Dare to Seduce (NY Dares 3)

She was so lost in his taste and desire she wasn’t prepared when he broke the kiss, and she gasped for air. Somehow she’d been breathing through him, with him. He still held her up, more gently than before, his torso supporting her weight, his arms braced on either side of her head.

His eyes gleamed bright with desire and, if she wasn’t mistaken, more than a hint of satisfaction… and that made her nervous.

“Now tell me, has anyone else made you feel like this?” he asked.

His words brought her back to reality, and horror set in. She’d succumbed to Max so easily, as if Lucas meant nothing to her at all. Which wasn’t true.

She and Lucas had a comfortable relationship. He was someone to talk to, to have dinner with, and occasionally, when they were in the mood, sex was actually good. That was all she wanted. After all, if she didn’t become emotionally invested, she couldn’t be devastated when the relationship ended. And they all ended eventually.

“Is that what this was about, Max? Proving a point? That we have chemistry? Bravo. You proved you could seduce me if you wanted to.” She braced her hands on his shoulders and shoved him away.

“This wasn’t about some damned point. This was to show you what we could have. You weren’t about to listen to words. I had to act.”

“Well, you put me in an awful situation.”

“I just want you to think. If you’re honest, there’s only one conclusion you can come to—give us a real chance.”

She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Maybe she’d lost her hearing. “Are you crazy? Where were you years ago?” she asked, horror setting in when she realized what she’d admitted to.

Shaking, she turned away and ran for the house, adjusting her pants suit as she made her way there. She was a mess, her hair tangled around her face, her lips swollen and clothes undone. She’d have to sneak inside if she really wanted to fix herself and hide the evidence of her betrayal. Isabelle wouldn’t mind if Lucy used her things, so she’d head to the master bedroom and lock herself inside. Hopefully nobody would see her if she went in through the front and avoided the partygoers in the back.

She slipped into the main entrance and darted for the stairs, then enclosed herself in the master bath. Alone, she sighed and gripped the marble countertop hard. Max Savage had just kissed her. Hell, he’d ravaged her in broad daylight, and she’d let him. And he’d been the one to break the kiss, not her.

Lucy had never considered herself a cheater, so what had she been thinking? She shook her head, knowing the answer. She hadn’t been. There’d been a time when she would have been ready for Max. When she’d still held on to fantasies of older, sexy Max Savage turning those amber eyes on her and claiming her as his own. Then he’d fallen in love and gotten married, shattering any foolish dreams of Max protecting her from the harsh outside world of loss.

Instead he’d handed her more.

So she’d grown up and found safety in independence and distance. She’d graduated college, moved to California, helped decorate the family clubs her brother, Gabe ran. Living on the West Coast, she could keep up with, and care about, Gabe and Decklan from afar. Protect herself and her heart… should something tragic happen to them like it had to her parents. Being isolated had also prepared her for the day when her brothers found their own families… and they had. She could love from a distance. It was safer.

Lucas was a safe choice. She knew her brothers didn’t like him, but they didn’t understand him either. He was busy and usually preoccupied with whatever film he was working on at any given time, which made him come off as abrupt and uncaring. But weren’t her brothers busy too? Gabe ran a nightclub empire, and Decklan had been promoted to police detective… but their women took priority. For Lucy, it had taken a lot of pleading to get Lucas to come to New York with her for her brother’s engagement, and he still hadn’t committed to joining her in Eden for the wedding. Still, he was here now.

And he wouldn’t approve of this messy version of herself. In Hollywood, appearances were important, and she told herself she didn’t mind playing a role, dressing the way he preferred. Not the way her family was used to. As she smoothed her blouse with shaking hands, she realized how well Max knew what she liked, how he preferred the real Lucy Dare.

She bit down on her lower lip, reminding herself it didn’t matter what Max l

iked. She and Lucas were compatible. And if she didn’t see fireworks when Lucas kissed her, so what? They clicked. Neither gave the other a hard time if they had to work late or couldn’t see each other for long stretches. Unlike her brothers, who barely let Amanda and Isabelle out of their sight whenever possible. And the way they looked at their women… Max had looked at her that way, she thought with a full-body shiver, right before his lips had descended on hers.

She trembled, her entire body still singing from that nearly public, sizzling-hot, tongue-tangling, soul-touching kiss. She still hadn’t recovered from the emotional assault on her senses, nor had she begun to figure out how she felt about it. Well, she knew how her body felt—her blood ran hot, her skin still tingled, and the kiss kept replaying on an endless loop in her brain. She had to refrain from running her fingers over her still-sensitive lips.

In the course of ten short minutes, Max Savage had ripped away any shred of safety and sanity she’d possessed, leaving her raw and fragile. If she ever were to get involved with Max, she’d fall hard, and if she lost him, she didn’t know if she’d find her way back from the pain.

Somehow she refreshed her makeup, a swipe of blush on her cheeks and gloss on her well-kissed lips. She worked on her hair next, but each pass of the brush led to instant recall of Max’s fingers pulling at the long strands and the way her sex had pulsed in reaction. She didn’t understand the tug of desire that action had evoked, but she knew she’d never experienced such intense longing before. Even now, her panties were still damp, her body aching and needy. In the end, she didn’t put her hair back up, unable to replicate the up-do she’d had before.

She made her way down the stairs and headed back outside, finding Lucas at their rental car, which he was using as his makeshift office. “Lucas.”

He held up one finger, indicating she should wait, and continued his phone call.

She glanced into the bright blue sky. Her brother and Amanda had lucked out with the weather, she thought as Lucas droned on. Finally, he disconnected the call.

“Ready to leave?” he asked hopefully.

She shook her head and groaned. He really wasn’t interested in her family, her life, or the things and people that mattered to her. But she wasn’t ready to give up on him yet.

He sat in the backseat, car door open, facing outside into the sun, jotting down notes.

“Lucas? What are we doing?”

“Going back to the hotel, where I can work in comfort, I hope.”