The elevator doors open and I rush forward, seeking privacy before I explode. The instant we are in the room, I whirl on him. “Don’t look at me like I’m some helpless pup that has to be coddled, Chris. That’s not what I need now. I need what you needed today. I need an escape. I need to know . . .” So much. Too much. “I need . . .” I have no more words. I just need.

Stretching behind me, I unzip my dress and shove it down my body, leaving myself in my thigh-highs and heels, and the dangling rubies. I’m desperate to push Chris over the edge, to make him take me the way he always does—passionately, completely.

Chris pulls me hard against his body, and he is hard where I am soft, strong where I am still weak. Yes. This is what I need. “Fuck me, Chris. Take me to that place you go and don’t be gentle.”

He runs his hand down my hair. “Not tonight, Sara. Not after you just told me that bastard forced himself on you.”

“It was two years ago, Chris.”

“Which you had to relive tonight.”

“Don’t do this. Don’t treat me like I’m breakable, or Michael wins.”

“I’m not treating you like you’re breakable.”

“You are, and if you do it now, you always will. It’ll change us.”

“No. One night is not a lifetime.”

“This isn’t just one night. It’s this night. It’s the night that—” The pain in my chest cuts off my words and I shove it away. “Pain that is pleasure. Pain that is an escape. I need just what you need tonight.”

“No, baby. I’m not going there with you tonight.”

“You mean you’re not going there with me ever!” I charge. “You’re afraid to take me there now. This isn’t going to work. He’s already ruined us.” I shake my head. “I need out of here. I need to go home.” I tug on my arms, but he holds me easily. “Let go. Damn it, let go!”

“Sara—”

My hands close around the sleeves of his jacket. “I knew this would happen. I knew if I told you, you’d be afraid to be you.” My cheeks are wet with tears. I don’t know why the hell I keep crying. “Just let me go, so I can get all the hell over with in one night, Chris. Let me go find my way of dealing with this again. My way without you.”

He backs me against the desk, his hands on my hips, his expression unreadable. He’s still so damn in control. I’m naked inside and out, and he’s no closer to letting down the wall this night has erected, than when I was fully dressed.

“Just let me go now, Chris.” My voice is a barely audible. I am defeated and beaten. “Please.”

His expression softens and he wipes my tears away. “Sara, baby, you aren’t alone. And I’m not going to shut you out.”

“You will. You are. You tried to shut me out today before you even knew about this. How can I believe you can go those places you need to go with me when you didn’t even believe you could earlier today?” My fingers close around his lapels, and the absolute torment I’m feeling is like gravel in my throat, and I barely find my voice. “And what if I need to go there now? I need to escape. I need to feel something other than what I’m feeling right now, Chris.”

He stares down at me, and I see the shadows in his eyes, I see the turbulence, a deep sea of emotions I don’t understand, and I fear we are both drowning. It’s too much. Everything feels like too much. “Chris,” I whisper, and it’s a plea for him to make this ache inside me go away. A plea for him to take me away like only he can do.

Suddenly, he’s picking me up and carrying me toward the bed. We go down on the mattress and he quickly shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it away. And then he’s on top of me. The weight of him, the sweet wonderful weight of him, is all that keeps me from completely losing my mind.

He raises up on his elbows and our eyes meet, and I am lost in the fiery depths of passion this man stirs in me. “Sara.” He whispers my name and the air around us shifts and I feel Chris everywhere, in places he isn’t touching me. A shudder runs through me and I pull his mouth to mine, drinking him in, burning for him.

Then his lips leave mine, and I physically ache with the loss of the connection. This man can hurt me so deeply. He could hurt me in a way I’m not sure I’d recover from, and it’s too late to stop it from happening.

As he starts to undress, I sit up to watch him. His gaze sweeps the jewels dangling on my nipples, bringing a welcome heat in contrast to the icy pit in my stomach. And I think that tonight just might be a new beginning for us, instead of our final destination.

Twenty-two

All sinewy muscle and masculine perfection, Chris presses me back down onto the mattress, his hands covering my breasts, fingers flicking the rubies. Little darts of pleasure rush from my nipples to the V of my body, where the thick ridge of his erection settles.

My hand curves on his face. “I need what you needed earlier today.” My voice is raspy, urgent, etched with the weight that today has been, and all it has revealed. I barely recognize it as my own. “Take me there, Chris. Please.”

“Where I needed to go was where I ended up. I was shutting you out, like I shut everything out, and you pulled me back. You made me see what was important. What’s real. You made me see you.” His lips brush mine. “See me now, Sara.”

“I do see you.”

“No. You don’t. You see what happened tonight and what you’ve decided that means for us. See me now, Sara, like you made me see you.” He kisses the corner of my mouth and his lips travel down my jaw. “Really see me.”

“I’m trying.” My hands slide to his hair. “But, I—”

He kisses me, a soft caress of tongue against tongue. “No buts. Either you see me or you don’t. Either you let me in or you don’t.” His mouth touches mine again, a feather-light, barely there brush. “Let me in, Sara.”

Confusion ripples through my mind. Am I shutting him out? Isn’t it he who has shut me out? No. Yes. I don’t know. His fingers caress my nipple, and his mouth travels my jaw to the delicate curve of my neck, and I can barely think. His breath fans hot against my ear, and his voice is a low, deep, sensual promise. “I’m right here.” His words whisper in my ear and travel down my neck, over my skin, and settle in that deep hole inside me that only he can fill.

My hand slides to his face and I pull his mouth back to mine. “Part of you isn’t enough, Chris. You can’t hold back because of what you found out tonight. You can’t.”

He strokes his tongue against mine, and it is sweet velvet seducing me. “Taste that. That’s me. That’s us.” His tongue strokes mine. “Us, Sara. Forget everything else.” His mouth comes down on mine again, and I fight the passion consuming me. I fight because he didn’t tell me he wouldn’t hold back. He didn’t say what I needed to hear and I know why. Because he never says what he doesn’t mean. But it’s a worthless battle I cannot win. Not when his hands are on my breasts and his mouth is caressing a path down my neck.

The last of my will to question who we are together and where we are going is lost when his tongue flicks the ruby strand. He suckles my nipple, tugging on the attached ring, and oh God, his other hand slides between my legs, applying pressure to the jewels attached to my clit. I moan and my hands slide into his hair, and he lets me. Some part of my mind registers this as abnormal, as him allowing me control I don’t normally have, but I can’t seem to process. Not when his mouth is doing the most amazing things to my nipple and his fingers are pressing inside me. His thumb strokes my clit, and he seems to have found the exact right spot to send sensations spiraling through me. I gasp at how quickly I am on the edge and he swallows it, kissing me. I shatter at the touch of his tongue against mine, pleasure trembling through me in a long wave of sensations.

“Sometimes pleasure is just pleasure,” he promises against my mouth.

“And that’s enough for you?”

“We aren’t even close to the place I call enough.”

And with that promise he slides down my body, and spreads my legs to lick my swollen clit.

I gasp. “No. I can’t. I’m too sensitive. It’s too much.” Everything is too much tonight.

“I’ll tell you when it’s too much.” He licks me again and I feel him tug away the jewel, replacing it with his mouth. I shudder with a mix of pain and pleasure. No, it’s all pleasure. It’s pleasure and I am lost to the way he licks and strokes and teases me until I am impossibly on the edge again. So close, and yet I’m not there. I need to be there. I’m desperate to get there again. And this is pain. It’s pain and pleasure and it’s Chris, pushing me, taking me there. Always taking me someplace I don’t know I can go.

He is not so far out of reach, and neither is my release. My sex clenches and spasms, empty and needy, and I whimper. Chris answers my cry, covering my body with his, but he doesn’t enter me. He strokes his shaft over the sensitive V of my body and I whimper again, my lashes fluttering.

His hand slides to my face. “Look at me when I enter you.” His voice is rough, intense. “See me, Sara.”

“I do.”

He presses inside me and thrusts, burying himself deeply, completely. “Feel me.”

“Yes.”

He lowers his mouth a breath from mine. “But do you feel us?”

My hands slide around him, holding on to him. “Yes.”

“I’m not sure you do.” He brushes his mouth over mine. “But before tonight is over, you will.”

* * *

The sound of the phone ringing on the nightstand permeates the sweet, sated state of my slumber. I’m immediately aware of the sunlight glimmering through the hotel window and the wonderful weight of Chris’s leg draped over mine, his hard body curved around me.

Chris reaches over me and grabs the phone. “I need the car at nine fifteen. Right.”

I roll to my back while he listens to whatever he’s being told. I stroke my hand over the shadow on Chris’s jaw, letting it rasp along my fingers before tugging a strand of his sexy, rumpled blond hair, which is all the sexier because I know my fingers helped create the disarray. Memories of the night assail me in a mix of hot and cold, ice and fire. The lovemaking had been nothing shy of amazing, but there is so much more to Chris, and to me, that I need to know still exists.

Chris reaches over me again and hangs up the phone. “Morning,” he says, pulling my back to his front, his arm wrapped around me as he nuzzles my neck.

“Morning,” I whisper. “What time is it?”

“Eight. And since we need to swing by the hospital on the way to the airport, that leaves us only about thirty minutes for a good-morning fuck.” He nuzzles my neck and his stubble is deliciously rough on my skin, the way he can be when he wants to be. The way I want him to be now.

I feel a pinch in my chest, a hint of the ice returning. “I thought you might think I’m too delicate for such things.”

His hand slides over my breasts, caressing my nipple, and a sound of pleasure slides from my lips. How is it possible that I never get enough of Chris?

“Why don’t we find out?” he asks, and he nips my ear, settling the thickness of his erection against my backside before pressing between my thighs.

“Yes.” I reach between my legs and stroke him, challenging him. Pushing him the way I burn to have him push me. “If you dare.”

He covers my hand on his shaft and leads it to the silky wet heat of my sex. “If you dare. Because, baby, just because I protect you doesn’t mean I’m not going to fuck you. I’m still me and I’m still going to fuck you in all kinds of ways you haven’t imagined.” He squeezes my breast and pinches my nipple and I hold his hand there, not wanting him to stop. His voice is as rough as his touch, both like sweet cognac that burns going down and leaves me wanting more. “I’m going to tie you up the way I painted you, Sara. Does that scare you?”

“No. Nothing with you scares me.”

“No?” His hand curves my backside.

I remember his palm on my backside, the erotic sting. The moment his thick cock pumped into me, the pleasure. “No.”

“You should be.”

His finger slides down the cleft of my backside and I gasp at the intimate intrusion, and then pant. “Are we back to this again? You warning me away?”

He explores me from the front and the back. “Last night earned you one last warning. One chance to run while you still can.” His lips press to my shoulder, teeth scraping, nipping. “But know this, Sara.” His fingers slide deeper, between my cheeks, while his other hand teases my clit, flickering it with delicate fingers that contrast the near hard command of his voice. “I’m going to own you, body and soul. I will bind you. I will fuck your ass. Your mouth. I will do what I want. And none of this even comes close to where I’ve been and where I will never take you.”