Grand Passion

lazy sensuality. “Well, I'm convinced that you aren't hiding my Luttrells. I knew the first night I met you that you were either one of the most formidable opponents I had ever encountered or…Never mind.”
    “What do you mean, never mind?” Cleo said. “Finish the sentence.”
    “Or you were one of the nicest, sweetest, most innocent women I had ever met,” Max concluded smoothly.
    Cleo glowered at him. “That's not what you originally intended to say, was it? What did you really think that first night? That if I wasn't extremely shrewd, I was probably not too bright? Is that what you thought?”
    “I can't even remember what I thought that first night. Too much has happened.” Max rolled her over onto her back and sat up beside her. He opened the drawer next to the bed and reached inside.
    “What are you doing?” Cleo asked, straining to focus on whatever it was he was removing from the drawer. “What's that? It looks like a scarf.”
    “That's exactly what it is.” Max shook out the large square of yellow and blue silk.
    “What are you going to do with it?”
    “I'm going to try something I read about in chapter five of The Mirror .” Max took hold of opposite corners of the scarf and stretched the fabric into a taut, narrow rope.
    Cleo's eyes widened even as the first tremors of excitement flowed through her. “Max, you wouldn't.”
    Max's eyes gleamed with warm, sexy amusement. “Relax, Cleo. I rarely screw up, remember?”
    “Yes, I know, but Max .” Cleo was suddenly hot all over.
    Max slowly eased the hem of her chaste, flower-printed flannel gown up to her waist. Then he slid the strip of yellow and blue silk beneath her buttocks and drew it up between her thighs as if it were a thong-style bikini. He gently pulled it taut.
    “ Max .” Cleo could feel the strip of silk working its way into the moist, heated folds of her feminine flesh. She grabbed fistfuls of the sheet in both hands.
    Max tightened the scarf slowly until it was gliding over the delicate bud hidden in the triangle of dark hair. The sensation left Cleo gasping. The feeling was one of tantalizing torment, just as she had imagined it would be when she had written the scene in The Mirror .
    When Max embellished the original version and used his mouth to dampen the silk between her legs, Cleo came apart in his hands.
    She knew Max was watching her in rapt fascination as she surrendered to the climax. For some reason that only made the final sweet convulsions all the more exquisitely exciting.

    Max opened one eye a long time later to find Cleo sitting up in bed, leaning over him. She had a speculative expression on her face as she shook out the yellow and blue scarf.
    “What do you think you're going to do with that?” he asked with sleepy unconcern.
    “Experiment. You never know. Someday I might write a sequel to The Mirror .” Cleo started to drape the silk square over him. “From a man's point of view.”
    Max started to smile. Then he sucked in a deep breath as his recently satisfied body reacted to the sensual touch of the silk. “Sounds interesting.”
    “Yes, I think it will be.”
    The phone rang just as Cleo was starting to do some truly creative things with the length of silk. Max swore as he reached for the receiver beside the bed.
    “Fortune here.”
    “Max?” George sounded wide awake for once. “This is me. George. At the front desk.”
    “What's wrong, George?”
    Cleo halted the process of tying the narrowed scarf into a bow around an extremely rigid portion of Max's anatomy. She leaned across him to fumble for her glasses on the nightstand.
    Max groaned as her soft stomach pressed against his decorated manhood.
    “There's a guy down here says he knows you, Max. Says he wants to talk to you right away. He's threatening to tear the place apart if you don't get down here.”
    Max sat up against the pillows. “Who is it?”
    “He says his name is Roarke Winston.”
    “Hell, that's all I needed. I'll be right down.” Max tossed the phone back into its cradle. He reached for the cane he had propped against the wall.
    “What's wrong?” Cleo demanded. She was already off the bed, searching for her jeans.
    “Winston's here.” Max got out of bed and went to the closet.
    “Kimberly's husband?”
    “Right.” Max started to pull on his trousers and stopped when he noticed that the silk scarf was still tied around him in a wispy, languid bow. He cautiously removed it.
    “What's he doing