CHAPTER TWO
Zachary Savage looked up from the papers he was perusing and watched three men enter the Executive Guest Suite.
From his position behind the glass wall of the mezzanine floor office he’d commandeered from his assistant, he tracked them with narrowed eyes.
The lead member of the rock band Friday’s Child was immediately recognizable. Back in what felt like another life, Zachary had attended a couple of their gigs. But that was before everything had gone to hell.
As usual, any thoughts of how his life had changed over the past six years made his jaw clench with anger and sorrow.
If he’d known that this stopover would clash with one of his Indigo Lounge flights, he’d have made other arrangements and placed himself very far away from harsh reminders of the past.
What the hell, he was here now.
That he normally did the guest vetting from the comfort of his San Francisco home office was neither here nor there. The stopover from London to refuel his jet was taking longer than expected. Working while he waited helped contain the restlessness that continued to prowl inside him.
He tried to get his brain back to work mode. So far he’d gone through the info on all the passengers boarding his plane except one.
As far as he’d been able to determine, the band members were clean. No evidence of drug use or excessive drinking. The other six parties travelling on this Indigo Lounge experience had been equally vetted. He tracked the band members to the front desk, watched them flirt with the receptionist.
Boredom escalating, his gaze returned to his papers. There was only one unknown quantity.
Bethany Green. The wild card.
Her invitation had been issued late, but so far the preliminary background check was clean.
He was about to flip over to the photograph page when a flash of yellow caught his attention.
She stood framed in the doorway of his building, two large weekenders clutched in her hand and an oversized purse slung over one shoulder.
Long dark hair spilled in rich waves around her bare shoulders and over her arms. Zach couldn’t immediately see her face against the sunlit backdrop, but what he saw of her body made his breath catch as something flickered awake inside him.
The way she held herself intrigued him; slightly unsure but poised on the threshold, as if talking herself into taking the next step. In his world, women reveled in being ball-breakers, strove to show no weakness in his presence in hopes of impressing him.
Seeing a woman who recognized her vulnerability and struggled to own it was oddly captivating. He stood and walked to the window, surprised by how much he wanted to see this woman.
The wind caught and flattened her short dress against long, sexy bare legs, legs that seemed to go on forever before they curved to embrace rounded hips and a firm, flat stomach.
Zach’s cock jerked, stunning the hell out of him with a hunger his jaded existence hadn’t allowed him in a very long time. When his gaze reached her breasts, he let out a growl and realized his fingers were braced against the glass, his head almost touching it as he strained to see her face.
But she remained in shadow, poised on the threshold of the building, undecided whether to step in or bolt.
Come in .
He realized he’d whispered the words and froze, a touch of confusion making him frown. As he watched, her head cocked to the side, one hand lifting to brush her long, luxurious hair off her face. And still he couldn’t see her.
But with her hair out of the way, he caught sight of a sleek neck, smooth skin.
The hunger grew, slammed inside him like a living thing. His cock, now fully awake, demanded action. Action it hadn’t seen in weeks because even the thought of sex had bored him to distraction. Until now.
He breathed in deeply, every nerve in his body straining to see her fully.
Come in!
She continued to play with her hair, holding it back from her face. He grew harder, nearly dizzy with the force of his erection.
Finally, she stepped forward.
Zach’s breath blew out of his body when he saw her face. Sensation hit him with the strength of a force-five hurricane. Her features were luscious; her pink mouth full and deliciously curved as if created for kisses… his kisses. High cheekbones and a pert nose completed the gorgeous tableau, and he watched with unwavering attention as she entered his domain.
With each step she took, he felt a powerful charge go through him. By the time she was directly below him, his fist was clenched against the glass, his emotions and his body both on fire.
She glanced up directly at him, but of course, she couldn’t see him through the one-way mirrored glass. At that angle, her face was even more stunning, her clear blue eyes shining with a mixture of excitement and apprehension.
Zach wanted all her excitement and none of the apprehension. Hell, he wanted her, period.
No, “want” was too tame to describe the feelings coursing through him. The desperation churning inside him was as alien as it was forceful. He didn’t do spontaneous. Didn’t crave a woman on just seeing her. Nowadays, his girlfriends were carefully chosen, fully vetted.
And yet…
She lowered her gaze, shook her head slightly as if to clear it and looked around her. The moment he saw her head for the desk where the rock band were getting checked in, Zach cursed.
He was running out of his office before the string of filthy words was complete.
Bethany tried to shake off the strange sensation that had come over her and moved toward the front desk, where a drop-dead blonde goddess was checking in the last of the group of men. One of them, dark-haired and wearing an expensive-looking leather jacket, glanced over at her and winked.
She wasn’t na?ve enough to mistake his interest but her return smile felt strained all the same.
Now that she was here, out of the sphere of Keely’s confidence, she was bombarded with second thoughts. And that sensation she’d felt a moment ago as she looked up at the frosted glass, the feeling like she was on a yawning precipice, staring into the face of danger… well, that had scared the shit of out her?—
A door to the side of her burst open, and Bethany stopped dead.
Jesus!
He was all her wet dreams personified. The living god of her sexual fantasies, her daydreams and her cravings come to life.
Eyes the color of slate zeroed in on her from a face so incredibly stunning that her mouth went dry. His bold stare transmitted a raw sexual pulse of electricity straight between her legs. As he moved like an animal barely caged by civilization, her clit pulsed to life—contrary to Keely’s hypothesis, it wasn’t quite dead yet it seemed.
Everything fell away, every human being in the vicinity ceased to exist as she stared at the god before her. The vaguely familiar god…
His shoulders were wide, strong and imposing. He was breathtakingly tall, easily six-foot four, with hair as black as the T-shirt he wore with black jeans that emphasized narrow hips and taut, manly thighs.
Weathered boots and a chocolate-colored leather jacket completed the package but did nothing to disguise the air of raw masculinity that vibrated from him.
He stared at her as if he had the right to, as if he owned her and intended to claim her right there and then.
Bethany’s pulse raced as she stared back, feeling extremely vulnerable but unable to pull her gaze away.
He moved one more step and stopped right before her, threatening to block out even the sunlight.
“Welcome to The Indigo Lounge.”
His voice, like honeyed gravel, rough yet melodic, sent another wave of heat right through her.
Bethany had no trouble imagining it during sex, whispering hot, dirty things to her as he fucked her. God, he probably fucked like a goddamn champion.
What the hell had he said? Welcome?
“Umm… thank you.”
He finally broke his electric focus and nodded over to a spare desk. As if conjured up by magic, another blonde goddess appeared behind it.
This one seemed to have eyes only for the man in front of her. No surprise there. But the avid interest in the woman’s gaze made Bethany itch to wipe the smile from her face.
“Serena, can you check in Miss…?” He looked at her, one brow raised.
Bethany forced herself to focus. “Green. Bethany Green.”
His eyes gleamed, then his lashes swept down to shield his expression. He nodded and turned to Serena. “Check Miss Green in, and arrange for my bags to be moved, too. I’m joining this I.L. trip.”
Serena’s eyebrows hit her carefully arranged bangs. “You’re no longer heading to the West Coast?”
His nostrils flared slightly, and his jaw protruded as if he was battling with himself. Finally, he smiled. “No. Change of plan. Can I rely on you to arrange that, Serena?”
Of course he could. Serena’s simpering smile indicated Mr. Sex God could rely on her to arrange everything to suit him—including herself should the whim take him.
“Right away, sir.”
Sex God smiled. “Not quite right away, Serena. First, please assist Miss Green.”
Stormy grey eyes locked onto her once more. There was something about him that was so devastatingly powerful, Bethany had to force herself to look away, desperately willing her brain cells to track when Serena asked for her passport.
She handed it over, along with her copy of the Indigo Lounge agreement, which she’d signed in triplicate. All the while, the burn of his gaze silently branded her.
When Serena fake-smiled and handed back her passport, Bethany’s hand shook as she placed it in her purse. The force of his stare was that little bit too much for comfort.
“If you leave your bags right here, they will be taken onto the plane. Your hostess, Tracy, will be here in a moment to introduce you to your team and she’ll arrange the final search.”
“Search?”
Serena’s fake smile stretched wider. “It’s our company policy to do a drugs search before our clients board. It’s right there in the agreement you signed. Mr. Savage’s rules about drug use on his planes are very strict.”
Bethany’s teeth ground together at the patronizing tone but she forced a smile. “Sure. If Mr. Savage insists.”
“He does,” Serena emphasized, casting another simpering look past her at the Sex God.
Bethany glanced over at him too and caught his faint look of amusement. But the moment their eyes met, the amusement faded, replaced by sizzling, possessive heat once more.
He shifted as if the same restless energy that prowled through her stormed through him as well. His fingers flexed, then he jammed them into his back pockets. The movement stretched the material of his T-shirt over his powerful biceps, making her mouth water.
She struggled to rein in her reeling senses. She’d never felt like this before, not even with Chris?—
Yeah… Chris. Not thinking about him right now!
“Allow me to escort you to your hostess,” the man said, rocking forward on his feet.
She wanted to ask him who he was, why he was taking an interest in her check-in, but the chemistry between them was blatant enough, powerful enough, that words seemed superfluous.
Despite her floundering, despite the puzzlement as to why such a sexy and gorgeous man was watching her with barely contained hunger, she couldn’t dismiss the bone-deep truth firing through her body.
Bethany wanted to fuck him. Pure and simple.
Except there would be nothing pure or simple about it.
The jaded wariness she saw in his eyes didn’t detract from the raw sexual experience that lingered within the grey depths. Sex with this man would be insanely filthy; it would be nasty and sweaty. It would also be beautiful and complicated beyond words. She knew it as surely as she knew her own name.
Without answering, she nodded and fell into step beside him.
Behind her, Serena gushed about seeing to his needs, but neither of them paid her comments any attention.
His scent, warm, lemony with a hint of spice, filled Bethany’s head along with a dizzying progression of filthy thoughts. God, she wanted to lick him in places she’d never once dreamed of licking a man! And that was just the beginning…
He led her through the doors he’d emerged from what felt like an eternity ago. A set of luxuriously carpeted stairs led to another door on the mezzanine level.
He stood to one side and waved her up, a wicked smile curving his sensuous lips. “After you, Miss Green.”
Thank God she’d shaved her legs last night, was her first thought. Her second was whether her panties were visible through the thin fabric of the flirty yellow Vera Wang summer dress Keely had insisted she wear.
Oh, what the hell did it matter?
Propriety had gone out the window the moment she’d set eyes on this man. All the same, she couldn’t stop her hand from fluttering against the back of her dress as she mounted the stairs.
She heard his soft hiss and belatedly realized that all she’d done was succeed in plastering the material against her ass. Her Kardashian ass, as Keely liked to call it.
By far it was her worst feature, ridiculously large in comparison to the rest of her body. While her breasts were an okay size, and her stomach and thighs having been primed with ballet from an early age responded well to exercise, her ass let her down every time. It was why she’d given up her dreams of becoming a prima ballerina.
She reached the top of the stairs and quickly dropped her hand.
Before she could open it, he reached past her and threw the door open.
The moment she entered, she knew why she’d felt the weird sensation as she’d walked into the Executive Guest Suite.
Moving forward, she stopped in front of the glass wall, her heart hammering wildly in her throat as she looked down into the open space below.
“You were in this room when I came in.” It wasn’t a question. It was another certainty that stemmed from her soul.
“Yes.” His voice, hypnotic and sexy as hell, washed over her.
“You saw me.”
“Yes.” He was closer, close enough for her to smell him again.
“And you came downstairs?”
“I couldn’t not.”
She turned. He stood less than a pace away, those mesmerizing eyes on her. Again, his shoulders and his hands moved restlessly, as if he were physically restraining himself from touching her.
“So, what now?”
His gaze raked her from head to toe and back again. His lips parted and his tongue traced the inside of his lower lip. “Now you place your hands on the wall behind you and spread your legs.”
Stunned excitement rocked through her, but she forced herself to breathe, to remain lucid. “W… why would I want to do that?”
His smile was filled with pure sin. “For your drug search, of course.”
“What… what about Tracy?”
His smile disappeared. “She won’t be conducting the search. I brought you here because now I’ve seen you, now I have you, Bethany Green, I refuse to let anyone else touch you.”
He took that last step until they were a whisper apart. His head lowered and his nostrils flared as he breathed her in, the sharp tinge of need in his every exhale. “Are you ready?” he rasped.
She looked up at him, every nerve in her body tightening with need.
“No. You’re about to put your hands on me and I don’t even know your name.”
“My name is Zachary Savage. You can call me Zach. In fact, I prefer it. Because Zachary is too long for the many times I intend for you to scream my name when I make you come.”
CHAPTER THREE
Sweet. Baby. Jesus.
“I don’t think you’re allowed to say that to your guests, Mr. Savage.” She was stunned that her voice sounded halfway normal because her brain was jumping with the shock of finding out who was stood in front of her.
Holy hell, she was talking to Zachary Savage! Although her brain had fired off that possibility when she’d first seen him, she’d discarded the idea because as captivating as the picture of him in Time had been, it did him no justice at all in person.
This flesh and blood version was virile, charismatic, sexy as hell. This close, she could see the myriad expressions in his eyes as he looked at her. And the main expression made her clit throb.
“I don’t believe in playing coy games. And you’re not like the rest of the guests.”
“You’re very sure of yourself, aren’t you?”
“I know what I want. And I always get it.”
“Or everything you’ve just said you weren’t going to say could just be one huge, cocky line carefully designed to get you the same result.”
His jaw tightened a touch but his avid stare continued to bore into her. To hypnotize her. “It’s not a line, Bethany. You know that. You’ve just admitted you felt it. What I felt when I saw you from this room—you felt it, too, even before we’d exchanged a single word.”
Although she wanted to agree, Bethany held back. Her instincts screamed that giving in too easily to this man would be dangerous. “It’s a long cake walk from feelings to fucking, Mr. Savage.” Even his surname tasted foreign on her tongue, exotic and exciting, and charged with the endless possibilities shimmering in his eyes.
His nostrils flared. “Not for us. In our minds, we’ve already fucked a hundred times in a hundred different ways. Mental copulation is just as powerful as the real thing.”
Jesus! “And did I like it, this hypothetical fucking?”
He grinned with complete and utter masculine confidence, his white-toothed smile transfixing her. “You wouldn’t be here, alone with me, if you hadn’t.”
“Mr. Savage?—”
“Zach,” he insisted.
“Let’s be clear on one thing. I’m not in the habit of jumping into bed with the first man who crooks his finger at me on a Sunday morning.”
His nostrils flared in a barely contained hint of displeasure. “You won’t be jumping into bed with any other man for the foreseeable future. Let’s get that clear.”
The breath she blew out was both desperate and exasperated. His closeness was doing things to her insides she wasn’t sure she could accurately describe. From the moment she’d set eyes on him, her nipples had peaked into tight, hard nubs. Bethany was sure there was some sort of physical side effect from being this turned on for too long. The racing of her heart alone scared the holy shit out of her. She needed to get out of here, if only to find a moment’s reprieve. But from staring into his eyes, she knew Zachary Savage wasn’t about to let her go.
“Are you going to conduct this search sometime today, or am I free to go board your plane?”
For an eternity he didn’t reply. Then he took a single step back. “Drop your purse.”
Holding his gaze, she did as he asked without argument. With a soft thud, her purse landed on the carpet beside them. Until she didn’t have the imagined security of her purse, she hadn’t realized just how vulnerable she felt.
She swallowed hard and waited.
“Arms up.”
A shiver went through her, but she complied, slowly lifting her arms until they were level with her shoulders.
“Higher,” he rasped, his voice strangely compelling.
Licking her dry lips, she raised her arms higher until they were above her head. The action lifted her short dress.
Bethany didn’t have to look down to know her legs were exposed to mid-thigh, that her breasts were pushed high by her stance.
She watched him watch her, her breath coming in pants as he slowly sank down onto his heels.
He reached for the heel of her shoe, lifted her foot and widened her stance. Then he grasped her foot and placed it on his knee. Her platform-heeled shoe came off with little resistance.
The moment Zachary Savage touched her, Bethany knew she was thoroughly screwed.
Profound, electric and wild. She marveled that so simple a touch on her heel could elicit such strong feelings.
With precise movements, he looked into her shoe, checked the platform and stiletto, then set it aside. He conducted the same scrutiny on her other shoe, then lowered her foot.
He raised his head and locked his dark grey eyes on her as his fingers drifted up her ankles and over her calves. When he touched the back of her knees, she couldn’t stop a soft moan from escaping her throat. He paused, his stare curious and hungry, then he continued upward, upward until his hands were underneath her dress, over the super-sensitive skin of her hips.
Searching fingers grazed the edge of her panties, traced the cotton to the space between her legs. Bethany saw him swallow as his fingers encountered her wet heat. But he didn’t linger.
Lips clamped together as if holding himself together with the utmost control, he let his fingers drift to the top edge of her panties and then to the sides before withdrawing.
She almost groaned in disappointment as he continued his search over her dress. Large, strong hands travelled around her waist, his grip sure and powerful as he searched upward over her midriff.
He rose to tower over her. Without her heels, she reached just below his shoulders. Again, her feeling of vulnerability escalated. He was so tall, so strong and powerful. He could break her with a single snap.
And yet, looking into his face, she saw gentleness in the depths of all that wild and savage need.
Zachary Savage wouldn’t hurt her.
But if he chose to just rest his hands beneath her breasts like that, he could certainly kill her with lust.
As if sensing her agitation, he moved his fingers, followed the line of her bra without palming her breast the way she yearned for him to.
Although… Sweet Jesus. This was sexier than she’d ever imagined. Way sexier. This push and play between them, the touching and yet not touching…
When his hands grasped her waist tightly and insistently before he let go, she bit her lip against another groan.
“Turn around.”
Her sex pulsed harder, liquid heat pooling between her thighs. A hairsbreadth away from becoming one hot mess, she turned and placed heated hands against the cool glass.
This time he started from the top.
He lifted her hair and fingered the heavy tresses with long, slow movements.
At one point, Bethany thought he lifted a strand to his nose and inhaled, but her senses were so overwhelmed that she couldn’t be sure.
Again, he searched the straps of her bra then moved lower to her waist.
He was just about to skim her panties when the click of the intercom echoed through the room.
“Would Indigo Lounge guests make their way to the VIP room, please? Boarding is about to commence.”
She exhaled in a rush and started to lower her arms.
“Not yet. There’s no rush.”
“But we… I have to go.”
He stepped closer and caged her in, one hand either side of her on the wall. “I own the plane, beautiful,” he whispered in her ear. “It doesn’t fly unless I say so.”
“Okay, but you’re offering a service and you have a duty to provide a great one.”
“I also have a duty to make sure my rules are upheld. And you’re not leaving this room until I’m sure you’re fully compliant with my wishes.”
His fingers walked up the glass to rest over hers. Interlacing their fingers, he slowly lowered their arms. He let go of her hands and he shifted his stance behind her. His hands moved to her ass and another powerful surge of electricity scorched her. She closed her eyes against the potent sensation and whimpered like a helpless kitten.
He cupped the heavy globes, molded them, then squeezed tightly.
He muttered something she didn’t quite catch, hard and urgent under his breath.
“What did you say?” she asked, her own breaths quick and frantic.
The intercom buzzed again, interrupting his reply and summoning guests to the VIP room.
Zach grunted his annoyance but when he spoke again, his voice held only dark, heated, implacable promise. This time when he caged her, he pushed right against her, until the hard, rigid imprint of his body was unmistakable against her back. He gripped her backside and pushed against her till his thick, heavy cock rested between her ass cheeks.
“Soon. Very soon, when the time is right, Bethany Green, I’m going to put my cock between these gorgeous peaches and I’m going to crack-fuck you until you beg me to make you come. And that will be just the beginning.”