Chapter Two
Who was this guy, and where had he been her whole life?
Current dry spell notwithstanding, Brooke was no stranger to sex.
But her experience hadn’t prepared her for this. For Eli staring down at her as if she were a Christmas present and he was trying to decide how to unwrap her, those piercing, almost translucent blue eyes heating her from the inside out. The fingers inside her curved and penetrated deeper, hitting that secret spot that made her cry out with pleasure.
“Like that, do you?” The cocky bastard had the nerve to chuckle.
A smile played around the corners of her lips. Two could play that game.
“Mm-hmm.” She snaked a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him down so her tongue could trace the shell of his ear. She worked her way down to the lobe, taking it between her teeth and giving it a not-too-gentle tug. “How about you? Like that?”
He moaned. “Tease.”
“I’m the tease?” She ran her hands down his back, pulling his shirt from his waistband and slipping underneath to touch him. He had way too many clothes on. She’d have to do something about that. Soon. “You’re the one making me crazy.”
His eyes, heavy-lidded and darkened with desire, met hers. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit longer.”
“Jerk.”
She writhed underneath him, doing her damnedest to force his fingers deeper inside her. He punished her by withdrawing them entirely.
“You’ll be singing a different tune before the night is over.”
“Promises, promises.”
“That’s right.” He hooked his thumbs under the strings of her thong. “And I intend to keep them.”
She didn’t need any coaxing to lift her hips, allowing him to drag her panties down her legs with an excruciating slowness.
“At this rate, we’ll be here until dawn.”
“What’s wrong with that?” He pulled her panties over one foot, then the other. “I don’t have anywhere better to be. You?”
“No.” She dropped one leg to the floor, opening herself to him. “But I’m worried about Miguel.”
He froze with his hand in midair, her panties dangling from one finger. “Boyfriend?”
“Barback. He’s on mornings this week.” She moistened her lips and trailed a fingernail along his bicep. “I’m afraid we might traumatize him if he walks in on us.”
He tossed the thong aside and reached for the hem of her skirt. “We’ll lock the door.”
“He has a key.” She closed a fist around his upper arm. Or tried to. Her fingers barely spanned half the circumference of his meaty bicep.
OMFG. Eli might be a Manhattan yuppie, but he clearly found the time to stay in shape, be it at the gym or running in Central Park or some combination of the above. She shut her eyes and pictured him shirtless and sweaty, fresh from a workout and in need of a hot shower and someone to help scrub his back.
The wet brush of his lips on the sensitive skin behind her knee woke her from her daydream. “Then I guess traumatizing Miguel is a chance we’ll have to take.”
He shoved at her skirt. She cooperated again, raising her ass so he could hike it up to her waist.
“Now you.” She twisted her fingers in the soft fabric of his shirt.
“Fair enough.” He helped her yank it over his head, apparently in too much of a hurry to unbutton it. She slid her hands across his chiseled pecs and traveled down his eight-pack, only stopping when she reached the button on his waistband.
He shot to his feet, and for a minute, she thought she’d done something wrong. But then he shucked off his pants and boxer briefs, leaving him gloriously naked. He stretched out on the futon beside her, the hard length of his erection pressing against her belly.
“This has to go.” He fingered the neckline of her blouse.
She unfastened the buttons one by one and let the shirt fall open, revealing a sheer seafoam-green bra that matched the thong he’d discarded earlier. “Better?”
“Bra, too,” he ordered.
“Bossy.” Even as she complained, she found herself reaching around her back to undo the hooks. It was like he was some sort of sexual sorcerer, manipulating her mind and rendering her incapable of disobeying his gruff demand.
He grinned. “You have no idea.”
She let the straps drift down her arms, keeping the cups in place with her palms.
“Are you going to stay like that all night?” he asked, running his knuckles over the lacy edge of one cup.
She lowered her hands, letting her bra drop slowly. Without taking his eyes off hers, he picked it up and flung it over his shoulder.
“What did you do that for?”
“I don’t want anything between us.”
“Oh.” Something inside her melted, and she wondered again where this model of manhood had come from and what she’d done to deserve him. He touched her like she was a hothouse flower, fragile and precious.
Reaching down, she encircled him with her fingers. He was hot and hard. His free hand covered hers, moving her palm over the head then down the shaft again. She wrapped one leg over his hips, bringing him closer to her warm, wet, and equally ready center.
“Condom,” he growled, rolling away from her to pluck his pants off the floor.
Shit. She was so far gone the thought of protection hadn’t entered her lust-clouded mind. Thank God he’d been aware enough to remember. Not that it said much for her powers of seduction.
He pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his pants and fished out a foil packet, holding it up.
Brooke raised herself up on one elbow and let her eyes wander over his body. “Are you going to stand there all day posing, or are you going to get over here?”
“Door number two.” He suited up and rejoined her on the futon, pulling her on top of him. “Ride me.”
She reached down between them and guided him to her entrance.
“Christ.” He ground out the word from the back of his throat. “You feel so fucking good.”
“You, too.”
She would have said more, but he took hold of her hips and started moving inside her, at first slowly, then faster, robbing her of coherent thought. With each thrust, she released a small, needy moan. Her head fell back, and her eyes closed as she climbed higher and higher, closer to the edge and her ultimate release.
“I’m…”
“Yes.”
“Eli.”
“Now.”
Every cell in her body vibrated with energy, like she was racing a hundred miles an hour, on fire, toward climax. She arched her back and curled her toes, riding the tsunami.
“Holy hell.” Eli’s grip on her hips tightened and with a low, guttural groan he thrust into her one last time.
She collapsed on top of him, burying her face against his neck as her chest rose and fell with her deep breaths. They lay like that for a minute, her sweat-drenched body sticking to his. Silent. Awkward. Unsure.
He was the first to stir, rolling them to one side.
“Holy hell,” he repeated, scrubbing a hand across his stubbled jaw.
“That bad?” She winced at her lame attempt at a joke.
“You know damn well it wasn’t. Fuck, if I had another condom, I’d say let’s do it again.” He glanced down at his semi-hard cock. “In a few minutes, when I’ve had time to recover.”
“If that’s the only thing holding you back, I’ve got good news for you.”
“There’s a box of Trojans in the desk drawer?” he asked hopefully.
“No.” She gave him what she hoped was a saucy smile, filled both hands with his tight butt, and squeezed. “But there’s a condom dispenser in the men’s room.”
…
“You look like crap.” Ginny glanced around the hole-in-the-wall diner, taking in the grease-stained walls and ripped pleather seats. “And why did you want to meet me way out here? What’s wrong with Dean & Deluca? Or the Starbucks on Eighth and 48th?”
Too close to the office, that’s what was wrong. He’d explain as soon as he flagged down a waitress and got what, from the look of the place, was sure to be a crappy cup of coffee.
“Nice to see you, too,” Eli quipped, flapping his arms like a madman and finally getting the attention of one of the servers, a frazzled-looking woman in a pale-pink polyester uniform, who looked like she’d stepped right out of central casting for the role of overworked, underpaid food service employee. He ordered two coffees and took the risk of asking for a couple of menus.
“Here.” Ginny slid his phone across the table to him.
“Thanks.” He slipped it into his pocket. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“I hope the reason for this little excursion is so you can tell me what’s going on.” Frown lines creased her forehead. “You’ve been missing in action for almost two days. I was worried sick.”
Guilt clawed at his gut. What an utter shit he’d been, thinking only of himself. While he was off sucking down scotch and screwing bartenders in Sunset Park, Ginny, the only person he could trust, was tearing her thin hair out and losing sleep over him.
He dropped his chin to his chest. “I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
“I’m glad you’re all right.” She leaned over the table to study him, her bloodshot eyes narrowed. Had she been crying? Because of him? The guilt tightened its grip on his midsection. “You are all right, aren’t you?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
The waitress chose that moment to show up with their coffees and menus. He waited for her to set them down then went on.
“Can I trust you?” After everything he’d been through the last forty-eight hours he had to ask. For his sanity.
“Of course.” She sat back and crossed her legs, emptying a creamer and a packet of sugar into her coffee. “What do you need?”
“I need to lay low for a while,” he said, dropping his voice for some unknown reason. It wasn’t as if he was likely to run into Simon—or anyone else he knew, for that matter—in Brooklyn at eight a.m. on a Thursday. Or any day. He’d had a hard enough time convincing the usually unquestioning Ginny to make the trek across the East River. “And I want to do it here.”
She waved a hand around the restaurant. “In a run-down diner?”
“No.” He sipped his coffee. Just as he’d suspected. Crap. But bad coffee was better than no coffee. He took another sip and grimaced. So much for that theory. “In Sunset Park.”
Her frown lines deepened. “Why Sunset Park?”
He pushed away his cup and explained the plan that formed the minute a certain sexy barkeep made an offhand comment about the Fairway. It had taken a temporary backseat to getting in her pants—well, skirt, technically—but the next morning, once she’d hustled him out the door before Miguel showed up, it started percolating again as he roamed the streets of the Brooklyn neighborhood.
The supermarket wasn’t the only new development popping up. He’d walked past a frozen yogurt shop, a farm-to-table restaurant, and an upscale coffeehouse. That added up to one thing in Eli’s business brain—dollar signs, provided he could get in on the ground floor before property values went through the roof. He’d even found the perfect project on his sojourn—a former factory someone had chopped up into a handful of loft apartments before going belly up and abandoning the job.
“So, let me get this straight,” Ginny said when he was done. “You want to buy an old candy factory in Sunset Park and turn it into luxury condos.”
“Right.”
“And you want me to help you.”
“Right.”
“Without letting Simon know what you’re doing.”
“Right.”
“And the reason for all this secrecy is…” She let the sentence hang in the air between them, waiting for him to fill the void.
Eli hesitated, torn. He shared pretty much everything with his administrative assistant. In the eight years she’d worked for him, the matronly woman had become more than his PA. She was the mother he’d never really had, one who made sure he ate three squares a day and brushed his teeth after every meal and got at least eight hours of sleep. Or tried to.
But admitting he’d been stabbed in the back by his best friend? That wasn’t something he ready to discuss, even with Ginny. The wounds were still too raw.
“Business?” she prompted when he didn’t answer. “Personal?”
“Both,” he admitted. “I think Momentum has a mole.”
Ginny choked on her coffee. “Are you serious?”
“As an eviction notice.” He handed her a napkin. “It’s the only way Dupree could have known about Dumbo. And Stuyvesant. And Flatbush.”
“Who?” She dabbed her mouth and balled up the napkin in her fist. “Simon? “
“I don’t know.” The list of suspects was short, but he wasn’t ready to call it. Not out loud, not until he had proof. Which was why he’d dragged Ginny out to the boroughs. “But I’m going to find out.”
“How are you going to do that if you’re playing recluse in Brooklyn?”
“That’s where you come in.” He paused for the waitress, who was hovering over him with her pad and pen at the ready for their orders. Ginny got oatmeal with raisins and he settled on scrambled eggs and bacon, which he figured even the worst short-order cook couldn’t screw up. When the waitress snapped her pad closed and turned on the heel of her non-slip shoes, he continued. “I need you to be my eyes and ears at the office while I’m quietly working this Sunset Park deal. Keep me in the loop. Keep things running smoothly.”
“Done,” Ginny said without taking even a beat to consider her answer.
“And you’ll have to watch my penthouse. Water my plants. Forward my mail.”
“Where to?”
He pushed a piece of paper with an address scrawled on it across the table. “I’ve got a month-to-month lease for an apartment at Candy Court.”
It hadn’t been easy tracking down the listing agent, getting a hold of the owner, and negotiating a lease in less than two days. But Eli was determined. And when he was determined, shit got done.
“Candy Court?” Ginny unfolded the paper and studied it.
“The building I’m going to buy. And trust me, the name will be the first thing to go. Figured I could kill two birds with one stone. Hide out and do some recon.”
“What am I supposed to tell Simon when he asks for you?” She refolded the paper and tucked it safely into the purse at her feet. “And your sister?”
Shit. His sister. How could he have forgotten her? Paige might be buried in work as a postdoc research fellow at Columbia, but that didn’t mean he could go AWOL without her noticing. She had an annoying habit of dropping by his place unannounced, usually to raid the fridge or do a few loads of laundry.
“I’ll deal with Paige. And I couldn’t care less what you tell Simon. Tell him I’m at a monastery in Tibet. On a sailboat in the Caribbean. Hiking the Appalachian Trail.”
“Fine,” Ginny huffed. “I’ll come up with a suitable cover story on my own. How long will you be in hiding?”
He shrugged. “A few weeks. A few months. However long it takes to figure out who’s doing this.”
Someone—most likely Simon, unless his partner had shot off his mouth and told someone else about the East Harlem project—was fucking with his livelihood. With the business he’d built with his blood, sweat, and tears. And once he smoked them out, they were going down.
Hard.