No Holds Barred Read online

  That one word shredded whatever thin grasp he still had on his control and triggered a series of explosions inside of him. The craving that had been building for so long had become so huge that he wasn’t going to survive another second unless he filled her.

  When he did, she cried out from the shock, from the intensity of the pleasure, and he felt his control snap. As he drove into her in fast, desperate thrusts, she matched him move for move. Heat became intense. Glorious. The pace was fast. Furious.

  They were in a race, one that everything depended on, and they were neck and neck. The speed was insane, the pleasure outrageous. They both cried out as they reached the finish line together. He heard his name blend with hers before reality faded completely.

  * * *

  WHEN PIPER FINALLY OPENED HER eyes, she was lying on the floor of the library staring up at the ceiling two stories above. Her mind was gradually swimming back to reality, and she wasn’t sure she could move. It wasn’t just the fact that Duncan’s arm and leg were pinning her down. She’d just never felt so relaxed, so spent. So…right?

  No. Quickly, she pictured her bottle and corked up that little idea. Sex on demand was the perfect fantasy. No strings. No expectations. That was the deal she’d made with Duncan and herself.

  At least she hoped they’d both agreed to it. She’d done most of the talking before she’d climbed onto his lap and conversation had pretty much ceased. She wasn’t even clear on how much time had passed since she’d first entered the library. Minutes? Surely not hours. The slant of the sun through the windows hadn’t shifted that much. And the dust motes had returned to their slow dance.

  Still, she couldn’t work up the will to move. She’d never noticed before that the ceiling was intricately carved and painted with some sort of scene; she couldn’t imagine a more delightful way to have discovered its beauty. She felt her lips curve at the thought. So at least some part of her body was working.

  Duncan stirred at her side. She angled her head, pleased to discover that it was also working, and met his eyes. For just a moment, she lost track of time again and there was just the two of them. Nothing else. No one else. She could have lain there just like that for a long time.

  Too dangerous, she thought and searched for something to say.

  Duncan beat her to it. “Do you think that qualified as monkey sex?”

  She blinked, and then smiled at him. “I highly doubt that monkeys know how to do what you just did.”

  “Thanks, I think.” He kissed the tip of her nose, then drew back to study her for a moment. He’d never felt so relaxed with her before. He wasn’t sure he’d felt this comfortable with any woman. “You surprise me.” Stunned would have been a more accurate word, he thought. And when he saw the slight frown flicker over her face, he gave her a quick hug. “In a good way.” In every way. She’d been wild in a way he’d never imagined. And more responsive than he’d ever dreamed. “I don’t think I’ll ever look at this library—or any library—in quite the same way again.”

  The smile lit her face again. “Me, neither. So…are we in agreement?”

  “About what?” For a moment he’d become totally focused on the way the light played over her features.

  “About my proposal—sex on demand. It’s the best solution to what’s happening between us. It’ll keep everything simple and neat.”

  Duncan traced a finger along her jaw line, felt her tremble. “You like simple.” He liked it himself. Especially in his personal life, he’d always preferred it to complicated. But whatever they called it, he knew that what he’d just begun with Piper MacPherson was going to be as complicated as hell. He lifted the strap of her bra, rubbed the red lace between his finger and thumb. Who would have thought that beneath those conservative suits she was wearing something this…provocative?

  “Duncan.” She raised her hands to clasp the sides of his head, then waited for his eyes to meet hers. “I need you to focus on this because we have a lot on our plates. We should get at least this part settled, and I have the feeling that half of your mind is on something else.”

  “It is,” he said. “But I can multitask.” There was some satisfaction in seeing her eyes widen as he fished into the pocket of his jeans to get another condom, then sheath himself in it. “If I recall, our deal is sex on demand, anytime, anyplace?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay then.” He settled himself between her legs and then entered her in one smooth stroke. “This time it’s going to be a long, slow ride.”

  And it was.

  7

  TAKING A HIKE HAD BEEN Duncan’s idea. Piper had been motivated to agree when she realized that after making love three times, she would have been perfectly content to lie curled up with him on one of the couches in the library until they’d recovered enough for round four.

  The sex on demand she’d fantasized about at nineteen was supposed to be convenient, not addicting. One of its benefits was they should actually be able to get some work done. So far they hadn’t made much headway in the Lightman files. So it was probably a good idea to take a break and clear their heads.

  It was one of those perfect days in the Adirondacks. The sun was high in the sky, the lake a perfectly matching blue below them. By the time she’d showered and changed, Duncan had already packed their lunch into a backpack and was waiting for her on the kitchen terrace. The man was meticulously organized.

  His pace was brisk, but in spite of the fact that his legs were longer, she had no problem keeping up with him. The path he’d chosen was a familiar one that wound upward through the woods to the cliff face bordering the lake.

  “Have you visited those old caves lately?” Duncan asked.

  “No.” She’d run along the cliffs frequently when she was in high school, but she’d never climbed down to revisit the caves after that summer he and his brothers had visited. She shot him a sideways glance. Maybe he’d forgotten how she’d frozen on the cliff face that day. “It was never one of my favorite places. If you’ll recall, playing damsel in distress wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.”

  “I do. After the first time we played pirates there, Reid and I tried to talk Cam out of playing it again. We thought it was too dangerous for you girls.”

  “Good thing you didn’t tell us that. And I take it you didn’t convince Cam, either.”

  He laughed as they came to the part of the cliff path that cut inland through the woods for a bit. “Not much chance of that. Cam was attracted to adventure and danger even back then. And Reid and I were certainly not immune to it. Plus, we got to take turns killing Cam in order to win back the treasure and rescue little Nell. Not a bad day’s work. We did reach a compromise on the safety issue. After the first time, Reid made sure that Nell always drew the short straw and then offered to climb with her to the cave before you or Adair jumped in to protect her yourself.”

  Piper thought back, seeing the game through a different lens now. “As I recall, Reid spent a lot of his time that whole summer making sure that Nell was safe.”

  Duncan nodded. “Six was a little young to be rock climbing, not to mention some of the other things we did, and it turned out to be good practice for him. Even at ten, he already knew he wanted to go into the Secret Service. Now he’s working on the vice president’s detail.”

  She heard the pride in his voice and asked, “When did you know you wanted to be FBI?”

  There were a couple of beats of silence before he glanced sideways at her and replied. “I probably decided the day the FBI came to our house and arrested my father for embezzling from his family’s investment firm.”

  Surprise had her stumbling. But Duncan gripped her arm just in time to help her regain her balance. “How old were you?”

  “Nine. It was the summer before we all came here. My father had always put his business as his first priority, especially after my brothers and I were born. He traveled and entertained a lot. He even kept an apartment in Manhattan. Every time he came home for any length of tim
e, he would make my mother very unhappy.”

  He took a bottle of water out of the backpack, handed it to her, then fished another one out for himself. “I’d hear her crying in the middle of the night, and I felt helpless because there wasn’t anything I could do.”

  She studied him as he sipped water. “Makes sense that you’d want to protect her. So you admired the FBI agents who took him away and wanted to grow up to be like them.”

  He began to walk again, this time veering off the path to take a shortcut to the cliffs. “I may not have been fully aware of it at the time, but I wanted to know what made someone do what my father did. Not just the stealing part. Greed is one of the things that makes the world go round. I wanted to know why he made my mom cry.”

  Understanding moved through her and tightened something around her heart. “So you were attracted to behavioral sciences.”

  “Ultimately.” They stepped out of the trees into the sunshine. A few feet away, the earth fell away in a sheer drop to a strip of sandy beach below. “Sorry to put a dent in your white knight theory.”

  He hadn’t. But she was prevented from pointing that out to him when her cell phone rang.

  He put a hand on her arm before she could answer the call. “I meant to tell you before. Don’t let anyone know where you are—not even your boss. I’ll explain.”

  A glance at her caller ID told her that it was Abe. Guilt moved through her when she realized that she hadn’t bothered to check her messages since they’d arrived at the castle. That wasn’t like her at all. “Hello?”

  “Piper, where are you?”

  It wasn’t Abe but an annoyed Richard Starkweather, her coworker. And he was using Abe’s cell phone. “Hi, Richard. Is Abe all right?”

  “Where are you? I stopped by your apartment to check on you last night and you didn’t answer. So far, I’ve left three messages on your cell.” There was concern in his voice, but beneath it, she heard a trace of annoyance.

  “I’ve been…busy.”

  “Very busy,” Duncan murmured in a voice only she could hear. She made the mistake of meeting Duncan’s eyes and the glint of laughter had her choking back on a laugh.

  “Where are you?” Richard asked again.

  “Where’s Abe and why are you using his cell phone?” she countered.

  “Abe asked me to call. We need your help on the Bronwell case. You have to make yourself available. We need to know where you are.”

  Piper kept her tone patient. “Richard, you were in the meeting I had with Abe yesterday afternoon. I’m taking a few days off at Abe’s request. As far as the Bronwell case goes, I turned over all my files to you. It’s all there. Why aren’t you using your own phone?”

  “Because you haven’t returned any of my calls. Obviously, you were avoiding me. If I have questions, I need to get a hold of you.”

  She bit down hard on annoyance. “You’ve got hold of me now. What do you want?”

  “How long will you be out of town?”

  “Until the publicity fades and Abe thinks I can return.” But in her head she said, Until I can take over second chair again. Then you won’t have to ask me any questions.

  “Sorry, I’m losing the connection,” she said aloud. Then she broke the connection and took a long drink of her water.

  “You don’t like Richard,” Duncan said.

  She paced away, and then whirled to come back to him. “Actually, I think it’s the other way around. In Richard Starkweather’s view, I have two strikes against me. He was Abe’s right-hand man until I was hired, and then I refused to go out with him. Several times.”

  “What was the I’m-so-concerned-about-you act he put on in your apartment yesterday?”

  “That was about impressing Abe.”

  “Some men don’t take either rejection or competition well. Does he dislike you enough to stage that scene yesterday morning and send the flowers?”

  Piper stared at him. “Good heavens, no. Why would he?”

  “To get you out of the way so that he could take over second chair at the Bronwell trial. My boss, Adrienne, suspects that someone in Abe’s office may have leaked the fact that you wrote the brief—to either the Macks family or to one of the other victim’s families. No one in my office was aware of your involvement. I didn’t even know you worked for Abe.”

  “I can’t believe that Richard would do something like that,” she said.

  “Abe’s a suspect, too. It’s very convenient that the media is focused on you now and not him. He can go forward with the Bronwell trial with a cleaner slate, so to speak.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Abe would never do anything like that.”

  “Maybe not. But until we figure out who staged that scene in your apartment and is sending you flowers, my boss would like to keep your location a secret, even from your coworkers.”

  “How? This is my home. Even Richard could guess that I might come here.”

  “Yeah.” Duncan smiled slowly. “I’ve given that some thought. I didn’t mention it to Adrienne, but it might work to our advantage if our RPK imitator does follow us up here. In D.C., it’s fairly easy to remain anonymous. Up here, strangers are remarked upon. Earlier today, I spoke with Sheriff Skinner in Glen Loch and filled him in on the situation. He’s putting the word out through Edie at her diner. He claims she’s his best investigator.”

  Piper didn’t like the fact that their conversation had started the nerves dancing in her stomach again. “I want this all to be over.” She shifted her gaze down to the lake and let the view diffuse some of her anger. “But I’m not going to run any farther than this.”

  Duncan got that. He’d seen that quality in her when she’d been eight and he’d come upon her clinging to the cliff face for dear life. His heart had nearly stopped. But she’d held on until he’d been able to reach her, and she hadn’t panicked. Then she’d followed his directions like a trooper as they’d climbed down together.

  He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You’ll be fine here. Thanks to whoever it was paying nocturnal visits to the castle library, the security is currently CIA approved, and Vi says that Daryl Garnett will be here for the weekend because of that photo shoot. As head of the CIA’s domestic operations, he’s the best when it comes to white knights. But so are you.”

  She frowned at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “That time you had to play damsel in distress in the cave all afternoon? You did that to protect Nell. And you told a bald-faced lie when you claimed that you’d always dreamed of being rescued.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Whoever this guy is who’s sending you flowers, he picked the wrong person to mess with. But I suggested we come out here to get your mind off everything else for a while. And I have an idea of just how we can do that.”

  She stared at him. “You want to have sex here?”

  With a grin he glanced around. They were on the steepest part of the cliff and while there was no one in plain sight, anyone with a good pair of binoculars or a camera with a telephoto lens could see them. “Tempting, but that’s not what I had in mind.”

  Instead, he swung the backpack off his shoulder and sat down. “I thought we might share some lunch before we climb down to explore those caves.”

  “You want to climb down to the caves.” She walked over to him and took one of the sandwiches he held out. “Why?”

  He sat down on the grass near the cliff edge and gestured for her to join him as he pulled out his own sandwich. “I want to check something out.” He explained his theory about it being Eleanor who’d hidden her dowry.

  She took the time to chew and swallow the first bite of her sandwich while she mulled it over. “You’re profiling her.”

  “I suppose I am in a way. I’m looking at what we know and trying to theorize what might have happened.”

  “Okay, I see your point. Eleanor wore the sapphire in her wedding portrait, and there’s no record, either visual or written, of
their existence after she died. So it’s logical to think she’d be the one who hid them. It also stands to reason that if she split the earrings and hid just one of them in the stone arch, she hid the two other pieces of her dowry elsewhere. Otherwise, why split them up in the first place?”

  “Exactly. And if she hid one of them outside the castle, it seems logical that she’d hide the other pieces somewhere else, also.”

  “Very logical,” Piper said around a second bite of sandwich. “That’s why we’re here. You figure Angus would have known about the caves. This was land he chose. It stands to reason he would have explored all of it. Heck, it didn’t take you and your brothers more than a week to find them. So Eleanor would have known about the caves also. You showed them to Adair and Nell and me the same day you discovered them.”

  “Right.”

  “But if any part of the Stuart Sapphires is in the caves, surely one of you would have found it.”

  “We scoured both of those caves, but we were looking for some kind of treasure box, not something as small as a leather pouch.”

  “Both of them?” She turned to meet his eyes. “Didn’t any of you ever look in the third cave?”

  Duncan stared at her. “There’s a third cave down there? We only knew about two. How did you find a third one?”

  “Boredom is a strong motivator. The tunnel leading to it was pretty much blocked off by a boulder in the second cave. I couldn’t budge it, but I managed to squeeze behind it. The third cave is the biggest one and it was empty. But then I wasn’t focused on finding Eleanor’s dowry at the time. Finish your sandwich and let’s climb down and take a look around.”

  * * *

  PIPER’S ARMS WERE ACHING AS she wedged her fingers in between two rocks and searched for the next foothold. She could do this. She wasn’t a scared eight-year-old anymore.

  “To your left,” Duncan called from below her.

  In true white knight style, he’d pointed out the narrow rock ledge about one hundred feet below them, and then he’d insisted on going first and she’d let him. She was betting he’d already reached it. He’d been halfway there when she’d swung her legs over the edge. But she didn’t dare look down to check his progress.