Untamed Love

His best friend, Kingsley Diallo, didn’t look worried. “Auctioning yourself off for charity will make you feel good,” he said with a vague smile, looking around the large ballroom of one of their acquaintance’s latest mansion renovation projects gone wrong. Naked cherubs everywhere. “And it’ll make you look like less of an ass.”

Kingsley, perpetually Miami casual in a lavender V-neck shirt and celebrity-endorsed jeans, eventually settled back in his chair across from Victor, apparently satisfied that he had checked out the entire room and seen what there was to see. Victor, however, was quietly furious. Kingsley had put the services of his company up for bid without him knowing. Victor was a landscape architect, not some bored socialite’s puppet. He opened his mouth to say as much, but the auctioneer announced Raphael Design Group, effectively shutting him up. Victor snapped his eyes back to the small raised stage in the center of the room.

They were doing things the old-fashioned way, raising paddles to signal their interest in the bids. Despite the open ballroom, brightly lit by the afternoon sun, the French doors were open to let in the crisp February breeze. Or at least as crisp as February ever got in Miami. Every event like this Victor had ever seen on TV took place in shadowed rooms or unironically old European auction houses with the look of old blood money staining the silk-papered walls. But this was Miami. Why wouldn’t things be different? He’d half expected a stripper parading around in a white thong and moaning the name of each item up for bid. But maybe that spoke to his lack of class.

Despite the fact that it was his services on the line, Victor tuned out the proceedings. It didn’t matter who won. Kingsley had decided that Victor should get out of his comfort zone and had damn near pushed him out of it, so here he was, obligated to perform. For free.

His fingers flexed on top of his thighs, the muscles tense and strained. Just like the rest of him. Polite applause rippled through the room. Someone had won the auction. His fingers tightened even more.

“Nice one.” Kingsley reached over the small table to clap him on the shoulder.

Would it really be that bad to shovel dirt over his best friend’s face and leave him for dead? Maybe someone would find his traitorous body after an hour or two.

Ice cubes rattled in a glass, and he looked down to see a tumbler of ginger beer in front of him, along with a slice of German chocolate cake. He gave Kingsley a grim look but picked up the glass. The liquid was cool and stroked his tongue and throat with its effervescence as it went down.

“One day, I will kill you,” he said.

“Not today, my friend.” Kingsley drank from his own glass: whiskey neat. “Today, you’ll thank me.”

“I doubt that.”

Kingsley laughed as if he knew a secret. He dug into his own slice of chocolate cake, a dessert that was a favorite for them both. His friend was relying on bribery to soothe his temper. The cake was good, he’d grant Kingsley that.

The auction was the last event of the fund-raiser, an afternoon garden party to raise money to help local low-income kids pay for college. Victor breathed a sigh of relief that it was almost over. Soon he would get in his car and drive back to his house in the upper east side of the city, maybe even pick something up from Whole Foods to cook for dinner.

“All right!” Kingsley’s fork rattled against the now-empty dessert plate. “Let’s go meet the winner.” He picked up his whiskey.

“No. I’m done with this.” Being social wasn’t Victor’s forte.

His sister had even called him a standoffish hermit, which he’d told her was a bit redundant. He’d already donated money to the scholarship fund and even wished the high schoolers good luck, although he winced in sympathy, for them, being paraded in front of these rich idiots just so they could feel sorry for the kids and see that their money wasn’t going to waste. Or something equally stupid.

“Come on, man. You have to see who won.” Kingsley nudged him to his feet. “Not to mention you need to make arrangements to start the work.”

“That’s what phones are for.” But he allowed himself to be led across the room toward the table where the winning bidders gathered with the auctioneer and his half dozen or so assistants.

“The winning number is 191,” Kingsley hissed as they stepped into the sea of designer casual wear and perfumes.

Before Victor left his house to come to the auction, the day hadn’t been especially good. He was thinking about his sister Violet as he always did on her birthday, his already dour mood plummeting with the thought that she would have been thirty this year.

Kingsley apparently knew him too well and called to drag him out of the house and into the light of social interaction. Too bad he had no idea before he left the house of the knife Kingsley was gleefully waiting to plunge into his back. The bastard.

At a far table, he spotted a black-and-white paddle with the number Kingsley told him. Better get this over with sooner rather than later, he thought. He pushed through the crowd toward the older man who held the paddle upside down in the crook of his crossed arms.

Kingsley grabbed him. “Where are you going?”

He jerked his head toward the man holding the number of the winning bid.

But Kingsley shook his head. “Wrong number.” He squeezed Victor’s arm and pointed toward another paddle, this one held in a slender feminine hand: 191. As he watched, the woman slowly began to fan her face with the paddle. Victor swallowed.

The sight of her punched the breath from his lungs. She was damn stunning. Hair in tight and gorgeous coils around her face, skin the warm brown of the inside of a seashell. The perfect handful everywhere. And so very unlike any woman he’d ever seen that he nearly stumbled on his way to her.

It was only Kingsley’s amused presence at his side that kept Victor from tripping over his own feet. Even from across the room, there was something about the way she made him feel that beat a hard and familiar drum deep inside him. It was like fear and exhilaration all at once.

She fanned her face, and the small breeze from the auction paddle stirred the cottony hair resting around her cheeks. That hair was big, springy and wild, framing narrow and laughing eyes. One of the two women around her laughed, too, then leaned in to slap playfully at her shoulder. Her friends, Victor assumed. Two women who were pretty enough in their tight outfits, with their laughing faces and sophisticated clothes.

Next to them, the woman looked like their little sister, almost innocent in her white blazer, pale floral slacks that tapered down to her narrow calves and high-heeled pink shoes. A big necklace in the shape of a sunflower rested at her throat. She was springtime personified. From the first glance, there was nothing sensual about her, only joy in the way she stood, a radiant presence in the crowd. Then she tipped her head back with the paddle moving languorously through the air, revealing more of her slender neck, the line of her jaw. And desire bit him low in his belly.

“You all right, man?”

Kingsley’s question should have worried Victor. He was showing too much emotion. He shouldn’t care. He should tighten up and exchange information with the winner of the bid and then leave. But all he could do was feel and realize that no, he was not all right. Far from it.

* * *

“This place is such a madhouse.” Mella used her auction paddle to fan her face. “And it’s hot.” She grinned. This was the kind of scene she loved. The restrained wildness of the crowd, the heated wave of everyone’s intentions as they surged toward something they wanted. Even if it was just bidding for a vacuum-cleaning service. She fanned a little faster, wondering what drove the organizers to open the doors of the massive ballroom instead of turning on the AC. This was Miami, not freakin’ Minneapolis.

“This so-called party is about as much fun as watching paint dry in the cold, Mella.” Corinne looked the epitome of boredom in her Gucci shades that she refused to take off indoors. It probably had something to do with her red eyes and the late night she’d had the day before.

“Relax, Corinne.” Mella glanced over at her friend, reining in her smile. “You’ll get the chance to throw yourself at eligible single men in just a few minutes. I need to get the information about the landscape guy, then we can go.” She’d already paid for her winning bid and was only waiting to collect her prize.

“Yeah. Relax, Corinne.” Liz, Mella’s best friend and Corinne’s old college roommate, sucked in her stomach and posed in her barely decent dress. Her high heels put her already tall frame nearly half a head over most women in the room, including Mella, who could only claim five feet. “You need to smell the roses. Or in this case, the testosterone. Maybe the guy Mella bid on is some hot and hung lumberjack type wearing jeans tight enough for me to tell his religion.”

Mella snorted with laughter. “You’re thinking about a gardener, not a landscape architect.”

“Same thing,” Liz muttered.

Mella heard Corinne take in a quick breath and whisper under her breath, “No, it’s not.” Corinne took off her dark glasses and stared.

Mella turned to see what her friend was gawking at. Only through an act of will did she keep the paddle in her hand moving, fluttering the air around her face that suddenly felt several degrees too hot. Two men were walking purposefully toward them. She bit the inside of her lip to keep her mouth from dropping open just like Corinne’s. Of the two men stalking their way, she only really noticed one.

He was dressed all in black, an utter contrast to everyone else at the fund-raiser who’d put on their spring colors and lightweight jackets. Black upon black upon black. Leather ankle boots with an understated sheen, Italian-cut slacks that fit a lean shape and a dress shirt rolled up to show muscled and lightly veined forearms dusted with hair. His watch, a gleaming stainless steel, was the only touch of light on him.

“Damn, he’s fine!” Corrine breathed somewhere near Mella.

“Yes, girl...” Mella could only agree while she lost her breath to the man in black.

There was nothing pretty or soft about him. Watching him walk through the crowd and make his way toward where she and her friends stood was like watching a jaguar stalk through a room of gazelles, the silken glide of his every step a promise of power and strength. Mella’s back straightened, but she felt her legs quiver from the impending confrontation. She kept the smile on her face.

“They both are,” Liz said with an amazed laugh. “After seeing absolutely nobody halfway decent in here for the past two hours, and now these two fine gods walk in from nowhere...somebody up there was listening to my prayers.”

From the corner of her eye, Mella noticed Corinne preen even more, smoothing a hand down her taut thighs and shifting toward the men in profile so they could admire the high curve of her butt in the clinging white jumpsuit. “Maybe we can get one for you at the next spot, Mella.” She said the last nearly under her breath since the men had come steadily closer and were only a few feet from them.

Mella continued to fan her face, wishing desperately for the heat in her cheeks to subside. She never reacted like this to men. Never.

“My name is Victor Raphael.” The one in black held out his hand for Mella to shake. “I believe you’ve won me for the next few months.” Just as his look promised, his voice was a lulling purr, calm and steady. A man used to giving orders and having them obeyed. “I’m with Raphael Design Group,” he said after a short pause.

Damn, he’s tall. She stared up and up at him. Then looked down at his hand, not quite ready to touch him yet. It felt like a big step for her to take his hand and feel his skin against hers, to know some of the strength in him. She looked down at the large hand, at least larger than her own, and opened her mouth to speak. But Corinne slid close and grasped Victor Raphael’s hand instead.

“I’m Corinne,” she said. “I haven’t won you, but you can win me.”