Author: Bella Andre

She blinked up at him, her gaze momentarily fuzzy. But then she smiled and said, “You’re wearing too many clothes."

Her hands moved from around his neck to the buttons of his shirt as she worked to undo them. The soft touch of her fingers skimming across his chest had his heart pounding even faster. Her tongue came out to lick her upper lip as she concentrated on undressing him and he couldn’t possibly have stopped himself from bending down to taste it.

As soon as his tongue touched hers, she opened her mouth for him and that simple need to taste her tongue became another soul-destroying kiss.

He could have kissed her like that forever, had the sound of fabric ripping not surprised him into pulling back. She’d ripped his shirt apart and where the buttons hadn’t been able to come undone fast enough, the cotton had actually shredded.

The next thing he knew, she was dropping his ripped shirt from her clenched fists and running her hands over his abs. Her hands on his bare skin were good. So damn good. But he should have known it was going to get even better, because a split second later, she leaned up to nip at his chest. His muscles twitched beneath her teeth as her tongue came out to lave the small bite.

“I’ve never wanted anyone like this,” she whispered against his chest as she pressed one naughty kiss after another across his skin while her hands moved lower.

He sucked in a breath between his teeth as she closed her palm around him, first tentatively, growing bolder as she felt him thicken even further inside her warm clasp. Gritting his teeth against the intense pleasure of her caresses, he made himself remind her, “Slow and easy, so that I don’t hurt you.”

Her gaze flew to his. “You would never hurt me.”

Her trust in him landed straight in the center of his chest, in a place he’d thought was closed off for the foreseeable future. It was the same place that had reacted when she’d fallen asleep on his lap, when she’d appeared shy and fresh-faced in the kitchen, when she’d been laughing with the boy and girl who loved her music.

He didn’t know how she was doing it, how she was managing to get in under his skin, his bones, all the way down to a heart that knew better. He should have been looking at her as Nico the pop star. He should have been reminding himself that she was going to move on after tonight and forget about him amidst her world of flashbulbs and adoring fans.

She didn’t need him. Not past this one night, in any case.

Marcus would never forgive himself if he ended the night needing her.

More than a little angry with himself for an ending that was starting to seem more inevitable by the second, he abruptly moved away from the bed to step out of his pants. He needed a few seconds of not touching her to get his brain to start functioning properly again.

Her eyes widened. “You’re beautiful, Marcus.”

He knew he had a good physique and plenty of women had looked at him like this before, but it had never affected him so strongly. Maybe because no one had ever looked up at him with such wonder.

Or such trust.

* * *

Nicola couldn’t do anything but stare.

His body, his muscles—his incredibly beautiful face—made a mockery of any sculpture Rodin had ever made.

And even though she’d known he was big, without his clothes on he was huge, his muscles rippling as if he did manual labor for a living.

Somewhere in there, she realized he’d slid a condom on and was saying, “Just because I’ve put this on doesn’t mean we have to do anything that you’re not ready for.”

She’d loved following his lead tonight, but not if it meant he was going to leave out of some strange sense of honor because she “wasn’t ready” to be with a man like him. She didn’t like how he was still standing beside the bed, his hands in fists as if he was trying his best not to touch her again.

Nicola didn’t wait another second—couldn’t risk waiting for him to change his mind—before moving off the bed to jump into his arms, her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist. Loosening her arms a little bit, she let gravity help her sink down onto him.

“No, Nicola, not like this. Not yet.”

But his body was saying the exact opposite of his words as his hands came around to cup her bottom and his hips started moving in a slow motion guaranteed to ease more of her inside of him. She gasped and her head fell back as she locked her ankles tighter together behind his hips to try and pull him in closer, deeper.

“Am I hurting you?” His raw, rough words reverberated against her neck, his teeth scraping against her pulse point before she could answer.

She wanted to tell him no, he wasn’t hurting her, because she knew that was what he wanted to hear. But she’d promised to tell him the truth tonight. She lifted her head to look into his eyes.

“A little. But it’s a good pain. I want more of it. More of you.”

Before he could tell her they needed to stop, she pressed her mouth to his and kissed him, her tongue wild against his, the little bit of pain rebounding back into shocking pleasure.

Soon, she was lying on the bed beneath him again, sweat dripping down from his chest onto hers as he worked to keep himself still above her. Their mouths came apart and she looked up at him, marveling yet again at how gorgeous he was, his muscular, tanned chest impossibly beautiful, his arms strong, his hips narrow.

“Slower,” he rasped out. “We need to go slower.”

She wanted the exact opposite. She was beyond ready for fast and crazy. She wanted to know what it would be like for Marcus to lose control with her...and to know that she was the one who had done that to him. She wanted to make him forget everything—everything except how much he needed her, wanted her, had to have her.

Because that was how she felt about him.

And she didn’t want to be the only one who needed, wanted, craved like that.

“I don’t want slow,” she told him. “I just want you. All of you.”

She bucked her hips up hard into his, forcing him to give her more, and she couldn’t hold in her gasp at the shocking fullness of his body entering hers. Or the fact that with every inch he moved deeper, she felt like he was owning not just her body, but a piece of her soul that she’d never known was available to anyone.

“There’s no going back now.”

“I don’t want to go back,” she whispered. How could she, when Marcus was her every fantasy come to life?

But that didn’t mean she wasn’t scared knowing just how thoroughly he was going to possess her. A possession that wouldn’t just be physical, despite the rules they’d set up for their one night together.

She reached for him, put her arms around his neck. “I like you, Marcus. I like you so much.”

He bent his head, kissed her softly before saying. “I like you, too.”

And then he was rearing up over her, her hands sliding from around his neck to the front of his chest as he braced his weight on his knees and gripped her hips to position himself between her thighs. She gasped as he pulled out and then filled her in one smooth stroke.

His eyes were dangerously dark. “You like that, too, don’t you?”

“Mmm.” She couldn’t answer, couldn’t get her lips to form the words for how much she liked it, but her body was doing a fine job of answering him, rocking beneath his long, hard thrusts.

She could feel another climax building, growing, taking her over cell by cell and the oncoming orgasm hit her so hard it knocked all of the remaining breath from her lungs.

“Oh God, Marcus. Please. I need you here.”

Her frantic words, her unplanned plea, must have been magic, because in an instant, all of the control that he’d work so hard to hold onto was gone.

He pounded into her with no regard for hurting her, without a thought to whether she could withstand the force of his lovemaking.

And, oh, how she loved it.

How she loved to be in the middle of the hurricane with him as he spun them both higher and tighter. Sounds echoed through the large bedroom, his praise for how beautiful she was, how perfect, along with her moans, gasps, yes, even screams of pleasure. And even when she expected the pleasure to end—it couldn’t go on forever like this, could it?—Marcus continued to rock with her, his hand moving between her legs.

“Give me one more,” he urged her, and she was wondering how he knew there was a little bit left inside of her still, when she felt it wash over her, another wave of pleasure, less intense this time, but still so good, she had to reach for him and pull him down over her so that she could kiss him.

Their kiss was lazier now, slower in the aftermath of all that passion and intense need, and she loved the way his tongue stroked against hers.

A little while later, he shifted them so that he was on his back and she was lying half on the bed, half sprawled across him. Somewhere in there she felt him shift to remove the condom, but thankfully he was reaching for her and pulling her back against him a handful of seconds later, her head on his chest, with the rest of her body curled over and around his very hard muscles.

Nicola couldn’t remember the last time she felt this tired...or this good. And yet, if she slept now, knowing it was all over in the morning, her dreams would be unsettled. Upset despite how amazing her night with Marcus had been.

And the truth was, had she been more awake, more lucid, she never would have asked, “How about two nights instead of one?”

The perfect way they fit together, the way he pulled her closer and stroked his hand over her hair, was her answer. No longer needing to stay awake, Nicola let herself relax all the way into sleep.

* * *

Holy hell.

Marcus stared at the ceiling, the bright lights of downtown San Francisco shining in through the sheer curtains on the windows.

He’d always loved sex, but what had just happened with Nicola tonight...it was way beyond good sex.

His mind wasn’t just blown, his body was, too.

And now, she wanted another night.

Of course, he did, too. How could he not want a repeat of the most spectacular sex of his life, with what had to be the most beautiful, most responsive woman he’d ever had the pleasure of making love to?

But that was just the problem.

It should have been mindless sex. It should have been nothing but pleasure, nothing but checking off one orgasm after another.

Nicola shifted against him, her soft curves arousing him when he should have been long past the point of no return, at least for a good thirty minutes or so.

Maybe if he wasn’t thirty-six years old; maybe if he hadn’t just been deceived by a woman he’d thought he was going to marry; maybe if he hadn’t just been party to something so extraordinary it made his groin throb with renewed need...maybe then he could have told himself the lie he wanted to believe.

But he knew better than to even try.

Because the undeniable truth was that the night he’d just spent with Nicola had been more than he’d bargained for.

He liked her. A whole hell of a lot more than he was comfortable with. Somehow all the visions of her with those kids at the elevator, his memory of the way she’d slept on his lap and then had been so sweetly nervous in his brother’s kitchen, combined with the sex goddess she’d been all night in bed, made her seem like his version of the perfect woman.

If one night could take him this far, then where on earth would he be after two?

Chapter Eleven

Nicola was having the most marvelous dream. She was in a deliciously cozy bed, cuddled into a hard, heated wall of muscle. It was pure instinct to arch into the large hand at her hip, in the hopes that more was coming.

RING! BUZZ! RING! BUZZ! RING!

The loud sound of a cell phone jumping on a tabletop was almost immediately joined by the harsh ringing of the hotel’s phone on the bedside table, barely three feet from Nicola’s head.

Oh no! She jumped up in the bed, her heart pounding.

How could she have forgotten about her video shoot?