decided whether you can afford the donation—without the date. Because the deal is off.”
“But—”
“Sorry,” he snapped. “Can’t mix business with…” He hesitated as she moved her sexy body closer to his amped one. “You were going to say…pleasure?” He felt heat. Swallowed.
“Because it sure wasn’t business that I had in mind, Agent Duncan.”
His throat began to thicken, and his brain headed south. “Sorry, no can do.” But be damned if right at this insane moment Lex was suddenly feeling it was all he wanted to do. This woman, up close, was pure bewitchment. He had to get out of her aura, suck in a dose of desert air, figure out what the hell to do about this stunt she’d pulled. He turned to go, just as the dance music was heating up and lights began to pulse over the floor.
“Wait.” She grasped his arm. “At least give me this one dance?”
Lex stilled at the sensation of her hand on his bare arm, cognizant of the fact that he was still naked from the waist up. Her hand moved a little higher, and his stomach tightened sharply. He turned, slowly, and looked down into her deep liquid-brown eyes. Mistake.
Because suddenly he couldn’t seem to pull away. “It’s…nearly midnight,” he managed, his voice thick. He tried to tell himself it was the excitement, the adrenaline pounding through his system. But it wasn’t. It was her. She was doing this to him.
She laughed. “What? You worried your SUV will turn into a pumpkin?” she said naughtily with a little pout on her red lips, and he knew he was going to be toast if he didn’t move. Real soon.
“I…have to report to work early tomorrow.”
“Is it always about the job for you, Lex?”
He studied her brown eyes, drowning in them for a long moment. “Pretty much.”
And his orphans. That was his life right now. That was the way he liked it.
Her eyes flickered, a mischievous glint in them. “We’ll have to do something about that, then.”
Oh, boy. On impulse he snagged a tequila from a passing tray, swigged it back, felt the oily burn through his chest. Another mistake. It seemed to shoot straight to his groin. Making him hotter, not to mention hard.
She moved her curvaceous body closer, almost pressing up against him. He could smell her fragrance, her warmth. The lights dimmed. Colored spotlights played over the dance floor, the crystal in the chandeliers shimmering in dazzling small pinprick shards of light. A low primal beat began to swallow the dance floor.
“Come,” she whispered against his cheek. He felt her hand sliding down his arm, her fingers gently encircling his wrist. He could feel the warm swell of her breast against his bare torso, the soft champagne breath from her lips against his face, and she lured him, as if manacled, drawing him onto the dance floor. “Just one dance,” she said. “Then I’ll let you know where to pick me up tomorrow night.”
Lex glanced desperately at the massive art deco clock on the wall. The luminous hands showed three minutes to midnight—the average length of a song. He vowed he’d be outta here within those minutes. Then he’d find a way to weasel out of the date. He was convinced she’d set him up. Because what were the odds of this being a coincidence? She’d have to have been living under a rock not to know he was the lead agent on her sister’s homicide case. And under a rock was the last place this casino princess would be.
Then again, as Mr. Skydiver had pointed out, this was Vegas. Weird stuff—magic—really did happen. A gambler could bet a single quarter and pull a slot machine handle, and it would spew out one million dollars. Another could plunk down his life savings and lose his entire fortune with the simple flick of a card.
Luck. Fate. Chance. The only sure thing about Las Vegas was that nothing was sure, nothing predetermined. No one ever knew what could happen next.
It’s what made Sin City so exciting.
So dangerous.
Jenna placed her hands on his hips, guiding him to the rhythm of the beat, and Lex’s brain went blank. His blood began to thump in time with the music. And before he knew it, the trademark Ruby Room clock began to chime. Midnight.
Music halted momentarily for effect, twirly strips of silver confetti shimmering down like crystal rain as the lights strobed white. Like silver, like money. Like magic. The Vegas sleight-of-hand. And Lex knew, on some level, he’d been witched, by a pair of big brown eyes and a goddess body in a shimmering red dress, and it had happened somewhere in those three minutes before the stroke of midnight.
In panic he snagged another shot of tequila, knocked it back, thinking of Dutch courage and skydiving. Because he sure was free-falling right now, out of control, and gaining speed each time Jenna batted those big browns and arched against him.
The DJ amped the music, and the base pulsed deeper. Bodies gyrated, red strobes flashing off glass in the chandeliers, off the red crystals on Jenna’s dress, and the tequila began to work on Lex’s brain, along with his libido.
Truth was, the more Lex looked at her, the more bedazzled he was by Jenna Rothchild. She had the kind of looks that really did it for him—rich chestnut hair that fell in lustrous waves to well below her creamy shoulder blades. Full mouth, painted blood-red, high cheekbones that gave her an air of experienced sophistication—the kind that made a man forget about her youth—and a body worth every bit of wattage in Sin City. That made a man hot.
It wasn’t easy to stand out in a place like Vegas—a town of lean, leggy showgirls with spotlight smiles—but this woman did. She was also big money and high maintenance, and for all those reasons, Lex wanted to avoid her like the plague. Never mind a conflict of interest. Jenna Jayne Rothchild was plain dangerous to him personally as well as professionally.
But as he was about to pull back and extricate himself while he still could, she leaned up and murmured against his cheek. “You feel a little stiff, agent.”
Oh yeah, and she was going to find out just how stiff if she pressed her body any closer to his pelvis. The music wasn’t the only thing hot and pulsing right now.
She used her hands to guide his body in time to the retro beat. “Come on, loosen up a little, move with me, agent. Or are you always wound this tight?”
Unsmiling, he allowed her to move his hips to the primal tempo of the music and be damned if all he could think about was getting her into bed, and moving with her like a real man, naked between the sheets, the way nature intended. It made his head thicker, it made his vision narrow, it made perspiration begin to gleam over his bare chest.
Lex tried to stay in focus, thinking he should never have downed those shots, because he was not feeling himself. Instead, he found himself fixated on her cleavage, the way the neckline of her dress plunged so low that the sparkling fabric seemingly just floated atop her breasts. He had no idea how it stayed there. And he found himself waiting for it to slip, lust winding so tight inside him he thought he’d bust. Then as she moved, the diamond teardrop pendant nestled between her smooth breasts at the end of a gold chain, winked at him.
And
