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She let out a shuddering breath. “I, um, had some p-p-personal problems lately. I wanted to, you know, to get away from it all. Marla persuaded Jerome to give me the keys to his island house. She told me about your beautiful pool. I just didn’t think. She said nobody would mind. I guess she was, um, wrong.”
He processed that. In point of fact, he had not yet had time to rig up the security system for the pool house, just the video. His alarm had gone off when she tripped the infrared set up at the perimeter.
This sucked. His chances of living through Zhoglo’s impending visit were slim enough without involving clueless innocent bimbos who organized weddings and banquets. “Do you trespass naked often?” he asked, genuinely curious.
Dark, curling lashes swept down over enormous leaf-green eyes. She had a dusting of freckles on her nose.Concentrate, damn it.
“No,” she whispered. “I’ve never done anything like this in my life. It was, um, an exercise. I’m trying to be—I want to be more, ah, adventurous.”
Adventurous? He stared at her. His lips twitched. His cock lengthened. Hell, he’d show her adventure. A hot, sweaty adventure that she’d never forget. Left, right, sideways, upside down, inside out.
No, he wouldn’t.“Adventurous?” he repeated.
She shrugged as best she could. “I know it sounds stupid. But I’ve always been a good girl.” The rest of her explanation came faster. “I brushed my teeth, I did my homework, I took my vitamins, I worked hard, I put myself last…I guess that’s why my fiancé thought I’d make such a good politician’s wife—”
“Fiancé?” He came down on the word, like shark jaws chomping.
“Ex-fiancé.” She added the prefix with vicious emphasis. “I’ve never had the nerve to misbehave, so the bastard figured there would be no dirt for the gossipmongers to dig up. He might as well marry a department-store mannequin, that condescending, manipulative son of a bitch—”
“Can we stick to the subject, please?”
Too late. The chick was on a roll. A detail came back to him—the nearly empty wine bottle he’d glimpsed by the pool. She must have carried it in. Finished most of it off.
“The snake cheated on me!” she said heatedly. “With Kaia!She’sthe adventurous type. Her nose is pierced. She’s trekked in Nepal. She’s gone on safari. Whoop de doo for her. Bitch.”
Her fury made his mouth twitch. He hadn’t smiled in so long, he almost didn’t recognize the sensation. Sort of like a tic.
She didn’t appreciate it. Her eyes narrowed. “What’s so funny? Do I amuse you?”
“Sorry.” He looked her slowly up and down. “I don’t think you’re a mannequin. You look real to me.”
“Um, thank you, I think,” she said stiffly. “I don’t suppose that means you would consider taking off these handcuffs? They hurt.”
He stared at her. If what she said was true, he’d endangered them both by making her curious about him. If what she said was a lie, then there was an evil plot afoot, which meant that the chances of him going on up to the Great Stake-Out in the Sky tonight were very good.
He took a deep breath, let it out. The more he looked at that gift-of-God gorgeous body, the less inclined he was to worry about it.
It occurred to him that if she really was just a naked events coordinator, she wasn’t likely to drug, stab, or poison him while they did the deed.
He stopped that thought dead in its tracks. The chick was scared out of her wits. Restrained with his cuffs. No matter how stunning she was, he had never forced the issue with a woman in his life, and he damn well wasn’t going to start now. No matter who was watching.
He couldn’t think of any safe way to deal with her, though. If only there was a way to scare her off the island until Zhoglo and his crew had come and gone. But keeping her quiet might be impossible if he was deliberately terrifying. She could go to the local cops, file a complaint, and screw up everything. Perhaps fatally.
So. What now? He couldn’t expect her to laugh it off. Or just give her the cuffs to take home for a souvenir of an oh-so-wacky encounter with her nutty new neighbor. They would have to become instant friends for that to happen.
Every male instinct he had clamored to keep her right where she was. Naked and helpless and very close to him.
Grow up, dickwad. He let out a regretful sigh, and undid the cuffs.
Becca flopped heavily down onto knees that felt weaker than water, the second that she was freed. Long, bare brown feet planted on the floor tiles in front of her swam into focus. Her eyes traveled up over hairy, muscular calves. He wore raggedy cargo pants, cut off below the knees. Her gaze traveled over rock hard thighs, lean hips, the…oh, my. The bulge at his groin.
It was a big bulge.
She swallowed, and continued up his belly, his hard, slabbed chest shown off to amazing advantage in the tattered black muscle shirt. She looked straight into his intense dark eyes. Beautiful eyes, heavily lashed. An exotic hooded slant to them. A hot, focused stare.
A rush of nervous female caution made her insides flutter. She had to get up, onto her feet, this instant. Being naked on her knees in front of this huge, scary man was making her feel…no.
Whatever it was she was feeling, she didn’t want to feel it. Not for a second. It was unsettling. Whew.
