Forbidden: A Shade Darker – The Complete Collection. Leslie Kelly

between them. “Despite appearances, I’m not the dumb girl I was.”

      “You were never dumb.”

      To be fair, he’d never treated her as if she was dumb, just as a sweet little innocent. Until that last night.

      She’d met Rand when she was visiting her brother, Seth, who lived in L.A. Seth was a sports agent, just building a name for himself back then. Now, he counted some of the most famous, successful athletes in the country as his clients. Rand McConnell had been one of them.

      He wasn’t anymore, though. Because of her.

      “You were always pretty spectacular.”

      Her spine went ramrod straight and she forced away the hint of pleasure his compliment created. The guy was a womanizing ballplayer who probably fed every woman that same line. “And you were always a jerk.”

      He flinched, visibly affected at last.

      She instantly regretted the comment. Because he hadn’t been a jerk. In fact, Rand had been anything but a jerk when they’d first met. He’d been cute and funny and charming, even if he hadn’t been later.

      “Wow, that’s new. You’ve grown a sharp tongue to go along with that perfect face,” he said, sounding rueful.

      “I’m sorry,” she admitted. “This was an awkward reunion at best. If you’ll excuse me, I’d better get going.”

      She began to walk toward the door but he stepped in front of her. She had to drop her head back to stare up at him—he’d had a good six inches in height on her when he’d been twenty-one and he seemed even taller now.

      She suddenly realized why. “Wait, where are my shoes?” she asked, still not believing he’d pulled her out from under the bed—and not believing she’d been about to walk out of here barefoot and with her skirt still twisted out of place. The man had fried her brains and made her forget everything else. As always. She untangled her skirt and yanked it into position.

      “I hid them.”

      “You didn’t have a chance to hide them.”

      “Okay, so I threw them. They’re in the corner.”

      She walked over to get them and shoved her feet in the pumps. Turning to leave, though, she found he’d stepped right in front of the doorway, blocking her exit.

      “I’m curious, if you weren’t, uh, lying in wait, what were you doing under my bed?”

      “I was trying to unhook the...”

      The words died on her lips. She did not want to talk to Rand about the fur-lined handcuffs attached to his bed, apparently left there by the hotel owner. She’d heard rumors about the wealthy owner’s revolving-door love life. Evidently it wasn’t just his money that kept the women coming to the penthouse night after night when he was in residence.

      Although the room itself was probably part of the attraction. The three-bedroom suite was the final word in opulence. It included every creature comfort a person could desire, from a private pool on the rooftop patio, to a ten-headed shower in the master bath, to a bar fridge stocked with Perrier-Jouët champagne and Beluga caviar.

      And, as she’d discovered when doing one last sweep after the maids had departed, a bit of a kink factor. She’d found a pair of cuffs in a drawer in the bathroom, which had prompted her to double-check the bed. Good thing. There’d been another set attached to one of the decorative wooden slats that ran vertically down the center of the thick, massive headboard.

      “Let me guess—you were trying to unhook the handcuffs?” he said, a teasing note to his voice.

      Heat rose in her face. “How did you...”

      “I heard you mumbling to yourself.”

      Yet he had still assumed she was a stranger lying in wait to, uh, seduce him. Did women regularly handcuff him to the bed to have their kinky way with him? She did a mental eye-roll at the very idea, then quickly pulled her thoughts off all things handcuffy and sexual. And Randy. Oh, yes, randy was definitely on the no-no list right now.

      “Yes, well, I was just doing a sweep to make sure everything was acceptable.”

      “And you found handcuffs.”

      “Would you shut up about the freaking handcuffs?”

      “Are they still there?”

      “Do I look like a locksmith to you?”

      “Are they the fake plastic ones? Because, if so, they should have a release button that enables them to just be snapped open.”

      Her jaw fell. “And you would know this...how?”

      “Who doesn’t know that?”

      “I didn’t know that.”

      He tsked. “Never played cops and robbers as a kid, huh?”

      Yeah, right. She’d just bet that was how he’d discovered release buttons.

      He sure discovered your release button.

      She ordered the sassy mental voice in her head to shut the hell up, even as her brain flooded with images of how he’d found the most vulnerable spots on her body and plucked them like a virtuoso fingering the keys of his instrument. She’d been so sheltered, with no adult female influence throughout her teenage years, that she hadn’t even been sure where her clit was until Rand showed her. Oh, God, had he shown her that one night when she’d been a wild child, rather than a good girl.

      Being wild had been spectacular. But it had also caused a whole lot of misery. So she’d gone back to being a good girl, never tempted to push the limits with any other guy. And that seemed to be just fine with the men she’d dated, all of whom were okay with nice, quiet, reserved Emily who didn’t get on the floor and wag her fanny at them, or call them jerks or tell them to shut up.

      God, why was Rand always able to get her riled up like this? More important, why did part of her love being riled up?

      “I certainly never played games with real handcuffs,” she finally replied.

      “So you think they’re real, not plastic?”

      “Must we talk about the handcuffs?”

      “Let’s just say you’ve aroused my...curiosity.”

      “Well, you’re welcome to satisfy your...curiosity once I’m out of here. Despite the faux fur lining, they are not toy handcuffs and they’re still dangling from your headboard.”

      “Fur-lined but still real? I doubt it. Show me where they are and I’ll try to open them.”

      She rolled her eyes, wondering if he believed her a total sucker. Then again, her boss had made it pretty clear that she had to make Rand happy. If word got back to Dawn that a pair of handcuffs had been left for a valued customer to find and a staff member had refused to help remove them, the general manager would make good on her threat to fire Emily.

      “Fine,” she snapped, heading toward the bed. He followed her, and she forced herself not to dwell on his being behind her. She didn’t want to remember the wild, angry, erotic thoughts she’d been having as she crawled out from under the bed, torn between humiliation, fury and the same crazy desire she’d felt for Rand from the day they’d met.

      Dropping to her knees on the bed, close to the headboard, she bent over and reached her hand between the frame and the mattress. The metal cuffs dangled near the bottom of one slat, and she hooked her fingers into the free cuff and began to tug the set up. “I tried to open them from up here but it’s a pretty bad angle, which is why I was under the bed when you arrived.”

      “I see.”

      She looked over her shoulder and found him eyeing her backside. Yeah, he saw all right.

      “Didn’t you get enough of an eyeful a little while ago?”