The Dangerous Hero Read online

  "God, I've missed you, Viola." His voice was affectionate. His hands were fondling her as she lay cuddled against his side, her head on his shoulder. "You make me feel like a teenager again, too damn aroused to make it last."

  "Well, I’m glad I’m not a teenager any longer, given how much my age once freaked you out."

  "How old are you, anyway?"

  "Twenty-six. I'll be twenty-seven in July. You?"

  "Thirty in November."

  "It seems like such a trivial difference now, doesn’t it? My ex-husband was 19 years older than me."

  "Seriously?"

  She was already wishing she hadn’t told him that. It had just slipped out. She didn’t want to talk about Derek. Not now, not ever. "Yeah. Mistake, big one. I never should have married him."

  "How long did the marriage last?"

  "A little more than two years. But it seemed longer."

  "Unhappy marriage?"

  "Huge mistake."

  He caressed her gently, sympathetically. They both lay quietly for a few minutes, thinking their own thoughts. It felt comfortable. He was easy to be with. Had it always been like this? She thought it had. She had liked Stephen back then because he had treated her as an equal. No loftiness, no condescension. His own affable, cheerful manner was similar to her own. They had laughed a lot, she remembered. They'd had fun.

  "How did you happen to marry a man who was so much older than you?"

  "It was one of those professor/student things. He had a beautiful home, an art collection, cultured, fascinating friends. He'd recently divorced his wife and was looking to replace her with a younger model. He was persuasive, and I was dazzled. We had a whirlwind courtship, and everything happened quickly. By the time I started my dissertation, I was wed."

  "And by the time you finished it you were divorced?"

  "Exactly." The story was not so simple, but maybe he wouldn’t inquire further. "Between that, and applying for jobs and finally landing the one I’ve got now, that’s pretty much been my life. Not too exciting, compared to writing bestselling novels."

  "A writer’s life is not as exciting as you think. All I’m doing is staring into a computer screen all day. My characters are the ones who lead exciting lives."

  She decided not to make a remark about Bartholomew Giles’s exciting life torturing people; she probably shouldn’t keep giving him a hard time about that.

  "How about you? Have you ever come close to marriage?"

  "Me? Nope. Not since that one time in college. I like being single."

  What did that mean? Should she ask? Best not, she decided. This relationship was barely more 24 hours old. Friendly and lighthearted was the way to behave on a first date, even when the evening ended in the bedroom. Or so she thought, anyway. She couldn’t claim to have a lot of experience negotiating such situations. She hadn’t really dated since college. Were they even dating? Or was this just a mad sex weekend?

  She had to bite her tongue to keep from blurting out some of those questions that were never to be asked on a first date unless you wanted to commit relationship suicide. No, if she wanted this to continue—and she did, so much—she needed to keep everything light and happy. Hide her heart. Be mysterious and elusive for a change. After all, she wasn't a teenager anymore.

  "Why'd you get all quiet?" Stephen asked.

  "What? Quiet? Me?" She tugged playfully on the silky curl of his hair that was tucked behind his left ear. "I keep having yummy flashbacks to what we were doing ten minutes ago."

  "No need for flashbacks." He took her hand and placed it on his cock, which was perking up again. "We can just keep right on going."

  "I'm impressed," she laughed, moving her hand encouragingly up and down the lovely organ. "You're going to run out of condoms at this rate."

  "Let's hope there are some all-night drug stores in this town. If I'd known I was going to get so amazingly lucky this weekend, I'd have been better prepared."

  "Don't worry, I bought a box today."

  "Did you indeed?" He was grinning at her. "For me?"

  "There's no one else in my life for whom I'd need them." Damn, she thought as soon as she said it. That wasn't exactly being mysterious and elusive.

  "Good," he said, and blanketed her body with his.

  Chapter 8

  "Stephen?"

  "Hmm?"

  "What’s wrong with you?"

  "What’s wrong with me?"

  "There has to be something. This has been too much fun. The sex is awesome, you make me laugh, you’re smart, you’re gorgeous, and unless you’ve changed a lot from a decade ago you enjoy a lot of the same activities as me. There’s got to be a catch. Nobody’s this perfect."

  He had just come back from the bathroom to find her sitting up in bed with her arm looped around her knees. It was still dark in the room, but there was a faint glow coming from the windows that hinted at the dawn. Neither one of them had slept much. As he climbed back into bed, she smiled and he felt his cock harden again. Which made him say, "I think what’s wrong with me is that I’ve got some medical condition where I have an erection all the time."

  She giggled. He settled himself beside her and pulled the sheet over them both. "I could ask the same thing, you know. You seem pretty perfect yourself."

  She snorted. "Far from it. But I asked first." She let a few moments go by, then added, "Am I going to wake up in the morning and find you gone?’

  "No," he said, ruffling her hair. "You’re not going to find me gone. I’m hoping this is the start of something. It’s not often that people get a second chance. We ought to make the most of it."

  She hugged him spontaneously, nestling her face against his chest. She was so sweet, so affectionate, so easy to be with. Their bodies seemed to have a natural affinity for each other. It was everything that he had remembered it to be.

  And that wasn’t all. He really liked her. He had felt the same that summer, too. In fact, he had briefly believed himself to be in love.

  Stephen knew he had an odd view of romantic love. For a male at least. He actually believed in it.

  As an overly imaginative kid, he was been delighted by those fairy tales about princes and maidens. There had been that guy who chopped through the thorny forest to waken Sleeping Beauty. And the other dude with his nightly climb up Rapunzel’s glorious rope of hair. He could totally see himself as Lancelot storming into Camelot to rescue his beloved Guinevere. When his class had read Wuthering Heights senior year in high school, he was the only boy in the class who got why Heathcliff wanted to be buried next to Cathy and have the sides smashed out of their coffins so their dust could mingle as their bodies decomposed. "Yuck," the girls had all cried, but Stephen thought it was romantic.

  He'd been careful to hide these thoughts from his friends. Never had he let on that every time he started up with a new girl in school and college—whether it was just a hookup or an actual series of dates in a developing relationship—he would hang in suspended anticipation, waiting for the bolt of revelation that would tell him that he had finally found his true love.

  It never worked out that way. The delicious madness of a new romance was heady and fun, but those feelings rarely seemed to last for more than a few weeks, or, at the outside, months. Not only did he want something more romantic, but he also wanted sex that was more varied and creative. Long before he had begun writing novels, Stephen had lived mostly in his head, in his imagination, and his imagination was capable of inventing complex erotic scenarios that had a lot more in common with Anne Rice's erotica than with the Brothers Grimm.

  He'd had a couple of happy and satisfying long-term relationships, but something was always missing. He had grown jaded enough now that he considered his youthful fantasies of romance to have been immature and silly.

  Still.

  There had been one woman—one girl, actually, since she had been so young—whom he had thought might actually be The One. That girl had been Viola Quentin. Whom he had lost because he hadn�
�t had the guts to stand up to her dad.

  While he was glad that she seemed to have forgiven his incomprehensible fuckup in failing to recognize her, he wasn’t sure that she’d absolved him yet for abandoning her. He couldn’t really blame her if she hadn’t. It had been a real betrayal, a betrayal of his heart.

  Could the past be mended? Could they pick right up again where they had left off? He wasn’t certain. Although they both seemed to have slipped back into their old easy intimacy—they had, after all, been good friends before falling into that maelstrom of erotic passion—he sensed that they had changed over the years. They were no longer the same carefree, openhearted kids they had been at 17 and 21.

  Besides, she might not realize it yet, but there was something wrong with him. Well, not wrong, exactly, although some people might see it that way.

  "Well?" she challenged, grinning at him. "What deep dark secret are you hiding, and are you brave enough to confess it?"

  He grinned back. "The real question is, if I confess my darkest secrets, are you going to be brave enough stick with me?"

  "Ooh, ominous. Try me."

  "Well," he said slowly, "There are a few things you should know. Like, sometimes I break the law by exceeding the speed limit on the highway."

  She giggled. "Shame on you! What else?"

  "I hate to do laundry, so there are days when I just gather up the jeans and T shirt that I threw on the floor the night before and put them right back on again."

  She glanced at the spot beside her bed where he had tossed his clothes. "Guess you won't have much choice about that tomorrow morning. C'mon, you'll have to get darker than that to impress me."

  "Ha. It's your turn to confess something."

  "Hmmm, let's see. Got one—despite my dentist's lectures and threats, I don't always floss my teeth. In fact, I usually only do it for a week or two before seeing the dentist."

  "Evil, definitely evil. Give me another—I gave you two."

  "You hate laundry, I hate doing dishes. I have a deep sink in my kitchen, so sometimes I just rinse the plates and glasses and let them pile up for a couple days before washing them."

  "I do that, too. Uh-oh. I foresee fights over whose turn it is wash the dishes."

  "Well, if that's the worst thing we fight over, it doesn't sound too bad. But you must be darker than that, my friend. Give me something really wicked."

  "Really wicked, huh? Right." Stephen hesitated for a moment, remembering a couple of instances in his past where the confession he was about to make had not gone well. Unless all his instincts were wrong, though, Viola was not going to be horrified. Or even surprised. "Okay. There is something. Usually this would be out in the open before we even made it to the bedroom, but you're kind of a special case."

  He must have said it in a much more sober tone than he had been using, because her expression changed. She’d been joking around, he realized, and not expecting a serious answer.

  "Meaning what?" she asked, scooting down in the bed so she could lie on her side and see his face.

  "Meaning—as you've probably already figured out—I’m not exactly in the middle of the bell curve when it comes to sex."

  She did an exaggerated double take, still joking around a bit. "You’re curved?"

  "I’m twisted. I like it rough."

  Her expression shifted slightly and a tiny line appeared in the middle of her forehead. "Rough, as in kinky?"

  "Yep. That doesn't freak you out, does it?"

  "Wow." She didn’t answer the question. Her expression had gone distant, as if she were withdrawing and turning inward. That surprised him. He had been sure he was picking up like-minded signals from her. She had responded ardently to the edge he had given their lovemaking tonight.

  "I’m not talking about anything harmful. Just sweet, sharp, twisted fun."

  Her gaze came back to his. She didn’t look particularly freaked out. "Tell me more."

  "Well, you have this big brass bed, which has been giving me all sorts of ideas ever since I laid eyes on it. You really don't have any restraints?"

  A beat while she considered this. "You mean handcuffs?"

  "Not those metal things that amateurs fool around with, no. I only use handcrafted leather cuffs. They’re superior to metal handcuffs because they're safer and more comfortable when you struggle. And you will struggle. That I guarantee."

  Viola’s breath caught. A dark pleasure rippled through her. She felt a little dizzy as she struggled to process what he was telling her. And yet, it wasn't really a surprise.

  "Nylon rope is good," he went on. "Soft, not too thin. Do you have anything like that?"

  "Um, no, just maybe some old clothesline?"

  "Nope. Old clothesline isn't safe enough. We don't want anything that could score your wrists or leave rope burns. Most of the natural fiber ropes are too harsh." He quirked a brow at her in a manner that was positively devilish. "Unless one is specifically seeking a harsh binding."

  Oh dear. Her heart had begun to scamper again. Could sexual excitement damage the circulatory system? Surely not. Wasn't it supposed to be good for you?

  Stephen leaned up on one elbow and grinned down at her. "I guess you don't have a chest filled with bondage gear stashed under your bed?"

  "Sorry, no." After a moment she added, not wanting to seem like a complete neophyte, "I do have a vibrator. A girl’s gotta have one of those."

  He laughed softly. "Absolutely." As usual, his lighthearted approach to things stripped the subject of whatever embarrassing qualities it might otherwise have held. "I suspect I could drive you wild with a pair of leather cuffs, some rope, and a variety of sex toys, vibrators included."

  She fanned herself. "Is it hot in here?"

  He studied her. "Am I scaring you?"

  "No. I love to try new things."

  "Would it scare you if I told you that my place on the Cape is well-stocked with BDSM gear?"

  "Do you have a brass bed too?"

  "I think the bedposts are cherry. Or maybe mahogany. I can never tell the difference. They’re sturdy, though."

  The better to tie you to, my dear, she thought. She imagined herself, bound spread eagle while he did whatever he wanted to her in his big sturdy bed. Thinking about it made her slick, and she was having difficulty keeping herself from pouncing on him, but there was still a piece of her mind issuing faint alarm calls.

  She forced herself to examine how she really felt about this. Her body might be excited—she had always been sexually adventuresome, in her fantasies at least—but she suspected that her mind and her body might not be entirely in accord. Before Derek had hurt her, she had frequently indulged in daydreams about being swept off into the arms of an irresistibly sexy rogue who would make rough love to her. Ropes and bindings had figured in these fantasies, as did spankings and other forms of erotic discipline. Some of her imaginings had been really wild.

  But after Derek, her rough sex fantasies had scaled way back. When you’ve actually been hurt by a man, it messes with your mind and heart and imagination. Could she even endure being tied up now? Would she ever be able to trust a lover to such an extent?

  "How kinky are we talking?"

  "One hundred percent safe, sane and consensual. The goal is mutual delight and pleasure." He was watching her closely, and caressing her at the same time. "It's not a requirement. If you’re turned off by the idea, we don’t have to go there."

  "Not. Turned. Off," she said, taking his hand and squeezing it hard. "On. Definitely on. I just...I’m not sure how I might react."

  "You seemed to like it nine years ago. In the boathouse." He paused. "I know you remember the beach, but do you also remember the boathouse?"

  "Of course I do. I just—" The boathouse. She felt her color rise as more memories flooded in. He had tied her hands together in the boathouse. She hadn’t exactly forgotten it. It wasn’t something one forgot, but she hadn’t thought about it for a while either. "It all seemed like such a dream to me after
wards. I mean, did that actually happen?"

  He laughed. "I wondered that a few times myself. There was a dreamlike quality to the whole afternoon. But, yes, it did."

  The memories came flooding back to her now.

  After their first encounter on the beach, they had fumbled back into their bathing suits and gathered up their windsurfing equipment to return it to the boathouse shed where the aquatic equipment was stored. She and Stephen had slipped easily back into the offhand and friendly way they'd always dealt with each other.

  The boat shed was snug, dimly lit and full of sporting equipment, much of which had been put to good use all summer. They had been together in there lots of times to get the canoe, the kayak, the fishing rods, diving equipment and snorkels. She had never thought anything about being there alone with him.

  Suddenly it was all different. The windsurfing boards were stored overhead on the shed rafters, and she had to go up on tiptoe to help him wrestle them into place. The first one went up with relative ease, but by the time they got the second board up, Stephen’s expression had changed, his gaze moving hungrily over her body as she reached overhead to correct the position of the surfboard. His look had sent heat shooting through her again, but the routine of securing the equipment—something she’d been doing every summer since her childhood—was deeply ingrained.

  "Almost done," she’d told him. "We have to bind them with these, though, in case of a storm." And she’d tossed him one of the lengths of rope they used for tying down various pieces of sporting equipment. He had stared at the rope as if he’d never seen it before, even though he had helped her stow sporting gear several times that summer. A speculative look came over his face, followed by that heavy-lidded flare of arousal.

  "I want to try something," he’d said. "Will you trust me?"

  "Yes," she’d said instantly. As far as she was concerned, he’d proved on the beach that he could be trusted.

  He stretched out the rope, one end in each of his hands. He looked at her, seeming to hesitate. Somehow she understood what he wanted. She took a deep breath, stepped closer and held out her hands, her wrists together. "Here," she said, offering herself up to him.