The woman was an evil genius. Hell, he’d seen professional cons with less finesse. If he weren’t so damned pissed off, he’d be in awe. The whole sham was pure artistry and Max had found himself screwed over and abandoned before he’d even realized she’d gotten to first base. Infuriatingly, when he’d finally tracked Minerva down and accused her of theft (a beyond ironic moment, he admitted) the wily broad had merely waved her hand dismissively and claimed that she had no idea what he was talking about. Worse, she’d stressed that her lover’s box had already been sent to her antique shop in butt-fun, Florida, and that it was too late because she’d given it to her great-niece as a present.
The type of guys who hung out in the Czar’s Club didn’t exactly hand out papers of sale or provenance records, and there had been little that Max could do short of calling out the eighty-year-old woman and challenging her to pistols at dawn. He had no idea what she was trying to pull with her niece, but he didn’t really care since he planned to steal the damned thing back, find the treasure, then live out the rest of his life on easy street. Maybe a tropical island with two or three local women to keep him company.
And even more disconcerting than being the victim of such a farcical robbery was the strange sensation that he couldn’t shake. A niggling itch prickling the back of his neck. As if there was something hazardous waiting for him, but not the kind of peril he was used to facing. Stupid, because nabbing the lover’s box should be a no-worries retrieve and run.
But there you had it. The same rush of adrenaline that pulsed through him when he was on a dangerous hunt was right now surging through his nervous system. To Max, hunting relics was a game, the greater the risk the better. He always gambled, occasionally with his life. He preferred it that way. It made him come alive, the thrill real and palpable in a way nothing else could match, when he risked the ultimate price of failure.
Max challenged every damn odd thrown against him. He flipped fate the bird and got off on the rush of walking away unscathed. And, for some reason, right now his instincts were giving him a hit.
A killer grin curved across his face. Max Stone loved this shit….
Feeling cocky and riding the high—hey, anything was better than thinking about Minerva Parker—he silently climbed through the now-open window. He crouched down once he stepped inside, then pulled out his small flashlight and turned on the beam only to find himself face-to-backside with a stuffed water buffalo. That Minerva had such a bizarre item in the middle of her antique store came as no surprise, but when he stepped around the unfortunate animal and came face-to-breasts with something that was not stuffed and definitely alive, he was more than surprised.
Strangely, he wasn’t overly concerned that, for all practical purposes, he’d just been caught. If he had to, he could take down the small, curvy bundle of woman in front of him in less than a second and Max found himself praying that he had to. He slowly ran the beam from his flashlight up the smooth, wet legs dripping water onto the oriental carpet beneath her dainty feet, and over the soaked, clinging towel that looked more suited to drying a pair of hands than wrapping itself around an adult’s body. But damn if that’s not exactly what the lucky little stretch of terry cloth was being forced to do.
And it was doing a damn poor job of it, he was happy to say, since the damp fabric barely hit the very tippy tops of her thighs, and just covered her small, enticing mound. Max’s fingers itched to flick it away and see the exact color of those pretty feminine curls that were hidden from his gaze.
His mouth suddenly dry, he slipped the light up over the heart-pounding curve of her tiny belly clearly outlined by the clinging towel. The sight was enough to make him want to fall to his knees and push his tongue against the enticing dent of her belly button. Then he moved the light a little farther up, to the absolute sweetest, plumpest handfuls of breasts for which he’d ever sprung a boner.
Now, Max generally liked all breasts and had never really had a complaint with any pair he’d seen or touched, but the cherry-tipped duo in front of him looked beyond centerfold perfect. He’d found his dream tits and until this very moment, hadn’t even known that he’d had this strong a preference.
Quite frankly, if he was even half as stunned by the rest of her, he was afraid he’d shoot off like a teenager on prom night. So far, every inch of her that he could see had suddenly become his absolute favorite: his favorite kind of toes that he liked to lift to his mouth, then kiss and nibble. His favorite sort of legs that he liked to stroke and caress, and feel wrapped around his torso. His favorite sort of belly that he liked to feel cushioned under his body while he rhythmically pressed his stiff cock into its plump softness as he mimicked the motion he’d re-create when he was deep inside her.
And his hands-down, all-time favorite pair of tatas that he liked to squeeze and suckle and bite until just the pressure of those erect little tips against his tongue was enough to make him come.
His instant, painful attraction to her was so strange, and he felt so damn good about it, that if he didn’t know better, he could swear that someone had put a spell on him.
Then the woman said, “Oh…my…gosh…”
Max lifted his light to her face and almost dropped the damned thing. His heart started to pound, slamming against his rib cage. He stiffened his spine and willed himself to stand absolutely still, because he’d never wanted to mate with a woman so badly—there was no other word for the sheer lust-craved act he wanted to perform on her delectable body—and if he so much as twitched, he was afraid he’d nail her where she stood.
And then she said in a voice that he swore made a drop leak from his dick, “I can’t believe it. It worked….”
3
CASSIE STARED MUTELY at the very embodiment of her fantasy, wondering if she should scream in terror or knock him out before he could escape. Holy…The lover’s box really worked.
Yeesh. Even barely able to see him, his looks had her blushing hard enough to pass out. Yes, indeedy, the man certainly fit the from a superior race of godlike beings part of her description, and the phrase Come to Mama…flitted through Cassie’s mind.
This vaguely surprised her since it would be more in character for her to start kicking herself for requesting someone so far out of her league. But she didn’t feel like worrying about the sudden silence of the voice inside her head that liked to keep a running monologue of Cassie’s faults, her past failures and the deadly combination of the two that seemed to make her constantly repeat them. Besides, the proper response to such masculine beauty brought via Gypsy magic to satisfy her carnal demands was the happy dance. She felt like jumping around the room and singing, “I get to do him, I get to do him.” She restrained herself, just barely.
Instead, she took a big gulp of air. She’d sort of forgotten to breathe. She’d also forgotten that she was wearing a towel, and only remembered when she felt it heading south. She wriggled, trying to save the darn thing.
At her movement, the man’s eyes went wide and he dropped his light. The room was thrown completely into darkness and the sound of his cursing floated in the air. Now that she couldn’t see him, she tried to drag her thoughts back to reality, frantically telling herself that only a complete idiot would believe her stupid fantasy had anything to do with this freakishly attractive burglar. Her brain was having none of it.
She also decided that she couldn’t stand here all night. She either needed to call the cops or have sex with him. She also needed to speak, say something, to figure out what the heck was going on.
And then his light came back on, and that’s when she noticed that besides possibly being the sexiest man in existence, completely conjured for her own personal enjoyment, he wasn’t wearing a shirt. He’d wrapped it around his hand, a few slivers of glass clinging to the fabric.
If she’d been staring at him before, her eyes were now devouring him. Perfection. Pure male perfection. Ripped and