The promise plunged into her like a knife as he moved away to discuss something with the chauffeur, and Virginia stood there like someone in a hypnotized state, watching his big, tanned hands at his sides. Hands she’d felt on her.
She gritted her teeth, fighting the lingering arousal tickling through her. He was playing with her. He was pretending. He was a man who’d do anything to win—and he wanted Allende.
Marcos seemed oblivious to her frustration when he returned, slowly reaching behind her, his fingers splaying over the small of her back as he led her up the steps.
She followed him and no, she wasn’t imagining him naked, touching her, kissing her in the exact way he’d just done—no, no, no. She studied the beautiful hotel and the potted palms leading to the glass doors with the intensity of a scientist with his microscope.
The lobby and its domed ceiling made her lightheaded. It was so…so… God, the way he’d touched her. With those hands. As if that breast were his to touch and his hand belonged there. How could he pretend so well? He’d been so hard he could’ve broken cement with his…his…
“Do you like it, Virginia?” he asked, smiling, and signaled around.
She gazed at the elegant but rustic decor. “The hotel? It’s beautiful.”
His eyes twinkled, but underneath it all, he wore the starved look of a man who’d hungered for a very long time and intended to feast soon. He looked like a man who could do things to her she didn’t even imagine in fantasies, like a man who would not want to be denied.
And he would be. He had to be.
“It’s very…charming,” she continued, anything to steer her mind away from his lips, his mouth, his gaze.
They wound deeper into the marbled hotel lobby. A colorful flower arrangement boasting the most enormous sunflowers she’d ever seen sat on a massive round table near the reception area.
Virginia could still not account, could not even fathom, that she’d just kissed him. Her!—woefully inexperienced, with her last boyfriend dating back to college—kissing Marcos Allende. But he’d been cuddling her, whispering words so naughty she could hardly stand the wanton warmth they elicited. No matter how much resistance she’d tried to put up, he was the sexiest thing on the continent, playing some sort of grown-up game she had yet to put a name to, and Virginia had been close to a meltdown.
It had all been pretend, anyway. Right?
Right.
Trying to compose herself, she admired his broad back as he strolled away, the shoulders straining under his black shirt as he reached the reception desk and leaned over with confidence, acting for the world as if he were the majority stockholder of the hotel. The two women shuffling behind the granite top treated him as if they agreed.
Virginia quietly drew up to his side, her lips feeling raw and sensitive. She licked them once, twice.
A lock of ebony hair fell over Marcos’s forehead as he signed the slip and slid it over the counter. “I requested a two-bedroom suite—it would appease me to know you’re safe. Will this be a problem?” Facing her, he plunged his Montblanc pen into his shirt pocket, watching her through calm, assessing eyes.
She saw protectiveness there, concern, and though her nerves protested by twisting, she said, “Not at all.” Damn. What hell to keep pretending for a week.
“Good.”
In the elevator, as they rode up to the ninth floor—the top floor of the low, sprawling building—his body big and commanding in the constricted space, the silence whispered, we kissed.
In her mind, her heart, the choir of her reason, everything said, kiss kiss kiss.
Not good, any of it. Not the blender her emotions were in, not her tilting world, not the fact that she was already thinking, anticipating, wondering, what it would feel like to kiss again.
Freely. Wildly. Without restraint.
She would have to stall. Abstain. Ignore him. God. If she did something to compromise her job, she would never forgive herself. And nothing compromised a job like sex did. And if she compromised her heart? She stiffened, firmly putting a lid on the thought.
Mom had loved Dad with all her heart—through his flaws, through his odd humors, through his drunken nights, through all the good and bad of which there was more of the latter, her mother had loved with such steadfast, blinded devotion Virginia had secretly felt…pity.
Because her mother had wept more tears for a man than a human should be allowed to weep. Appalling, that one man could have such power over a woman, could take her heart and her future and trample them without thought or conscience.
Even on her deathbed, sweet, beautiful, dedicated Mother had clutched Virginia’s hand, and it seemed she’d been hanging on to her life only to continue trying to save her husband. “Take care of Dad, Virginia, he needs someone to look out for him. Promise me, baby? Promise me you will?”
Virginia had promised, determinedly telling herself that if she ever, ever gave away her heart, it would be to someone who would be reliable, and who loved her more than his cards, his games and himself.
No matter her physical, shockingly visceral responses to Marcos, he was still everything she should be wary of. Worldly, sophisticated, ruthless, a man enamored of a challenge, of risks and of his job. The last thing she pictured Marcos Allende being was a family man, no matter how generous he’d proven to be as a boss.
Down the hall, the bellhop emerged from the service elevator, but Marcos was already trying his key, allowing her inside. He flicked on the light switch and the suite glowed in welcome. Golden-tapestried walls, plush taupe-colored carpet, a large sitting area opening up to a room on each side. “Gracias,” he said, tipping the bellhop at the door and personally hauling both suitcases inside.
Virginia surveyed the mouthwatering array of food atop the coffee table: trays of chocolate-dipped strawberries, sliced fruit, imported cheeses.
A newspaper sat next to the silver trays and the word muerte popped out in the headline. A color picture of a tower of mutilated people stared back at her.
Marcos deadbolted the door. The sound almost made her wince. And she realized how alone they were. Just him. And her.
And their plan.
Suddenly and with all her might, Virginia wished to know what he was thinking. Did he think they’d kiss again? What if he wanted more than a kiss? What if he didn’t?
Feeling her skin pebble, she shied away from his gaze, navigated around a set of chairs and pulled the sheer drapes aside. The city flickered with lights. Outside her window the hotel pool was eerily still, the mountains were still, the moon still. She noted the slow, rough curves and the sharper turns at the peaks, lifted her hand to trace them on the glass. “Do you come here frequently?” she asked quietly—her insides were not still.
“No.” She heard the sunken fall of his footsteps on the carpet as he approached—she felt, rather than saw, him draw up behind her. “There wasn’t reason to.”
He could be uttering something else for the way he spoke so intimately. Inside, a rope of wanting stretched taut around her stomach and she thought she would faint. The proximity of his broad, unyielding hardness sent a flood of warmth across her body, and the muscles of her tummy clenched with yearning. His body wasn’t touching hers; there was just the threat of the touch, the presence that created a wanting of it.
In the darkness of her bedroom, very late at night, she’d wondered if Marcos was as ruthless when he loved as when he did business. And if his kiss…was as dark and devastating as his eyes had promised it would be.
It was. Oh, God, it was.
The air seemed to scream at her to turn to him and kiss.
The close contours of his chest against her back, the scent of him, were an assault to her senses. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and the touch was fire on his fingertips. “This is a safe neighborhood—I won’t lose sight of you, Virginia.”
But outside the danger didn’t lurk. It was in her. It was him. She locked her muscles in place, afraid of leaning, moving, afraid of
the magnetic force of him, how it felt impossible not to turn, touch. “What was it like for you when you were young,” she said, softly.
His hand stroked. Fire streaked across her skin as he drew lazy figures along the back of her arm. “It wasn’t as dangerous back then. I grew up in the streets—I kept running away with my father’s workers, looking for adventure.”
Did he move? She thought he’d grown bigger, harder, nearer. She sensed his arousal, the thundering in his chest almost touching her back. Or was it her heart she heard?
He lowered his lips and briefly, only a whisper, set his mouth on her neck. A sharp shudder rushed through her. “Now even bodyguards aren’t safe to hire,” he whispered on her skin. “Wealthy people have armored cars and weapons instead.”
She closed her eyes, the sensations pouring through her. “No-man’s-land?” Just a croak. A peep from a little bird who couldn’t fly, would willingly be lured in by the feline.
He made a pained sound and stilled his movements on her. “Were you pretending just now when you kissed me?”
Oh. My. God. They were actually discussing it.
Her nod was jerky.
Marcos hesitated, then huskily murmured, “Do you want to…?”
She sank her teeth into her lower lip to keep from saying something stupid, like yes. “To what?”
His whisper tumbled down her ear. “You know what.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” But she did. Oh, dear, she did.
“Kiss…” Thick and terse, his voice brimmed with passion. “Touch…”
Shaking like a leaf in a storm, she wiggled free and walked around him, her insides wrenching. “I told you I could pretend just fine.”
Heading for the couch and plopping down, she surveyed the food once more, but her eyes didn’t see anything.
Was she supposed to stay strong and resist what her body and heart wanted when she had a chance to have it? Was she supposed to say no and no and no?
Marcos plunged his hand into his hair. “That was pretense?”
“Of course.” He sounded so shocked and looked so annoyed she might have even laughed. Instead, her voice grew businesslike. “So you left. And your father stayed here? In this city?”
For a moment, he released a cynical laugh, and when he gradually recovered, he roughly scraped the back of his hand across his mouth as if he couldn’t stand remembering their kiss. Reluctantly, he nodded. “You’re good, Miss Hollis, I’ll give you that.”
“What made you leave here?” she asked, blinking.
One lone eyebrow rose and this time when he laughed, she knew it was at her attempt at conversation.
“Well.” Propping a shoulder against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest in a seemingly relaxed pose, Marcos exuded a raw, primal power that seemed to take command of the entire room. “Allende Transport was taken. By my father’s…woman. It was either her or me—and he chose her. But I promised myself when I came back…the transport company would be mine.”
His voice. Sometimes she’d hear it, not the words, just the bass, the accent. Marcos was larger than life, large in every single way, and Virginia could pretend all she wanted but the fact was, she’d be stupid to forget her position. And she had to make sure the car incident would never again be repeated.
“Marcos, what happened here and in the car was—”
“Only the beginning.”
She started. The beginning of what? The end? She ground her molars, fighting for calm. “We were pretending.”
“Aha.”
“Yes,” she said, vehemently. “We were.”
“Right, Miss Hollis. Whatever you say.”
“You asked me to pretend, that’s what I’m here for. Isn’t it?”
His silence was so prolonged she felt deafened. Was she here for another reason? A reason other than what he’d requested of her? An intimate, wicked, naughty reason?
She could tell by the set of his jaw that if he had a hidden agenda, he wouldn’t be admitting to it now.
Walking off her conflicting emotions, she fixed her attention on the food. The scents of lemon, warm bread, cheeses and fruit teased her nostrils, but her stomach was too constricted for her to summon any appetite. Usually she’d be wolfing down the strawberries, but now she wiped her hands on her sides and put on her best secretarial face. “At what time should I wake up tomorrow?”
“We have a late lunch, no need to rise with the sun,” he said.
She signaled to both ends of the room, needing to get away from him, wishing she could get away from herself. “And my room?”
“Pick the one you like.”
She felt his gaze on her, sensed it like a fiery lick across her skin.
She went over and peered into a room: a large, double-post bed, white and blue bedclothes. Very beautiful. She went to the other, feeling his eyes follow. The lamplight cast his face in beautiful mellow light. He looked like an angel that had just escaped from hell, like an angel she wanted to sin with.
“I guess either will do,” she admitted.
She smiled briefly at him from the doorway, and although he returned the smile, both smiles seemed empty.
And in that instant Virginia was struck with two things at once: she had never wanted anything so much in her life as she wanted the man standing before her, and if his lips covered hers again, if his hands touched her, if his eyes continued to look at her, she would never own her heart again.
She said, “Good night.” And didn’t wait to hear his reply.
The room she chose was the one with coral-pink bedding and an upholstered headboard. She didn’t question that, for appearances, he would wish him and his “lover” to appear to share a room. But she quietly turned the lock behind her.
As she changed, she thought of what she had read about Marcos and Monterrey. She arranged the clothes in the large closet, each garment on a hanger, and eyed and touched the ones he’d bought her.
She slipped into her cotton nightgown, ignoring the prettier garments made of silk and satin and lace, and climbed into bed. Awareness of his proximity in the adjoining room caused gooseflesh along her arms. A fan hung suspended from the ceiling, twirling. The echo of his words feathered through her, melting her bones. I’ll pretend…you’re her.
She squeezed her eyes shut, her chest constricting. It’s not you, Virginia, she firmly told herself.
She touched a finger against her sensitive lips and felt a lingering pleasure. And in her heart of hearts, she knew she was. She was her, the woman Marcos wanted. She’d dreamed of him in private, but dreams had been so harmless until they came within reach. Marcos Allende.
Wanting him was the least safe, most staggering, worrying feeling she’d ever felt.
And one thing she knew for certain was that to her, Marcos Allende was even more dangerous than his beautiful, deadly city of Monterrey.
Sleep eluded him.
The clock read past 1:00 a.m. and Marcos had smashed his pillow into a beat-up ball. He’d kicked off the covers. He’d cursed and then he’d cursed himself some more for thinking one kiss would be enough to rid himself of his obsession of her.
Then there was Allende.
He had to plan, plot, leave no room for error. He had to stoke his hatred of Marissa, to be prepared to crush her once and for all.
But he could not think of anything. Memories of those kisses in the car assailed him. The fierce manner in which his mouth took hers and her greedy responses, the moans she let out when he’d touched her. How his tongue had taken hers, how she’d groaned those tormenting sounds.
He lay awake and glared at the ceiling, his mind counting the steps to her room. Twenty? Maybe fewer. Was she asleep? What did she wear to sleep? Was she remembering, too? Jesus, what a nightmare.
He shouldn’t have asked her there.
He’d thought nothing of Allende, nothing of tomorrow, but had kept going over in his mind the ways she’d kissed him and the ways he still wanted to kiss her.
He sat up and critically surveyed the door of his room. He wanted her to give in. Wanted something of hers, a stolen moment, something she hadn’t planned to give him, but couldn’t help but relinquish. She was cautious by nature. She’d fear ruining everything, all she’d worked so hard for, all she’d tried to achieve. A steady job, security, respect. Could he guarantee this would remain solid when they were through? Could they even continue working together—flaring up like torches like this?
Their kiss had shot him up into outer space; obviously he still couldn’t think right. In his drawstring pants, he climbed out of bed and slipped into his shirt.
He meant to review his numbers once again, ascertain that the amount he planned to offer for Allende was low, but fair enough to secure it.
Instead he ignored his files and found himself standing outside his assistant’s bedroom door, his hand on the doorknob, his heart beating a crazy jungle-cat rhythm.
He turned the knob, smiling at his certainty of her, her being always so…orderly, having locked it against him.
His heart stopped when he realized Virginia Hollis’s door was unlocked. Now all that kept him from Virginia Hollis were his damned scruples.
Five
“Sleep well?”
“Of course. Wonderfully well. And you?”
“Perfectly.”
That was the extent of their conversation the next morning over breakfast. Until Marcos began folding his copy of El Norte. “A favor from you, Miss Hollis?”
Virginia glanced up from her breakfast to stare into his handsome, clean-shaven face. A kiss, she thought with a tightness in her stomach. A touch. God, a second kiss to get rid of that haunting memory of the first.
With her thoughts presenting her the image of him—Marcos Allende—kissing her, she flushed so hard her skin felt on fire. She toyed with her French toast. “Nothing too drastic, I assume?” she said, some of the giddiness she felt creeping into her voice.
“Drastic?” he repeated, setting the morning paper aside.
She shrugged. “Oh, you know…murder. Blackmail. I don’t think I could get away with those.”