“I trust Evelyn handled everything for you like I said she would?”
“Yes, Evelyn was great. She was very nice, extremely discreet. She hardly blinked when I told her you instructed her to put my things on your personal account.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” He grins, loosening his pewter-colored tie. “It’s always good to have firsthand reports from satisfied customers.”
I gape at him. “Are you saying you own L’opale?”
“Technically, I own the building. Beck owns the store.” Beck, as in Andrew Beckham, Nick’s attorney. “He bought the boutique for his sister to manage a few years ago, after Evelyn went through a rough patch in her personal life and needed to start over.”
I close my eyes as understanding sinks in. Now that he’s made the connection for me, I realize the strikingly similar features that Beck and his sister share, from their tall, lean bodies and dramatic facial structures, to their creamy brown skin tones and stunning, light-colored eyes.
And while I’m still not ready to ask if I’m the first woman he’s purchased thousand-dollar lingerie for on his account at the boutique, the fact that he owns the building and his friend and colleague is the proprietor helps me to at least rationalize some of his apparent familiarity with the shop.
“So, you’re telling me that Baine International invests in everything from five-star hotels and commercial properties around the world, to retail space for women’s unmentionables?”
“Among other things.” Nick’s mouth quirks. “I have varied and eclectic interests.”
I practically snort. “Not the first two words that pop into my mind.”
He laughs, drawing my hand into his and guiding it down to his very impressive erection. “I don’t suppose I need to elaborate on the words that are popping into my mind right now. Or less conveniently, during my meeting with the good sister.”
I cup my hand around the bulge in his charcoal gray suit pants. “Serves you right, making me walk in here carrying lingerie in my hand, especially when you apparently knew damn well who was here.”
He smirks, thoroughly unrepentant. “Could’ve been worse. There’s an interesting sex shop in the Village I’d like you to see.”
“I suppose you have an account there too?” I raise my brows. “More than an account?”
He holds my gaze without answering, and my imagination whirls with curiosity about this man and all the pieces of him that he has yet to reveal to me. What kinds of erotic things would he want to show me? What kinds of carnal, rawly sexual things would he demand of me?
Memories of our time together on his sailboat in Miami several weeks ago now replay vividly in my mind. Memories of surrendering to him completely, my hands bound tight, my body belonging wholly to him. My sex throbs at the recollection . . . at the possibility of knowing that kind of dark pleasure with him again.
Trust me, he’d demanded.
And I had, even though it terrified me.
Even though trust is the one thing I’ve never been able to give a man.
In these past several months, I’ve given Nick more of me than I have anyone else in my entire twenty-five years. That should terrify me too. It does, but with him even fear has its own kind of allure.
With him, I’m dancing right up next to the flames of everything I’m afraid of and I’m learning that I can actually enjoy the burn.
With him, I’m learning that I crave it.
Nick’s gaze is far too knowing as he slides his palm around to the back of my neck, his fingers strong and firm against my nape, yet infinitely tender. He makes a low noise in the back of his throat, then presses a light kiss to my brow. “We’ll save that conversation for another time. Come.”
He takes my hand and leads me back to the leather sofa, pausing to reach for a slim silver remote that closes the dark wood louvers on all of the room’s corridor-facing glass. That same remote apparently locks the door, too, the faint metallic whisper sealing us inside.
“Won’t your employees wonder what we’re doing in here?”
“No. And if they do, none of them will dare let on one way or the other.” He slants me a serious look. “I demand trust from the people around me as much as I demand excellent performance. I pay well for both.”
I feel a cold pang as I glance over at the bag of ridiculously expensive lingerie, which is not the only extravagant gift I’ve received from him. Nick has spoiled me with fine things these past few months. Incredible dinners at the city’s best restaurants. Romantic getaways. A long rope of exquisite pearls that must have easily cost him tens of thousands of dollars.
“Is that how you feel about the women you date too?”
He frowns. “That I expect trust and performance? Or that I’m willing to buy it?”
I shake my head, wishing I hadn’t spoken my thoughts out loud. “I don’t know. Both.”
A certain hardness moves over his expression. “What are you really asking, Avery?”
Too late to pull the words back, I hold his searching gaze. “Is that how you feel about me?”
Instead of answering, he cups my face in his hands and pulls me into a slow, bone-melting kiss. When our lips finally part, he doesn’t release me. His brows furrowed, he exhales a quiet curse and lowers his forehead to rest against mine. “That is how I feel about you. Never doubt that. Never doubt what we have together.”
I manage a nod, but that doesn’t seem good enough for him. Lifting my chin on the edge of his scarred hand, he searches my gaze. “Tell me you won’t doubt what we have together.”
“I won’t,” I promise, unsure why it means so much to him to hear it when he’s never promised me more than a moment. His eyes vow more than that, however. Right from the start, those fathomless blue eyes have promised me everything I dare to grasp. I need only to reach for it. “I won’t doubt you, Nick.”
His thumb traces the line of my lower lip. “Good girl.”
I meet his touch with the tip of my tongue. “I thought I was coming here to be a bad girl,” I say, hoping to steer us back to the playfulness I saw in him before I let my insecurities dampen the mood. “I’m surprised Sister Margaret’s habit didn’t catch on fire from all of the dirty things I was thinking as I passed you in the hallway.”
His voice drops to a thick rumble. “Is that right?”
I nod. “I have to admit, seeing you with a nun was . . . unexpected.”
“Really, why?” He sits on the sofa, but doesn’t coax me down with him. There’s a teasing glimmer in his eyes that I can’t resist. “Because I’m the devil incarnate?”
I give him an arch look, all too aware that my stance in front of him has now perfectly positioned my sex level with his face. “If you mean in bed, the answer is definitely yes.”
He grunts, running his hands up my bare legs and under my linen skirt. “Some would argue in business too.”
“I don’t know, Sister Margaret seems to like you well enough. She seemed downright charmed, if you ask me.” I suck in a gasp as his touch skims my inner thighs. “How often do you meet with her?”
“Only when we’re talking about plans for the children’s rec center I want to build.”
I freeze in his arms. “That’s the meeting you cancelled?”
Nick confided in me not long after we met that he’s been trying to get permits and construction approvals for a recreation center for impoverished inner city kids. It’s a pet project that obviously means a great deal to him, yet here he is, blowing off a meeting about it to mess around with me.
I seize his wandering hands from beneath my skirt and hold them still. “Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you were doing today? Jesus, Nick. I don’t want to interrupt your work on that project.” As important as the rec center construction is to him, it is me who’s become his singular focus at this moment. I can’t deny the thrill it gives me, even though I’ll probably go to hell for tempting him away from doing good, charitable work with Sister Margaret. “You should have told me
. I never would’ve agreed to come here like this if I’d known.”
“What makes you think I would’ve let you refuse?” Wry words, but the dark glimmer in his deep blue eyes is intense with meaning. “Need I remind you of our agreement, Ms. Ross? You know the terms.”
As if to emphasize his point, he brings his hands out from under mine to resume their upward slide under my skirt. His fingers move onto the curve of my ass and contract, kneading the bare mounds of my flesh. The thin fabric of my thong wedges into the crevice between my cheeks, making me hyperaware of every flex of his fingers, every caress that brings his touch achingly closer to my core.
“Anywhere I want, anything I ask of you,” he murmurs, repeating the promise I gave him in that rain-soaked parking lot the day he came looking for me. “No boundaries. No barriers between what I desire and what you’re willing to surrender to me.”
I nod and release a shaky sigh, torn between wanting him to soothe the wet, throbbing ache of my sex, yet savoring the anticipation of the pleasure I know he will give me. I can’t look away from his face. The combination of his low voice and sensual touch rivets me. That’s all it takes for him to make the rest of the world fall away for me.
The fact that he can look at me and make me believe that somehow I do the same for him is the most powerful aphrodisiac I’ll ever know.
His eyes rivet on mine, holding my gaze so possessively, I can hardly breathe. All I can think about is the need for him to touch me, to kiss me . . . to make me come the way I nearly did back at the L’opale dressing room.
But he isn’t ready to give me that relief just yet. I see the truth of that in his ruthless gaze.
His hands slowly drift away from me. Yanking his tie loose, he tosses it carelessly aside, then unfastens the top two buttons on his shirt. He leans back now, draping his arms along the back of the sofa, his thighs spread. His knees cage me on both sides where I stand in front of him. With his cock straining in the confines of his pressed trousers, he looks at me with a profane mixture of hot lust and cool, aggravating control.
“Undress for me, Avery.”
I shoot a sidelong glance at the door and the shuttered windows, the only things concealing us from an entire floor full of people. Muffled voices carry indistinctly from the corridor outside. At almost noon, the office is buzzing with activity and conversation.
“Don’t think about them,” he instructs me firmly. “There is no one else right now. Only us. And I want you naked.”
There is no leniency in his command, only certitude that I will obey. Because he knows I will. Not because it’s part of our agreement, but because I want desperately to please him.
Despite my fear of discovery—despite my awareness of all the reasons I shouldn’t find a man’s complete domination of me as seductive as I do with Nick—I nod my head in acquiescence and begin to do what he demands.
I remove my sandals, then slowly peel off my white silk tank and let it flutter to the cocktail table behind me. My breasts feel heavy, too constricted within the lacy cups of my bra. My nipples have been hard as pebbles ever since Nick entered the room with me.
Now I feel them pucker even more under the hungered blaze of his eyes as I reach around to unzip my skirt. The linen slides down my bare legs, pooling at my ankles. I step out of it, a move that brings me one pace closer to the edge of the sofa and Nick’s erotic, negligent sprawl.
I shiver, not from any chill, but from the pure animal heat that pours off him as I stand before him. I can see what it’s costing him not to reach for me, to deny himself the urge to snatch me up right now and throw me down beneath him. His hands are splayed on his spread thighs, his strong fingers curling into the muscle of his legs so intensely his knuckles are bone white.
“The rest, Avery.” His voice is raw, coarse with desire.
With one arm laid across my breasts, I reach back with my other hand to unfasten the clasp on my bra. It springs loose, held in place only for a moment before I let it fall away. Nick’s breath leaks out of him on a low curse. That curse becomes a groan a moment later, as I slip my fingers into the front of my thong and slide it off my hips.
“Jesus Christ, baby. How many times have I seen you take off your clothes, and yet I’m never prepared for just how fucking beautiful you are.”
He reaches for me at last, harshly dragging me toward him as he moves to the edge of the leather cushion. His hands grasp my wrists and push my arms behind me, leaving my body wide open to him. Then he is off the sofa and down on the floor on his knees, his mouth closing over my sex. Sensation rushes up on me in wave after wave as his tongue spears into the folds of my cleft, wet and hot and hungered.
My head drops back, a jagged mewl of pleasure tearing from my throat.
Nick shows me no mercy.
Thank God.
My body has been on the verge of exploding for what feels like hours, and now that Nick’s mouth is on me, I know I won’t last long. He kisses and licks and suckles me, his wicked tongue moving from the tight knot of my clit to the drenched seam of my body.
When his grasp on my hands goes lax, I know better than to risk moving them. I know his cues well enough by now. He has no rope to bind me, but he wants my surrender just the same. My reward is the deepening power of his lips and tongue on my quivering flesh, while his hands now roam freely over my body.
“Nick,” I gasp brokenly. “Oh, fuck . . . I’m so close. I’m going to come.”
He moans against my pussy, his tongue pushing inside now, adding fuel to the fire of my building release. I clutch my hands together behind my back, my legs starting to tremble violently under the sensual assault of his mouth. He pulls my clit between his lips, sucking the bundle of nerves so intensely I see stars behind my closed eyelids.
When his finger enters me and drives deep, my orgasm erupts. It takes me over the edge, splintering my senses. I cry out with the force of it, not caring if every person on the floor can hear me. This is what he does to me. Makes me shameless. Makes me bold.
With him, I’ve become someone I would never have recognized just four short months ago.
His name boils past my lips as hard tremors rock me. My legs feel boneless, my body wrung out and quaking under the relentless pleasure of his wicked mouth and skillful hands.
His gaze catches mine, his blue eyes stormy, as dark and wild as a tempest. The sight of him licking me so carnally while he watches my face twist in uncontrolled passion is nearly enough to make me come all over again.
I reach for his shoulders to steady myself, but in the next moment he’s shifting between my parted legs, giving me one final, dizzying lash of his tongue before he moves back onto the edge of the sofa cushion.
His mouth is wet with my juices, those full, sensual lips held in a way that tells me he’s just as fevered as I am. More, because while my climax is still echoing through me, his own is banked and burning. Waiting to be set loose.
On a wordless growl, he tugs me down to meet his kiss. His mouth ravishes mine. There’s no gentleness in it. No gentleness in his hard grasp on my arms as he urges me to my knees before him now, his meaning unmistakable.
I fumble with the buckle on his smooth leather belt. I expect the metal to be cool, but it’s heated from the inferno of his body. As I unfasten it and slide his zipper down, Nick’s tongue thrusts deep into my mouth, sweet and musky, the taste of me still lingering there.
My fingers work quickly to free him, spurred by the awareness of his need and my own ravenous hunger to have him in my mouth. Thick and hot and heavy, he fills my greedy hands. I break away from our kiss on a moan, starving to feast my eyes on him.
His big cock thrusts out of his open trousers, jutting high against his abdomen. My core clenches at the sight. My mouth waters shamelessly. I lick my lips, then lower my head to take the broad crown into my mouth.
Usually, I like to tease him a little at first, but I have no patience for that now. Neither one of us does. I take all of him in a long, slow sli
de, not stopping until he hits the back of my throat.
“Ah, Christ.” Nick’s words are strangled, uttered through clenched teeth.
When I draw up to his tip, his pelvis bucks reflexively, a shudder racking him. His hands roam over the back of my head, tangling in my hair, his fingers flexing and contracting with every inch of him I devour as I go even deeper with him this time.
“Baby,” he groans. “Yeah . . . take all of it. God, that’s so fucking good.”
I hum in response to his praise, bobbing my head faster, harder, taking him as deep into my throat as I can bear. I’ve never cared much for sucking a man off, and considering my history, that’s probably little wonder. But I can’t get enough of Nick. I can’t get enough of his pleasure, or knowing that I have the power to deliver it.
His growl tells me he’s close. Slick, salty liquid beads against my tongue as I reach the tip of him once more. He thrusts into my mouth, hissing a curse as I tighten my lips around him and lower my head down to his groin.
“Avery . . .”
I don’t let up for a moment. I’m obsessed with the need to make him come. Caressing his balls with one hand, I wrap the other around the hard stalk of his shaft, pumping him firmly while I lick and suck and worship every delicious inch of him.
His breath races out of his lungs, heavy pants that sharpen as I continue to work him. “Ah, fuck, baby. Your mouth is amazing.”
His hands hold my head in place, his arms trembling with the force of his need. As I slide my mouth up to the crown of his cock again, his hips jerk, then begin to piston hard and fast and tight. A low roar builds inside him as he fucks my mouth.
When he shouts my name again, it’s raw, jagged. And then the first hot burst of his semen erupts on my tongue. It jets against the back of my throat, thick and scalding, almost more than I can handle. I swallow and he fills my mouth again and again, his hips still bucking in a wild rhythm, his hands still fisted in my hair.
We’re both panting, both spent and languid, when the last of his aftershocks have faded. Sagged against the leather cushion at his back, he pulls me up beside him. Tenderly, he cups my face in his hands and draws me close for an unrushed kiss. My lips are swollen, pulsing from the fevered intensity of our passion and the force of his climax.