Simon didn’t respond.
She pushed. “Isn’t that why you loaned him the money?”
His brows came together in a frown. “I thought you couldn’t hear us talking.”
She pushed again, harder, refusing to be distracted. “Isn’t it?”
“He told me that the money was for a work
over of the well our fathers used to operate. Nothing he’s tried to do with the place has paid off, or given him enough of an income to put the cash aside himself.”
“If there’s stil
l
oil there, then you had to have believed he could do it. You took a chance on your cousin, he let you down, that’s that. It’s not the end of the world. Or a reason to cut him out of your life.”
He didn’t say anything right away, as if his thoughts had gone elsewhere, to the oil, to his cousin. She didn’t have a clue, so he surprised her when he finally said, “That’s what it means, you know. Le Hasard. It means chance.”
Apropos, she supposed, considering he’d come to own the place because of a poker game played long ago. And he’d taken one on his cousin. So why couldn’t he take a chance on the two of them?
He could lose her to a reckless driver—one with no ulterior motive or evil intent—any day, out of the blue, no warning. Wouldn’t their time together be more precious because of knowing that?
“I’m glad you gave him one,” she finally said. “He seems so…lost.”
“What’s lost is my ninety thousand dollars,” he said with a snort. Uh-uh. She didn’t believe this was about the money. The money was a diversion, keeping him from dealing with the fact that getting rid of what stood between him and King would cost him even more.
“What did he do with it?” she asked.
Again with a snort. “He didn’t tell me. I could find out if I really wanted to know, but it stopped being important. It doesn’t matter.”
He didn’t want it to be important. He didn’t want it to matter. He didn’t want to face the possibility that his estrangement from his cousin had been a mistake. “Seriously. You don’t want to know,” she said.
It took him several seconds to respond. “About the money, no. But I do want to know if that’s all you plan to do with your hand.”
He was being a man. Changing the subject. And for the first time to sex instead of away from it. “You told me that this afternoon was all we could have,” she reminded him, wanting to hear him argue his way out of a trap he’d laid. “That you didn’t want to risk us becoming more deeply involved.”
“I don’t. At least the involved part. But the deep part is sounding pretty good.”
“Is that so?” She wouldn’t say no to having him deep inside her. She wouldn’t say no to having him any way at all. She just wanted him to give them a chance. He lifted her hand, tossed back his sleeping bag, returned her hand to its resting place. Only this time instead of coarse fabric, she felt the triangle of his chest hair, which was like strands of fine silk to the touch.
“It’s so,” he told her gruffly. “But see for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
“Oh I believe you. I just don’t…bel
ieve you. But I’m more than will
ing to dispel what doubts either of us might have,” she said, leaving it to him to sort out her meaning, because she was certain he was lying to himself about not wanting to be involved. She eased out from beneath her sleeping bag, slid to the foot of the bed, then up between his legs. He had obviously undressed before she had finished up in the bathroom; while he was wearing nothing, she was still wearing her jersey and socks, and, wel
l
, everything but her jeans.
His skin was warm, the hair on his calves and thighs soft, that surrounding his penis and balls bristly. He was already erect when she took him into her mouth. He pulled in a sharp breath, shoved out a string of curses that encouraged her, whether that was his intent or not.
The head of his cock was ful
l
in her mouth, slick with beads of salty moisture, and hot to the touch of her tongue. She lapped at the flat of the top, teased the seam where it split the underside, caught the ridge between her lips, and held him there as she sucked. He had a mouth on him, her Simon, the words coming out enough to make her blush. Giving him this pleasure was exquisite, the feel of his flesh in her hand, against her tongue, the arousal that swept up her body. But there was more, so much more, the desire to have him in her life that took hold of her heart and squeezed. She couldn’t breathe for the way she wanted him, couldn’t breathe for the sharp sob caught in her throat. He seemed to realize her struggle, raised up on one elbow and reached out, wrapped her hair around his wrist to tug her close.
“C’mere,
chère
,” he said, and she followed his lead, crawling up his body to straddle his thighs. “Don’t think about it. Not about any of it that’s not right here, right now.”
But it was right here, right now, didn’t he know?
“I’m so tired. I didn’t know I could be so tired.” She was exhausted and emotionally punch-drunk, not to mention dealing with the physical aches that stil
l
twitched from time to time.
“We’re both tired. We both need sleep.” His hands were at her chest, fingering the buttons down the front of the old-style jersey. He released them quickly, parting the front of the shirt, soothing her nerves with soft murmurs and shushing sounds. “And I can let you go, though you gotta know it’s the last thing I want to do.”
“What’s the first?” It was all she could ask.
“Get you naked.”
“Do you need help?”
He shook his head, the moonlight glinting off the glossy strands of black in his hair and the green of his eyes. “The journey’s as much fun as the destination.”
“So I’ve heard.” She let him skim the shirt off her shoulders, leaned forward, her hands on the mattress as he reached for the clasp of her bra.
When her bare breasts were inches from his face, he said, “Have I ever told you how much I love your tits?”
That made her smile. “Don’t most guys love tits?”
“I don’t know from most guys,
chère
. I only know that I could eat you up for hours.”
“I don’t see anyone here stopping you,” she got out just as he plumped her breasts together and began to tease her nipples with his tongue.
And so it began, her fall. Into oblivion. Into mindless sensation. Into love. He sucked gently, then with enough force to make her squirm, before he pulled back to blow on the flesh he’d so thoroughly wet.
While he played there, she lifted her bottom up off his thighs, slipped a hand between her legs to pul away the crotch of her underpants, then, using the heel of her palm, she found the pole of his erection and lowered herself onto his shaft. She took him in slowly, gripping him, rotating her hips as she slid to the base. The head of his cock nudged the entrance to her womb and stayed there, pulsing, waiting as if deciding between holding on and letting go.
“Woman,” he growled. “Do you have any idea what you do to me?”
She knew what he did to her. That told her plenty. “I want hours of you. Uninterrupted. With time to sleep wrapped up together. With no apologies for indulging in pleasure. Hours of nothing but this.”
“I can’t…I can’t say anything. I don’t know how you put that into words.”
This…emotion. It did that to her. A rush of warmth that grew to swaddle her, cotton and down and comfort. All the things he made her feel. All the things she felt for him. Did he know?
She rode him like the fine stallion he was, thick and muscled and prime. She tightened around him as she came up, opened as she slid down, ground her clit against the wide base of his shaft, the hair above tickling.
He held her hips, guiding her, reining her in as if he feared that his thrusts might drive her away, that if he let her go she would fly. And oh, but she flew, all over him, coming apart as he bucked up into her, as he spilled his seed as deep inside her body as he could. They took forever to finish, neither one wanting to return, to lose what they’d found, finally giving in to sleep that was swift to take them, though unable to pull them apart.
Thirty-five
Simon had barely made it downstairs the next morning when a loud knock sounded on the door. Before he made up his mind to answer, the knock came again, an insistent banging he wasn’t going to be able to ignore. He started to cross the room, stopped as the door opened and his cousin, as jumpy as an addict, walked in. Simon turned toward the stove, picked up the aluminum drip pot sitting on the back burner. “Coffee?”
That was al
l
he had the energy for. After the hell of a long day yesterday turned out to be, he’d expended his reserves on Micky in bed, and four hours’ sleep hadn’t left him anywhere close to recharged—funny, since he could go for days on nothing but catnaps on the job.
Seemed something about Bayou Allain, or something about Micky, was draining him drier than he’d been in a while. Or maybe it was finally getting away from the cave of his studio and letting the tension of the last month go. More than likely it was a combination of all of the above, and he was going to wear himself out trying to piece it all together without the help of caffeine.
“Yeah, sure, I guess,” King said, pacing the small room.
Simon wondered if what his cousin really wanted came in a bottle with a long neck, but being too familiar with that devil himself these days, he didn’t offer. Neither did he prompt the other man to find out what had brought him here so early. King’s agitation was obvious, but no more so than the sludge in Simon’s brain. He put water on to heat, dumped ground coffee in the metal basket, reassembled the pot, then leaned against the counter to wait. “You been up al
l
night?”
King snorted. “You making conversation, or do I look as dog shit bad as I feel?”
“Dog shit?” Simon shook his head, took in the tension keeping the other man moving, began to feel it himself. “Wired is more like it.”
“I’m just waiting for you to wake up enough for me to tell you what I found.”
What the hell? “Found? In Terrill’s boxes?” It had to be. What else would bring King over here this early? “I’m awake. Talk.”
“It wasn’t in the boxes, no. I gave up on those before everyone left. It was too needle in a haystack. I don’t know how Terrill managed to find the things he did. Two bits out of thousands, most written in legal speak that had my eyes crossing like T-Beaux Gentry’s.”
Meaning he didn’t look at much of anything closely. Meaning who knew what all he had missed.
“I wanted to see what else I could find about the Landrys owning Le Hasard.”
It had been the middle of the night. King could have done his digging only one way. And he’d beat Simon to it, since Simon had planned to contact SG-5’s ops center after coffee and before Micky got out of bed to see who was in the office and what they might have time to find out.
“And where did Google get you?” Simon asked as the water began to boil. He poured it into the top of the pot and inhaled deeply as the fresh brew began to drip.
“Some interesting stuff, boo,” King said, the legs of a kitchen chair scraping the floor when he spun it around and straddled the seat.
“Interesting how?”
At the sound of Micky’s yawning question, Simon turned. She walked into the kitchen pushing her hair from her face, rubbing sleep from her eyes, and wearing nothing but the baseball jersey and crew socks she’d worn to bed last night.
Granted, the shirt came down to the middle of her thighs and covered all the things he didn’t want King to see. But it was impossible not to remember her body on top of his, milking his, loving his, and not want to heave her over his shoulder and haul her back up the stairs to his bed.
Not a reaction that was going to make it easy to put her on a plane later today.
“King was just about to explain. We were waiting on the coffee.”
“Is it done?” She gathered her hair into a tail with one hand, leaned over the stove and inhaled deeply.
“Almost.” He, on the other hand, was sizzling, as was the glare he shot toward his cousin, who was busy checking out Micky’s ass.
She straightened, turned to face King, and leaned back into Simon’s body as if this were commonplace, the two of them here in this kitchen, a couple, together, at home. He couldn’t believe how fiercely the desire for that very thing ate at him from the inside. King finally had the decency to clear his throat and stare over Micky’s head at Simon. “I did a search on the history of the property, tax records—and you are the legal owner, boo—past liens, and other filings. Found some stuff about the loss of the orchards and grazing land in the storm, and other stuff about Smokin’ Aces.”
“Smokin’ Aces?” Micky asked, moving away for Simon to fish three Styrofoam cups from the box of supplies on the counter he’d never had time to unpack.
“The wel
l
on Le Hasard,” he explained, pouring the coffee, handing her two cups, carrying his own along with the creamer and sugar to the table. King took his black, blowing across the top before sipping but still scalding his tongue.
“Shit,” he yelped, but sipped again, growling when Simon laughed. “Anyway, I also found a Web site that describes treasures that have never been found.”