Seduction and Sapphires Read online

  Not even his brothers knew that his current job was just another cover, though he had a suspicion that Declan was in on it. His brother seemed to know everything going on all the time.

  “And now you have a house and a sexy neighbor,” Shane said, shrugging. “It’s very mature. You’re thirty-six years old. It’s about time you settled down.”

  “Enough, Shane,” Cade growled, thoughts of the future and children he’d never gotten to share with Carmen clouding his vision. “I don’t want to settle down in some picture perfect life of what you think would make me happy. I’ll do my fucking job. I might even do my fucking neighbor. But I’ll be damned if I bring some woman and a bunch of kids into the misery that is my life. You think del Fuego or his men will ever stop looking for me? My family would never be safe. I’m a wanted man.”

  “Bullshit, Cade,” Shane said. “There have been no reports on activity again in the cartel. You’re just afraid to live again. For the last couple of years you’ve done nothing but be miserable to yourself and everyone around you because of what happened to Carmen del Fuego. I know you loved her. But you might as well be dead the way you’re living now. You’re trying to get yourself killed. You think we’re too stupid to know that you’re setting yourself up as bait?”

  Shane was always the more hotheaded of his brothers, and he never knew when to shut his mouth. Cade could see Declan shaking his head from the corner of his eye and moving into position to get between them if things got violent. And Cade knew that Dec wouldn’t pull his punches if he was forced to break up a fight.

  Cade had worked with his middle brother on several ops over the years, and Cade still had no idea what branch of the government Dec worked for or exactly what he did. He only knew that his brother always showed up when he needed to, and he wasn’t someone to mess with.

  “It’s my life, Shane. They’re my memories, my regrets, and it’s my fucking guilt. I’ll do what I need to, and I’ll do the job I’ve been given. Even if it means I spend my last breath watching the cartel come to an end. Don’t ever expect anything more from me. I don’t need the hero worship you had for me as a kid. I know my duty.”

  “You’re sure as fuck not anyone’s hero anymore, Cade,” Shane said. “You think it doesn’t break Mom’s heart every time she sees what you’ve become? Miguel del Fuego might be the most unimaginable bastard to ever walk the face of the planet, but even he’s got life in him that you don’t have. Because he has a purpose. His purpose might be to kill you, but it’s a purpose all the same. What the hell do you have?”

  “A brother who doesn’t know when to shut up.”

  Shane grabbed his shirt off the floor and jerked it on, and Cade followed him into the living room, feeling the acid churn in his gut as his brother grabbed his duffle bag and slipped on his sunglasses. He wanted to stop him. To apologize. To just do—something. But he didn’t say anything.

  “You know what the shitty thing is, Cade?” Shane asked as he turned back, his eyes hidden behind his glasses. “It’s like your whole family died with Carmen that day. I don’t know why the hell we all bother. I’m leaving on assignment tomorrow. I’ll be back in country in six weeks.”

  Shane waved a hand negligently as he walked out the door, and Cade decided he’d be better off going to the kitchen for another beer rather than throwing something against the wall like he wanted to do.

  “Are you leaving too?” Cade finally asked after Declan had been silent for what seemed like forever.

  “Might as well. I’ve got a job coming up.”

  “I can’t help the way I feel, Dec. And I can’t change the way I am.”

  Cade heard Declan sigh, and his grip tightened around the bottle in his hand at the disappointment that one breath of air seemed to express.

  “That’s not for me to say, Cade. And I know it won’t be one of us who has the power to make you feel differently. Maybe it’s time to just open your mind to the possibilities of having something more. I’m not saying you have to,” he said, before Cade could interrupt. “But maybe there’s a chance you didn’t die that day with Carmen after all, and there’s a lot of life ahead of you. She wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself.”

  Cade grunted and brought the beer up to quench his dry throat. He was just so damned tired. And empty. And lonely.

  “Just be grateful Darcy and Grant aren’t here to add their opinion to Shane’s.”

  A rusty laugh rumbled from Cade’s chest as he thought of his two other siblings. Grant had just gotten married and was settling in nicely with his new wife, and his sister, Darcy, was finishing up her Master’s Degree and trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life, driving everyone crazy in the meantime. One of the reasons he’d moved from Montana to Texas was because he never had any peace. Someone in the family—between his parents, siblings and cousins—was always trying to give him advice on how to get his life back together.

  “Oh, believe me. I’m grateful.”

  Declan nodded and grabbed his own bag from the hall closet. “You’ve got a nice house here, Cade. It’s older, and it’s going to need some care and maintenance, but she’s got a solid foundation. You’ve got a lot in common, I think.”

  “You know I love you guys, don’t you, Dec?” Cade said, feeling the urgent need to let his brother know it. “I just need some time.”

  “I know. Try to stay out of trouble. We haven’t heard rumbles of the cartel moving again, but my gut’s been churning ever since you took this job. They’ll find you, and I know you’re expecting it, but shit happens. I’ll be mighty pissed if you end up getting killed.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Declan grinned, stretching the ragged scar on his right cheek into a fine white line. “And don’t give the pretty lady next door too hard of a time. She’s going to give you a run for your money.”

  “Never in a million years. Did you see the way she glared at me? No man wants that kind of grief all the time.”

  Declan’s laughter followed him out the door. “Whatever you say. You know how to reach me if you need me.”

  He gave a two-fingered salute and slipped out the back door silently, through the trees in the backyard and to the car he had parked about a mile away. Declan was a paranoid bastard, and he had good reason to be. He also had uncanny instincts, and if his gut was churning then Cade could all but guarantee the cartel had found him. Perfect.

  Chapter Two

  Guilt ate at Bayleigh as she tossed and turned in her bed the rest of the morning. There was no way she was going to get back to sleep. Not that she didn’t have a good reason to be a bitch at that time of the morning. No judge in a court of law would convict her once they’d learned she hadn’t had her coffee. But still, she should have shown a little more restraint, and she shouldn’t have let him get under her skin. She’d paid for enough therapy to get over her self-esteem issues. And he’d apologized, though he’d looked damned angry about it.

  The thought of those dark, wicked eyes had her body heating and her breasts aching. He was dangerous—the scars on his hard body the proof of the life he’d led—but despite the first impression of him that had stolen the breath from her body, she hadn’t been afraid. Because as much as she hated to admit it, there was something about him that called to her baser nature. Animal instinct. There was no other way to explain her reaction to him.

  Hell, maybe she didn’t have the sense that God gave a turnip, as her brothers so often reminded her. Trouble had a tendency to follow her around, but she knew how to handle herself. Growing up as an army brat with a retired Colonel for a father, a brother who was a Navy SEAL, and another brother who worked for Homeland Security had given her the necessary tools to strike out on her own. But the man next door was trouble to the millionth degree, and she had a feeling there was nothing in her arsenal of tricks that could protect her from him if he ever got it in his mind to come after her.

  God, she’d been more turned on just standing there looking at the bu
lge beneath his jeans that she’d ever been having actual sex with Paul or any of her previous lovers. But men who had that kind of sex appeal usually came with relationship issues, and she didn’t want to deal with that. She wanted a partner. A man who could give her friendship, his devotion, his love and orgasms.

  Maybe she was being too picky.

  Bayleigh tossed the covers back and let the fan that spun overhead cool her overheated body, and the urge to skim her fingers across the sensitive tips of her breasts and down beneath the thin cotton of her boxers had her teeth gritting in frustration. Damn the man anyway for stirring up her anger and lust all in the same morning. And now she could expect to spend the rest of the day not only exhausted due to lack of sleep, but turned on as well.

  Her feet hit the floor and she headed into the kitchen to make another pot of coffee. She was going to need it. The lace curtains at her kitchen window weren’t there for privacy’s sake. Her need to have the light come through her windows drove her brothers crazy, and they were constantly lowering the blinds they’d had installed for her every time they visited. But she felt safe in this neighborhood. Her neighbors were good people—mostly elderly—and the street itself was beautiful.

  Huge oak trees lined the row of cottage style houses. The sidewalks were cracked and broken with age, and black antique lights were spaced evenly down both sides of the street. She liked that her neighbors were nosy and checked up on her, and she loved that she felt comfortable enough in this place to take soup to Mrs. Abernathy two houses down when she’d had pneumonia, or that she had a key to the house across the street so she could water the plants when Mr. and Mrs. Spillers went to visit their daughter in Alaska every summer.

  This was the first place she’d been able to call home her whole life. Her parents had never settled more than a year or two in one spot when she was a kid because of her father’s job in the military. But the question that was eating at her was why her neighbor had decided to move here. He didn’t seem like the type for hearth and home or quiet neighborhoods.

  She sipped at her coffee and stared next door. The moving truck was gone, and a Harley that looked a lot like its owner—mean and sleek and tough—sat in the driveway. His house was a 1940’s bungalow and was sided with asbestos shingles. Diamond-paned windows decorated the front of the house and ivy grew riotously across every available surface. If it had been for sale when she’d been looking she would have snapped it up herself.

  There were no coverings on his windows and she wondered what he was doing. If he still had his shirt off. Damn, she just wanted to look at him one more time, just to assure herself that he was completely unsuitable. She was such a liar.

  “Damn,” she muttered aloud as the alarm clock in her bedroom blared, letting her know she only had an hour to get to the shop.

  She had a tendency to lose track of time and the alarm clocks were her way of making sure she stayed on schedule. Or at least mostly on schedule. Some days were better than others. She hurried back to the bedroom and took her coffee with her into the attached bathroom, showering quickly.

  By the time she padded back into the bedroom, a towel hooked securely around her breasts, she’d resigned herself to at least giving the man next door an apology for her behavior. She’d get another look at him and appease her conscience at the same time.

  Her shop, Satin and Lace, was an exclusive lingerie boutique in the outdoor shopping center a couple of miles from the college, and her clientele had certain expectations when they entered the glass double doors. They expected quality, sometimes exclusivity, and they always expected Bayleigh to act as if she didn’t need their business to survive, which was completely ridiculous. It was a game, and she’d learned to play it well over the last four years. She also handmade some of the finer pieces the store offered, and she was damned good at it.

  She dropped her towel and pulled on black lace panties and the matching bra she’d embroidered with gold thread. Sometimes the best perk of owning a shop like hers was she was able to sample the merchandise. Thigh high stockings followed and she attached them securely to the matching garter belt. She laid out a black pencil skirt—one that made her legs look a mile long—and a sexy three-quarter length azul sweater that veed enough to show a tempting amount of cleavage. It was part of her job to dress expensively, just as it was part of her job to offer her clients champagne and hors d’oeuvre’s and have fresh cut flowers delivered to the shop.

  Bayleigh moved to the bay window in her bedroom and peeked through the sheer lace curtains. She knew no one could see her. The trees shaded this side of her house, so her window was cast in darkness. Her window faced the new neighbor’s deck and part of the master bedroom window, but he was nowhere in sight.

  She was drawn to him. And damned if she could explain it.

  Cade let out a slow breath as his neighbor moved away from the window. He almost hadn’t gotten out of the way in time, but the sight of her ass in those barely there panties and garter belt had sweat trickling down his spine and his jaw clenched with desire. What the hell kind of game was she playing? No woman dressed like that unless they had seduction on the mind, and a woman wouldn’t walk around in front of her windows unless she wanted someone to notice. Since he was the only one there at the moment, he had to assume he was her target.

  His cock was swollen to painful proportions behind the zipper of his jeans, so he unbuttoned and unzipped them carefully, releasing his heavy erection into his hand. He hadn’t been this hard in months—so hard his own touch was almost unbearable because he was too sensitive.

  His balls were drawn up tight and he could see himself tearing that flimsy lingerie from her body and bending her over the little dressing table she was currently sitting at, his fist wrapped around the thick length of her hair as he pushed inside her.

  He stroked himself from shaft to tip, spreading the drops of pre-cum over the swollen head of his cock. His back bowed and sweat ran freely down his neck and chest as he worked his shaft up and down, swirling his hand around the head, and then repeating the motions again slower so he didn’t come too soon. The thought of how hot and tight she’d be clamped around him made his knees weak, and he braced his hand against the windowpane for balance.

  “Have mercy, sweetheart,” he moaned as she bent over to get the hairbrush she’d dropped on the floor.

  The images in his mind shifted until he saw her on her knees before him, her mouth devouring him and her tongue driving him wild as his cock hit the back of her throat. The thought was too much and his balls tightened closer to his body and his cock seemed to swell in his hand as he pumped faster and faster. Muscles strained and his heart pounded as semen spurted in thick streams against the glass. His lungs seized and the need for oxygen didn’t seem to be as important as it should have. The force of his orgasm took him by surprise. It had clearly been too long since he’d had a woman.

  Shit. She was going to complicate his life, because there was no way in hell he was going to be able to stay away from her. He’d take her until they burned each other out. And he was positive whatever sparks there were between them would eventually die out. The life he led was too dangerous for a serious relationship. And he was too damaged. As long as she understood his position from the beginning they could focus on bringing each other pleasure instead of being tied down by emotions.

  He also had to worry about keeping her safe. It wouldn’t take long for the cartel to realize Cade was interested in Bayleigh, and starting an affair was the best way to keep her close. If he could convince her to stay at his house, it would be even better.

  Cade knew Miguel’s son, Carlos, would be the one heading the cartel’s resurrection, and he’d be the one looking for revenge against Cade. There had been traces of Rabbit, the deadly drug Miguel’s scientists had developed, found in different states for the past several years. The occurrences weren’t frequent and so far they were contained to the southern states, but they were still there. No, it was too late to cut ties co
mpletely and leave her out of this operation. The best thing to do would be to draw her in. For her own safety. And for his satisfaction.

  With that decision made, he got his breathing back under control and cleaned up the mess he’d made before hitting the shower. He didn’t officially start work until the next day, but he wanted to go in and talk with his captain, get a feel for the station. Vice cops didn’t work with partners, and he was grateful for it. One less person for him to drag down with him if things went to shit.

  Cade dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt, tossing his old leather jacket over his shoulder as he grabbed the keys to his motorcycle. Boxes littered the path to the front door, but damned if he could find the motivation to start unpacking them. It could wait another day or five. It’s not like he wasn’t going to be here a while.

  The front door locked behind him and his eyes immediately went next door. He sensed her before he saw her standing there—the light scent of vanilla clouding his brain, making him hungry for her. There was no way he could leave her alone now that she’d given him a preview of that fuck me underwear, but the wariness was there in his gut, the knowledge that he’d inadvertently drawn her into something that she hadn’t had a choice about. He was a bastard for sure, bringing her closer when he should have been on the phone to her brothers, begging them to take her away and keep her safe until the cartel was brought down. But he hadn’t, so it was up to him to keep her safe.

  Cade’s body pulsed, dark and hard with desire as his eyes raked over delicate feet in four-inch stilettos and wandered up over impossibly long legs. He almost swallowed his tongue at the way the black skirt hugged her curves and the smooth flesh of her thighs. His gaze lingered on her full breasts, remembering the delicate lace that touched her so intimately. Her nipples were hard and practically begged for his attention, and he could see the pulse beating rapidly in her throat and the slow flush of desire working its way up her chest. She wasn’t unaffected by him, and he wanted nothing more than to sink to his knees in front of her and see how ready she was for him.