Caught Off Guard

Loving that idea, and the chance for some payback, he grasped her waist and flipped her onto her stomach. Kneeling between her open thighs, he spread them wide, enjoying the telltale glint of the arousal that coated her sex. But he didn’t start there. Instead, he touched the base of her neck, beginning an excruciating exploration for any hidden marks. She gasped as he sucked at her nape and then blew a cooling stream of breath across the wet patch of her skin.

He rolled her head this way and that, tantalizing her with his fingers and mouth. Down the length of each arm, across her shoulders. Lavishing each tiny vertebra of her spine with individual attention. Her body squirmed beneath him, inflaming his desire, which was already riding the slippery edge of control.

Her skin was soft and fragrant. A delicious mixture of knowledge and need pulsed beneath the thin layer against his lips as he kissed the dip of her waist and the flare of her hips. He could almost feel the growing urgency heating her body beneath him.

Finally, he allowed them both the exquisite pleasure of touching her sex. She groaned low in her throat and pushed hard against his hand when he slid a finger inside her hot and slippery core.

Uninhibited, she greedily took the pleasure he gave her, forcing him back and fighting for more. He couldn’t control her or himself. He couldn’t wait to possess her, to feel her body take him in and hold him tight.

Turning her back over to face him, he grabbed a condom and rolled it down his cock. He was inside her within seconds, the exquisite feel of her heat surrounding him. She reared up with him, digging her fingernails into his back, trying to bring them closer together. She bit the edge of his bottom lip, sucking it into her mouth before soothing the ache with her tongue.

Meeting him thrust for thrust, she ground her hips against him, wrapping her legs around his body and holding him tight. They stayed that way, both straining for the unbelievable edge that they wanted to launch themselves over, pumping, pulling, chasing each other closer.

With a guttural groan of satisfaction, Anne dropped her head against the scattered pillows, her blond hair ballooning into a soft, disheveled cloud around her beautiful face. The orgasm ripped through her body—he could feel it, see it, practically taste the sweetness of it on his tongue. He enjoyed watching her shudder with the sensations, enjoyed knowing he was the source of her pleasure.

When she’d finally stilled beneath him, he let his own pleasure break free, shaking with the force of his restraint. He let the aftershocks of her orgasm haul him with her, the muscles of her inner walls massaging his sex in the most delicious way he’d ever known.

He looked down at the satisfied smile on her bliss-filled face and knew he was in trouble.

He didn’t want to roll away, didn’t want to lose the connection he’d found when they were locked together. He’d never had such an intense reaction to a woman in his life. Granted he was a little rusty. For the past several years he’d been preoccupied with building his business and hadn’t had the time or inclination to play the dating game. One-night stands had been the name of his game.

But this was different. The woman beneath him had been the first thing to make his blood quicken since he’d stopped jumping out of perfectly functioning airplanes. She stirred, her eyes fluttering open. His entire body felt the impact as her brilliant green gaze caught his.

Oh yeah, he was in trouble.

2

AWARENESS CAME SLOWLY, crawling up Anne’s spine along with a pounding headache and a sickening gurgle at the bottom of her stomach. The headache was all alcohol, although she hadn’t really drunk that much.

The churning stomach, not so much.

She didn’t even have to open her eyes, she could smell it. The maddening scent of professional-grade cleaner that could never quite be covered by the sickening floral spray they used to try and hide it. She’d once suggested to her mother that the hotel find another way to eliminate the smell. The woman had dismissed her suggestions. Surprise, surprise.

She hadn’t noticed it last night, although she hadn’t noticed much of anything besides the way Blake made her body burn.

Well, apparently it was time to pay the piper’s price.

Her legs scraped against sheets that weren’t her own yet were all too damn familiar. She opened her eyes. Keeping them shut wouldn’t change things no matter how much she wanted it to. She took a halting tour of the space, trying to move only her eyeballs in deference to her protesting head.

Different, and yet still the same. The bedspread and artwork changed, but the impersonal still permeated every inch of the cookie-cutter hotel room.

Horrific memories slithered out from beneath the rock she’d shoved them under, making her stomach roil even faster. Maybe, if she could stay out of the bathroom, she could keep the worst of the images at bay.

The vision of her brother, dangling lifeless from the bathroom ceiling of their hotel suite, slammed into her brain anyway. Her muscles went rigid. Her lungs protested their sudden lack of oxygen as she forgot to breathe, forgot her surroundings, forgot everything but the nightmare. Curling her body into a ball, Anne shoved the heels of her hands into her eyes and laid her pounding head on her knees.

This was why she should have left last night. This was why she never stayed in a hotel. Not just Prescott hotels. Any hotel ever. After her brother’s suicide, she’d run away from the chaos, the guilt, the madness of the life she’d once led. She’d changed her name from Annemarie Prescott to plain Anne Sobel.

It had taken her years but she’d finally built herself a new life with no help from her mother or her trust fund. A life she could be proud of. A life with meaning outside whether or not she had the latest “it” accessory.

The downside was that for years she’d lived in fear of someone discovering who she really was and turning the information over for a quick buck. It had been a long time before the paparazzi had given up trying to uncover her hidey-hole. Birmingham, Alabama—not exactly first on their list of places to look. But now the world had moved on and found a new party girl to glorify, giving Anne a little room to breathe.

Taking on another persona, adopting her mother’s maiden name and pretending that Annemarie had never existed was worth it for a sense of peace.

And if she was lonely from time to time … well, that was a price she’d willingly pay again and again to be out from under her mother’s thumb and away from the memories and the girl she’d once been. Even though she’d been surrounded by people, she’d been just as alone in her old life, anyway. Or she would have been, without her brother.

Now, if she could just get out of here.

“Aspirin.”

The deep voice startled her, although she hadn’t for a second forgotten that she wasn’t alone. Her mind might have been swamped by nasty images of her past, but in some corner she’d been aware of Blake’s presence in the room with her.

His cupped hand appeared above her face, the long, tanned arm blocking her view of everything else. This was possibly a good thing.

A water bottle slid into her line of sight, strong fingers wrapped around opaque sides. She reluctantly uncoiled her body, careful to keep the covers caught tight to her chest which seemed like a stupid thing to do, all things considered.

She took the little white pills, downed them with one cold swallow and finally looked at him. Blake Mitchell. Her best friend’s older brother. The man she’d screwed six ways to Sunday last night.

Oh, she could blame it on the alcohol but she’d known, one-hundred-and-ten percent known, exactly what she was doing last night. And she’d wanted this man with a passion she hadn’t felt in … years. Of course, that didn’t exactly make what she’d done right.

Anne would be the first to admit that her upbringing had given her a skewed idea of what was appropriate. But even she knew that using her best friend’s brother for meaningless sex crossed the line. Especially given her history. Karyn might not care … but that didn’t take away the guilt gnawing at Anne’s insides.

Inappropriate sex had always been her slippery slope.

She wondered if it was seeing Karyn and Chris together that had pushed her over the edge, or just being in Mother’s hotel again. Either way, she’d obviously reverted to some very, very bad habits. Sexual pleasure could be just as much of a drug as crack cocaine.

Oh, she had sex. But in a very controlled environment with single men who understood that they were both simply getting off. No one got hurt. No one staked out her house to catch a compromising photo.

But with Blake, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from taking what she’d wanted. And that was probably what scared her most. She’d been so careful to control her affairs before. This one had not been planned.

Even now, she couldn’t keep her eyes away from him. His hair, burnt-toast brown, was disheveled. His chest was bare, hard and lean, and made her want to reach out and touch.

It would be so easy to lose herself in him again, to let him take the memories and the edge of bone-deep pain that being in this room caused her.

But she’d used Blake Mitchell enough last night. She couldn’t do it again.

He sat on the bed beside her, his hip rubbing against her own beneath the Egyptian-cotton sheets. She fought past the urge to reach out for him.

“Good morning.” His voice was gruff, rusty. “Karyn and Chris are leaving in about fifteen minutes. Do you want to head down to see them off?”

With a silent nod, the only response she could manage between the desire, self-loathing and guilt swimming around inside her, she watched as he unfolded from the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.

Water sounded, the floor creaked against the weight of a full-grown male and the nightmares returned full force.

She couldn’t stay. She needed out of here. Now.

Anne swung her legs over the side of the bed, stood up just a little too fast for her head’s comfort and scanned the room. She was so worked up over Blake and the memories that it took several minutes to notice the bag in the corner. Her bag. The one that had been sitting in her trunk since she’d packed everything from Karyn’s parents’ place yesterday morning.

Ripping into it, she pulled out the first things she could find, a pair of well-worn jeans and a peach sweater. Clean panties and a bra helped make her feel somewhat human again. She brushed her hair, applied a minimum of makeup and finger brushed her teeth all in five minutes at the dresser mirror. She wasn’t waiting. And the hounds of hell would have had to drag her into that bathroom.