He pointed to her waist. “What do you do with the cuffs?”

“You’d know better than me.”

“Wild thing,” he said, a salacious smile tilting the corners of his mouth, “I don’t need extra hardware to get the job done.”

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “Spare me the details of your sex life.”

“Are you sure? You might learn something good.”

She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “I doubt you know anything I’d want to learn.” Then she quickly added, “That wasn’t a challenge.”

His soft laughter filled the short distance between them. “It was a challenge, Delaney.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” He took a step toward her, and she held up her hand like a traffic cop. “I don’t want to go there with you, Nick. I thought you came up here to look at the note Helen left me.”

“I did.” He stopped when her palm hit his chest. Cool leather pressed into her hand. “But you make it a real hard to think about anything but your zippers.”

“You're a big boy. Try to concentrate.” Delaney dropped her hand and moved past him to the refrigerator. “Wanna beer?”

“Sure.”

She twisted off the tops, then handed him a pumpkin beer she’d bought at the microbrewery. He looked at the designer brew as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it. “It’s really good,” she assured him and took a big swallow.

Nick raised the beer to his lips, and his gray eyes watched her over the top of the bottle as he took a drink. He immediately lowered the beer and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary that’s foul.”

“I like it.” She smiled and took an extra long swig.

“Do you have any real beer?” He set both the bottle and the note on the counter.

“I have a raspberry ale.”

He looked at her as if she were suggesting he chop off his testicles. “Got a Bud?”

“Nope. But I have a Coke in that bag.” She waved her bottle toward the plastic sack then moved past Nick to the living room.

“Where did you find the first note?” he called after her.

“In the salon.” She switched on a light above the stereo, then moved to a table lamp next to the couch. “Actually, you pointed it out to me.”

“When?”

“The day you changed my locks.” She looked over her shoulder as she pulled the lamp’s chain. Nick stood in the middle of the room chugging the Coke she’d bought at the Value Rite. “Remember?”

He lowered the bottle and sucked a brown drop from his bottom lip. “Perfectly.”

Unbidden, the memory of his lips pressed to hers and the texture of his warm skin beneath her hands flooded her senses. “I was talking about the note.”

“So was I.”

No he wasn’t. “Why do you think Helen is responsible?”

Delaney sat on the couch, carefully making sure her satin skirt didn’t slide to her crotch and make her a porno star. “Who else could it be?”

He set the Coke on the coffee table and shrugged out of his jacket. “Who else would want you gone?”

Delaney couldn’t think of anyone besides Nick and his entire family. “You.”

He tossed his jacket on the arm of the sofa and looked at her from beneath lowered brows. “Do you really believe that?”

Not really. “I don’t know.”

“If you think I sneak around threatening women, why did you let me in your apartment?”

“Could I have stopped you?”

“Maybe, but I didn’t leave those notes and you know it.” He sat next to Delaney and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He’d rolled the sleeves of his chambray shirt up his forearms, and he wore a wristwatch with a worn black band. “Someone’s real upset with you. Have you given a bad haircut lately?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she set her pumpkin beer on the coffee table with a heavy thump. “First of all, Nick, I never give bad haircuts. And second, what do you think, that some infuriated psycho is running around leaving me notes because I trimmed her bangs too short or over processed a perm?”

Nick looked across his shoulder at her and laughed. It started low in his chest and grew louder, feeding Delaney’s temper. “Why are you so pissed off?”

“You insulted me.”

He placed an innocent hand on the front of his shirt, pushing the soft fabric to the side and exposing a slice of tan chest. “I did not.”

Delaney lifted her gaze to his amused eyes. “You absolutely did.”

“Sorry.” Then he ruined the apology by adding insult to injury, “Wild thing.”

She punched his arm. “Jerk.”

Nick grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him. “Has anyone told you that you’re a great-looking hooker?”

The scent of sandalwood soap and warm skin filled her senses. His strong fingers sent tingling pinpricks up the inside of her arm, and she tried to pull away. He let her go only to grab her boa in both his hands and tug her closer. Her nose bumped his, and she felt herself sucked into his smoky gaze. She opened her mouth meaning to say something stinging and sarcastic, but her brain and voice betrayed her and what came out instead was a breathy, “Gee, thanks, Nick. I bet you say that to all your women of the night.”

“Are you my woman for the night?” he asked just above her mouth, holding her with nothing more than a string of fluffy pink feathers and his smooth voice.

She didn’t think she’d said that, or meant that, or something… “No. You know we can never be together.”

“You should never say never.” The feathers brushed across her cheek and neck as he slid one hand to the top edge of her bustier. “Your heart is pounding.”

“I have pretty high blood pressure.” Her eyelids were heavy and she felt the tip of his tongue touch her bottom lip.

“You were always a really bad liar.” Then before Delaney knew quite how it happened, she was in Nick’s lap and his mouth was all over hers, in a kiss that started sweet but quickly shattered Delaney’s pitiful resistance. He had a hand on the back of her head, the other on the outside of her thigh, caressing her through black hose. His slick tongue stroked hers, urging a hotter, more passionate response, and she gave him a kiss that sent a shudder of raw lust through them. She slid her hands up the sides of his neck and worked the rubber band from his ponytail. The beret fell from his head as she combed her fingers through his cool, fine hair. She felt his fingers drift up her garter to the edge of her skirt, drawing a line of fire that heated the insides of her thighs and flamed the hunger deep in her abdomen. Then his fingers dipped beneath the black lace and elastic and he grasped her bare flesh. She shoved one hand inside the open collar of his shirt and touched his shoulder where he was warm, his muscles hard, but it wasn’t enough and she tugged at the buttons until his shirt lay open. He was hard and smooth, his skin hot and slightly damp. Beneath her bottom, his thick erection pressed into her and she squirmed deeper into his lap. His fingers bit into her thigh, and she felt his deep groan beneath her palm.

He moved one hand to her waist, and his strong fingers squeezed her through the thin satin. A moan stuck in the top of her chest as his palm slipped upward, over her breast, to her throat. His knuckles brushed her collarbone and across the edge of her bustier. Then he slid his sensual mouth to her throat and his hand inside the tight satin top. He cupped her bare breast, and Delaney arched, pressing her hard nipple into his hot, hot palm. Her hands moved to his shoulder, and she grasped the soft fabric of his shirt in tight fists.

She ached all over and, with her last shred of sanity whispered, “Nick, we have to stop this.”

“We will,” he murmured as he pushed the bustier practically to her waist and lowered his head. He brushed his lips across the pink tip of her breast, then sucked it into his mouth, his tongue hot and wet and relentless. His big warm hand slipped between her thighs and he pressed his palm into her sensitive flesh. Through her damp cotton panties, his fingers felt her, and she squeezed her legs together, locking his hand in her crotch. Delaney eyes closed and his name escaped her lips, part moan, part sigh. It was the sound of need and desire. She wanted him to make love to her. She wanted to feel his naked body pressed to her. She had nothing to lose but self-respect. What was a little self-respect compared to a quality orgasm?

Then his mouth was gone and cool air swept across her breast. She forced her eyes open and followed his fiery gaze to her glistening nipple. He slid his hand from her thighs and picked up one end of her boa, slowly brushing it across her sensitive flesh. “Tell me you want me.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Say it anyway.” He looked up, his eyes heavy with lust and determination. “Say it.” The feathers made another downy pass across her breasts.

Delaney sucked in her breath. “I want you.”

His gaze skimmed her face, then settled on her mouth. He placed a soft kiss on her lips and pulled her bustier back in place, covering her breasts once again.

He wasn’t going to make love to her. Of course he wasn’t. He had a lot more to lose than she did. “Why do we keep doing this?” she asked when he lifted his mouth. “I never mean for this to happen with us, but it always does.”

“Don’t you know?”

“I wish I did.”

“Unfinished business.”

She took a deep breath and leaned against him.

“What are you talking about? Unfinished business.”

“That night at Angel Beach. We never got to finish what we started before you ran off.”

“Ran off?” She felt her brows lower then rise up her forehead. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“You had a choice and you made it. You left with Henry.”

With as much dignity as possible under the circumstances, Delaney removed herself from his lap. Her left shoe was missing and her boa was stuck inside her bustier. “I left because you were using me.”