King's Passion Read online

  Her finale was a scream so loud and powerful it wouldn’t surprise either of them if the entire floor heard her. Afterward, for what seemed like the longest minute, she just tried her damnedest to lie still. But her body’s aftershocks made that impossible.

  Eamon was smiling long before he opened his eyes again. Not only that, he was completely drained. And that was saying something coming from a man who competed annually in the New York City Marathon. He was amazed and yet frightened of this woman tucked under him. He enjoyed women—almost to a fault. But what he was feeling now was eroding the line of casual sex.

  Steer clear of this kind of danger, a little voice in his head kept repeating.

  Eamon cringed at Q’s logic floating around in his head. Still there was something to his cousin’s warning. He pulled in a deep breath, hoping that it would help clear his mind.

  It didn’t.

  His ego took the floor in his imaginary courtroom and tried to convince him that he was just opening up a whole new world for his spoiled heiress, but his brain immediately argued not to buy in to last night’s and this morning’s dramatic performance. Only an over-emotive community theater actress could perform with that much passion and abandonment. Don’t get it twisted, Eamon admonished. He knew he had skills, but could a woman really have as many orgasms as he’d counted last night?

  Eamon rolled over onto his side, pulling Victoria’s body against his for the requisite spooning. She was like a new toy that he didn’t want to share or lose, at least not until he’d figured out how all the parts worked and what made her so special. That was what she was, his heart stated. Special. Hadn’t he known it the moment he’d laid eyes on her?

  He watched her as she dozed softly during her after-sex coma as more questions bubbled to the surface. The questions didn’t scare him. It was the answers that might have him lying in a pool of his own sweat in the middle of the night. She looked nothing like the fire-breathing Amazon who’d stormed into his club less than twenty-four hours ago. The lightly applied makeup that she had on during dinner last night had long worn off and her hair looked as if it had been windblown during a category-five hurricane. Yet she was still stunningly beautiful.

  The longer he stared at her the faster his heart raced, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away. As the minutes ticked by, Eamon started etching every line and angle of her face into memory. Of course, it would be nice if he could wake up every morning to her face.

  He frowned. Wasn’t that the second time that rogue thought had drifted across his mind? Spooked, he shook his head and sat up. No. This was just sex. Nothing more and nothing less. He eased off the bed and then as quietly as he could, he headed to the bathroom and shut the door.

  In the shower, the spray of hot water washed off some of the hazy feeling of sexual afterglow. Not all of it, but enough to get him to start feeling like his old self again. Sure, Victoria was a sexy-as-hell heiress with a major chip on her shoulder. Last night and this morning, she proved to be a woman of boundless passion with possibly a freaky streak. It was a heady combination for sure. But it didn’t mean that he should be entertaining any notions of turning his life upside down to become a one-woman man. Those types of dreams were long gone.

  “Long gone,” he repeated as his amen chorus. By the time he stepped out of the shower, he had reclaimed his sanity. “It was just sex,” he told his reflection as he wrapped a towel around his hips. When he marched back to the master bedroom, he was surprised to see Victoria sitting on the edge of the bed with the top sheet bunched around her.

  “Good morning, Princess. Sleep well?” He traced an appreciative eye over her just-sexed look and smiled. His cock also started to stretch back down his leg. Damn. I hope I have at least one more condom in my wallet.

  Victoria’s gaze swung sharply toward him.

  He found himself grateful that she didn’t possess the ability to decapitate him with her mind. It looked like the other Victoria had returned. “Is there a problem?” he asked with his brows creasing the center of his forehead.

  “We need to talk,” she stated in a flat monotone.

  “That doesn’t sound too good when you say it like that.”

  Her glare softened a bit, but her jaw remained firm. “Look. It’s probably best that I just come right on out and say this.”

  Eamon folded his arms. “All right. Shoot.”

  Victoria took a deep breath. “What happened last night was…just sex.”

  His eyebrows wrinkled comically in the center of his forehead at the sound of his own words being tossed back at him. To be honest, he didn’t like it. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. It didn’t mean anything…and it doesn’t change anything.” Her gaze locked on to his. “Is that clear?”

  Damn. Was that how he sounded when he gave this speech? “Actually, I’m sure that it is clear.” He leaned back against the wall and studied her face. “Are you saying that you just used me for sex?” He almost smiled when a familiar shade of burgundy stained her face and neck.

  “Don’t be glib.”

  He unfolded his arms and pressed a hand against his chest. “Me? Glib? Never. I’m just curious. Do you make it a habit of doing this kind of thing?”

  She jumped to her feet and just barely kept the sheet from falling to the floor. “Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve never done anything close to what happened last night.”

  Eamon cocked his head. “Come now. You’re hardly a virgin.”

  Her mouth opened wide in shock. “You know what I mean. I don’t…” She lowered her voice. “You know—sleep around—or have one-night stands.”

  Chuckling, he folded his arms again. “It seems you and your ex-fiancé come to Las Vegas and do a lot of things that you two don’t normally do.”

  Victoria’s eyes bulged to the size of golf balls. “How dare you!”

  “Me? I didn’t wake up this morning and decide to become a raging…witch this morning.”

  There was one more gasp before she turned, picked up the clock radio and hurled it at him.

  Eamon dodged out of the way. The clock smashed against the wall and left a large dent in the plaster.

  “You take that back!”

  He probably would have, if he could get himself to stop laughing.

  “Take it back!” She turned around again, this time she grabbed the lamp and snatched the cord out of the wall.

  “All right. All right!” He held up his hands but was still laughing. “I take it back. Don’t hurt me.”

  With eyes flashing like emeralds and her chest heaving with anger, she was once again that powerful Amazon that had stolen his breath away the moment he’d laid eyes on her. He was fascinated by both sides of this complex creature. “Has anyone ever told you that you have one hell of a temper?”

  The question worked as a mirror and she slowly lowered the lamp back onto the nightstand. “I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “I…overreacted.”

  He nodded as a way of accepting the apology and took a tentative step toward her. “I apologize, too. I shouldn’t have brought him up. That was tactless.”

  “Yes. It was,” she agreed.

  He grinned. “Does that mean that you accept my apology, too?”

  She shrugged as her gaze lowered to the carpet.

  “Wow. You’re a real tough one, aren’t you? You don’t forgive easily.”

  “Are you going to whip out a psychology degree, too?”

  “I have one framed at the house, if you’d like to see it. It was a waste of fifty grand but it looks good on my bookcase.”

  A smile cracked her face again. “Please tell me that you’re joking.”

  He took another step. “I have a business degree, too. That one came in handy.” When Victoria laughed, he used the moment to wrap his arms around her and pulled her into his embrace. Now that he had her, he was sure that he was halfway home. “Look. I don’t want to fight. I thought that we were having a good time together.”

  She shrugged
as her gaze remained lowered. “It was… nice.”

  Another laugh rumbled from his chest. “Just nice?”

  “It was…” She fumbled around in her mind looking for another safe adjective. “Pleasurable.”

  “Pleasurable? I see.” Eamon pulled his ego out of the trash bin and started taping it back together when it hit him what was really going on. “How would you rate me on a scale of one to ten? What would you give me?”

  Her eyes were whirling around so fast that it was amazing that she managed to keep them in her head.

  “I don’t know. Maybe a…seven?”

  It was a bald-faced lie and what made it so bad was that he knew it and she knew that he knew it. Instead of calling her on it, he pulled her even closer and announced, “Then we need to get back in bed if there’s that much room for improvement.” He moved his puckered lips in for a kiss, but she pressed her hands against his chest and pulled back.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Eamon finally reached for her chin and gently forced her to look up at him. “Look. I can’t have you going around telling people that I’m just a seven. Do you know what something like that will do to my reputation?” He gave her his sly smile. “I think that I deserve the opportunity to improve my score.” He started peeling the sheet from her body. “It’s only fair.”

  The sheet fell to the floor and Eamon’s erection tented his towel. “Damn. Let’s do this.”

  “Wait. Wait.”

  She pressed her hand against his chest again and it took every ounce of strength she had to pull back. “Problem?”

  “I just want to freshen up first,” she said, smiling. “It’s not fair that you’re the only one that smells like Ivory soap.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I kind of like you dirty.” He stole a quick kiss.

  “No. Please. Just give me, like…ten minutes.”

  Despite the fact that his need to have her was so strong that he was just seconds from dry-humping her leg, he smiled and released her. “Ten minutes. If you’re not out by the eleventh minute, I’m coming in there to drag you out—soaking wet if I have to.”

  “Deal.” As she turned to head for the bathroom, he playfully popped her on her lush ass.

  Giggling, she hurried out of his reach and slammed the bathroom door behind her.

  Once she was gone, another smile exploded across Eamon’s face as he mimicked her. “‘It was just sex.’” Never mind that those had been his words, too. He was already revising the sentence to add adjectives. “It was good sex. Better than good—it was great sex,” he muttered to himself. “Spectacular…explosive.”

  Face it. You just don’t like the fact that she beat you at your own game. Eamon rolled his eyes at his smart-ass ego. “That wasn’t it at all,” he argued back. “I just don’t know where the hell she’s coming up with that seven BS.” Hell, just because he didn’t like a whole lot of strings attached didn’t mean that she couldn’t give an experience like last night its proper rating. Frankly, he was willing to give it double digits. “And she will, too, when I’m finally finished with her.”

  He sat down on the bed and thought about striking a pose. Too cheesy. He sat up and looked around to see what he could do differently so that she’d be ready to jump his bones when she came out of the bathroom. While he was thinking, his stomach started to growl.

  Damn. They never did get around to eating any real food last night. Eamon grabbed the phone and called room service. Maybe a hearty breakfast with a few roses was just the thing he needed to set the mood. When room service picked up, he ordered enough food to feed a football team.

  He was so ready for the next round that he felt like a six-year-old trying to go to sleep on Christmas Eve. While he had a few more minutes on his hands, he started thinking about some of the questions that had popped into his head while he watched her sleep. Like how long was she planning to stay in town? Did she have any plans tonight? Of course, that meant leaving Quentin in charge of the club for another night. That might be risky. Right now he was just hoping the place hadn’t been burned to the ground.

  But if he could wrangle another night with Victoria tonight, maybe he could introduce her to a few more things—nothing too out there. Maybe some warm body oil or silk scarves. That imagery pumped a little more blood to his erection. If he had been a wolf, he would be howling right now.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  “Wow. That was fast.” He stood up from the bed and went to answer the door. “You guys really believe in fast service,” he said as he opened the door. However, there wasn’t a waiter standing on the other side. His memory kicked in and he recognized the face that had walked in on him and Victoria in his office yesterday, only there were two of them. “Oh. Hello, ladies,” he greeted.

  The women’s mouths sagged open simultaneously, but then they took another glance at the number on the door to the suite.

  “Is…Victoria here?” one of the twins asked.

  “Actually, she’s in the shower.”

  That answer made the twins’ eyes triple in size, and was followed by a slow eyeroll down his body.

  Belatedly, he remembered his erection and dropped his hands to cover himself. “Ah. Sorry about that.”

  From his left, he just barely made out this blur of color, next thing he knew it was rushing headlong toward them like a Tasmanian devil. The door was slammed in the twins’ faces, and Victoria was plastered against the back of the door. Once again, her eyes were angry and her chest was heaving like crazy.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Uh…answering the door?” He half expected a buzzer to go off, alerting him that he’d given the wrong answer.

  “Why in the hell would you do that? This isn’t your room. It’s not up to you to put all my business out on Front Street. Did it occur to you that maybe I don’t want or need someone to see you in here dressed like that? They might get the wrong impression.”

  Both brows sprung to the center of his forehead. “And what wrong impression would that be? That we spent the entire night playing strip poker?” He settled his hands on his hips, exposing his erection again.

  “Oh, God.” Victoria slapped a hand against her forehead. “Look at you. Does that damn thing ever go down?”

  “Keep talking and we’ll see.”

  It was her turn to jab her hands against her hips. “I’m serious.”

  “I don’t know what you are. I can’t tell if I’m in the middle of a real argument or a slapstick comedy.”

  Victoria bolted away from the door, moaning continuously, “Oh, God.” Then suddenly, “You’ve got to get out of here.”

  “What?”

  She stomped over to him and grabbed him by the arm. “You heard me. I want you out.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. I just thought that it was room service,” he protested as she pushed and shoved him forward.

  “I don’t care. Out!” She opened the door.

  “But I thought that we were—”

  “No! Out! It’s over!”

  Before he could seriously plant his feet still, Victoria rammed everything she had in her body against his back and propelled him across the threshold.

  Eamon was shocked to find himself standing in the hallway, he quickly turned back toward the door, only to have it slam in his face. What in the hell just happened? He saw something move off to his right and he turned his head to see the twins still standing there with their eyes and mouths in the same position as when the door had been slammed in their faces.

  Ignoring the fact that he was half-naked, he jutted a thumb toward the door. “Is she usually this grumpy in the mornings?”

  Who’s Afraid of Victoria Gregory?

  Chapter 11

  Quentin sighed as he unbuttoned his jacket and made himself more comfortable. “My man should’ve counted his lucky stars right then and there and hit the road. If I could see that she was trouble, then any player worth his salt should�
�ve seen it, too.”

  “You didn’t like Ms. Gregory?” Dr. Turner asked.

  He bobbed his shoulders. “I liked her all right. She’s definitely a beautiful woman. No doubt. But she was the type of woman who played for keeps, whether she knew it or not. She didn’t strike me as someone you could just bed and walk away from. She’s the type that puts invisible hooks in you while she’s scratching your back.”

  Dr. Turner snickered.

  Quentin glanced over his right shoulder and smiled. “Know a lot about that, do you?”

  “We’re not talking about me, Mr. Hinton.”

  “I thought that we already established that you were going to call me Quentin?”

  A light twinkled in the doctor’s eyes. “All right. Quentin. So what was it about this Victoria that you found so threatening?”

  Frowning, Q shifted in the chaise. “I don’t think that threatening is the right word.”

  “No?” She sounded surprised. “Victoria didn’t threaten your newly formed boys’ club?”

  Silence.

  “That is why you started hanging around your cousins, isn’t it? To be around like-minded men—men who’d taken a vow of eternal bachelorhood, too?”

  Silence.

  Across the room, the image of Alyssa with her head angled to the side appeared. “Aren’t you going to answer her?” the imaginary Alyssa asked.

  Quentin clenched his jaw and rolled his eyes. Why am I putting myself through this? “Yeah…maybe,” he finally answered. “I guess I can admit that. Two weeks after their explosive introduction, I thought maybe I’d been wrong. Eamon threw himself into work and Victoria went back to New York…”

  Chapter 12

  Two weeks later…

  Life seemed like it was getting back to normal. For the first time since her disastrous wedding, there wasn’t a peep on Page Six of the New York Post about the jilted billionaire bride or her runaway groom. Surprised, relieved and even a little suspicious about the welcome change of events, Victoria paged through the newspaper to double check her good fortune.