He slipped out of her arms with the same ease he’d used to slip into them, and led her back down the way they’d come. He led her through a bedroom that had to be his—it was all dark wood furniture and neutral colored bedding and organized disarray—into a bathroom that made her knees go a little light. “What?” he asked, noticing her expression.
“I just wondered if there’s any room in this place that’s smaller than my apartment.” She paid careful attention to her tone, and was relieved when he laughed.
“You need a bigger apartment, then,” he said, glancing around the cavernous bathroom.
I need a bigger paycheck, she thought, and choked the words back. It would sound like begging, or digging, and that wasn’t what she wanted. “Do you have anything I can use to put my hair up? I don’t want to bother drying it.”
“Let me see,” he said, and turned to a tall cupboard by the sink. He rummaged around for a moment, and came out with a clip designed for thick hair, still in the package. “Will this work?”
She accepted it, and looked it over for a moment before glancing up at him. “I have a vaguely offensive question.”
“Why do I have stuff for women all over my house if I never bring women home?”
Zoey nodded. At least he already knew. Might mean he had a stock answer, which could be completely not true, but it saved her the awkwardness of answering.
He grinned again, and he looked like a kid when he did it. “Sophia is just Italian enough that she lives in eternal optimism. If she leaves girly stuff everywhere, they will come.” His eyes widened as he heard his words. “That is—uh—”
Zoey let him fumble for a moment, and then laughed, running her fingers over his delicious chest again. His chest wasn’t metrosexual bare, which she liked. There was a slight darkening of hair over his pecs, and then trailing down in a delicate line that disappeared into his pants. It gave a soft texture as her fingers ran over his skin, and the urge to purr was instantaneous and sharp. “I get it,” she said. “She doesn’t like your playboy lifestyle?”
Alex shook his head. “She sat me down last year to ask if I was gay, and to tell me that if I was, I could trust her, she would never breathe a word of it. She just wanted to let me know that it was okay, and I could bring men home.”
“That’s kind of sweet.”
“It was very sweet,” he said. “My father—well. He wouldn’t have tolerated that in his son. It was bad enough that his heir was—” Words failed him, and he just sort of gestured at himself. The pain that he carried was obvious and intense. The only response she could imagine was to step into his arms and press her lips against his, dragging him back to this moment in time. He responded not with lust, but with tenderness, and thorough intensity. Whey they broke apart again, his pupils had blown wide in his dark eyes. He gave a little shiver.
She turned away from him and twisted her hair up off her back and pinned it up and out of the way with the clip. He stood behind her, his eyes shining, and she gave him a little smile. He turned the water on in the glass enclosed shower and skimmed off his workout pants. She dropped the robe, and they stood there for a moment, naked and studying each other, before they crashed together. His mouth was harsh on hers, devouring her, and her hands reached down for his cock, which was already semi hard as she stroked the length of it. He groaned, wrapping his arms around her waist and doing nothing more than leaning back to lift her feet off the ground and deposit her in the shower. She squeaked at the heat of the water splashing over her skin, jumping out of the spray for a moment so that she could ease herself back in more slowly.
Alex stood in front of her then, absorbing the heat on his back, his eyes raised at her. “Too hot for your blood?” he asked, a teasing edge in his tone. He rolled his neck back, letting the spray wash over his head, exposing the long line of his throat, and then run down the lines of his chest and torso. She let her fingers follow the paths the water made, and he idly slapped them away. “You get to watch now,” he said, his hands running over his body as he washed the sweat off his skin. He was carefully precise, running his hands over each inch of skin with careful patience. He turned into the spray, and she got a gorgeous view of his taut backside. She was sure he was clenching for her, but Captain America had nothing on the view. Nothing at all.
When he turned back, he pushed her gently backwards, sitting her down on a small shelf within the shower enclosure. She knew what he wanted, and she took one single moment to decide to trust him. It was easy, she found, because he would stop if she asked him to. That wasn’t even a question. So dropping her knees open as he knelt in front of her was the most logical thing she’d ever done.
He didn’t lean forward to lick her, though. He knelt on the floor, taking himself in hand, stroking his cock with a luxurious motion. She was fascinated by the motion, by the way he tried to keep his focus on her, but was clearly distracted by the sensations he was creating. “Do you like this?” he asked, slowly, enunciating carefully.
“I’d like it better if I could wrap my mouth around it,” she said, running her tongue over her lips.
His grin grew. “That is exactly how I feel,” he said.
“Then do it.”
He did. This time, as his mouth closed over the heat of her cunt, she felt all the burning need of the past few days boiling through her. She sagged against the shower wall, clinging to the towel rail on one side, braced against the opposite wall on the other, and just let him devour her. He swung her thighs over his shoulders, his tongue moving at a feverish pace over her tender flesh, and she whimpered as the sensation started to burn and surge within her. His eyes darted up at her, every so often, and she could barely meet her gaze. She’d never felt so completely naked, so utterly stripped down in so few motions.
Suddenly, his tongue plunged into her, and she did scream. It wasn’t an orgasm, not exactly, but it was the next best thing as her vision went spotty, and her hips arched up, fucking his face, and the only thing different was that she was so full of aching, angry need that she wanted to tear his skin off and crawl inside of him. “I need you,” she whispered. “I need you now.”
His pupils were so wide that there was hardly any iris left to see. “I know,” he said. “I need a condom.”
“I hate you,” she said, without much feeling as he stepped out of the shower. She trailed her fingers down to her clit almost idly as she watched his tight ass walk across the bathroom, sheath himself, and come back to her.
He lifted her again, pressing her back against the wall of the shower, both of them turned sideways in the spray. He slid into her more easily than he had the first night, and she groaned all the way down to her toes as he started to shift within her. He had one arm under her ass, and the other hand reaching between them to flick at her clit. It wouldn’t have worked if she wasn’t so close, if she wasn’t already teetering on the edge, but she came for him, so hard and fast and overwhelming that she was only faintly aware of herself as she tore his back with her nails. All that she could clearly feel was her pussy clutching at his cock, at the sudden increase in the pace of his thrusts followed by the explosion of sound as he followed her over the cliff.
They sank together down to the bottom of the shower. She was shaking from aftershocks, and he was smiling at her like a kid, pressing faint light kisses to any bits of her that happened to come into reach.
“Shut up,” she said, not meeting his eyes.
“Told you.” The smile spread into a grin.
“I said shut up.”
“Admit that I was right.”
“I don’t like you any more.”
“Liar.”
“Probably.” She leaned forward and kissed him quickly.
For one moment, he was just a guy, just an incredibly hot guy with whom she was having incredibly hot sex. He wasn’t someone who was being betrayed by everyone he’d ever trusted. He wasn’t someone who had the potential to make or break her career. He wasn’t someone she might have to use, if she wanted to get where she wanted to go.
She held onto the moment, clung tight to it, and didn’t let it go.