My Secret Life Read online

  The pirate growled again, low and guttural. The sound vibrated through her, set her nerve endings flaming, causing her hips to twitch involuntarily and the deep folds of her moist sex to burn for him.

  He unzipped her costume and slipped it off her shoulders in the darkness. Then he unhooked her bra, exposing her bare breasts. The pirate lowered his head and began to sweetly suckle one of her aching nipples while lightly pinching the other between his thumb and index finger.

  The synthetic material of his fake beard tickled her skin.

  Something inside of her slipped, a ship freed from its moorings, set adrift at sea. She reached up to plane his face with her hand, feeling the solid jut of his cheekbone against her palm.

  His mouth was skillful. Gentle when she needed him to be, firm when she needed that, too. This pirate was taking his time.

  While Katie appreciated his unanticipated leisure, at the same time it added to her anxiety. The longer this took, the more likely they were to be caught.

  And that sent a fresh set of brand-new thrills and chills chasing up her spine.

  His arms were strong, comforting. Oddly, in spite of the unconventional circumstances, she felt safe. She wished it wasn’t so dark, wished she could see his face.

  What, and spoil the fantasy?

  He reached down and, grabbing one of her legs, lifted it up and cocked her heel against his hip. Katie felt her stocking being stripped away. He peeled off her stiletto. Let it clatter to the floor. Carefully, he let her leg drop, then repeated the process with her other leg.

  She’d intended this encounter to be a clothes-on quickie, but it wasn’t turning out that way. He wasn’t playing his part how she’d imagined.

  His breath on her bare skin was deep and rich— black velvet. Nimbly, his fingers worked, tickling her skin. She giggled against the lightness of his touch, the freedom it unwound in her.

  Soon, she was standing with her back against the wall wearing nothing but black silk panties.

  “You don’t have to get undressed,” she said, taking care to keep her voice disguised, to keep the fantasy going. “We should make this fast. In case someone comes looking for us. We don’t want to get caught doing the nasty at the Ladies League ball.”

  “Why not?” he said rough and low. “It’s the perfect high-society sacrilege.”

  She frowned. What did he mean by that? She wished she could see his face.

  The room was ebony. Only the light from underneath the crack in the door penetrated the darkness.

  He said nothing, but she heard the quiet whisper of his zipper sliding down.

  She sucked in her breath.

  Wet heat gushed through her body. The muscles deep within her pelvis tightened. Her heart beat faster and she surprised herself by how quickly she grew slick.

  His hand was a hot pressure as he reached out to trail it across the soft silk between her legs. He stroked her gently, his fingertips executing a slow, deliberate circle.

  Whimpering softly against the erotic sensation, she grasped his arm for support.

  He kissed her tenderly while his fingers kept exploring. A warm, soft kiss of satisfaction.

  Lust swamped her. She had to have him. Had to have him or she would surely die. She ran her tongue around his lips and he made a masculine noise of enjoyment.

  He slipped her panties down then, edging them over her hips, below her thighs. When her panties fell to her ankles, she kicked them off and curled against him.

  He sank slowly to his knees.

  Uh-oh. What now?

  She felt the touch of his lips against her upper thigh and pulled in a hissing breath as his mouth inched toward the place Katie most wanted him to touch with that quicksilver tongue.

  Wanted it, but was she ready for it? Few had ever gone there. She put a hand to the back of his neck. “Wait, I…”

  He lifted his head. “Don’t be shy,” he whispered, and then made a promise. “I won’t hurt you.”

  His strong outer lips rested against her soft inner lips. Instant heat. Boiling, building. She was a teapot—hot and ready to let off steam. She had no idea she was capable of feeling such physical intensity.

  He made a sound of hearty appreciation and clasped her tightly in his muscled arms, pressing her hips firmly against the wall. Pinning her. His prize.

  Her hands were frantic, raking through his hair. She was desperate. Raw. Hungry need personified. Taking lust, turning it into trust.

  Foolish, perhaps, but here she was.

  She accepted what he gave her. She didn’t ask for more. There was no reason. She did not require it. He conferred upon her everything she desired.

  No one had ever touched her in the way Richard was touching her. Inside. Deep inside. He found all her secrets, exploited them to full advantage.

  It felt so good it almost hurt. This free-falling pleasure and pain.

  Lost. She was afloat in the sweep of his tongue, the moist heat of his mouth. The tension was impossible. His tongue teased and pleased. Taunted and tamed.

  She wanted to cup his head in the back of her hands, drop to her knees and face him in the darkness.

  But she was afraid. Afraid to learn too much. Afraid to ruin the fantasy. Afraid of being caught in a whirlwind of chaos from which she might never recover.

  His head was buried between her legs, his tongue stroking her hooded femininity. She savored the wild ride. This encounter was special. Something she’d remember to the end of her days. She did not want reality to intrude.

  He teased her clit, circling slowly at first, and then faster and firmer, pulling her toward a beautiful climax. But he wasn’t going to let it be that easy. He eased off on the pressure, slowed down. And then he took her up again. Up and down in a tumult of sensation until she thought she’d go mad with need.

  “I want to feel you inside me,” she murmured. “I have to…feel you. Now.”

  He pulled back, rose to his feet. She heard him rustling. What was he doing? She was so wet and hot and achy. She needed him. Now, now, now.

  “Do you have a condom?” she whispered.

  “Got it covered,” he said.

  There was a slight tearing sound of a small package being opened.

  She touched him down there, through the opening in his leather pants. Her hand closing around his steely shaft, and she heard his low groan of pleasure.

  He was so hard. So big.

  “Hurry,” she insisted, growing suddenly scared against a nameless sense of dread crowding inside her chest. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

  “Wrap your legs around my waist,” he said, pushing her shoulders against the wall, “and grab the clothing rods.”

  Heart pounding, she did as he asked. One hand wrapped around the hanging rod on the right, the other on the left, her legs serpentined around his hard waist. She could feel the tip of his penis throbbing against her bare buttocks.

  She felt like an acrobat, a trapeze artist. It added to the excitement.

  Carefully, he entered her warm wet center. She could feel the material of his pants rubbing against her thighs as he moved. Katie reflectively closed her eyes, gasping in reverence.

  What an incredible sensation.

  She was entranced, filled up by him. She relished the wonder of his body, the excitement of her fantasy, of the life force pulsing through him and into her and back again.

  He pushed into the hilt.

  And then he began a slow, meticulous thrusting.

  Swept away, she matched his tempo, arching her back, pushing against him, using the hanging rods as a fulcrum, increasing the tension. The rhythm between them was quite extraordinary. They were so in tune with each other.

  He thrust, she parried.

  It was almost mystical.

  This slow, sweet journey. The intensity rising and swelling, dropping and climbing.

  “More,” she gasped, barely hanging on to her French accent. “I’ve got to have more.”

  “Greedy,” he accused.

/>   Yes, yes, she was greedy and not the least bit remorseful.

  Biting need flowed through her body. She needed this intimacy, needed him. Her legs were wrapped around his waist and she held him tightly.

  The orgasm rose in her, in a hot, loud knot. She let go of the hanging rod so she could stuff her right fist against her mouth to hold back her cries of ecstasy.

  He gave one last thrust and his body twitched with the power of his own climax. The sound of his breathing was rough against her ears.

  And just after his release, she came as she’d never come before. Wave upon wave. An entire ocean crashing through her.

  He held her as she shuddered in his arms. Then, after they’d recovered, he dressed her in the dark, tenderly slipping on her stockings and her shoes. When he was finished he pulled her to his chest and kissed her softly one last time.

  “Oh, Richard.” She breathed. “You were magnificent, as I knew you would be.”

  He made a startled noise and stepped away from her.

  “What’s wrong?” Katie felt his alarm. Hurriedly, she pulled the mask that had gotten pushed up on top of her head back down over her face and quickly adjusted her wig.

  “Richard?”

  He did not answer, but the coats mumbled as he brushed past them in his effort to get out of the closet and away from her.

  Katie fumbled on the wall for the light switch and found it just as he opened the door.

  The closet was bathed in light.

  Their eyes met.

  The pirate captain raised his palms. Katie found herself staring at the barbed-wire tattoo encircling his left wrist. Alarm shot through her, but her brain was still not processing what her eyes were telling her.

  This man was not Richard Hancock.

  This man was Liam James.

  With dawning horror, Katie gasped and slapped a hand over her mouth. She’d just had sex with her sister’s boyfriend!

  STUNNED, Liam could only stare as the woman in the French-maid costume almost knocked him down getting past him. In the stark glare of the closet light bulb, he saw her auburn wig was knocked askew, blond curls were peeking out around it.

  “Wait,” he called.

  She tossed him one last panic-stricken look over her shoulder. Even with the mask covering most of her face, she seemed oddly familiar. Did he know her?

  He shook his head to clear it. Who?

  Brooke. She reminded him of Brooke Winfield.

  The synapses in his brain fired rapidly as alarming thoughts crowded in. Had Brooke dressed up in the French-maid costume to seduce him at the party? But Brooke had brown hair and she was taller than this woman.

  And then it dawned on him and he recognized where he’d seen that saucy little walk before.

  She was Katie Winfield. Brooke’s baby sister.

  Shoving a hand through his hair, Liam groaned aloud.

  He had to go after her, had to explain himself. Had to justify what he’d done. Had to make sense of what they’d done together.

  Liam took off after her, but she’d already disappeared in the crowd. People were staring at him, pointing and tittering. Agitated, he glanced down and saw that his bare chest was exposed from where Katie had ripped the buttons off his shirt and that his pants were unzipped.

  Frantically, he tugged up his zipper as he ran. He was desperate to talk to her before she got away. But by the time he reached the front door, she’d already fled to the parking lot.

  “Katie!” he yelled as he stumbled down the stairs and out onto the asphalt road, just as her red BMW convertible sped past him.

  All he saw were her taillights disappearing into the darkness, leaving him feeling like the world’s biggest jerk.

  4

  KATIE SPENT the remainder of the weekend holed up in her condo. She sprawled out on the couch, eating handfuls of caramel popcorn, guzzling hot chocolate and immersing herself in a romance-classics movie marathon. When Katie was a kid and feeling down in the dumps, her mother would get out the popcorn, the cocoa and the old movies to pick up her daughter’s flagging spirits.

  Normally the self-indulgent trick pulled Katie right out of the doldrums. This time, however, it hadn’t worked. For one thing, it reminded her of Daisy and that made her sad. For another, watching lovers repeatedly meet, mingle, mate and marry hammered home what she already knew—sisters don’t stab sisters in the back by sleeping with their boyfriends.

  She would never be able to look Brooke in the eye again.

  Cut yourself some slack. You didn’t do it on purpose.

  No, Katie might not have done it on purpose, but once again, she hadn’t looked before she leaped. Witness the result of her recklessness.

  She was so ashamed.

  Brooke doesn’t have to know. No one has to know.

  Except Liam knew.

  Maybe not, she hoped. Maybe he hadn’t recognized her with the costume and the mask. She prayed it was so. But here was the terrible truth: sex with Liam was the best sex she’d ever had, and she wanted to do it again and again and again.

  It wasn’t him, she tried to convince herself. It was the masquerade, the semipublic location, the forbidden thrill of it all.

  Oh God, she’d made such a mess of things.

  By Monday evening, she was so sick of her own company she picked up the phone and called Tanisha.

  “How was your weekend,” she asked her best friend.

  “Great,” Tanisha purred like a satisfied kitten. “Dwayne and I spent the entire weekend in bed. In fact, he just left. How was your weekend?”

  “Sucky.”

  Tanisha hissed in her breath. “Things didn’t go so well with Richard?”

  “I wasn’t with Richard,” Katie mumbled.

  “Oh?”

  “I had sex with my sister’s boyfriend,” she blurted.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Katie wailed. “I thought he was Richard. He was wearing a pirate costume. It was an honest mistake but now I feel so—”

  “Hold the phone, girlfriend. I’ll be right over.”

  An hour later, Tanisha showed up on her doorstep, a bag of takeout from the Chinese restaurant down the block clutched in her hand and a half gallon of chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream in the other.

  “This sounded like the kind of emergency best soothed by food,” she explained, and breezed into the condo. “Besides, I’m starving. Dwayne and I must have burned up a thousand calories.”

  “Braggart,” Katie accused.

  “Don’t pretend you wouldn’t be doing some bragging of your own if the shoe was on the other foot.” Tanisha dished up sweet-and-sour chicken and several kinds of dim sum on two paper plates. She passed one of the plates to Katie and handed her a set of chopsticks.

  The delicious smell teased Katie’s nose and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything but caramel popcorn all weekend long. They sat at the wrought iron bistro table in the breakfast nook.

  “Give me all the details,” Tanisha said. “Don’t leave anything out.”

  Cringing, Katie told her everything.

  “Look,” Tanisha said when she’d finished, “it was a case of mistaken identity. No one can fault you for that. If anything, he’s the one who should be ashamed for sneaking off with someone else when he’s dating your sister.”

  “That’s true.” She perked up. “But it doesn’t change the fact that I betrayed Brooke.”

  “You didn’t do it on purpose. How serious is Brooke and this guy, anyway? And what’s his name?”

  “Liam James.”

  Tanisha’s eyes widened. “The real-estate mogul who was nominated Boston’s most eligible bachelor by Young Bostonian?”

  “That’d be the one.”

  “All I gotta say is, girl, when you screw up, you do it in style.”

  Katie groaned and sank her head in her hands. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Don’t do anything.” Tanisha shrugged. “Forget all about it.”

 
“I can’t.”

  Tanisha studied her for a moment. “This is really eating you up inside, isn’t it?”

  Katie nodded miserably.

  “Your guilt only underscores what I was trying to tell you on Friday.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’re into self-sabotage.”

  “You’re probably right,” Katie said glumly, poking at her dim sum with a chopstick. Of all the dumb things she’d done in her life, this had to be one of the dumbest.

  “There’s a cure, you know.”

  Katie looked up from her plate. “And that is?”

  “Give up casual sex.”

  Katie arched an eyebrow. “This coming from the queen of casual sex.”

  “Not anymore,” Tanisha said.

  “Oh?” Katie straightened.

  Tanisha giggled girlishly, which was a surprise because she was not the giggly type. She pulled a key from her pocket. “Dwayne gave me a key to his place and I gave him one to mine.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I think my wild partying days are behind me.”

  “That’s great.” Katie got up to give her friend a hug.

  “Thanks,” Tanisha beamed. “I feel so happy.”

  “I’m happy for you.”

  “I wish you could find someone. When was the last time you had a serious boyfriend?”

  Katie gulped. She’d never had a serious boyfriend. She’d been having too much fun playing the field. “I’m not really ready for a serious relationship. I just want to stop making stupid mistakes.”

  “Then turn over a new leaf and empower yourself.”

  “I thought I was empowered.”

  “If you were empowered, then you wouldn’t be feeling miserable over it.”

  Katie blew out her breath. “Okay, so how do I empower myself?”

  “Stop basing your decisions on an if-it-feels-good-do-it philosophy. Think about the consequences of your actions,” Tanisha instructed.

  “Can you bottom-line it for me?”

  “When it comes to sex, you’re going to have to go cold turkey.”

  LIAM SPENT the weekend working. Or at least trying to work.

  Hell, who was he kidding? He hadn’t gotten a lick of work done. He’d spent Saturday and Sunday at the office staring at the contracts on his desk and all he could see was Katie Winfield decked out in that devastating French-maid outfit.