Mine Until Morning (9 page)

The Only Way Out

and licked the seam of his lips. It wasn’t a peck; it was a tease. He opened. She pressed her mouth to his, forayed inside with her tongue. And moaned. The car’s interior heated. Her breasts caressed his chest, and he wanted to crawl across the seat and take her. His fingers flexed along the back of her neck as her taste filled his mouth.

Then she slipped away, leaving him utterly bewitched. “Call me when Isabel calls you,” she said.

The door opened, closed; she unlocked the house, disappeared inside while he watched. His limbs wouldn’t move. He should have followed. Closing his eyes, he leaned his head back. No. Wrong. They had only this. The nights of her dates when he took care of her, made sure she was safe. The nights were all Kern had given him. He hadn’t given Mac his wife. Christ, he needed that next date like he needed a breath.

DANI CLOSED THE DOOR AND SLID DOWN UNTIL HER BUTT HIT THE tile floor.

Oh God. She’d wanted to beg him to come in. Stay with me. The words had hovered on her lips. He would have come if she’d asked. The man could own her if she let him.

“You’re in control,” she whispered to the empty house. She thought she heard the echo of a laugh. It sounded like Kern. Stabbing her hand in her purse, she yanked out her cell. It didn’t seem to matter how late, Isabel usually answered.

“Did it go well?” Isabel wanted to know.

That was code for the money. She’d almost forgotten the envelope in her hand. It wasn’t even why she’d called. “Very well,” Dani said, though she hadn’t checked. Sticking the phone between her shoulder and ear, she opened the envelope. Oh. My. God. She could barely breathe. “They were very appreciative.”

And rich. She’d never expected that much. Damn if it wasn’t heaven-sent, though. She laughed, overcome. “I think I need some more dates like that one.”

“Generous, I take it?”

“Above and beyond,” she admitted. “I’m almost shocked.” Though she’d also say that she and Mac had shown the Stamoses an extraordinary time, a date they’d never forget, and one she was sure they would try to duplicate. Okay, there was a reason she’d called Isabel. She needed another date as 56

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soon as possible, and it wasn’t all about the money. A date was her excuse to have Mac again. She craved what he’d given her tonight. She was in danger of losing control all over again. With Kern, it was the money. With Mac, it was her body. Or more.

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9

“THAT WASN’T THE DEAL,” MAC SAID THREE DAYS LATER. Though it would have been simple enough to make the arrangements over the phone, Dani had dropped by his Silicon Valley office two hours after Isabel had called him with the lowdown on a date. Mac damn well knew why Dani had come, and it wasn’t the afternoon coffee break she claimed. To make it look good, she’d brought him a stout cup of his favorite brew from the coffee bar across the street. He wasn’t fooled.

Her real mission? She wanted to bat her eyelashes at him, tie his guts in knots, and get him to do anything she wanted. He was in danger of falling for it, too, sucker that he was. At this point, though, he was still maintaining a hard line. Damn difficult with her dressed in tight, sexy jeans and a low-cut formfitting white T-shirt with a black bra beneath it. There was something about seeing a woman’s lingerie through her clothes that set his motor rumbling. It was goddamn slutty, and he loved it.

“This is how Kern did it,” she replied evenly. He wanted to smack a fist on his desk. “I don’t care how Kern did it. We had a deal. I can only look out for you if I’m there to watch.”

She snorted.

Damn if she didn’t see right through him.

Three days had passed since their date with Stamos. Mac’s skin felt stretched too tight for his body, and the sun falling through his office window turned him hot under the collar. The closed door was too much of a temptation. He wanted to grab her up out of the chair, bend her over his desk, and make her cry out the way she had in the stairwell on Saturday night. He didn’t go in for high jinks in the workplace, but for her, he’d make an exception.

“Mac,” she said, overly patient, as if she were talking to a child, “he’s a regular I’ve dated for six months.”

Dated? She meant fucked, but he wasn’t about to say it.

“Isabel already spoke with him,” she went on, “and he does not agree to be watched.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Look, you said you wanted ménages because they were more lucrative”—yeah, he’d thought about how to 58

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phrase that one—“so deviating from that plan doesn’t make sense.”

She pursed her lips primly and sighed at him. “The kind of thing we had with Jessica and Spryo doesn’t come along often. I’ve got to supplement with my regulars.”

He knew nights like that didn’t fall out of the sky, but he wanted it again, needed it, was close to begging for it.

It was fucking unmanly to beg. He was used to negotiating.

“The priority is paying off the medical bills.” She was so irritatingly matter-offact. “To do that, I have to see my regulars.” Why did her simple statement make him see red? “And we’ll handle it the way Kern did.” She smiled pleasantly.

“You drive me, meet him with me, wait for me, I complete my business, and you drive me home.” She spread her hands, tipped her head, waiting for his agreement.

She was offering him a goddamn bone. One that had already been chewed, buried, and dug up again. No fucking way. “Here’s how it’s going to work.” He gave her a smile equally as pleasant, like a shark, perhaps. “I drive you, we meet him in the bar, we all three go up to the room, I watch you complete your business”—drooling like a mad dog every moment—“we leave, I drive you home”—then fuck like rabbits all night long—“or we cancel the date.”

Her gaze didn’t waver, yet her chest rose with a mesmerizing breath, her eyes narrowing as she exhaled. “Excuse me?”

“I promised your husband I would take care of you. This is how I’ve determined I will do it, choosing your dates appropriately.”

She uncrossed and recrossed her legs. Slow and deliberate. “Kern never chose for me,” she said with heavy emphasis.

“Maybe he should have.”

She stood, magnificent in her anger, cheeks stained with red, eyes the shade of leaves just as the colors start to turn in fall. “Is this an ultimatum? Either I let you watch, cancel my date, or”—she jutted her chin—“or what, Mac?”

He’d seen it as a battle of wills. He was used to winning. If he didn’t get what he wanted, it had never really mattered if his opponent walked away. It mattered if she did. It mattered if he lost her. Their so-called deal had moved from being a deathbed promise he’d made Kern to being all about her. What he needed from her.

He didn’t want to be her protector or her pimp. His skin hummed as if an 59

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electrical current raced through him. He wanted to be the man in her life. Fuck. It was too new and terrifying to acknowledge aloud. For the first time in his adult life, Mac backed down before he actually dared her to step over the line he’d drawn between them. “I’ll allow it, but only with a time limit, one hour, and only if you call my cell to give me the room number when you get up there, then again before you fuck him, and finally when you’re done.”

She laughed, the tension easing. “You’re such a freak. He’s harmless. I don’t know what you’re so worried about.”

Neither did he, except that the thought of her alone in a hotel room with another man made him insane. “I’ll pick you up at seven.”

She smiled, shaking her head, sashayed to the door, then turned with her hand on the knob. “He only takes half an hour.”

Getting in the last word, she shut the door behind her, her perfume lingering. Only half an hour with her? The guy was crazier than Mac was. But it did mean the rest of the night was his.

LEAVING MAC’S OFFICE BUILDING, DANI WANTED TO JUMP UP AND down and punch her fists in the air like a football player who’d made the winning touchdown. Of course, that would have been an unsportsmanlike display. She’d won. Over herself. No begging, no compromising. Yeah, sure, she planned to have sex with Mac after her date with Sheldon, but on her terms. She’d bested Mac. Unbelievable. Inconceivable. He hadn’t exactly backed down; he’d given her a time limit and ordered her to call, yeah, yeah, but he had to sit down in the bar and wait.

All right, it was a small triumph, but it was like telling herself she had to wait, proving she could wait. That gave her back the power. Okay, it was odd. One would think getting paid for sex made a woman powerless. Not so. She could turn a man down. She could get him blacklisted. It was when you needed what he could give you. Yes, she needed the money—and she was the first to admit how marvelous it had felt paying bills on Monday with what she’d received on Saturday—but she didn’t need payment from any particular man. The loss of power came when you needed the man himself. Saturday, Mac had overwhelmed her. Three days later, she’d gotten that in perspective.

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Back home after leaving his office, perusing her closet, running her bath, soaking, shaving, rubbing lotion into her skin, painting her nails, curling her hair, well, all that was for herself, not Sheldon. And certainly not Mac. It took three hours to prepare. A man would marvel at that. Dani savored every pampered moment. If she did say so herself, in a short red dress that hugged her breasts and flirted with her bare thighs, she’d knock Sheldon’s socks off. She’d paired the dress with four-inch spiked heels, which would put her at precisely three inches taller than him. He loved feeling dominated by a woman who dragged him by his tie into the room, pushed him down on the bed, and had her wicked way with him despite his feeble protests. The side benefit to all the prep time was knocking Mac’s socks off, too. He stared for a full ten seconds without a word when she opened the front door. Helping her into the car, he trailed a hand down her arm as if he couldn’t help the brief touch. As he drove them to the downtown San Jose hotel, his glance kept falling to the bare skin of her thighs. It felt deliciously good. Maybe too good.

They were early, Sheldon hadn’t arrived, and Mac ordered her a white Russian as they waited. It was a convention hotel, and the lobby bar was packed. Rather than tables and chairs, the seating arrangements were sofas and chairs with coffee tables in the middle. Every nook was filled, but Mac managed to snag one more chair for her date. Voices and laughter echoed off the high ceiling. Dani scooted closer on their little couch to hear Mac better. And because she loved the way he smelled.

“Where’s your cell?” he asked.

Dani smiled and patted her purse. “Right here. Yes, I remember I’m to call you with the room number when we get in, before we go all the way, and when we leave.” She smiled, saccharine sweet. What she hadn’t told Mac was that Sheldon never had intercourse with her, so technically, she wouldn’t need to call Mac in the middle. God, Mac had breathed life back into sex, and he didn’t even know it. This was how it used to be with Kern, before—

She stopped right there, closing her eyes for only the briefest moment as pain and guilt spiked right up into her heart. She couldn’t think about Kern now. If she had to do this, she’d have the fun, too. It was the only way to get through.

She poked at Mac to push herself back into the mood. “Oh, and I’ll tell him 61

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only the usual half hour, no matter how much he begs for more.”

He smirked. “You’re getting cocky.”

Dani grinned. Yes, she was. She needed to. Then she pinched Mac’s hand.

“Shh. Here he comes.”

Sheldon O’Dell shuffled into the hotel lobby, his suit rumpled, his hair windblown. A short, thin man in his late fifties, he wore wire-rimmed glasses and looked like the quintessential hen-pecked accountant. He was actually chairman of a Silicon Valley-based Fortune 500 and on the boards of several influential charities. He’d never given her his last name, but she’d seen his photo in the paper. The hotel he chose was decent but not extravagant, he drove a five-yearold American-made car, and his suits were purchased off the rack from a fine department store.

All of that was why Sheldon O’Dell was a very rich man. He paid her well. He was also masterful at oral sex. Especially when she ordered him to pleasure her. Sheldon loved to be ordered about. That was when he performed the best, and he certainly didn’t have any trouble on that end. She’d always wondered what his wife was like.

He slid into the chair beside her. “How do you do? I’m Sheldon.” He held out his hand. Mac shook.

Dani would love to see Sheldon in the boardroom. She couldn’t imagine he would sound as meek.

Clearly, Mac hadn’t been expecting Sheldon’s type. The way his gaze danced from her to Sheldon and back again amused her. He’d been ready to play the enforcer as he had with Spryo, laying down the rules, demanding. He didn’t know what to do with Sheldon. Dani loved throwing him off-kilter. It shifted the balance of power to her, right where she needed it.

“This is Mac,” she said, “my muscle.”

Sheldon did have a sense of humor, and he smiled shyly, his eyes reaching the knot in Mac’s tie and no higher. “Mac the Muscle. I like it. Very appropriate.”