“Take me, honey!” a partygoer shouted as he stumbled into her path. Wearing a crooked three-cornered hat emblazoned with a Jolly Roger and a Metallica T-shirt, the guy sloshed beer over the rim of his plastic cup onto the toe of her lace-up black boots.
Kyra righted his precarious cup and sidled past him, her gaze scanning the crowd for Jesse. She wasn’t so desperate for attention that she’d settle for the lecherous stare of a drunken stranger.
Unfortunately, her corset attracted plenty of the wrong kind of attention.
She smacked away a hand that brushed along her thigh, wishing she’d brought along a riding crop for crowd control. Who’d have thought a glorified push-up bra could turn so many heads?
Desperate to find the only man whose attention she really cared about, Kyra caught sight of him leaning into the shade of a palm tree planted in between the concrete slabs of sidewalk some fifteen yards away. Focused on her muscle-bound goal, she stepped around a strolling hot-pretzel vendor and a mother clutching the hands of toddler twins wearing eye patches.
Only then did she spy Jesse’s companion. Greta the German Wonder-bod giggled relentlessly at every word out of his mouth, her perfect figure looking svelte and toned in yellow shorts that barely covered her ridiculously tiny butt. A white T-shirt spelled out Monaco in matching sunny yellow letters.
Kyra knew damn well Greta didn’t need the aid of a corset to give her those amazing curves. The German model had an effortless beauty that wouldn’t desert her when the festival was over. Even if she made a living slinging hay in blue jeans.
The ache of second-guessing tightened in Kyra’s chest. Would it be cruel to pull Jesse away if he would honestly rather patch things up with Greta? God knows, it looked like he was enjoying himself, his dark eyes alight with good humor and his lone dimple flashing in his left cheek.
But then again, Jesse had a way of making any woman feel like she was the center of his universe even as he plotted how to dance around any sort of commitment. His elusiveness was part of his charm.
And hadn’t he just confided to Kyra three days ago that Greta wanted much more than he could provide?
Refusing to allow a little feminine insecurity to thwart her plan, Kyra charged toward the couple. No way would Jesse have invited Greta here today if he was worried that she was taking things too seriously. Greta was probably just chasing him the same way so many women did.
She pulled herself up short.
The way Kyra was chasing him for the first time in her life.
But at least Kyra knew what would come out of a relationship with her best friend. A few nights of amazing pleasure so she could get over her age-old crush on him and they would go back to being strictly friends.
Committed to her plan, Kyra withdrew a silk scarf from the pocket of her cargo skirt and wrapped one end of the filmy material around each of her hands.
She didn’t have the option of carrying off Jesse over one shoulder the way a guy pirate might kidnap his wench of choice. Therefore, she had to resort to more underhanded means of abduction.
Edging up behind Jesse, she was neatly hidden from Greta’s view by his broad back. A white tank shirt bearing the name of a horse show she’d competed in long ago exposed his tanned shoulders and strong arms. Low slung black shorts hugged his hips and a very fine…back view.
A shiver of excitement jolted through her as she neared him, along with a slight tremor of nerves.
Before she could change her mind, Kyra looped her pink silk scarf over his head to cover his eyes. In a flash, she pressed herself to his warm back to whisper in his ear.
“Don’t fight it, hotshot. Consider yourself a pirate prisoner.” The words tripped off her tongue in a breathy rush as her body reacted to his with spontaneous heat. “For today, you’re all mine.”
2
JESSE RECOGNIZED the silky voice whispering into his ear. Yet he couldn’t merge his image of practical Kyra Stafford with the decidedly feminine curves pressed against his back. Or the exotically scented scarf blindfolding him into a world of pure sensation.
A world where it was getting mighty damn difficult to remember why he and Kyra had always maintained a strictly platonic relationship.
For a moment, the roar of the overcrowded street faded from his hearing. The only sound penetrating his brain was the soft huff of breath in his ear as his captor demanded compliance.
Before his hormones recovered enough to reply, he could hear Greta start squawking a few feet in front of him.
“Excuse me?” Her words dripped sarcasm like a Popsicle in July. “I came here with this man. You can’t just—”
“Well it looks like you won’t be leaving with him,” Kyra retorted from behind him, her voice all the more familiar now that it was lifted in normal conversation. “A Gasparilla pirate doesn’t exactly need to ask your permission.”
Maybe Kyra was only trying to rescue him from Greta today. A welcome intervention given that Jesse hadn’t brought Greta with him and had been trying his best to avoid her. Still, she’d managed to track him down in a crowd of a hundred thousand people with unerring instincts.
She’d have him chained to her side on the first boat back to Berlin if he wasn’t careful.
He held both hands up, resigned to whatever scheme Kyra had in the works. He just hoped she eased away from him soon, before his body started reacting publicly to those breasts against his spine. “Sounds like I have no choice but to surrender.”
Greta’s spluttered indignation took a back seat to Kyra’s seductive whisper.
“Excellent decision,” she breathed in his ear, steering him through the crowd and away from Greta with slow steps. “You are wise to come along quietly.”
Each stride brushed her body against his, making him keenly aware she wore a blouse with no bra to speak of underneath. Those awesome C-cups couldn’t belong to Kyra. Could they?
She was holding him captive wearing some kind of laced leather outfit that bit into his back even while it thrust her breasts forward in luscious offering, sort of like a—
Holy freaking hell. Maybe after all his lip about buying a dominatrix outfit, she’d decided to call his bluff.
Raw lust ripped through him with a vengeance. He stopped dead in his tracks and twisted around to face her, whipping off the scarf with an impatient hand. The sight that greeted his eyes was better than a dominatrix outfit.
No, make that worse. He wasn’t supposed to be licking his chops over his best friend, of all people.
She was dressed as a pirate. Not any normal pirate with a bandanna and a blackened tooth, though. More like the kind of lush X-rated lady pirate you’d expect to find in some half-baked adult film called Blow the Man Down.
His eyes did a slow ride over her barely there blouse partially covered by the leather corset he’d felt earlier. The garment pushed her breasts up and out and straight into any man’s view, the tops of that creamy white flesh exposed while the rest was only marginally hidden beneath thin cotton.
Where had those amazing breasts come from? Was he that blind that he’d never noticed them underneath the men’s T-shirts she normally favored? And he’d definitely never noticed her legs before. At least not like this, he hadn’t. Somehow he had overlooked her lightly muscled thighs and long, lean calves in the jeans she always wore when she worked with the horses.
But her abbrieviated black skirt and fishnet stockings practically put a neon sign on those gams and screamed, Look At Me!
And was he ever looking.
Jesse was carefully scrutinizing every inch of her right down to her high-heeled lace-up boots when she cupped one hand under his chin