His fingers tightened around the bottle as he restrained the urge to hurl it across the room. Hell, he’d just have to clean it up. And he’d long since grown tired of cleaning up the messes his rage had induced.
He relaxed his fingers slowly, inhaled deeply, and forced himself to remember the fresh, clean smell of Jaci’s body, rather than the smell of f**king rose perfume, stale sex, and liquor.
He finished off the beer, breathed in roughly, then strode to the cordless phone at the center island. Jerking the phone from the base, he made a quick call to the exclusive boutique several streets from the hotel.
Speaking to the owner, he gave her his request—Jaci’s size and coloring—and authorized the credit card transaction. Mrs. Lisette Miles, the owner of the boutique, was ecstatic with the sale, and more than happy to make certain the purchase was delivered to Ms. Wright at her hotel.
With that accomplished, he allowed a small, tight smile to touch his lips and moved quickly to the shower. Tonight he would try to seduce her into trusting him. Gaining her trust couldn’t be that damned hard. Hell, she knew him, knew he would kill for her, knew he would do whatever it took to protect her. God help anyone who tried to hurt her, because he’d make certain they paid for it.
He’d stayed out of her life for seven years because he’d known she wasn’t ready for him. Known he wasn’t ready for her. She would come to him when she was ready. That was what he’d told himself over the years. He’d made certain her parents knew where he was, made certain he knew where she was working at any given time, and that she could find him if she needed him.
He wasn’t a stalker. He wasn’t obsessed. He just knew who his heart belonged to, just as he’d realized he may never have what he needed from her. The hardest part was the fear that he couldn’t be what she needed. A part of him realized that, accepted it. He might never be the man she needed, but he couldn’t walk away from her now.
He could have lived without her; he was living without her—until she arrived here, in his territory. She had come to him.
He shed his clothes and stepped beneath the shower, his teeth clenching as he fought back the dominance that raged inside him.
He had been living fine without her, but he was going to live better with her, and starting tonight she would learn that.
She was going to fight him, he could feel it, and it was more exhilarating than he could describe. She would challenge him, she would meet him head-on and make him work for what he wanted.
When was the last time he’d had to work for a damned thing, other than to get the information he dug up during the investigations he and Chase dove into? Sometimes that was work; but women had never been work. If one wasn’t interested, then he could find another that was. No big deal, because none of them was Jaci.
Now, it was Jaci.
He washed his hair quickly before soaping his body, grimacing as he soaped and rinsed the thick length of his c**k and thought of Jaci. A hard-on always made him think of Jaci.
Her life had been one of loneliness, he knew that from the investigative report. Her lovers were evidently few and far between, because he couldn’t find them. She didn’t make friends easily, and those friends she had made were intensely loyal.
A woman as fiery, beautiful, and passionate as Jaci needed more than a few long-distance friends, though. She needed a man. A lover she couldn’t walk all over, one that would challenge her, make her blood hot. One that could take all that restless, burning passion inside her and return it to her tenfold.
He was the man to not just tame it, but to sate it. To make her burn over and over again, and to put out the flames with his touch, his kiss. His possession.
Ian was right. Jaci wasn’t going to give him everything without more from him. He had hoped she would, had expected her to. He should have known better. Seven years wasn’t going to weaken a woman who had been strong even at twenty-one. Strong enough to walk away from something he knew she had wanted down to the soles of her feet.
She was adventurous. She was a woman that would never belong to a weak man. And Cam was anything but weak.
Hell, he had more ghosts inside him than a haunted castle, and he knew damned good and well there were parts of him that might never be whole again. That would be the battle. Getting her to trust him, to belong to him, while keeping his secrets to himself.
Because those secrets could destroy him.
The secrets had nothing to do with seduction, though. They had nothing to do with making Jaci his.
Anticipation burned inside him at the thought of her and the seduction to come. He had never had to put himself out to seduce, but Jaci was definitely worthy of the effort. She was worth everything, even his own compulsion to never give a woman his release without a condom.
In his entire sexual life, he had never, not once, taken a woman without a condom. Evidently, Jaci had been just as careful, just as picky. And pickiness wasn’t the end of it. It was more than picky, and he knew it. She had taken him, a part of her did trust him, he realized. She would have never allowed him to take her without protection if she didn’t. So it wasn’t just an issue of trust. Which meant he had to figure out exactly what that issue was.
11
Jaci restrained her smile as she entered the Brockheim mansion. She had redesigned a vacation cabin for the Brockheims in Aspen two years before. The Brockheims had decided to leave the job to Jaci alone, rather than oversee it. Margaret Brockheim had worried about having her husband there at the time, after hearing the rumors of Jaci’s home-wrecking tendencies. Their daughter, Moriah, had been at the cabin, unknown to her parents, as Jaci worked.
Moriah hadn’t known Jaci was due to arrive that weekend. She had been hiding, suffering, and while Jaci had been there, they had found a bond in their hatred of the Robertses. That, and a plan.
The Brockheims were old money, old morals, and old grudges. They were in their seventies, considered themselves hip and modern, and enjoyed their social lives to the utmost.
How Courtney had managed to acquire an invitation for Jaci to this party, Jaci wouldn’t know; but as she caught sight of her friends across the ballroom, Jaci had to admit it didn’t surprise her.
Courtney was dressed in figure-hugging sapphire silk. Her hair was piled atop her head, long strands falling from the top to flow over one shoulder.
Beside her, Ian and Chase were dressed in tuxedos, looking powerful and decidedly handsome, while Khalid—standing nearby—conversed with another guest.