“Give me a smoke,” she ordered.
As D shoved a hand in his back pocket in search of his cigarette pack, Noelle’s attention shifted to his taut ass, hugged oh so nicely by his cargo pants. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on that sculpted body of his. He was spectacular.
Smoking together had become a habit since D and his men had shown up at her ranch. They didn’t speak much—talking wasn’t something either of them excelled at—but tonight Noelle found herself saying more than usual.
“Callaghan’s getting laid,” she remarked.
D took a deep pull of his smoke. “About time. You jealous, baby?”
“I don’t get jealous, and I don’t want Callaghan.”
“Yet you’ve been toying with him since we joined forces, and don’t think anyone has forgotten about that special favor you demanded of him.” D chuckled. “Have you decided what it’ll be?”
“Not yet.”
She blew a cloud of smoke into the night. It was chilly out, the wind packing a frigid bite, and she wrapped the two halves of her long black sweater tighter around her.
“Something’s bothering me,” she said.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
She felt D’s piercing gaze on her, but she didn’t turn to meet his eyes. Lately, he’d been watching her far too often for her liking. Constantly searching and studying, as if he was trying to delve into her psyche and make sense of her, find out what made her tick.
He needn’t waste his time, though. Her secrets were buried so deep they may as well be in a bottomless abyss, forever out of reach to anyone but her.
“Meiro. I can’t figure him out.” She slanted her head. “Did you read his file?”
D nodded.
“Did you notice anything odd about it?”
“No pictures,” he said curtly.
It didn’t surprise her that his naturally suspicious brain had locked in on the same detail—or lack thereof—that had given her concern.
“No pictures,” she echoed. “And it’s not like he was raised by wolves—he grew up in Lisbon, for fuck’s sake. There should be school photos, driver’s license and passport photos, but there’s no photographic record of him prior to the age of thirty, and even then, Paige only found that one picture from the charity gala in Madrid. It’s like the son of a bitch appeared out of thin air.”
D shrugged. “Dude must have a shady past—that’s for sure.” He paused. “Has Reilly been in touch?”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t have anything we can use. He found out Lassiter’s finances and records were handled by a business manager down in Florida—Sean’s trying to get his hands on the man’s paperwork, but it’ll take some time.”
“What about the other Reilly? The one in D.C.?”
“Oliver’s got zilch. Wherever Jim went and whoever he talked to remains a big fucking mystery. And so is Jim’s connection to Meiro.”
As usual, Jim’s name got stuck in her throat like a piece of rotten food. She showed no sign of it, though. Her feelings about Jim Morgan had been banished to the abyss right along with her secrets.
As the image of Jim’s intense blue eyes flashed in her mind, a rush of hot anger wrapped around her insides and made her stomach burn. She still remembered the first time she’d seen those magnificent eyes, how they’d hypnotized her, lured her in the way a flame drew a moth.
She had to wonder, were moths capable of acknowledging their mistake before being burned alive, or did they leave the world as oblivious as they’d entered it?
“Don’t you look pensive.”
D’s mocking voice jolted her back to the present. She shot him a sideways glance and swept her gaze over him. His black muscle shirt clung to each and every ripple of his chest. Razor-sharp stubble slashed his jaw, making him appear even more menacing than usual.
“You know, one of the first men I ever killed looked a lot like you,” she mused.
“Yeah?” D sounded bored.
“Yeah. He was French. No, Czech. Right, it was Prague.”
“Private contract?”
“Government.”
D’s dark eyebrows shot up. “Which government?”
She shrugged.
“Interesting. So you’re telling me that at one point in time, a government agency actually employed a crazy bitch like you?”
She had to laugh. “Shocking, ain’t it?”
“I’m curious about something else—that number you have for Morgan, the one you used to leave him a message, where’d you get it?”
Her hands nearly curled into fists before she caught herself. “Just a number I had lying around.”
“I’m sure.”
“And I’m bored.” She stepped away from the railing, her lips tightening in frustration. “I don’t like that we still have so many questions about Meiro.”
“Well, maybe when Blondie finishes making Trev come,” D said in a disparaging tone, “she can go back to work and get us some fucking answers.”
• • •
“I should go,” Isabel murmured, but even she could hear the complete lack of enthusiasm in her voice.
Who was she kidding? The last thing she wanted to do at the moment was disentangle herself from Trevor’s embrace and return to her empty suite at the Crystal Palace.
Two orgasms.
She’d had two honest-to-God orgasms tonight, all thanks to this man. When the first waves of release had swelled inside her, she’d fought hard not to burst into tears of stunned joy. A part of her wondered if she’d hallucinated those earth-shattering orgasms, but her sated body said otherwise.
“Uh-uh. You’re not going anywhere yet.” His arm tightened around her shoulders, keeping her in place.
Smiling, she rested her head on his bare chest and listened to the steady beating of his heart beneath her ear. His body was so warm, his presence unbelievably comforting.
But even as she reveled in the extraordinary way he made her feel, she recognized that she was making a mistake. Instead of pushing him away, she kept pulling him closer and closer.
She really had to stop doing that, damn it.
Tomorrow, said the sleepy voice in her head.
Yeah, that was a much better idea. Tomorrow she’d re-arm herself against Trevor’s magnetism.
Tonight she would simply close her eyes and enjoy this feeling of pure contentedness.
“So who was your first time with?” she heard herself ask.
“Sara Malkovitz.” Trevor didn’t even have to think about it, and to Isabel, that said a lot about his character.
“Sara Malkovitz. Interesting. High school girlfriend?”
“Yep. We lost our virginity to each other in junior year.” His husky chuckle vibrated in his chest. “It was a total disaster, but I didn’t know it at the time. I thought I rocked it.”
Isabel burst out laughing. “Okay, I have to know more.”
He stroked her hair, threading his fingers through the red strands. “I planned this whole romantic evening. My parents were out of town, and I bribed Krista to spend the night at a friend’s so I could have the house to myself. Then I went all out—cooked a gourmet dinner, stole a bottle of wine from our cellar, sprinkled a bunch of rose petals down the hall and all over my bed.”
“Mr. Romantic over here.”
“Sixteen-year-old me thought so too. Sara, not so much. She sat through dinner pretending it was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted, without bothering to tell me that I put waaaaay too much hot sauce in everything—”
“Hot sauce?” she interjected. “What the hell did you make?”
He snorted. “Spaghetti. Yeah, I know. I thought I was creating a cool new sauce that would blow her mind. So poor Sara’s sitting there, her face fire-engine red and her nose running because that spaghetti sauce is the spiciest thing on the planet, and she’s washing it down with wine. Neither of us were big drinkers, and instead of getting drunk, Sara just got sick. I had no clue though, because she didn’t want to upset me
, so she ducked into the bathroom to ‘get ready’ when really she was puking her guts out.”
Isabel snickered. “Oh, shit, I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just . . .” She giggled again. “That poor girl.”
“Eventually she came out wearing nothing but my baseball uniform shirt, which was damn hot. We didn’t get to the sex part right away. Sara was nervous, so I held her hand like the gentleman I was and we put a movie on. About halfway through, she decided she was ready, and we followed the trail of rose petals to my bedroom, and . . .” He broke out laughing. “I lasted forty-five seconds.”
Isabel propped herself up on her elbow. “Aw, that’s sad.”
“Sad? I thought that was good. My buddy Pete said if you went longer than thirty seconds, that was crazy-awesome.”
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes as another wave of laughter overtook her.
“Needless to say, Sara Malkovitz’s first time was thoroughly underwhelming.” He flashed a cocky smile. “Her second time, on the other hand, was mind-blowing. She didn’t even have to fake an orgasm.”
“Did she fake it the first time?”
“Yep. She really had me going, too. Lots of moaning and shuddering and squealing, a real porn-star performance. If a woman did that to me now, I’d know in a heartbeat that she was faking.”
“Oh really? What about me? Was I faking it tonight?”
Isabel regretted the words the second they slipped out of her mouth. Crap. Why had she inserted herself into the discussion? Her past sexual interludes were way too humiliating to share with Trevor.
His whiskey brown eyes took on a smug light. “No fucking way.” Then those eyes narrowed, as if he was suddenly second-guessing himself. “Were you?”
“No. I wasn’t.”
His expression became even more suspicious. “Why do you say it like that? Like you’re surprised?”
“I’m not surprised. I was just joking around.”
She’d tried to sound casual, but Trevor wasn’t buying it. He went quiet for a second, and then his voice took on a contemplative note. “You didn’t have an orgasm last night.”
She bristled. “I told you, I was exhausted.”
He didn’t acknowledge her response. “You didn’t seem surprised by it, though. It was almost like you expected not to. But tonight . . . you came and it caught you by total surprise, didn’t it?”
She supposed she could have lied, but she got the feeling Trevor would see right through her. “Yes. It caught me off guard,” she admitted.
His brow furrowed. “Why?”
Embarrassment heated her cheeks. “Because the last person to bring me to orgasm was Michael.”
The boy whose hands her father had shattered with a baseball bat . . .
She banished the agonizing memory and focused on Trevor, whose jaw had fallen open. “You mean up until tonight, you hadn’t had an orgasm since you were a teenager?”
“No, I’ve had orgasms.” She blushed. “The ones I’ve given myself.”
“But you’d been with other men, right?”
She nodded.
“You faked it with them?”
“Yes.”
The admission was accompanied by a pang of shame. She hated thinking about her past lovers, as few and far between as they’d been.
“It’s a shitty thing to do, I know,” she said wearily. “But honestly, after a while, faking it was the only option. I would try to explain that the sex was still enjoyable—just because I didn’t come didn’t mean I was having a crappy time or anything. But men are black and white creatures.” She rolled her eyes. “If you’re not giving a Sara Malkovitz performance, then they start to wonder if there’s something wrong with them, but since no one wants to believe they might have any sexual inadequacies, they immediately deflect the blame. Which means that there must be something wrong with me.”
She sat up with a sigh, pulling the sheet up to cover her breasts. “They were right, though. There was something wrong with me. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t let myself relax. Every time things got too . . . intimate, I guess, I would shut down.”
Her confession hung in the hotel room, bringing a rush of discomfort to her stomach. She suddenly felt queasy. God, why had she told him all that? What kind of woman talked about her sexual deficiencies and intimacy issues while lying in bed with a sexy, naked man? No wonder she was still single at thirty-two.
She bit her lip. “I don’t know why it was different with you. I didn’t expect this.”
“It’s different because you’re different,” he said quietly.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re not playing a part when you’re with me. You’re opening yourself up to me, and that makes a difference when it comes to sex. You can’t experience true intimacy unless you let down your guard.”
“I guess.” Feeling uncomfortable, she eased out of bed, still holding the sheet against her like a shield. This entire conversation was unsettling, nearing a line she wasn’t ready to cross.
Naked as the day he was born, Trevor hopped off the mattress and caught her by the waist before she could pick up her dress.
“No,” he said roughly. “Don’t do it, Isabel.”
She avoided his gaze. “Do what?”
“Shut down. You did it with the other men in your life, but I’ll be damned if you shut me out.”
Too late. Her guard was back up and higher than ever.
Continuing to avert her eyes, she gently removed his hand from her hip. “I have to go. We’re in the middle of an undercover op here.”
She felt his frustrated gaze on her as she got dressed, but he didn’t say a word, not until she’d slipped on her high heels and was taking a step toward the door.
“This isn’t over, Iz. You know that, right?”
“All I know is that I have a job to do. Anything beyond that, I’ll figure out later.”
“Why do I get the feeling that when this job ends, you’ll be giving me a speech along the lines of ‘what happens in Monte Carlo stays in Monte Carlo’?”
Her lack of response inspired a muttered curse from Trevor.
“I won’t let you walk away from me again,” he said.
A weight of exhaustion settled over her. “What do you want me to say? What do you want from me?”
“Everything.”
“Christ, who asks for that, Trevor?”
He approached her again, and her eyes devoured every glorious inch of him. His sculpted chest and washboard abs. His powerful legs and firm thighs. His thick cock, semihard even now.
“I don’t do half-ass relationships, Isabel. Once I’m in, I’m in one hundred percent.” He gripped her chin and forced eye contact, holding her prisoner with his intense gaze. “Give me a hundred percent in return, sweetheart.”
Little drops of fear trickled down her spine. She felt utterly hypnotized as she stared into Trevor’s gorgeous eyes. The man was casting a spell on her. He was somehow breaching each and every one of her defenses, getting closer and closer to the heart she’d locked up tight a long time ago.
He wanted everything.
Damn it, how could he even make such a demand?
Pressing her lips together, she shrugged out of his grip and marched to the door with false bravado. “Like I said, we’ll talk when the job is over. Good night, Trev.”
She left the room quickly, before he could call her bluff.
Chapter 16
When Tomas Meiro showed up at Isabel’s hotel suite the next afternoon, Valerie Parker-Smith didn’t waste any time putting the man in his place.
“You’re married.” Her flat tone and unhappy pout conveyed her precise feelings on the matter.
As expected, Meiro’s expression darkened. “You’ve been asking about me.”
“Of course I have. I’m not an imbecile, luv. When a handsome man showers me with attention and invites me to lunch in the private dining room of his luxurious hotel, I ask questions.”
She cr
ossed her arms over the front of her red Dior silk blouse, which she’d paired with a black Dolce & Gabbana pencil skirt and three-inch Manolo Blahniks. The peep-toe heels clicked on the parquet as she turned away from Meiro and strode into the suite’s living room.
He followed her inside. “I’m sorry, Valerie. I should have told you the truth.”
His remorseful tone caught her off guard. Meiro didn’t strike her as the type of man who apologized often.
“Well, at least you’re not denying it.” With a haughty lift of her chin, she walked over to the bar area, picked up the crystal water jug, and poured herself a glass. “Nevertheless, I’m afraid I won’t be accompanying you to lunch.”
“Ma chérie—”
“I’m not your darling,” she interrupted. “I’m also not a home wrecker, so I’m sure you can understand why I choose not to spend time with you.”
She sipped her water and eyed him coolly over the rim of her glass.
Meiro looked visibly unhappy. And again, quite handsome. Today he wore a pair of perfectly starched gray chinos and a black V-neck sweater that outlined his broad chest. His thick, wavy hair was slicked away from his forehead, emphasizing his angular features and pronounced cheekbones.
“Will you at least give me a chance to explain?”
She feigned boredom. “What is there to explain, Tomas?”
His jaw tensed, the only crack in his polished armor. He was far more annoyed than he was letting on—that was for sure.
“My marriage is nothing more than a business arrangement.”
“How naive do I look?” She rolled her eyes. “You think I haven’t heard that before?”
With purposeful strides, he joined her at the bar and splashed a small amount of bourbon into a tumbler before focusing his caramel eyes on her face. “I married Renee for her money.”
“That’s a very frank thing to say.”
“It’s the truth. There is no love between my wife and me. Her father was my employer, a very powerful man, but also quite old-fashioned—he didn’t think a woman could run an empire, so he was trying to marry his daughter off to a man who could eventually take over the business. I was looking to elevate my social position, so I asked for her hand in marriage and he gave us his blessing.”