Touch Me (5 page)

For those who didn’t see that right away, he had a little story he told about his permanently damaged commitment capability.

His attention was snagged by a sudden sigh. Looking up, he caught Rose staring out the window, her hand absently circling and circling and circling the sink’s enamel. Global economy had her going that pensive?

Before she could stop him, he was at her side and had pulled a bud from one ear. He held it to his own. A cultured British voice narrated.

The duke loosened her stays with an experienced hand, all the while exploring her neck, his mouth hot against her shivering skin. Annalise moaned, her hand drifting up to sift through his silky locks, encouraging this most passionate of expeditions.

Rose snatched the small device from his hand and stepped away from him, glaring. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all. It certainly sounds more interesting than some dull tome on the world’s economy.”

“The duke invested in the East India Trading Company,” she said with a sniff.

Payne didn’t know what the hell that meant, but he gave her points for blustering her way through the moment. Still, she looked embarrassed. Color flagged her cheeks and she wouldn’t quite look him in the eye.

For a moment he considered teasing her about passionate expeditions, but he figured that would get him the cold freeze, and the problem was…

“I’m bored,” he admitted.

She removed her phone from her back pocket and set it on the counter. “This matters to me why?”

“Don’t be so thorny, Rose.” At the dramatic roll of her eyes, he grinned. “Heard that a lot?”

“Actually, hardly ever. But you seem to bring out the worst in me.”

“I don’t care.” Payne crossed to the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of iced tea. “I need you to entertain me. You told Cilla you would.”

“Not strictly true,” Rose said. “It was more of a recommendation.”

“Yes, but if you don’t provide a distraction, I could do something detrimental to my health.”

She eyed him, as if seeking the truth of that.

“My weight room is calling to me,” he said.

“I saw you doing bicep curls already today.”

“Just received the doctor’s approval. But what I wouldn’t give for a full chest and back workout.”

She turned away from him to swipe again at the sink with the sponge. “Do some leg lifts. Lunges. Squats. You can have twenty minutes on the stationary bike.”

“Who’s been reading my exercise directions?”

“Part of the job,” she said.

Maybe that’s what was making him antsy. He had a virtual stranger working in his home. Perhaps he’d be more comfortable if he was more comfortable with her.

“Want to play a game?” he asked.

On a sigh, she turned around. “I am not at all athletic. Terrible hand-eye coordination.”

He tilted his head and considered her tight little body. “How do you stay in such good shape?”

Her color went high again, then she moved her arms up and down. “Walk, run, hike. I have my own light weights routine.”

“We should do that sometime—walk, run. We could go to the beach.”

Those gray eyes of hers narrowed. “You
are
bored.”

“What makes you say that?”

“I’m not your usual type of companion.” Both her hands waved, making a silhouette of a well-endowed woman with hips as curvy as her tits.

“I don’t have a usual type.”

She laughed. “Right.”

He refused to take insult. “You don’t know a lot about me, just what you surmise. That’s why you should want to play my game.”

“Yeah?” She still looked skeptical.

“It’s called Questions. We’ll have three categories. Family, Future, and…another to be determined later.” Favorite Sex Acts, he thought, but he wouldn’t spring that on her right away.

He gestured toward the kitchen table. “Sit down. We’ll trade off. I’ll ask a question and then you can.”

With a sigh, she tossed the sponge into the sink and dried her hands on a towel. “Well, you’ll have to help me out while we play.”

Imagine his surprise when she fetched a tote bag and took out of it a hunk of yarn. “I need to wind this into a ball,” she said. “You stretch it out between your hands while I do that.”

When they were seated and he had the stringy stuff linked around his wrists, he watched her begin to wind the free end. “You knit?”

“Nope,” she answered cheerfully. “But maybe it’s my passion. I’ll find out.”

“Your passion?”

“It’s my turn for a question next,” she said.

He frowned. “But—” he began, then shrugged a shoulder. “Go ahead.”

“On the subject of family, what’s going on with everyone from the compound?”

Stretching out his legs, he watched her small fingers move. Her nails were short, unpolished, but her hands were still pretty. “The Velvet Lemons themselves are on a world tour. They’ve got another year or so of it to go. As for everyone else…we’ve started to bond.” In childhood they hadn’t been close, though Payne was never entirely sure why. “Ren and Cilla got engaged and decided to draw us back together as a unit. Now Cilla’s brother Bing is embarrassing us all by exchanging PDA with his bride-to-be, Alexa. Reed’s wrapped around his woman, Cleo, just as often. The rest of us, Walsh, Brody, Cami, Beck, and I are still sane and single.”

“So—”

“Nuh-uh-uh. My turn. Didn’t you go off with your dad after your parents’ divorce?”

Rose kept her attention on the yarn, her head down so her long, sweeping bangs obscured her expression. “Mm. Went to college in Washington state and then joined my father’s accounting firm in Seattle. Now I’m back here, living with Lily and her husband and their baby boy.”

“I heard about that new addition. Pass along my congratulations.” He shifted in his chair, trying to get more comfortable. “Your future?”

She flicked him a quick glance. “That’s to be determined as well.”

Hmm. Something had sent her running from depreciation and derivatives, ledgers and line items. He opened his mouth to ask, but she slipped in her question first.

“Are you planning to return to racing?” Then she waved a hand. “No, scratch that.
If
you’re planning on returning to racing, what would possess you to do something you obviously know to be dangerous…even life-threatening?”

See? This was why he liked to keep busy. Navel-gazing was so not his thing. He dredged up his usual answer. “There’s explanations of that all over the internet. Danger triggers the fight-or-flight response which releases pleasure-generating compounds into the system.”

Her frown indicated she wasn’t satisfied with his rehearsed, clinical response. “But why can’t you find pleasure another way?”

He could have told her even a night with the Berry triplets didn’t give him a similar adrenaline high, but he didn’t want to bring them into the conversation. “What, you’re worried about me, Rose?” he asked, his tone teasing enough, he hoped, to divert her from the subject.

Her head came up and there was something in her eyes that made his pulse jump. She swallowed, and he followed the movement of her slender neck, wanting, suddenly, to put his mouth to that tender skin.

“I saw your scar,” she whispered.

His belly tightened. Okay, so not diverted. “It’s ugly.”

She shook her head, her gaze not leaving his. “It scared me.”

And he was taken back a dozen years, when he’d looked into her big gray eyes and felt her warm body against his and a tide of tenderness had welled out of nowhere to combine with a potent spike of hungry lust. The first, unfamiliar. The second, inappropriate.
You
scare
me
, he almost said, then bit it back as he rose from his seat. “I’ve gotta go.”

“I thought we had a third category of questions.”

“Not now,” he said, dropping the yarn manacling his wrists so he could walk away from her. It was supposed to be Favorite Sex Acts, but he had to leave before he decided to ask Rose something else.

About what it felt like to fall in love.

Early Monday morning, Rose approached Payne’s house, telling herself it was bound to be a better day. Their intention was to put in a few hours at one or more of his businesses, which would mean—she hoped—no opportunity for another awkward heart-to-heart like the day before.

Whatever had gotten into her, telling him his scar scared her?

He was a reckless danger junkie who didn’t care a whit about her opinion of him and how he lived. The fact was this: Payne Colson was a burning star, all brilliant light and explosive energy, and staying emotionally clear of him was the only way a woman would keep herself from getting scorched.

It should be easy to keep that distance. Though she might want to add a dash of excitement to her life that had been entirely too proscribed—by other people—an overindulged, unserious playboy was truly not her type.

As she pulled into the driveway, he popped out the front door. Dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and running shoes, he was already sliding into the passenger seat before she came to a full stop. Impatience and the clean scent of soap wafted off him. “Let’s go.”

She groaned. “What, no ‘good morning?’ No coffee for poor Rose?”

He glanced over at her, then took a second, longer one. “Late night?”

“What makes you say that?”

“Rose, you look a little…wilted.” He grinned at that last word.

“So funny.”

“Punny, more like,” he said, still smiling.

His good humor rubbed her the wrong way. She hadn’t slept the night before, tossing and turning until baby Marcus began fussing sometime after midnight. With his daddy on a 24-hour shift at the fire station, Rose had gotten out of bed to spell Lily. She must have walked miles while jiggling the cranky baby.

Payne slapped at the sedan’s dash. “Let’s go.”

Now she had to deal with another demanding man-child. She scowled at him. “Rose needs coffee.”

“Drive-through, then. I want to get to the yard.”

Stifling her sigh, she reversed out of the driveway. Only marginally happier with twelve ounces of hot caffeine in her cupholder, she followed his navigational directions, all the while working hard to ignore the wide shoulders just inches away. Despite herself, she kept glancing down at his hands, resting on his spread knees.

She frowned, again annoyed. Why did the man sit like that? As if he needed more room for his dick and balls than the average guy.

“What did I do now, doll?” he said.

Her gaze flicked to his face.

“That’s a fierce expression you’re wearing.”

“Maybe it has nothing to do with you. Maybe I’m thinking about the traffic.”

“You’re thinking about me.”

No way would she agree and give him and his ego the satisfaction…though it just might wipe that smirk off his face if she told him she was contemplating the size and shape of the Colson jewels.

Hell, what was she thinking? He’d enjoy it.

Now he laughed, low and sexy, which only pissed her off more, and she took the left turn into a dusty commercial area more sharply than she intended. It threw his body sideways, and the glancing blow of his shoulder to hers ran through her body like reverb.

“All right?” he said, reaching over to squeeze her upper thigh.

She slowed her speed and didn’t dare look at him. “Fine. Sorry.” His pinkie was too close to the inside seam of her jeans and she was certain he knew that.

It didn’t take a genius—or a run-in with randy triplets—to realize his expertise in the melting panties department. Desire was already pulsing between Rose’s legs.

Brushing away his hand, she focused on driving until she came to a stop before a chain link fence. The gate was closed with a heavy padlock.

Black graffiti scrawled across the dented metal sign that announced the business hours. Used fast food wrappers were swirled by a listless wind that then kicked them against the rusty links of the fence. Beyond it she could see a ramshackle building that looked as if the big bad wolf could blow it down with a huff and a puff. Beyond the structure were rows of rusting hulks that had once been vehicles.

Rose stared. Not that she expected Payne to be some hot-shot entrepreneur, that would be too much to expect from one spoiled rock prince, but this establishment looked downright seedy.

“Nice place,” she said in a snide tone, and immediately felt ashamed. But slapping at him seemed a necessary defense, because the gusset of her panties was damp and she was struggling not to press her legs together to assuage the ache an almost-innocent touch had incited.

Damn him and his fabulous body and too-handsome features. He’d always been wildly good-looking, but that was a bug, not a feature, she reminded herself. Women came too easy for him and the knowledge of that was all the immunity she needed.

Yep, she was totally resistant. Really.

It was best to escape the close confines of the car, though. “Aren’t we going in?”

“Yeah.” He opened his door and climbed out, digging for keys at the same time. Then he released the padlock and pushed back the gate. Rose parked near the building on cracked blacktop that played host to tall weeds.

Payne stepped over them and shoved a key in the front door’s lock. The room beyond was dusty and smelled like rubber tires and motor oil. A plastic-topped counter separated the entry from office space.

They pushed through a swinging door to cross through that area to another, smaller room beyond a half-open door. When he flipped on the lights she saw battered metal file cabinets and a matching dinged-up desk on which sat a computer, phone, and haphazard stacks of papers. Pinned on the wall above it was a calendar from the year before, the photo showing a well-oiled brunette Amazon in nothing but a glittery G-string. She reclined on the hood of a sports car, her impossibly big naked boobs pointing toward the sky and one hand under the elastic of her panties.

Eww
, Rose thought.

Payne made a sound of disgust and ripped the offending item off the wall and tossed it in the nearby trash.

Then he rummaged around the stacks on the desk. He pulled something free of them and in a minute he’d fastened another calendar in place of the old one. It was for the current year.