Loe raamatut: «Untamed Love»

To my readers, old and new.

Thank you for sharing your time with me.

Acknowledgments

This writing journey of mine wouldn’t be possible without Sheree L. Greer, Angela Gabriel, Cherie Evans Lyon and Dorothy Lindsay. As my beta reader, Sheree has read more romance novels than she’d ever even thought possible, and Angela has suffered with me through many plotting sessions over dinner and ice cream. Cherie Evans Lyon and Dorothy Lindsay have simply always been there.

Kimberly Kaye Terry, as ever, thank you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Epilogue

Copyright

Chapter 1

“If you weren’t my friend, I’d be burying your body out back right now.” Victor Raphael carefully put a hand on the cloth-covered table in front of him, the other hand balanced on his thigh as he listened to the auctioneer call out to the eager bidders.

“Three thousand, five hundred dollars!” the tuxedoed man shouted, his teeth a blinding white in his tanned face. “Do I hear four thousand?”

His best friend, Kingsley Diallo, didn’t look worried. “Auctioning yourself off for charity will make you feel good,” he said with a vague smile, looking around the large ballroom of one of their acquaintance’s latest mansion renovation projects gone wrong. Naked cherubs everywhere. “And it’ll make you look like less of an ass.”

Kingsley, perpetually Miami casual in a lavender V-neck shirt and celebrity-endorsed jeans, eventually settled back in his chair across from Victor, apparently satisfied that he had checked out the entire room and seen what there was to see. Victor, however, was quietly furious. Kingsley had put the services of his company up for bid without him knowing. Victor was a landscape architect, not some bored socialite’s puppet. He opened his mouth to say as much, but the auctioneer announced Raphael Design Group, effectively shutting him up. Victor snapped his eyes back to the small raised stage in the center of the room.

They were doing things the old-fashioned way, raising paddles to signal their interest in the bids. Despite the open ballroom, brightly lit by the afternoon sun, the French doors were open to let in the crisp February breeze. Or at least as crisp as February ever got in Miami. Every event like this Victor had ever seen on TV took place in shadowed rooms or unironically old European auction houses with the look of old blood money staining the silk-papered walls. But this was Miami. Why wouldn’t things be different? He’d half expected a stripper parading around in a white thong and moaning the name of each item up for bid. But maybe that spoke to his lack of class.

Despite the fact that it was his services on the line, Victor tuned out the proceedings. It didn’t matter who won. Kingsley had decided that Victor should get out of his comfort zone and had damn near pushed him out of it, so here he was, obligated to perform. For free.

His fingers flexed on top of his thighs, the muscles tense and strained. Just like the rest of him. Polite applause rippled through the room. Someone had won the auction. His fingers tightened even more.

“Nice one.” Kingsley reached over the small table to clap him on the shoulder.

Would it really be that bad to shovel dirt over his best friend’s face and leave him for dead? Maybe someone would find his traitorous body after an hour or two.

Ice cubes rattled in a glass, and he looked down to see a tumbler of ginger beer in front of him, along with a slice of German chocolate cake. He gave Kingsley a grim look but picked up the glass. The liquid was cool and stroked his tongue and throat with its effervescence as it went down.

“One day, I will kill you,” he said.

“Not today, my friend.” Kingsley drank from his own glass: whiskey neat. “Today, you’ll thank me.”

“I doubt that.”

Kingsley laughed as if he knew a secret. He dug into his own slice of chocolate cake, a dessert that was a favorite for them both. His friend was relying on bribery to soothe his temper. The cake was good, he’d grant Kingsley that.

The auction was the last event of the fund-raiser, an afternoon garden party to raise money to help local low-income kids pay for college. Victor breathed a sigh of relief that it was almost over. Soon he would get in his car and drive back to his house in the upper east side of the city, maybe even pick something up from Whole Foods to cook for dinner.

“All right!” Kingsley’s fork rattled against the now-empty dessert plate. “Let’s go meet the winner.” He picked up his whiskey.

“No. I’m done with this.” Being social wasn’t Victor’s forte.

His sister had even called him a standoffish hermit, which he’d told her was a bit redundant. He’d already donated money to the scholarship fund and even wished the high schoolers good luck, although he winced in sympathy, for them, being paraded in front of these rich idiots just so they could feel sorry for the kids and see that their money wasn’t going to waste. Or something equally stupid.

“Come on, man. You have to see who won.” Kingsley nudged him to his feet. “Not to mention you need to make arrangements to start the work.”

“That’s what phones are for.” But he allowed himself to be led across the room toward the table where the winning bidders gathered with the auctioneer and his half dozen or so assistants.

“The winning number is 191,” Kingsley hissed as they stepped into the sea of designer casual wear and perfumes.

Before Victor left his house to come to the auction, the day hadn’t been especially good. He was thinking about his sister Violet as he always did on her birthday, his already dour mood plummeting with the thought that she would have been thirty this year.

Kingsley apparently knew him too well and called to drag him out of the house and into the light of social interaction. Too bad he had no idea before he left the house of the knife Kingsley was gleefully waiting to plunge into his back. The bastard.

At a far table, he spotted a black-and-white paddle with the number Kingsley told him. Better get this over with sooner rather than later, he thought. He pushed through the crowd toward the older man who held the paddle upside down in the crook of his crossed arms.

Kingsley grabbed him. “Where are you going?”

He jerked his head toward the man holding the number of the winning bid.

But Kingsley shook his head. “Wrong number.” He squeezed Victor’s arm and pointed toward another paddle, this one held in a slender feminine hand: 191. As he watched, the woman slowly began to fan her face with the paddle. Victor swallowed.

The sight of her punched the breath from his lungs. She was damn stunning. Hair in tight and gorgeous coils around her face, skin the warm brown of the inside of a seashell. The perfect handful everywhere. And so very unlike any woman he’d ever seen that he nearly stumbled on his way to her.

It was only Kingsley’s amused presence at his side that kept Victor from tripping over his own feet. Even from across the room, there was something about the way she made him feel that beat a hard and familiar drum deep inside him. It was like fear and exhilaration all at once.

She fanned her face, and the small breeze from the auction paddle stirred the cottony hair resting around her cheeks. That hair was big, springy and wild, framing narrow and laughing eyes. One of the two women around her laughed, too, then leaned in to slap playfully at her shoulder. Her friends, Victor assumed. Two women who were pretty enough in their tight outfits, with their laughing faces and sophisticated clothes.

Next to them, the woman looked like their little sister, almost innocent in her white blazer, pale floral slacks that tapered down to her narrow calves and high-heeled pink shoes. A big necklace in the shape of a sunflower rested at her throat. She was springtime personified. From the first glance, there was nothing sensual about her, only joy in the way she stood, a radiant presence in the crowd. Then she tipped her head back with the paddle moving languorously through the air, revealing more of her slender neck, the line of her jaw. And desire bit him low in his belly.

“You all right, man?”

Kingsley’s question should have worried Victor. He was showing too much emotion. He shouldn’t care. He should tighten up and exchange information with the winner of the bid and then leave. But all he could do was feel and realize that no, he was not all right. Far from it.

* * *

“This place is such a madhouse.” Mella used her auction paddle to fan her face. “And it’s hot.” She grinned. This was the kind of scene she loved. The restrained wildness of the crowd, the heated wave of everyone’s intentions as they surged toward something they wanted. Even if it was just bidding for a vacuum-cleaning service. She fanned a little faster, wondering what drove the organizers to open the doors of the massive ballroom instead of turning on the AC. This was Miami, not freakin’ Minneapolis.

“This so-called party is about as much fun as watching paint dry in the cold, Mella.” Corinne looked the epitome of boredom in her Gucci shades that she refused to take off indoors. It probably had something to do with her red eyes and the late night she’d had the day before.

“Relax, Corinne.” Mella glanced over at her friend, reining in her smile. “You’ll get the chance to throw yourself at eligible single men in just a few minutes. I need to get the information about the landscape guy, then we can go.” She’d already paid for her winning bid and was only waiting to collect her prize.

“Yeah. Relax, Corinne.” Liz, Mella’s best friend and Corinne’s old college roommate, sucked in her stomach and posed in her barely decent dress. Her high heels put her already tall frame nearly half a head over most women in the room, including Mella, who could only claim five feet. “You need to smell the roses. Or in this case, the testosterone. Maybe the guy Mella bid on is some hot and hung lumberjack type wearing jeans tight enough for me to tell his religion.”

Mella snorted with laughter. “You’re thinking about a gardener, not a landscape architect.”

“Same thing,” Liz muttered.

Mella heard Corinne take in a quick breath and whisper under her breath, “No, it’s not.” Corinne took off her dark glasses and stared.

Mella turned to see what her friend was gawking at. Only through an act of will did she keep the paddle in her hand moving, fluttering the air around her face that suddenly felt several degrees too hot. Two men were walking purposefully toward them. She bit the inside of her lip to keep her mouth from dropping open just like Corinne’s. Of the two men stalking their way, she only really noticed one.

He was dressed all in black, an utter contrast to everyone else at the fund-raiser who’d put on their spring colors and lightweight jackets. Black upon black upon black. Leather ankle boots with an understated sheen, Italian-cut slacks that fit a lean shape and a dress shirt rolled up to show muscled and lightly veined forearms dusted with hair. His watch, a gleaming stainless steel, was the only touch of light on him.

“Damn, he’s fine!” Corrine breathed somewhere near Mella.

“Yes, girl...” Mella could only agree while she lost her breath to the man in black.

There was nothing pretty or soft about him. Watching him walk through the crowd and make his way toward where she and her friends stood was like watching a jaguar stalk through a room of gazelles, the silken glide of his every step a promise of power and strength. Mella’s back straightened, but she felt her legs quiver from the impending confrontation. She kept the smile on her face.

“They both are,” Liz said with an amazed laugh. “After seeing absolutely nobody halfway decent in here for the past two hours, and now these two fine gods walk in from nowhere...somebody up there was listening to my prayers.”

From the corner of her eye, Mella noticed Corinne preen even more, smoothing a hand down her taut thighs and shifting toward the men in profile so they could admire the high curve of her butt in the clinging white jumpsuit. “Maybe we can get one for you at the next spot, Mella.” She said the last nearly under her breath since the men had come steadily closer and were only a few feet from them.

Mella continued to fan her face, wishing desperately for the heat in her cheeks to subside. She never reacted like this to men. Never.

“My name is Victor Raphael.” The one in black held out his hand for Mella to shake. “I believe you’ve won me for the next few months.” Just as his look promised, his voice was a lulling purr, calm and steady. A man used to giving orders and having them obeyed. “I’m with Raphael Design Group,” he said after a short pause.

Damn, he’s tall. She stared up and up at him. Then looked down at his hand, not quite ready to touch him yet. It felt like a big step for her to take his hand and feel his skin against hers, to know some of the strength in him. She looked down at the large hand, at least larger than her own, and opened her mouth to speak. But Corinne slid close and grasped Victor Raphael’s hand instead.

“I’m Corinne,” she said. “I haven’t won you, but you can win me.”

Her friend’s foolishness snapped Mella out of her daze. “Michaela Davis.” She introduced herself with a nod and smile, then turned to his friend who she’d barely noticed. “And you are?”

“Kingsley Diallo.” His friend shook her hand with a wide smile. “I wasn’t won and didn’t win anything. I’m just here for the food.” Laugh lines bracketed his expressive mouth.

Mella liked him immediately. “Wasn’t the lobster mac and cheese phenomenal?”

Kingsley laughed, an infectious sound that had her instantly laughing with him. “It was,” he said. “Although I have had much better from a friend’s kitchen.”

“Let’s get back to the business of this auction before we discuss the menu.” Victor said the last word like a curse. Didn’t he like food?

Well, two could play at that all-business game. Mella held out her hand. “Your card?”

For a moment, he stared hard at her, at her hand. Then reached for his wallet and took out a business card. She was surprised that it wasn’t black, too. Instead it was a crisp green with black writing, everything she needed to contact him, including a QR code printed on the back.

“Call me when you’re ready,” he said.

“I’m ready now,” Liz muttered behind Mella.

Mella ignored her friend and gave Victor a card of her own, taking care that their fingers didn’t touch. Would their hands spark with static electricity, or would it be like touching any other man? She wasn’t quite ready to find out.

Normally, she would have grasped him in one of her typically friendly handshakes, a handshake that would morph into a hug at their next meeting, but she had a feeling he wasn’t like every other man she’d dealt with before. She tucked his card away into her purse and clenched her teeth into a determined smile.

“Perfect.” She gripped her purse and tapped it against the front of her thighs, almost succeeding in ignoring Victor and the weakening effect he had on her. Her heart was practically fighting to leap out of her chest. “It was good to meet you both, but now we have to head out. Have a great afternoon.”

“But wait...they just got here.” Corinne sounded as if she was working up to a pout. She and Liz had been chatting up Kingsley while Mella and Victor “got down to business.”

Liz put a hand on Kingsley’s forearm. “We were heading to Fever on South Beach. They’re having a huge day party. You should come with.” Did she just bat her eyes?

Corinne, who could read most men as easily as her daily horoscope, turned her attention to Kingsley instead of trying to worm her way beneath Victor’s aloof and prickly exterior. He was obviously not into playing anyone’s game. Mella couldn’t help but chuckle at the Cheshire Cat grin that took over Kingsley’s face as the two women latched on to him on either side.

“You ladies could tempt a monk to sin,” he said, although he was obviously not a monk.

Why couldn’t Mella have been attracted to him? He looked fun, as if he was open to wherever the night might take him and would simply leave it all behind the next morning, no strings attached. Instead she was aware of every breath that left Victor Raphael’s body, of the firm heat of him only a few feet away, aware of just how much she wanted to twine her arms around his waist and lead him into breathless sin. But she didn’t need to know his sun sign to realize he wasn’t that kind of man. She kept her smile easy and noncommittal.

“You can go ahead, Kingsley.” Victor tipped his head toward the open door through which most of the party’s attendees had already gone. “You’ve had a long week at the office and need some time to unwind. You’re not going to get that from me today. I can get a cab back home.”

The two men exchanged a private look. Then Kingsley glanced down at the women, obviously tempted to stay with them. But he shook his head, about to speak.

Mella jumped in. “There’s no need to ruin anybody’s night, Kingsley. I can take Victor home, and you go with Corinne and Liz. He and I can talk business while you three have fun. I need to head home early, anyway.” For what exactly, she didn’t know. But if playing chauffeur meant she could spend a few minutes longer in Victor’s company, then it would be a pleasure.

Kingsley turned to his friend with a raised brow. “Only if Victor is okay with that plan,” he said.

Mella couldn’t look at Victor. With one stroke of his commanding gaze, she felt all her good sense begin to desert her. God! This was humiliating. But she couldn’t think of any place else she’d rather be. Victor made a low noise, which finally urged her to look at him. Although his face was blank, it was obvious he didn’t want to go to Fever.

“No,” he said. “I’d need more than an almost handshake for you to take me home.”

Did he just make a joke? Mella blinked at Victor.

“I’ll come with you to the day party,” he said. “As Kingsley is quick to say, I need to get out of the house, anyway.”

Oh.

“Okay.” Mella rolled her eyes as her friends high-fived each other. She hoped Victor Raphael knew what he was getting himself into.

They left the party in two separate cars, with Victor and Kingsley agreeing to meet them at Fever. The men already knew where the place was, or at least Kingsley did.

“I don’t know what you guys were thinking inviting them to the party. Victor didn’t look like he was in the mood.” Mella was a big fan of doing what she wanted instead of what other people expected. Life just tended to be happier that way.

From the small backseat of Mella’s green Fiat convertible, Corinne giggled. “We would have been happy just hanging with Kingsley. He seemed fun, at least.”

Mella glared at her in the rearview mirror, annoyed that she would think of leaving Victor behind, even if that meant Mella would get the chance to take him home. She didn’t dwell too long on how that sounded in her head. “But what would Kingsley look like, leaving his friend for some random chicks he just met?”

“Spontaneous, Mella. He’d look spontaneous.”

Mella shook her head. She was all for spontaneous, but she was about loyalty, too. And she liked that, though it was a small thing, Kingsley had stuck by his friend even when it seemed he could have gotten lucky, twice, on his own. Mella knew her friends weren’t above the occasional threesome. They may have been on the marriage hunt, but she knew they saw nothing wrong with having a little fun along the way.

“You all are dead wrong,” she muttered.

At Fever, the music was loud and bass-heavy, women and men in tight designer clothes, the liquor flowing freely on the wide rooftop. The three women headed for the bar for their usual drinks before looking for Victor and Kingsley. When they found them, Kingsley was dancing in the middle of the crowded floor with a woman Mella was fairly certain he’d never met before.

Victor, though, was nowhere to be seen. Her friends flocked to Kingsley, ready to fend off the Jenny-come-lately who was hanging on to his hips for dear life as they grooved to the hip-hop pounding from the speakers.

She saw some people she already knew and joined them, leaving her husband-hunting friends to make their move on Kingsley. The afternoon was fun and the music and energy all that Mella hoped for. She drank her cocktails, shared gossip with old friends and danced until the sweat ran down her back and she had to take off her blazer and leave it hanging on the back of a chair.

It wasn’t long before she finished her second drink and wanted another one, but the main bar had a line from hell. She excused herself from her friends and made her way to the other side of Fever and downstairs to the hidden bar very few people knew about. Mella gripped the chrome handrails and nearly stumbled down the stairs in her high heels, her thighs trembling faintly from dancing for nearly two hours straight in her stilettos.

The lower level of Fever was smaller than the rooftop space, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows letting in the bright Miami sunlight. But the bar, hanging as it was beneath dark beams and sheltered from much of the brightness, was partially in shadows.

Barely a half dozen people sat at the stools surrounding the bar. The patrons that sat on the stools were spread out, little islands to themselves. One man and woman were practically sitting in each other’s laps, an impressive feat considering the small size of the bar stools, a trio of businessmen and a lone man dressed in black who sat with his back to the room. Mella went up to the bar, fitting herself between the businessmen and the man in black. She signaled the bartender, who had been talking amicably with the lone man.

The bartender turned. “Hey, Mella.” His bright smile lit up his entire face.

“Hey yourself, Greg. How have you been?” She gave him her order, a Blood and Sand, and propped her hip against one of the bar stools.

“I’m doing great now that you’re at my bar.” He amped up his smile.

“You say the loveliest things, Gregory.” She batted her eyes at him while he made her drink, a mixture of Scotch, orange juice, sweet vermouth and cherry liqueur. Light on the orange juice.

“Sweet for the sweet.”

She laughed, knowing that he only flirted as a matter of course, part of the job. Greg was happily married with twin girls in kindergarten. He exchanged the drink for her ten-dollar bill, and she turned with the chilled glass in her hand, getting ready to head back upstairs and to the dance floor. But a pair of intense eyes pinned her where she stood. Victor Raphael.

He sat at the bar, drinking something from a cocktail glass and looking pleasantly relaxed on the stool. His strong forearms rested easily on the edge of the bar while his eyes held her with the strength of a leash in an iron grip. She forced a casual smile, although butterflies had started a small rebellion in her stomach.

“Mr. Raphael.” She nodded in his direction.

“Ms. Davis.”

Greg, who had been making his way back to Victor, looked between him and Mella, then abruptly turned to check on his other customers. Victor’s attentions, still fierce and predatory, didn’t stray from her.

Then the ridiculousness of it all forced her to laugh. They were in a club. She was covered in sweat from dancing the afternoon away, and he was sitting at the bar cool as could be, with what was probably some sort of manly whiskey drink. Their differences couldn’t be more apparent.

“You should call me Mella after all this,” she said and moved closer to him, despite instincts that screamed at her to run the other way. He wasn’t like other men. She couldn’t tease him and walk away and dismiss him from her mind as if he’d never been there.

Victor Raphael nodded. The unforgiving lines of his face and most of his body were wreathed in shadow, but she couldn’t mistake the way he stared at her. He didn’t say anything, but she forged ahead, anyway.

“And I’ll call you Victor.”

“If you like.” His voice brushed like the finest silk over her skin. Mella shivered.

“I do like.”

In the half light of the bar, he was even more fierce than at the fund-raiser. All remaining trappings of civility stripped away to leave this brooding shadow man who seemed to have a lot on his mind and wasn’t about to change his demeanor simply because someone had wandered into his cave. Because Mella was sometimes foolish, she went further into the beast’s lair.

“Why are you drinking alone?” she asked.

“Because I want to.” The words should have pushed her away, but she only leaned closer to hear his voice. “The alternative—” he waved vaguely to the party happening above them “—is not much of one.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

He tipped his head, appeared to consider it. Appeared to consider many things in that one charged moment. “No. Stay. And let me pay for your next round if you’re having one.”

The words were so uncharacteristic of the man she’d met at the fund-raiser that she looked down at his glass, wondering at his welcome and just how much he’d had to drink that he was inviting her to stay with him at the bar. Wasn’t he the one who’d wanted to get down to business and then go home? Had his drink changed his personality? Although she couldn’t talk. This was her third drink, and her blood was just warm enough that she was looser than usual, feeling so good about life that having another drink would take her from nice to naughty. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to act that much of a fool with this magnetic stranger. A stranger whom she would be working with very soon.

Mella lifted her glass. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m afraid this is it for me. Although I’m not driving, I don’t want to get too blitzed today. I still have some work to get done tonight.”