Hot Ticket (25 page)

“Okay, let’s try this again. I need something to
wear
to sleep in. Got an old T-shirt you can spare?”
Pull up your jeans,
she thought.
No, lower them. No, drop them.
She backed into the wall. “T-shirt?” she squeaked and rubbed her elbow.

Tiago took her hand in his—strong and tan against fish-belly white and freckled. “C’mon.”

“Big and long, please,” she said on the way to his bureau.

His grin grew. “You know I can accommodate that request.”

“The shirt, damn it.”

“Sheesh, talk about single-minded,” he griped.

His suite had a gym—which would account for his six-pack abs. A sofa bed was open, bed untouched. In the corner stood a wooden circular stairway that looked as if it came from an old British library.

He tossed a “Stolen by Tiago” shirt her way. “Go change. I want to show you something.”

“If I had a buck for every time I’ve heard that.” After she changed, their adjoining door remained unlocked, so she went back to his suite. When she saw that he hadn’t snapped his jeans, a tingling happy dance went on at her core.

“Well hell,” he said. “You’re wearing your robe instead of my shirt.”

“Speaking of which, I’m surprised you don’t have, ‘Stolen by Tiago’ tattooed on your butt.”

“I’d pay big to see it tattooed on yours.”

“Likewise,” she said, and the air crackled with an invisible charge of electricity. “A stud till the end,” she said.

“And proud of it.”

“You know, Tiago, you pride yourself on stealing—kisses, panties, bases—second, third, and even home—but you do understand that you can’t steal first.”

“Your point?”

“You have to
earn
first base. And if you don’t, the other stuff doesn’t matter. It’s called growing up.”

“I’ve heard of it,” he said. “Now put on my shirt. It’s from my personal stash, and I like the idea of you wearing it.”

“I am wearing it . . . under the robe.”

“I thought you were hot.”

“But not stupid.”

“Right. Let’s go.” He led her to the stairway.

“Are we going up?” she asked.

He
sure was, Tiago thought. “Yep, I’ve got a surprise for you up there.”

“I’ll just bet you do.”

“No, this is on the level. You first,” he said, but he couldn’t keep a straight face.

She was going commando, and they both knew it. “I have to give it to you,” she said. “I’m having a good time. I forgot how entertaining you could be. But no need to be a gentleman. Do go first.”

“My mama taught me better,” Tiago said, admitting to himself that he hadn’t had this much fun in years . . . away from the cameras.

Stepping into his upper-level glass-domed observation car at night was like riding the Milky Way. Despite its overstuffed sofas and recliners, minibar, player piano, and hot tub, the starry night sky stole the show.

With the full moon casting soft light about Quinn’s hair and
shoulders, she looked so radiant that their time apart seemed to slip away. They were seventeen again, and she was the center of his universe.

“I feel as if I could touch heaven,” she said.

Yeah,
he thought,
me, too,
amazed, still, by the sight of her, here, with him.

The first passenger, ever, to enter his sanctum sanctorum, Quinn turned in place and took it all in—the hideaway ambience, the old-world charm, the new-world luxuries.

“Do you still play the piano?” she asked.

Her dart burst his bubble and hit him where it hurt most, his pride. “You’re toast if you tell the media.”

Her smile grew. “I guess that would apply to your talent for tap, jazz, and ballroom dancing as well?”

“Shit, you’ve got a memory . . . which you will keep to yourself.” He wagged a warning finger, and she caught it between her teeth. That was when Tiago knew
he
was toast, because the sizzle between them hadn’t cooled in thirteen years. If anything, time and distance had heightened it.

He lowered his guard and met her gaze, and she released his finger and stepped back, something inside her speaking to the fear in him.

“Here,” he said, safely back in the new millennium. “Relax and watch the sky.” He pulled a sofa into a bed.

“Wait a minute,” she said, her suspicion tempered by the kind of banked excitement she might be able to hide from someone else but not him.

“You watch the stars,” he said. “And I’ll play the piano.”

She threw her robe aside and did as she was told, a rare phenomenon. “No funny business,” she said, with uncertainty . . . or was it hope?

She looked lost in his shirt, which made him feel protective, and possessive, which scared the crap out of him. “I won’t touch you,” he promised, “believe me. Not even if you beg.”

“Saint Tiago.” She rose to her knees and cut him off at his. “I think they named a city after you in California.”

“Well,” he said, overcome by lust, “maybe if you beg.”

He played and sang “their song” from senior year, “I’ll Be There.” He’d thought of her every time he’d heard it since.

She settled back and watched the stars while he watched her and played it again.

When he finished, he went over and found that she was still awake. “Just call my name,” he said, and she slipped her hand in his and pulled him down to the bed.

“You started sitting beside me in the first grade,” she said. “Remember?”

“You had the nicest crayons.”

“Man, you know all the good lines.”

“Thanks, but I don’t get to use that one much.”

“You were my best pal,” she said. “Did you know?”

“And your worst enemy.”

She chuckled to cover a sob and failed, but he pretended different. “What do you think?” she asked. “Was that, like, a love/hate relationship we had, from kindergarten to twelfth grade?”

“Yeah, and I’m sorry it ended on the negative side.”

She bit her lip. “Me, too, not that it matters anymore.”

“Right. So why
did
you disappear the day after we had sex?” Tiago hated himself for needing to know, even now.

“Careful,” she said, leaning away from him till none of their body parts touched. “The question implies you give a rat’s tail.”

“I do. I mean, I did.”

“I woke up and you were gone,” she said. “What’s to explain? Twelve hours later, Daddy offered to send me to Paris until I started Harvard, and I went. Next thing I heard, you were in California. End of story.”

Quinn—the kindergarten sandbox bully. Quinn—the prettiest girl in the class, the valedictorian who pushed him down on her
bed and stole his virginity, more or less. Quinn—who invaded his train, and his heart, and morphed his long-held anger into a dangerous case of dissatisfaction.

His
Quinn—in his bed.

Women offered themselves to him faster than he could steal bases. He was wasting his time falling again for the only woman who ever left first. “In all those years, do you know when I liked you best?” he asked.

“Please don’t say the night we had sex.”

“I loved the little girl who appeared in the park one day in braids and a dorky frog T-shirt. She looked me straight in the eye, that girl, and for once, she didn’t come out swinging.”

“I was scared wartless that you were gonna pull my braids.”

“I forgot to be a terror when I looked at your pouty little mouth that day. Something happened inside me.”

“You hit puberty?”

“We were eight.”

“I rest my case.”

Tiago smiled. “You looked like you were inviting me to kiss you.”

“So you did.”

“Yeah, and I asked if I could kiss you again, and you said, ‘Ribbit,’ like it was a yes.”

“It was.”

“I liked that girl. What happened to her?”

“She grew up.”

“Bummer.” Tiago stroked Quinn’s cheek with strands of her copper hair. “Wish I’d had a frog shirt to lend you tonight.”

She raised her eyes to his. “Ribbit.”

And he kissed her.

Tiago had already lost his head kissing Quinn in a railroad car full of people, so he’d have to be doubly careful now, alone with her beneath the stars . . . in a bed.

Man, he was in trouble.

He kissed her like a man drowning, he knew, but he tried to keep his hand over her shirt, along the straight of her spine, but before he knew it, he was sliding that hand up her soft, sweet leg, and she was sighing, and stretching, and rolling to her back. Oh boy.

Instead of cupping her perfect bottom as he anticipated, he found her perfect center instead, and her needy whimpers at his touch were like music that fed his heart. Quinn, slick and sleek and more than ready, was open and dew-kissed as a morning glory at dawn.

About two minutes in, she came like a firecracker.

“I think you broke the land speed record,” he said, raising her up again. “When was the last time you—”

“You mean with a man?”

He was bringing her off again and having a hard time
concentrating. Besides, he was throbbing so hard, his zipper was taking shark bites out of his cock.

Quinn wailed her second release, but she wasn’t done, and Tiago thought maybe they’d break more than one record tonight. He tried to nudge his jeans down while giving her the kind of attention that humbled and excited him. “Yeah, with a man,” he finally said.

“Max . . . somebody . . . New Year’s Eve . . . two thousand . . . something.”

“That’s all I need to know, Baby. Have some more. That’s it. Come on, you can do it. How’s this, right here. Oh, that’s the spot, slow and deep, I can tell.” God, she was sweet—and responsive as all hell. He’d forgotten. How could he forget? “This is all for you,” he said. “Let’s keep it going, Sweetheart. Let’s grand-slam you right out of the ballpark.”

 Quinn opened her eyes to a living dream, the one where she wakes in the morning with Tiago wrapped around her, both of them naked, the sun streaming in the windows. But for a dose of reality, this time she had the sky overhead and the incredible scent of fresh coffee wafting up the stairs. Tiago must have a standing order.

While he continued to snore softly, his morning boner patted the back of her hand, nice, big, and happy to be alive, so she gave it a “hello there” stroke. Soon enough, her hand was full and being coaxed into rhythm.

“You said you wanted it big and long,” Tiago said, yawned, and stretched to his back. “Are you trying to have your wicked way with me? Say yes.”

Quinn adored touching him, and not just his impressive erection, but all of him—his face, his chest, his long tapered feet, and everything in between. “Where’s my shirt?” she asked.

“Don’t look at me. You threw it off and said you wanted to feel your breasts against my ‘nice hairy chest.’ Your words.”

“What a hussy.”

Tiago chuckled. “You should be proud.”

“I would be, but . . . I don’t think you got your share, or any share.”

“No foolin’.”

“You didn’t, did you?”

“I passed out from exhaustion, if that counts for anything.”

Quinn buried her warm face in his neck. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry hell. I witnessed a miracle. You gave new meaning to the term ‘multiple orgasm.’ Damn, but I’d put you in the record books if I could count that high.”

Quinn giggled and burrowed against him, settling in to give him his due, but someone knocked at the door downstairs.

“Much as I like what you’re doing,” he said, covering her hand to stop her but helping her instead, “and believe me, I do, I need to take a rain check. I have a train to run, damn it. What’s say I answer the door and then we get our act together and go looking for lunch?”

“What are you going to do with this?” She knuckled his magnificent hard-on.

“I’m saving it for the Mighty Quinn. By the way, you earned that title last night. Ah, yes.” He arched. “Do that again. No . . . stop. You’re taking me past pecker endurance.”

Quinn donned the robe, went downstairs, pilfered a cup of steaming coffee and a fresh shirt from his stash, and scooted into her suite so Tiago could answer his door.

After her shower, she found her underwear still too damp to wear.

While she waited for Tiago’s shower to stop running, she grabbed the newspaper outside her door.

One glance and she choked on her coffee.
Tiago Steals Pants off Murdock President
topped the news in bold headlines, while the picture of them lip-locked and entwined like mating snakes took up half the freaking page. To add a touch of class, she could read “Stolen by Tiago” on the back of her cap.

Quinn threw open the adjoining door and stopped dead when she caught Tiago coming from the shower, towel-drying his long ebony hair.

“How could you?” she snapped, trying not to be seduced by the fact that he was hung like a stallion.

Tiago frowned. “Geez, Quinn, I’m used to being alone in here, so I walk around naked. What’s the big deal?”

“Not that, you effing jock playboy traitor . . . jock . . . jerk!”

“Nice talk. Did you ever think about writing a book? You could call it
F-Word Alternatives
.”

“My father won’t let me use that word around the office, so I disguise it.”