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  I needed more.

  So much more.

  Now.

  Barely breaking the contact of our lips, I swooped an arm around her knees and lifted. Though I braced myself for at least a squeal of protest, Claire only mewled her encouragement, sending adrenaline to my legs to cover the half-dozen steps to the nearest deck couch. After laying her on it, I pounced in a circuit around the thing, hauling the drapes shut in four clean sweeps.

  When I returned to her, my heart thundered and my body pounded, drawn to her like a ship finally finding its harbor. I stretched my body beside hers, but in the space of one consuming kiss, I stroked a hand beneath her dress and up her thigh to find the lacy scrap covering the treasure I sought most. As I yanked impatiently at the fabric, I rolled to position myself between her legs. My body muffled the distinct tear of the lace giving way to my force.

  “Oh, my God.” Her stunned stare beamed up into mine. “Oh, my God!” she repeated as I pushed away the panties, sliding my touch inward and lower. Then lower…

  “Perfect,” I murmured in return. “Holy shit, Claire, your pussy is so perfect. And so hot for me. And oh…feel this…so very wet for me…”

  It sounded like pillow talk, but every fucking syllable was the truth. Her flesh, so pliant yet tight, so quivering yet sure, was the gateway to bliss I’d been dreaming about for two interminable weeks. Her little moans were just icing on the erotic cake. She emphasized each by gripping my shoulders harder, finally shoving my jacket off in order to grab at me through my shirt.

  “I swear, if you keep doing that…oh, and that…dear hell, Killian, I’m going to scream…”

  I couldn’t help emitting a wolfish chuckle. “That’d be a fun twist to the evening.”

  “You’re evil.”

  “I’m yours.”

  “Stop saying things like that.” She said it wistfully, adding a long gaze full of equal yearning. In return, I leaned low and sank my mouth against hers. When I pulled up, our stares still locked, I rocked my cock against her cleft, wondering how much longer I could take the torture of my pants and briefs.

  “What should I focus on instead?” Another feral smirk—that disappeared as soon as she issued her reply.

  “Getting lost,” she whispered. “With me. Inside me. Please…”

  Chapter 14

  Claire

  As soon as the words spilled from me, his expression tightened and intensified, turning his face into the definition of shadowed beauty. Oh, God. My plea had affected him on a deeper level than I intended.

  You really going with that, girlfriend?

  All right, it may have been exactly what I intended. Being here with him, cocooned in this crimson hideaway with the silken wind around us, liberated something inside me. Killian’s nearness set more of my spirit free, his strong body and fervent embrace giving me the security I’d longed for, the bravery I craved to finally admit things—to him and myself.

  I fumbled at his waist while we continued kissing, consumed by our passion. His dark carnality dragged me like an undertow after a summer storm, and I never wanted to be saved. Surrender was the only choice. I gave it with a long, willing moan.

  Killian finally leaned back and unbuckled his belt, working his tuxedo pants and briefs down around his trim hips. He returned to me quickly, settling eagerly between my thighs, where we were finally able to slide flesh against flesh. I gripped his shoulders and sighed from the nirvana of his rigid cock against my pulsing pussy, teasing my stiff, needy clit. As he pushed a little harder, I abandoned my effort for silence. My cry of pleasure tumbled free, flying with my spirit now.

  “I’ll never get my fill of you.” The faint stubble on his jaw was an erotic caress as he growled the words into my ear. “It’s only fair to warn you now, Claire. You’re a fever in my blood. A torment in my dreams.”

  I stared into his dark eyes. “Is that why you won’t leave mine, either?”

  He pulled back a little. I couldn’t define the look on his face anymore. It had surpassed intense, shifting to a force that clutched at my throat, even stung at my eyes. His lips parted as if he had words for me in return, but nothing came out. I was glad. Sometimes, consonants and vowels were crimes against the splendor of the universe, especially when its gifts were something like our something. My chest tightened, but the rest of my body trembled, terrified and electrified in the same crazy moment.

  I finally blurted the only thing that made sense.

  “Make love to me.” I yanked at his hair, pulling his face to mine in a long entreaty of a kiss. “Please, Killian. I need to feel you…everywhere.”

  A gorgeous smile spread across his lips. “Hold on, baby. Let me suit up.” He already had a condom yanked from his pocket and ripped the packet with his teeth to free the latex.

  “Oh,” I squeaked. It was the only possibility, given the new hardness in his jaw and seduction across his features. Both turned more intense as he wrapped my fingers around the rubber.

  “Roll it onto me.” His voice was gritty. “I want you to feel how much my cock’s missed you. How deeply I’ve longed to be part of you again.”

  The wind gusted, coinciding with his fierce hiss as I fitted the condom around his shaft. His flesh swelled, steely and hot, against my touch. I gasped as he pushed into my fingers, his pulsing veins and searing crown filling my grip.

  “Killian. You’re beautiful.”

  He buried his face in my neck while realigning his sex with mine. “And you’re my obsession. Dear God, Claire…”

  The curtains billowed as he stroked his erection through my soaked folds, all the while kissing a trail from my ear to my gown’s neckline, his growl holding thick, sinful promise. He teased my clit until I moaned like a wanton fool.

  “What— What if someone comes out here?” The line wouldn’t be earning me an acting award. Desire spiked my words more than fear, adding to my shivery excitement. I’d never done anything like this before in my life. Another first on my list, courtesy of Killian Stone.

  “What if they do?” His drawl was filled with molten surety. As always, he’d somehow peered in my mind and spooled straight to the source of my lust. “Maybe they’d see our shadows through the curtains…maybe they wouldn’t.”

  “So maybe we should hurry.” I ran my fingers through his hair, scraping my nails on his scalp. He hummed with pleasure like he usually did, and my heart glowed. I was starting to memorize his hot buttons too.

  “I think you’ll say anything right now just to have my dick inside you, baby.” While we shared a chuckle, his eyes conveyed how much of the truth it really was.

  “Would you rather I beg, Mr. Stone?”

  “I would rather you never call me Mr. Stone again. Ever.”

  On the last word, he rocked his hips and entered me, eliciting my immediate cry of ecstasy. When I was able to open my eyes again, I found him staring down at me, inches from my face. His warm breath feathered across my skin. His stunning black eyes danced with desire.

  “You take my breath away.” He withdrew a fraction and pushed in fully, circling his hips while I clung to his ass, digging my nails into his burnished flesh. “You took it away the day we met.”

  Thank God I was on my back. The man, with his eyes and his body and his heated confessions, would have knocked me there anyway. As my soul flooded with emotion, I wrapped my arms around his neck, interlocking my fingers so I could pull myself up to kiss him. I licked his lips, moaning from the spicy taste that was uniquely him, now mixed with the salt of his sweat from the sexual pace he was setting in his wool tuxedo.

  Until voices drifted across the terrace.

  So much for pace.

  We both froze. My eyes shot to his, resulting in the instant urge to smack him. Mirth played in his stare and a smirk tapped at his lips, deliberate pokes at my abject horror. Before I could think again, he leaned down and whispered in my ear as he started pumping at my pussy again.

  “All you have to do is stay quiet, fairy. Think
you can do that for me?” With deliberate timing, he changed up his pace to include those enticing hip twists again.

  “Bastard,” I hissed—and then sank my teeth into his shoulder to muffle my heated moan.

  The man didn’t alter his pace. “Your cunt feels so good,” he growled into my ear. “I can feel every inch of you, clamping down on me.”

  “Ahhhh.” I let it out on a breath. The wind picked up again. The drapes smacked the support poles, threatening to give us up.

  “You’re getting wetter, Claire. Hotter. You like this, don’t you? The danger. The idea of getting caught…” I felt his mischievous grin against my neck. He’d discovered something new about me and started using it to his full advantage. “What if you came while they were out here? Could you keep quiet as you shattered for me? Could you be still while I came with you, my cock spilling hot come inside you? Or would you scream from the rapture, so everyone in the hotel knew what we were doing in our secret spot? Would you love it if everyone knew I was out here, fucking you into ecstasy, watching every moment of it on your face?”

  “Killian,” I rasped. “Oh, hell—”

  He drowned my lips in a kiss that spiraled me higher, sucking on my tongue to the point of pain, reaching inside my bodice to pinch a pouting nipple. As I began to moan, the voices drifted away. A woman whined that it was too cold and she wanted to go back to the party. A man answered, complaining she had no sense of adventure anymore.

  Killian finally released my lips but played along my jaw with hot kisses. “Oh, fairy, that was close. Maybe next time we won’t get so lucky. But maybe next time you’ll be coming for me.”

  “Okay,” I blurted. When he only chuckled, I really did start begging. “Killian, please.”

  “Please what? Tell me, baby. Let me hear it.”

  “It— It feels so good. You feel so good, fucking me. Faster…please. Harder…please. Do it until you come, Killian. Get lost with me…” I gripped his ass again and pulled him into me. His deep groan spurred me to hold tighter, wrapping my legs around his waist. My gown pooled down around me on the sofa, making me appear to be drowning in an ice-blue lake. The comparison was so damn accurate. I was submerged in heat, desire, and need, clinging to the only life raft that made sense. Killian.

  “Hell, yeah.” His face swayed above mine with the force of his thrusts, his features drenched in an expression of reverence, intensity, and joy. “Let it go, baby. All of it. I’ve waited too damn long to watch you come again. Do it for me, Claire.”

  I gasped and grabbed at his hair. “You— You too.”

  “I’m right here. I’m going under too. I’m ready. So fucking ready.”

  I was speechless again. The purity of his confession, the honesty of his passion…they turned me inside out. I adored him. I needed him.

  I came for him.

  The explosion slammed like a lightning strike, jolting me with a million sensations from head to toe, covering me in delicious tingles and prickles. Lights of a million colors sparkled behind my closed lids as I heaved in air, desperate to catch what I could. Killian’s groan added more resplendence to the moment, his body seizing as his cock pulsed against my walls, an orgasm that surely tested the limits of the latex around him.

  After a couple of long minutes, he fell on top of me. We traded smiles that resembled kids in a candy store.

  “Holy fuck, woman.”

  “Don’t you blame me!” I couldn’t stifle my giggle.

  “No blame,” he stated. “Only gratitude.” His face turned solemn. “You amaze me.”

  After he tossed the condom into a covered ash tray, we lay in silence for a few minutes, enjoying our afterglow and the play of the wind through the drapes. I started to get chilly since we weren’t humping like bunnies anymore, so I snuggled closer to the furnace of his chest. He circled his arms around me, tucking my whole body close to his. I pulled in a breath. When I let it out, all the lead weights in my body seemed to float out with it.

  “This is nice.” My voice sounded almost like I’d sucked in helium. I nearly giggled again until Killian tightened his hold. While he still radiated warmth, it was joined by a sober stillness.

  “What the hell are you doing to me, Claire?”

  “What am I doing to—” I attempted a sarcastic huff while smoothing a hand over his shirt. “Sorry, sir. I’m afraid you have that one backward too.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.” My tone wasn’t so flippant now.

  “I think we have to talk. To figure this out. And yes, there is a this.”

  He swung a finger back and forth between us in emphasis. I rose a little in order to see his face. As I expected, his focus didn’t waver. As I hadn’t expected, a clear truth nailed me between the proverbial eyes.

  The man had feelings for me. This shit had knocked him just as sideways as me—and quite possibly scared him as much too.

  I’ll never get my fill of you.

  You’re a fever in my blood.

  You’re my obsession.

  Holy shit. I’d written all of it off as pretty, empty words. After all, men said the stupidest lines when their little head ran the show.

  Had his big head been in on his show too? Had he meant all of that?

  “This is so complicated.”

  He tucked some of my stray hair behind my ear. God only knew what my elegant style looked like now. “Then let’s simplify it.”

  I was almost thankful for the strong gust that whooshed across the terrace at that moment. It was a perfect excuse not to speak—not that I had any words to give him anyway.

  Then Michael Jackson saved my ass.

  “Billie Jean” suddenly blasted from my handbag, still sitting where I’d tossed it when we climbed onto the sofa. “Shit,” I muttered. “That’s Chad. I’d better—”

  “Go ahead,” Killian kissed my forehead in encouragement.

  I picked up right before the King of Pop hit his chorus. “Hey,” I said breathlessly. “What’s—”

  “Where are you?” It wasn’t Chad. It was Michael. And he sounded like the horrified guy from those old radio recordings of the Hindenburg disaster.

  “I’m…errr…at the Terrace.”

  “That’s here, right? In this hotel? You’re still at the Peninsula?”

  “What are you doing on Chad’s phone?” I glanced at Killian, who’d straightened in connection to the tension in my voice. “Michael, what the hell is—?”

  “Are you still at the Peninsula or not?”

  “I’m here, all right? What’s happening?” I wouldn’t have been shocked to see flames licking up the side of the building any minute.

  What Michael revealed was worse.

  “Trey’s flawless manners?” he shot back. “Turns out they’ve been helped along—by God knows how much tequila.”

  “What?” I realigned my dress. “But how the hell—”

  “Remember the cute little blonde reporter? The freelancer?”

  “How could I forget? She’s been eyeing Trey’s crotch more than his face.”

  “And apparently trading drinks with him while she does. We also found a flask at the edge of the reflecting pool. Chad’s pretty sure he heard Trey sneaking gulps from it in the john earlier.”

  “Wait. The reflecting pool? You mean the big tank thing with the fountains that the decorators brought in?”

  “That would be the one.”

  “Why did Chad find the flask there?” My imagination answered that for me. “No. Ohhhh no.”

  “Oh, yes. The guy’s giving liquid courage a whole new meaning.”

  I traded another stressed stare with Killian. No sense in hiding the truth from him. “Dear God.”

  “I’m not sure He’s listening.”

  I tried to jam my hairstyle back into place. “How bad is it?”

  “You’d better just get down here.”

  When I hung up, rolling my eyes in misery, Killian’s expectant stare awaited. “Let me guess. It in
volves Trey, some booze, and at least one woman.”

  I grimaced. “Michael didn’t mention any women.”

  At that moment, a giddy female squeal resounded from the bottom floor. In its wake were three words, issued in loud enough shouts to echo up the street. “Go, Trey, go!”

  “Mother. Fucker.” With his pants already righted, Killian braced an elbow on his knee in order to pinch the bridge of his nose. “How did this happen? I thought he was being watched like a toddler.”

  “He was. I guess next time a strip search won’t be off the table.”

  “There can’t be a next time,” he growled. “Damn it, I thought we were done with his crap. I thought the Wooten incident was his rock bottom.”

  “I’m not sure he has a rock bottom.” I shoved back into my shoes despite trembling knees. “I’m sorry. This is unbelievable. We worked so hard at putting all this together.”

  I felt like crying as we rushed toward the elevators, but that was so not happening right now. The car arrived and I stepped toward it, but Killian halted me, taking both my hands.

  I averted my eyes, unwilling to meet his scrutiny. The second the call from Michael concluded, I should have expected this. The promises of we have to talk and simplifying this? Yeah, they weren’t happening, either. At least I’d had the bliss of the dream for a minute.

  But once again, he shocked the hell out of me. After tenderly kissing my knuckles, he lifted my chin for his reassuring gaze. “We’ll figure this out, baby. All of it. Okay?”

  If I’d found it hard to choke back my tears before, the feat was pure torture now. “Okay,” I murmured before re-girding my psyche as we rode to the ground floor.

  With one of my hands still locked in his, Killian pushed through the crowd toward the reflecting pool. Our journey wasn’t easy. The mob was thick and rowdy, everyone whispering and laughing. Most had cell phone cameras in their hands, eagerly setting the devices to capture the antics of—