The Fifth Favor (3 page)

“Thirty-three.”

“With such innocent eyes for a cutthroat
Illicit
reporter.”

She studied his expression, found it sincere. “Despite rumors to the contrary, not all of us fit the hard-hitting mold.”

“I see that.” He reached up and brushed an errant strand of hair from her cheek, a tender gesture that caught her completely off-guard. “And I like it.”

She couldn’t quite catch her breath. They stood too close in the shower doorway; his presence, his delicious heat, stole her oxygen. “Don’t tell anyone you figured me out,” she said abruptly, using humor to defuse her own shaken response. “It’s a sign of weakness in this business to let anyone know you have a heart.”

“Of course it is.” Frown lines creased his brow as his thumb lingered at the curve of her cheek. “Our industries share more than a few stray similarities.”

They stared at each other a moment longer, then Billie swallowed and looked away from his obsidian gaze. “That tub looks wonderful.” She moved toward it as an excuse to break the thick, too-intimate moment. “Do your clients like it?”

“I’ve never entertained a woman who didn’t.” A note of mild amusement edged his words as he followed and stopped beside her. “It has special jets. Take a look.”

Billie stepped up on the marble platform, her hand gliding over the plush stack of Egyptian cotton towels nearby. “I haven’t seen a whirlpool tub like this before.”

“Only six exist in the world. Specially designed for Avalon.” Stepping up behind her, Adrian leaned to twist a gold knob. Instantly, steaming water splashed into the tub.

Billie’s lips curved into a smile. No ten-minute wait for the tap to run warm. Within seconds, four inches of water undulated beneath her hand. “This is heavenly.” She fluttered her fingers through the steady, massaging waves.

“And this,” Adrian said as he pressed a button hidden behind the Kouros, “is ecstasy.”

Plumes of water shot from myriad jets placed strategically at the back, sides and bottom of the tub. Rhythmic spurts. Billie stared at it, illicit images dancing through her mind. “The special jets, I presume?”

Adrian merely smiled and led her hand back to the water, turning it so that a spray pulsed against her palm.

The vibration hammered through her veins, down low in her stomach. Lower. Her knees weakened, and the most obtuse question of all time slid from her lips.

“What’s…what’s so special about them?”

His mouth brushed her ear. “Why don’t you take off your clothes and find out?”

She already felt naked, standing there with her hand shoved against the undulating jet and Adrian’s hot, hard body a narrow inch behind hers. “Because this is an interview.”

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The Fifth Favor

“All right. Let me see if I can put it into words.” It sounded like a threat. Before she could reply, his free hand swept around to gently hold her abdomen as he eased her forward, closer to the tub.

“The jets are positioned to accommodate the varying statures of our clients,” he murmured, his cheek against hers, his warm, spicy scent filling her senses. “They pulse and massage and caress in ways a man’s tongue cannot. The little railing here, and the niches for the feet, hold the woman in place while the jets stimulate her, and of course her companion is always her attendant, so she doesn’t even need to stand on her own if she chooses. All she has to concentrate on is how many orgasms she can achieve.”

Tightening his hold on her waist to keep her from slipping over the edge, he guided Billie’s hand from jet to jet beneath the water, sampling each one, his voice growing husky over the gentle hum of the hidden motor. “This one provides direct stimulation and brings a quick, intense orgasm. This one has a timed delay. A tease, if you like. But the resulting climax is worth the wait.” He shifted her hand to a dual jet with a softer pressure that sprayed higher, over the surface of the water. “And this one stimulates the breasts, while below…”

They dipped beneath the water again, where a tiny, sharp stream greeted Billie’s tingling palm, flickering up and down, up and down. The sensation on her palm echoed a phantom caress between her legs, and she felt herself go damp and quivery there, as though she floated in that roiling tub, spread open to that flickering stream of silken heat, anchored in buoyant water against the hard, hungry body of her waiting companion.

Adrian.

His fingers burned her waist through the silk of her blouse, and perspiration beaded her skin, between her breasts, the nape of her neck, the small of her back, as his tone dropped impossibly lower. “Are you making note of all this, Ms. Cort?”

Oh, God
, was the response that welled on her lips, and even though she withheld it, he seemed to hear her as if she’d groaned aloud.

“The tub is almost filled.” He nuzzled her cheek, his slick fingers trailing beads of water up her wrist when he drew her hand from the tub. “Last chance.”

Her eyelids slid closed. “But I have so little time to get what I need from you.”

The faltering statement rang out in the bathroom, vulnerable and raw and needful.

Humiliated, Billie straightened in his embrace and turned to glare at him. “We’re wasting time. Let’s get back to the interview.”

“I wasn’t aware that we’d digressed.” Adrian stepped down from the tub, handed her a towel, and reached for another to dry his own hands. “You asked me to tell you about the jets.”

“Adrian, please.” Billie squelched the frustration rising within her. She didn’t want this man to group her with the clients and conquests and hungry-eyed females passing him on the street, yet how was she different? She was one of the few who’d sought him not for his lovemaking, but for his story, his truths. And now all she could think about 15

Shelby Reed

was the sensation of his lips against her ear, his breath warm, his words like fingers stroking her nerves, stroking her skin…

Get it together, Billie
.

“Let’s go back to the other room,” she said, a light suggestion to banish the tension choking the air.

He didn’t speak, and for an alarming moment, she thought he would end the interview, show her to the door. Perhaps she’d breached some boundary after all, simply by telling him
no
.

Rejection for such a man wasn’t food for power.

With a half-glance in her direction, Adrian finally tossed the towels on the counter and motioned brusquely toward the doorway. Once again seated in the bedroom, he waited in silent observation while Billie changed the tape in the recorder with trembling fingers.

Pressing the record button, she looked up at him. He had long lashes, a seductive gaze that could unbutton, unhook, unzip every garment on a woman’s body. His steady regard bathed her in heat. He wasn’t finished toying with her. A carnal shiver worked its way up her spine and her nipples hardened beneath the linen jacket.

As if he knew, Adrian said, “Why don’t you take off your jacket and get comfortable?”

Billie opened her mouth to decline, but found herself sliding the material off her shoulders. Painfully aware of his observation, she wriggled out of the jacket, folded it and laid it across the arm of her chair. When she turned back to him, he said, “Now your shoes.”

“Oh, I’m—”

“You’ve got until one o’clock to interview me.” He rose from the chair, knelt in front of her and lifted her foot against his crotch. “That’s a whole morning in these torture devices,” he said, slipping the shoe off and setting it beside the marble hearth.

His palm caressed her sole through her stocking. “Now the other.”

Speechless, Billie let him remove her other shoe and closed her eyes at the desire that sizzled through her. The simple touch at her foot left her aroused and aching. How could any woman survive making love with this man? Just the flashing image brought a groan to her lips, one she barely suppressed.

“That’s better.” He considered her face for a moment before he straightened and seated himself again.

Billie glanced blindly at the notes in her lap. “Uh…where was I? Tell me about your clients.”

The topic sent a bevy of emotions skittering across his features: amusement, aversion, interest, resignation. He folded his hands across his lean stomach as he searched for the answer. “They range in age from twenty-one to fifty, with most in their 16

The Fifth Favor

forties. Accomplished businesswomen. Doctors, diplomats, attorneys, politicians. Rich, lonely housewives.”

“Married women,” Billie said.

“Many of them, yes. So alone in their marriages they have to seek intimacy from a total stranger.”

“And pay for it, too.”

“Yes.”

She stared at her notepad again and closed it with a sigh, knowing she couldn’t concentrate on the questions she’d scribbled there earlier. “Tell me about a typical visit with a client.”

Adrian rested his head against the back of the wingback chair, his features shadowed. “First the client has to present a clean bill of health. Blood test, the whole nine yards.”

“And you?”

“Every six weeks I see a physician, have a complete blood work-up. It’s all in my file downstairs, which you’re welcome to examine. Every companion has a file for the clientele’s reference.”

“Okay.” She made a mental note to stop by Azure’s office after the interview. “So when the client arrives for her appointment, how does she choose you?”

“She looks at pictures during a preliminary meeting with Azure or her secretary, Maria. She reads files, bios, asks questions. Then she makes her appointment.”

“And then what?”

Adrian shifted, and the candlelight glow from the brass chandelier touched his profile. “I meet her at the time and place she specifies. Parties, gallery openings, the opera. Sometimes here at Avalon, and sometimes in a restaurant or bar. Whatever she wants.”

Billie tried to picture such a rendezvous and a current of forbidden excitement surged through her. “Do you ever travel to meet these women?”

“As far as Prague. Once a year I meet a particular client there. And recently, twice to London.” His thumb rubbed at an errant thread on the arm of the chair. “You do understand that not all of these women seek sex. Some want a companion for business and social events. Some just want male company.”

“I see.”

He glanced at her. “Do you? You look doubtful.”

“That’s because…” Billie shook her head and laughed. “To be completely frank, Adrian, I can’t understand a woman hiring you and spending hours in your company without entertaining sexual thoughts.”

“Is that what you’re doing, Billie?” His lashes shielded the expression in his midnight gaze as it dropped to her mouth. “The conditions are different, but the 17

Shelby Reed

potential is there. Although it’s through your work, you’ve hired me. And although it’s for the sake of an article, you’re spending hours in my company. Are you entertaining sexual thoughts?”

No answer she could summon would save her pride. “That bathtub number you pulled on me was pretty potent.”

His brow quirked. “You liked that, did you?”

Cheeks flaming, she changed the subject. “Once you meet the client, what happens?”

“That’s a broad question. I’d rather walk you through it.” His voice was soft, his features hidden again in shadow as he let his head drop back. “We could leave no stone unturned, if you’d allow it.”

Billie lowered her gaze, heart hammering. “I’d rather stay on track.”

He was silent for a long time, watching her from the shadowed depths of the wingback chair. Then he said, “The course of the evening all depends on the client. Let’s say you’ve made the appointment, Billie. What would you want to do, the very first thing?”

She swallowed and searched for an honest answer. “I guess I would want to get acquainted with you.”

“So we’d go out to dinner. Have a drink. Or if you seemed particularly tense, like you do right now—”

“I’m not tense,” she protested.

“But we’re speaking hypothetically, aren’t we?” His knowing smile silenced her. “If I sensed you were uptight, I would suggest we have a drink here, in this room, without any distractions. We would talk, just like we’re doing now. Then…” With one graceful movement, he got to his feet and gazed down at her. “Do you like to dance, Billie?”

“Sometimes.” Inside she quaked, but damned if she didn’t sound positively cool.

With that same mild humor playing around his mouth, Adrian crossed to the armoire and pulled open the doors. “Before anything happens between us,” he said, reaching inside to switch on a stereo, “may I have this dance?”

Tony Bennett’s mellow croon floated from invisible speakers buried in the ceiling.

Adrian returned to her, took her hand and tugged her to her feet. “In a typical scenario, the client would probably say yes.”

“I have two left feet,” she said huskily.

“It’s just a dance, Billie. Say yes.”

Tony Bennett’s voice slid around the notes of the ballad. Adrian’s regard slid around her desires, the inhibitions that kept them firmly imprisoned, and set them free.

“Yes,” she whispered.

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The Fifth Favor

Leading her to the middle of the room, he tucked her hands against his chest and drew her against him, and Billie discovered her nose fit perfectly in the curve of his neck.

They danced. As the ballad faded and another, sultrier refrain painted the room with notes of seduction, she clung to him and let him lead. Her former fiancé, Ted, had always complained that she didn’t know how to follow. Time and again at social functions he’d stalk off the dance floor, leaving her marooned and embarrassed. And all because of her natural propensity to lead.

The humiliation seemed like a distant dream now, Ted, a wispy phantom.

Following Adrian’s slow, swaying movements was suddenly the easiest thing she’d ever done. Playacting, she told herself. He was allowing her to stand in a client’s shoes.

But how far would he take this? How far would she let him?

Her lashes fluttered open when his chin moved against her hair. “Ask me what happens next, Billie.”

Separate of her will, her fingertips slid beneath his arms to surround his back, across cotton-covered muscle, drawing him closer. “What happens next?”