Thigh High (16 page)

Mac couldn't believe it. The most dreaded words in the English language.

We have to talk.

But he didn't have to argue. He had other ways.

Stepping close to Nessa, he looked into her eyes and pulled the pins out of her hair. “Yes, we do.”

“What are you doing?” She lifted her hands and tried to stop him.

“It's half down, anyway. It looks untidy.”

She bit her lower lip.

“Besides, I'd like to see it…curling over your shoulders. Do you know”—he dropped the last pin on the floor and ran his fingertips along her scalp—“your hair is as wild as you are.”

“That's not true.” As he massaged the back of her neck, her eyes grew unfocused.

“Okay. It's not as wild as you are.”

“No, I mean…I'm not wild.”

He chuckled deep in his chest.

Something about that sound apparently snapped her back into the
now
. “I want to discuss what you know about my mistake seven years ago.”

He unbuttoned the first button on her blouse. “At this very minute…you want to talk about what happened seven years ago?”

“Not what happened, exactly, but what you've heard and how you got the information.”

“All right.” He opened her blouse and looked…and looked. Nothing more. He just looked. He didn't have to fake his gratification, his awe…His gratitude. Women's breasts were one of God's finest creations, and these were
Nessa's
breasts.

They took his breath away.

Her chest rose and fell in a long sigh. “You're trying to distract me.”

He glanced up at her, let her see the lust that possessed him. “Is that what you think?”

She stopped breathing. “Yes. I think that you…I think that you…um, distracting because you…”

“Your hair is down. Your shirt is open. I can see your breasts, and they're magnificent. I can see your waist and it's tiny. I know your legs are long and strong, and I know you aren't wearing panties. And you think I would rather not talk about how I found out you made a mistake in the bank?”

She must have seen the humor, for she started to laugh.

“Score one for womens' intuition!” He slid a hand in the cup of her bra and lifted out her breast. “I would rather taste this sweet nipple.” Leaning down, he sipped it softly. “I would rather slide your blouse off your shoulders and follow its gradual descent down your arms.” He brushed the material away and onto the floor, and reveled in the silky skin under his fingertips. “I want to take off your bra, loosen your skirt.” Action followed each wish, until she stood before him dressed in her red heels…. Only her red heels.

When she dressed this morning, had she realized the kind of provocation those shoes would be? Never again would he see a pair of red leather heels without thinking of this moment, this passion, this woman.

He removed his shirt in record time. He stood naked before her, scars and all.

As her gaze encompassed him, her laughter faded completely.

What did she think? There was no mistaking him for one of the pale, skinny guys with whom she'd grown up. His muscle was formed, not of lifting weights and playing tennis, but of hard work and peasant genes. His scars were real, not the result of an accident, but of cruelty and deceit.

She didn't shy away, but touched his chest and arms with her fingers, stroking down to his elbows, and in a choked voice, she said, “Nice.”

Catching her hands, he turned her back to him, lifted her by the waist, and urged her down among the crisp new money. Bills fluttered as he settled between her knees.

Since the first moment he saw her face on the video, he'd been waiting for this—to stroke the globes of her ass, to slide his hands up over her hips, her belly, her ribs. He weighed her breasts in his palms, felt her sigh.

She leaned back against him, laid her head against his shoulder, and relaxed.

Triumph burst through him.

She trusted him to care for her. To pleasure her.

In his office in Philadelphia, it had been easy to believe Ionessa Dahl got her way with a combination of cunning and sex. Now that he'd met her, it was clear that she never gave out what she promised with her lavish smiles and flirtatious blue eyes. No, she sent the men who worshipped her into battle while keeping herself pristine.

But she yielded to
him.

He brushed her hair away from her neck, held her chin, and turning her face to his, kissed her.

Kissing Nessa—the penetration, the way she met his tongue, sucked on the tip—turned him wild. He made a sound deep in his throat, a growl of demand, and felt each muscle in her body grown taut.

Reaching over her head, she caught his hair in her fists and held him still, to kiss him as he kissed her, with tongue and teeth and lips. Boldness…from a woman obviously inexperienced, definitely modest.

He pressed his dick close between her legs, feeling her heat, overwhelmed by anticipation. Slashed by need, he wrapped his arms around her, struggled between the twin urges to plunge inside her…or torment her with lingering pleasure.

Lingering ecstasy. It had to be lingering ecstasy. This was a woman who'd enjoyed too little passion in her life, and he'd already been hasty once—he, who had been trained by a dozen females on how to give pleasure, and knew that for a woman, rapture involved time and patience.

Nessa deserved the best he could offer.

Their kiss ended slowly, and as they separated, he slid his palm up her spine to the base of her neck.

She stretched and mewed like a cat surprised by pleasure.

His grip on control slipped again. How did she do this, make him revert to being a horny teenager? And even as a teenager, lust had never goaded him so insistently.

Lingering ecstasy, he reminded himself. Because her constant wonder told him more than she probably wanted him to know. She'd never experienced a man who knew what he was doing. He was her first—and she didn't know it, but he would also be her last.

He attentively, languidly, slid her around and onto her back. Kneeling between her upraised knees, he placed his hands on either side of her shoulders, leaned into her. He smiled deliberately, wickedly.

Her beautiful blue eyes widened in alarm…and anticipation. “What?” she whispered.

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” It was a line he'd been taught years ago, but right now, he had never meant anything as much in his life.

She rewarded him with the most enchanting smile. “I'm impressed.”

He was flattered but cautious. “I suspect you're not talking about what I hope you're talking about.”

Her gaze glided down, then up again, meeting his eyes. “Oh, I'm impressed about that, too.”

A comment that worked as an aphrodisiac, not that he needed one.

“But mostly I'm impressed because you complimented me, and you weren't even looking at my boobs.”

The tiny hint of bawdiness from a woman who barely knew the word
damn
delighted him. “I can see them out of the corner of my eye, and as splendid as they are, they can't compare with the glory of your lips.” He kissed her once, softly.

She pushed him back with a fingertip to his chest. “Is
that
one of the lines the ladies taught you?”

“No. Apparently, all it took for me to learn the art of conversation was the chance to be naked with you.” In a leisurely fashion, he kissed her throat, her left breast, her right breast, her fingertips, her belly….

With his thumb, he found her clit, and his lazy massage brought a low moan to her lips. She was damp and ready, yet still he dawdled, wanting to stretch her nerves to the breaking point. Her eyes were closed now, her lips parted as she panted. In the dim light of the vault, her skin was luminescent with rapture. Beneath her, the cash formed a green carpet that rustled as she moved in increasing restlessness. She held his shoulders, kneaded them. Her breathing increased; she was close to orgasm.

He knew with pride he had tended her fire, taking care not to let it die, and now she was alight for him again.

He sank down onto her, pressing his chest to hers, his groin to hers, mating them without penetration, wanting her to grow used to his weight, the way he felt on top of her, and to know the promise of pleasure.

He knew how to make her climax—it took only the slow press of his cock inside her, and she spasmed around him, shaking, coming on wave after wave of pleasure. She moved beneath him, meeting his hard, driving rhythm with a motion of the hips that made him grit his teeth. She clutched his chest in her arms, his hips in her legs, his dick in her pussy.

Her convulsive motion hurled him out of control and into insanity.

Groaning, he rose to his knees, caught her thighs in his hands, lifted her, and continued the torture. He thrust hard, filling her with himself, taking her, making her his. He couldn't stand any more, he couldn't hold it anymore….

She arched her back, clawed at his thighs, cried out in ecstasy, while inside her, her muscles grasped him, milked him—and he came in great spurts. He shook with the effort of orgasm, desperate to finish, desperate to never finish, just…desperate.

Finally, he was done.

She was done.

He sank down on top of her, dropped his head on the floor next to hers.

And smelled the distinctive odor of new money.

Unwanted, the old cynicism clawed its way to the surface of his mind.

Man, if money was what it took to keep Miss Ionessa Dahl in his arms, he was ready to pay the price.

Mac paced the vault in his rumpled shirt and wrinkled pants, looking for the entrance he knew existed somewhere. He'd tapped every wall, jiggled every air-conditioning grill—and found nothing.

He glanced over at Nessa.

Her suit was as bedraggled as his. She sat on the floor before the shelves, her head bent over the mounds of dollar bills as she counted them into bundles and slipped the bands back over them.

She'd taken off the red heels. Thank God, or he'd be on her again. As it was, he had to be very careful to not think about the fact that she wore no panties.

He glanced at the pocket of her jacket, where the plain white panties peeked out.

He would buy her silk and lace. Not that he needed it; as long as Nessa wore the panties, Mac would jump when she told him to. He just had to keep that information to himself or she'd use those red heels to walk all over him.

He had to get her out of here before morning. She hadn't said anything, but he knew damned good and well what would happen if Stephanie Decker opened the vault and discovered the two of them. In the conscripted world of New Orleans society, all hell would break loose. The gossips would have a field day. Not that affairs didn't occur and never raised an eyebrow, but an affair between straightlaced Ionessa Dahl and the rough-hewn Jeremiah Mac would be a tasty tidbit. And oh, shit, if someone decided to check into his background, his story of being an insurance investigator wouldn't hold up.

Somehow he didn't think Nessa would accept his deception lightly. For a woman he considered a liar and a thief, she had quite a strict code of morals….

He leaned a hand against the wall. When he closed his eyes, he could feel what it had been like inside her. She hadn't been a virgin, but damn, she felt like one. Tight, warm, firm, yielding only to the most subtle love-making and the most powerful pressure.

His private investigators said she wasn't involved with anyone.

Mac now said she hadn't been involved with anyone for a long, long time. Which made him feel embarrassingly virile and soothed his worst suspicions of her.

Idiot!

Just because she didn't sleep with every dick on the street didn't mean she wasn't stealing him blind.

Although the amount really wasn't that much…

Abruptly, he straightened.

What was he thinking? Was he forgetting everything he'd learned the hard way? A thief was a creature to be despised, a sneaking, grasping, worthless soul who walked away from responsibility and left a wasteland behind him.

And if Ionessa Dahl was guilty, he would prosecute her to the full extent of the law.

The trouble was…he was no longer sure she was guilty.

“If you're not going to pace,” she said in a mild tone, “you could help get this money back in order.”

“I'm not pacing. I'm looking.” But he sat down on the floor facing her and counted bills and banded them.

She sat cross-legged—a fact that did little to ease his rampaging libido—and she wasn't talking. Instead she sat with her forehead puckered, gaze on her hands, and did the work of the most menial teller. Clearly, she'd done it before, for she did it well.

Yet he wanted her to say stuff. Stuff like she always did, that kind of little patter that put him at ease and made him feel as if he was more than a businessman with a freakish grasp of numbers, more than a former escort to wealthy women, more than a bad seed that would best be destroyed. That skill she had of looking at him and loving what she saw—that was why he'd polished up the skills he'd learned to pay for his college. Nessa made him want to give her his best of…everything.

Weakness.

Yet also the truth.

Somehow, he needed to tactfully approach her about their love-making, remind her of her pleasure, and most important, discuss the continuing relationship.

“You enjoyed it,” he said.

Possibly that hadn't been the best way to start.

With a faintly startled expression, she looked up from her work.

“The sex. You enjoyed it.”

“Oh. Yes, I did.” She looked down again. “Thank you.”

“Thank you?”

“It is customary to thank the person who brings you pleasure, so—thank you.”

“If that's the case, I should be prostrate before you.”

That got her attention. Her eyes shone as she asked, “Really?
You
liked it?”

“All I can think about is—When can we do it again?”

Her gladness fell away. “I don't think that's a good idea.”

Shit.
“Why not? We both just agreed we are compatible.”

“A professional relationship can't survive when the partners are involved. Things get…messy.”

“Darlin', things between us are already messy. I nailed you against the door to the vault and again on a pile of money. And if it were up to me, I'd have my head between your legs right now. How do you propose to put that genie back in the bottle?”

“You
nailed
me?”

It had been too long since he'd had to watch his language around a woman, think before he spoke, and bite his tongue on every other word. Clearly, if he wanted to nail her again, he'd better start biting, and fast. “That was badly spoken. What I meant was,
you
nailed
me
against the door of the vault and on a pile of money, and I am abjectly, pathetically grateful.”

She thought about it for an uncomfortably long time, then nodded. “As you should be. Nevertheless, it's not an activity I believe should continue.” She glanced at his hands. “You count money like a professional.”

“I put in my time in a bank,” he said with ironic understatement. “Look, a love affair between the two of us doesn't have to be a problem. We can keep business and pleasure separate.”

“Maybe you can. I'm not so coldblooded.”

Another dreadful misstep. Tonight he would win first prize for messing up a good thing. “Neither could I, but I thought the argument might work.” Dropping the bills he held, he caught her hands and did what any self-respecting man would do in these circumstances; he begged. “I'll do anything if you'll just give me another chance. I'll take you dancing. I'll cuddle all night, I'll read poetry in bed….”

“Yes, yes, I know, you'll sing love songs, you'll rob a bank. You'll join the millions of men who make promises like that and don't follow through.”

“Rob a bank?”

“Have you got a frog in your throat? You sound funny.”

He felt funny.

Was this really how she got her accomplices? Had she been playing him all along?

He tested the waters. “I would rob a bank for you.”

“One thing you should know about me.” She sounded friendly enough, but she looked at him without a smile. “I hate a liar.”

Was she checking him out? He didn't know. In his experience, treachery was very much part of the human makeup. And while he'd seen little evidence of hypocrisy in Nessa's personality, he'd been wrong before. Horribly, terribly wrong.

He touched the scars on his forehead.

The betrayals of the past had taught him a valuable lesson—it hurt more when the one who screwed you over was someone you trusted.

He looked hard at Nessa: at her sensuous lips, her long legs, her long, dark hair that felt like silk and smelled like flowers. And he realized that yes, she had started to work her way under his skin, convince him she was the person she appeared to be.

He wanted her again. He wanted her any way he could get her.

“You know, I've been thinking,” she said.

Excitement and revulsion mixed in his mind. She was actually going to propose he help her rob his banks. “Yes?”

“The legend surrounding Frederick's Vycor's death was very specific. There was money scattered all over, but none of it was stolen.”

“What?” His usual nimble mind wasn't making the adjustment. “What are you talking about?”

Patiently, she said, “There's no reason to mess with the money if you're not interested in taking it.” She turned her head and looked at the shelves where the stacks of bills would be stored.

It was essentially a unit of bookshelves recessed into the wall. The back and sides were oak, with oak trim around the edges, and the shelves themselves were anchored solidly. “So I think the murderer couldn't get into the vault without disturbing the money. It's got to be heavy, but if a man could lift the entire block, the whole thing, out of the way, I think he would find the entrance to the vault is behind that wall.”

 

Together they shuffled the massive shelves out of the way and found Frederick Vycor's secret bedchamber, with a rusty iron cot and a chamber pot resting beneath it. They followed a narrow, hidden stairway that crawled through the walls to arrive at the top of the house. A small door dumped them onto the roof, and from there they climbed down the rusty fire escape and onto the street.

It was night, thank God, and Nessa fervently hoped no one recognized them, for the dust and cobwebs of more than a century covered them from head to toe.

More important, in her opinion, was the fact that her clothes were crumpled and she looked like a woman who had been someone's
real
good time. And everything Jeremiah did and said made it clear which someone it had been.

He couldn't have been more unsubtle. He hovered. He worried about something that made him frown when he thought she wasn't watching. He
observed
her.

She hoped he didn't see how very much she wanted to get away from him.

“You wait here.” He led her to a protected overhang on the building next to the bank. “I'll get a car.”

“Mardi Gras,” she reminded him.

“I've got strings I can pull, too.” He got out his cell phone.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Midnight.” He placed his call.

Only midnight? Her whole life had changed in five hours? She waited until he finished, then asked, “May I use it? I need to call my aunts and tell them I'll be home soon.”

He took her hand and folded the cell phone into her fingers and held them. “Tell them you'll be home in the morning.”

“Oh, God, no.”

He pulled her close. “It's a little late to be shy.”

“I'm not shy.” Maybe a little. “But what happened in there…it wasn't me. I don't behave like that. I can't do that again.”

“You're shocked at yourself.” He sounded warmly, deeply amused. Or maybe pleased.

Whatever it was, Nessa didn't like it. “I'm not a prude.”

“No, you're inexperienced.”

“I'm not that, either.”

“Who have your lovers been? College boys? Privileged guys from good homes? I told you, Nessa, I'm not like that. I learned my lessons from women who knew what they wanted and taught me how to please them. What we did in there was the tip of the iceberg. Come home with me, Nessa. I'll show you what it's like to make love to a man.”

Had she really toyed with the idea of having a brief fling with this guy, then waving him good-bye and returning to her regularly scheduled life? Fat chance. One session with him left her blasted by passion.

Before she could fling out the same old, tired argument, he said, “Sure, we work together, but we won't be working together for long.”

“No. We won't. But what would your Mr. MacNaught say about you sleeping with your assistant when you should be working the case?”

“I don't give a damn what he'd say.”

But he looked disgruntled, and it was easy to see she'd struck a chord. “I'll go home.”

“All right.” He surrendered, but leaned close enough to kiss. “But I won't give up.”

I never thought you would.

“Which one of us is going to tell MacNaught his bank's not secure?”

“We both will. To make sure he receives the e-mail.”

“Yeah.” While she called the aunts, a black town car pulled up, one with tinted windows and a chauffeur who spoke softly to Jeremiah, then held the door for them.

Jeremiah waited until the car was in motion before saying, “I'm going in early tomorrow to view the digital security and positively identify who shut us into the vault. Will you be there?”

There wasn't a doubt in Nessa's mind what she would see. “I wouldn't miss it. I want to see the look on Stephanie's face when she opens the vault and no one's there.”

Stephanie.

Something about that name made Nessa jump.

“What's the matter?” Jeremiah wrapped his arm around her.

“I don't know.”
They had forgotten something.
“I just had this sensation that somehow, we left evidence in the vault.”

“I lifted the shelves out of the escape hatch. We stacked the money back the way Decker left it. We got into the hole. Handles were screwed into the back of the shelves, and I lifted them back into place. I promise, I didn't waver. The bills didn't fall out. The only thing we left in that vault was fingerprints, and they're supposed to be in there.” He pulled her closer. “Stop worrying.”

“You're right. Surely you're right.” But for the rest of the trip and the rest of the night, a faint certainty nagged at Nessa.

They'd forgotten something very important.