STORM: A Standalone Romance (13 page)

"I'd say it makes you my best candidate," Cara gasped.

"Do you conduct all of your interviews this way, Miss Langford?" Simon's darkly amused voice drifted to her. "On your knees in a rich man's bedroom? Or have you made a special case for me?" Another finger slid into her, and Cara moaned, rocking her hips to encourage the delicious friction he was causing. "Either way, I'd say I'm very lucky indeed."

A low whine in her throat rose unbidden as Simon retracted his fingers, leaving her desperate for something, anything, to fill the space he had left inside her. She had dealt with it for weeks now, and, knowing he was so close to giving her what she wanted, she couldn't bear it anymore. One hand came up from stabilizing herself on the bed to press his hand deeper into the crevice of her breasts, and she felt his groan vibrate through her own body as he slid into her at last.

"Simon!" she moaned. The man took his hand from her breasts and snatched her hips, yanking her back against him, and Cara gasped as an explosion of pleasure ripped through her. She had always felt filled by him before, but forced into this angle beneath him, his pulsating member was buried so deeply inside her that she could feel it brushing up against something incredible. Her lips parted in astonishment as she arched against him. Once she had recovered herself, she hunted with lidded eyes for some indication of how he was accomplishing this. She saw her own ass fitted against his pelvis, pressed so firmly between them that it pushed upward toward his navel. His trousers still hung off his hips, and the undone buckle of his belt jiggled as he pulled himself back and thrust into her again.

Stars exploded behind Cara's eyes. She gave a cry that was almost a scream, a sound that she would have tried her best to muffle, had she not had some vague awareness that there were no neighbors on this floor. She could be as loud as she wanted as Simon had his way with her, and there would be no one around to halt their proceedings. The billionaire pressed the smooth line of her body, the silken curve of her back, back against his open shirt, and thrust again. His hand roved up the length of her body, passing over her breasts with an almost indecent indifference, before stopping to cup the straining column of her throat. Warmth flooded Cara at the gentle pressure as his fingers stroked her neck idly, collaring her. She felt the other hand leave her hip to skim down her bikini line and delve between her legs. She had almost completely forgotten by this point that she was still wearing her dress. A lot of good the skimpy item of clothing was doing her now.

Simon began to take deep, slow thrusts into her. The slap of their flesh each time they joined drove her wild. He was arousing her every sense to its absolute limit, except for her vision; when she realized she couldn't see his face or track how their bodies were moving, Cara closed her eyes and gave herself over to the feeling. She raised her hand to cup the hard edge of Simon's jaw, secure in the fact that this was real, and not just another hot, wet dream.

He pumped into her, his finger stroking her secret recesses all the while. Every move he made against her felt more intense, more incredible, than the last, and Cara knew she was addicted. There was no man in the world who had Simon's talents in the bedroom, and the fact that he wanted to do these things to her and her only sent her soaring with every thrust. She was the thing he had told himself repeatedly he couldn't have—yet every time he laid his eyes on her, he lost complete control of himself and had her anyway.

"Simon." She gasped the man's name. "Simon, I'm going to
come."

"That's the…point…of this exercise," he gasped back to her, his words punctuated by his slow rhythm.

"Make me come," she begged. "Please."

"Not yet," he murmured. Cara felt the pressure building within her, and another caress along her neck threatened to put her over, but Simon had other plans. He removed his slickened fingers from between her legs and grasped her inner thigh, using it to turn her over. Cara crashed down onto the bed sideways as he hiked her leg over his shoulder and took her at a new, devastating angle. There was nothing she could do but watch as Simon grasped her elevated ankle and pumped into her. Finally seeing the way their bodies came together repeatedly in the dark drove her wild with pleasure. She moaned and snaked a hand between her legs, forking her fingers and fondling herself as Simon filled her to the brim again and again.

"You can't touch yourself like that, Cara." Simon's voice sounded strained, and she could see a tendon standing out in his neck as he fought to keep control of himself. "You're going to make me come, seeing you like this."

"Is this what you imagined you'd do to me?" she managed to purr. She pressed and massaged herself, flinching and giving little gasps as she allowed Simon to watch her explore her naked body beneath him. "When you were having dreams about me?"

"Oh, God." Simon shuddered, and his cock gave a jump inside her. She felt him thrust himself up against the line of her inner leg, and Cara stroked her own center hard; when her orgasm finally hit her, her cry was deep and enduring. She felt a rush of warmth as Simon emptied himself into her tight crevice, and shuddered again as he slowly and agonizingly withdrew. Pleasant aftershocks raced through her at the slightest movement, taken by either him or her. She felt gentle hands roam the rumpled fabric of her ruined dress and pull it off her completely.

Simon shed his own clothes, and then he was on top of her, taking her into his warm arms and kissing her back to awareness. Cara moved herself in his embrace, pressing their naked bodies together as Simon carried her up to the line of pillows.

"Cara." She loved the way he said her name. There was reverence, and relief, and maybe something more…although she wouldn't hope for those words, not from Simon. Not yet. They still had so much to work out between them, but at least the line had been crossed now, and they were back together again. Whatever arguments awaited them tomorrow morning, Cara felt their issues could be resolved with a single kiss. It was a strange, sometimes seemingly unworkable relationship that they shared.

Cara wouldn't have it any other way.

Simon pulled the sheets up over them, planting fleeting, worshipful kisses along her neck all the while, and Cara leaned into him happily. He was in a half-drowsy state, exhausted from the completed terms of their reunion; for her part, Cara felt as if her blood was singing. The sluggish beatings of their hearts joined together like a lullaby, and they succumbed at last to blissful sleep.

This time when she awoke in the morning, Simon was lying there beside her. Cara found herself wrapped tightly inside of Simon Banning's strong, naked arms, and pulled against his chest as if she were the most cherished thing in his billion-dollar world.

              She peeked up at his dozing face, and was overcome by a sensation she had rarely felt before… She felt suddenly, inexplicably shy. It made no sense, considering all that they had been through already—all that they had
done together
—not to mention the fact that their exposed erogenous zones were currently pressed up against each other's bed-warmed bodies. She wasn't feeling shy because she was naked in his penthouse, no—Cara felt the way she did because she had never seen Simon so vulnerable before.

              He slept, his head resting on the pillow above her, handsome face drawn down in sated relaxation. There was no bitter, clever smile in evidence, no wry amusement at her expense, no strain or anger or tortured expression. She couldn't even think of him as Simon Banning; he was simply Simon. Behind him, she could see the dark vestiges of his expensive suit and tie thrown carelessly over the back of a chair. It was such a small detail, but it punctuated so much.

              Cara hesitated before reaching up to move a swatch of the man's auburn hair aside. She leaned upward and placed a gentle kiss on his forehead. Simon stirred, his arms tightening around her, but he did not awaken.

              She lay with him like that for a long time, before morning necessities called. She managed to slip out from beneath the enclosure of his arms, though finding the bathroom proved a bit harder. She hadn't realized last night, but Simon's bedroom at the hotel was massive—there was even more than one bed, should a party necessitate numerous guests staying over. After Cara passed a third entry door to the same walk-in closet that was bigger than her apartment at school, she managed to find what she was looking for.

              The bathroom was cavernous, pearlescent, and glistening. She walked into it slowly, and was struck by how absolutely clean it was. Simon couldn't have been at the hotel for very long at all. There was a line of three sinks, and, most fascinating of all, a Jacuzzi tub. Cara had never seen one inside before. While she was sorely tempted, she decided to go with her original plan, and stepped into the enormous shower. She eased the door quietly shut behind her.

              The water that assailed her felt absolutely divine, immediately hot and cleansing. She let it run in rivers down her bare flesh, turning and massaging it into her scalp. The bathtub was lined with exotic-looking shampoos, washes, and oils. Feeling completely alone and at her leisure, Cara twisted the caps off them all and sampled each scent before arriving at one that was a mixture of honey and sandalwood. She shook some out into her palm and rubbed it into her skin, easing the last of the tension from her overworked muscles. Sex with Simon had been an incredible stress reliever, and she wasn't sure pampering herself like this was going to replace its effects anytime soon, but it certainly didn't hurt.

She had just turned to rinse the oil from her breasts when a pair of hands alighted on her body. Cara turned quickly, shocked that she had been so enraptured with her bathing that she hadn't noticed another person joining her. Simon grinned down at her.

"Isn't this a nice surprise?" he asked.

"Did you think it was all a dream?" Cara inquired with a casual lift of her eyebrow. He drew her close until their chests butted up against each other's; she could feel the rigid press of the erection he had woken up with against her inner leg.

"Yes," Simon said quietly. "And when I woke just now without you, for a moment I was sure of it."

"I had dreams, too," Cara admitted, just before their lips came together. Soon she was riding Simon as he held her pinned back against the slick shower wall. They slid against one another, the eruptive aroma of the oil titillating their senses, lubricating their bodies. The water pounded down between them and pooled in their joined navels and in the valley of her breasts. Cara's moans reverberated off the imported tiles as Simon took her then and there. Coming clean had never felt so sinfully dirty.

This was fast becoming his Connecticut estate all over again. There had hardly been a room left on his property where they hadn't done something illicit; even the caves weren't safe. Then again, Cara probably hadn't been admitted to even half of the rooms during her brief stay there. The thought that she might one day return to sully more of them with Simon filled her with private pleasure.

But they had exhausted themselves for now, and Cara was eager to hear what the actual assignment was.

She exited the bedroom after Simon and found him at the dining table in the main living area. He had evidently ordered down for room service—that, or they had just habitually brought it up—and Cara was greeted by the sight of a veritable breakfast feast before her. There was a pitcher of mimosa, of course; there was eggs benedict, scrambled, and sunny-side up; there was a loaf of steaming banana bread accompanied by a brick of creamy yellow butter. There was an enormous bowl of glistening fresh fruit, and another bowl of hand-whipped cream that looked the exact consistency of the clouds outside.

Cara was in disbelief, and Simon grinned when he saw her expression. "I'll never get tired of seeing that look on your face. It comes so rarely that I think you must be good at hiding it. It makes me feel like an infinitely richer man than I actually am."

"I'm not sure that's even financially possible," Cara murmured as she seated herself across from him. The meal laid out before her was unreal, and definitely enough to make her second-guess that Simon's suspicion that this was all a dream might have some basis in fact. "And you shouldn't talk so flippantly about your fortune."

"Why not?" Simon inquired curiously as Cara tucked in to eat. She paused to look at him with an arched eyebrow.

"Because it could get you into trouble," she finally offered. "I don't think you're in danger of being mugged or anything, but Simon…you're lucky if I only get this expression on my face rarely. There are people out there who could seriously hurt you. There are people out there who will take advantage of you, like Melinda."

"You don't have to worry about Melinda anymore," Simon said quietly. Cara noticed he had yet to touch anything on the table; his plate was completely pristine. She pointed to him with her fork.

"You mean you fired her?" she asked, feeling an immediate surge of relief. The longer Simon waited, the more likely the woman was to take advantage of his compassion and trust.
              "No, Cara." Simon glanced up from the table at her, and the look in his pale blue eyes froze her to her chair. "Melinda has been murdered."

"You mean to tell me," Cara said quietly, "that your housekeeper has been murdered, and the first thing you wanted to do when you saw me was have sex?"

              "Admittedly, that was also the second thing we did," the billionaire reminded her from across the table. The sumptuous breakfast that lay between them was completely forgotten in the wake of this revelation. Cara sat back, staring at her lover in abject disbelief, as he pulled a napkin off the table and unnecessarily shook it out. He hadn't helped himself to anything on the spread so far except for this choice distraction. "I would like to plead that the third time is the charm," he added.

              There was no plea on earth that would save Simon Banning from Cara Langford's fury at this discovery. She wasn't traditionally a morning person, anyway—their hot quickie in the penthouse's expansive shower had put her in an
extremely
good mood, but she could feel her happiness at being reunited with Simon rapidly declining as she stared at him. The man across from her was shirtless, and his torso still glistened with residual water in the morning sunlight that filtered in through the window. Vascular veins snaked along his powerful forearms, aroused to the surface by their earlier physical exertions. He looked as if he had gotten a haircut since the last time she had seen him, although there was the shadow of stubble on his jaw this morning, the same dark auburn hue as his hair. He looked pretty magnificent sitting across the table from her, which made his sheepish smile of apology all the more infuriating.

              Cara sat in her seat a moment longer; then she rose. She hated to leave a perfectly good meal on her plate before she was fully satisfied, but she needed to leave now if she was going to make it to the elevator in the next five minutes before she imploded. She began to gather up her clothes from the night before.

              Simon rose and came after her, his expression… well, his expression was a mixture of things. Despair, amusement, and the faintest hint of alarm that she intended to make good on her silent threat to leave. "Cara! Cara, wait. I'm sorry. You have to know how much I've missed you. Seeing you last night made business seem somehow less important."

              "What are you, in the mob?" she demanded. "Because the last time I checked, that's about the only place that anyone would consider murder
business."

             
"You know precisely what I meant by that," Simon returned in his clipped accent. Cara stopped gathering her things in favor of crossing her arms. She wanted to appear angry and unconvinced in the wake of his explanation, but Simon wasn't buying her act. He took her gently by the arm, and when she didn't raise an immediate protest at being handled, he steered her toward one of the enormous and expensive-looking leather couches arranged about the living room. It wasn't cold, but he switched the fire on anyway, and the effect reminded Cara of the front room of his New England mansion. She wondered if it was meant to put them both at ease.

              She hated feeling easy, and Simon always made her feel easy in every sense of the words. She was able to guess by now that they had both gone through life with walls up: Simon, due to his fortune, and later due to his heartbreak and betrayal in the wake of the car accident that had destroyed his life; and Cara, because she was, well… Cara. She had been labelled "pretty" at a very young age, but being raised in a large family in the shadow of three older brothers, nothing had even been handed to her for free. She had grown up resenting the inevitable moments when people appreciated her more for her looks than her hard work, and she had receded back behind her book smarts and razor-sharp wit. That didn't mean she didn't know what she desired, though, or how to get it. And Simon had been onto her from the start.

              She felt
easy
now because the billionaire knew how to rouse her mind as much as he knew how to pleasure her shuddering body in the bedroom. He wasn't holding her here against her will—Cara was curious. She had never been this close to a murder before, despite what any future job in the journalism industry might hold. Her advisor had clearly seen an opportunity for her to advance her craft outside of the stifling strictures of a classroom.

              But she didn't think of Melinda's death as an opportunity to personally profit. Maybe that was why her advisor had allowed her to go, too.

              "All right. Tell me everything," she said. Simon refilled her glass of mimosa and brought it over to her from the table, before taking a seat on the cushion beside her. He laced his hands and leaned forward, forearms propped atop his thighs as he considered where to begin.

              "I will begin by reiterating that you were right," he said. "Melinda is…
had
been in my employ for a considerable amount of time. Her service was second only to Gerald's, and I trusted her implicitly. I was so ready to believe that any chance of happiness I might find would crumble, that I believed her over you. I thought everything you made me feel, Cara, was undeserved, and it came as a strange sort of relief to think that I would no longer need to meet the expectations of a relationship if that was not what you were pursuing. But the relief didn't last."

              Cara snorted. "Of course not."

              Simon held up his hand to bar her interjections, and she relented. "And neither did the silence in the household amongst the staff. One maid, a recent hire, found me when I was alone and told what she knew. She said that Melinda had come to her before you had ever arrived with a similar proposition—that is, Melinda had asked the maid if she would be interested in selling my story and location to the press. The maid declined, but as Melinda was her superior in the household, she was forced to keep quiet on the subject at the risk of her job being terminated. While it's not something I'm proud to admit, she was probably right to do so; I was often so preoccupied with my own troubles that her release would have hardly registered as a blip on my radar. She overheard me yelling about you, however, and decided to speak out in your defense."

              "You were yelling about me?" Cara asked with an incredulous lift of her eyebrow. "To who? Don't tell me you also trashed the furniture."

              "I threw one dinner tray, but it was stainless steel, and there was no human target," Simon said defensively. "May I finish?"

              "Fine. But I want to revisit the part where you were senseless with grief over losing me later," Cara said. She raised her drink to emphasize that her lips were now preoccupied with things other than interrupting. Simon eyed her suspiciously a moment longer, before giving vent to a deep, troubled sigh.

              "I fired Melinda immediately. I should have fired her sooner. I saw another side of her that day, one I had never been privy to before. She threatened to ruin me. I'm already ruined, of course, since the accident," Simon smiled tiredly at this, "but I wasn't alarmed by her threats. My employees are all bound to silence legally by the contracts they sign upon being hired. This was why Melinda approached the new hire before she had signed the contract, and why she came to you, a guest. She knew she couldn't go public alone without going to court as a consequence.

              "I gave her a day to get her affairs in order. It was evening by the time all of this came about, so I also offered her an overnight stay in her former quarters for one more night. I was being overly generous. In the morning, she was discovered dead on the floor."

              "You keep saying she was murdered," Cara pressed him. "Was there blood? A weapon? Where was the wound located, and what did the coroner say?"

              "Poison," Simon concluded severely. "And there were trace amounts of powder found on her fingers and at the bottom of her bureau. The official word on the matter is suicide, although it is still being investigated on my behest."

              "You don't believe it." Cara sat back and crossed her arms, studying the far wall of the penthouse, the one without the gorgeous view. Simon took her glass away to go and refill it while she was processing all of this. It should have made her incredibly self-conscious to have a half-naked man who was worth billions of dollars waiting on her like this, but their domestic chemistry felt natural. Cara was beyond noticing, anyway. She was biting the inside of her cheek and squeezing her arms unconsciously. "Going off of what you're telling me, I'm not sure that I believe it, either. Why would Melinda have poison to begin with? And if she wanted revenge via suicide, wouldn't she have been more likely to try and frame you for her murder? She was well within her means to leave a note indicating you in the crime. Say what you will about her morals, Melinda was a smart woman, and she would have thought about something like that. I suspect she also would have thought not to leave powdered residue over everything belonging to her. She had access to your room, after all—it would have been more than easy to dust everything you owned while she pretended to be in there dusting the mantle.

              "At the same time, I don't believe she
would
exact revenge against you this way. Not only was she clearly a self-preserving woman in life, there would be no payoff that she would be around to reap. I'm sorry, I know this is a callous way to talk about someone who is recently deceased," Cara apologized quickly. Simon had seated himself on the coffee table in front of her as he listened to her deductions, his expression half-amused, half-astounded at the rapid workings of her brain. He passed her another orange juice as she carried on. "Furthermore, you said that she was found on the floor. To me, that says that she clearly wasn't expecting to drop dead then and there. Regardless of whether or not she might have been trying to frame you, I think a person who was intending to commit suicide would have sat themselves down somewhere or stayed in bed. You can apply this same logic to the scenario that your investigators have concluded—if she committed suicide because you fired her, what was her incentive to do anything but take a seat and twiddle her thumbs and wait for the poison to take hold? What was the state of her luggage?" Cara asked suddenly, surprising Simon by requiring his involvement once more.

              "Half-packed," the billionaire said slowly. Cara saw the look of dawning comprehension on his face as he confirmed something she had already suspected. It was a terrible cliché, but she snapped her fingers.
Eureka.

             
"Why would she have even bothered packing, much less waited until she got halfway through a process that nobody in their right mind enjoys? It shouldn't have even occurred to her that she would be leaving, not if she had already decided that your mansion was to be her final resting place."

              Simon took that as his cue to rein her back in. "Dramatics aside," he said, and Cara flushed at her Gothic word choice, "I knew you would be the right person to work with me on this. I want to see her killer brought to justice. Even Melinda deserved better than what she got."

              "What are you saying?" Cara asked him incredulously. "You can't go back there. Simon, there's a murderer living in your house!"

              "I've dismissed all the servants for now," Simon said. "Indeed, in the wake of what has happened, it would be inhuman not to. We've all had a bit of a fright." The turn of phrase made him sound incredibly English. Cara sat back into the couch, relieved despite herself. "I was thinking about staying here, actually. I was about to hire a private investigator to look into the matter, but I wanted to see you first. Thank you, Cara," Simon added quietly as he fished for her hand between them. She watched, her expression softening, as he placed a kiss upon it and allowed his lips to linger. She pulled him up with her as she rose from the couch and embraced him.

              His arms hung at his sides for a moment in surprise, but eventually the man folded her against him. Cara buried her face in his shoulder, enjoying the fresh smell of him and the warmth of his skin from sitting by the window during breakfast.

              "Thank you for bringing me out here, and for giving me a chance to tell you my side of things," she murmured. "Thank you for wanting my opinion. I know this can't be easy for you. I have one last thing to say thought, Simon. If you want me involved, I will be—I promise I'll try and get to the bottom of whoever caused Melinda's death. But I need something from you first." Cara drew back until she was at arm's length. Simon's handsome face above her tightened in puzzlement, but he still wouldn't release her from his grasp.

              "Anything," he said.

              "I need you to go home." Her throat constricted over the words, but she said them anyway. What was this awful feeling? She wanted Simon to be safe, didn't she? She wanted him to have the best chance possible at getting through all this, so why did the thought of him leaving feel like she was losing him all over again? She soldiered on. "I think you should go home to England. You need to get your affairs there sorted. I think you should distance yourself from all of this, but you have to stop running. You're not going to be able to focus on resolving this problem when you already have another one hanging over you. And…"

              This part required a little more courage. If he had been wearing his suit from the night previous, Cara would have reached forward to adjust his tie to keep her hands busy. But there was nothing between them anymore; it was just her and Simon. It was time to be honest.