No Holds Barred

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Duncan threw back his head and laughed. Her straightforward, no-nonsense approach was one of the things he’d always liked about Piper. And he was grateful for it now since it had effectively brought him back to the present. For a moment after she’d stepped out of that alley door, she’d wiped his mind clean.

“What are you doing here?” Piper asked as she reached the hood of his car.

He had to think for a second. Looking at her was slowing his thought processes down. But the reason was the same one that had brought him to her apartment that morning. “Your boss called my boss and asked for a favor.”

Her brows shot up. “Favor? What kind of a favor? And why would your boss owe Abe Monticello a favor?”

“Family thing. My boss is Adrienne Monticello. She’s Abe’s younger sister. I suspect she grew up trying to get him out of trouble, and old habits die hard. They’re both worried about you.”

Duncan watched her absorb the information. While he absorbed more of her. The pantsuit was a pale gray linen with a slim fit that tapered down to narrow ankles and killer heels. When he slowly swept his gaze back up to her face, he saw by her frown that she didn’t like his answer, but she got it.

“You’re my ride back to my apartment.”

“Yes.” For starters. He wouldn’t tell her his entire plan, not while they were standing in an alley and they hadn’t yet discovered who’d set that nasty little scene that morning.

She shifted her gaze to the car and ran her hand over the hood. “Nice ride.”

“Nice disguise.”

“I had to improvise.” She tipped her sunglasses down as she met his eyes. Duncan took the hit dead center and he struggled to keep his thoughts from scattering again. When she pulled the cap off and a rich cascade of dark brown hair tumbled out, he gave up on thinking of anything but the way the sun showered over her long, loose curls, lightening some strands, darkening others. He reached out and wound one of those curls around his finger. He couldn’t be sure who had moved, but they were close enough that their fingers had suddenly tangled on the hood of his car. Close enough that he could see a ring of lighter gold surrounding the deep, rich amber shade of her eyes. And he could smell her. Spring flowers—he hadn’t forgotten the scent.

If he lowered his head, he could finally taste her. Something he’d been wondering about all day. No. Longer than that. He’d been wondering about her taste for seven years.

Piper’s mind was racing almost as fast as her heart but she couldn’t seem to latch onto a coherent thought. When she’d started toward him, she’d had a plan. She was going to handle the Duncan problem by politely accepting his ride home and then sending him on his way. And now her fingers were linked with his and the heat from that flesh-to-flesh contact was zinging through her blood.

She could try to blame it on the car. If she hadn’t run her hand over the hood, she wouldn’t have gotten this close. But a good defense attorney would tear that excuse to shreds and claim she’d put her hand on the hood because she’d wanted this to happen—that she’d been thinking of touching him ever since she’d seen him in her apartment that morning.

Guilty, she thought. And, dammit, now that his mouth was only inches from hers, she wanted to taste him, too.

No. She had to think.

Breathe. The air she gulped in burned her lungs.

Say something. But the desire she was feeling was so huge, so consuming, she couldn’t get any words past the dryness in her throat.

They touched nowhere else except where their fingers were linked, but he might as well have been touching her everywhere. And she wanted him to so badly.

With whatever brain cells she had left, Piper figured she had two options. Run or do what she really, really wanted to do. And why not? It had taken a Pandora to open that box and an Eve to sample that apple. Maybe she just needed to know how big a problem she was dealing with. A good attorney built her best cases once she’d read through the discovery. Gripping his shirt with her free hand, she rose on her toes and pulled his mouth to hers.

She might have made the first move, but once she had, Duncan Sutherland was no slouch in the kissing department. The scrape of his teeth had her gasping, then moaning as his tongue seduced hers. Those hands, quick and clever, were everywhere, enticing, exciting. She couldn’t get her breath, didn’t care if she ever did.

She thought she’d known what to expect.

The jolt was no surprise. But how could she have known it would knock her off her feet? Or had he lifted her?

The heat, too, she’d been prepared for. When a man could make your blood sizzle with a look, heat was a given. But she hadn’t imagined it would have the power of a blast furnace. Or trigger a need to crawl right into him until she dissolved.

Excitement was too tame a word for what was pounding in her blood.

Greed didn’t even come close to describing the desperate hunger she was feeling or the urgent need to satisfy it.

Here. Now.

Had she said the words out loud?

Had he?

ALL DUNCAN KNEW WAS THAT HE couldn’t think. She flooded his senses, blocking out everything else with her taste, her textures, her scents. He couldn’t separate them. Couldn’t possibly name them all. Couldn’t resist taking more, asking for more.

When she wrapped her arms and legs around him, as much demand as invitation, he was helpless to do anything other than take them both deeper. No other woman had ever made him feel helpless. Now she was taking him places he’d never been before, making him feel things he’d never felt before.

And why had he waited so long to let her do it?

Here. Now.

The idea of laying her on the hood of his car and quenching the desire, the need that had gone from flame to inferno in seconds, flashed brilliantly into his mind. He wanted, wildly wanted to turn the image in his mind into reality.

Here. Now.

But he couldn’t. With the words still thrumming in his mind and pounding in his blood, he reached deep for control and found it. Easing away, he settled her against the car’s fender before he stepped back. His pulse was still racing. His heart slammed like a hammer against an anvil in his chest. And he still wanted her. He had to figure that wasn’t going to stop any time soon.

So he had a problem. An even bigger one than he’d anticipated. “That isn’t what I came here to do.”

“Ditto.” She’d folded her arms across her chest, but she was no longer using the car for support. When he noticed he still was, he stepped away.

“We have to figure out a solution to this,” she said.

“Agreed.”

“I have to think.”

Duncan thought the time for that had passed.

“So.” She walked around to the passenger door and opened it. “You can take me to my apartment, see that I’m safely locked in and then go away.”

Duncan slid behind the wheel and then drove them out of the alley into D.C. traffic. He could go along with one out of three of her directives. But he figured he’d have a better chance of making his case in her apartment.

4

PIPER STOOD IN HER KITCHEN watching Duncan open a bottle of red zinfandel. He’d picked it up with the pizza on the drive back to her apartment.

“We have to talk. You have to eat,” he’d said by way of explanation.

She couldn’t argue with either point. And she figured she needed to save up her energy. If she was going to argue with Duncan about anything, it was going to be about what she was sure he wanted to “talk” about.

The mind-blowing kiss they’d indulged in.

In an alley. A very public place.

She’d made the move, but at least they knew what they were up against. And she hadn’t been the one to call a halt to it. She’d always been able to before. That aside, they had to find a solution. They both worked in D.C. They were adults. And they wanted each other like gangbusters. No way they could ignore the elephant in the room.

She made her living arguing cases, negotiating solutions, and if she’d learned anything from law school and from working for Abe, it was the value of a preemptive strike.

So while they’d driven home, she’d tried to review her options. But it was damn hard to weigh them objectively while they’d sat so close in that tiny car. Every time he’d shifted gears, his arm had brushed against hers, and each time it had, “here” and “now” had blinked on and off, little neon letters in her mind.

Now he filled all the spare space in her kitchen. She could even smell him above the spicy aroma of the food.

He’d given her no chance to send him away as he’d cut a path through the little throng of reporters that had been waiting at the mouth of the alley. And she had to admit that she was happy not to have had to enter her apartment alone tonight.

He poured the dark red wine into two glasses and handed her one. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Ditto,” she said. She just had to figure out what it was. Exactly.

“Mind if I go first?”

“Go ahead.” The only thing better than making a preemptive strike was learning what your opponent had in mind and then adjusting your strategy.

“Cam has been bugging me to take a few days off and go up to the castle to see what I can figure out about the rest of Eleanor Campbell MacPherson’s missing dowry and about that intruder he believes was breaking into the library. I want you to come with me.”

Surprised, Piper stared at him, her mind racing. Duncan Sutherland knew a bit about making preemptive strikes himself, it seemed. “Why would I want to do that?”