Tangled: A New Adult Romance Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle of Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Royalty)

by Lakes, Krista

  Inwardly, I shiver.

  Our main course arrives. I have ordered the halibut, and Alex the lamb.

  “You’re not enjoying your food much,” he observes, seeing me cut my fish into little pieces and taking a tentative bite out of one.

  “I’m stuffed, that’s all.”

  “Liar. You’re a bundle of nerves.”

  How perceptive.

  “Well, you do unnerve me. All this,” I wave my hand around, “unnerves me.”

  There – my frank and honest declaration.

  He’s solicitous again. “You don’t like it?”

  “I do . . . it’s just that . . . I’m not used to it, that’s all.”

  “You’d rather we go to Sal’s diner and have a greasy burger and fries?”

  I laugh. “I’m more of a salad person.”

  “I can tell. You have a great figure.” He raises one eyebrow and lowers it again. “Don’t worry. I can see the look on your face. I’m not going to jump you, Liz. Not tonight, I firmly promise. This is just a date. No strings attached.”

  That’s good. He’s not going to jump me.

  Why do I feel so disappointed?

  He adds, “There are chaperones all around, as you can see. The pilot, Arabella, the rest of the stewardesses. Everyone’s around us to make sure I behave myself around you.”

  Hang on. This is exactly what I wanted, isn’t it? I’m the one who pulled away from sex that last time.

  And he owns the damned plane. He can tell them to stay where they are – cocooned in their pilot’s cockpit or the back or whatever they call those compartments stewardesses hang out in. He still can misbehave, and they won’t do a damned thing.

  Right?

  Nevertheless, after this admission, I find myself relaxing. I recover enough to take more bites out of my halibut, which has been steamed to perfection. Alex knifes his lamb, smiling and watching me.

  “Am I really such an ogre, Liz?” he says.

  An ogre? A god, more like. I like to think of him as Hermes – the mercurial messenger god.

  “Not an ogre. Just remarkably unpredictable.”

  “I can live with that.” He tips his handsome head back.

  Oh, but I can stare for hours at his profile – at that exquisitely sculptured face and those deep, deep alluring eyes.

  Outside, the windows have darkened into night.

  “Just where are we going, Alex?”

  He flashes me a smile. “Nowhere tonight. But somewhere tomorrow, I hope.”

  It sounds like a metaphor.

  “Nowhere?”

  “We’re just cruising, circling the skies. This is a date thirty thousand feet up.”

  Ah yes. I’ve never had a date thirty thousand feet in the sky before.

  “Sorry for not having candlelight,” he adds ruefully. “Any form of fire’s not allowed in the cabin.”

  I can’t help laughing.

  Boy, but Alexander Vassar has a way with him.

  11

  Sometime after dessert, the plane makes a circuit.

  I’ve changed my tomato juice to a margarita, and then a vodka with lime. So I’m a little tipsy and uninhibited. I don’t think I’ve had that much alcohol at one sitting.

  I’m relaxed. More relaxed than I have been in a long while. In fact, I’ve kicked off my shoes and I’m now lounging back in my comfortable seat, enjoying its plushness and silky smooth exterior.

  Alex is relaxed too. Relaxed enough to remove his jacket, undo two of his top buttons and kick off his shoes. He’s leaning back in his chair and smiling at me.

  I say softly, “Why did you ask me out on a date tonight?”

  “Because I wanted to see you again.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to see me again? I’m – ” I shrug my shoulders. “I’m a college student moonlighting as a hotel maid.”

  “And that makes you different from anybody else? Better?”

  I almost choke. “Better? That’s not what I’m implying.”

  He brushes a tendril of hair from his brow. “Maybe that’s the trouble, Liz. You don’t accept me for who I am. I, on the other hand, completely acknowledge and accept you for who you are.”

  So he’s turning the tables on me.

  “Isn’t Tatiana more your type?”

  He snorts. “I don’t want girls like Tatiana.”

  “Why not? She’s drop dead gorgeous.” Not to mention rich. And probably some sort of European countess, if they still make them.

  “Maybe that’s exactly it. I don’t want drop dead gorgeous.”

  “And I’m not?” Part of me reels back in dismay. I think I’m getting closer to what all this is about – finally. He’s being a rebel. Running away from his clique. Being everything his parents do not want him to be. Going for a girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

  He leans over earnestly. There’s a soft light shining in his eyes, and he is mesmerizingly and beguilingly beautiful. His generous lips stretch upward in wide invitation.

  “You are the freshest, most innocent woman I’ve ever met, Elizabeth Turner, and you intrigue me.”

  Yes, we are very close now to the revelation.

  So I’m different. He wants different.

  “You’re beautiful, Liz. You just don’t know it. You hide it underneath that veneer of work and insecurity – ”

  “Insecurity!”

  “Yes, insecurity. You’re insecure, Liz. You don’t think you are physically attractive, even though you are. You don’t think a guy can desire you for who you are. You’re always looking over your shoulder, looking for ulterior motives in everyone else when there are none.”

  I should be outraged. “You hardly know me, and you’re talking to me like this?”

  My heart is thudding. How dare he psychoanalyze me? I should storm out of here, except for the fact that we are thirty thousand feet above the ground.

  “You asked me why I wanted to see you again, Liz. Is that what you’d ask another college junior in your class? Someone you’d consider your peer?” He makes it sound like it’s a bad word.

  “You can’t blame me for being suspicious,” I say in defense.

  He takes a deep breath and says in earnest, “I won’t lie to you, Liz. I desire you and your body, and I’m completely captivated by you and how you think. You’re an enigma to me. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that day we met. Is that so difficult to believe?”

  My pulse is like a beat box in my ears. Alex’s eyes have darkened and his nostrils flare.

  Oh my. We’re going someplace I’m not ready for. And I’m not talking about sex.

  I grip the armrest.

  “Guys like you, Alex, they are not for keeps. Maybe I want something for keeps. Something real from my part of the world.”

  “And I’m not real?” A look of hurt actually flits over his face. That look – a flash of vulnerability and pain that glosses across his beautiful features – is so raw and intense that an actual pang sears through me. “Just in case you haven’t noticed, Liz, I’m not some glossy paparazzi photo in a magazine. I’m flesh and blood. I have feelings, just like you. And you are making assumptions about me. You’re discriminating against me.”

  “I’m discriminating against you?” Of all the absurd things to say!

  “Yes. You’re painting a stereotype of what I should be and that’s unfair.”

  I hate to admit this, but he’s right.

  He holds his hands up in a gesture of placation. His face has become serene again. The twitch of vulnerability is gone.

  “I’m not here to fight with you, Liz. I’m just being brutally honest. I’m attracted to you. Hell, I’m more than attracted to you . . . you have no idea how much.”

  His eyes burn when he says this, and a deep shudder – an erotic thrill – goes through me all the way right down to the center of my pubis. I can feel my inner muscles clenching.

  Oh my God. A man like this .
. . desiring me. Maybe even . . . dare I say it? And this frightens me a little . . . obsessed with me.

  I don’t know how I’m ever going to live up to that. The immense pressure I’m going to face – of being desired, of being wanted, of not measuring up when he finally discovers who I really am . . .

  Alex leans over, his face softening. “You have no idea how much I want to kiss you right now.”

  The air around me stills, as if it’s been sucked into a vacuum. I can hear my heartbeat very acutely in my ears – ba dup, ba dup, ba dup – a staccato of anticipation in the dead calm.

  Hell. I want to kiss him so badly too.

  So badly like you have no idea.

  It’s like that first moment I met him. Call it kismet or universes colliding and all that schmaltzy stuff – but it does happen, and it’s happening right now, and two people can really make an intense physical connection that can only be considered love/lust? at first sight. And I don’t quite know what is happening again, only that I’m swept away in its tide.

  He’s out of his chair and upon me. I know he says he isn’t going to jump me tonight, but here he is – it’s like he can’t really help himself around me, and that makes me feel powerful and desirable and crazy with lust and everything I shouldn’t be. He’s pulling me up to my bare feet, and I’m kissing him back. Our lips are locked in a warm, moist embrace, and his tongue is fiercely probing through my parted ones and searching my mouth.

  His arms are around my back, my waist, and they are roaming everywhere up and down my body. They are on my breasts, where he cups them beneath the fairy light material, and down to my waist again, and I’m getting so hot and bothered and in need.

  My hands are traversing the length of his body too – his sides, his back, almost to his buttocks underneath his pants. I’m so aroused and abandoned, and his lips are so intoxicating and heady . . . and everything south of my navel goes molten and in hunger and in a terrible, terrible craving to be filled –

  Then suddenly – inexplicably – he stops.

  What the – ?

  His soft lips withdraw from mine.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, “I know I said I wouldn’t do this to you . . . but I can’t help myself. I’m sorry.”

  For answer, I do the only thing I can physically do under my feverish circumstances. My hormones are already raging in crazy currents all over my body, and it’s like a fire has been ignited inside me – a spark that is being fanned by the winds of my frantic, frenetic longing.

  I can’t stop even if I wanted to. Oh help me, God.

  I grab his hair and kiss him back. Longingly, fiercely, and with every ounce of erupted passion I have inside me.

  I think we are in so deeply as to be considered gone.

  We shed our clothes, not caring who walks in at that moment – Arabella or the pilots or someone else who just happens to be listening at the door. (And I’m sure they are.) He rips a little part of the delicate fabric that makes my dress in his haste to get it off.

  “I’ll get you another one. I promise,” he says.

  At this moment, I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life with him naked.

  For answer, I unbutton the rest of his shirt and pull it out of his pants. I fumble at his belt buckle, whose clasp just refuses to come off. He grins and takes his hands off me to undo it himself. He unzips and drops his pants. I can barely keep my hands off his revealed torso – all gleaming lines and muscle and eight-pack. He’s wearing a pair of white briefs, and it’s deliciously tented in the front (oh my God, I did this to him . . . me!) and it’s suddenly off too and down his firmly toned legs –

  My mouth dries when I see his ready and fully tumescent member

  which is

  so ripe and bursting with sap and goodness and promise and everything wonderful and scary and

  He gathers me in his arms again, and I realize that my brassiere and panties are off too, and the only things I’m wearing are my diamond choker and earrings. He’s kissing me again, and down my throat . . . my neck, my collarbones. These are deep, wet planted kisses, and he trails his mouth (and tongue!) down to my breasts.

  He circles my right nipple, making slow little oscillatory trails with his tongue tip (ohhhhhh). Warm blood immediately flows into both my nipples, and they twitch with puckered eroticism, and I can feel the tiny hairs on my entire body stand up.

  He pushes me gently down on my chair, and without me realizing it, depresses a button on the armrest that slowly winds the back of the chair downwards, and the footrest upwards – down, down and up, up until the whole cushy ensemble becomes a flat bed.

  He presses me against that plush but firm bed. It’s his hunger that undoes me.

  “Please,” I gasp, “I want you inside me.”

  “Later,” he murmurs, never taking his mouth off my nipple. His hands sponge and grapple my breasts to plump them up so that my nipples rise even more protuberantly. When he decides that my right nipple has been suckled, licked and caressed into frenzied submission, he transfers his mouth to my left.

  His fingers curl and skate down to my moist pussy – which is practically overflowing with my juices now – and when his knuckle bunches against my throbbing clit, I let out a soft moan.

  He raises his mouth. “Oh, you like that, don’t you?”

  I’m too flushed to nod. He continues his purposeful nuzzling . . . no, nudging – a back and forth rubbing movement upon the hood of my clitoris with his knuckle that is both pulverizing and releasing. And I’m curling my fists and moaning and putting them into my mouth to chew. He spreads my legs wider, and I’m so embarrassed – I who have never been in this position. I grip any part of the seat I can get my fingers on.

  And his head descends. His tongue makes a clean plunge down my stomach – which is thankfully taut – and into my bellybutton. Then down, down . . . slithering its warm, wet path as it goes down. When it touches my clit for the first time, it’s as though I have been set ablaze.

  “N-no, Alex, please.”

  He holds my hips down with his strong hands. I clutch at his hair – his marvelous, silky hair – and he’s relentless as he tongues and tongues my clit and nether lips. Oh, that slippery, sliding tongue with a life and capriciousness of its own. He probes it deeply into my secret grooves, and I almost come wildly.

  “Please, Alex, I c-can’t . . . stand it.”

  He doesn’t care, and tortures me with this delicious friction further. To add insult to my torment, he slyly worms a finger into my secret hole, which is a sopping and weeping mess. My muscles contract around his finger, and the heat down there is so intense, and I whip my head to the other side and claw desperately at his hair and neck and any part of him I can reach.

  Ohhhh. He feels soooooo good. I’ve never had this done to me before, and I never knew such pleasure existed. It makes me feel proud to be a woman, and proud to be made to feel like one by this wonderful, beguiling man, and I’m enjoying this moment for all it’s worth . . . even if I know that this animalistic attraction he has for me won’t last forever.

  He whips up his head, and I can see his lips – red and smeared by my juices. He’s smiling, as always.

  “You know,” he says, “I brought a condom. Just in case.”

  He reaches for his discarded pants.

  I’m still panting. “And here I thought you said you weren’t going to seduce me tonight, Mr. Vassar.”

  I feel coquettish and desired. A part of me I never knew existed is coming out.

  “Mr.” He takes out a gold foil packet from his side pocket and tears it with his teeth. “I like that. None of that reverent ‘your highness’ stuff.”

  A damp condom falls out. He picks it up and hands it to me with the most solemn of expressions, although the sides of his glorious mouth are threatening to twitch.

  “Care to roll it on?” he says.

  Oh no. I can’t. I haven’t done this before.

  I can’t . . . I really can’t.


  He sees the panicked expression on my face and relents. “Next time then.”

  So there will be a next time?

  I know . . . he’s right about me. I’ve brow-beaten myself all my life and my confidence is about as big as a speck of dust. It’s going to take a lot to get it balloon into normal proportions.

  He positions himself between my legs and rolls the condom onto his cock. I almost can’t bear to look at it. His penis is so huge, so spectacular, so masculine, so merciless. I shut my eyes as he lowers himself upon me. The head of his sheathed penis poises at my swollen sex, ready to enter.

  “Take a deep breath, Liz,” he whispers as he pushes himself into me.

  Oh, but it’s such a rush. His flesh slams into me headlong, parting my vaginal walls in a sluice. I am so filled, so expanded. He slides into me as deeply as he can possibly go, and clutches at my waist and arms as he begins to stroke into me. His eyes hold mine, and they are bright and shining and mesmerizing as he pounds me and nails himself into me and does all things a man can physically do to a woman when he fucks her.

  I can only arch my hips to meet his, higher and higher, and he is grasping and clutching at me – my sides, my breasts, my waist, my arms, my hair – everything. His breathing grows more ragged. His hair falls in shivery strands around his beautiful face.

  He’s raw sex himself. Intoxicating. Fiery. Passionate.

  “Oh God, Liz, what you do to me,” he groans.

  A sweet elation fills me as my own wave rises and crests. That I can even do this to him and with him imbues me with my own overpowering sense of awe. I rise and crest, rise and crest like a breaker along the beach, until a sweet white explosion fills me and I completely lose all my senses.

  Ahhhhhhhh!

  And

  Ohhhhhhh

  And

  a deep, sweet shudder of satisfaction washes through me.

  Oh God.

  This is where I’m meant to be.

  Sheer utter bliss.

  12

  I spend the next day sleeping it off in my own bedroom. My dreams are contented and filled with smoky images of Alex.

  Alex.

  I can stare at him – even in a dream – forever. It seems impossible that such a gorgeous and desirable man would want to make love to me . . . which he has done. Twice.