Half dazed, she barely registered his long arms snaking around her back. Suddenly the catch of her gown was open and all that dress was slipping free into a pool of shimmering lavender at her feet—leaving her standing wide legged, in a pair of sodden, pearl silk panties and four-and-a-half-inch heels. It was crazy after everything that had happened, all she’d let him do already, but under the sudden exposure her arms moved instinctively to shield herself.

Nate leaned back on his knees, his brow creased with intensity born of desire, his gaze trailing hot across her skin.

“No.” Brushing her hands aside, he stood before her, his chest rising and falling with the efforts of his restraint. Need raged in his eyes. Lines of strain bracketed his mouth. The corded muscles of his neck stood out in stark relief.

For her.