Pursued

She cried out then, a high-pitched strangled sound that made his own need skyrocket. But this wasn’t just about him, wasn’t some quick, anonymous screw. Not to him anyway. And though he didn’t yet know what it was about Desi that intrigued him, he did know that he wanted to see her again. Did know that he wanted to get to know more about her than what color her nipples were or how hot and wet and tight she felt around his finger.

Although he was good with knowing all that, too. More than good, he admitted to himself as he worked his way across her flat stomach, kissing and licking and sucking every inch of her skin.

Her hands moved from his shoulders to his head, her fingers tangling in his hair with a sharpness that only turned him on more. Pleasure coursed through him and he groaned at the sensation before nipping sharply at her hip bone in retaliation.

She cried out again, wobbled a little, then grabbed on to him, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she fought to stay upright. Her obvious arousal fed his, and he gently bit her a second time. A third time. Then he laved the little stings and explored more of her soft, gorgeous skin. As he did, he couldn’t help wondering if he’d left marks. If she would look in the mirror tomorrow and see tiny bruises on her hips, her stomach, her thighs, and think of him as he knew—even now—that he’d be thinking of her.

“Please, please, please,” she whimpered in the sexiest mantra he’d ever heard. He laughed in response, then kissed his way back across her stomach, then lower, so that his tongue traced along the very edges of her sex.

She was shaking, her body and arms curving around him as much for support as to hold him to her. He loved the feel of her wrapped around him, loved the fact that she was as affected by what was happening between them as he was.

In answer to her silent pleas, he moved closer, pressed her legs apart a little more as he trailed his mouth lower. In response, she stroked her fingers down his face, rubbed the stubble on his jaw. She played with it for long seconds, and her fingers felt so good he felt his resolve crumble. He wanted to be inside her, needed to be inside her with a desperation that bordered on insanity.

But he wanted this more. It was a driving compulsion, this need to watch her while she came. To know what she looked like, sounded like, tasted like when he took her to the edge and then flung her over.

With that thought a beacon shining through his own dark and desperate need, he leaned forward and put his mouth on her. Then he nearly lost it as Desi pressed a hand against her mouth to muffle her scream.

She was in sensory overload, her every nerve popping with pleasure at the feel of Nic touching her. At the feel of his arm around her waist, his big, calloused hand kneading her backside. At the feel of his fingers still buried deep inside her. At the feel and sound and sight of his mouth moving against her sex.

It was so good, so good, that she couldn’t stop herself from pressing back against the wall, against his hand, even as she tilted her hips forward to give him better access.

She was so close that it didn’t take long to bring her right to the edge. She knew he was aware of how close she was. She could feel it in the tension of his shoulders and in the slow, careful way he caressed her. For a moment, just a moment, she wondered what he was waiting for, but then the insidious pleasure of what he was doing, the care he was taking, streaked through her. Intense, powerful, mind-numbing.

“Nic, I can’t—”

“You can,” he told her, his voice hoarse with his own restraint.

“I can’t,” she answered, the words broken and brittle and breathless. “I need—”

“I know what you need.” He kissed her then, hot and openmouthed, making her knees tremble and her hands shake. Her whole body slammed into overload and she reached for him, her fingers tugging at his shirt, his hair, the bowtie hanging limply from his collar.

“Please, please, please,” she muttered mindlessly as she arched against him. She needed more, needed him.

He cursed then, harsh and low, and the words felt hot against her skin. The sensation only added to the tension inside her until she couldn’t think, couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. All she could do was feel.

All she could do was crave.

And then he did it. He twisted his fingers inside her even as he swirled his tongue around her most sensitive spot and reached up with his free hand to pinch one of her nipples, hard.

The different sensations slammed Desi into overload. She careened straight over the edge into ecstasy, her body shuddering as pleasure swamped her, more intense and powerful and shattering than anything she had ever felt before.

“Nic!” Lost in the maelstrom, she cried out for him.

And he was there, his hands stroking her soothingly even as he took her higher and higher and higher. Even as he thrust her straight into the stars that shined so brilliantly above them.

When the pleasure broke, when she finally started to come back to herself, Nic wouldn’t allow it. Instead, he fumbled with the front of his tuxedo trousers as he shoved to his feet. Then he cupped his hands under her and lifted her right off her feet.

She was still pleasure drunk and more than a little dazed, but even so, her instincts kicked in. She wrapped her legs around his lean waist, her arms around his broad shoulders and pressed back against the wall for better leverage.

Then he was there between her thighs, blunt and hard and big. She had just come, but as he probed gently at her opening, Desi couldn’t help but respond.

He had been so patient, so careful to ensure that she was satisfied, that she expected him to be impatient now. To be rough, hurried.

Instead, he took his time here, too. Leaning forward until his lips were right next to her ear, he whispered, “You’re so damn beautiful.” Then he pressed soft kisses to her cheek.

The words, combined with the feel of him right against the core of her body, took her arousal up another notch. “It’s okay,” she told him, arching her hips in an effort to encourage him. “I’m ready.”

He groaned then, thrusting forward gently until he was buried halfway inside her. “Okay?” he ground out, and she felt him shaking from the effort it took to hold himself back.

Touched more than she wanted to be—certainly more than she’d expected to be from a torrid encounter with a stranger—she leaned into him. Pressed her mouth to his in a kiss as soft and gentle as his concern for her. “Please,” she whispered against his lips. “I want to feel you inside me.”

That whisper was all it took to snap his control like a twig—which she was exceptionally grateful for.

Nic thrust into her then, so hard that he slammed her back against the wall. But she was still wet, still turned-on, and more than ready for him. Pleasure crashed through her at the first stroke, coursing along her every nerve ending until her entire body felt lit up like the Fourth of July.

“Damn!” he growled, his fingers digging into her hips as he held her in place. “You feel good.”

Again, she expected him to slam into her, even braced herself for it, but again he surprised her. He brushed kisses across her forehead, her cheeks, her lips as he waited for her to adjust to him. Only when she squirmed against him, trying to get closer, did he finally relent.

He began to move in slow, steady, powerful strokes that had her grasping at him as the need ratcheted up inside her. Soon—too soon—she was on the brink of coming again. But she didn’t want to go over alone this time, didn’t want to lose herself in the ecstasy without him.

Tightening her inner muscles in a long, slow caress, she did what she could to take him as high as he had taken her. She brushed her thumbs across his nipples, whispered how much she wanted him in his ear, lifted her hips to meet each of his thrusts. It must have worked, because he groaned, then began thrusting harder.

Then he was leaning forward, his mouth inches from hers. “Kiss me,” he commanded, a scant moment before his lips slammed down on hers.

She did, pulling his lower lip between her teeth and nipping at him as he had done to her earlier. She wanted more of him, wanted all of him. Craved him until it was an inferno deep inside her.

She bit him again, a little harder this time, and the shock of pain must have been what he was waiting for, because he came with a growl. She tore her mouth away from his, gasped for breath, but Nic wouldn’t let her go. He followed her, his mouth ravenous on her own while the heat of his body seared hers wherever it touched. In moments, the pleasure swamped her, overwhelmed her, and she followed him over the edge, her body spinning wildly, gloriously, completely out of her control.

Three

When it was over, when she could breathe again and her scattered thoughts finally came back to her, Desi didn’t know what to do. What to say. How to act.

There was a part of her that was shell-shocked. A part of her that couldn’t believe she had just had sex with a stranger in public. And not just in public, but on the balcony outside a gala that she was supposed to be covering for work. If someone had told her an hour ago that before the night was over she’d be pressed up against the hotel’s outside wall, her legs wrapped around Nic, whose last name she didn’t even know, having just had the most intense orgasms of her life… Well, she wouldn’t have called that person a liar. She would have called him or her a damn liar and then laughed herself silly.

But here she was. And the kicker was, she wasn’t even sorry. How could she be when her body was so blissed out that she still wasn’t sure her legs would be able to hold her when Nic decided to set her down? Which—­thankfully—he hadn’t yet made any move to do.

“You okay?” he asked after a minute, pressing his lips to her neck.

“I don’t know. That was—” Her voice broke and she swallowed in an effort to get some moisture into her too-dry throat.

“Amazing,” he said, kissing his way over her collarbone. “Incredible. Earth-shattering.”

She giggled. It was a totally foreign sound to her, one Desi couldn’t ever remember making in her adult life. She wasn’t the giggling sort. Then again, she wasn’t the one-night-stand, public-sex-against-a-building sort, either. And yet here she was, with absolutely no desire to move. And absolutely no regrets.

Nic lifted his head, gave her a mock frown that in no way reached the beautiful green eyes she could just barely make out in the shadows. “Are you saying that making love to me wasn’t earth-shattering?”

He slipped a hand between them, circled his thumb around her. She gasped, arched against him. She knew exactly what he was doing, knew that he was teasing her, but she couldn’t help it. Normally, she never let a man get the upper hand, but with Nic she couldn’t help it. Everything about him appealed to her, drew a response from her that she had almost no control over. His sense of humor, the intelligence she could see in his eyes, the careful way he held and touched and kissed her. And, of course, the fact that he was the hottest man she had ever met certainly didn’t hurt, either.

“I’m saying,” she said, her voice more breathless than she would have liked, “that I very much enjoyed having sex with you.”

“Sex, huh?” He rubbed a little harder, a little faster, and shocks of electricity sparked through her. Just that easily, he made her ache. Made her want. Again.

“Nic,” she whispered, cupping the back of his neck with her palm, even as her head fell back against the cool stucco wall.

“Desi.” His voice was low, teasing, but she could hear the sudden thread of tension as clearly as she could feel him hardening once again within her.

“Don’t play.” Suddenly she was as needy, as desperate, as if she hadn’t come at all.

He scraped his teeth along her jaw, bit lightly at the sensitive spot behind her ear. “I thought you liked it when I played.” His breath was hot against her skin, the words a whisper that worked its way deep inside of her.

“You know what I mean.” She clenched her core around him to underscore her words, took great delight in the sexy hiss the movement elicited from him. He closed his eyes, dropped his forehead against hers, and the hungry noise he made had her tightening her inner muscles again and again.

He cursed then, a harsh, sexy word that only ramped up her arousal more. From the moment he’d taken her out onto this balcony—hell, from the moment he’d kissed her on that dance floor—Nic had had the upper hand. She’d be lying if she said it didn’t feel good to get a little of her own back. Especially when doing so was so incredibly pleasurable for both of them.

Nic’s hand tightened on her behind as he lifted her nearly off him before letting her slowly sink back down. He did it a second time and then a third, all the while continuing to stroke her with his other hand. It took only a minute or two before ecstasy beckoned—brought even closer by his careless demonstration of strength—but just as she was about to go over the edge for the third time in less than an hour, he stilled.

“What’s wrong?” She forced open her too-heavy lids, tried to focus on his face despite the urgent need lighting her up from the inside. “Why’d you stop?’

“Come home with me.”

“What?” She was so far gone that her brain had trouble assimilating his words.

“Come home with me,” he repeated, thrusting deep inside her for emphasis. She moaned despite herself, tried to arch against him and get that last bit of needed pressure. But he held her firmly, refused to let her move. Refused to let her come.

“Please,” she gasped, her whole body shaking with the need for release. “I need—”

“I know what you need,” he whispered, taking her mouth in a kiss that was somehow both hard and tender. “Say you’ll go home with me and I’ll let you come.”

She bit his lip, not hard enough to draw blood but definitely hard enough to make him take notice. “Let me come,” she countered breathlessly, “and maybe I’ll go home with you.”

He laughed then, a low, dark sound that sent shivers down her spine even as it made her entire body melt. “I want you in my bed.”

She tightened around him yet again, taking great pleasure in the fact that he groaned deep in his throat. “You know what you need to do then.”

“Is that a yes?” He stroked her once gently. Too gently, but she wasn’t complaining as her nerve endings tingled.

“It’s not a no.”

He laughed again. “Damn, I like you, Desi.”

“I certainly hope you do, considering what we’ve spent the last forty-five minutes doing.” She had to bite her tongue, but somehow she managed to resist adding that she liked him, too. A lot. She hadn’t been with that many men—only two before Nic—but neither of them had ever made her laugh. Not out of bed and certainly not while making love to her. Until him, until now, she hadn’t even known that she’d been missing something.

He bent his head, licking his way over first one nipple and then the other. “Come home with me,” he urged when she was even more of a trembling, needy mess, “and I’ll spend the rest of the night showing you just how much I like you.”

She didn’t want to give in—not because she didn’t like him, but because she did. Too much. And the last thing she needed right now was to fall for a sexy, charismatic rich guy who would break her heart if she let him.

And yet…and yet, like him, she wasn’t quite ready for this night to end. Wasn’t quite ready to walk away from Nic with his bright green eyes and ready smile, his quick wit and gentle hands. And she sure as hell wasn’t ready to walk away from the pleasure he brought her so effortlessly.

“Please, Desi,” he murmured against her cheek, and for the first time she heard the strain in his voice, felt it in the way he trembled against her. “I want you,” he said. “If you just want it to be tonight, that’s okay with me. But please—”

“Okay.” In one desperate, vulnerable moment, she threw caution to the wind.

“Okay?”

“I’ll come home with you.”

His eyes shot up to hers. “You will?”

“I will.” She grinned a little wickedly herself. “That is, if you make me come in the next sixty seconds.” This might be her first—and probably her last—one-night stand, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make the best of it…

“I thought you’d never ask.” His answering smile was blinding, and it caught her right in the gut. Which probably would have made her nervous if her body hadn’t been on a collision course with its third orgasm of the night.

Nic bent down and took her mouth with his. Less than thirty seconds later he was muffling her screams as she came and came and came.

His house was gorgeous. Worse, it was perfect. Which, she was growing desperately afraid, was simply a reflection of its owner. And while most women would jump at the shot to start something with a gorgeous, rich, perfect man, Desi wasn’t most women. The thought of falling for Nic made her itch, so much so that she couldn’t help casting a few surreptitious glances down at her bare legs to make sure she wasn’t actually breaking out in hives.

Which was why it made absolutely no sense that she was sitting at the bar in the middle of Nic’s (still didn’t know his last name and still didn’t want to) gorgeously designed arts-and-crafts kitchen at two in the morning, watching as he made her homemade blueberry pancakes. Simply because he’d asked what her favorite food was and that was what she had answered.

“So, what’s your favorite TV show?” he questioned as he expertly flipped the first batch of pancakes. Watching him made her a little crazy, especially since all he had on was a pair of well-worn jeans. No man should be allowed to look that good outside the pages of a fashion magazine.

And no man should be able to make pancakes that perfect after three rounds of the best, most earth-­shattering sex she had ever engaged in. It went against the laws of nature.

“Desi?” he prompted, casting a quick glance over his shoulder at her.

She tried to look as if she hadn’t spent the past ten minutes ogling his perfectly defined back. Judging from the smirk on his face, she didn’t succeed nearly as well as she’d hoped to.

So she cleared her throat and focused on answering his question as a means of distraction from the fact that she was more than a little afraid that she was turning into a sex addict. “I don’t watch TV.”

“What do you mean you don’t watch TV?” He turned to stare at her incredulously. “Everyone watches TV.”

She quirked a brow at him. “Not everyone. Obviously.”

He named a few popular shows, but when she just shook her head, Nic sighed heavily. “Okay, fine. How about your favorite movie, then? Or do you not watch movies, either?”

“I watch movies. But it’s hard to pick just one, isn’t it?” She did her best to keep from smiling at his obvious frustration.

“Not necessarily.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s your favorite then?”

“Titanic.”

It was her turn to stare at him incredulously. “You don’t really mean that, right? You’re just messing with me. You have to be.”

“Why wouldn’t I mean it?” He looked completely disgruntled now. “It’s a fantastic movie. Love, passion, danger, excitement. What’s not to like?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Betrayal, maybe? Attempted suicide, attempted murder, poverty, icebergs, death. Not to mention the world’s most infamous sinking ship.” She paused as if considering. “You’re right. What was I thinking? It’s a barrel of laughs. Obviously.”

He made a disgusted sound. “You’re a real party pooper. Did anyone ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“Well, then, let me be the first. You’re a real party pooper.”

“I’m a realist.”

He snorted. “You’re a nihilist.”

She started to argue on general principle, but stopped before she could do more than utter a few incoherent sounds. After all, whom was she kidding? He was totally right. “Just call me Camus,” she quipped with a shrug.

“Is that a movie?” he asked as he poured more batter on the griddle.

“Are you serious?” she demanded, watching him like a hawk as she tried to find some kind of tell to prove he was messing with her. But the look he sent her was utterly guileless. Not too guileless, mind you. Just guileless enough, as if he really had no idea what she was talking about.

Huh. Maybe he wasn’t so perfect, after all. The thought made her inexplicably happy, though she refused to delve too deeply into why that was.

“Albert Camus was a French writer,” she told him after a second.

“Oh.” He shrugged. “Never heard of him.”

That knowledge made her infinitely more relaxed. “Oh, well, a lot of people would say you weren’t missing much.”

“But not you.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

He grinned as he slid a plate piled high with perfect, golden, fluffy pancakes in front of her. “But you still didn’t tell me what your favorite movie is.”

“I told you I couldn’t choose just one. Not all of us can wax poetic over a sinking boat, after all.”

“More’s the pity.” He cast her a mischievous look that she immediately mistrusted. “But you know what? I think you’re right. I don’t think I can choose just one favorite movie. Now that I’m thinking about it, a few more come to mind.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“The Stranger, definitely. And maybe The Guest. And—”

“You suck!” she told him, breaking off a piece of pancake and throwing it at him. He caught it, of course. In his mouth. Without even trying. “Those are two of Albert Camus’s most famous works.”

“Are they?” he asked, his face a mask of complete and total innocence. “I had no idea.”

She studied him closely, looking for his tell. He was lying to her, obviously, but the fact that she couldn’t tell was odd. She could always tell—she prided herself on it. It’s what made her such a good investigative journalist. And such a lousy society columnist.

The fact that he didn’t seem to have a tell fascinated her. And made her very, very nervous all at the same time.

When she didn’t say anything else, he nodded at her untouched plate. “Eat your pancakes before they get cold.”

“Maybe I like cold pancakes.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know. Do I?”

He didn’t answer. Instead he grabbed the bottle of maple syrup and drizzled it over the top of her pancakes. Then he cut into them and lifted a forkful to her mouth.

He waited patiently for a few seconds, but when she just looked at him instead of taking the proffered bite, he rolled his eyes. “My pancakes don’t taste good cold. Trust me.”

Trust him. The idea was so ludicrous that she nearly laughed out loud. Only the knowledge that he definitely wouldn’t get the joke kept her from making one wisecrack or another. But there was no way in hell she was ever going to trust him. Mr. Perfect. No, thank you. Been there, done that, still had the T-shirt as a not-so-pleasant memento.

Not that she was bitter or anything. Or sexist.

Because it wasn’t that she didn’t trust men. It was that she didn’t trust anybody. Not when life had taught her over and over and over again that she couldn’t count on anyone or anything. If she needed something, she could count on only herself to make it happen. Anyone else would just let her down.

Maybe it wasn’t a great philosophy, and maybe—just maybe—it was a touch nihilistic. But it was her philosophy. She’d lived by it most of her life, and while it hadn’t gotten her much—yet—it also hadn’t cost her much since she’d adopted it. And in her mind, that was a win.

And yet, even understanding all that, she—­inexplicably—leaned forward and let Nic feed her the bite of pancake. She had no idea why she did it, but it certainly wasn’t because doing so made him look incredibly happy. Not at all. Not even a little bit.