“Are you—?” His voice had a scraping quality to it that he cleared away before he started again. “Are you alright?” His entire body dreaded the answer.
Iris propped herself up and leaned over Marcus. Pressing against him, she rattled around on the nightstand for something. “Well, I’m starving. Do you think room service would bring us something to eat this late?” She squinted through the dark at the menu she was holding, but found she couldn’t read a thing.
Food? After what had just happened she was cavalierly bringing up a midnight snack? Marcus commanded his brain to compute, but no dice. He was as confused now as he’d been a few seconds ago.
“Iris,” he said, setting the menu aside. He had to know. “Are you alright after what just happened?”
“I mean,” she reached for the menu again, “my entire worldview has been rocked, but yeah, I’m doing…” she trailed off as his expression registered. He was being serious. He legitimately thought that she might not be alright. She suddenly realized that he wasn’t snuggling or cuddling her. He was completely still underneath her like he was terrified of hurting her. “Marcus. Are you alright?”
He took a deep breath and slammed his eyes closed for just a second. “I can’t lie to you, Iris, that was the most incredible thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m not exaggerating. That. That was—God.”
Iris squirmed against him in delight at his words. He was more experienced than she was, so to hear that she not only measured up, but surpassed? Well, that just made her feel good.
“But I know,” he continued and had her brow furrowing, “I know it was really intense. And,” he scraped a hand over his eyes, “I know it was too much.”
Iris frowned, propping her chin up on one fist as she struggled to understand. “Of course it was too much,” she told him and watched as his expression hardened. But she was far from finished. “It was… everything.”
She made a little noise in the back of her throat as images from what just happened swamped her. She closed her eyes and shivered. “I didn’t know a man could love on me like that,” she continued. “I want to do that every day for the rest of my life.”
Suddenly her eyes snapped open and she sat up next to him, tucking her feet underneath him and tracing a hand over his perfect chest. She didn’t notice the intensely mystified expression on his face. “Is there more? Does it get more intense than that? Were you holding back?”
He struggled to keep up. To understand what she was saying. She wanted to do that every day for the rest of her life? It was everything? He cleared his throat and stared at her face, looking for any clue that would help him understand. “I was trying to.”
“Next time, don’t hold back anything.” She absently dropped her head and kissed him at the hollow of his throat. “Next time I want everything you can give.”
“Next time.” The thought stuttered through him. Blooming and tripping at the same moment. Next time?
She wanted more.
She wanted more of him.
He hadn’t destroyed everything. He hadn’t destroyed her. He’d barely let the possibility occur to him, convinced as he was that she was going to be overwhelmed by the way he’d loved her. “You want there to be a next time?”
She pulled back from him sharply and took her lip between her teeth. It was the expression he’d been expecting to see from her. Shy and uncertain and a little damaged. But then she let out a big puff of air and something in her eyes went certain. “Yes, I want there to be a next time. I want there to be a thousand next times. Don’t…don’t you?”
His arms moved for the first time since he’d rolled off of her and it was to bring them around her. He gathered her up and a warmth rolled through him. But he wasn’t quite ready to bask in it. He needed more information and fast. “Of course I want a next time with you, Iris. I want the rest of my life to be one big next time.”
The words were clumsy and a little cheesy, but they brought a humongous grin out on her face and Marcus didn’t regret them at all.
“So, what’s the problem then?” she asked. “Why are you all…?” she pulled her face into a grimacing, sober expression that perfectly imitated his. He couldn’t help but crack a small smile.
“Because,” his eyes searched the ceiling as if he could find the right words there. “Because I lost control with you. And I wasn’t sure if you… liked it.”
“Oh.” She snuggled into him further because it was what they both needed. “Marcus, if you’d been a one night stand or something, yeah, what just happened probably would have been overwhelming. But you’re not a one night stand.”
His eyes tracked hers and she could tell that he was clinging to her words. That she had the power to send him to heaven or to hell right now. She wasn’t sure she wanted that power, but she respected it.
“That… that wasn’t just sex. Not for me or for you,” she continued in a voice that shook with nerves. He might never know how much courage it took for her to say that, considering the way that Jet had played her to the side. Convinced her that she’d misconstrued what had been happening between them. But she refused to let fear downplay what had just happened between her and Marcus. It had been special. And that was that. “That really meant something. And you really mean something, Marcus. To me.” She blushed hard and cast her eyes down.
“Give me those eyes, baby,” he whispered.
She looked up on a deep breath. “I loved what just happened. You were lost in me. I’ve never seen you like that before. Crazy for me. I liked it. I loved it.”
He stroked a hand over the back of her neck and hitched her up his body so that he could kiss the hell out of her. “You know that when I get like that, you can stop me. Just ask me. Ask me for anything and I’ll give it to you.”
“I know.” She nodded confidently. “I didn’t want you to stop. How could I? You were doing something to me that—” She cut off, her legs started to wiggle a little bit as she remembered the way he’d made her feel.
“That…” he prompted, a small smile starting to make its way onto his face.
She blushed, but why shouldn’t she tell him? What did she have to hide? “That I’ve never felt before. And certainly not at the hands of a man.”
Marcus frowned and slipped his hands through her hair. “Not that I want to bring him up, but the more I know about him, the more I really hate this Jet asshole.”
Iris laughed. “He’s not worth the energy. But it was never like that with him. Not even close. He didn’t pay attention to me and he never made me feel safe. Not the way you do.”
Images of what had just happened flashed through Marcus’s mind. Awe at her words descended over him like fog over an early morning pond. “I make you feel safe,” he repeated, almost blankly. “Even after I just lost my mortal mind on your body.”
“You’ve always made me feel safe,” she answered immediately, confused by his confusion. “I mean, it was your job to protect me, of course. But it was more than that.”
She sat up again, crossing her legs under herself, sensing that he really, really needed to hear this. “Marcus, you protect me. And not just as an agent. As a man.” She thought hard. “Except when you were being a real dipstick on the way to the FBI building that one time, you’ve never failed to make me feel your complete focus on me. On my safety and wellbeing.”
His mouth pulled tight in chagrin. “Dipstick is generous.”
“Yeah, well,” she waved a hand in the air. “I’m not into name calling. And besides, I figured out why you were being so grumpy with me anyways. So I’m not mad about it anymore.”
She looked so satisfied and happy and sweet that Marcus couldn’t help but smile as he traced a hand down one of her folded legs. None of this was going at all how he expected and he couldn’t be happier. “Why was I being so grumpy then?”
She pinned him with her eyes. “Because you were scared of losing me. That I’d be assigned elsewhere and you wouldn’t get to be around me anymore.”<
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For the first time, it was Marcus who broke their eye contact. He took her and tucked her into his side, laying her next to him. The intensity of her eyes and her gaze and her words were all too much for him. She’d seen everything. He hadn’t really been trying to hide it. But some of this stuff he hadn’t even admitted to himself yet.
“Was I right?” she asked, bobbing her head up. An expectant smile lit her face up like an overeager student in a classroom.
He couldn’t help but laugh and press a short kiss to her lips. He cast around beside him for the room phone and dialed zero. “Room Service? Yes. This is room 1009. Are you still serving food? Alright. Two pb and js. Two bags of chips. And do you have any dessert? Perfect. Alright. Thanks.”
He hung up. She knew that he’d deftly avoided her question but she didn’t care. Because there he went, taking care of her again. As soon as he hung up the phone, Iris flung herself at this man. At this perfect, gruff, grumpy man who’d blown her mind. Love for him rocketed up through her like electricity and it almost tripped off her tongue. The words. Words she’d never said to a man. But as his lips found hers in the dark, Iris forgot everything but the feeling of his body pressed against hers.
They rolled and just like before, she found herself pinned between the mattress and his body. He was more than just dominant, he was obliterating. She shivered against him as his mouth fell from hers down to her neck, her collarbones. Minutes dissolved away as they rubbed and petted on one another.
Marcus growled frustration into the air when a sharp knock sounded on their door. “Room Service!”
He was crawling off her and off the bed when Iris sprang up, grabbing a hotel robe off a hook and sliding it on.
“I’ll get it.” He frowned, wanting to bring the food to her in bed.
“Please,” she grinned at him. “You can’t answer the door in your state.” She dropped her eyes pointedly to his very prominent arousal. “You’ll traumatize the poor bellhop.”
He couldn’t help but laugh as he fell back onto the bed, grinning like a fool as he listened to her accept the food, say a few kind words to the bellhop.
He expected her to be smiling just as much when she came back to the bed, but there was a slight tinge of embarrassment on her cheeks instead. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth.
He propped himself up and felt a slicing tremor of desire for her as she absently let the robe fall and climbed onto the bed with a tray in her hands. She was so goddamn beautiful. It shook him just to look at her. And it damn near devastated him to touch her.
She was hungry, he reminded himself. He had to let her eat.
He watched as she unwrapped one sandwich and then the next, embarrassment high on her cheeks and a question obvious on her lips.
“Ask me, Iris.”
Her eyes darted to his.
“Whatever question you’re talking yourself out of asking,” he continued. “Just ask.”
“Well, um,” she swallowed down a big bite of her sandwich, washing it down with some of the orange juice they’d sent up as well. “You know how I said that you’d traumatize the bellhop if you answered the door in that state?”
He smiled, nodding and taking a big bite of his own sandwich, leaning over the tray to avoid crumbs on the bed.
“Well, I guess I was just wondering. Because I don’t have much to compare to. Your…” She blushed, unsure of which word to use, so she just gestured down between his legs. “It’s much bigger than normal, right?”
Marcus raised an eyebrow. “To my knowledge, yes, it is.”
Iris blushed even further but knitted her lips together, swallowing down something she almost said.
“Tell me,” he demanded. He couldn’t stand the thought of her holding back from him. Not now.
“It’s just,” she bit her lip and drove him insane when she paused, “I kind of have a crush on it.”
“On my…” Marcus threw his head back and laughed. Hard. That dark hot chocolate laugh of his that warmed every single inch of Iris to her toes. “Wow.”
“What?!” she demanded, propping herself up and scowling. “You act like I’m crazy, but come on, the thing is like, perfect.” She paused. “Mathematically speaking.”
He laughed even harder now. Absolutely delighted with her and delighted with the two of them.
“I don’t even know what to say to that,” he laughed. “Except… thank you?” He paused. “And I have a crush on your lady parts too.”
Iris grinned and kept working on her sandwich. When the air conditioning in the room made her toes cold, she thoughtlessly tucked them underneath Marcus’s leg. He stiffened for a second before drawing them further underneath.
“Finish up eating,” he told her. “So I can warm you up under the covers.”
And warm her up he did. Marcus and Iris, cocooned under the covers, spooned together, sweated and groaned and writhed their pleasure into one another. She couldn’t get enough of his hands, tight and trapping her to him. He couldn’t get enough of her soft skin, her delicate little noises. He wanted to swallow her whole.
She whispered his name into the dark, begged him for more. And he was helpless but to give it to her. Rolling them, he pinned her to the mattress and covered her. He was between her and the entire world. He pleasured her from above and she screamed it into a pillow, gripping him with everything she had. And still he was over her, protecting her, flinging her headlong into heaven. And he knew, without doubt or reservation, that anything that came for her, would have to go through him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When they woke up the next morning, they were already wrapped in one another and moving, moving, moving. Pressing inside of her was as natural as breathing. He saw nothing but her eyes, the spill of her hair over his hand.
And again, when she finally rose to look out the glass doors of their balcony, it was the most natural thing in the world to go to her, plaster himself to her back. To watch her hands fist and claw at the glass as they raced one another to ecstasy.
But it was in the shower where she threw in the towel, figuratively speaking.
“I can’t feel my legs, you animal,” she grumbled as her body shook from the tremors he’d just teased out of her.
Smiling, he unhooked her legs from around his waist and let her slide down his body. He tilted them so the warm spray of the shower cascaded down her back. “I take it that’s a good thing?”
“Mmmmm,” she hummed, wetting her face in the warm water and leaning back into the hands he was massaging along her shoulders. He wondered if she could feel the way his heart was tripping over itself to get to her. He halfway hoped that she could. “That’s a very good thing. But I need food if you’re gonna keep up this caveman routine.”
Marcus squinted at the wall clock in the bathroom. “Well, we’re meeting everyone for brunch in twenty minutes, so you can recharge your depleted stores there.”
He ducked his head under the spray, so he missed the raw terror that crossed her face. But he definitely saw the pink staining her cheeks only a minute later.
“What is it?” he asked, scrubbing shampoo over his hair.
“I didn’t realize we were gonna be seeing everybody so soon.” She bit her lip and allowed him to work shampoo into her own hair. “You think that they’re all gonna know?”
He grinned down at her, charmed by her shy little self. He wanted to tease her. “That I rocked your world and ruined you for any other man?”
She didn’t smile back or roll her eyes as he expected. She just looked up at him solemn as could be, suds on her forehead, water dripping down her nose. “Well… yeah.”
He froze for a second. “Wait.” He stared down at her. “You feel like I ruined you for any other man?”
Pink slashed across her cheeks, but it was a stubborn expression on her face. “Yes. And you damn well better say the same about me. Except, you know, for other women. Not for other men.”
He gently tipped her head back and wa
shed the shampoo out of her hair. He was awed and humbled by her. He didn’t understand how in the hell he’d gotten so lucky. Not only had he found her. But he got to have her. And now, here she was, feeling exactly the same as he did.
“Baby, you destroyed me for other women. Even before we kissed.” She grinned and he felt pride balloon his chest. He’d put that smile on her face. “I mean, feeling on you while we watched movies was the best action I’d ever gotten. But this? What we’ve just been doing? I mean, that’s another world, right there.”
Instead of melting into him, she slapped off the shower and reached for their towels, tossing one to him. “Yeah, well, that’s great and all. But it doesn’t change the fact that all your friends are gonna know exactly what just happened between us.”
“So?” he asked, scraping the towel over his hair and stepping out of the tub. He held out a hand and helped her out as well. “Who cares?”
“I care!” she yelped, gently drying herself. “They’re gonna think I’m some… vacation floozy!”
Marcus laughed at that one. Good and hard. “Iris. They’re not gonna think you’re a vacation floozy.”
“Of course they will! I’m this chick they’ve never met. Along for a free vacation with you. And then we all get drunk and go dancing and I give it up like I’m Oprah.”
Marcus squinted his eyes in confusion. Oprah? he mouthed.
Iris sighed and rolled her eyes. “You get laid and you get laid and you get laid!” She did a spot on impression of Oprah handing out free cars to everyone in the audience.
He laughed again, hard, and then even harder when his laughter only made her scowl more. “Baby, they’re never gonna think that about you. Although I kind of want you to show them your Oprah impression.” He left the bathroom and grabbed his swim trunks and a t-shirt from their duffel. “I think it’s been really obvious that that’s the opposite of what you are to me. And vice versa.”
“What do you mean?” She wandered in after him, drying her hair with the towel and grabbing her two-piece from the duffel as well.
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