Blackmailed Into His Arms

And from the look in his eyes, she knew he heard it, too.

“Not here,” he said, his voice tight and graveled with lust. “But I’ll find something by this evening even if I have to buy up every book and magazine publisher on the West Coast.”

He held her gaze and it was all she could do not to wiggle in her seat, both from nerves and a growing sense of longing. How he could have such an effect on her after such a short amount of time, she didn’t know. But it was there, strong and powerful and alive.

“Unfortunately,” he went on, dragging his gaze away from her to check his watch, his voice returning to normal, “I have to get going or I’ll be late for my first meeting.”

Pushing his chair away from the table, he stood and dug out his billfold. “I’ll be busy pretty much all day, so I’m afraid you’ll have to find something to keep yourself occupied. Here, take these.” He handed her a gold card and a stack of crisp bills in large denominations. “Go shopping, do lunch, have fun. I’ll see you back here around four. We have another business dinner I’ll want you to be ready for, all right?”

She took the cash and credit card, even though she didn’t like it. Being handed money to “keep herself occupied” made her feel cheap, entirely too much like a paid companion. But then, she supposed that was just part of the job when one agreed to become a man’s mistress.

Throwing back the last swallows of his coffee, he crossed the room for his briefcase, then headed for the door. With his hand on the knob, he tossed an already distracted “See you later” over his shoulder before disappearing into the hall.

The door clicked closed behind him, leaving Elena alone in the sprawling suite. She glanced down at the wad of bills in one hand and the credit card in the other.

Well, that had gone from interesting to disappointing in the blink of an eye, she thought. But this wasn’t a vacation; it was a work week for Chase, and the fulfillment of a business agreement for her.

So she would find something to fill her day like a good mistress, and be back in time to get ready for her next dinner performance.

Where the hell was she?

Chase stood in front of the bedroom bureau, straightening his tie in the mirror for what had to be the fifth or sixth time.

He was showered, dressed and ready for the dinner meeting. The only thing missing was his date.

He glanced at his watch again, even though only a minute had passed since the last time he’d checked, and muttered a colorful oath.

She was almost an hour late. He’d told her to be back in the room by four o’clock, and here it was going on five.

She was probably busy burning up his credit card with dozens of clothes, shoes and expensive trinket purchases. What more could he expect of a spoiled, selfish debutante like Elena Sanchez?

The problem was, she hadn’t acted spoiled or selfish since meeting him at the airport. He hadn’t even seen any signs of the shallow girl she used to be—her bossiness at breakfast that morning notwithstanding.

He’d actually found her strong-arm tactics during that little incident amusing … followed by highly erotic when she’d agreed to use that husky, arousing voice of hers to read to him in bed.

Of course, now he knew the last day and a half was more of a fluke than anything else. He’d given her his gold card and a stack of cash in fairly large bills, and she’d apparently found a way to blow through it all. Enough so that she was still busy shopping.

Which didn’t surprise him in the least. Truth be known, he’d given her such a long lead line to prove—to himself, if no one else—exactly what he knew deep down in his bones. Elena Sanchez hadn’t changed. She was still indulgent, self-involved, too beautiful for her own good, and she put her own comforts and desires above the feelings or well-being of others.

The pointed reminder was worth paying a few thousand dollars to his credit card company.

But if she didn’t get back soon, if she made him late for this very important business dinner, he would not only make her pay the charge bill herself, but he’d put her on the first plane back to Gabriel’s Crossing and have her father’s company bought out and in his portfolio by morning.

He swore again and was just turning his wrist to check his watch for the ten millionth time when he heard the door to the suite click open.

“Finally,” he breathed, following that by another grumbled curse.

“Where the hell have you been?” he charged, turning on his heel and marching into the other room.

He expected to find her grinning from ear to ear, her hands full of boutique bags, her arms piled high with ribboned boxes. She’d probably want to show him everything he’d bought her, maybe model some designer dresses and sexy new lingerie.

He might even be willing to sit through a lingerie fashion show … later, after they got back from dinner and he wasn’t in such a foul mood.

“Sorry,” she apologized, rounding the corner of the kitchenette.

She looked rumpled and windblown, her simple, sleeveless cotton blouse and denim skirt wrinkled, her hair starting to fall out of its now-crooked ponytail. Her face and shoulders rosy from the glaring Las Vegas sun.

As far as he could see, there wasn’t a single bag or box anywhere near her.

He paused in mid-step, momentarily confused.

Maybe she was having everything delivered. But just to be sure, he walked the rest of the way across the room and glanced toward the door.

Nothing.

She didn’t look overly happy or bubbly or excited, either, the way most women would after what amounted to a carte blanche shopping spree.

“You’re late,” he pointed out, uncomfortable with the knowledge that she’d knocked him off his guard, managed to sidetrack him from his focus on her whereabouts and their dinner schedule.

“I said I was sorry,” she told him, not the least intimidated by his accusatory tone or thunderous expression. “But I won’t take long to get ready, I promise.”

Pulling the ponytail holder from her hair, she started for the bedroom, already unbuttoning her blouse. “I’ll only be twenty minutes.”

She left the connecting doors open and he could hear her moving around. Shedding clothes. Opening dresser drawers and closet doors. Stepping into the bathroom, out, then in again. The bathroom door closed and he heard the shower turn on.

Regardless of what she said, he fully expected her to take at least an hour to change and do her hair and makeup. He didn’t know any woman who wouldn’t.

A quick glance at his watch showed that if she took an hour—an hour, and not one minute more—they could still make it down to the hotel restaurant on time. Barely, but they would make it.

Strolling into the bedroom, he moved to the dresser where he’d abandoned his cufflinks when he’d heard her come in, trying not to imagine Elena’s wet, soapy, naked body in the generous shower stall. A space large enough to fit two comfortably … in any number of creative positions.

Clearing his throat, he turned his attention back to attaching the gold and diamond studs at his wrists. Just because he was annoyed at her tardiness didn’t mean he didn’t still want her. If they weren’t already running late, he’d leave a trail of clothing behind on the walk to the bathroom and join her for a long, enjoyable steam—among other things.

Afraid that he would give in to temptation if he stayed this close to her for much longer, he turned. As it was, he ran the risk of spending the rest of the evening trying to hide an embarrassing arousal.

But before he went a step, his gaze caught on two items on the dresser top. His credit card and the pile of cash he’d handed Elena earlier.

Ignoring the card, he picked up the bills and counted them out. Only twenty-odd dollars missing, from the hundreds he’d given her.

Well, that wasn’t so surprising, he decided. She’d probably charged just about everything all day. The cash could have been used solely for tips or some such.

In the bathroom, the water shut off and he quickly replaced the cash beside the card. He didn’t want her to know he’d fanned through it. And since he would probably have supplied her with the same again tomorrow, he might as well leave them where she’d put them.

But just out of curiosity …

He quickly glanced at the phone number on the back of the credit card, memorizing it, then slipping quietly from the room before she emerged from the bathroom. Closing the door silently behind him, he crossed to the phone on the desk in the far corner.

It took a few minutes to get through to an operator and verify his identity, then a second more to make his request and wait for the answer. Had there been any charges on his account today, and if so, how much did it total?

He thanked the woman on the other end of the line and returned the handset to its cradle, a deep frown marring his brow and tugging his mouth down at the sides.

Zero. Zero charges. His balance was the same as it had been before, and the last purchase was one he’d made himself.

Now he was even more confused than before. She’d been gone all day, on his dime, presumably shopping, yet hadn’t spent more than thirty dollars.

He didn’t know any woman who could shop all day and only spend thirty bucks.

So if she hadn’t been shopping, where had she been and what had she been up to?

Before he could devise a list of possibilities, the bedroom door opened and she stepped out, looking like every man’s fantasy come to life. Her hair was swept up into an artful twist. Her long black gown glittered with silver in the lamplight. A slit ran from her ankles to very high on her thigh, and the front was cut low, fastening around her neck with a single strap, leaving the front of her neck, shoulders and back bare.

She wore minimal jewelry—a couple of rings, a pair of silver string earrings and a small charm on a thin silver necklace that matched the bracelet on her wrist—and three-inch spike heels that caused his blood to thicken and slog through his veins.

“Twenty minutes, as promised,” she said, making a small pirouette where she stood.

The gown showed off her womanly shape as though she were naked, and he suddenly wanted to keep her inside the room with him rather than take her out, so no one else could see her.

“What do you think?”

He thought way too many things, none of them suitable for delicate ears or pre-dinner conversation. After dinner, though … that was a whole different story.

“Good. Good. You look good.” His tongue felt like an old gym sock in his mouth, and even though he knew he wasn’t making much sense, he was content to be able to form words at all. The synapse in his brain was barely firing, cells washing away to join all the others in his body south of the equator.

To buy a few much-needed moments to recover his senses, he cleared his throat and checked his watch. She was right; she’d only taken a little over twenty minutes to get ready, from the time she’d disappeared into the bedroom … twenty-five counting the time he’d wasted standing there feeling speechless and steamrolled.

“Okay. Well, then …” He tugged at his cuffs, straightened his tie and somehow managed to step forward, offering his arm. “Are we ready to go?”

She nodded, meeting him halfway. He noticed the shawl in her other hand and took it from her, draping the long-fringed lace around her shoulders.

“You look amazing,” he said, perhaps belatedly.

“Thank you.”

He pulled open the door, holding it until she’d passed into the hall, then hooked her arm around his elbow again and guided her to the elevator. Their reflection shimmered back at them in the polished golden doors, and he couldn’t help noticing how good she looked standing beside him. Tall, glamorous, gorgeous.

He’d known she was beautiful when he’d suggested this arrangement—a man would have to be blind not to, and even then, any man worth his salt would have a pretty good idea of her charms just from her voice and the way she handled herself.

He’d also known she would make a good impression on his associates. She was funny and charismatic and knew when to put in a few words or hold her tongue while business was being discussed. And there was no arguing she was easy on the eyes.

What he hadn’t counted on was the force of his attraction to her.

Beautiful women were nothing new to Chase Ramsey. He was wealthy, a self-made multimillionaire, which happened to be an attribute that a lot of women apparently found irresistible.

And he’d enjoyed his fair share of them. Some might say he used them, asking them out only when he needed a date for one event or another, and then taking them to bed—a place they were always more than willing to go.

But the way he saw it, any using was mutual. They wanted to be with him because he had money, wanted to be seen with him because of his power and prestige.

And most of them, whether they were blatant about it or not, harbored hopes of finagling a wedding ring out of him and snagging themselves a rich husband.

Elena, however, was in an entirely different category.

She didn’t seem impressed by his wealth at all. Yes, her family had money of their own, but so did the families of a lot of women he dated. That never kept them from wheedling for or accepting expensive gifts. Permission to use his credit card for the day would have had most of them squealing like a litter of hungry piglets.

She didn’t take forever in the bathroom or fuss obsessively over her appearance, and once she was ready, she was ready. She carried herself with confidence and seemed comfortable with whatever she was wearing instead of fidgeting with every little thing.

It was that confidence, her silent assurance, that turned him on almost as much as her shapely body and passionate nature.

Aside from that, he also found her simply fascinating. She never did what he expected, never reacted to things quite the way he thought she would.

And she hadn’t charged a single damn thing to his credit card, which he had to admit was driving him positively crazy. He wanted to know where she’d been all day, what she’d been up to.

He needed to know.

“So,” he murmured as the elevator doors whooshed open and they stepped inside the plush compartment. “What did you do today?”

Five

Elena raised the back of her hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn. It had been a long day, and she was suddenly feeling every minute of it. The two Manhattans she’d sipped through dinner probably hadn’t helped, either.

“Sleepy?” Chase asked, brushing a loose tendril of hair away from her face.

She offered a small smile and leaned into his touch as the same elevator that had taken them down to the lobby a few hours before now took them back up to their floor.

It was amazing how comfortable she felt with him after such a short time, and it worried her. She’d expected their relationship to be cold, businesslike. Intimate, but functional.

Instead, things between them had been warm and friendly. She liked it, and that bothered her most—that she liked it maybe a bit too much.

“I’m a little tired,” she answered.

His hand slid from the lobe of her ear to the nape of her neck, where he gently kneaded the taut muscles with his calloused fingertips.

“You must have had a busy day.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to find out how she’d spent the afternoon. But so far, she’d avoided giving him a straight answer. It wasn’t that her activities were that much of a secret, just that she didn’t feel like sharing.

He’d handed her a wad of cash and a credit card, and basically told her to keep herself occupied while he worked. Well, she had—without spending more than twenty-five or thirty dollars of his money, either. Since she hadn’t let him foot the bill for more than a short cab ride and a salad for lunch, it was no one’s business but her own how she’d stayed busy.

When it became apparent she wasn’t going to answer, he went on.

“When we get back to the room, I’ll help you slip out of these clothes, then turn down the covers and we’ll crawl into bed.”

“Just to sleep?” she teased.

“Just to sleep,” he assured her. And then his lips curved and a devilish glint sparkled in his blue eyes. “Unless you’re interested in something else.”

A slow heat began to unfurl low in her belly. That was another thing she found surprising about this situation … that making love with him didn’t feel like a chore she had to subject herself to in order to help her father save his company. She liked being with him, and was already looking forward to spending the night in his arms. Just the thought made warmth pour through her system and put her nerve endings on red alert.

“What did you have in mind?” she asked as the elevator doors opened and they stepped into the hallway, any drowsiness quickly morphing into arousal and anticipation.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he drawled, his arm twined with hers as they strolled slowly toward their suite. “We didn’t have dessert with dinner so maybe we should order something sweet from room service.”

They stopped in front of their door and he fitted the key card into the lock, waiting for the light to flash green.

“Strawberries and champagne?” he suggested, holding the door open for her. “I could nibble juice from your chin and trickle champagne into your navel. Or hot fudge sundaes. I understand chocolate sauce tastes even better licked off a beautiful woman’s naked flesh.”

If she hadn’t been turned on before, the mental images he was creating certainly aroused her. She shivered as she thought of his tongue scraping along her skin, of chocolate and ice cream mixing with passion in her mouth as he kissed her after cleaning them from her body.

“So what will it be?” he asked when she was halfway across the room. “Dessert or straight to bed?”

His voice sounded farther away than she’d expected, and she turned to find him leaning against the wall, just a few steps past the closed and locked door. His arms were crossed over his chest, one leg cocked over the other at the ankle.

One glimpse of him standing there, looking so casually relaxed yet so intensely masculine, and she knew there was no way she’d be sleeping tonight. At least not anytime soon.

But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a little fun with him first.

“I’d like to go straight to bed,” she said, feigning a yawn that a few minutes ago would have been real. Reaching up to remove the pins from her hair, she watched the air of confidence seep from his expression, the cockiness disappear from the firm set of his stance. His reaction amused her, but she didn’t tease him for long.

Shaking her head and letting the long strands of her hair fall to the middle of her back, she added, “With the strawberries, champagne and a hot fudge sundae. With nuts on top, please.”

She turned on her heel and sashayed toward the bedroom, but not before she saw the wide, positively predatory grin that spread across his face. It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d pushed away from the wall and sprung on her like some sleek jungle beast. A part of her even wished he’d do just that.

They would fall to the floor right where she was standing in a tangle of limbs, his heavy frame pinning her down. Clothes would be torn off, tossed away or left in tatters. Mouths and hands would be everywhere. They would come together fast, hot, frantically, the carpet leaving them scraped and raw.

And it would all be worth it.

She almost whimpered at the very idea, moist heat pooling between her legs, making her weak in the knees. She bit her lip, wondering what she might do to make it happen.

But in the end, she couldn’t think of anything that felt right. She wasn’t used to seducing handsome men, let alone devising a plan to get one to attack her.

So she settled for simply lifting her hands to the back of her neck and unhooking the single strap of her dress. The two pieces of material fell, an arm across her breasts the only thing keeping her from being completely bare.

“You will bring everything into the bedroom when it gets here, won’t you?” she asked as seductively as she could manage. Then, without waiting for an answer, she stepped into the other room and closed the door behind her.

Her heart was beating a mile a minute. She’d never done anything like that before—taunted a man, tried to work him into a lather and lure him into bed.

And now she would have to deliver. At the speed of light, she raced around the room, undressing. She kicked her shoes off so they each flew in different directions. Her dress fell to the floor and she opened the closet door to kick it inside. It was no way to treat an obscenely expensive designer gown, but at the moment she couldn’t care less.

Hopping from foot to foot, she made her way to the bathroom while working to undo her garter belt and roll off her black stockings. She left them in a ball on the floor, along with her matching black panties.

Naked, she stood at the sink, in front of the huge wall-to-wall mirror, and quickly brushed her teeth, washed her face, ran a comb through her hair. She reapplied a dab of perfume behind each ear and at the pulse points of her wrists, then hurried back to the bed.

Sweeping back the covers, she leaped onto the ivory satin sheets, plumped a couple pillows behind her back and tried to adopt a sexy, alluring pose. Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Anna Nicole Smith … she thought of every pinup girl she could remember and tried to channel their spirits.

She pulled the sheet up to her waist, then over her breasts, then threw it off again. Bent her legs to the left, then the right. Threw an arm over her head, then scooted down and laid spread-eagle across the bed like the smorgasbord she hoped he would use her as.

When she heard the rattle of the doorknob, she startled, swallowed a panicked squeak and froze in the best position she could come up with at the last minute. She let the muscles in her face go lax and half-closed her eyes, hoping he wouldn’t notice she was a nervous wreck. She wanted him to think she’d just been lounging on the bed, waiting for him to serve her.

The bedroom door opened and he strolled in, dragging a room service cart behind him. This time it held a bowl of strawberries, a magnum of champagne on ice, two glasses and a very large, decadent, already melting ice cream sundae.

Normally, her stomach would have rumbled at such delicious-looking fare. But at the moment, it was her other four senses and her raging libido that were starving for attention.

Chase turned, his gaze soaking her in, slowly skimming from head to toe. From the hardening of his jaw and the steam rising behind his sea-blue eyes, she thought he must like what he saw.

A thrill rolled through her and she sat up straight, careful to act sleepy and nonchalant.

“Mmm,” she murmured. “It looks good.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, still staring intently at her. “It does.”

After a few tense seconds when she thought he might forget the food altogether and simply lunge at her, he picked up the bottle of Roederer Cristal, dried the bottom with a cloth napkin and popped the cork. He poured the champagne into both flutes, then handed one to her, followed by the bowl of strawberries.

She took a plump, bright red berry and bit into the tip before taking a sip of champagne.

“Good?” he asked, sampling a piece of fruit on his own.

“Delicious.”

Taking a long swallow of champagne, he set his glass and the bowl of strawberries aside and began shrugging out of his clothes. Suit jacket, tie, shoes … they all evaporated as though they were made of smoke.

As naked as she, he turned back to the wheeled cart, grabbed the dripping sundae and a spoon and climbed onto the wide mattress beside her.

“This is what I’m hungry for,” he said.