He had nothing to be shy about.
Transfixed, she nodded. But the real treat was when he said, “There’s more,” and turned.
An American eagle in flight spanned the entire width of his back, the tips of the bird’s wings flirting with the edges of his tattooed arms. In its razor-sharp talons it clutched a banner that said Death Before Dishonor.
She couldn’t stop a very breathy-sounding “wow” from escaping her lips.
Wearing a slightly crooked smile, he looked back over his shoulder at her. “See something you like?”
Did she ever. The bird was so lifelike she imagined she would actually feel the silky softness of the feathers if she touched Roman’s back. Then he was getting closer, but he wasn’t the one moving. Her feet were carrying her across the room to where he stood, then her hands were reaching out.
She felt possessed. And she was—by lust. By a need so intense her breasts ached and her heart pounded. She flattened both hands against his skin at the level of the eagle’s breast and she could swear she felt Roman shiver. She slid her hands upward, across the wings to his shoulders.
“Gracie,” he said, in a voice gravelly and low. “If you keep that up...”
He didn’t have to finish his sentence; she knew exactly what he was going to say, and she was already too far gone. Now that she had touched him she couldn’t stop. The ache pulsed downward and settled between her thighs and she could feel herself getting wet. His skin was hot and smooth against her palms as she slid them upward across the eagle’s wings.
Over his shoulders.
Down his arms.
He moaned softly and uttered her name, and all she could think was mine. She wanted him, and nothing was going to stop her from having him this time.
She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek to his wide back, threading her fingers through the thick, crisp hair on his chest, his hard nipples tickling her palms.
His head fell back and he cursed under his breath as she hugged herself close to his body, but it wasn’t close enough. She wanted to crawl inside of him, be a part of his being. A part of his soul.
He had always been a part of hers. Maybe that was why his betrayal had hurt so much.
“Last warning,” he told her. He was still holding back, but he was wasting his time. She dragged her nails down his chest to his stomach, gently, so it was barely more than a tease, then slipped her hands under the waistband of his shorts. He groaned as she wrapped one hand around his erection. He was solid and hot in her hand. She stroked him, gently at first, then she squeezed.
With a throaty growl he spun her around to face her, then wrapped his arms around her and lifted her right off her feet. She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips, and when their lips met and their tongues tangled in a desperate kiss, it felt just like it had that first time so many years ago.
They fell onto the bed, Roman on top of her. He grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and pulled it up over her head. She moaned as he buried his face in her cleavage and tugged the cups of her bra down.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, teasing the tip of one breast with his tongue, then nipping just hard enough to make her gasp. After all this time he still knew what to do to drive her crazy. He did the same to the other side, then he unfastened her bra with an adept flick of his fingers, pulled it off her and tossed it somewhere over his shoulder. Then he kissed her again, the hair on his chest tickling her nipples in the most tantalizing way.
She yanked his shorts off over his hips and used her feet to push them down his legs, desperate to feel him inside her. There was a fire building at her core, an ember burning hot on the verge of igniting.
He rose up on his knees, stripping her out of her pants and underwear in one swift motion, and grabbed a condom out of the drawer of the bedside table. Tearing the packet open with his teeth, he wasted no time rolling the condom on. Then he was back on top of her, his weight sinking her into the covers. He teased her first, sliding his erection against her. She was so slick and sensitive she probably could have climaxed just like that. But then he stopped, pulling back slightly. If he stopped now she was afraid that she actually might die from the ache building inside her.
She grabbed his muscular backside, and though she had never been one to beg she said, “Please, don’t stop.”
He grinned down at her, eyes glazed, his lids heavy. “Not a chance in hell.”
His eyes locked on hers as he slowly entered her, giving her just an inch or two before pulling back again. Slow and gentle and sweet. But she didn’t want slow. She needed him inside her now.
Digging into his buttocks with her nails, she thrust her hips upward against him. She cried out as he sank as deep as he could go. Roman moaned and buried his head in the crook of her neck as he cursed and told her with gritted teeth, “Slow down.”
But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to slow down. She arched up to meet each of his thrusts, slipping easily into the rhythm they had mastered so long ago, their bodies so perfectly in sync it was almost as if they were one person.
Across the room, in the mirror above his chest of drawers, she could see their reflection. She lay beneath him, her legs hooked tightly around his hips, his muscular backside flexing with every thrust. It was the hottest, most arousing thing she had ever seen, and her muscles instantly began to coil and tighten. He must have felt it, too. He groaned and tunneled his fingers through her hair, kissed her hard as she reached a crest of pleasure that left her weak and breathless.
Moaning as her muscles gripped and pulsed around him, Roman was only seconds behind her. He picked up speed and pressed his forehead to hers, eyes squeezing shut as every muscle in his body tensed. “Gracie,” he moaned as he climaxed, holding her so close and so tight she could almost feel the pleasure coursing through him.
Shuddering and gasping for air, they lay like that, wrapped in each other’s arms, their bodies still intimately joined. And though she tried to fight it, feelings of affection threatened to overwhelm her.
This was just good sex, she told herself. No, not good sex. Fantastic sex. Mind-blowing, earth-shattering, out-of-this-universe sex.
But still just sex.
Then he lifted his head and looked deep in her eyes, teased the tip of her nose with his own and smiled, and her insides went all gooey again. But not gooey enough to say or do something she would later regret.
She was a woman who kept her heart carefully guarded and locked up tight. He used to have the key, but it would do him no good. It had taken so long for her broken heart to repair itself that the lock had rusted shut. And she refused to let anyone, especially him, break it again.
Besides, even if she wanted it to be more, even if she could someday forgive and trust him again, her family never would. Sure, he was charming and funny and great in bed, but he had given her no reason to trust him. And far too many reasons not to.
Grace stood with her sisters amidst the crowd at the construction site of the new children’s hospital, shivering under her cashmere coat. The reception for donors was set to begin in just a few minutes and she had serious mixed feelings about being there. After all, the Newport brothers were naming the hospital after Cynthia Newport. The woman with whom her father had had an affair and an illegitimate child. But Carson was her half-brother, and Eve was engaged to his brother Graham, so how could she not be there for them? The project was being funded almost entirely by the Newports.
She turned to scan the crowd to see