back. “God.”
The one syllable drew Sara toward him. She took a seat on the coffee table, their knees almost touching. “You’re okay with it, right?” she asked.
His head didn’t move and his eyes remained closed. “The girl doesn’t even know me.”
“She knows you’re her big brother.”
“Yeah.” With his free hand, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m her big brother.”
Then Sara drew in a breath and threw away all thought of distance and professionalism and the metaphorical butler’s rulebook. “Joaquin, what happened to Felipe?”
Later, she supposed she could have looked it up on the internet. But he didn’t tell the tale with much more emotion than was delivered by pixels on a screen. She learned of a talented young man, driven to taste all that big money and new fame could offer him. They’d been a band of buddies, Felipe, Joaquin, and another young actor, Mick Hastings, but there wasn’t a cool head in the group.
And Sara had thought, how could there be, when they were sixteen and seventeen and eighteen and not a single person had ever said “no” to them?
Finally, for Felipe, months of combining drugs and alcohol had led to a single night at an infamous L.A. nightclub. Joaquin had received the call his brother was in trouble, and he’d broken speed limits to reach him, only to find Felipe convulsing in the hall by the bathrooms, and then turning blue. When the paramedics arrived, he’d flat-lined. The coroner pronounced him dead of cardiac arrest brought on by acute multiple-drug intoxication.
At the end of the recitation, Joaquin pulled in a long breath. “Just like that, he was gone.”
Sara didn’t know how her knees found the strength to hold her up, but she managed to make it to her feet. Her skin felt chilled, her insides hollowed-out, and though she’d only watched ninety minutes of that beautiful young man strutting across the screen, grinning and cocky and so alive, she felt…wrecked.
Joaquin glanced up at her as she stood before him. “You’re going to bed?”
The place she’d been heading for tonight several times already. Solo. But now she reached for Joaquin’s hand to tug him to a stand.
The heat that always sparked when they touched coursed up her arm. She let it burn away all her doubts.
“We’re going to bed,” she said. “Together.”
Chapter 7
Joaquin’s surprise at Sara’s offer kept him silent on the short journey to her rooms. She didn’t let go of his hand, and he stared at their linked fingers, hers so small and strong. At the entry to her quarters, she didn’t hesitate to cross the threshold, pulling him with her.
As the door swung shut behind them, he breathed in air that smelled delicious—and so like his butler.
His butler. He groaned and, pulling his hand from hers, stepped back so that his shoulder blades hit solid wood. Then he scrubbed his palms over his face, trying to think. Minutes before when he’d told her about Felipe, she’d been quiet and still, her big eyes trained on him, full of sympathy. “Tell me this isn’t a pity fuck.”
“No,” she said, her voice soft. “It’s about my beating heart.”
The large room was dark except for the glow of a lamp beside the bed, and its light outlined her small body in gold. She took hold of his hand again and pressed his palm to the middle of her chest, just above the rise of her breasts.
It throbbed against his flesh, and he couldn’t stop himself from shifting his fingers to test the pulse at her throat, too. He could feel the blood moving under her skin, the fast rhythm of it making his own redouble. Alive. They were both alive.
“Then it’s about the burn in my veins, too.” He turned them so her back was to the door and he pressed in to her. “It’s about your sweet mouth.”
Her lips opened beneath the onslaught of his, and he speared one hand into her hair, the soft strands tickling the inner surface of his fingers as he deepened the kiss. It tasted like he remembered, hot and honeyed.
He supposed going forward wasn’t smart. Even if she denied offering him a pity fuck, there couldn’t be any doubt it was a human-kindness fuck. But hell, he needed her touch.
Breaking the kiss, he buried his face in the curve between her neck and shoulder and breathed in the fragrance of her skin. His body hummed with tension, still at war between right and want.
Her hands drifted up his back. “What