CHAPTER FOUR

Why, oh why, did he have to be off-limits? Why did he have to fall squarely under the heading of do not pass go? It was truly fucking unfair because no one had ever made her feel like this. Like she was high on a touch. Like she was deliciously dizzy from a kiss. She wanted him so badly, and not just physically. She wanted more of him, but her emotions had to be cordoned off tonight. She told herself to let go for this one last night, let go of everything but the way he made her feel so alive.

“Close your eyes,” he told her firmly, and she let her eyelids drift closed, giving in to sense. Giving in to touch.

Maybe she was selfish. Or maybe she just wanted to feel a little something that was solely for her tonight. Nobody could deliver that better than this man.

He was kneeling behind her. She couldn’t even see him. But she was keenly aware of his presence as he dipped his mouth closer to her skin. His lips fluttered over her sensitive neck once more. She ached, pulsing between her legs as he kissed her all over. A snapping sound fell on her ear, and her hair spilled from its clip onto her neck as he undid her twist.

“Oh God,” she gasped, because she knew what was next.

His hands dove into her hair.

Fuck me now. Just fuck me now.

He’d discovered all her secrets the very first time he’d kissed her and explored her body. He’d read her responses as if it were his top-secret assignment to know every inch of her skin, then he’d remembered and sought them out, focusing on all the places that drove her wild. The back of her knee. The inside of her arm. Her neck, the gateway to her pleasure.

She was hopeless with him. He’d unlocked the code to all her desires, and he used it masterfully.

He threaded his talented fingers through her curls, gripping, and she moved with him, moaned for him, as if she were the notes he played on a cello. He was the musician; she was the instrument. He played and he played and he played, and her body sang for him, a song of pure desire. Of heat. Of want.

He twisted her hair once around his hand, pulling it to the side, and she tilted her head that way, giving him more room to devour her neck with kisses, like he was starved for her. He lavished pleasure all over her, leaving her drenched in sensation from soft, fluttery whispers along her neck, territorial kisses that claimed her as his, all mixed with the whiskery rub of his stubble. His ever-present scruff was trimmed to mere millimeters but long enough to brush against her skin with every kiss, bringing the intoxicating mix of soft and hard, of rough and tender. He rubbed his chin along her shoulder, and she arched into him.

He snaked an arm over her shoulders, grazing along her breasts as he traveled down her belly, his fingertips dancing against her waist.

“You like what I do to you.” It wasn’t a question.

“So incredibly much,” she said, as he flicked the tip of his tongue across her shoulder. When he kissed her like this, and he touched her like that, she wanted to give herself to him fully. The way he wanted. The way he’d asked for. A voice in the back of her head started to argue with her, to warn her what happened when she made choices in heated moments like this, and she tensed for an instant.

But this was different. This was a moment she was choosing to relish. A night of pleasure.

His hand reached the crest of her hip and her brain went dormant. He traced the top of her panties through the fabric of her dress. “Show me how much you like giving in. Show me how wet you are.”

She yanked up her skirt, bunching it near her waist, giving him instant access to the V of her legs. Even with her panties on, there was no hiding her arousal.

He groaned huskily. “Look at you, Elle. Look at how wet you get. For me.” His fingers glided up the soft flesh of her thighs, and she parted her legs for him. Grazing the wet panel, he whispered, “I want to feel that all over my dick. I want this sweet wetness all the fuck over me. Tell me how much you want me inside you right now. Tell me.”

“Oh God,” she panted. “Yes, God yes. I want that. I want it so much.”

“You want it?”

“You,” she said quickly, correcting her error. “I want you so much.”

“I want you to want me even more,” he said then took his hand away from her wet heat, returning both to her shoulders, sliding them up her neck to her hairline. He grabbed her hair, wound it all up in his fist and pulled hard, making her shudder. He bit the back of her neck, his teeth rough on her flesh.

She gasped as he soothed away the sting with his lips. She was nothing but cells and atoms, electrons and protons, smashing and colliding into lust and desire, and she could barely track where he was on her body. His lips were on her shoulders, her neck, her throat, then her jaw, her ears, her cheeks. His hands pressed into her breasts. His fingers raced down her arms. His erection rubbed against her spine through his clothes, making her gasp and want to beg for him.

And there, right there between her legs, she was an inferno for him. She arched her hips and said his name like a chant. He’d trapped her and she wanted to be his captive—captive ’til she came. “Colin,” she said. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“Tell me what you want most this second. Tell me,” he said, his voice hot and demanding.

The answer was easy. There was only one thing she needed. “I need to come, Colin. Please, I need to come so badly.”

In a flash he rose, lifted her, and set her on her feet. She turned around and skimmed off her panties. He sank down on the end of the chair.

“Unzip my pants,” he told her. With greedy, eager fingers, she bent forward and did as he asked, tugging his pants to his thighs, then his boxer briefs, freeing his cock. Her mouth watered as she stared at his erection—hard, heavy, and so fucking long. So many glorious, gorgeous inches that she loved to take deep inside her.

He pressed a condom into her hand, and she quickly opened it then rolled it on him, stopping only when she spotted the new ink on his hip. A simple black phoenix, akin to a stencil design. It matched the lotus, like he’d said. Matched it in symbolism.

“For new beginnings,” she whispered softly, tracing it with her fingertip. It mesmerized her, the art and lines, the placement on his body, but she shook off her reaction because she didn’t want to think of beginnings. She wanted to think only of ending this epic ache in her body.

She straddled him. His fingers grasped her hips, and she lowered herself onto his shaft. She was ready to build a shrine, to make holy offerings, because he was divine. Anyone who said size didn’t matter had never experienced the unmitigated erotic joy of this kind of cock filling her up. Yeah, the motion of the ocean mattered, but so did the size of the boat. Long, thick, and steely, his dick operated like a precision-timed machine of pleasure.

She moaned, stilling for just a moment to savor that delicious stretch of taking him all the way in, her slippery heat coating his cock. “I almost forgot how good you feel,” she said as she started to move on him.

“That would be a damn shame. We shouldn’t let that happen,” he said, thrusting up into her.

She clenched around him. “No, we shouldn’t because this is…”

Words stopped forming as he drove into her. Gripping her hips, he jerked her down harder, filling her deeper.

“This is what, Elle?” he asked, his voice a sexy taunt, urging her on.

“Intense,” she said on an exhale, as he filled her so deliriously she nearly screamed. She was vaguely aware that there could be people nearby—workers, waiters, bartenders—and she somehow found the will not to sing and shout her pleasure to the stars. But she felt it. The intensity thrummed in her bones, sizzled across her skin. “Incredible. It’s so incredible,” she said on a moan, as he thrust into her.

Then, because he was a fucking expert, because he’d studied all the shortcuts to her pleasure, he looped his fingers in her hair and pulled hard, exposing her throat to him. That was like an electric burst of ecstasy.

“Fucking you is the best,” he said, layering kisses onto her skin. “You get so wet, and I love how it feels to slide into you over and over.”

“Tell me how it makes you feel,” she said, losing touch with the earth as he talked to her, his dirty words sending her into a tailspin. The way he spoke to her was such an insane turn on, and she was already aroused beyond her own comprehension. He kissed the hollow of her throat and drove his cock deep into her.

“It’s fucking extraordinary. Being inside you is extraordinary. And I love it when you come on me.” He slid a finger between her legs, brushed it lightly against her clit, and her lips parted, forming an O. A silent, glorious O, containing all the pleasure in the universe. He’d flipped that switch, pushing her from chasing an orgasm to falling apart in his arms. She shuddered, pleasure wracking her cells, racing through her to flood every corner.

Helpless to stay quiet, she felt her silent cry turn to an audible moan as she shouted the beginning of his name. He clamped a hand over her mouth, covering her noises as he thrust up into her like a mad man on a frenzied ride, desperate to follow her to the other side. He fucked her as aftershocks rippled through her, the sensation spreading to her fingers and toes.

As her moans subsided, he dropped his hand from her mouth and gripped her waist. She opened her eyes, watching him, loving the way he looked when he came. Nothing was sexier, nothing was hotter than watching the man she wanted lose control.

All for her.

She didn’t understand why, but somehow she was his undoing.

And he was hers.

He fucked her into his own release, his eyes squeezed shut and his face contorted in pleasure. He grunted, and groaned her name before biting her collarbone, holding in all his sounds, too, as he came.

“We can’t stop,” she whispered, voicing the most dangerous words. Words she shouldn’t say. But her body had the reins, making decisions for her, seeking more bliss.

“We can’t and we shouldn’t,” he murmured, layering soft kisses on her neck.

Soon, as they came down from their high and her senses reattuned to the world around her, the tinkling of glasses reached her ears. The after party was starting…

Which meant.

She was about to become a pumpkin.

From inside her clutch purse, the alarm sounded on her phone.

“I have to go. My mom has a shift at eleven. I told her I’d be home by ten-thirty.”

“I’ll walk you to your car,” he said.

In the parking garage, he cupped her cheek gently, pressed his lips to hers, and gave her a sweet good-bye kiss that would linger on the whole way home.

He whispered, “Go.”

In three minutes, she was on the road, rushing to return home to her son.