Sinful Desire

“I think you like being tempted by me,” she answered, licking her lips.

The pressure in his pants said he liked it far too much. He was so damn hard there was no breathing room for his dick. Especially when his eyes landed on her pouty red lips, which would look so good wrapped around him. Her red lips meeting his dick… He nearly groaned out loud. He wanted that so badly. Wanted it from her. He couldn’t imagine anything hotter than her gorgeous head bobbing up and down between his legs.

He shoved a hand through his hair, as if that would reroute his brain and discourage this inconvenient erection. “Talk about something else,” he instructed with a huff.

She nodded. “So you’ve got one sister, and you have a brother, too, your bio said. Three of you?”

Ah, nothing like family to make an erection vanish. He held up four fingers as the pod rose higher into the night, creating the illusion of floating above the brightly lit city and its landmark skyline. “Shay”—he used his sister’s public name—“and Colin are twins. There are four of us. Michael and I run the security firm. Shay is the choreographer, and Colin is a venture capitalist. He lives here, too.”

“You all have fascinating jobs. That’s so cool. And sounds like you’re close.”

He nodded. That was the understatement of a lifetime. In spite of his secrets, the four of them were as tight as any set of siblings could ever be. Their history, and their tragedy, had cemented their bond. The four of them had come to rely on each other, as well as the grandparents who had raised them after their mother was sent to prison.

“We’re very close,” he echoed, twisting his index finger around the middle one as if to show the connection between the Sloans.

“I’m close to my brother, too. Especially since it’s the two of us now. He’s here in Vegas as well.”

“Oh, is he?” Ryan asked, keeping his voice even and normal, as if he’d just learned this fact for the very first time.

“I basically adore him, even though I love to give him a hard time about his job and his co-workers.”

“Bet he enjoys that,” he said with a wink, feeling only the slightest bit weasely. But she’d offered up the brother details; he was merely making a safe remark that didn’t give himself away.

Sophie laughed. “Drives him crazy. He’s a detective with Metro so it’s all very macho and guy-centric at his office.”

Ryan drew on his best isn’t that interesting face. “That must be an intense job.”

“Intense definitely describes John. He’s a total workaholic. Honestly, he doesn’t even have to work as much as he does. He chooses to.”

“What do you mean? Doesn’t have to?”

“He was my primary investor. He funded my company with his savings account. Basically everything he’d ever had as a kid—from the jobs he worked, from his neighborhood lemonade stand, from money gifts from relatives on birthdays—everything. He put it into my company when I started it—he was the seed investor. So when I sold it, he profited, too. I joked that he could retire like me, but he said never. He has too much work to do putting criminals behind bars.”

A tight line of tension coiled through him. Ryan wasn’t a criminal, but he’d been born to a woman branded as one. “He sounds pretty driven,” he said, doing his best to refrain from prying. The less he said the better off he’d be if Sophie ever found out he’d had business with her brother. Not that she would. He didn’t date anyone long enough to meet her family.

She lowered her voice to the barest thread as they reached the top of the observation wheel. “John had a good friend who was an innocent bystander, shot in a drive-by gang shooting when we were younger.”

“That’s terrible,” Ryan said, a dose of rage coursing through him. He knew far too well what it felt like to lose someone to a bullet. “How old?”

“David was fourteen when it happened. Same as John,” she said, her voice breaking a bit. “He was a good friend of all of ours.”

Ryan gripped her hand tighter, and then instinct told him to drop a quick, comforting kiss on her forehead. Her skin was so soft. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was fourteen when—”

He cut himself off. Damn near kicked himself, too. What the hell? Ryan didn’t go around offering up bits and pieces of his family story. He didn’t run the motor mouth and say I was fourteen when my dad was killed by a gang gunman, too. He’d already shared more about his father than he ever did at this point. He couldn’t believe he’d been about to say more.