That would have been me. Mia shot me a teasing glance as she hopped into the back of our cab. At the time, it seemed like a great idea. The restaurant was highly rated, it had a beautiful setting, and I’d suspected if I got Mia away from the city, we could turn our attention to the ever growing attraction between us and to finally do something about it.

I’ll even admit I thought about stealing kisses along the pathway as we strolled near the river. What I had not ever once thought about was having the kiss interrupted before it could even happen.

Damn it. I’d been so fucking close to finding out just how Mia tasted, what her lips felt like under mine, and how her body would react when it came into contact with mine. She was a much better poker player than I was. I knew she had to be a little upset at the untimely appearance of the young family, but she held it together much better than I did. Or at least better than how I thought I did.

I glanced to my side. Traffic going back to the hotel wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been on our way out. However, it was still a busy city and it was taking longer than I wanted for us to make it back. Once we were there, alone…

Mia sat to my left, looking out her window. If I looked, I’d probably be able to meet her eyes in the glass, but I didn’t want to just yet. Her hand rested in the space between us and I let myself inch my fingers forward until her hand was completely under mine. I wiggled my fingers in between hers until they were interlocked and then I caressed her palm, right at the base of her thumb, making slow and sensual passes.

The slight hitch in her breathing was the only sign she gave that she was even aware I was in the cab. I smiled. Frankly, that wasn’t enough for me. I needed to know she wanted to explore this thing between us as badly and as thoroughly as I did. I wanted to know that I made her heart race and that she wouldn’t be able to rest or sleep soundly again until we’d given into it at least once.

Not that I was under any misguided allusion that having her once would be enough. I knew it wouldn’t be. Just as I knew we could both vow that once we returned to Boston we could pretend we left it all back in Atlanta, but that didn’t mean we wouldn’t remember. That we would forget the other person’s touch. It drove me mad that even with that foresight, I still wanted her with an ache that defied logic and damn it all, I wanted to know she wanted me, too. That she burned for me as intently as I burned for her.

I moved my hand away from hers and placed it on her knee. Her head jerked away from the window and she turned to look at me.

“What?” I smiled.

“What are you doing?” she asked with a sultry smile. “Trying to be sneaky?”

“I love this dress on you.” As I talked, I moved my hand up her leg, slipping my fingers under the material, careful not to snag the delicate hose she wore. “I know I told you that earlier this evening, but something has my head in a quandary.”

“What is that?” She glanced at the cab driver and then back to me. I could have told her she didn’t need to worry about the driver hearing us. He was completely focused on traffic at the moment and mumbling under his breath in a language I didn’t recognize, at the drivers sharing the road with us.

“I don’t remember seeing any panty lines.” I’d reached her inner thighs and I stopped my fingers there for a moment, stroking her. She felt so good and it was killing me not to move my hand higher. “Are you not wearing panties?”

Her cheeks flushed, so I knew she heard me even though she turned her head back to look out the window. I almost laughed. Like I’d give up that easily.

I let my fingers inch a little higher along her inner thigh. “If you don’t answer,” I whispered. “I’ll be forced to check it out myself. And I have to say, I don’t mind putting in the time to research the issue thoroughly.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” she said, still looking out her window.

“Are you sure about that? Because I’m pretty sure I would.” I let my fingers drift up her thigh to show her how serious I was. I think she got it, because she trembled under my touch. “Try me.”

I had to give her credit. She kept her face turned to the window the entire time we talked, though every so often, she’d glance at our driver. But he never paid us the slightest bit of attention.

“No,” she whispered so softly, I almost couldn’t hear her. “I’m not wearing any.”

I had thought I was fairly aroused before she admitted to being completely bare under her dress. But my cock jerked to full attention and pressed painful against its confines when she whispered she wasn’t wearing panties.

I balled the fist that wasn’t on her thigh and took a deep breath. “I think I need to verify.”

But she moved faster than I’d anticipated, drawing her skirt down and crossing her legs. For all intents and purposes, shutting me out of the Promised Land for now. “No.” She took my hand from her thigh and placed it back on the seat between us. “Not here. You can verify, but we have to wait until we’re in our rooms.”

“Or in the elevator if no one is there with us.” We might as well be on the two thousandth floor for as long as it would take us to make it up to our rooms.

“In our rooms,” she repeated. “You know the elevators have cameras. I’m not going to be the security guards’ entertainment tonight. Nor do I want the video of me naked from the waist down in an elevator to make it on the company’s secret holiday video they pass out this year.”

“What the hell? What secret video?” I asked, trying to make heads or tails out of what she was saying.

“You didn’t see that news documentary?” she asked and then continued when I shook my head. “Some of the security companies, you know the ones that work out of high rises or hotels and apartments? They’re all the time seeing people do crazy shit in elevators. They save the best clips in one file and then at their holiday parties, they play them all.”

“Really?” I asked, even though it made total sense to me. After all, if I were working security at a high rise and shit got boring, I could easily see myself looking through security feeds for some entertainment. “On second thought, I get it.”

“You do?”

“The companies aren’t doing anything wrong or illegal by having cameras and like you said, everyone knows they’re there. So really, if you want to get frisky in an elevator, it’s pretty much on par with public sex. Odds are you’ll be seen by someone. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s okay for these places to keep the video and use it for their own enjoyment. If that’s not illegal, it should be. At the least, it’s unethical.”

“I agree with you there,” she said, an unmasked look of victory in her eyes. “And look. There’s our hotel.”

“Damn, you’re good,” I said once it hit me that she’d kept me occupied and thinking about something other than how naked she was under her dress. “I didn’t even pick up on what you were doing until you pointed out the hotel.”

By then, the cab had stopped in front of the lobby. I paid the driver who smiled and thanked me, and then I turned back to offer Mia my hand. We walked silently to the elevators. Once we were inside, alone except for the ever watchful security camera and staff, I leaned over and whispered, “Part of me wants to bust out into ‘We wish you a Merry Christmas’. Matter of fact, if I didn’t suck so bad at singing, I think I would. But I won’t because the one thing worse than me naked on film is me singing on film.”

“No way, the worst would be you naked and singing on film.”

I gave her shoulder a playful shove. “Hey, you’ve never even heard my singing.”

“To hear the way you talk about it, I should consider that a blessing. But I can’t believe you’re that bad of a singer. Seriously, I’ve never seen you fail at anything.”

We were almost to our floor and I ached with the need to touch her, to do something about the awareness that hummed between us. “Just hang around me long enough and you will. I’m not perfect, nor do I claim to be.”

In the seconds before the doors opened, she shifted so she stood between me and the door. “Thank goodness for that. I have no desire to be with a perfect person. I think that would suck. Especially in bed.”

I tried to take my time getting to our rooms so Mia wouldn’t catch on to how badly I wanted her. Halfway to the doors, I realized she was probably already aware of just how much I wanted her. Hell, my cock had been pressed against her when we were by the river. Why try to hide it now? “I’m ready to show you just how not perfect I can be,” I told her. “Your room or mine?”

She lifted a finger to her lips and tilted her head in an exaggerated thinking act. “Hmmm…”

I chuckled and dragged her into mine, simply because it was open and I was tired of waiting. I half expected her to play fight or resist, but she didn’t, which told me she was tired of waiting, too. Thank fuck.

I came to a stop right beside the bed. Before we went any further, I felt it necessary to reiterate the important points. “If you don’t want this, we don’t have to do anything.” I tried not to think about how I was getting ready to utterly and completely potentially fuck up everything. My job. My company. My name. My reputation. Everything. “I mean, we could just say goodnight and fly home tomorrow. There’s nothing stopping you from turning around and walking out that door.”

She looped her arms around my neck. “Tenor?”

I swallowed. “Yes?”

“Shut up.”

I didn’t have a chance to let it sink in that she was staying. Why had I thought she’d leave? There was no time to ask, because before I could form the words, her lips were on mine and the only thing running through my mind was the word FINALLY.

Her lips were soft and sweet, and they parted beneath mine, allowing me to taste her fully. I needed more. More of her. More of her mouth. More of her body pressed against mine. My fingers fumbled with the zipper on the back of the dress. I couldn’t get it unzipped and I felt like a fifteen-year-old virgin. I’d never had trouble undressing anyone.

I pulled away. “I can’t get this dress off of you, so I either need you to turn around so I can get it or else I’ll just pull it up and I can fuck you with it on.” It was coarse and it was crass, but damn it all, it was what I felt and at that moment I needed inside her too badly to be waylaid for even a second by an uncooperative dress.

“I can’t mess this dress up. It’s not mine.” She wiggled out of my embrace and tuned so her back was to me, lifting her hair up and out of the way. “Can you help me get it off? I need to hang it up.”

Normally, I’d ask what the hell was so important about the dress, but in this case, the sooner the dress was off her and safely on a hanger meant the sooner I’d get to have my hands, fingers, and lips all over her gorgeous naked body.

I took a moment to simply enjoy the way she looked before me with her back facing me, her hair pulled back in a way that exposed her nape. I stepped close and breathed in the scent of her. Citrus and sunshine. I’d never look at an orange the same.

I took the zipper tab and slowly pulled it down, revealing the smooth skin of her back inch by tortuous inch. I reached her waist and held myself back from pressing my lips to her spine.

“There you go,” I said, surprised by the roughness of my own voice. “If you don’t want that dress ripped off you, I suggest you get it on a hanger quickly.”

She sucked in a surprised breath and I couldn’t help but grin.

“That’s right, Mia. My restraint is wearing thin. I’m about five seconds away from ravishing that hot body of yours. Better hurry.”

She moved quickly, stepping out of and hanging the dress up in a matter of seconds. My eyes followed her nearly naked body as she walked back to me wearing only an ice blue lace bra and a garter belt with hose. Totally unexpected since she told me she wasn’t wearing panties and it was hot as hell. I may have growled.

“Damn, Mia,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who wore garters.”

She turned to the left, just enough so I could see how they framed her perfect ass. “You like?”

Instead of giving her a yes or no, like she expected, I unzipped my pants and shoved them down my hips along with my boxer briefs. Her eyes grew large as she took in my erection. “Does that answer your question?”

“I’m not sure, why don’t you bring it over here so I can have a better look,” she said in a sex kitten voice that made me harder.

I took a step forward and if the way she was looking at my cock wasn’t bad enough, as I move closer, the tip of her tongue peeked out between her lips. Fucking. Hell. I was going to explode before I ever touched her. I stopped a few feet in front of her, thinking maybe I could hold out until I was inside her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I need to get even closer.” She lifted her head and met my gaze. Then, with a smile filled with sensual mischief, she lowered herself to her knees. I put my hands on her head to stop her, but she must have taken my reaction as encouragement because she proceeded to take as much of my length as possible into her mouth.

Fuck. The feel of her all warm and wet around me.

It took all my strength not to hold her head steady and thrust my whole cock into her mouth, to open her throat and fuck her face as hard as I could. “Careful,” I warned. “I’m dangerously close to the edge and would rather be inside your pussy when I get there.”

With a sigh, she fell back to her heels. “Maybe later then?”

I wasn’t sixteen anymore, so I wasn’t sure if it would be possible if she meant later tonight. Then again, as aroused as I’d been whenever I was with her lately, it was altogether possible that it might not be out of the question.

“Later is a very long time,” I said and pulled her up. I ran a finger along the edge of her garter belt where it hooked onto her hose. “This is so hot. I think I want you to keep it on.”

Her cheeks flushed, but she didn’t protest. I leaned down for another kiss, taking my time and letting my hands wander across her body. I cupped her ass and pulled her close, the lace scratchy against the small amount of skin on my chest not covered by my shirt.

I pulled back and tugged on her bra strap. “Oh, no. This won’t do. Not at all.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Your shirt’s still on.”

“It’ll have to wait.” I pushed the straps from her shoulders. “Take it off.”

Once upon a time, I’d do it myself. I had long since mastered the art of unhooking bras without looking at them. But somehow in the last few years it seemed the damn things had gotten more and more complicated. Spend twenty minutes trying to untangle an undergarment that was so complicated to put on and take off you needed an instruction manual and see how quickly your libido died.

“You’re so bossy,” she said, with a mocking eye roll, but did it anyway.

She dropped the bra to the floor and I walked us both backward until she was against the bed. I pushed on her shoulders gently until she sat down.

“Come to the edge and spread your legs for me, beautiful,” I said, going to my knees. “Let me see you.”

Some women were overly shy when I wanted to get my mouth on them. Mia wasn’t like that and it turned me on more to know she was so confident in her own skin and the way she owned her sexuality.

“Lay back if you want to,” I told her. “Because I’m going to take my time tasting you and you have to come at least once before you get my cock again.”

She didn’t say anything, but got into the position I wanted her and stayed there while I did exactly what I said I would. I tasted and explored her until her knees shook and her fists clutched the sheets at her side. Only when she started making little panting sounds, did I start licking her clit.

It only took three strokes of my tongue until she clenched around me in release. Even then, I didn’t pull back, but slipped two fingers deep inside her and kept up with the gentle, but relentless, sweeps of my tongue along her sensitive spot.

“Tenor,” she groaned, pulling at my shoulders. “Please.”

I lifted my head long enough to say, “Please what? You taste so good, I might do this all night.”

She let out a string of garbled words. I couldn’t be exactly sure, but I was almost positive she was cussing me out in another language.

“If you ask for what you want,” I spoke while intermittently nibbling her skin. “You might get it.”

Nothing but more garbled words. I moved us higher on the bed and suckled one of her nipples.

“Oh, God. Tenor.”

I smiled against her skin, kissed her other nipple. “What do you want, beautiful?” I asked before drawing it deep inside my mouth.

“Fuck me.” She grasped my shirt. “And get this off.”

“You take it off.”

She sat up and with a fierce determination began to unbutton my shirt. She did fairly well until about the fourth button. She mumbled something before finally taking the fabric in her hands. With a grunt and a hard pull, she ripped the rest of the buttons off. It might have been the hottest thing I’d ever seen and though I thought it damn near impossible, I grew harder.

“You just ruined my shirt,” I said in mock outrage, tugging it off.

She shrugged. “Then you should have taken it off the first time I asked you.”

I couldn’t argue with that so I gave her a kiss instead. She parted her lips and I moved my tongue inside in a slow and sensual way that mimicked how I planned to take her. At first. My fingers brushed down her arms, across her belly, and went even lower, stroking between her legs to ensure she was still wet. She was. I moaned into her mouth, pleased with the knowledge of how I turned her on.

I slid my fingers out and she gave a tiny cry in protest. “I’m going to fill you up with something better,” I promised. “Just let me get the condom on.” I had a few waiting on the nightstand. I grabbed one and rolled it up my dick, all the while she watched me. The hunger in her eyes turned me on. “How should I give it to you the first time?” I asked, giving myself a hard stroke because her eyes grew wide each time I did. “Do you want me to fuck you hard or would you prefer slow?” I wasn’t sure I could be slow, but if that was what she wanted, I’d give it a try.

She rose to her knees and pulled me to her. Her eyes were dark with lust and her voice husky. “I want you to fuck me as hard as you can with that massive cock of yours. I want it hard. I want it rough. And I want it dirty as hell.”

Fuck, I loved this woman. “Then I’ve got you covered.” I dipped my fingers inside her one more time.

Her grip on my arms tightened. “Honest to hell, Tenor, I promise you won’t break me with your dick.”

Since she seemed to be so flippant about the whole thing, I pushed her down on the bed and came up over her. “Spread your legs nice and wide for me so I can get my cock as deep as possible inside you.” I felt her shift under me. “That’s right. Just like that.”

I lined myself up with her and watched her expression as I slowly entered her. Or at least, that had been my plan. In reality, she felt so good, my eyes nearly rolled to the back of my head in pleasure.

“Fuck, Mia,” I groaned out her name, pulled out a little and thrust into her again.

“Again.” She wrapped her legs around my waist and lifted her hips in invitation. “Harder.”

I loved a vocal woman in bed. One who had no trouble telling me what turned her on the most and what she liked. Self-knowledge and self-confidence were sexy and hot. From the way I saw it, Mia had both. In spades.

I angled my hips to give her what she wanted and the resulting half gasp/half moan assured me I had. I took her hand and placed it on her clit. “Show me how you like to be touched.”

Again, she showed no hesitation or shyness, but took my hand and together we stroked her where and how she enjoyed it the most. I knew she was getting close by the soft pants she made as I moved in and out of her and the way she trembled though her muscles were taunt with the strain to remain still.

“Let me see you come, Mia.” I kept one hand on her clit, not giving her any way to hold back the release I knew was fast approaching.

With a strangled cry that might have been my name, she came and I was done for. “Mia,” I managed to whisper. “You are stunning when you come.” I feared she might think I said that to every woman I fucked, but the truth was, I’d never said it before.

She smiled and looked blissful and sated. Or at least she did until I rocked my hips and then she let out a groan as I moved in and out of her a few times. “You haven’t come yet,” she said, like she was telling me something I didn’t know.

“Ladies first.” I wasn’t holding still, but I had slowed my pace down. Mia’s eyelids fluttered as I pressed deep inside her. “I want you to come again for me.”

She giggled. “If you insist.”

“I do.” I slid out of her and stroked myself. “Get on your hands and knees. I want to take you from behind. You’ll be even tighter.”

Her eyes grew hazy with lust and she hurried to get in position. I kept one hand on my cock and stroked her backside with the other. “You have a gorgeous ass.” She giggled again and added an ass wiggle as well.  I thoroughly enjoyed how playful she was in the bedroom. Joining in, I let out a chuckle while giving her backside a satisfying snack. 

That only made her giggle more, but the giggles died when I placed my cock back at her entrance. 

“Tenor,” she moaned. 

“You going to come for me again?”

She nodded and I slid partially inside her, both of us enjoying the slow way I filled her. “You feel so fucking good, Mia.” 

And she did. Better than I'd imagined she would be.  Better than I'd ever experienced. And better than anything I knew I’d ever experience again. 

Normally, withholding my own release wasn't an issue. I'd never had any problems ensuring my partners experienced many orgasms. I'd always been confident in my abilities as a lover.  Never had I second guessed decisions, wondering if she would like what I had planned or if I was pleasing her, but I couldn’t get that voice inside my head to stop questioning if she was enjoying herself.

Each time I touched her I fell deeper and deeper into her spell. Every thrust into her body was a way to bring me closer to her, a useless attempt to try and bind myself with her. I could make all the jokes in the world and say I was just horny or Mia was hot. But the truth hit me as I took her from behind.

I wanted more than the pleasure of her body. I wanted to breathe her in until she became a part of my very soul. And for one of the few times in my life, I was scared to let someone in that deep.

I clung to her as my release swept over me.