Rhea was a lot more turned on by what she'd done than she wanted to admit. The truth was, Ace had tasted wonderful. And the look on his face as she tasted him was branded into her consciousness. Her breasts were still swollen and heavy from desire.
How could she be attracted to him? Yeah, he looked great, but he was a pest.
Trying to distract herself, she strolled down an aisle with the most incredibly odd vibrators she'd ever seen. Some of them looked like penises and some of them just looked weird. One in particular had two penises pointing away from each other.
Tilting her head to study it, Rhea paused and frowned.
Ace gave a low, amused laugh as he came up behind her. He was so close, she could actually feel the heat from his body. Feel the intensity of his presence. He might as well be touching her for all the damage he was doing to her willpower.
"You really haven't ever been in one of these stores before have you?" he asked her.
She shook her head. "I had no idea that these"--she gestured toward the myriad of battery-operated boyfriends--"came in so many shapes, colors, or textures. Good grief. Do people really use these?"
As his body brushed against her, she could feel his taut erection. He'd been right. He was a large man, and the thought of that electrified her as he reached for one of the illicit packages. "Yeah, they do, at least I know they use them in porn flicks."
She gave him an arched, censoring look.
He actually looked offended. "What? My cousin Vito produces porn films for a small, independent studio. Much to the horror of my grandparents, he talks about it at every Christmas party."
Relieved more than she wanted to admit, she shook her head. "You have the strangest family."
"And you've spent as much time in Beverly Hills as you've spent in adult stores if you believe that. Trust me, where I grew up, my family were the most normal ones on the block."
"And now I know why I've never made it a habit to frequent either place." Rhea folded her arms over her chest. "So what exactly will I need for this...excursion?"
Ace returned the "item" in his hand to the shelf. "I vote we ease our way into this. For one thing, no gags, since gagging Bender would defeat the purpose of getting him to talk."
"That makes sense."
Ace headed over two aisles to where they had a display of restraints. "Something simple. Handcuffs."
Rhea studied the variety of manacles they had. An un-bidden image of Ace spread out naked on her bed flashed through her mind, and in spite of what she would ever admit, she had to say it was an incredible thought.
Oh, jeez, don't make him right! He would be flattered to no end to know that you really are picturing him naked.
"Some of this stuff looks like it ought to be illegal," she said, trying to distract herself again.
Ace shrugged. "Personally, I'm not into the rough stuff, but there are all kinds out there."
"I'm just glad I'm not one of them and that I'm licensed to carry a concealed weapon should I ever have the misfortune of meeting one in a dark alley."
"Yeah." Ace grabbed two pairs of velvet-lined cuffs. He held them like a man who truly had no interest in using them.
"You really aren't into it, are you?" she asked in surprise. As gung ho and adventurous as he was in everything else, she would have thought he was a regular porn-meister.
"No. I like my sex the good old-fashioned way. Down and dirty."
She rolled her eyes at him. "You know, there for a minute, I was starting to like you."
"Only a minute?"
"You're right. It was more like ten seconds."
"Okay, for that, I vote for this." He picked up a cat-o'-nine-tails that was made of thick leather straps.
"Fine." She left him and went to the bustier rack, where she quickly found a frilly red number made out of satin and feathers. "What do you think of this?"
He grinned. "I like it."
"Good. What size are you?"
"Pardon?"
Grandma laughed. "I have his size in back."
"No!" Ace snapped. "I only have one rule in life: no drag."
"Why not?" Rhea teased. "You allergic to satin?"
"No, but this"--he picked up the thong part of it--"would give me a wedgie from hell. No, thank you."
She tsked at him, then put it back.
Ace stopped as they passed a tall, thin silver canister that held several long feathers. His look turned speculative, then wicked. "Tickle your ass with a feather?"
"Excuse me?"
He cleared his throat. "I said, particularly nice weather?"
Rhea screwed her face up. "Oh, please, don't tell me you're a fan of Up the Academy?"
Ace was stunned that Rhea knew his vague reference to the offbeat, early-eighties film. "So how many times have you watched it?"
"More than I cared to. It was my older bother's favorite movie in high school, and I curse the day they ever turned it into a videotape."
Ace laughed, amazed at just how much he enjoyed their verbal sparring and her unique views of the world. "Hey, I defend your brother's taste in movies."
"You would." But the dancing light in her eyes said that she wasn't as offended as she pretended.
Better still, she picked up one of the feathers and added it to the cuffs.
"You gonna let me?" he asked hopefully.
"Oh, no, you're the slave, remember? You have to do what I say."
"Yeah, but don't slaves get rewards?"
"No." She sashayed past him.
Maybe slaves didn't get rewarded, but before they finished this detail, Ace fully intended to. He'd been too hot for this women far too long to not at least get a small taste of that wisecracking mouth.
As for the rest of her...
Ace wasn't the kind of man to let something he wanted get away from him, and he wasn't about to let Rhea tie him down without both of them getting a taste of something decadent.
Chapter Two
Rhea kept glancing up from under her eyelashes while she ate. Ace seemed incredibly focused on her.
Too focused. She was beginning to feel like a piece of prey under the hungry stare of a powerful lion. Little did he know that this bunny, much like the one in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, had sharp, vicious teeth.
She sipped her wine. "If you're trying to make me nervous, Ace, you can hang it up. I don't scare easily."
He arched a brow at her comment as he continued to watch her. "I'm not trying to make you nervous, Rhea, I'm only trying to figure you out. You're normally so cool at work that I find it amazing how much you're not when you're out of the Bat Tower." The Bat Tower was the pet name of the BellSouth building in downtown Nashville where the BAD offices were hidden under the guise of a BellSouth department door in a secured area of the building that no one but their people could access.
Rhea set her glass aside and answered snidely, "It's all the chemicals in the air there. They solidify my blood cells until I'm nothing but a statue."
His warm laughter washed over her. Ace was a lot easier to talk to than she would have thought. Her first impression of him when they'd met three years ago had been less than flattering.
Okay, she'd hated him.
He'd shown up to work in a pair of ragged jeans with a T-shirt and a flippant attitude that had set off her ire immediately. She took her job seriously, while Ace took few things seriously--or at least it had seemed like that in the beginning.
It wasn't until she'd seen him in action that she'd developed some respect for his abilities and learned that he really did take his job with the same grave responsibility as the rest of them.
Since he came from a Hollywood family, he was a consummate actor. But that too left her wondering what the real Ace Krux was like. How much of even this charming man eating with her was real and how much of it was an act?
He paused while cutting his steak and looked at her. "Why do I have the sudden feeling that I'm some lab experiment gone wrong and you're the scientist trying to figure out why?"
>
"You're perceptive. Not about being an experiment. I was just wondering how a guy like you ends up working for the government."
He wiped his mouth before taking a drink of his beer. "In a nutshell, Joe."
That wasn't what she was expecting to hear. "Joe?"
"Yeah. We went to college together out in California. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, other than anything that didn't have Hollywood in it. I didn't even know what to major in. When I started my second year, Joe was my roommate, and even though he was only nineteen, he knew exactly what he wanted. While the rest of us went out drinking and partying all the time, he stayed in the room studying."
"That sounds like Joe to me."
"Yeah. One night, I actually got him totally bombed out of his mind and found out a lot about him. He wasn't there for an education, he was there because he wanted to make a difference. He wanted his life to matter to people and he could care less if he made any money so long as he could help the people who needed it. He was the most driven human being I'd ever met, and it was the first time in my life that I ever really respected anyone."
Rhea agreed. Joe was a hard man not to respect. "I still can't understand why a guy like you wanted to save the world. You just don't strike me as an altruist."
He snorted at that. "You want to know the real truth of why I'm here?"
She nodded.
"While we were roommates, I found out that Joe had never been to DC before and that one of the things he wanted most was to see the Smithsonian before he died. It was the same year that they were doing the Star Trek exhibit, which I thought would be cool to see since one of the costumes they had on display was one my mother had worn when she played some alien princess out to seduce Kirk."
In spite of herself, she was intrigued that she had probably seen that episode a dozen times in her life without ever guessing that one of the women after Kirk would have a son who would one day end up working with her. "Your mother was in a Star Trek episode?"
"Oh, yeah. She made tons of appearances in shows and movies before she married my dad and started having us."
Rhea hated to admit it, but she was fascinated by Ace's past. He'd had quite a childhood out in Hollywood. "Given that, I can see why you wanted to go, but it was really nice of you to take Joe along."
"Yeah, well, like I said, I admired him and it wouldn't have been half as much fun alone. So the two of us were there in the Smith along with several hundred other people, including families with small children and babies in strollers, when this voice came over the intercom telling us that there was a bomb threat and that the entire building had to be evacuated immediately."
Rhea saw red at that. It was just that kind of needless panic and fear that she hated.
"I don't think I've ever been more scared in my life," Ace confessed.
"You were scared and you admit it?"
He shrugged. "Hard to believe, but, yeah, as we filed down the halls and then single file down some metal back stairs, I really did expect a bomb to go off and kill us all. I kept looking around at all the faces of the people who had innocently gone there that day for no other reason than to see a little bit of our history, and I thought, what kind of dick would blow up the Smith? I mean, I knew such things happened, but it was the first time it was personal.
"And as we stood out in the Mall, waiting for the bomb squad to search the building, I got really angry as I looked around at all the different buildings that make up the Smith and thought about the irreplaceable items each one held. All the pieces of history that could have been lost to future generations...The Spirit of St. Louis, the Hope diamond, the original 'Star-Spangled Banner,' hell, even my mother's costume and the Lone Ranger's mask. But worse than that were all the children who were around me who would have been history themselves. It wasn't right, and for the first time, I really understood what motivated Joe to right the wrongs of the world. So I decided I wanted to do something with my life too. After graduation, we packed our things, moved to DC, and started applying for jobs. Within six months, he ended up in the CIA while I joined the SS."
She was impressed at the timetable and their impetus, especially for Ace. "That must have been scary for you guys to head out across the country on your own."
He shrugged. "Not really. When you have the kind of money and connections my family does, there's not a lot of risk in much of anything. My dad bought me a Georgetown brownstone for graduation, so it was just a matter of finding our places in the world."
"Wow," she said sarcastically, remembering how many times in her childhood they had barely made ends meet. "It must be nice to chomp the silver spoon and know that no matter what you do, you have a safety net."
He seemed to ignore her sarcasm. "Sometimes, but if you're not careful, that safety net can quickly turn into a noose to hang you."
His perception stunned her. Ace had real depth...that really was the last thing she'd expected from him, and it made him all the more alluring to her. "How do you mean?"
"I've seen a lot of my friends and family end up on drugs and totally screwed up emotionally because they have no concept of how hard life is for those who lack. To them a crisis is that the detail place didn't deliver the Ferrari in time for the party and now they have to take the Bentley instead. God forbid."
She watched the way the candlelight played in his dark blond hair while he ate some of his steak. The light danced on the sharp angles of his cheeks and jaw, making her wonder what it would feel like to trace that strong jawline with her finger. She shivered with the thought of it. It had really been far too long since she'd been with a man. Even longer since she'd last felt this insane need to reach out and touch one.
Why she would feel that with Ace, she couldn't imagine. Though to be honest, he was starting to grow on her now that he was talking to her and not sniping at her.
"How is it you escaped that fate?" she asked, more interested in the answer than she should have been.
"Again, I have to say Joe. He was the first poor person I'd ever really gotten to know. Here I was stressing out over whether I should go to Cancun or Rio for spring break while he was sneaking fruit into his backpack so that he'd have something to eat over the weekend rather than starve. I shudder to think what I might have become had I not lucked out when they were handing out roommate assignments."
Rhea thought about that in silence while Ace continued to eat. He really was beginning to intrigue her with his stories.
And that terrified her.
Even so, she wanted to know more about him. "So how did you end up with the name Thaddeus?" she asked, changing the subject. "That just doesn't seem to fit you at all."
He groaned as if the name pained him greatly. "Before my dad was a director, he was a stunt double. My mother thought it would be funny to name all of us after whatever character he was playing when we were conceived."
"Really? How fun." But for her life, she couldn't think of a single movie from the time of their birth with a character by that name. "So who was Thaddeus?"
He took another drink of beer. "It's an old TV western from 1971. Alias Smith and Jones. Ben Murphy played Jed "Kid" Curry, aka Thaddeus Jones, and hence my name. I suppose it could be worse. Had Dad been dark-haired, I'd have been named Hannibal after the Pete Deul character."
She cringed for him. "Lucky you, indeed. So where did you get the nickname Ace?"
"John Wayne."
She rolled her eyes. "I was being serious."
"I am serious. He was a longtime friend of my grandfather's. One night, about a year before he died, he was at my grandfather's house playing cowboy with me. I wanted a cool outlaw name, so the Duke dubbed me Ace Hijinx, Kid Outlaw."
A rush of warmth went through her. How sweet.
But Ace's face turned deeply sad. "I was only eight when he died, and when my mother came in to tell me he was gone, I told her I would never use another name again. The Duke had named me Ace, and Ace I would be."
Her heart ac
hed for him and the pain she saw on his face. "You loved him."
"Yeah. He was like another grandfather to me." Ace returned to his meal.
Rhea sat quietly as she thought over all of the stories and things he'd told her tonight. "You must have had a fascinating life, knowing all those celebrities."
He took it with an uncharacteristic dose of humility. "Yes and no. At the end of the day, fame is fleeting, and it really is true, we all get dressed the same way every day. The only difference between someone who works at McDonald's and a Hollywood diva is the size of the paycheck and ego. I've seen fame destroy far more lives than it's built."
Yes, there was a lot more to Ace than she would have given credit.
He met her gaze, and the intensity of those blue eyes made her shivery. "I have a lot more respect for someone like Joe, who had every mark against him and yet he fought his way out of poverty, turned his life around, and made something out of himself, than I do for all the rich kids who take their trust funds and party in the Caymans. Trust me, I'd much rather hang out with the Joes of the world."
He took another bite of his steak. "So what about you? Where did you grow up?"
Rhea sighed wistfully as she remembered her small hometown. "Starkville, Mississippi. The biggest celebrity I ever met growing up was the man in Tupelo who sold Elvis his first guitar."
Ace smiled at that as if Mr. Hollywood really was impressed.
"I hope you gave that man a big thank-you."
She didn't respond.
"So what about your parents?" he asked. "You never really talk about them."
Rhea's heart wrenched as she thought about her mother and father. "No, I don't."
Uncomfortable with the turn in conversation, she cleared her throat. "So tell me about Bender."
"Let's go back to the parent thing. I've spilled my guts to you, the least you could do is tell me something about your parents." Ace watched as her brown eyes actually teared up. "Rhea?"
"There's nothing to tell."
He didn't need his instincts to tell him she was hiding something. It was painfully obvious.
Before he could ask her anything else, she excused herself and headed for the restroom. Ace got up to follow her.
"What are you doing?" she asked as he pulled her to a stop in the lobby. "You're not planning on following me into the ladies' room, are you?"
"No. I just want to know why the thought of your parents upsets you so much. Most people don't get teary-eyed when they think of them."