Uncut Bundle
“She’s her roommate,” Cam said, telling the truth but tweaking it with a just-between-us-guys attitude he knew would work. “You know how it goes with women, Rich. They travel in pairs.”
His friend had chuckled. “Gotcha.”
Everything was set. So, why didn’t the P.I. call? Cam glared at his cell. It was on, the battery was working and here in a nice, normal, civilized setting, all the little transmission bars were lit.
He was good to go, and he wanted this over with.
He knew who Salome was. Not just her name. Her. The woman. And he understood that she’d never been real.
Funny. One of the things he and his brothers used to joke about was that most of the women they met couldn’t be called “real.”
“Take away the makeup,” Matt would say, “the hair goop, the clothes and who the hell knows what you’d have left?”
“A naked babe,” Alex would say solemnly, and they’d laugh.
Turned out it wasn’t all that funny anymore.
What you had left, Cam thought grimly, without all the froufrou, was a woman who didn’t exist. A woman who’d invented herself to suit the occasion.
A woman who’d claimed to love him.
What a lie.
Fantasy was her life. He’d seen that last night. The music. The sets. The costumes. Salome—ma
ke that Leanna—danced her way through life. She was a virginal princess one day and a sorceress the next.
She was like one of those toy ballerinas who came to life when you opened the lid of a music box.
And then, without warning, she’d found herself playing the role of a lifetime. A woman in jeopardy, with a man as different from the men in her world as night was from day.
Sleeping with him had been her walk on the wild side.
As for him… He’d been pulled straight into her fantasy. Either he wasn’t as immune to adrenaline highs as he’d thought or his rush had come from taking a virgin.
The bottom line was, he’d had enough. It was time to put the experience behind him and the way to do that was to confront Salome. Damn it, confront Leanna.
He had to remember who she really was.
He’d considered waiting outside the theater but then he’d realized she’d probably be surrounded by people. He didn’t want this last scene in their little drama played before an audience.
Better to go to her hotel. Grab her as she came in. Except, the odds were good she’d still be with people. Friends—or maybe some guy. Maybe, with her innocence gone, she was busy exploring life.
She’d been good in bed. Incredible. For all he knew, she’d decided to enjoy herself.
Just because he lay awake nights, remembering how it had been, didn’t mean she did. All the touching. The tasting. Sex that went from achingly tender to excitingly savage in a heartbeat.
Weeks had passed, and he hadn’t forgotten.
Her whispers. The feel of her hand on him. The heat of her body as he sank into her. The way she trembled when she came.
Cam slammed his fist against the steering wheel. Why didn’t the freaking phone ring?
In the end, he’d decided to catch her off guard. That meant doing this the way he knew best. Dress in dark clothes. Use the night as a cover. Slip into her room, wait for her, scare the crap out of her so she knew she couldn’t make a fool of him and get away with it.
The cell phone rang. Cam let out a long, slow breath and flipped it open.
“I’m outside the theater,” the P.I. said. “The subject’s roommate is heading east with a man. Medium height. Light hair.”