Hustle Sweet Love Read online

  “I’m desperate,” Lacy whispered. She couldn’t take her eyes from the long fingers and neatly manicured nails. Even his hands looked very sexy and assured.

  The gray eyes were on her face searchingly. “Do you operate this setup alone, or do you have a partner? Some sort of lover? Pimp?”

  Partner? Pimp? Things were just getting worse, rapidly. Now she was not only a hooker, she was a con artist—a bandit!

  “I work alone,” she said. Maybe if he thought she was just a poor working girl, he wouldn’t send her out of there with her feet in concrete. “I support my orphaned mother. And a brother. In a wheelchair.” He just didn’t know how desperate she was.

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Your mother’s orphaned?”

  “We never know who our parents are in our family,” she said, trying to make it all hang together.

  “Ah,” he said, raising both eyebrows. “I see.”

  He looked wryly thoughtful as he raised his hand. His touch was gentle, inquisitive. One finger wrapped around a glistening curl, then released it.

  “Amazing,” he murmured. Very slowly his big hand dropped to the smooth column of her throat, his palm resting against Lacy’s wildly beating pulse. His fingers held her throat lightly.

  Lacy closed her eyes. It was incredible, but the zap! bam! powie! was back. She should be screaming by now, but all he had to do was touch her, and this happened instead!

  “Do it quick,” she whispered, expecting the worst. She preferred that big, powerful hand to just snap her neck instead of strangling her slowly.

  He gave her a strange look. “As you wish. But there’s no need to rush, is there?”

  Lacy opened her eyes, wide. On the other hand, if he wasn’t going to exact his revenge there on the spot, there was still the matter of delivering fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of something she knew practically nothing about.

  “I give refunds,” she said, without hope.

  “Keep the money,” he murmured, looking down appreciatively at her wide, soft mouth. “I’m not going to haggle.”

  Lacy tilted her head back expectantly. He was probably going to kiss her again. Which, she found, was not so terrible after all. Not when compared with leaping out windows or being transported to the Tulsa garbage dump in concrete.

  But instead of kissing her, his hand found the zipper in the back of the Claude Montana and slowly pulled it down. The black crepe slid across her skin, the sleeves slipping down. There hadn’t been room under the dress for a bra. Lacy quickly clutched her full white breasts with both hands.

  “You don’t usually have to come across, do you? That’s not surprising,” he murmured. “Don’t cringe, let me look at you.”

  Lacy lifted her chin defiantly. She would have thought her skin would crawl under that probing gray-eyed gaze. But instead, for the second time that evening, she felt another blush rising in her face.

  “My God,” he muttered almost to himself, “you’re too incredibly beautiful to be doing this sort of thing.”

  She was frozen as his hard, warm hands slid down her bare back, pushing her dress over her hips and to the floor. She heard him take a quick, in-drawn breath.

  “But you do come dressed for it,” he murmured appreciatively.

  Oh, God, the garter belt! Lacy thought, too late. That awful black satin garter belt that held up the provocative black stockings. Outrageous on the runway, pure disaster here!

  “Do you know what you look like in that thing?” he said hoarsely.

  Lacy moaned. Under the sudden leaping fire in those gray eyes, her naked breasts broke into responsive tingles. Why did she feel she wanted those big tanned hands on her, stroking and caressing her? The garter belt felt as though it were crawling down her stomach. Under the silky black embroidery her legs shivered in anticipation.

  “You’ll have to kill me first,” she gritted.

  “On the contrary.” All the coiling power of the black panther had returned. He raked her with desirous eyes. “Don’t be afraid. I assure you, you won’t do anything you don’t want to.”

  Nothing she didn’t want to do? The man was a dangerous, egotistical lunatic! Nobody ever said anything like that, Lacy was sure, to a hustler in their whole lives!

  “Take that!” Lacy yelled. She hit him hard with an edge-of-the-hand karate chop on his brown column of a neck where it joined his massive shoulder. Her fingers went numb instantly.

  Maybe she forgot to yell, “Hah!” she thought, dazed. The way they taught in karate class.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” he murmured, his lips nuzzling her hair.

  She raised her leg to knee him in the groin, but he caught it easily. Lacy stock on one leg, helplessly, wondering what to do.

  “Jane,” he said tentatively. “Jane—Janey, let’s not be rough.”

  “My name’s not Jane!” she yelled, trying to get her black-stockinged leg back.

  “It is now,” he reminded her. His thumb stroked her knee softly. “You have the most magnificent legs I’ve ever seen.”

  Suddenly he released her. She was quickly enveloped in his arms, pressed hard against his chest, his mouth dropping down to seize and nibble the warm, tender skin of her throat. The urgent feel of his lips sent instant shock waves into Lacy’s body. She was helpless as his demanding mouth moved to a sensitive spot under her ear, tasting it, his breath touching her hair, then to the silky skin of her shoulder and up again to the line of her chin. His mouth stopped there, leaving Lacy gasping, waiting for more. She opened her eyes wide.

  So this was what it was like to have an obviously experienced, ardent, aroused man make love to you, Lacy thought, stunned. It was terrible; it was wonderful; it was totally mind destroying!

  He murmured against the corner of her lips, “You’re so fantastically beautiful. All over.”

  “Uh,” Lacy said, her mind gone crazy.

  His other hand was caressing the smooth, tight flesh over her ribs, sliding under her arms, stroking with his thumb. With excruciating slowness, a finger traced the heavy fullness of her breast.

  Why didn’t he just go ahead and kiss her, maul her, ravish her and get it over with? she thought with a sob. Instead of all this horribly tantalizing stuff? She gasped again as his head bent, and she clutched at his thick, nicely styled hair with both hands. Then she felt his hot mouth seize a delicate, shrinking, rosy nipple that instantly tightened to a hard bud of pained excitement. She almost screamed. Did he know no man had ever done this to her before? Couldn’t he tell? He was sending ruthless fountains of fire through her body, and there was a sudden, alarming ache in her groin. She heard herself making loud, sobbing noises. She was practically climbing all over him.

  “My hair, please,” he said thickly, trying to disengage her paralyzed clutch.

  Lacy met those gray eyes, wild-eyed. “Are you going to make love to me?” she croaked. It was more of a plea than a question.

  “Right away,” he promised, taking her mouth with an eager roughness.

  “You’re driving me crazy,” he breathed into her neck. “I—” He seemed to shake himself. Then he lifted his hand behind her back and looked at his gold Rolex watch. “I have a plane to catch at seven-thirty,” he said somewhat hoarsely. “We’d better get—we’d better go on to bed.”

  His words dragged Lacy back to sanity, “What?” she cried. She tried to pry herself away from his big body, knowing she’d lost her mind there for a moment.

  He looked down at her impassively. “You said you wanted to hurry.”

  “I did not!” Where had the game plan gone, anyway? He had wiped everything out of her mind with those crazy, wild kisses!

  She wrenched herself out of his arms and tried to stamp away, dazed but indignant, with naked breasts, quivering body and long legs in black embroidered stockings.

  “You’re not going anywhere like that,” he growled deep in his throat. He followed after her quickly, bent and with a smooth motion lifted her in his arms. “Bed is better.” />
  “Put me down!” Lacy howled.

  He paid no attention. The bedroom, apparently, was a sharp right from the foyer. He carried her to it with long, determined strides.

  “I’m going to sue you!” she shrieked as he let her slide from his arms down the full length of his body.

  “And I’ll charge you with soliciting and attempted robbery. You don’t mind if I keep this on, do you?” He held both her hands in an easy grip as he bent to open the fasteners on the garter belt.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  She jerked violently when he pulled the fragile scrap of her black bikini panties down her legs. Then he refastened the snaps on the garter belt, leaving it and the black stockings.

  Lacy looked down at herself. “That’s outrageous,” she breathed. She had on strappy black sandals, black embroidered stockings, a black satin garter belt and nothing else.

  He cocked a dark eyebrow at her. “Outrageous and lovely. It suits you.”

  “You’re crazy,” she protested weakly.

  “I’m surprising myself,” he admitted. He slid his hands around her waist and pulled her to him. “But I have a feeling this is going to be an evening to remember. To think I found you,” he murmured against her cheek, “hustling in a bar.”

  Yes, well, she supposed stranger things had happened. She found his mouth with her own, eager for the wild sensation of his dynamite kisses.

  His hands pressed against her inner thighs, making them open to him. Then his fingers were unaccountably searching out the damp, throbbing core of her flesh, making her body arch toward him.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” Lacy quavered. Nothing like this had ever existed before. She was surrendering completely to him without a thought for the consequences.

  She couldn’t protest when he picked her up in his arms and advanced a few steps to a tremendous bed covered with a black velvet spread. He came down on it over her, his heavy, hard body pressing all along the writhing, yearning length of hers, holding her under him.

  “You want this, don’t you?” he muttered, lifting himself away from her for a moment to peel off his clinging briefs.

  Lacy stared up at the handsome face above her. Yes! No! It was too late to tell him about that disastrous experience on senior-prom night in the Buick convertible. And that she was really afraid of men. And that she might be frigid. She found she didn’t care. This was the most terrible night of her whole life.

  “Yes,” Lacy said helplessly.

  “You’re so responsive,” he said raggedly. “God, you can’t be faking this!”

  “Mmmmm,” Lacy answered, trying to hold his hard, good-looking face between both hands so he’d kiss her again. His kisses were fabulous. That was no fake. It was —

  “I—oh!” Lacy cried in alarm as absolute reality thrust somewhat painfully against her and took possession. She hadn’t thought it would be like the one and only first time. “We don’t fit!”

  “Yes, we do—relax,” he told her. “Don’t be frightened. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Yeow!” Lacy cried wildly. She was wrong—it was nothing like she remembered. The shuddering black panther had her in his paws, clenching in a savage rhythm that was sending skyrockets through her body. And worse, she was going absolutely mad, making all sorts of loud, lustful sounds as that inexorable force choked out its own impassioned pleas for her to take it easy, then urged her to do just the opposite.

  A frenzied Mount Rushmore overwhelmed Lacy, descended all over her like an earthquake, boulders tumbling, trees giving way. A hot, ravenous mouth dragged volcanic bursts of her fire into his destroying lips. At the very center of the seismic uproar, Lacy trembled with the earthshaking pleasure that was driving into her, enveloping her, lifting her to a shattering peak where she melted into streams of flame, molten lava and exploding sparks. At her ecstatic cry of discovery, Mount Rushmore literally blew apart.

  Then an avalanche rumbled down on top of her and buried her beneath it.

  It was a remarkably long time before the cosmos put itself back together again. “I can’t breathe,” Lacy murmured stoically after a few minutes. And after she had pulled a strand of tangled hair from her swollen mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. He raised himself at once on his elbows and looked down at her, his eyes a stunned, opaque slate color. He cleared his throat. “That was ... quite an experience,” he managed.

  They stared at each other.

  “Me, too,” Lacy said with quivering sincerity. Their bodies, still pressed together, were covered with a satiny sheen of damp. And he was still gasping.

  The black panther’s taut, handsome features continued to study her upturned face searchingly. Then he shook his dark head. “I can’t believe,” he said between gasps, “that you do this for a living.”

  Lacy’s eyes opened wide. “Why?” she whispered, dreading the answer.

  His expression was more than a little baffled. “Because,” he said with an effort, “you put so much into it.”

  Lacy bit her lips. Did that mean he hadn’t seen through her total lack of experience? And the fact that she hadn’t the vaguest idea of what one did to earn fifteen hundred dollars? Good grief, did that mean he was satisfied with the transaction?

  She was suddenly and incongruously pleased. Just as quickly she felt a deep pang at how awful it was to put a price on anything so wonderful. Lacy was certainly no judge of these things, but Mount Rushmore had been fantastic, tender, impassioned—Wow, her dazed mind added, you can say that again—and generally stupendous. And she had discovered her own latent passion as a result.

  She had a feeling that there was even more to it than that. Because the circus aerialist and the black panther and Mount Rushmore and the Mob banker-gambler were all of them, she guessed, rather special, rather supermarvelous for any woman lucky enough to fall into their hands. She wouldn’t be surprised if they had known a lot of women.

  That, for some reason, made her feel so depressed she almost wanted to cry. He really didn’t look like a compulsive woman chaser, she thought, examining that hard, chiseled face that was so intently studying hers. She could see women chasing him, rather than the other way around. Strands of his dark, curling hair fell over his forehead, dripping small beads of perspiration into his eyebrows and thick, tangled black eyelashes. She could see the firm line of his mouth was definitely softened, definitely blurred from all that wild, hungry kissing. He looked rather sweet.

  Impulsively, Lacy reached up to touch his mouth with the tips of her fingers. He bent his head quickly to kiss them lightly, softly. She felt a terrible, unfamiliar ache rising in her throat.

  “I want you again,” he murmured.

  “Again?” She opened her eyes wide. That seemed impossible after what they’d just done.

  “Again.” The note of authority had crept back into his voice. “We have the rest of the night, remember.”

  Oh, that. “Ah—you have a plane to catch,” she said, staring at him.

  “Let me worry about that,” he said, burying his lips in her hair.

  Lacy clasped her hands around the hard column of his neck that was sweat-slick with lovemaking and drew his head down to her.

  She wanted to find out something as she lifted her mouth to him eagerly. And that was whether a deliberate search for all the zap! bam! powie! would make it all spring to life again. It did. She heard him make a growling sound of pleasure deep in his throat. She couldn’t help remembering the hoarse, exultant cry he’d given when Mount Rushmore had exploded, spewing rockets and fountains of flame. And she felt a curl of heated sensation answering in the depths of her own flesh.

  Still locked in the expanding wildness of their kiss, Lacy let her fingers explore his thick, sweaty hair and the places behind his right ear. She felt his strong frame shudder under her touch. When her hand dropped to the satiny creases of his neck, he trembled again. She had a certain power, she realized, fascinated.

  “Mmmmmmm,” Lacy murm
ured, thinking how marvelous this all was.

  In answer, he dug his lips into her throat, lavishing her wet skin with small, biting kisses. Then he nibbled his way down her shoulder and into the warm, sensitive spot inside her elbow, making her squirm with the electric feel of his tongue against the nerve points it found. Both his hands held her arms, gently imprisoning her, keeping her still while his mouth went on to circle and caress her aching breasts. When Lacy moaned, she thought she heard him say something.

  “I beg your pardon?” Lacy breathed.

  “I said,” he murmured, his voice muffled against all her creamy softness, “I’m damned if I can believe any of this.”

  Four

  It was easy to leave the penthouse after all.

  While the black panther was taking his shower in preparation for his 7:30 a.m. flight and singing an old Beatles song, “Yesterday,” in a slightly off-key baritone, Lacy found the door to an unused-looking kitchenette, the door to the hotel service area behind it, crept down the steps to the floor below and took the elevator to the lobby.

  There was no need to hang around any longer, even though he’d telephoned down for room service to deliver an elaborate breakfast for two, including champagne. And even though he had said he wanted to talk to her as soon as she got dressed. There was, Lacy knew unhappily, simply nothing for them to talk about.

  And so you see, she told herself later that morning on a TWA flight going back to New York, he would never know, and neither would anybody else, that she’d spent the night as a successful hustler in a penthouse in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Even her friends, who all knew she was totally zany, would never believe that one!

  Worse, she still had the money. She’d been so frantic to get away while he was showering that she had only managed to get partly zipped up the back, clutching her strappy sandals to her chest to tiptoe through the rooms.

  Forgetting to leave the money behind was the last straw, Lacy told herself. No wonder she was so horribly depressed through the remaining mists of her slight champagne hangover.

  It was more than just depressed—considering that Mount Rushmore was only the second man she’d made love with in her whole life, and she didn’t even know his name. To make it worse, he’d been convinced she was a hooker—you’d think a massive guilty psychological trauma would settle on her mind and wipe out the whole episode, like amnesia.