Ultimate Sins (20 page)

She had no intentions of starting now.

“I'm ready to return to the house.” Turning, she began walking the short distance back. “I'll have Anna bring the entertainers there.”

She wasn't going to argue with him. She definitely wasn't going to attempt to knock any sense into him while the agents were watching and listening so curiously.

“Amelia, you don't have to return to the house,” he stated reasonably.

“Will you have them get out of my way then?” She didn't bother to glance at him as she continued to walk. She had a feeling she knew his answer.

“I can't do that,” he sighed. “But I know you wanted to see a few of the grottoes—”

“Don't worry about it,” she suggested briskly, increasing her stride as they neared the iron fence surrounding Wayne's property.

“I won't let you risk yourself like that.” His voice was tighter now.

The gate was opened as it had been before. Two security guards moved to each side as the other four surrounded them instead.

Pulling her cell phone from her coat pocket, she quickly texted Anna that she wouldn't be able to come to the meeting, but Anna could bring the entertainers to the house instead.

Really?
Anna texted back with a frownie face icon.
Suggested this 2 Crowe 2day. He said NO! Archer says Crowe has to call first.

Amelia texted back
. Tell Archer you get to take care of this then.

Amelia stopped in the middle of the walk, glaring at the phone before slowly turning her gaze up to Crowe as she ignored the now frantic pinging of the text messages Anna was rapidly sending.

He stared back at her coolly, his gaze implacable as it lifted from the screen of the phone to meet hers.

“Making decisions for me, Crowe?” she asked him softly.

“Protecting you,” he amended, his voice low as he gripped her upper arm firmly and began moving toward the house once again.

“Protecting me,” she repeated with a bitter little laugh. “Yeah, that's what Wayne said when he locked me in the basement for two days and nights when you returned two years ago. He was just protecting me.”

Jerking her arm out of his grip, she stalked up the steps to the door, entering the house and quickly stripping her coat. She hung it neatly in the closet, refusing to look at him. She could feel him staring at her, silently searing her as she ignored him.

“Leave,” he ordered the guards, his voice dangerously quiet as Amelia strode from the foyer.

She didn't hear their response. She rather expected they hadn't given him one.

People tended to just obey Crowe without argument.

“Don't fucking turn your back on me and act as though I don't exist.” The harsh growl rasped from his throat as Amelia found herself suddenly swung around to face him.

She simply wasn't in the mood to be pulled around or manhandled. Even gently.

Rising to her tiptoes, getting as close to the glitter of amber in his gaze as possible, she let loose.

“Don't imagine, for even a moment, Crowe Callahan, that I'm one of your employees or one of your damned starstruck flunkies, because I'm not. You may get your orders obeyed, but trust me, it's only because you're stronger, not because I agree with you by any stretch of the imagination.” Her finger poked into his chest with a quick, imperious little jab as she snarled the declaration out at him.

“My what?” Incredulity filled his tone.

“You heard me. Don't make me repeat myself.” Turning on her heel, she headed for the desk on the far side of the room. “You can leave now to do whatever skulking around it is that you do and leave me the hell alone. As far as I'm concerned, I'm finished with you for the moment.”

*   *   *

Finished with him.

She was finished with him?

“Oh baby, I thought you knew me better than that,” he drawled, allowing his lashes to drift partially over his gaze to hide the full effect of his intentions.

“I know you as well as I need to know you.” She tossed her head like a feisty little mare.

Well hell, that was okay, because he was just the stud for her.

He smiled. A slow, easy curve of his lips as he turned and walked back to the wide double doors leading to the foyer.

And closed them before deliberately sliding the lock in place.

“Ya know, sugar elf,” he breathed out with deliberate relish as he turned back to her. “You're getting ready to know me a whole lot better.”

Wariness had filled her gaze, darkening the turquoise color and giving it a faintly green cast. Like the ocean just before dusk.

“I'm not in the mood for this.”

Oh yeah, he was just that easy to turn off—or not.

*   *   *

Amelia cursed her own unruly tongue and her untamed body.

Son of a bitch, she knew better than to dare him.

It was common knowledge:
Don't dare a Callahan, you'll regret it.

But what had she done? She'd gone and dared the most stubborn, most determined, and definitely the most darkly sexual Callahan known to draw a breath.

“Crowe, trust me, this isn't the time.” She narrowed her eyes on him and hardened her tone.

As though that was going to work, she thought with a spurt of sarcasm.

“Oh baby, trust me, when it comes to you, it's always the time.”

He paused several feet from her and pulled off the leather jacket he wore before tossing it over the back of a couch.

Her eyes widened at the shoulder holster and lethal handgun he wore. The same one he unclipped and laid over the jacket a moment later.

“You're falling behind, sugar elf,” he warned her, taking a seat on the large wingback chair next to the couch and unlacing his boots.

“In what way? Undressing?” she snorted. “It's the middle of the day, and I'm sure Anna will be here any moment…”

He shook his head as he spoke. “No, she won't be.”

“Why not?” He seemed entirely too confident. That wasn't good.

“Archer texted. Told me to send a message if he needed to bring Anna over here. I didn't text him back.”

Great, they were conspiring together. Just what she needed, her best friend's lover conspiring with her own. That simply wasn't fair.

“I'll be certain to tell Anna the two of you have your own little codes,” she suggested sweetly.

She acknowledged she could possibly be in just a bit of trouble here. Trouble she had been counting on Anna to bail her out from with a speedy little arrival and several social entertainers.

It appeared that wasn't going to happen.

“I'm sure Anna's already figured that one out, darlin',” he promised her. “And now, you're really behind.”

His boots were off and lying carelessly beneath the chair as she watched him with an edge of caution.

Rising to his feet, he stared back at her with that knowing little smile that was guaranteed to spell trouble.

“I'm not having sex with you.” Sometimes, that worked, to just take a stand with him immediately and let him know how it was going to be.

In this case, that dark chuckle that left his lips definitely spelled trouble.

“Works for me,” he informed her with a sexy smile. “I'll just have sex with you. All you have to do is lie there, sugar elf.”

Her mouth almost dropped open in incredulity. “You are so not serious.”

“I am so very damned serious,” he informed her, all amusement easing from his expression. “Done with me, are you, baby? Let me show you just how done with you I am not.”

 

CHAPTER 11

“Crowe, this is not the best idea you've had in a while,” she informed him nervously as he took a step toward her. “Actually, it's going to end up being one of your worst.”

“Really?” His expression appeared curious; his gaze told another story. “In what way, sweetheart?”

In what way?

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered, irritation getting the best of her. “Is that all you can do—question every damned thing?”

“Isn't that the only way to get answers?” he asked with a smug smile. “So, are you in the mood yet, baby, or do I get to have fun with that pretty little body of yours all by myself?”

“It's my body, too, Crowe.” She tried for that no-nonsense voice she had heard her mother use.

“Hmm, before I'm finished, that inquisitive little brain of yours is going to realize just who commands it.”

Before Amelia could blink in outrage he'd moved. Pulling her into his arms and lifting her against his body just enough that only the tips of her toes brushed against the hardwood floor.

“Crowe. No.” The surprised gasp came as he gripped the band of her skirt, his fingers tightening on it.

His gaze narrowed further on her.

“I don't have that many clothes, Crowe.” Admitting to that sent humiliation sweeping through her. “You have to stop destroying what I do have.”

What flashed in his gaze she wasn't certain. Something wild and primitive. Something possessive.

His fingers relaxed just enough to flick open the tiny metal clasp and ease down the zipper securing the band. A second later, the silk-and-wool material slid down her legs to the floor.

“Crowe…”

“No more protests, Amelia,” he warned her, the dark gentleness of his tone sending a tingling sizzle up her spine as his palm shaped the sensitive curve of her rear.

The callused tips of his fingers stroked against her flesh, dipping between her thighs to test the damp silk of her panties.

“How long have your panties been wet, baby?” Those diabolical fingers slid beneath the elastic leg to find the swollen, silken folds beyond.

Gasping at the pleasure streaking through sensitive nerve endings, Amelia smothered the moan threatening to follow it.

“Answer me, sugar elf,” he demanded as he swung her in his arms and moved to the couch, laying her back on the thick cushions gently.

He made her feel delicate and fragile rather than clumsy and lacking in grace, as she knew she often was.

Following her, Crowe came over her, one hard thigh pressing between hers as his head lowered, his lips feathering over hers.

“Crowe, you have to stop this.” He was weakening her, stealing her pride and her will with his touch.

The feather-light caress of his lips changed instantly. The moment the protest escaped he sealed them in a kiss that didn't just steal her protest. It stole her senses.

As his lips and tongue dragged a needy moan from her throat, his hands stroked, caressed, and pleasured.

Experienced fingers quickly unbuttoned her blouse, pushing it back from her shoulders as his lips moved from hers to the rise of her breasts above the delicate lace cups of her bra.

He was undressing her. Lifting her against him as he quickly removed the blouse and her bra, leaving her clad in nothing but her silk panties.

“This has to stop,” she whimpered, the sound anything but convincing.

And it wasn't as though he was actually listening to her.

His lips moved to the rise of her breasts, stroking over them with heated kisses as her breath caught with pleasure.

She couldn't think when he touched her. When she lay beneath him, her senses clouded with the building ecstasy, then she didn't have the will to think. She sure as hell didn't have the will to protest.

Her hands smoothed over his shoulders, loving the feel of his skin, stretched over tightly bunched muscles and rippling beneath her touch.

After licking a nipple with heated male hunger, he must have decided that wasn't nearly enough. A second later his mouth covered the hard tip, sucking it in.

Once it was captured, he still wasn't content. His tongue lashed at it, sending hard, clenching strikes of sensation to attack her womb.

Moving with hungry purpose to the other breast, he nipped and kissed his way to her tight nipple before drawing it into his mouth and suckling the sensitive peak with male hunger.

Her back bowed, the pleasure was so intense. Panting, blood rushing furiously through her veins as feverish need burned beneath her flesh, Amelia knew the battle had been lost before it even began.

Her nails raked against his hard shoulders. Clenching her thighs around the heavy male thigh between hers, her hips rose and feel, the bud of her clit pulsing with painful pleasure as the erotic need rose furious inside her.

The silk of her panties needed to go. They were between her and Crowe. His pants needed to go.

His clothes needed to go.

“Undress, damn you,” she cried out furiously, pulling at the shirt covering his shoulders, trying to drag the material up his back and over his head.

He moved, his hands no longer stroking her flesh, his hard body no longer covering hers. Jumping to his feet, he needed only a matter of seconds to undress. His shirt was tossed to the floor, his pants discarded quickly, the boxer briefs quickly pushed over his hips and tossed aside before he returned to her.

The panties he simply ripped from her with a rasped, “I'll buy you more.”

She didn't give a damn. She could do without panties if it meant he would touch her faster.

He didn't stretch out over her this time.

Oh, hell no.

Anticipation raced through her entire system as he dragged her hips to the side, pushed her legs apart, and knelt between them.

“Oh hell yeah,” he growled, shoving one of the small couch pillows beneath her hips to lift them closer then lowering his head to the saturated folds of her sex.

His tongue swiped through the dew-drenched slit. Licking, stroking, he caressed and tasted her, licking from the snug entrance of her vagina up and around the swollen bud of her clit.

The rasp of each caress sent spirals of increasingly tightening sensation wrapping around and through her clitoris. Her inner muscles clenched and ached, the emptiness inside her becoming increasingly painful as her hips writhed beneath his caresses.