It was at times like this, she heartily cursed her fair complexion, Sage thought, blushing furiously as Raven waggled his brows at her as they exited the movie theatre, two hours later.
She had watched the rest of the movie in a state of heightened awareness and helpless sensual daze because Raven’s hands had kept creeping into her dress and caressing her until she was near to fainting from sheer desire. The man was insatiable, she thought. After the explosive orgasm he had experienced, she would have thought he would not be able to have sex immediately after, but instead, he had been hard as a rock all through the movie.
Now, as he led her out, the gleam in his dark, slumberous eyes told her plainly that he hadn’t had enough of her.
“Will you come home with me tonight?” he asked, his eyes resting on hers as he watched her carefully.
Ever the gentleman, he had just had unbridled, passionate sex with her and yet, here he was, courteously asking her permission to have more sex with her. He seemed almost too good to be true, she thought, her eyes misting a little as she considered it.
She nodded almost shyly, and he grinned at her, with something almost like relief on his face. He leaned down and kissed her cheek gently, the unexpected motion making her eyes fly to his in surprise.
His eyes were so tender as he gazed back at her, and Sage swallowed nervously. Raven turned away then, to hail a cab, and she relaxed a little.
What was going on? Why had he looked at her with such emotion in his eyes? This was all just sex and fun for both of them, wasn’t it?
A cab slid to a smart halt in front of them just then and she stopped analyzing. Minutes later, the taxi pulled up to the same hotel she was lodged at and she looked at him in surprise.
“You are lodged here?”
He shook his head. “No. I am not lodged, per se. I actually own the hotel, so I have my own suite here, for whenever I’m in Spain.”
“Oh. Of course.”
He hadn’t been kidding, then, when he told her that he owned the restaurant she had been at earlier with her friends and had threatened to throw her out.
The lift took them to the highest floor and her breath caught in her throat at the plush luxury of the place. She stared around, her eyes almost falling out of her sockets in sheer wonder and amazement. The entire ninth floor of the hotel was built as a suite for his sole use. It was a veritable palace! It had to be the most luxurious room she had ever seen in real life or, indeed, in any other life.
Sage stared, mouth agape, at the ridiculously expensive furniture gracing different parts of the living room, pure gold ash trays, the thick, exotic rug that swallowed her feet, a chandelier that had to have cost an arm, a leg and a few other body parts, and several other choice furniture.
Raven turned to face her, his eyes darkening with passion as he reached for her. Sage automatically turned her face up for his kiss, her arms winding around his neck as his large hands kneaded her soft skin and molded her soft, womanly curves to the hard strength of his masculine body.
“From the moment I saw you in that lobby, I wanted you,” he whispered against her lips.
Sage rolled her eyes as she leaned back in his hands. “I sincerely doubt that. Come on, you looked so disgusted with me. I was amazed you didn’t spit on me or something. I don’t blame you,” she added with a smile to show she wasn’t angry.
His arms tightened about her, keeping her from pulling away from him. “I reacted so aggressively because I wanted you so much it was all I could do to keep my hands off you. I couldn’t get you out of my mind for a minute, and I even rushed back out to apologize, but you and your friends had disappeared,” he said. “Then, when I walked into the restaurant, minutes later, and saw you seated there, I thought my mind was playing cruel tricks on me.”
Sage frowned dubiously at him, “You didn’t seem inclined to apologize for anything when we met at the restaurant. You were going to throw me out, remember?”
Raven laughed, shook his head. “You really don’t understand men, do you? That was a jealous rage, nothing more.”
Sage stared in surprise. “You’re a very weird man, Raven Hawthorne.”
“So I’ve heard tell,” he murmured huskily as he lowered his head and took her lips in a slow drugging kiss that curled every last one of her toes and made her cling to him lustily.
“Make love to me, Raven,” she said simply.
His heart skipped a beat at the expression in her chocolate brown eyes. “Are you ready?” he asked, leaning down to lightly brush his lips against hers again.
When he lifted his head for a second, she said, staring up at him, honesty shining in her eyes, “Apparently, all you have to do is touch me and I’m wet and ready.”
Raven lifted her into his arms, his lips still joined with hers and carried her into a huge bedroom with a mighty king-size bed adorning the middle. As he lowered her onto it, Sage knew without a shadow of doubt that it was going to be a long, sensual night; very long indeed.
* * *
Sage came awake with a start, wondering what had woken her. She was so exhausted she could barely see straight and she stared around in disorientation at the strange surroundings, trying to place where she was. Her phone vibrated beside her again and she stared at it, realizing then that this was what had woken her up.
Awareness returned in seconds and she looked over at the other occupant of the bed; Raven Hawthorne. The man had to be the most passionate male of the species alive! After the movie theatre, he had made love to her five more times in one night, his appetite for her as intense as it was insatiable. A blush of pleasure stole up her cheeks as she recalled the various positions they had tried; positions she never even knew existed. They should have felt kinky and bad, but with him, everything just, somehow, felt right.
She leaned up on an elbow to stare down at him and an unexpected wave of tenderness swept through her, shocking her in its intensity.
She cared for him, she realized, her wide brown eyes widening further in shock. Heck, she loved him, she realized.
Her heart thudded in her chest with that realization and the sheer shock of it sent her moving. She scrambled out of the bed in a flurry of long limbs and tangled sheets, and her eyes widened as she realized that she had, indeed, managed to fall for a total stranger after just one night together.
She stared down at him in half-shock, half-tenderness, unconsciously memorizing his face as her eyes scanned his features. His long lashes framed his cheeks, resting against his cheekbones in a way that softened the firm, hard angles of his face. Sage slowly leaned down and caressed his cheek with the back of her hand, noting with surprise that his face was soft.
He looked so peaceful as he slept, almost like a baby, and was it her imagination or were his red lips somewhat puckered in slumber, she thought with a delighted grin.
Raven stirred in his sleep and murmured, “Sage.”
Her heart skipped a beat; how could he be murmuring her name in his sleep already?
Panicked, she edged away from the bed, moving as silently as possible. A quick glance at the alarm clock told her it was just 4:00am. Slowly, she struggled into her dress and picked up her strappy sandals in her hand. As her hands brushed against her naked breast, she blushed anew, remembering how Raven had worshipped them during their lovemaking. As she turned to leave, she subconsciously looked around for some sort of keepsake to remember him by.
Her eyes alighted on the wallet flung carelessly on the tabletop; she didn’t dare take his wallet, that would be too cheap. As though on cue, her phone beeped again, and this time, she looked at the screen. It was a message from Eden that said simply, “Don’t forget the last leg of the bet; snatch his wallet!”
She turned away, resolutely, to face the door, determined to just leave before he woke up. The rest of her life seemed to stretch emptily in front of her and with a frustrated sigh, Sage slowly turned back toward the bedside table and picked up the wallet. This was a very personal belonging and would remind her of him. Her eyes went to his gold watch resting beside the wallet. She returned the wallet to its position and picked up the watch instead; it was cold to the touch, but it was customized with his initials stenciled at the back of the watch and his picture inserted as the background on the face of the watch.
As she left the room, his watch dangling in her hand, she cast one last look over her shoulder, bidding him a silent goodbye.
Sage didn’t notice the tears streaming down her face as she went downstairs to her own room with the girls; she didn’t notice that her hair and clothes were tellingly disarrayed; she didn’t notice that other guests stared at her with curiosity as she descended; all she knew was that her heart was breaking into tiny pieces with every step that took her away from the one man that had touched her heart so profoundly in a matter of hours and left an indelible mark of his essence on her soul.