The Perfect Con (A Bad Boy Romance Novel) (Bad Boy Confessions Book 1) (7 page)

More important than that, however, was the likelihood of crossing paths with her uncle. She had no hope of recognizing me, but he would know who I was. He would know that there was no good reason for her to be socializing with me. And he would probably have me beaten and thrown naked out of a car somewhere on the brink of the Everglades.

“I’ve got a busy day ahead of me,” I told Sofi plainly. “Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Oh.” Her mouth turned down, and we pivoted onto the last set of stairs. I ached to tell her the truth, that I would love to go to her place and have lunch, love to tumble into bed with her, love to forget my entire life for a few days and just be the man she made me feel like. But that wasn’t Leonardo Battista. “Well, that’s a shame. I’m going to be stranded at the estate with Madeline, and you’ve seen how she is. Totally willing to lay out in the sun on a handful of painkillers and listen to Radiohead, but—not the best companion for an adventure.”

My heart gave a funny little squeeze at the word. Adventure.

“Your uncle isn’t keen on adventures, huh?”

“He is, actually. But, in accordance with that, he’s not going to be at the estate for the next week. He’s leaving today for Colombia.”

“Huh. Well, like you said. That’s a shame.” I made a show of checking my phone, furrowed my brow and looked at her thoughtfully. “Oh. Hm. You know what? My afternoon has cracked wide open.”

“Really?” Sofi scrutinized me. “Just like that?”

“Well.” I summoned whatever spirits aided Gabe in his constant parade of bullshit. “I was supposed to be meeting another associate of mine, so to speak—this unbearably arrogant professor, Tristan Thibaud, French, God help me—and the driving alone would have taken a huge chunk out of my day, but—you see—he just canceled. So.” I smiled. “Wide open.”

“Great!” For a moment, I thought I’d stepped into a shaft of sunlight falling through a window—then I realized that was just how I felt right now. We reached the exit of the museum and she shrugged off my jacket. “Thank you for this,” she said, and I took it back from her. “You smell like…menthol and musk. You smoke?”

“That’s funny,” I said, slinging the coat over my shoulder. “I actually don’t.” It was technically true—I’d stopped smoking about a month ago, and so far, so good—but Sofi drifted toward me and buried her face into my shoulder, inhaling deeply.
Argh. Get away from me, you stupid, stupid goddess.

She cocked her head and frowned up at me. “I could almost swear.”

“Well. Nope.”

A distinct sound of a lighter clicking distracted me, as if on cue. Some guy was lighting up his cigarette, only a few feet away from us, and it was almost a torture. She wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Ya wanna start? I can bum one from him,” she said. I watched as the guy sucked the cigarette to life and exhaled a plume of wondrous mentholated smoke.

“No,” I lied, watching the tobacco incinerate with a keen desire. I couldn’t start again now. “No, no, I’m fine.”

“All right. If you’re sure. Why don’t you follow me to my uncle’s place, then.”

I pursed my lips. “You know what? That’s not necessary. I don’t mind riding with you.”

Old words echoed back to me as I followed her to her car, though I shook them from me and they fizzled, losing their power.

I got my heart kind of broken by this duplicitous prick named Anthony.

There was one big difference between me and that Anthony character, and that was how I had no interest in stealing her heart. I just wanted to get her sent to jail. I did, didn’t I?

I
wonder
if I would have been as ready to melt if he hadn’t fucked me like a madman and then mysteriously rejected me the night before, if he hadn’t been going out of his way all day to put some space between us. But probably. It wasn’t just the sleek wardrobe, the dashing hair, that killer jaw and the somber, dark gray eyes. It was the careful measurement of distance between us, the hesitation before every minor touch, the pointed aversion of eye contact whenever it would be made. There was a mystery to him. Why didn’t he want me to get closer?

Oh, I’d met men who wanted me to assist in their crimes before, and some of them would be gorgeous, though I wasn’t sure I had yet met the match to Leonardo Battista. The men would go on about the money, the blueprint, and security; then we’d sleep together at some point, and suddenly, the dazzling score would lose its focus as the primary objective. It was fine, if not a bit disheartening. So easy. I liked to work, and hell, I also liked sex. We would have fun, and then, I’d have to shake them off and go on my way. I was always a one-woman show.

But Leo had the self-restraint to keep us apart, even after back-to-back orgasms. It didn’t make sense.

And I had to have him.

“Mm. Mm, mm, mm.” Leo rubbed at his mouth with a cloth napkin and settled back in his chair, and I started up, realizing I’d been staring at him dreamily. “I haven’t had a flan that good since I left home. But don’t tell my mother that I said that.”

A mama’s boy. Shocking.

“So, now that we’re done with all THAT,” Madeline murmured, staring across the table with an unwavering bitterness, directly at Leo. “Shouldn’t you be leaving now?”

I gaped at her. “Don’t listen to her, she’s—rude as hell,” I snapped, glaring at Madeline before turning back to him.

“I’d be rude too, if I was fucking starving,” he noted thoughtfully. His smile was pert and sunny. “Think nothing of it.”

“Shrewd as hell is more like it,” Madeline disagreed coolly. “But do what you want. I’m only your guest, after all.” Madeline stood and smoothed out her pleated tennis skirt, trudging out of the room, heading toward the patio off the kitchen. “I’ll be perfecting my backhand at the court if anyone calls.”

She slid the glass door closed behind her, and Leo glanced at me and struggled to suppress a grin. “She’s probably mad that she and Gabe had a thing which didn’t pan out for her.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. She hadn’t mentioned anything to me, which wasn’t much of a surprise. “I don’t think that’s it,” I murmured. “She’s not the type to really, um, care like that. It must be something else.”

“She’s a bitch?” he suggested helpfully.

I grinned. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard him make a joke before. “That might be it,” I allowed. “All for the best, anyway. It wasn’t like you were going to speak frankly in her presence.”

“That’s true.” Leo nodded toward the same doors she had exited. “Maybe we could head down to the beach to talk. You said it is private, correct?”

“That’s right.” I stood up from the table and traipsed to the door, kicking off my shoes there. “I wouldn’t expect anyone to interrupt us.”

“Good idea.” Leo unsheathed his feet from the black leather loafers, and I smirked. I was wearing denim cut-offs and a lightweight cotton Henley in a peach color. Beachy. He, on the other hand, was wearing slacks and that dress shirt and that hair—the poor dear. I just couldn’t picture him on a beach.
If I had my kerchief, I’d shove it in your little mouth.
“What?” he asked, interrupting my reverie.

“Nothing.” I pushed the door open and leaned my head toward the beach, a sprawling strip in the distance, beyond the patio and the barbecue and the pool and the tennis court.

“No, really,” he said. “What?”

“You just—you look funny,” I told him, as nicely as I could. “You don’t look like it’s physically possible for you to relax.”

“I can relax,” he insisted staunchly. “Watch.” He pointedly unbuttoned the top three buttons on his dress shirt and I nearly lost it.

“You’re right,” I placated him. “Very relaxed. Come on, let’s go.”

He walked out the door with me, but the frown wouldn’t budge from his face. “You really think I’m not capable of—what?”

“We don’t have to talk about it,” I assured him. “You’re clearly sensitive about it.”

“I’ll have you know that my profession requires creativity and flexibility as well as discipline and sobriety.”

“Are the part-timers also required to be sober?” I asked, grinning at him.

“I can be fun,” Leo insisted, flicking open each individual button on his shirt as we approached the border of the beach. “Or do you not recall last night?”

I cocked an eyebrow at him as he shrugged off his dress shirt. Damn. He was so, so sculpted. My eyes trailed from his broad shoulders, chiseled pectorals, and ripped abdomen, to the manicured path of thick dark hair which led into his pants. As my eyes flicked over his belt—a leather belt with a minimalist rectangular and metallic buckle—I remembered how he’d wrapped it around his knuckles the night before, and knocked that disrespectful ass-wipe right off his feet. And I didn’t want it to fill me with warm fuzzies, but damn, it did. None of my boyfriends had ever jumped on a guy for me. Most of them probably would have laughed along with those pricks.

“What?” he said, stripping off the silky dress socks from his feet and crossing over the sand.

“Um, what what?”

“You’re staring at me,” he said.

I cleared my throat. “No I’m not.”

Leo’s eyes changed, becoming warm and soft, and a slow smile spread over his lips. I felt color come fluttering up to my cheeks.

“You’re staring at me too,” I noted teasingly.

And the smile dropped right off, as if he really hadn’t realized he’d been doing it.

“I was just thinking about what an excellent decision I made in reaching out to you,” he said. “You’re not just graceful and fast. You’re—perceptive. And daring.” I frowned and cocked my head at him, not sure whether or not this was a lie. He gestured toward the boundary where the shore became wet and said, “Sit.”

I pursed my lips and did as told. Leo joined me, and I let my eyes discreetly rove him once more while he was distracted by drawing shapes in the sand with his finger.

“Here we are at the museum,” he said. “Our forgery artist, Javier, has supplied us with a counterfeit invoice for a new piece—also forged. Now, the museum keeps their work that’s not on display in the basement, and Gabe is the con here. He’s arriving as the delivery man on Saturday at six, and leaving the basement window ajar, which is ground level. You’ll be over here, across the street.” Leo stretched his hand to etch in the sand next to my thigh, but he hesitated and peered up at me. Our eyes met. “Ahem,” he said, etching an X beside my knee. “You’ll be waiting for the signal across the street. When the window is open, he’ll flash a light from it three times. From that point, you should have approximately twenty minutes before the guard on the third floor has a mandatory round.” From where Leo was kneeled before me, he looked so handsome, and he was so close. All I needed to do was scoop the palm of my hand beneath his jaw and tilt his face. “But he could walk the floor at any time,” Leo went on, “so you’ll need to be careful.”

A wave came sloshing up to the etched blueprint, washing it away. It only missed us by inches, and Leo ran his hand through the froth, and the detail didn’t escape me. Not just sensual, but—lonely?

Forget it, Sofi. Just because his ass doesn’t wear a ring doesn’t mean he’s not firmly taken by whoever got to him first.

“And the jewel?” I asked breathlessly, pushing away my thoughts of all the sophisticated women he might be married to. “It would be foolish to leave the heart wholly unguarded.”

Leo’s eyes flashed up to me, one dark lick from his hair loose from the rest, and I knew that he knew I had said more than just the words I was saying.
It would be foolish to leave the heart wholly unguarded.
He swallowed.

“Right,” he agreed quietly, tearing his eyes from mine. But I kept watching him. Those brooding slate eyes. The firm hand, now dripping with saltwater, but last night, that firm hand had practically bruised me with his lustful touch. There was more between us than just some cathartic expulsion of sexual tension. I couldn’t have just been imagining it—because he was right, damn it. I was perceptive. And I was daring. “The heart will be surrounded by interlacing and mobile lasers.” He drew in the wet sand another square, and some lines crossed over it. “But, you’ll use a fine powder to reveal their location, and a simple glass cutter will suffice to remove the item. We’ve checked. You just have to maneuver and slither your body between the laser beams. It’s a pretty antiquated setup, if you ask me. But we’re in Florida, everything here is antiquated.”

“And then?” I asked.

“Then you’ll have another ten minutes to get out before the first floor guard makes his next mandatory round. But, again, he could also walk the floor at any time. So you’ll have to be careful.” His eyes tilted up to me and my lungs swelled with oxygen. Between us, another wave rocketed up onto the beach, this one erasing the picture of the jewel display and coming up to lick at my knees. It was almost on top of us. “Or are you asking about your cut, after we get rid of it?” Leo continued.

“I’m asking about life thereafter,” I whispered. “After the heart has been stolen and gone.”

Leo hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard to say what life will be like after—all of this.” Was he thinking the same thing that I was? That he didn’t really want the score to end—because we would have no reason to lounge together on a beach without the heart of Icarus between us? “Life might be very—different.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked. “You’re not exactly a pauper now, Leo. Or are you talking about—” I decided to risk it. “—how things would be with your wife?”

Just then, another wave came crashing up the beach, but this one swirled further and drenched our thighs. I squealed and hurried to my feet. “Shit!” Leo seethed, coming to a stand. We were both sodden. But I had to laugh. He looked at me with thunder in his eyes. “What wife?”

“The one you went home to the other night,” I told him, shaking out the spray on my Henley. “Instead of getting blown to the moon and back.”

For a moment, we just gazed back and forth at one another, a good-natured smile frozen onto my face and an expression of chagrin on his. Finally, Leo shook his head. “It’s not that,” he said. My heart deflated; he didn’t deny it. “It’s just that—” He broke eye contact with me, and with it, I felt something vital go. Something I wanted back. Was I really going to be one of those women who chased a taken man? I’d never done that before.

But my possessed hand stretched forward and pressed against his immaculate bare chest. Electricity danced under my palm. Our chemistry was undeniable. Couldn’t he feel it too?

“What?” I asked softly, my eyes crawling over his face, searching for his gaze.

His eyes tilted to meet mine, so soft just now, like a field of cloud.

“When I’m with you,” he confessed, “sometimes I feel like I could be…a better man.”

I averted my eyes quickly, a breathless laugh escaping my mouth. “Don’t say things like that,” I said.

But Leo snatched my hand in a crushing, vice-like grip. “I don’t want to be a better man,” he growled, flinging my hand away and driving his own deep into my hair. He forcefully panned my face up toward his and pressed his lips to mine, savage. Unstoppable. I whimpered, and a shudder of volcanic heat racked through my veins as his tongue, with sudden and unexpected gentleness, cracked my lips apart and explored my mouth. The tension in his hands didn’t relax, though.

The sun was setting and the waves were swirling warmly around our ankles, and I just melted. How could his mouth be so soft while his hands were so firm? They moved with decisive strength over my shoulders and back, pressing me closer to his chest. I cupped his jaw in my hands and was content to just sink into this moment with him, content to move with this steady, heavy slowness. Heat and pleasure rushed beneath my skin as if I was orgasming. The shirt lifted away from my body and pulled over my head, tugging my hair up and then letting it all fall down onto my shoulders again. Even though I knew we were moving at normal speed, if not faster, it felt slow. It felt—weighty. Significant.

I would’ve asked if he felt it too, but then his fingers arched up to take my breasts, his other hand descending to tenderly cup a buttock and pull me closer, and my mind became lost in the moment, devoid of thought. He bent low and took a nipple into his mouth, eliciting a moan from my lips. “Damn it, you’re perfect,” he murmured, leaving my nipple cold to shower kisses along the valley of my stomach. He said it so softly, it almost seemed as if it wasn’t meant for me to hear.

Leo stood from the surf just as another wave came whooshing in, and I saw that his perfectly pressed dress pants were soaked, and that his member had created its own rigid crease in the fabric. He scooped me up and carried me to where the dry sand was, away from the rising tide. “Leo,” I breathed, my eyes ticking over him thoughtfully. “Is this really just—?”
Sex?

For a moment, he froze, and his eyes trained on me with great sobriety.

“Really just what?” he asked, tension etched into his face.

I bit my lower lip. “Maybe if we had met at another time,” I whispered up at him. “We could have been…”

Leo exhaled, and the tightness ran from his shoulders. He lowered me onto the sand, stretching himself out on top of me, and pinned my hands up over my head, lacing his own fingers through mine. The sky behind his head had turned a deep, bruised indigo.

“Let’s not talk about that,” he suggested gently. “I don’t want to talk about that. People like us—discussing the future ruins the present.”

I wanted to deny it, but before the words could rise out of my throat, his lips had pressed against mine again, and all thought fizzled to a rich and sensual darkness. My shorts were tugged away from my hips, and I pursed my lips in anticipation of the thrust, but it didn’t come. I opened my eyes and found Leo just staring up at me.