“My flight’s boarding now.” The stressed urgency in her tone made Ronan regret his candor. “Please lie low. If the police should find you, don’t say a goddamned word! Nothing at all.”
“I’m not completely without sense, Claudy.”
Her exasperated sigh refuted him. “And stay the hell away from Gideon Cross.”
Jules Robicheaux gripped the cool edges of the pedestal sink in his bathroom and stared into the eyes of his reflection. He looked like a guiltyfils d'putain, because he was unquestionably a son of a bitch. His sweat-drenched hair was slicked back from his face, and his chest glistened with perspiration. Tingles raced down his legs, and a muscle in his right buttock twitched spasmodically from the past hours of exertion.
His brother, the man he loved and respected as both a sibling and quasi-parent, was in a situation. Claudette was en route to New York, and he should’ve gone with her, but a single phone call was all it took to delay his departure.
Glancing back into the bedroom, he eyed the voluptuous blonde on his bed, her arms and legs stretched wide beneath the swirling ceiling fan. His unruly but thoroughly spent dick attempted to stir at the sight of her heavy breasts, taut belly, and full hips. He cursed it, damning the lack of control he had over the thing.
“Such language,” she teased, her lush lips curving in a satiated smile. “That’s no way to talk around a lady.”
His nostrils flaring with a sharp intake of breath, he turned on the faucet and splashed cool water on his heated face. “A lady wouldn’t be fucking the brother of the man she wants to marry.”
Eyes closed and face tilted up to the fan’s breeze, Scarlett Claiborne laughed. “Ah, here comes the inevitable guilt. When will you get over it, Jules? Your brother—who’s been busy fucking Ireland Vidal, I’ll point out—and I, we have an understanding. I don’t tie him down, and he doesn’t hold me to a higher standard than himself.”
“There are different rules for brothers.” He walked to the doorway and leaned against the jamb. “We can’t keep hooking up like this.”
Pushing onto her elbows, she looked at him with those lovely cornflower blue eyes, her heated gaze roaming the length of his nude body. She was insatiable. He could say without exaggeration that he’d fucked hundreds of women—too many of them serving as distractions from his craving for Scarlett—and none could match the well-regarded socialite’s greed for pleasure. “Well, then, don’t answer my calls or open the door when I come over.”
Her golden curls fell in a messy, damp cascade to the bed behind her. A rivulet of sweat coursed between her gorgeous tits and slid toward her navel. The Claibornes were an even more prominent family than the Boudreauxes, and when Jules crossed paths with her in public, Scarlett was the epitome of an impeccably pedigreed Southern belle.
But in the bedroom, she was temptation incarnate.
“I haven’t the willpower to resist you,” he said grimly. “I can only beg you to take pity on me and leave me in peace.”
She gave him a come-hither smile as she cupped one breast in her hand and rolled the taut nipple between her thumb and index finger. “But I can’t go without you, either,cher. No one fucks me like you do. As if you’d claw through steel to get your hands on my body. Your brother handles me with kid gloves—it might as well be a handshake. You, however, leave bruises.”
“Désolé,” he breathed, knowing it was true. He held her too tightly, kissed her too roughly, rode her tender pussy too hard.
How had he fallen so easily into this hellish arrangement?
He and Scarlett had been introduced at one of the public events held at Bellefleur, the famed Boudreaux estate, one of the few that he and Claudette were invited to attend. Harper Boudreaux would’ve preferred it if Ronan, her favorite grandchild, had no ill-bred half-siblings, so he and Claudy were excluded from Boudreaux family gatherings. That distinction always put Jules on the back foot, playing on his deepest insecurities and self-loathing. Meeting Scarlett under those conditions had tilted the world on its axis.
Jules had never seen a woman more lovely before or since. He’d flirted with her simply because it was second nature to him, and he could do so even when dumbfounded by her beauty and sharp wit. The minx had flirted back and charmed him in the process. She shared his mother's middle name, and he told himself that was the fingerprint of fate.
Since she wanted to ensnare his brother, he left her responsible for drawing the line. That was one of many mistakes he’d made. Moderation wasn’t a virtue to Scarlett.
“Oh, my word.” She flopped onto her back dramatically. “Apologize for being gone for weeks, Jules Robicheaux, not for fucking the hell out of me when you returned.” Lifting her head, she gave him a narrow-eyed glance. “And I won’t let you stop.”
Shaking his head, he straightened. Scarlett believed Ronan was her perfect match for an open marriage, and Jules understood why. His brother was like catnip to women. And Ronan had the added lure of being an heir to Bellefleur—although he didn’t want it—and the historic estate was a dangling carrot for many well-heeled Southern bachelorettes.
There was a small, shameful part of him that resented his brother for being so careless about someone Jules would give anything to possess.
“You need to go,” he urged. “I need to catch a flight.”
Scarlett sat abruptly upright, high color on her cheeks. “You arenottossing me out in the middle of the night like I just scratched an itch and wore out my welcome. I’m not like the other pieces of ass you fuck.”
“That’s all you can ever be,” he shot back, striding around the room and snatching her scattered clothes up from the floor.
“The hell you say.” She hopped off the bed and followed him. “I decide when I go!”
Turning, he thrust her garments into her arms. “You’re goingnow. And you’re not coming back.”
She threw the clothes onto the bed and shoved him back with both hands. “I don’t take orders from anyone.” She shoved him again. “I decide where I go and when I leave.”
His back bumped the wall when she shoved him a third time. “And maybe I’ll decide to move to New York,chère catin. The variety of women is sublime. I have a different one every night.”
