If You Dare (Entangled Flaunt) Read online

  Since Marcus had wanted to kiss her since the day he met her, he was surprised to find his initial reaction was panic. Instead of closing his mouth over hers, he reacted like a kid with a grade school crush…and play-punched her in the shoulder.

  “Hey, I have an idea.” I’ll abruptly change the subject so I don’t maul you where you sit. “You can, uh”—he scratched his neck and averted his eyes—“do my speech for me.” He shrugged and gave her a cocky smile. “You’ll be like a ghostwriter. Only you’ll be a ghostspeaker.”

  Wow. What a freaking reach. What was he so nervous about, anyway? How about because the girl of your dreams is coming on to you?

  Yeah, that’d do it.

  The look of longing receded from her expression, and he could see her heart wasn’t in the smile she offered him. He was hit with the strongest twinge of regret.

  She focused on winding the end of the blanket around her fingers. “Well, you earned the award, Marcus. I’m sure everyone there will be—”

  A crash from the kitchen interrupted whatever good-intentioned compliment she’d been about to pay him. She scrambled away from the sound behind her and across the mattress, practically landing in his lap. Her grip on his left forearm was so tight, he’d begun to lose the feeling in his wrist.

  She turned those wide eyes up to him. “What was that?” she asked in a hurried whisper.

  What it sounded like was someone overturning a china cabinet and emptying teacups, dinner plates, and various place settings onto the worn wooden floor.

  Marcus studied the dark doorway in front of them, now silent in the gloom. “I don’t know.” He rested a hand over both of hers and stood. “But I’m going to find out.”

  She stood with him, releasing his arm and moving to hide behind him. He reached around and held her against him, keeping her at his back as he listened, his every sense on high alert. He could hear the wind blowing outside, the propane heater humming quietly at his feet, and Lily’s sharp, short breaths over his shoulder. Other than that, the house was still.

  Lily’s phone chirped and she yipped, clutching the sides of his shirt with her fists. “Sorry.” She let go.

  He turned and faced her. “Wait here.”

  He meant to walk away, but he couldn’t move. The way her strawberry hair framed her cherubic face, the way her plush lips parted, was too tempting to leave behind just yet.

  Marcus gripped her chin between his thumb and forefinger and placed a kiss on the center of her lips. “And calm down.”

  …

  Earth to Lily.

  Marcus disappeared through the doorway of the massive kitchen to confront whomever or whatever was destroying Willow Mansion’s dishware. She knew there wasn’t a single breakable item in there, but she’d heard it too—the creak of the cabinet doors swinging open, the sound of china shattering into a zillion pieces.

  It would make sense if she’d been standing there for several seconds, bathed in the low light of the lantern, terrified out of her mind. Either nonexistent breakables had been shattered or she was in need of a psychiatric evaluation.

  But “terrified” wasn’t her reigning emotion. The predominant feeling was attraction, and it cloaked her in warmth despite the cobwebs and splintered boards at her back.

  Marcus Black was an exceptional kisser. He had firm lips, the bottom one slightly larger than the top. His kiss was no more than a peck, but his mouth had hovered over hers long enough for her to conclude that wine tasted a lot better on his lips than from a red Solo cup.

  Or maybe she was simply afraid. Fear and attraction had a lot of the same characteristics. The sweaty palms, the elevated heart rate.

  Picturing Marcus naked.

  Okay, maybe not that last one.

  Marcus—not naked—appeared in the doorway so suddenly she had to blink him into focus. His face was drawn and shadowed, but her heart ratcheted up at the sight of him anyway, her eyes automatically locking onto those talented lips of his.

  “Grab the Coleman.” His toneless voice snapped her out of her fantasy of being kissed again. “You’ve got to see this.”

  She forced her feet forward, lifting the lantern and taking it with her to the adjoining room. He extinguished the small flashlight in his hand when she stepped over the threshold. Holding the lantern high, she swept the light over every corner of the room before turning it on him.

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “Right.” He relieved her of the lantern, his fingers brushing her bare skin and sending a trail of fiery awareness licking up her arm. “Don’t you find that strange?”

  She started to answer, then realized he was referring more to the lack of broken dishes than the way his touch made her want to purr. Which he couldn’t possibly know about. Thank God.

  “No,” she answered belatedly. “I find it fantastic.” Somehow the idea she’d hallucinated the sound—that they both had—was more reassuring than the alternative. Ducking her head into the sand wasn’t her normal habit, but this place was far from normal. And if she had a prayer of not losing her marbles while stuck here, she’d do well to pretend everything was a-okay. They both would.

  He lapped the large kitchen one final time, his dark brows pinched. His boots stopped with a soft scuffing sound in front of her, then he lowered the lantern. She studied his brown eyes, choked by thick lashes, and his ink-colored hair tousled over his forehead in the yellowish light and remembered their first—and only—kiss. How he’d leaned in and taken her lips so confidently. She’d bet he did everything that way. Confidently. Thoroughly.

  “Did you hear me?” he asked.

  No. I was fantasizing about you. “Uh, sorry. Zoned out.”

  The side of his mouth kicked up, and Lily’s heart hammered into her ribs like machine-gun fire. “I asked if you wanted to go back to bed.” He waggled his eyebrows and tipped his head toward the living room. “With me.” He affected his best bad-boy rogue expression. Teasing her again.

  He seemed content to ignore whatever they’d heard. Good. She could work with that.

  She shook her head. “You’re impossible.”

  “You can’t get enough of me,” he said as he followed her to the living room.

  “You can’t get enough of yourself,” she grumbled over her shoulder, barely meaning it. She took her place back on the mattress.

  Marcus set the lantern aside and arranged his big body on the bed next to her. He was quiet, studying the boards covering the windows in the living room. “You know,” he said. “There are a lot of old trees out there. I’m thinking the wind caught a big limb and brought it down.” He braced his arms around his knees. “Lucky it didn’t come through the roof and kill us.”

  The sound they’d heard, as clearly as they both heard Marcus’s explanation now, was not a tree limb. Lily knew it. Marcus knew it. And she could see that he knew she knew it. But he was explaining it away, possibly for her benefit, and before her imagination could turn tail and run away with her on its heels.

  Back at base camp, the sound merely an echo in her memory, it was easier to believe a story about felled tree branches. So she let herself believe. Denial was a powerful, powerful tool, and she had no problem using it to her advantage.

  There was one thing she couldn’t deny, however. His insistence to return to the air mattress, to wait out the night with her. He was practically handing over what she had come here to win. Why not talk her into leaving? Why not create a panic and drag her from the house “for her own good”? Why would he sit here and…and…protect her when he had the most to lose?

  Unless…

  She gave him a coy smile. “I had no idea.”

  He still studied the windows. “What’s that?”

  “You’re a nice guy.”

  Marcus didn’t move from his seated position, knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them, but he did turn his head and scrunch his brow in contention. “What?”

  She nodded. So sure of her observation. “You leapt out of this r
oom and put yourself in potential danger to protect me.”

  “Whatever.” His fingers tapped a distressed rhythm against his jeans. “I walked into the kitchen to check for an ax murderer for me as much as I did it for you.”

  She grinned. Sure he did. “You mean one carrying a plastic ax and wearing a hockey mask?”

  He gave her a bland look. “Touché.”

  “What was your plan, anyway? Send me running to my car, screaming down the hillside?”

  “Basically.”

  She shook her head. Maybe he wasn’t all that heroic after all. Yet she was attracted to him. Which could only mean one thing: Marcus didn’t have pheromones like normal men. He emitted something akin to a hallucinogenic drug.

  The heater next to them chugged, whined, and died.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Lily hit the top. Hit the side. Switched the dials up then down.

  “Is this the way you usually fix things? Just bang on them until they’re operational again?”

  “Seems to work for the vending machine in the break room.”

  He brushed her hands aside and inspected the heater. “This isn’t a glass box withholding your Mallomars.” The Coleman winked out next, plunging the room into darkness.

  He swore.

  She felt like swearing, too. “I just bought that!” she said instead. So not the issue. She flipped open the cover on her iPad and cast light onto Marcus’s face. It died next. Just went dark, when she knew she had 87 percent battery left.

  “What the hell?” He snatched the iPad, and she heard him click the button ineffectually three times before blowing out a frustrated breath.

  With the heater silent, the room black, there was only the sound of the wind pressing against the boarded windows keeping them company. Cold, howling wind.

  “Marcus?” Her voice was a thin thread. She sounded scared. She didn’t care. She was scared.

  “It’s okay.” His hand found her leg, and she clutched onto him. Marcus’s body shifted, and she heard the clatter of the exhausted Coleman as he slid it aside. He shoved the heater next before leaning to one side and digging in his pocket. He muttered a curse. “My phone’s dead.”

  Her phone! Of course. She let go of his hand and felt blindly in the small space until she found her purse. After a few seconds of digging, she found her phone and pressed a button. Light flared between them. She examined the screen. “No signal. But we have light.”

  He took her hand and directed the muted light around the bedding. His firm grip warmed her arm, distracting her from everything else but the feel of his skin against hers.

  When he located the flashlight, he let her go. “Plenty of light,” he said, flicking it on then off. “Better save it.”

  Their eyes met in the pale light emitting from her phone, and she felt the air shift between them, vibrating with a different kind of tension.

  The sexy kind.

  His throat worked as he swallowed. “We should go to the road,” he said, his voice low. “See if you can get a signal.”

  She shook her head. “I have a bet to win. I’m not giving up because it’s dark.”

  And she didn’t want to interrupt the heavy tension clinging to the blackness surrounding them. Despite the shadows pressing in on them from every angle, she felt like she was seeing Marcus clearly for the first time. Something told her he wasn’t as selfish and cocky as he pretended to be. It was the way he looked at her…the way his features softened when his eyes met hers.

  “Determined to take this from me the way you did Sunny Acres, aren’t you?” he teased, his mouth tipping on one side.

  She felt a pinch of regret that he’d effectively removed the sexual tension and turned it into the usual kind of argumentative tension between them. “This again?” She sighed, disappointed. “You didn’t have a contract with Marjorie.”

  “No, but I sketched a design she loved.”

  Lily picked at an eyelet in her sneaker. The phone went dark, and she dropped it next to her leg. “She didn’t use your design.” Somehow that truth came easier in the dark.

  “Of course she did,” he argued. “She added on the pond and greenhouse, but she said the room idea was perfect.”

  She shook her head even though he couldn’t see her. She didn’t want to tell him the truth all of a sudden. Which was odd, because it made for excellent ammo and she’d assured herself she was saving it for a moment she needed a good dig. But each time he poked at her at work, she’d hesitated to rub his nose in it. Why had she done that?

  She knew why she hesitated now. Because she’d since begun to see Marcus wasn’t as much of an asshat as he’d like everyone to think. Or maybe because of the look on his face in his office the day he’d won the trip. He was in there alone, slapping the tickets against his open palm. Then he’d stared at them for the longest time, shaking his head as a proud—not cocky—smile graced his handsome face. In that moment, with his usual veil dropped, she had seen him care about something in a deep, reverent way.

  And that had intrigued her.

  Of course, an hour later, he’d plopped down on her guest chair in her office and run down a list of things to do in Hawaii. Ever been snorkeling, McIntire? I think I’ll cliff dive while I’m there. Thanks to my handy-dandy new shed, I have plenty of room for climbing gear and scuba-diving equipment.

  A scrape along the boarded windows sounded in front of them, and Lily instinctively grabbed for Marcus in the dark.

  “See?” he muttered softly. “Trees.”

  “Trees,” she agreed. Maybe they’d both overreacted because of the environment they were in. Maybe here, inside a spooky mansion steeped in local lore, everyday sounds were scarier than they actually were.

  “Talk to me about something,” he said.

  Good idea. She’d talk about anything to get her mind off the ghost of Essie Mae. “Like what?”

  “Like why you wanted to go to Hawaii.”

  Not what she’d expected. She thought for a moment. “Well. Like you, I’ve never been there. Plus, it’s a free trip…” But that wasn’t really why she wanted it. That wasn’t the reason she’d worked overtime and gone out of her way to sign more accounts than Marcus. “The truth is,” she said quietly, “I really like to win.”

  His deep laughter tumbled around her in the dark. “Yeah, I get that.”

  “And I wanted to see if I was good enough to beat the best.”

  She sensed more than heard his head turn.

  “You’re the best.” She squeezed his knee. “You’re unbeatable.”

  One rough hand covered hers. On a soft rumble, he said, “You may beat me yet.”

  She sniffed. That may have been a laugh if he hadn’t been touching her. If her heart hadn’t been beating triple time.

  The hand over hers turned and slipped beneath hers. Heat from their pressed palms lit a fuse that burned up her arm. “Lily?”

  She couldn’t see his face, but she knew his eyes were on her. She could feel them.

  A beat passed. Then another. She flipped her phone open with shaking fingers. His eyes zoomed in on her mouth. “Don’t suppose you’re scared enough of the dark to leave.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t suppose you’re planning on leaving me on my own.”

  A smile, then, “You might cheat.” He tugged their linked hands and leaned the slightest bit closer to her.

  “True,” she whispered, mirroring his movement. “I wouldn’t trust you if our roles were reversed.” Inches from his face, she admired the curve of his top lip in the pale blue light from her phone. “What are you doing, Black?”

  “I think,” he whispered back, his breath fanning her lips, “I’m going to have to kiss you, McIntire.”

  Chapter 8

  Marcus closed both palms over her upper arms and Lily shut her phone with a snap and dropped it somewhere on the bed.

  His lips hit hers hard and softened a moment later, even as his arms tightened around her body. He tugged, and she we
nt willingly…then sort of fell into him. The air mattress was about as stable as one of those inflatable ball-filled rooms.

  Lips still fused with hers, he laughed through his nose as he fell back, pulling Lily on top of him. Lying against that hard wall of muscle, she didn’t think there could be anything better than being held by his strong arms. Until he slipped his tongue into her mouth to tangle with hers.

  Oh, yes. Much better.

  She kissed him back, sucking his tongue while her fingers found the back of his scalp and clutched at his short hair. The feel of him, the smell of him, the taste of him was all so utterly masculine, she felt feminine and delicate by comparison. That was new. She liked it.

  He pulled away, his breathing ragged. Lily shifted against him, felt the hard length of him press into her thigh. Talk about masculine. She rubbed against him again. Shamelessly. This was crazy, right? They barely tolerated each other at work, were in the least romantic location on the planet. Plus—

  “Sorry.”

  Did Marcus Black just apologize?

  Chest heaving, she stayed where she was, her arms locked around his neck, breasts smashing into his chest, mouth close enough that his truncated breaths tickled her lips.

  “Are you?” she challenged.

  He tightened his arms around her and ground his pelvis against her leg. His voice was impossibly deep when he said, “No.”

  When his lips landed on hers again, she wanted to cry with relief. Shrouded in the darkness, hidden from the outside world, this felt safe. Like in this sequestered place, she was free to do whatever she wanted. Whomever I want. And right now, being on the receiving end of Marcus’s dwindling control was exactly where she wanted to be.

  Senses heightened in the dark, she explored his body. The soft, worn cotton of his T-shirt, the puckered fabric at the hem. His hot tongue still in her mouth, she slipped her hand beneath his shirt, fingers straying over an army of rock-hard abs dusted in hair. She trailed her fingers up his chest, savoring the width of him, the coarse texture of him, the heat rolling off his skin in waves.

  When he slanted his mouth over hers, his stubble scratched her face. He nipped at her bottom lip, her jaw, her neck, until he found the hollow at the bottom of her throat and explored it with his tongue.