It would take so little to close the distance between them. “Maybe.” He regretted the response the minute it was out of his mouth. What the hell was he thinking?
He wasn’t thinking, that was the problem.
A smile slid slowly across Joss’s face. “Really?” she said, stretching the word out like it was hot taffy. “If I said I’d be your lover, no strings, the entire time we were in Stockholm, you’d do it?”
The situation was rapidly slipping out of his control. “Look,” he backpedaled, “It’s not that simple.”
Something predatory entered her eyes. “Sure it is.”
Before he could react, she’d risen to step in front of him, pushing his shoulders back against the chair.
“What are you doing?”
“A feasibility study,” she told him and placed one knee on either side of his thighs, straddling him. Her eyes were deep and dark enough to dive into. Her scent wound around his thoughts. He watched without moving as she leaned in.
And when her mouth touched his, all he could feel was a hot, slicing arousal.
He had no business doing this, Bax told himself even as he closed his eyes. She was a client, or a potential client, they were in his office, at his desk and oh hell, he thought and gave himself up to it.
He’d kissed women before, even thought he’d loved one once, but he’d never felt anything like this. She was all he could touch. She was all he could feel even though she tempted him only with her lips on his, with the warmth of her thighs bracketing his own.
Her mouth was warm and mobile, her lips parted and ready to go deeper. With one impetuous move, she dragged him into want, into need. He wasn’t used to needing anyone, but even as he struggled against it, she beckoned to him with her mouth, her hands and her body.
And he followed willingly.
SHE’D NEVER been able to resist a dare, Joss thought hazily as she let the taste of him flow over her. She’d planned to kiss him until his head spun, until the little head began to overrule the big head and he gave in and agreed. Maybe she’d been a little curious, too. After all, if she could give them what they both wanted physically and get him to Stockholm at the same time, what was the harm in that? She’d expected kissing him to be good and sexy.
She’d never in a million years expected the taste of him to rock her back. She’d never expected the feel of his hard shoulders under her fingers to set up a drumming demand in her head for the rest of him, naked. She’d never expected desire to take control. All too quickly, the kiss stopped being about persuasion. It existed for itself, for the tempting brush of his tongue, the soft slide of his mouth, the touch of his hands sliding up her back.
More. She wanted more. She wanted to toss aside caution and dive into this heady sensation, dive into him. And somewhere in there, she might lose control. Trembling, she pulled back.
“Well.” She resisted the urge to press her fingers to her lips.
Bax stared at her as she walked back to the client chair. “What kind of a game are you playing?” he asked hoarsely.
“Just making sure we had chemistry.” She sat because her knees wouldn’t hold her. “So, do we have a deal?”
BAD IDEA, he told himself as his system refused to level. She was trying to play him and he was walking right into it. And yet, looked at a certain way, it made sense. Why not? Why not take the case? Solve her problem, make a little money and get a free trip to Stockholm and a warm and willing woman in his bed in the bargain. “Maybe,” he found himself saying. “I’ll think about it.”
She ran her tongue over her lower lip. “You’ll think about it?”
What could it hurt, he thought. “All right.”
“Great. And you’ll let me be part of the investigation?”
Not on his life. “Only if you can demonstrate to me that you know what you’re doing,” he hedged.
Joss rose and leaned over the desk to brush her lips against his. “Oh, I know what I’m doing, all right, Bax. Just wait and see.”
3
“YOU’RE KIDDING.” Gwen stared at Joss across the table at Rose Pistola that night, while the waiters bustled back and forth behind them. “You’ve promised to go to Stockholm and sleep with some guy you don’t know from Adam?”
Gwen didn’t sound nearly as horrified as she once would have, Joss reflected. Vegas had certainly changed her. “It’s no worse than a one-night stand, which you’ve had recently yourself. Besides, I sort of know him from Adam. He comes with references anyway.”
“How about blood tests? This is pretty out there even for you, Joss.”
Joss forked up a bite of salad. “Why? The guy is sexy as hell. Why shouldn’t I have a fling with him? You and Del just did out in Vegas.”
“That was different.”
“How? You might be serious about each other now, but it wasn’t that way at the beginning. Look, we’ll get the job done and have a good time while we’re at it. Besides, you know the saying—if you’ve got ’em by the ’nads, their hearts and minds will follow.”
“Ah. So, you’re going to sexually enslave him and have your way with him, is that the plan?”
Joss considered. “It has its advantages.” She leaned forward and the humor vanished. “The guy’s good, Gwen, and we need someone good for this job.”
Gwen looked at her, lips twitching. “Just don’t bonk his brains out so much that he can’t do any detecting.”
“I sincerely doubt that’ll happen, although you never know.” Joss thought of the hard swell of his shoulders under her fingers. “If he was that good with his tongue when he was kissing, who knows what else he’ll be good at.”
Now Gwen did grin. “You’re so bad.”
“Oh, come on. Tell me the thought hasn’t gone through your head when you’ve first kissed a guy.”
“So, what’s he like?” Gwen asked, ignoring her.
Joss considered. “Confident,” she said finally. “Maybe a little bit of a control freak. Hot, though, really hot. He’s serious but he’s got this wonderful, strong face and you just know if he’d let loose, he’d be…” She thought of the way he’d looked after they kissed. “I got to him at the end, I could see it in his eyes.”
“Watch out that you’re not the one who becomes enslaved.” Gwen pulled some bread out of the basket on the table.
“He’s a guy. They’re pretty easy to manage,” Joss said carelessly, giving the busboy such a brilliant smile he accidentally overfilled her glass, slopping water on the tablecloth. “I’m not worried about it.”
“So you fly to Stockholm together and then what? I mean, you can’t just wander around asking everyone you meet questions.”
“You said you knew this Silverhielm guy has the stamps.”
“I said I thought he had the stamps. Not the same thing as knowing.”
“Well, I hope you’re pretty certain, because I’ve got a plan for getting in good with Silverhielm. It means taking a risk, though.”
“How do you mean?”
Joss hesitated. “I need to take the Blue Mauritius.”
“You’re