Be My Baby (14 page)

That made him grin. “Open the door.” He stroked his fingers down the rich wood.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Don’t make me get physical, Rosebud.” Right. Like he could afford to have her calling the Pissant with a complaint that he was destroying her property. But she didn’t have to know that.

It worked, too. He heard her turn the lock, and a second later she opened the door.

She was all pokered up and disapproving as she frowned up at him, but the effect was less than intimidating, given her overall condition. Her soft skin was scraped up and she was kind of wan. She still wore the brown and gold wrap thing she’d had on earlier, and although it covered her decently enough, it was a slippery material that exposed her delicate collarbone and skimmed here and clung there. And her long, sexy feet, with their high arches and those pale pink siren toenails, were bare. He wondered if she was bare all over.

Then there was her hair, which had a way of capturing his attention. Every time he saw the woman, he swore she had more hair than the time before. And he really wanted to tangle the unruly mass through his fingers, to pull her head back and expose that long throat, so he could—

He stuffed his hands in his pockets and cleared his throat. “Throw some clothes on, angel face. We’re gonna go get something to eat.”

He distinctly saw her eyes light up, but she poked her narrow little nose up at him. “We have a perfectly good kitchen right here in the hotel.”

“I couldn’t find it. You suppose it’s got any grits in it?”

She made a face. “I sincerely hope not.”

“Then we’re going out, honey chile, ’cause I want breakfast—”

“It’s eleven o’clock at night!”

“—and breakfast just ain’t breakfast without grits or hush puppies. So go put on some clothes. You have ten minutes, then I’m packing you out as is. I’m starved.”

“You’re always hungry. What do you have, a hollow leg?”

The expression coming from her made him smile. “According to my sisters, that’s exactly what I have.” He glanced at his watch. “Nine minutes and thirty seconds, Rosebud.”

She spun on her narrow heel and walked away. Stepping into the suite, he closed the door behind him.

She kept him waiting, of course. He occupied himself by wandering the sitting room, picking up the scattered bits of her odds and ends, examining them, and then setting them back down again when something else caught his eye. She wasn’t exactly tidy, which was at odds with her neat-as-a-pin dressing style and crisp manners, but it seemed perfectly in tune with her hair the way he’d been seeing it more and more recently.

Would the real Juliet Rose please stand up?

Would the real Juliet Rose ever get her butt out here? He checked his watch impatiently. She’d dragged her feet long enough; he was starting to get a little ticked off. He strode for the bedroom, and giving the door one cursory knock, he barged right in.

She was sitting on a little girly-type chair and she
hadn’t even changed out of her damn robe yet. He opened his mouth to give her hell, but with one brief look at him, she swiveled to give him her back, and he stilled.

Was she
crying
?

He saw that she wasn’t when he came around the bed, but she was shaking. Shivering as if it were forty-five degrees in here instead of seventy. She sat sideways on the slipper chair, her spine perfectly erect, her neat little ankles aligned. But she hugged herself and stared straight ahead, rocking slightly.

“Heeeey.” He crouched in front of her and eased his hands, then his forearms, onto the chair’s cushioned seat on either side of her hips, curling his fingers over the far edge and bracketing her in. He looked up at her. “Are you okay, dawlin’? What is it?”

Her gaze left the far wall and zeroed in on his. “Somebody shot at me today, Beauregard.” The trembling increased.

“Shhh, I know.” He scooped her up and looked around. She’d probably fight him if he tried to go for the bed, and the little chair was a waste of perfectly good materials, if you asked him. He carried her into the sitting room and chose a good-sized armchair. Sitting down, he settled her in his lap. “Have you been chewing on it all this time?”

“I’ve tried really hard to
forget
…or at least put it aside for a while. But I can’t seem to get it out of my mind.” Her cheek rested against a spot between his shoulder and chest that could have been carved out just for her. Her knees were tucked up,
her feet on the seat cushion between his hip and the chair’s overstuffed arm, toes curled into the crevice. She tilted her head back to look up into his face. “Why would anyone want to shoot me, Beau? I’ve never done anything to anyone.”

“I don’t think it’s personal, dawlin’. We’re clearly dealing with a psychotic here.” He reached down and wrapped his hand around one of her bare feet, curling his fingers to knead its arch with his fingertips. “It’s my guess somebody’s fixated on the Garden Crown as a symbol of the historical landmarks that have been lost—which frankly, in this part of the world, isn’t exactly a problem of epidemic proportions.” Her head rode the swell when he shrugged. “You’ve obviously come to symbolize the corporate destroyer in his mind.”

“Terrific.”

He slid his palm up her foot, kneaded her ankle. “I’m going to find whoever it is.” Fingers sliding a little higher onto her shin, he squeezed. “Do you believe me?” He sat still while she searched his eyes.

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Good.” Thinking brotherly thoughts, he lowered his head and rewarded her excellent character-judging abilities with a soft, brief kiss.

He felt the soft ripeness of her mouth beneath his, and brotherliness was incinerated in a flash of heat. Hastily pulling back, he said hoarsely, “I don’t want you to worry about a thing.”

“Well, that might be asking a bit much.” Looking up at him solemnly, she curled her fingers around the back of his neck and tugged. “But maybe if I
could find something to distract me…”

Oh, shit, this was not a good idea. She was vulnerable, and he was on the job, and…

She shifted enough to lift her mouth up to his. With every intention of pulling away, his hands slid into her hair and molded to the shape of her head beneath the cushioning fullness.

“Please,” she whispered. Then her lips, parted and warm and moist, pressed against his.

And all his good intentions went to hell.

J
uliet felt as if she’d unleashed something as elemental as lightning—an out-of-control force that had the potential to sear her to ashes. One heartbeat, Beau’s hands were in her hair, resisting her sudden need for a physical connection between them. The next, they were holding her motionless against the onslaught of an appetite more voracious than anything she’d ever imagined.

His mouth twisted over hers, breaking the seal of her lips. Then he was inside her mouth, his tongue aggressive and dominant, and a feral sound rumbled in his throat. Sensations, fever-hot, sparked along her nerve endings. Her fingers inched up his nape to fist in his hair, and she clung to him helplessly, kissing him back, every stricture ever learned about self-control drowned in the river of lava that scorched its way through her veins.

Minutes, hours, days later, he lifted his head and stared down at her. “Damn, I love your mouth,”
he muttered. His tongue came out and moistened his lower lip. “I’ve seen that mouth in my dreams, made it do things I bet you’ve never even heard of.”

Her tongue slipped over her own lips in a sympathy lick. She was disoriented, slow to respond, and just as the fog began to clear enough ask,
what things
? he wrapped a fistful of her hair around his hand, and his head descended once again. His mouth was hot and strong and demanding as it opened on hers, and she was lost.

Lord have mercy, he knew how to kiss! He was so good that her knees went weak and she heard bells ring.

He lifted his mouth away fractionally. “Ignore that,” he muttered, and tilted her head to a different angle.

“Hmmm?” She sucked in a sharp breath at the feel of his lips—with the merest hint of teeth—worrying the vulnerable skin of her earlobe. Then another ring chimed softly across the room, and she realized it was the phone, not his kisses, that had caused the sound. She swallowed a bubble of hysterical laughter and struggled to sit up. Talk about a hopeless romantic.

His teeth became more than a hint on her earlobe. “Ignore it, Rosebud.”

“I can’t—I’ll just be a minute—please.”

Are you crazy, Juliet?
She didn’t want to talk on the phone. Deciding to forget her damn manners for once, she was startled to feel his hands slide onto her hips and ease her to the edge of his knees.

“Make it snappy, then.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

Juliet stumbled to her feet and crossed the room. What was it about Beau’s lap, anyway? It seemed to be a dangerous place for her, for every time she landed in it, she lost all sense of decorum.

And she liked it—that was the really scary part. Losing decorum felt incredibly good.

The phone rang again, and she snatched it up. “Hello?”

“Hello, dear, this is Celeste. How are you doing after this afternoon’s debacle? Are you quite recovered?”

“Oh, Celeste…yes. My hand is better and a nice bath took care of the stiffness.” She heard a rustle behind her and glanced over her shoulder. Beau was on his feet, his gaze hot on her while he peeled out of his shirt.

The receiver dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers.

She could hear Celeste’s voice still talking and she stooped to retrieve the receiver from the floor, her gaze glued to Beau’s bare torso. Shoulders, chest, and arms—he was muscular without being muscle-bound, and what she’d assumed to be a summer tan she saw now was a naturally dark complexion. Black hair feathered his forearms and spread in a fan across sculpted pectorals, and her helpless gaze followed the dwindling stripe of silky hair down his diaphragm, across a stomach that was flat and corded with muscle, to his navel, where the ribbon of hair widened. Then it narrowed again and disappeared beneath the waistband of his low-slung slacks. She saw his hands reach for his belt, saw the erection tenting his pants
below, and hurriedly turned her back. She pushed dazedly to her feet and brought the receiver to her ear. “I’m sorry, Celeste, I dropped the phone. I didn’t catch that.”

“I said, Lily told me she saw Sergeant Dupree wandering the hallways not too long ago.”

“Oh. Um, yes. He’s unhappy with the way the violence seems to be escalating and has decided to move in for a while.”

There was an instant of silence in which Juliet struggled to keep from turning to see what Beau was doing. Had he stripped right down to the skin? Then Celeste’s voice asked, “Do you think that’s wise, dear?”

Beau’s chest spread heat across her back, and his warm arms wrapped around her waist. She looked down to see his long fingers unknotting her kimono’s belt. “What?”

“I said, do you think that’s wise?”

“I…”

“Is that Celeste?” Beau’s chin was a sandpaper brush at her temple, his breath a warm rush of air that raised goose bumps down her entire right side.

Swallowing hard, she nodded. Had she truly thought he would be less hazardous on his feet?

The knot at her waist fell free and he spread open the kimono’s sides. “Say good-bye,” he ordered.

She was naked underneath except for a pair of pumpkin silk and black lace panties, and she saw as well as felt his hand as it spread possessively across her stomach. Tough-skinned and hot, it was dark and masculine against the pale gold tones of
her flesh. Celeste was saying something in her ear, but she might as well have been speaking Swahili—Juliet couldn’t concentrate long enough to sort out the words. “I have to go,” she whispered, and fumbled the receiver onto the hook.

A sound of approval rumbled in Beau’s throat and he turned her around. He kissed her hard and brushed her kimono off her shoulders. No sooner had it slithered down her body and pooled at her feet than he picked her up. A moment later, he was lowering her onto the mattress in the bedroom and following her down.

He knelt astride her hips. Reaching out a long finger, he feathered the skin next to her lips. “I should have shaved,” he murmured regretfully, and, looking up at his shadowed jaw, she realized that her face probably looked as though it had been worked over by steel wool.

She didn’t care.

She reached up and touched his chest with both hands. The hair covering it was springy, the muscle beneath hard and warm, and his small copper-brown nipples were smooth as worry stones. As she scratched her fingernail over one, the tiny nipple in its center grew hard as a nail head.

His gaze dropped to her own breasts, and she had a sudden desire to hide them from view. She should be wearing her Wonder-Bra—at least it gave her a hint of cleavage. Her hands left him, fluttering down to cup her modest curves.

“No.” His voice sounded like gravel. “Don’t cover yourself, Juliet Rose. Let me look.”

“There’s not much to look at. They’re small.” And he liked them big.

His fingers wrapped around her wrists and exerted gentle pressure until her fingers slid away. He pinned her hands to the mattress next to her shoulders. Eyes hot, he appeared totally absorbed as he studied her breasts. “They’re like you—understated. And so pretty it makes me hurt.”

Juliet’s nipples distended and Beau sucked in his breath. “Ah, God, and so responsive.” Letting loose her wrists, he trailed his fingers up her arms to the bend of her elbows, over her shoulders, then stroked them down her chest. He slid down on the mattress, making a place for himself between her legs, his hard stomach warm against the juncture of her thighs as he sprawled out, propping himself up on one forearm. The planes of his face were so taut as he gazed at her that Juliet regarded him warily. Something kept her very still.

Beau struggled to rein himself in. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this hot. He felt like some damn vampire who scented blood and had to hang on to his will for all it was worth to keep from falling into a feeding frenzy and scaring the bejesus out of her. He concentrated on keeping his touch gentle, cupping his hand beneath her breast and pushing the slight fullness up.

Her aureoles were luxuriant little puffs of pink that thrust her nipples forward like missiles. Her tits were so tiny and sweet, and he was utterly fascinated by them. It surprised the hell out of him, since he generally went for big and bouncy.

Suddenly, though, big and bouncy seemed sort of crass.

He smoothed his thumb up the slight swell of her breast and over the velvet arch of her aureole, until it pressed her nipple against the side of his index finger. Squeezing gently, he tugged, and her back arched, her thighs spread, and she made a low, throaty sound, as if she were a cat and he’d just set her loose in an aviary.

“Oh, shit,” he whispered. “You like that. What else do you like, I wonder? This?” He bent his head to lick the straining nipple, and she shuddered. He pulled it between his lips and sucked, and her hips raised off the bed.

“Beau?” Her fingers clutched in his hair and she held his mouth to her breast. Catching the nipple lightly between his teeth and pulling, he looked up and watched as her eyes lost focus. High, mewling sounds escaped her, but she immediately stifled them, clamping her teeth over her full lower lip and biting down.

“Oh, no, you don’t.” He surged up and lay on her full-length. Thrusting his fingers through her warm, thick hair, he gripped her skull and tipped it back until she was looking at him. “If something makes you feel good, dammit, you don’t repress it. I want to hear you.” He rubbed his thumb against her captured lip and watched as its fullness slid free of her perfect upper teeth. Then he rubbed it again, savoring the fullness.

Gazing back at him with dazed eyes, she opened her mouth against the press of his thumb, and it
slipped inside. She pursed her lips around it and sucked.

Seeing that porn-star mouth perform even a G-rated version of one of his more persistent fantasies made the breath explode out of his lungs. He thrust his thumb deeper, feeling the slide of her tongue and the slick walls of her inner cheeks as she drew on it. A growl rattled in his throat. He pulled his thumb free before he could give in to the impulse to instigate a suggestive rhythm. He rocked his mouth over hers, letting his tongue adopt the rhythm instead.

She tasted so sweet and pristine, and she kissed him back with untried fervor, that erotic mouth clinging to his, her breath hitching in the same crazy rhythms as his own. Her arms gripped his neck, and her long, smooth legs tangled around his thighs.

He lifted his head and stared down at her. Her gray eyes nearly matched the charcoal rings that rimmed the irises, and they gazed back at him with such a lack of focus that his stomach clenched.
Damn
, what a rush. As he felt her shift with questing restlessness beneath him, he burned to see just how out of control he could drive her.

“Beau?” She licked her luscious lips, and he kissed her hard before applying himself to the exploration of her long throat.

Juliet felt bombarded by sensations. Beau’s hair brushed her jaw, his mouth was a moist, suctioning furnace at her neck, and one of his hands toyed with her left breast, massaging its meager fullness, plucking at her nipple. She couldn’t think, she
could barely catch a satisfying breath. She was all nerve endings, a throbbing, jagged heartbeat that seemed to be centered high up between her thighs.

“God, look at you.” He pushed back to kneel astride her shins, and she stared up at him in confusion. Naked except for the gray cotton knit boxers that seemed to barely contain his massive erection, he looked dark and primal, all broad shoulders, intense eyes, and five o’clock shadow. “Look at you, Rosebud,” he repeated, and his voice was a sandpaper abrasion against already overstimulated nerves.

She didn’t want him looking at her. She was a galaxy removed from centerfold material, all lanky arms and legs, with no breasts or hips to speak of.

Yet he didn’t seem to mind—not if his hot-eyed gaze was anything to go by. His hands reached out to trail whisper-light fingertips down her chest, up the gentle rise of her breasts and down the fuller bottom curves, before they glided onto her diaphragm.

“You’ve got such soft skin.” His fingers spread out. Thumbs together, his hands coasted straight down her middle, fingertips curving over her sides. “Such long, gorgeous legs.” He delineated the dip that defined her waist, probed the deep well of her navel with the spatulate tip of one thumb. Then his fingers curled around her slender hips and his thumbs brushed over a narrow ridge of elastic and onto pumpkin silk and black lace. Something in his face went still, and he looked into her eyes as his right thumb crested the slight rise of her pubis and
firmly pressed its way down her damp, silk-covered furrow.

His touch was electric and her dew-drenched panties were the conductor that bore it straight to the heart of her. Her hips arched and he muttered, “Oh, Christ, I’ve got to see you,” and then her panties were sliding away, and he was sprawled on his stomach between her thighs, and somehow her legs were wide open with the width of his shoulders preventing them from closing, and she could feel his
breath
there—right there, on the most intimate part of her. And she just knew she was blushing all over, for no one had ever seen her like this.

She pushed up on her elbows and said uncertainly, “Beau?”

She could have sworn he said, “God, yes, it’s just like your mouth,” but that didn’t make a bit of sense. She certainly didn’t misunderstand, however, when he looked up at her and said, “You do know I’ve got to taste you, don’t you?”

In a flurry of pure panic mixed with a fierce anticipation that appalled her, she brought her foot up against the rounded muscle of his shoulder and tried to shove him away. But he simply wrapped his hand around her instep and brought the sole of her foot to his mouth.

He flashed his killer smile. “This first? Good idea, dawlin’. You’ve got the sexiest feet I’ve ever seen.” Then the smile faded and all that was left was the intensity of his eyes looking up at her as he pressed his mouth to her arch, to the ball of her foot, to her toes. “You don’t have to fight me, Juliet
Rose. I just want to make you feel good.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Okay, and to make myself feel good, too.” While his mouth paid homage to her foot, his free hand smoothed along her inner thigh, over the diminutive curve where her bottom met her leg. One long finger stole ahead of the rest, slipping between folds of slippery feminine flesh.