When he’d read up on Wilde’s Hotel, Cole Knight had not found anything about the bartender looking like a cross between Olivia Munn and Natalie Portman. But with amazing hair. Lots and lots of dark, lustrous hair that he wanted to run his fingers through. There certainly wasn’t a website, or even a Facebook page, just a couple of news items from when things had gone deep-dark bad with the resident biker club. But there’d been no mention about how glorious the staff promised to be in bed. He watched her run his tie through her fingers and loop it around her wrists before walking away. Full-throttle glorious.

He looked up at the ceiling where years of fly spots, spiderwebs full of dust, and the ravages of time had turned what might have been a pretty, white, corniced ceiling into a mess. Looking around he couldn’t work out why the owner was holding out against the development that was going to make this part of L.A. amazing. Wilde’s Hotel was practically crumbling at the seams.

Instead of this architectural relic he was going to open this whole area wide up. Plant trees and gardens among the apartments, build a place where people felt safe to visit their neighbors, not cower every time some over-engineered collection of chrome roared past with a man in leather on the back. Still, in his experience at Knight Industries, it was only a matter of time or money before Ms. Wilde handed over the keys like everyone else on the block.

Straightening as the woman in front of him led him to a door, he pushed thoughts of work aside. He would deal with the owner later. This was why he’d come to L.A. This right here. Escape. Forgetting. Moving on.

“This is my lockup. To a city boy like you it probably looks like a garage. Except that it has my baby in it. ” She pushed open the door.

“Wow.” Her bike was something else. All chrome and red metal, it was polished to a brilliant sheen. “Are you going to take me for a ride?”

She put a finger to her mouth. “Yep. Only not on my bike.”

Very. Nice. Cole was not the type to turn down a lady. Certainly not one who was sure of what she wanted and very intent on getting it. He’d been about to question whether she really wanted to indulge in an evening with someone who was trying to put her out of a job, but she’d put her finger to his mouth, and with a good portion of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his veins words became irrelevant.

He pushed the door shut behind him, threw his jacket down on a chair, and undid the top button of his shirt.

“It was a dark and stormy night and a tall, dark stranger walked into a bar . . . I wouldn’t believe it unless you were standing right there.” She flicked off the main light and was suddenly haloed by the small golden desk lamp behind her.

Her voice practically purred. When she’d first spoken to him he thought she’d as likely deck him as seduce him, but now her voice was rich, like molten chocolate. A deep, dark warmth fanned out from his stomach and pooled in his groin. “I didn’t ask for the storm, or the breakdown, or the company. But I can’t say I’m disappointed in any of it now. I’d break down again in a heartbeat if you were the rescue crew.”

She laughed. “Fantasies of me riding up on a Harley to save you?”

Too perfect. He pulled her to him and lowered his voice to a growl. “How about you fix my motor right now.”

She laughed and it put lines of caramel through her chocolate eyes. “So much cheese, so little time.”

“I’ve got all night.”

Her laughter faded and she looped his tie around one of his wrists. “Don’t know if you’ll last all night, but I’ll give you points for trying.” She took his other wrist from around her waist and before he could protest, had tied his hands together with his vintage silk tie. Full-throttle glorious was an understatement. This was what he needed. No strings. No commitments. No exes running off with other men. Even the thought of that betrayal chilled his skin and the woman in front of him noticed.

“Don’t like it when you’re not in control?”

Snap out of it. This is L.A., not New York. You have the board behind you on this one, and no one is cheating on anyone this time. “You get to be in charge. For a minute or so. My turn next.”

“Next time?”

“I did say I had all night.” His hands bound, he still managed to cup her chin, and tilting her face to his, he pulled her into a light kiss. Hot. Chocolate. Her lips were soft, not marshmallow, but pliant, sweet and plump. Their connection surged through him as if she were plugged into the wall socket and when he pulled back he half-expected to see steam curl from her mouth.

“Not bad, Slick.”

Cole’s lip twitched. “Guess I’m a lot more city than you’re used to.”

“Guess so. Although I imagine I’m a lot more bike leather than you’re used to.”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

“We’ll see.” She started undoing the buttons on his shirt, not taking her eyes from his as she did so. He went to undo the tie that bound his wrists, but she put her hand over the knot. “Now, now. Patience, Slick.”

Tie me up and throw me to the tigers. The heat from the kiss moved south and his erection started to push against the seam of his pants.

She finished with his shirt, and pulled it back over his shoulders, exposing his chest, before pushing him onto a large couch, hands still tied in front of him. “Your shirt might get a little creased, but I’m sure you’ll live.” She undid his belt, and in one swift movement pulled it clean out of the loops on his pants. Strap of leather in hand and a wicked smirk on her face, she looked every inch the classic femme fatale.

“I don’t get to undress you?”

Rather than answer, she undid the clasp on her leather vest, dropped it to the floor, and pulled her white fitted tee over her head.

Can’t ask for more than that. Black lace. Black jeans. Soft lengths of black wavy hair. Cole’s muscles tensed as his body and mind struggled between staying still and pulling her on top of him. “Should I ask what you’re planning to do with me or do I have to wait and see?”

“You’ll have to be patient. I imagine that’s hard for you.” She curled a length of hair around one finger and he was consumed by the need to feel that hair on his bare chest. She wasn’t done. “I was thinking I’d hold your arms over your head.” She toyed with the button on her jeans before opening the fly to reveal a peep of yet more black lace. “Strip you naked.” She pulled her jeans down and off. “And ride you off into the sunset.”

Sunset, sunrise, broom closet, as long as you ride me, I’m there. A low growl escaped his lips. She wanted to be in charge for a minute. Fine. Good. A minute wasn’t much to ask for. A little titillation was fun. She bent forward over him. More than fun. This was so different from his usual encounters; he wanted to enjoy letting it play out. All the way. He tried to relax and let his eyes drink in the backlit woman in front of him. Despite her five-foot-nothing height, she didn’t seem short when he wasn’t standing next to her. Well-muscled legs led to a perfectly proportioned waist where a fine lacy pair of panties sat comfortably just under her belly button. There was some meat to her, a butt to hold onto, and breasts, man, two glorious pale breasts that promised to overflow even his ample-sized hands.

“Don’t think you really need these.” She knelt down and undid his shoes. He had to strain to see her at his feet, but the view . . . Her arms pushing her full breasts together, the hint of pink nipples straining through black lace, man, she might be a red-leather biker, but she was not the tomboy he’d first pinned her for. Thank you, god of car breakdowns. “I did not think my evening would turn out like this.”

She stopped. “Are you complaining?”

“No. Hell no.” He struggled to sit up and convince her he wanted to be nowhere but here, but she pushed him back down before pulling off his socks and yanking down his suit pants.

“Because if you were, I could organize something different for your evening.”

“No. Please.”

She paused. “Are you begging me to stay?”

“Do I need to?”

“I don’t know. Try it out and see how I like it.”

“Please?”

“That all you got? Pretend I’m a big-shot city girl and I’ve got a nice fat bonus in my pocket for you.” She stood and scanned his almost naked form. “Although it looks like it’s you who has a nice bonus in your pocket for me.”

As she gazed at his erection, Cole felt it pulse, ready, hungry for the woman tantalizingly out of reach. He lowered his voice. “Pretty please with a nice big orgasm on top.”

She laughed, wickedly, and started to crawl up his body before pushing his hands over his head like she’d promised.

If they could have, his muscles would have tensed harder with the contact with her skin. The soft insides of her thighs whispered past his chest and every tendon wanted to grip her, devour her, relish her. He pulled at the tie binding him. No way was it going to last much longer.

She saw him. “Stop fighting it. Play the game, Slick.”

He stilled himself a moment. “Don’t stop then.”

“I haven’t even started yet.”

She straddled him and ran a finger down her neck to the top of her bra. Slipping first one strap, then the other from her shoulders she let her glorious breasts spill out before unclipping the bra altogether. Bending forward, she let her nipples make contact with his and his whole body arched to get closer to hers. Hot. Skin. Hard . . . everything. He wanted, oh he wanted her bad.

“Enough.” Yanking the tie apart he pulled her on top of him and sought her mouth with his. This time the kiss was anything but light. His tongue dove in and out of her warm, sweet mouth and just as hungrily, her tongue danced with his, her mouth opening wider to grant him fuller access. He flicked his eyes open and saw she had opened her eyes too. Flipping her onto her back he let his hands have full access to her body. Soft. Warm. Delicious. Taking mouthfuls of her neck, shoulder, breast, she filled his senses. Her taste, her scent, her skin.

“I knew you wouldn’t last long. Men like you don’t like to relinquish control.”

“I’m going to last longer than you.” He moved down her body and sighed hot breath through her skimpy black lace panties.

“Oh, I, that’s good,” she whimpered.

“Maybe I should tie you up. Don’t want you getting away now that I’ve got your attention.” Her took both her wrists in his right hand and pushed them over her head.

“There’s no issue with me running away now. Not till you follow through on what you just promised.”

Nice. Letting go of her hands, he tugged her panties off with one movement and spread her thighs. Oh yes, very nice. Kissing his way in from her thigh, Cole let his tongue taste a morsel of her inner core. Delicious. Unable to hold himself back any longer, he plunged his tongue deep into her sex. Her moan was deep and desperate enough for him to know he’d hit the right spot. Circling and lapping in and out, he drank her up, relishing her musky, sweet scent as her muscles started tightening around him.

The way she writhed on the couch was incredible. Sexy, uninhibited—a marked change from his last partner.

She gasped as he slipped one finger then another inside her and matched its rhythm with his tongue. Leaving his fingers right where they were he moved back up her body, wanting to have a mouthful of her breast before her took her over the edge.

“Don’t stop.”

“I wasn’t planning on stopping.” Circling his finger over her clit he felt her straining, her hips bucking beneath him and he released her breast, wanting to have his mouth on her when she climaxed. In a matter of seconds her thighs tightened and she threw her head back with a healthy groan of pleasure.

Breathing hard, she reached down and tore the wrapper of a condom she must have grabbed earlier. “No rest for the wicked, Slick.” She pushed him off and onto his back.

The first contact with his rock-hard erection sent a shudder through him. But with quick, easy strokes, she sheathed him before he could utter a word.

“Now then, Slick. Are you all talk, or . . .” As she straddled him and slid herself down onto his cock, her words were swallowed by an achingly sexy sigh.

He groaned and had to shut his eyes a moment to let the sensation ripple through his whole body. Catching his breath he bit his lip, grabbing two handfuls of her glorious butt to slow her down a moment.

“Your car broke down, but you’re my ride, Slick. Accept it. Go with it. Enjoy it.”

Easy enough. Eyes open again he drank in the overwhelming montage of sensations. He watched her body writhe up and down on him, saw the soft bare skin of her underarms exposed as she lifted them over her head and ran her fingers through her hair. He smelled their sex meet and mingle, blending with the sweet scent of bourbon and her deeper musky perfume. He heard the little whimpers that escaped her lips as she rode him, heard his own breath catch as she sped up and drove him deeper inside. And he felt the luscious depths of her center, muscles gripping and releasing him; his cock urged on to greater penetration.

As if she sensed his need, she fell forward onto him and her hot skin over his only intensified his quickening drive. His hands still gripping her butt, he propelled her up and down his length. Bending his knees and digging his heels in, Cole thrust up into her deeper and deeper as she ground herself against him.

“Oh, my, yes, right there.” Her voice was still deep, but the urgency of her need raked at the end of her sentence, cutting off her breath.

Too soon he felt his climax coming. “Slow down. You’re going to drive me over the edge.”

“No slowing down, Slick,” she gasped. “Make me cum. Now.” She leaned in and kissed him, hot, deep, full of the passion and claws of a tiger taking her prey.

He pulled back from the kiss and bent his head to take her full breast into his mouth. Tracing the outline of her nipple with his tongue, Cole couldn’t help biting it gently. She gasped and Cole’s stomach contracted as she clenched around him and demanded, again, “Now!”

He stopped holding on and let himself pulse deep inside her, his breath leaving him, his back arching, his thrusts meeting with her thrumming muscles and the two of them spiraling up into a burst of bright white light.

For a moment there was nothing else. The world was quiet perfection. Glorious, simple, silent.

He felt his breath settle, his heart still racing. Then as if a switch had been flicked, noises started to creep back around the edges of Cole’s perception: their breath, the creak of the couch, her sigh. She rolled off him and discreetly wrapped the condom in a tissue from the end table.

“Well,” she said, turning back to him on the couch.

“Indeed.”

She sat up and a long strand of black hair fell over her shoulder to coil around her pinked-up nipple.

“Sorry I didn’t go along with your tie - me - up - and - leave - me plan.”

She played with the strand of hair. “It was fun while it lasted.” She put a finger to her mouth and his stomach tightened again. God, she was something else. Something delicious. Coiling the strand of hair around her finger, her eyes widened as his cock threatened to harden again.

“Already?”

“Apparently.” He laughed as she blushed. “Of all the things I would have called you, coy and pretty are not two words that would have sprung to mind. And yet, there you are. Coy and pretty with your flushed face and your glorious hair.”

She smiled and her rosy cheeks deepened in color. “Be right back.” She jumped up, wrapping a blanket from the end of the couch around her, and ran into what he assumed was a toilet. He wasn’t going anywhere, so he shut his eyes and settled back a minute to wait for her.

* * *

He closed his eyes and the darkness swallowed him instantly. Black figures walked toward him, their low muttering of you’ll never make it work filling his ears. Batting at them ineffectually, the figures only laughed as they tore apart plans for the L.A. development. You’ll never make it work. Failure, failure, failure. Their hisses echoed around him and then a face leered in close: Martha, laughing and jeering just like the rest. Men’s faces followed hers, all of them laughing at him, all of them threatening to destroy his chance at proving he was done with the blackness. That he was back in control now. “No.” He struggled to sit up. “You can’t take this away from me, too.”

“Hey.”

A strand of hair tickled his nose and he batted it out of the way, reaching for the woman beside him instinctively. He opened his eyes to lustrous black hair.

“You fell asleep.”

He shook his head to rid it of the last vestiges of his dream. “Seems so.” He pulled her down to his side and she snuggled into his arms. Nice. For a minute he allowed himself the pleasure of having a naked woman by his side who had no hold over him and who could do him no harm. She fit well and he slid an exploratory hand down her thigh to check her reaction to a repeat performance.

She stopped him. “Who’s Martha?” she asked cautiously.

He froze. “What do you mean?”

“In your sleep you were muttering her name. You were more than muttering, actually. I thought about taking notes. Sounded like you were issuing execution orders for a bunch of people.”

“Martha’s my ex.”

“Huh. She the one that ran out on you then?”

“How did you know?”

“You hinted at it earlier when you were talking about me running out. And you didn’t exactly sound like you wanted to meet up with her for coffee.”

“No.” Cole’s jaw tightened.

“And Jeremy? Paul?”

He frowned. She doesn’t know any of them, chill. True, his hit list was hardly going to interest anyone who wasn’t in the commercial development industry. And it wasn’t like he was about to eliminate any of them, except financially.

“How long was I asleep for?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it was kinda cute. I wore you out.” She tweaked his nose. “So? It sounded like you need a good vent. What’s the deal with the rest of your hit list?”

She said hit list. Cole took a long look at the gloriously naked woman by his side. It didn’t mean anything. It couldn’t. She was a bartender at a biker bar. He let out a breath full of bourbon and post-sex drowsiness and stared at the ceiling a second. “I’m new in town, and not one of those shmucks is happy about it. They’re scared I’m going to take their business from them.”

“Should they be?”

He nodded grimly then couldn’t stop himself. “Jeremy Holder has been doing dirty deals since he was in diapers. Half the LAPD is on his payroll. And Paul Manning is a plain-out bastard. He bullied his brother out of the country, fired his board of directors, and now thinks he’s king of the world. Just because people let his company build those nasty apartment blocks doesn’t mean they should. His contractors cut corners every chance they get. Someone is going get killed on one of his sites soon, you can count on it.”

“Shit.”

He took a deep breath as the mix of alcohol and post-sex haze wrapped itself tighter around him. “We had that. An accident. Bloody mess that I was left to clean up.”

She was quiet, her breathing thick and even, and he was lulled into continuing. It felt good to talk. It had been a long time since he’d let anyone in. “One of our partners pushed too hard to get a contract done in record time. A guy got hurt. Bad. Stupid corner cutting. It should have gone to court, my company could have paid out, we have insurance, but I found out too late. Our guy threatened to destroy the injured worker if he squealed, and in the meantime a bunch of builders got pissed on his behalf. There was almost a walkout. That would have made the papers and it would have been game over. I ended up having to pay all of them off. I’m just glad to be here, starting over, where no one knows about it.” He rubbed his jaw. “Man, makes me look worse than Paul Manning and that’s saying something.”

“Hang on,” she sat back. “Builders? Apartment blocks? Paul Manning as in the guy that runs Manning Construction?”

“The very same. Bastard.”

Cole felt the change in her before he saw it.

“And . . .” She gulped. “Jeremy Holder who built that crappy mall downtown?”

“The one that’s falling apart. Yep. That’s partly why I’m here. The other firms are so awful everyone’s gonna jump at the chance to work with someone with integrity. Well, that and it means I can run this project on my own terms.”

“The other firms. Development firms.” She paused, took a break. “What’s your last name?”

Her face was pale and her eyes had darkened to midnight black. Uh-oh. “Knight.”

“Any relation to Frank Knight?”

He nodded. “He’s my father.”

“The one who’s trying to buy this hotel and everything around it?”

He paused a minute. “Not him. Me.”

Now her face faded to a sickly wash of parchment white. “But Frank Knight runs Knight Industries. Eighty-year-old, hunched, and faraway Frank.”

“Seventy-eight, actually. We kept him on as director because I couldn’t take that title from him, would have broken his heart. The company has been his life. Is his life. The board made me the chief operational officer five years ago, of that and my other two companies. But that hasn’t stopped them from meddling when it suits them.”

Her mouth opened and closed.

“You never told me your name. We’re not secretly related?” He tried for a joke, but knew, even as he said it, that the miscommunication circling the room was about to drop and drop hard. Tick, tick, tick. Boom.

She stood up and wrapped herself back up in the blanket. “It’s time for you to leave.”

“Leave? Now? Okay. If you can point me to another room.”

“No. Leave. Get out.”

“It’s pouring out there. I thought this was a hotel?”

“My name,” she said, drawing herself up as tall as she could manage. “Is Briony Wilde. Of Wilde’s Hotel? Ring any bells?”

Now it was his turn to balk. “Shit. Why didn’t you say—”

“Say what? That developers aren’t welcome? Shit is right. You’re an asshole. Coming in here, acting all knight in shining armor when the whole time you were trying to soften me up before you crush my family business. The only home I’ve ever known.”

“Crush your family business?”

“My family, my business. Now. Get. The. Hell. Out.”