Out of Her Dreams

“So you only flew here to save your friend’s ass from financial ruin?” His eyes were quietly thoughtful. There was no amusement in his expression.

Oops. She was treading on thin ice here. Keep your mouth shut, why dontcha?

“Partly.” She shrugged, hoping he would just forget her thoughtless statement. He didn’t.

“And what part of you, if any, wanted to come to be with me again?” His voice was dangerously soft. She noted the tenseness in those broad shoulders.

Sam pulled the sheet up around her body, suddenly feeling embarrassed. “I wouldn’t have come at all if it hadn’t been for your threat.” It was getting so easy to lie. Every damn part of her had screamed to see him again!

He drew a deep breath and nodded. “So, you falling into the sack with me tonight is just to help out your business manager?”

She was getting in deeper with every word. Her defense mechanisms kicked in, hard. “David, you’re being ridiculous. I didn’t come here to fall into the sack with anyone. I came expecting to negotiate some sort of financial agreement.” Anyway, that’s what she’d told herself.

“So what you’re basically telling me is if I’m willing to let you pay me off with great sex, you’d be willing to stick around for a while?”

She frowned in frustration and shook her head, then started to scoot off the bed but he dragged her backward and she found herself flat on her back again, staring up at him as he easily pinned her to the mattress. Her mouth went dry at the look in his eyes. “You aren’t gonna go all crazy on me, are you?”

“No. I’m gonna make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

“What offer?” Her breath was ragged as his powerful body gently pressed hers into the mattress.

“If money is all that concerns you, let’s get a deal on the table, shall we?”

“Deal?” Her eyes widened in worry. This was deteriorating fast.

“I will agree not to sue you and your good friend, on one condition.”

Sam bit her lower lip, feeling breathless and hot. “And what is that?”

“I own you for the next six months.”

Chapter Seven

Sam stared up into his face, waiting for him to grin and tell her he was just joking. He did neither. She swallowed hard but the knot in her throat didn’t budge. “What exactly do you mean, you’ll ‘own’ me?” She held her breath.

“I mean that you’ll be completely mine for the next six months. You travel with me. You keep me company. You do anything I want you to do, no questions asked. And your pal gets off scot-free.” He didn’t move or blink. A small tic in his jaw was the only sign that he was alive and not some stone statue.

“You expect me to be your…plaything…for six months?” she squeaked.

“If that’s what you want to call yourself, that’s okay by me. I would prefer to call you a close, intimate companion.”

Sam felt dizzy and faint from the inability to draw a good breath of air. “That’s friggin’ extortion!”

“Yep. You might even call it blackmail. But that’s what it’s gonna cost you to keep both you and your pal out of court and off the soup line. Unless you didn’t really mean what you said about paying off whatever I thought you owed me.”

Her heart was pounding. Had the man actually just dropped a six-month offer on the table without even blinking? Six months of hot, lusty, mouth-watering sex? Oh. My. God. And if he had, was she up to it?

Oh yeah. She was so up to it, it scared her. She drew a deep breath and frowned at him thoughtfully.

“And if I agree, what assurance do I have that you will keep your end of the bargain?”

David drew a slow breath. “Are you agreeing?”

Sam closed her eyes and savored the way his hard body molded hers to the mattress. Staying with this man would be no hardship at all. Leaving him afterward would be the real problem. She wriggled to get some blood into her legs and felt the instant reaction in his body.

“Don’t do that unless you want what will come next,” he whispered huskily against her temple.

“Does it matter what I want? If I agree to stay, all that will matter is what you want, I would think.” She frowned. The deal was on the table. Now they were down to haggling.

David stared down at her. “Is that a yes?”

“No.”

“It didn’t sound like a ‘go to hell’ to me.”

“I need to think about it.”

“Fine. You think. I’ll enjoy myself.” He lowered his mouth to taste hers again and her thighs drifted open for him without the slightest hesitation. This man was too good to be true. She bit her lip as she watched him strip off the used condom and reach for another. God, even that looked sexy.

As he found her hot, wet center and slid into her body with a soft growl of delight, she knew that her answer would be yes. She’d already planned on taking a few months off to rest. As for the six-month offer, she would give anything to have more time with this man. But she hardly believed it would last any longer than three. He would lose interest. He would let her off the hook. But did she want to be let off the hook?

He was sprawled across the bed, his heavy arm and one massive leg draped across her body, preventing her from slipping out of the bed to go to the bathroom. She shoved at his leg until he roused slightly and said gruffly, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“To the bathroom, unless you prefer a wet bed.” She made a wry face.

“Go ahead.” He rolled onto his other side and, despite her need to exit the bed, she felt suddenly bereft at the loss of his body wrapped around hers.

She slid from the bed and padded into the smaller bedroom, where Snowball yawned and uncoiled from a furry white ball on top of the bed and welcomed her. “Hello, love. I promise I’ll play with you and pet you in the morning, sweetie.” She used the bathroom and scratched his ears, before washing her hands and brushing her teeth.

She stood and gazed at her slim body in the makeup lights and winced at the sight of the huge, nasty bruises that had blossomed on her skin.

It hurt to move. It brought back long-buried memories of the pain she had suffered after the accident.

What on earth did he see in her? Her body was hardly what she would have called sexy. She was trim and had good muscle tone but that was about it. And yet when he looked at her and touched her, his eyes were filled with a dark fire that took her breath away. She splashed cold water on her flushed face. There was no accounting for what some people thought was attractive.

Her eyes moved over the faded white scars that marred the smooth skin of her abdomen and right hip. She reached for a towel and pulled it around her naked body, tucking the ends over to hold the towel securely about her. She frowned into the mirror. The scars were so faint now, she could barely see them. Plastic surgery had worked wonders with the ones across her face. But there was still a fairly visible one on her jawline and another one across her left shoulder. She had thought that no man would find her attractive with those scars.

Her fears had kept her a virgin all these years. And the man who had moved so amazingly through her dreams since she was fourteen didn’t seem to notice the lack of perfection at all. Maybe he just wasn’t very perceptive.

Yes, she wanted to stay with him, even if he tossed her out in a few months and never looked at her again. But she had the feeling that if she acted too damn needy, she would quickly lose her appeal. How could she agree to his demands without making it seem that she was desperate to be around him? Even if she was?

She brushed her hair absently, head down. It was only when she felt his mouth on her shoulder that she jerked back to reality and stared at him in the mirror.

“Would it be an invasion of your privacy to ask how you got this?” he murmured softly, as his hands and arms