Bound By Passion: No Desire Denied / One More Kiss / Second-Chance Seduction

REID STOOD ON the balcony of his room, his hands gripping the stone railing like a lifeline. He’d stepped out because it was as far away as he could get from the connecting door to Nell’s bedroom. The cold shower he’d already taken hadn’t done a thing to lessen his desire. While the water had poured down on him, he had reviewed the reasons why it would be a mistake to go to her. She needed sleep badly. He needed some distance to regain his perspective. Making love to her again would only increase her expectation that he could give her something that he was incapable of. He didn’t want to hurt her more than he already had. Etcetera, etcetera and so forth.

Cut the crap, Sutherland. The real reason you’re holding on to the railing like a lifeline is because you want more than to make love to her again. You simply want to be with her. To lie beside her and hold her. To talk to her. Not just about the case or the sapphires. He wanted to know more about her. What she’d shared with him beneath the stone arch had only made him more curious.

Pillow talk. It was an old-fashioned and clichéd term that his mother had used to describe one of the joys of her marriage to A.D. The fact that he could envision himself doing it with Nell scared the hell out of him. Spending the night with a woman had been near the top of his never-do list. He’d never brought one to his home because he valued the freedom, the flexibility to leave before morning. Staying the night built the kind of intimacy he’d never desired.

With Nell, he wanted to spend the night, to wake in the morning holding her close, to see her face in the light of a new day. He wanted intimacy.

Damn her. No other woman had made him want more than he could have.

Lifting his hands from the stone railing, he found that his fingers had gone numb from the tightness of his grip. He had to think of something else. Vi had been right. He needed to sleep. While he slept, perhaps his unconscious mind would let him know what to do about Nell.

But the thought of going to an empty bed kept him lingering on the balcony. The night was so quiet that he could hear individual waves licking the rocks along the shore. Flexing his fingers, he shifted his focus to the gardens that stretched from beneath his balcony to the stone arch and the hillside in one direction and the lake in the other.

The stone arch was clearly visible in the floodlights, and the moon spilled enough light to make out the tops of the trees and the shadowy paths that wound through the gardens. Nell was so sure that Eleanor had left clues in the painting, but Daryl had been dead-on. The cliff face was on the opposite side of the castle from the gardens. If Eleanor had intended to leave clues to the location of the sapphires in the painting, she’d left a big one out.

And if he stayed on his balcony all night, he definitely wouldn’t be at the top of his game tomorrow. He was about to turn and head for bed when his cell phone rang. A quick glance at the caller ID told him that it was Cam. He must have news.

“Problem or favor?” Reid asked.

“Neither. Adair and I discovered something...curious.”

Reid knew his brother well enough—Cam wouldn’t call in the middle of the night unless he thought it was important. Aware of how sound could carry over water, he stepped back into his bedroom and slid the balcony doors shut. “Tell me.”

“It was Adair’s idea,” Cam said. “Mom’s been in the library ever since she got permission to visit the Campbell estate, and A.D.’s been in the gardens. Neither one of them has gotten a tour of the castle, so this afternoon Adair convinced the housekeeper to give us one.”

“You found something on our Gwendolen,” Reid said.

“Not exactly. We learned the estate has fallen on hard times. The story in the village is that it started to decline about two hundred years ago—just about the time of Angus and Eleanor’s flight to the New World. Due to the lack of a male heir in Eleanor’s generation, the castle and the estate went to a cousin, but the money just wasn’t there. The present housekeeper says that her mother worked here after the Second World War when most of the furniture was sold or taken by debt collectors. She’s still alive, and we’re going to visit her first thing in the morning. But it’s what we didn’t find on our tour that’s curious.”

“What did you not find on your tour?”

“About the only things that didn’t get sold are a series of portraits in the upstairs ballroom. It’s a regular rogues’ gallery of Campbell heirs and family members. Each generation has a family portrait with the male heir and his wife and children. The last one has Eleanor in it—the same long blond hair. The housekeeper says the family wouldn’t sell them, but it’s more likely that the pictures wouldn’t be of much value to anyone but the Campbells.”

It was unlike Cam to take so long in getting to the point, and that fact alone had Reid’s curiosity growing.

“The thing is, none of the wives are wearing the sapphires—not even Eleanor’s mother,” he said. “Adair’s been nagging me ever since we left the ballroom to call you about it. She says that the sapphires should be in the paintings, and she claims their conspicuous absence means that Deanna Lewis might be right. The sapphires were not Eleanor’s dowry because they never belonged to the Campbells.”

“There’s certainly an argument to be made for that theory,” Reid said. In his mind he could hear Nell making it. If the Campbells had been in legitimate possession of the Stuart sapphires, surely a record would have been displayed in the family portraits.

“Yeah,” Cam said in a resigned tone. “It opens up a whole new can of worms. If the Stuart sapphires didn’t belong to the Campbells, who the hell did they belong to and how did Eleanor get hold of them?”

“That’s what you need to find out. And fast,” Reid said. “Anything else?”

“Now that you mention it, I am curious about whether or not you’ve read the fantasies in the MacPherson sisters’ fantasy box.”

Reid let a beat of silence go by. Of course, Cam would know about the box. Duncan would probably know about it, also. “No, I haven’t.”

“Well, you have a treat in store. Long story short, the sisters got together on the night our parents married and wrote some very explicit sexual fantasies. Then they buried them in the stone arch so that they would eventually come true. Nell wrote hers on pink paper, and it’s very interesting.”

Reid frowned. “Are you telling me that you’ve read them?”

“Hey, I’m CIA. I’m trained to leave no stone unturned.”

Reid couldn’t identify all the emotions that shot through him. Fury that someone had invaded Nell’s privacy was the first one. “You had no business reading Nell’s.”

“Whoa, big bro. Calm down.”

Reid was shocked to find that he needed to. He was pacing, and his free hand had clenched into a fist. If Cam had been in the room, that fist would already have collided with his jaw. He stopped short and drew in a deep breath.

“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” Cam asked.

Reid found he couldn’t answer. He was very much afraid that the answer was yes. And if he said it out loud...

“I’m going to take your silence as an affirmation,” Cam said. “I bet Duncan that you’d be a goner within the first twelve hours of your arrival at the castle. The profiler believes that you’re a cautious man, and it would take at least twenty-four hours for you to take the fall. I win.” Cam was chuckling as he ended the call.

Reid stood there for a moment staring down at his cell phone. Then he reached deep for his control. He couldn’t, he wouldn’t think about his feelings for Nell right now. He had a forty-eight-hour countdown clock to deal with, which left them only thirty-six hours at most. When he glanced up, he discovered he was standing right in front of the connecting door to Nell’s room, his hand on the knob. But before he could turn it, it opened, and he barely recognized this version of Nell, who took one of his hands and drew him into her room.

11 (#u838c0fae-1d89-5303-9e2e-1306e3078cfa)

NELL’S HEART THREATENED to pound right out of her chest. She was not going to let Reid spoil her plan this time. Not after all her careful preparations.

He’d taken forever to get to his room. She’d used the time to light candles, chill champagne and dress in the black lace designer lingerie she’d purchased in the boutique below Piper’s apartment. When she’d put it on and looked at herself in the mirror, she hadn’t even recognized the old Nell.

Perfect. The lacy tank top stopped just short of the string-bikini-style panties, leaving the skin at her waist exposed. She placed a hand there now to help her focus.

It wasn’t just black lace that she’d armed herself with. She also had plenty of other ideas. But there was a world of difference between imagining something and actually doing it. In her daydreams she’d never had to deal with the effect of his gaze as it swept down her body. Flames licked first along the nerve endings at her throat, then flickered lower to the sensitive skin at the tops of her breasts. She sucked in a breath when she felt the fire reach her belly, then sear her legs right down to her toes. He was still fully clothed, and that made her remember her plan.

Strip him. You can definitely do that. Just talk your way through it.

Careful not to look directly into his eyes or at his mouth, she said, “I intend to seduce you, Reid. I wanted to do it in the gardens, but it may be a while before either of us is safe there.”

Good. Words had always come easily to her.

“You have too many clothes on.” She reached for the first button on his shirt and slipped it free. “Better.”

She could do this.

“Nell—”

“Shh.” Tamping down on the impulse to meet his eyes, she concentrated on the second button and felt a spurt of triumph when she freed it. “You don’t have to say a word. You want to tell me that we both need our sleep if we’re going to find the necklace tomorrow. And you’re expecting that I’ll obey like the good little girl I was at six. But I’m not that girl anymore.”

As if to emphasize her point to both of them, she ignored the last button, and in a move she’d dreamed of forever, she shoved the shirt down his arms so that it trapped his wrists at his sides. When he sucked in his breath, the thrill shot straight through her.

Turning him, she placed a hand on his chest and urged him toward her bed. “Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of getting you out of your clothes?” The fast thud of his heart against her palm was rewarding, arousing. When she backed him into the side of the mattress, she slid her hand down his now-bare chest to his belt. Thrilled at his quick expulsion of breath, she lingered there, tracing her finger along the top of his waistband.

“I wanted to do this on the day our parents were married.” Taking her time, she unfastened the buckle, then pulled the belt through the loops. Slowly. “I described the way I would strip you in one of the fantasies I wrote about you that night.”

Moonlight streamed through the glass doors, highlighting all the planes and angles of the skin she’d exposed. She simply had to touch him again. Tossing the belt aside, she ran her hands from his waist to his throat. It wasn’t just the sight of him that fascinated her. She loved the contrast in their skin tones. His was tan; hers was pale. Pleasure sharpened at each response. The sound of his breath expelling when her nails scraped down over his nipples, the rapid hammer of his heart against her lips, the way her name caught in his throat when she unsnapped his jeans and slid the zipper down—each separate sensation thrilled her, enchanted her.