Caleb almost roared as he felt her hot, hot pussy clenching around him ruthlessly. And he froze as his climax took him, hard and overwhelming.
The spasms of pleasure drew up in his balls and throbbed through his cock. He felt the pulses of his release inside her. He experienced an uncontrollable swelling of primitive pride in claiming her this way.
His elbows buckled, and he collapsed on top of her, panting into her hair and shaking a little. She was holding on to him, her body soft, loving, and pliant beneath him. They didn’t talk for a long time, just clung to each other in needy silence.
Until finally Caleb’s reason and recognition returned. He rolled off her a little, so she wouldn’t have to support his whole weight. His cock was soft and wet, and it slid out of her easily.
Stroking her warm face, he said dryly, “I think I might be out of practice.”
She smiled up at him and caressed his hair. “Well, then we better start practicing more.”
Caleb shook his head in amusement and readjusted until he was on his back, and she was curled up beside him. He didn’t say any more, feeling uncomfortable with anything too mushy.
But he was silently wondering if this was how it felt to be with someone for real.
—
The following evening, he was sitting at the desk in his home office, trying to get through some email before bed when his phone rang.
He stared for several seconds at the screen—the name of the caller—before he clicked over to answer it. “Hey, Moore. It’s been a long time.”
“It has,” Sean Moore replied. He was Caleb’s first supervisor at Vendella. Mentor. Never really a friend.
“What’s going on?” The men never talked for social reasons, so Caleb knew there must be news he needed to hear.
“There may be a problem—with an old project. The one that gave us the most trouble. You know which one I’m talking about.”
Of course Caleb knew.
“What problem?”
“Someone has been looking into it. There have been inquiries. About me.”
Caleb felt a chill run down from the tension at the back of his neck. “What kind of inquiries?”
“I don’t know. I can’t find out the source of them, or even who’s doing the asking, but there have been rumbles. We may need to do something. I don’t have to tell you the fallout if that comes to light.”
“Okay,” Caleb said, moving immediately into mental crisis mode. “I’ll look into it. Keep me posted if you hear anything more.”
After he hung up, he sat for a long time, staring at his phone, thinking urgently, trying to come up with a plan to deal with this new problem.
Caleb had a lot of black marks on his soul. He would be the first to admit it. But nothing else in his history, his past, his career, made him feel so guilty.
He thought about Kelly, who was outside right now, happily throwing Ralph his favorite ball.
She could never know.
She might understand him. She might know the kind of man he was and want to be with him anyway. She might be able to brush off threatened scholarships or threatened Russian gangsters.
But there were limits to what she would be able to overlook, and losing her just wasn’t an outcome he could allow.
He clicked through his documents until he got to the folder of the project in question. There was nothing here. Nothing that could put him or his career in danger. Just reports and budgets and marketing plans.
But there were things that had happened that had never been written on paper.
Caleb wasn’t a good man, and he’d never pretended to be. But there were a few sins that even he wished could be erased from the record of his life.
He stared for a long time at the list of research scientists who had worked on this one project.
He would never be good. He didn’t even want to be good.
But he also didn’t want to be this.
Interlude
Caleb had Kelly propped up on a wide window ledge in a back hall of a historic house that was used now for upscale banquets and parties. He was holding one of her legs up, her thigh hooked over his forearm, and he was fucking her fast and rough.
She was about to come hard, and she had to bite her lip to keep from making any sounds as the pleasure built up in a tight coil.
“That’s right. I can feel how tight you’re getting. You know you like it hard this way.” He sounded hoarse the way he did when he was really into it.
She stifled a helpless sound as her pussy squeezed around his cock in response to the erotic words. She was clutching his neck and shoulders, desperately trying to hold on in her precarious position.
“Tell me how much you like it,” he demanded, spreading her open even wider and bracing himself with his other arm.
“I like it hard. So much.” She had to lean forward and bite into his shoulder, over the jacket, of his tuxedo to channel the powerful sensations.
“You like that someone might catch us?” His words were choppy and breathless from his effort, but still impressively controlled. “You want someone to see us like this. All those stuffy people at the party. You want them to know how well I can fuck you. It really turns you on. Doesn’t it?”
She made a little whimper of sound, waves of heat and cold washing over her.
“Tell me.”
“Yeah,” she gasped. “It turns me on.”
“Oh, fuck, you’re going to come so hard. Come now, Kelly, blossom. Come now.”
She came at his words, her pleasure uncoiling in spasms of pleasure that made her whole body shake. She hid her face to smother the sounds, and she held on to him as she heard him grunt a few times before the tension in his body released in a hot rush.
“Oh, God,” she was gasping as their bodies started to relax together. “Oh, God.”
As he came down, he pulled her more tightly into his arms, so she was wrapped fully in his embrace. She could feel the emotion in his grip, as powerful as the desire she’d felt before.
She returned it. She couldn’t help it. There was no going back for her now. She was on this road, and she had to see it through—no matter what the consequences.
He was pressing little kisses against her face before he found her lips softly. Her mouth clung to his needily.
He might not be guilty, she reminded herself. It could be that circumstances had lined up to cast a shadow over him, but the shadow might not be based in reality.
He was cool and controlling and sometimes heartless. He was ruthlessly ambitious, and his ethics were dubious. But there was so much more in him than that. There was a softness to his soul that he never let anyone see.
But she had seen it. He might not be guilty.
“We better get back,” he said, with one last stroke of her hair.
“Yeah.” When he took a step back, she straightened up, pushing down the skirt of her evening dress. It was wrinkled now. No hope for it.
When she took a step, she winced at the soreness—mostly her thigh being stretched so far for so long. He reached out to wrap an arm around her, supporting her weight with his strength.
“Thanks,” she said, with a breathy laugh. “I’m okay. It was worth it.”
He might have killed her father. She just didn’t know. And, until she knew, she had to live torn apart like this, surrendering her body and heart without ever surrendering her will.
She was going to find the answers. She was going to see this through. She already had an idea for getting some of the information she needed.
“Do you have any idea how crazy I am about you?” he murmured, leaning down to kiss her again.
She did know—a truth that made everything worse.
She was under no delusions in this. One day, he would find out about her. If he wasn’t guilty, he would never forgive her. If he was, then he might kill her.
But this was the road she was on.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, looking concerned when she couldn’t qui
te pull out of her brooding. “Was I too rough?”
She smiled, shook her head, and told him the truth. “Of course not. I know what I’m in for, when it comes to you.”
About the Author
CLAIRE KENT has been writing romance novels since she was twelve years old. She has a PhD in British literature and, when she’s not writing, teaches English at the university level. She also writes contemporary romance under the pen name Noelle Adams.
You can email her at
[email protected] and find her online at:
clairekent.com
Facebook.com/NoelleAdamsAuthor
@NoelleAdams3
The Editor’s Corner
July is the month for sizzling romance and Loveswept has all the books for your reading needs right here.
In New York Times bestselling author Marquita Valentine’s Take the Fall, the first spin-off novel from her successful Boys of the South series, passions run hot as a rugged, brooding marine rekindles an old flame. Elisabeth Barrett begins a heartfelt new Briarwood series with a tale of forbidden love, broken promises, and second chances in Once and Again. Club Sin returns in Commanded, a decadent new romance from USA Today bestselling author Stacey Kennedy. Next, USA Today bestselling author Claire Kent’s deeply sensual story of love, lust, and deception, Sweet the Sin, where a woman searching for the truth discovers that she’s sleeping with the enemy. Another USA Today bestselling author, Serena Bell teases all five senses in Turn Up the Heat, a poignant, tantalizing novel of fantasies long hidden…and finally indulged.
The heat is on in Cassie Ryan’s story of temptation and total surrender, My Obsession—a powerful master gives his dream girl a new beginning in the dungeons of decadent ecstasy. Violetta Rand’s explosive new Lies & Leather series kicks off with a red-hot motorcycle racer who rides hard and plays for keeps in Loving Lucas. And New York Times bestselling author Tracy Wolff poses the question: Do nice guys always finish last? In the new Extreme Risk novel, Slashed, a burned-out underdog and a vulnerable tomboy defy the pressure to be perfect and go after what they really want.
If you adore billionaire romances that are blistering hot, don’t miss Tracy’s Play Me series, now available as one book!
My, it’s hot in here. And it won’t cool down for August—just wait until you see what we have in store!
Until then,
Happy Romance!
Gina Wachtel
Associate Publisher
USA Today bestselling author Claire Kent continues her emotionally charged story of longing, betrayal, and insatiable desire as Kelly Watson and Caleb Marshall find themselves in a deadly standoff of seduction.
Darker the Release
Coming soon from
Loveswept
Continue reading for a sneak peek
Chapter 1
Kelly Watson was getting annoyed because Caleb wouldn’t hang up the phone.
She’d come over to his big estate outside DC for the weekend. She wasn’t living with him all the time anymore—the way she had in the beginning—but she’d spent the last three weekends with him. Now, it was Friday at almost seven in the evening, and he was still on a work call.
He also was wearing nothing but a towel around his waist.
Caleb Marshall was the CEO of Vendella and Co., a high-powered pharmaceutical company. He didn’t have the luxury of only working on weekdays. She didn’t expect him not to work—or not to take calls on any day or at any hour they came in.
But still, they were scheduled to leave for a black-tie event in ten minutes. The cocktail party was his thing—since she was a pet portrait artist and wasn’t in the habit of attending formal events of any kind. It was because of him that she was going to this party at all. She’d gotten out of the shower, dried her hair, and done her makeup in the bathroom, and she’d expected him to be dressed when she reentered his bedroom.
But he was sitting in a leather chair near the window, talking on the phone, naked except for the towel.
And he didn’t even appear aware of her presence.
It worried her.
They were supposed to be in a real relationship. They’d never said the words “I love you.” Given both of their pasts as commitment-phobes, that would be far beyond the comfort zone for either of them. But they’d admitted that the feelings between them were real, and they’d agreed to try to make the relationship work.
He was supposed to care about her, be totally into her, feel for her more than he’d ever felt for anyone else. That was what he’d said, at least.
Which was why it was concerning that he didn’t notice that she’d walked into the bedroom wearing nothing but her underwear. He hadn’t even glanced over at her.
Caleb wasn’t just her boyfriend. He might have killed her father. And the only way she could ever find out the truth was to get him to trust her completely, let down his guard, allow her access to the information she needed, find concrete evidence about who arranged her father’s murder. And she only had a limited amount of time to accomplish all this in the month or so her mother had left to live.
If Caleb was losing his interest in her, if she wasn’t as attractive to him as she used to be, then she could never do what she needed to do.
So she felt distracted and out of sorts as she walked over to the dresser and looked in the mirror.
Her makeup was good—setting off her blue eyes, high cheekbones, fair skin, and full lips—and her long dark gold hair was pulled up into an elegant twist. Her bra and panties were a sexy black lace—much more expensive than she’d ever bought for herself before she’d met Caleb.
In the past, she’d only ever had one-night stands. There was no man in the world whom she’d known as deeply and intimately as Caleb. No man who could turn her on as much. No man she’d invested nearly as much in as him.
No man she’d hated as much.
It was the bitter irony of her life—to live torn apart like this until she could finally find the truth, finally find closure, finally heal. If such a thing was even possible.
But all of it would be futile if he was starting to lose interest.
He was talking about some sort of marketing campaign on the phone. She heard the words, but they were of no interest. It didn’t sound like an emergency, though, so it was definitely time for him to hang up the phone.
With that same flutter of anxiety and uncertainty, she grabbed a tube of lotion from the bag she’d brought over for the weekend and squeezed some out on her palm.
Then she walked over so she was directly in Caleb’s line of sight, sat down on the edge of the bed, and started to rub the lotion into one of her legs.
Her body was pretty decent, with long legs and good breasts. Caleb had always seemed to really like it before. Might as well use it to her advantage.
She massaged the lotion in slowly, extending her leg in a way she hoped was sexy.
With a clench of pleased satisfaction, she noticed from the corner of her eye that Caleb’s eyes had shifted over to her.
He was still talking, but at least now he was watching her.
She took her time with rubbing the lotion on her other leg as well, and then she stood up and started applying it to her arms and shoulders in turn.
He was definitely focused on her now. His brown eyes had taken on a familiar heat—albeit still distracted by his conversation—and his gaze didn’t leave her body.
Making sure to act unaware, she walked over to the closet to get a dress. She’d brought two possibilities with her for this evening, since she hadn’t been sure which she should wear. Inspired, she grabbed the one she’d already decided against.
She returned to his line of sight to slowly, sensually pull the dress on, letting the soft fabric cling to her body.
It was a blue that matched her eyes, and she studied herself in the mirror, turning around and pretending to be evaluating the effect. She slipped on her high heels and looked at herself again.
Then she unzipped it and let it fall slowly
to the floor so she was standing in nothing but her underwear and heels.
Caleb stumbled over something he was saying.
Acting as though she wasn’t paying any attention to him and hiding her flush of pleasure at this clear evidence that he was so affected by her, she walked back to the closet to get her other dress.
This one was a deep red—a sleeveless column dress with well-tailored ruches and a slit on one side that came all the way up her thigh.
Caleb wasn’t talking much anymore—just occasionally saying “yeah.” She didn’t dare to look over at him fully, because he would suspect what she was trying to do.
But the brief glances she snuck proved that his body had grown tense and his skin was slightly flushed.
He was turned on. No doubt about it. It gave her a rush of pleasure and relief—and also a pride that left her a little uncomfortable.
She was so focused on looking sexy as she tried to zip up her dress that she was at a loss when the zipper snagged on the fabric.
She tugged on it gently, and then frowned, wondering how she was supposed to get it unsnagged and still look sexy.
She gasped and gave a little jump when she felt a hand over hers on the zipper.
Caleb had gotten up and moved behind her while she was distracted.
“Stuck?” he asked, his voice thick and textured the way it always was when he was turned on.
He was standing behind her, and his eyes were moving with a hungry heat from her face down her body in the mirror over the dresser.
“Try not to tear it,” she said, as he focused back down on her zipper. “This dress was expensive.”
“It was well worth the money.”
With a little work, he freed the zipper and pulled it all the way up.
“Did you finish with your call?” she asked, glancing back to where he’d left his phone on the table next to the chair.
“You made sure of that, didn’t you?”