“The billionaire playboy?” London liked whenever Alyssa’s friends dished about the fast-driving, hard-loving enigma. From their stories, she knew that Xander must be handsome, charming, and of course, the love-’em-and-leave-’em type. But as far as she was concerned, all those women in Xander’s life were lucky. At least they’d been loved at some point.

“That one. OMG, I don’t think that man goes a day without picking up at least one random girl, and from what I hear, showing her a really good time.” Kata smiled, then sobered. “Anyway, he brought his brother to me. Javier is falling apart.”

That sounded awful. “Can I help?”

Compassion softened Kata’s eyes. “It’s sweet of you to offer, honey, but I’m not sure how much any of us can do but try to help him move on. His wife was murdered about a year ago.”

Sympathy hit London hard. “Oh my gosh, that’s terrible! Did they find her killer?”

“No.”

How terrible. “Do the police have any idea why she was killed?”

Kata started to reply, but her answer was interrupted by a pained moan, a rustle, then a crash. She ran down the hall and into the first room on the left. London followed, concern for a man she’d never met twisting her up. Javier’s heart must be utterly shattered to need this much help a year after his wife’s death. He must have loved her very much.

As she ran into the room behind Kata, a man lurched from the bed and stumbled into the nightstand, wearing only a pair of dark gray boxer briefs that hugged his lean hips and thighs, and clung to his gorgeous backside. Bronze skin covered a muscled back and wide shoulders. Even stooped over, he stood tall. Big and powerful. Shaggy dark hair brushed the strong column of his neck, slightly askew and wavy.

Kata grabbed his arm, holding him back from taking another step and likely falling on his face. “Throw back the covers and help me get him into the bed again.”

London jolted into action and ran to shove the sheet and blanket down. When she looked up, Kata had eased behind Javier, grabbed both bulging biceps, and was trying to turn him back toward the bed, but he’d wedged her between his solid body and the nightstand, leaving her no room for leverage. London stepped in front of the poor widower to help and looked up at him. Sympathy was the last thing on her mind.

Even with pale eyes half-open and dazed, Javier was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. His nearness washed through her veins in an icy-hot rush. Her stomach plummeted to her knees. And a little bit lower, between her legs . . . she didn’t want to think about that sudden ache. Damn, he smelled manly. It wasn’t cologne. Older than her by probably a decade, he wore his experience on his face in the faint lines around his mouth, and the notch between his brows. The strong slashes of his cheekbones told her that he’d look like all kinds of warrior avenger when he was angry. Everything about him made her want to press herself against him, wrap her arms around him, promise him that somehow she would make his pain go away.

“A little help, please?”

Kata’s question jolted London into action. She grabbed Javier’s waist. God, he radiated heat. It seared down her palms, staggering her. If this man tumbled her to a bed and covered her body with his, he’d burn her up with his heat alone, not to mention that sinful streak of a mouth, wide and somehow commanding. The thought of him slanting those lips over hers . . . She almost couldn’t breathe.

“London? You okay?”

The concern in Kata’s voice ripped her attention away from Javier, and she looked around the bronzed muscles of his shoulder to find the woman’s dark gaze questioning her.

“Fine. Sorry. Sometimes, I’m a bit slow.” Like when I see gorgeous, mostly naked hunks.

Kata sent her an encouraging smile. “You’re fine, sweetie.”

Between them, Javier’s knees gave out. He slumped forward, and London caught him, staggering to bear his weight. She wrapped her arms around his middle. His hot chest seared her through her thin mesh T-shirt. Despite the heat, her nipples tightened, bunched.

If this was sexual attraction, now she knew why so many people read and sang songs about it. As it threatened to knock London back, she sucked in a breath, trying to find her balance as she staggered to the bed with Javier leaning all over her. He was mostly unconscious. He wouldn’t remember this or her. At best, he’d think she was a nice person for helping when he needed it. At worst, he would think of her as a pudgy blonde, starstruck because of her abysmal lack of experience with men. Either way, she was insignificant to him. Time to pull her head out of the clouds and her girl parts away from fantasy land. She tried to console herself with the thought that maybe he was a horrible human being. Or bad in bed—not that she’d know the difference. But another glance at him had her changing her mind. This man would never be bad at anything.

Together, she and Kata wrangled him back into bed. Even his legs were heavy, and she had to wrap her arms around his lean middle to straighten him across the mattress. With her face all but buried in the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles and the healthy bulge a few inches lower, it was little wonder the view sharpened the ache right between her legs.

Being closer to him than Kata was, London reached across Javier to flip the blankets back over his body. He moaned, cursed faintly. She glanced his way to find his hazy stare on her breasts, now dangling less than a foot from his face. He peered up at her with a smile.

“Beauty,” he whispered.

Me? Impossible. The guy was lost in his own world, maybe even hallucinating about his late wife.

Then he closed his eyes again, and it didn’t matter anymore.

To a man like him, she would never be important. While she . . . well, she had a bad feeling he’d haunt her dreams for many nights to come.

Chapter Two

JAVIER woke slowly, aware of a baseball bat slamming repeatedly into his forehead. At least that’s what the painful throbbing in his head felt like. With a groan, he ventured to open one eye just a slit. Sunlight streamed through the window, stabbing him with a pickax. He fell back with a curse.

What had he done last night?

Mentally sifting through his memories, Javier remembered Dominion and Whitney’s red ass. Anxiety had hit him then, freezing him up. Xander had tried to coach him through it, but Javier remembered anger gripping him. He’d walked out on his brother. And God, he’d abandoned a restrained sub who’d been all warmed up and needing play. He’d left her in a public place, where she was vulnerable to any abusive troll. He hadn’t assured her that she’d been lovely and pleasing. He’d simply thrown the flogger and fled. But it wasn’t the first time he’d failed to protect and nurture someone in his care. He could captain a multibillion-dollar company, but damn it if his personal relationships weren’t a fucking wreck.

What had he done after that? Who else had he hurt with his thoughtless actions? Most everything between the club and this moment stretched out like a big black void.

Except his fight with Xander.

With crystal clarity, he remembered spilling out every dreadful accusation he’d allowed to fester inside of him for the past year. He’d laid the blame for Francesca’s death at his brother’s feet. Javier squeezed his eyes shut. It wasn’t totally Xander’s fault; his late wife had made her choices, which apparently included some lethal lothario who’d paid more attention to her than he had. But if Xander had taken Francesca in hand, she wouldn’t have been in Aruba with her killer. That fact was inescapable. And thinking this much right now made his head hurt even worse.

He rolled to his side with a pained moan. His stomach turned. God, was he going to be sick? How much had he had to drink last night?

“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” drawled a feminine voice nearby.

Since he hadn’t awakened with a woman in over a year, that brought Javier’s eyes open wide. Feet away, he saw a beautiful Latina wearing a thin black tank with a built-in but wholly inadequate bra, sitting in the corner of an unfamiliar room. Her coffee-colored hair hung in waves, the ends curling around her ample breasts. Her plump nipples pressed hard against the thin cotton. She’d drawn up one of her knees against her chest and curled an arm around it. Her black yoga pants stretched tightly across lush hips and thighs.

“Good morning.” He propped himself up on his elbows and stared. Shit, he had no memory of this gorgeous woman. If he’d finally decided to get back on the proverbial bike and start riding again, he’d chosen well, but he wished to fuck he could remember it. When would he have found her? Where? His head throbbed. Nothing made sense.

A small smile played at the corners of her mouth. She reached to the little table beside the chair, picked up a steaming mug, and sipped. “Coffee?”

“Please,” he croaked. It would help to clear his head, and maybe while she fetched the brew he might get some spark of recollection. “Black.”

But no. He watched her curvy backside retreat until she disappeared down the hall and around a corner. Nothing. Why couldn’t he remember getting her supine and under him?

She came back a few moments later with another piping-hot mug and set it with a saucer on the little bedside table, along with two familiar orange tablets. “There you go. With a little ibuprofen, as well.”

Bless her. Javier eased up, surprised to realize he was wearing his boxers and nothing else. He didn’t bother covering himself with the sheet because the gorgeous brunette had presumably seen and touched it all. Hadn’t she?

“So . . .” he started as he grabbed his coffee and gulped it, using it to wash down the pills.

“So.” She took a sip from her own mug and raised a brow.

Hell, she wasn’t giving him anything to work with. He was just going to have to be indelicate. “I’m sorry, but I have to confess . . . I don’t remember your name.”

She looked even more amused, which confused him. Why wasn’t she pissed off? “I’m Kata.”

Still not ringing any bells. “I’m Javier.”

“I know.” Now she looked like she was suppressing a laugh as she sipped more of her coffee.

“Listen, you’re probably going to think I’m an ass, but I don’t remember anything about last night. Did we, um . . .” The word “fuck” sounded too raunchy to say to her clean-scrubbed face. “Make love” was too personal. He didn’t make love to anyone. “Have sex?”

“You don’t remember?” She batted her lashes, looking just a little bit crushed.

Immediately, he felt like a heel and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. “Damn it! I must have had too much to drink and . . .” Shit, that sounded bad. He needed to shut up and focus on what had happened last night. It would be so much easier if pain wasn’t still thundering in his head. But he owed it to Kata to try.

After leaving Dominion, Xander had dragged his ass back to the Dallas mansion they’d rented. A member of the staff had brought him a dinner plate. He’d halfheartedly picked at it before prowling the house like a caged beast desperate for freedom. When he stalked back to his room, a convenient glass of Cîroc had been sitting on his nightstand, luring him wordlessly to oblivion. He’d downed it gratefully.

Only now was he questioning where it had come from. Xander had done his level best to remove all the booze from the house. So why had that glass been there? And why did he feel as if he had more than the usual hangover? Unless . . . Xander had put the vodka there and laced it with something stronger. How the hell else could he be here, wherever here was, with a complete stranger?

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You’re in Lafayette, Louisiana.”

What? Wasn’t Lafayette basically at the crossroads between Nowhere Town and Hicksville? Yes, it was the ass crack of the world. He’d never been here, never wanted to even visit. There was no way he could have driven himself the six hours to Lafayette last night and not remembered it. This had to be his brother’s doing. That son of a bitch! Apparently, Xander didn’t understand the meaning of “fuck off,” but Javier swore he’d pound it through his brother’s skull.

But that also meant he’d never touched Kata, and she’d been in on this scheme all along.

“This is the first time we’ve met, isn’t it?”

A genuine smile flashed across her face. “You figured that out pretty quickly. Yeah.”

“You might have told me that instead of letting me squirm.” He sent her a chastising glance.

Her smiled widened. “I might have . . . but where’s the fun in that? Your brother brought you here in the middle of the night and dumped you in bed. I was asleep, so this is the first time we’re meeting.”

Well, hell. If Kata was acquainted with his brother, it was a good bet that Xander knew Kata in the biblical sense. He eased back in the bed with a sigh and used the sheet to cover himself. She laughed and stood, reaching her hands up high, stretching. In this position, there was no way he could miss the wink of her diamond naval ring and the twin circles pushing against the fabric around her pierced nipples. Gorgeous. Xander might be a complete douche . . . but he had great taste in women.