No Romance Required

by Cari Quinn

  “Why didn’t you tell me that you’d come up with the donation program, not just the design?” she shot back, surprised when his grip only tightened on hers. “Besides, I thought donations were private.”

  “They normally are, except my brother thinks you’re a goddamn saint and couldn’t stop talking about you last night. He said you offered up an entire decorating package to two families, which is above and beyond.”

  The distaste in his tone made her frown, until his eyes flashed. “You’re jealous that Dillon likes me.”

  “I’m never jealous.” He gave her an impervious look. “And in case you’ve forgotten, you’re mine for the duration. As you chose.”

  You’re mine. He might as well have taken out the key to unlock her vagina. She could hear the cylinders click. Open, sesame.

  The movement of his finger held her captive, both from the jolts of pleasure radiating up her arm and from his skillful touch. “You know about pulse points.”

  “You’d be surprised what I know.”

  “You said that before.” She swallowed, hard. “And not so much.”

  He stepped closer. His features appeared carved in granite, but for the warmth of his eyes. No longer a flat, cool gray, they blazed with the intensity she’d only ever seen him apply to work. Now it was riveted on her.

  “I’m going to kiss you,” he murmured. “If you don’t want that, tell me now.”

  His words alone caused goose bumps to rise along her arms, despite the heat. She could leave. He was giving her ample opportunity to flee, just as she had last time. But this was, for all intents and purposes, their third chance up at bat. The first he’d fumbled, the second she had. If they struck out now, she’d never know what it was like to lose herself in her arms. She’d never get to watch his control shatter.

  Because of her.

  She moved in and slid her hand up to the back of his neck. Without her heels to narrow the gap in their heights, she felt at a definite disadvantage. He loomed over her, the breadth of his shoulders reminding her exactly how big he was. All over.

  He waited until she leaned up before closing the distance. Their mouths came together in a hard clash that knocked the few preconceptions she had left of him right out of her head. He slanted his lips over hers and drove his tongue deep, groaning as she seized hold and tugged.

  No hesitation. No doubts. Nothing but pure, sweet relief that it was so damn good between them, better than in her wildest dreams.

  She licked the length of his tongue, sliding her own back and forth in a languid tease. He yanked off her headband and sent it flying, then buried his hands in her hair, shifting her head so he could explore her thoroughly. Her mouth was his playground, and he claimed it with a carnal patience that set off a desperate pulse in her core.

  Panting, he gripped her arms to pull her up on her toes. When that wasn’t close enough, he hoisted her onto his hips and cupped her ass, somehow managing to hold her in place when her renewed kisses sent them flying back into the mirrored wall. His skull bounced off the glass and she gasped, reaching up to feel for blood or lumps. “Are you okay?”

  “That’s one way to solve this.” He opened one eye. “Kill me.”

  She deliberately rose up in his arms, putting his face near her straining breasts. They were both breathing raggedly, and it was hard for her to string words together. “You’re not dying until I get my fill, Santangelo.”

  “Take it off.” He looked down where her shirt had ridden up, exposing her navel. “Take it all off. Now.”

  The thrill in his demand incited a shiver. Her body didn’t seem to know the temperature was set on broil. “There is another class later.”

  “The operative word is later. Trust me, we won’t be bothered.”

  She frowned. “How do you know?”

  “I paid off the woman at the desk to reserve this room for our…discussion. Our privacy is assured.”

  Cocky much? But she couldn’t drum up any irritation, not when he’d turned her brain into an omelet with his kisses. Under other circumstances, she might’ve even found it amusing that he assumed no one would dare to challenge his will. Or his checkbook.

  “FYI, Santangelo, this a gym, not a motel.”

  “For Christ’s sake, will you just shut up and get naked?”

  Ignoring him, she shimmied down his body and gripped the waistband of her shorts. His eyes fired as he zeroed in on her fingers. Torturing him had always been one of her favorite things, and apparently that even applied when they were about to have sex.

  “Want me?” She cocked her head and played up her vamp role. “Then come and get me, big boy.”

  …

  Cory stalked toward her and yanked off his jacket and tie. She was right about one thing. Coming was definitely on the agenda.

  Normally he wasn’t one for sex other than in the place intended for it—with the occasional side trip into a shower or hot tub—but she made him absolutely crazy. This studio with its soft mats and walls of mirrors added its own sexy ambience, part of why he’d changed his plans from talking to touching. As soon as he’d walked in and seen her barely-there outfit and glowing, dewy skin, he’d walked right back out and reserved the room.

  Exactly how flexible was she from all that stretching and bending? Oh, the ideas he could conjure. Combining their knowledge of all the ways the human body could move—and be restrained—would be truly mind-blowing.

  She rolled down her shorts and kicked them off her toes with a leg extension than nearly made his eyes roll back. That yoga thing? Total win.

  He followed the long, silky line of her legs up to her triangle of golden curls. Not honey-blond like the hair on her head but as light as corn silk. Just enough to tease.

  Something he’d pretty much reached his limit on.

  He pounced, hitching an arm around her waist and lifting her off her feet. Then she was on her back on one of the cushy mats and he was on top of her, pushing her shirt higher. He already felt like he was coming out of his skin, on the verge of roasting alive, but the sight of her naked and exposed nearly popped off his damn head.

  She watched as he rolled her top up her toned torso to the bottom of her breasts. She was small enough that she’d gone without a bra yet he had no complaints. To his mind, she was made perfectly. Lithe and compact and incredible.

  Their gazes fused while he coaxed the clingy material over the taut tips, his trapped breath escaping in a hiss at each patch of skin revealed. He trailed kisses up the center of her abdomen, tasting the salt of her skin and inhaling the tang of her arousal. Her tan lines were still visible, her breasts paler than the rest of her and capped with pale-brown nipples. He traced the definition between darker skin and light with his tongue, deliberately avoiding her breasts. Reveling in her shudders and how she scraped her hands over the mat, digging in with her mermaid-green nails.

  He licked the swell of her breast. “You shouldn’t tan.” He grinned at her hazy expression, then made her eyes cloud all over again when he drew her nipple into his mouth and sucked her deep.

  Her hips bucked, and he rested his hand low on her belly right above that tantalizing strip of hair. He held her down and kindled her desire until sweat pearled at the top of her cleavage and her breath came in little gasps. They only increased when he switched to the other nipple and skimmed his palm over her mound. Her wetness glazed his skin, ripping a groan from his throat.

  If he tasted her as he wanted to, this would be over too soon. His pants clung to his painful erection from the temperature in the room, and his balls felt as tight as knots. He jerked open his remaining few buttons and managed to get off his shirt, which was sticking to him in the heat, without releasing her nipple.

  Up on her elbows she went, studying his body while she breathed through puckered lips. “Pants off.” She moaned at his increased suction. “Please. Want you…naked.”

  She wasn’t the only one. He’d probably have to content himself with permanent nudity if he succeede
d in peeling his pants off his body, because he damn well wouldn’t be getting them back on.

  He didn’t reply so as not to use his remaining air. It was already in short supply. He tugged off his belt, then winced as he forced off his trousers and boxer briefs. Goddamn, he was hard enough to hammer wood. And not dead wood either. All because of her delectable body reclined in front of him like an offering to the gods.

  To him.

  Finally he returned to kneel between her outstretched thighs. She wore that awed expression again, the one that made him smile. “You’re so b—” She stopped but it was too late. He was grinning. “C’mere,” she said, making a come-hither gesture he couldn’t comply with fast enough.

  His cock practically jumped into her grasp, and they both groaned at the feel of her hand closing around him. Christ, she had some grip on her.

  Her eyes never left his face. Gauging his every reaction. She worked him with skill, responding to him so acutely that he almost believed his pleasure was as addictive to her as seeking her own.

  “Ladies first. Didn’t anyone teach you that?” Edging back, he pressed his length hard and heavy against her belly while he arrowed his tongue along her nipple again, adding his teeth when she squirmed and moaned. “You’ve probably concluded I like to be in control.”

  Her irises had warmed to molasses, the color receding from her dilated pupils. She tossed her head, loosening her ponytail from its band and sending a few damp blond curls flying. Sunshine to chase away the twilight he’d left outside to find paradise in here with her. “So do I.”

  “You’re going to come on my fingers.” He gripped hers, nipping them. She cried out even before he touched her intimately, from the mere suggestion that he would.

  God, she was blowing his mind.

  He skated his hand down her damp torso and hooked a finger in her folds, growling at the surfeit of moisture. She gyrated, silently begging him to move. He dipped lower, building more heat with his caresses.

  Lightly, so lightly he touched her, using his other hand to turn her chin toward the mirror. Surprise flared in her expression as he spoke against the side of her mouth. “We’re both going to watch you shatter for me.”

  She shut her eyes, as if it were too much for her to bear. He stroked her harder and she whimpered, shaking her head in denial of what he would force her to feel. And force her he would.

  “Open,” he demanded, sure she knew he meant her eyes as well as her slick sex holding his fingers in a snug, unyielding grasp. She’d tried to close her thighs around him just like she’d closed her eyes.

  She granted his request, tilting her hips into his strokes and staring at their reflection. Staring at him while he gazed right back at her. Perspiration collected at her temples and he licked it, eager to taste her. She wiggled her stomach against the heft of his cock, its damp head trailing wetness over the flushed undersides of her breasts. Moans burst from her lips and he gentled his pace, wanting to string out her excitement.

  “Want to come?” His lips moved against her throat. “Claim your pleasure.”

  Chapter Six

  Uncertain, Victoria jerked back. “What do you mean?”

  He shifted against her, pinning her hips with his, enjoying her gasp. “Tell me what to do. Fingers only. Not tasting you now.” He nuzzled her neck. “That’s for later, when I have hours to devour you.”

  “Slow doesn’t do it for me. I need fast.” She licked her lips, flashing a hint of her tongue. “Rough.”

  “Eyes on the glass.” He moved back down her body and pried her legs open, inhaling deeply at the swollen pink flesh that awaited him. He couldn’t wait to savor every bit of her.

  “Don’t look at me,” he commanded when she sneaked another glance. “Look at the mirror. If I go off track, use those pretty little lips and tell me. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  He hiked up her thigh and drove his fingers in deep, two this time. She moaned as he pushed them in and out, releasing her leg so that he could use his other hand to hold her open. Laid bare like this, her tan lines framed her mound, highlighting the swollen pearl of nerves and how she flushed from his attention.

  “You’re fucking gorgeous,” he gritted out.

  Her nails scratched the yoga mat as he thumbed her clit, coordinating his movements with the withdrawal of his drenched fingers. This time her moans were so loud he considered stuffing her top in her mouth, just in case.

  She was everything and more he’d hoped for in bed—and on the floor—and in a minute, she was going to drench his hand. Or better yet, his cock.

  When she started to spasm, he drew free of her though he continued to circle her clit. She throbbed against the pad of his finger, all heat and unapologetic need.

  “Are you on the Pill?”

  She nodded so swiftly he would’ve grinned had he dared. Any unexpected movements and he feared he’d lose his tenuous grip on his control. “Yes. God, please,” she begged.

  “I don’t have a condom.” Irrefutable proof he hadn’t showed up for sex, though he damn well didn’t mind the turn of events.

  “It’s okay. Isn’t it?”

  Considering his track record of late, he did some rapid nodding of his own. “Yes.” He set the head of his cock against her entrance and closed his eyes. Then he whispered the word, like a prayer. “Yes.”

  So goddamn wet. So fucking hot. The inferno in the room seemed to be inside him now. Inside her as he sank deep. Tight and soft, she gripped him in a fiery fist, holding him there while he clamped his hands on her thighs and spread her wide.

  Slowly he drove deeper, noting with satisfaction that she still watched her face in the mirror. He did, too, riveted by the sight of her mouth widening every time he inched in farther. Her lashes fluttered and her taut nipples jutted when she bowed back, still maintaining that link between them in the glass.

  He anchored his hands on her waist and tightened at the feel of her coiling her legs around his hips. She clasped him deep, rippling around him in silent supplication. He traveled as far as he could go, then changed the slant of his thrusts when her desperate moans demanded more. He was already steeped in her, her relentless need twining urgent ropes of desire around his throat. His cock.

  His heart.

  She pressed her heels against his ass and drew her lean, impossibly toned body up, arching in an erotic bridge he thanked the yoga gods for. Then he was plunging into her, mindless to everything but the feel of her squeezing him from root to tip. Wrenching more pleasure from him than he’d believed he was capable of feeling. Blowing through his limits until they were shattered roadblocks on the way to the bliss he’d found in her sweet, selfless body.

  He’d lost all control. She’d pushed him to the point where there was nothing but her and him, and the magic they made together.

  When the orgasm finally overtook her, the most lovely smile he’d ever seen in his life crossed her face. As she succumbed, he did, too, in long, endless pulses that shuddered through him and flowed into her, extending her climax. She twitched around him, prodding another groan from his throat.

  She’d completely wrecked him.

  Eventually he shifted them onto their sides on the mat. Playfully, she walked her fingers up his stomach, but he couldn’t even dredge up a smile. His chest felt too tight, as if his overheated skin had shrunk. His heart was still racing. Maybe he needed to up his cardio.

  “Tired?” she teased.

  “It’s been a while.” He grimaced at the pile of his discarded clothes, wishing he didn’t have to go back to work for the first time in forever.

  With the new stores opening soon, he had a million things to handle. He didn’t do days off, nor did he take extra-long dinner breaks. Along with the usual tasks, there was the upcoming magazine launch and his parents’ looming retirement. He’d think of more, once his synapses figured out how to fire again.

  Other parts of him he’d given up—temporarily—as casualties of war.

&nbs
p; She sifted her fingers through his chest hair. “What’re you thinking?”

  He glanced at her enthusiastic smile and his aching chest locked up. In another minute she’d rest her head on his shoulder, and he’d be confronted with all he wasn’t. Maybe he’d fooled her for the moment, but the truth always came out.

  She wasn’t going to find his workaholic ways satisfying for long. Soon she’d be bopping on to new adventures and he’d be left just…left.

  He opened his mouth to speak just as his phone went off in his jacket. He stood and walked over to where he’d dropped it, then snatched his cell from his pocket, never more grateful to hear his secretary’s voice. There was an issue at one of the rental properties and she couldn’t reach Dillon. Could he come in right away?

  Oh yes, he could.

  “I’m on my way,” he said, hanging up.

  His eyes met Victoria’s. “I have to go. Dill’s unavailable and there’s an issue at the Rison. Nancy needs me to come in.”

  She frowned and he swiped off the perspiration on his forehead. If only he could shed the guilt as easily. “Right now? Can’t you stay for a few?”

  “Sorry, Nancy’s waiting. But I’ll see you Friday as usual. Okay?” He rose and dressed in his wrinkled suit, then left before he could make things any worse.

  Like by having sex with her again.

  …

  The normal thing for a woman to do after having sex with a guy she’d sort of crushed on for years was probably to replay it over and over again, not try to block it out.

  Vicky had never been normal.

  In this case, she had good reasons for going into mental denial mode. It wasn’t because it had been bad. Oh no siree. Much as she hated to admit it, she’d never experienced anything even half as mind-blowing.

  Which was most of the problem. She had a tendency to want to repeat amazing things. Or in the case of sex with Cory, repeat it until she couldn’t walk straight.

  So she’d tried not to think about it. Much. Okay, not more than sixty-two times per hour. That had worked until this evening. How could it be Sunday already? Cory hadn’t even picked her up for dinner at his parents’ yet and she was damn near ready to jump him on sight.