This is as inevitable as day following night, autumn embracing winter. I want him, but I want more than that. I want to make him lose his mind as much as I am losing mine.
I pull away from him with regret, and he makes a sound of frustrated confusion. I drop to the floor between his legs and loosen his belt, my eyes holding his as I pull it from his jeans and then unclasp his button and zip.
He knows what’s about to happen and he doesn’t move. He stares at me, as lost in the moment as I am.
He is rock-hard and I bring my mouth to his tip first, encircling him with my tongue, my eyes locked to his as I tease him with what’s to follow.
He keeps his hands by his sides, balled into fists, his expression one of determination.
‘Something wrong?’ I smile as I take him deeper, rolling my tongue over him as I guide him to the back of my mouth.
‘Fuck...’ He shakes his head.
But as I move my mouth up and down, he moans my real name, low in his throat.
‘Alicia... You are perfect.’
I’m not.
We’re not.
But this is.
Our bodies might well have been forged with this in mind. They are perfectly designed to please one another. It has never been like this for me. Not with anyone before Jeremy, and not even with Jeremy.
What we shared was good once. But it was borne of love and friendship and knowing one another.
This is different.
It’s indefinable.
At least for me.
I wonder if it has ever been like this for him. If it was like this with Sienna. Or anyone else. Has there been anyone else for him?
I know they were together a long time...
These are questions I want answered, but not now. Now I want to experience this moment to the full.
I bring one hand to cup him around his base and I roll him further back in my mouth. He lifts his hands over his head and slides lower on the sofa, giving me more access, and I taste a hint of him in my mouth.
He drops a hand to my hair, and another to my shoulder, and I know why. He wants me to stop before he finishes.
But the power is thrilling. I take him deeper and he lets out a groan. And then he moves, sliding across the sofa, out of my grip. He moves quickly, dropping onto the floor beside me at first, and then he is behind me. He straddles me, his chest to my back, the weight of his body bending me over the sofa so that my face is flat against the cushions. He’s so deep, and my body welcomes him as its master returning.
His fingers find my nipples and he teases them, pulling at them, cupping my breasts, his fingers callused against my smooth skin.
I swear low in my throat as he pushes into me again, harder, faster, and then he drops one hand to my clit and moves his fingers over me. I explode. It is fast, it is intense, and I am loud. I cry out with no care for who hears me. Pleasure rips through me like a hurricane.
I kneel straight up, arching my back, but that just gives him better access. To my breasts, to my body, and then his mouth is on my throat, kissing me as his harder-than-granite dick controls me.
I am his.
I am completely his.
‘Your mouth on me is the fucking hottest thing ever.’
‘No...’ I shake my head, trying to find his lips. It’s too awkward the way I’m positioned. ‘This is.’
He laughs—a sound of dangerous desire. He brings his hand around to my ass and then to the small of my back. He presses down with enough strength to bend me over the sofa again. I do not even dream of resisting. I am on a ride of his creation and it is a good ride.
The best.
He holds my hips, his fingers digging into my flesh in a way that is deliciously painful, and he drives into me, thrusting and finding every single nerve inside me. My body is melting. His fingers run over my flesh, across the curves of my ass, and I moan as he moves inside me.
Heaven is a place and it’s right here—in the middle of the Gramercy Park Hotel.
* * *
It is midnight when I surface from the haze of our sensual exploration. My body is heavy with lust and liquid heat. Ethan is asleep beside me. I roll over, staring at him, watching the rhythmic intake of his breath, the gentle exhalations, and I smile at his beauty in repose. At the way he looks younger somehow. And so handsome.
I don’t want to go. Which is all the more reason why I must.
I slide sideways slowly, pulling myself out from under his arm. I’m almost there. But when I’m right at the edge of the bed his fingers clamp around my upper arm and he pulls himself closer to me.
‘Stay, baby,’ he murmurs, the words husky and coated in sleep and dreams.
‘I can’t.’ I shouldn’t.
‘Stay.’ His eyes blink open groggily and land on my face.
And I weaken completely. I nod, smile and wriggle a little closer.
One more night won’t hurt.
‘IS THAT YOUR PHONE?’
I barely hear him through the haze of sleep. I am naked in his bed, my limbs heavy, my hair a tangle across my back. I push up onto my elbows and look at him quizzically, before realising that, yes, my phone is ringing.
‘Oh. Sorry.’ I reach for it and cringe when I see my mother’s face.
I swipe it to answer at the same time as I push out of his bed, grabbing one of the hotel bathrobes and wrapping it around me, cinching it in at the waist.
‘Hi, Mom.’
I move out of his bedroom and into the lounge, slipping a pod into the machine on autopilot.
‘Alicia Jane Douglas. Would you mind telling me what the hector you’re doing?’
‘I’m making coffee,’ I say only half-jokingly. ‘Where’s the outrage in that?’
‘Young lady, I’m serious.’
Young lady? Uh-oh. In my mom’s native tongue that’s really, really serious. It sobers me.
‘What about? What’s happened?
‘“Ethan Ash isn’t wasting any time moving on from Sienna Di Giorgio after her shock engagement to Tom Banks. The Grammy award-winning star was seen leaving his hotel with the same mystery woman he was spotted out and about with in SoHo last week. Could romance be on the cards for the heartbroken singer?”’
I grab the coffee cup out of the machine and stare at it, my heart racing. ‘What is that?’
‘It’s in the papers,’ she hisses. ‘I’ve had a photographer come to my house. This morning!’
Worse and worse. My mother believes calling on someone before midday is just plain rude. I grimace.
‘I’m sorry, Mom. It’s... It’s not like it sounds.’
‘Alicia, your father and I have barely recovered from your last run-in with poor decision-making. We’ve hardly lived down the reputation of what you did then. And now this article? Your father is the minister of this town, missy. How the hector is he going to explain this to his congregation?’
Colour flames my