An unexpected rush of pleasure flooded Asia as she slipped between the sheets later that night. She hated admitting it, but she had enjoyed having dinner with Lance, and for once they hadn’t been biting each other’s heads off. She had merely listened while he told her more about his family, finding every little tidbit fasci nating. And although she had claimed she wouldn’t do so, she had ended up cleaning up the kitchen with him. When they had finished, he had merely thanked her for her help, told her good night, and then went upstairs to bed.
Because she had taken a nap earlier, she had been too wired up to sleep and had gone into the office and had completed another full chapter before calling it a night. Although at no time had Lance acted inappropriately, she had still managed to feel his warmth in the spacious kitchen. His nearness had reminded her that she should have been keeping her distance, but she had honestly enjoyed his presence too much to think about that. And, she reasoned, no harm would be done as long as she kept her guard up.
And she was determined never to lose her head when it came to Lance Montgomery again.
Over the next few days, the routine for Lance and Asia was basically the same. He would get up at the crack of dawn to go jogging, and she would wake up around eight, grab a cup of coffee, and start writing. And just like that first day, a fresh vase of hand-picked flowers with a note would be sitting near the computer. And just as she did that first day, she tried not to put much stock into what he’d written.
They would spend the day in their separate offices getting as much writing done as they could and during the late afternoon, by silent agreement, they would meet on the beach to relax and unwind. It was during those times they would talk about different things, always keeping their conversations impersonal. Then at night they would prepare a meal together, eat, clean up the kitchen, and then part ways, going to their separate bedrooms. But it was during those dinner times, when he would always share with her some things about himself, that, whether she wanted to or not, she was getting to know the real Lance Montgomery. She knew the music he liked, the foods he didn’t like, the places he had gone and places where he still wanted to go. And despite not wanting to, he got her to talking about herself and how hard it was for her single widowed mother to raise two daughters after their father’s death from a work-related incident when Asia was five.
Although occasionally she still thought about leaving the island, especially on those days she felt herself being drawn to Lance, she didn’t. She rather liked not getting any phone calls, and not having any interruptions. During the day, since Lance had his own book to work on, it was as if she was alone anyway. He didn’t try to invade her space, and she didn’t invade his. They had respected each other’s privacy. But then she knew they both looked forward to the time they spent together on the beach at the end of the day.
It seemed that this evening there would be a slight change in plans, Asia thought, as she logged off her computer and glanced out the window. There were heavy, dark clouds covering the sky, which meant a storm was coming. That also meant she and Lance wouldn’t get to spend any time on the beach later that day.
She walked out of her office the same time he was coming down the stairs. “A thunderstorm is headed our way,” he said, glancing out the window. “The last time I was here and a bad storm came up we lost power. I’m going to go around and gather candles just in case.”
“All right.” In a way she was glad he was there with her. She didn’t want to think how she would have handled things alone on an island in total darkness. “And just in case we do lose power, I’m going to go ahead and fix us something to eat, like sandwiches and a fruit salad. How does that sound?”
“Like a winner.”
Asia had just finished making the last sandwich when the storm hit, hammering the island with torrential rain and with it came the smell of fresh, rain-sweetened air combined with the scent of topical flowers. She glanced up when Lance walked into the kitchen.
“The candles are lit already.”
“Good. I don’t relish the idea of sitting here in total darkness.” But then she didn’t relish the idea of sitting anywhere in candlelight with Lance. There were times like these that his presence made her tense, not for anything he was doing intentionally, but because as much as she didn’t want to, she was attracted to him. And she couldn’t stop the dreams she had of him at night.
In one particular dream—the one she’d had last night, in fact—he had come into her bedroom and slipped into the bed with her. Taking her into his arms he had kissed her while sliding his fingers underneath the flimsy nightgown she’d worn and easing it off her shoulders. Her head had fallen back when he had released her mouth to let his lips trail all over her. And when he had made it to her stomach and was inching lower, her body had actually quivered at the thought of how she would feel when he kissed her deeply in the spot between her legs. And when he had pushed her thighs apart and lowered his head she had—
“Asia? You’re okay?”
She blinked. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen having a heated flashback of her dream. She glanced up at him and found him looking at her strangely. “Yes. I’m okay. Why do you ask?”
“Umm, mainly because you were breathing funny.”
Had she been? Deciding not to go there, she said, “Sounds like the rain is going to be here for a while.”
Lance glanced out the window. “Yes, it does. I don’t see it letting up any time soon.”
“Are you ready to eat your sandwich?” she asked, having nothing else to say.
“No, I’m not hungry. I thought I’d go back upstairs and take advantage of as much daylight as I can just in case the power does go out.”
She nodded. “I think that I will, too.”
Asia made a move to step around him and he touched her arm. She stopped and lifted her brow, trying to face him calmly, fighting hard to do so. But the touch of his fingertips had done something to her. It had scattered her thoughts, and had made hot pulsating desire run rampant through every part of her body.
“Yes?” she asked, fighting the fierce longing, the deep urgency, for him to touch her again. She gazed into his eyes and wished she hadn’t. She saw it. Stark desire of the most potent kind.
“We’ve been on this island together for five days,” he said huskily, like he’d been the only one counting. “And so far I haven’t done the one thing I’ve been itching to do since I got here.”
She swallowed deeply, knowing she shouldn’t ask but knowing that she would anyway. “And what’s that?”
“Taste you.”
Her entire body felt convulsed with desire, and she felt as if she was suffocating. Suddenly she needed air. She needed to run outside in the rain to cool off. She needed for him to kiss her.
She closed her eyes, trying to remember her relationship with Sean and her decision to marry him and thinking it was strange that he hadn’t crossed her mind much lately. It seemed Lance was the only man who held her attention, thoughts, wants.
“Asia?”
Her name was a raspy sound from his lips—lips she wanted to devour hers. Her mind suddenly began spinning. What was wrong with her? Technically, she was engaged to marry one man, yet she wanted another. She loved another.
That realization hit her with such force that she almost tumbled backward, and she would have if Lance hadn’t reached out to keep her from falling. But in a way, she fell anyway the moment he touched her. She fell straight into desire. It started as a slight tremble deep inside of her and then without very much effort, it escalated into something else when heat blazed to life within her body, igniting a fierce form of sexual need, leaving her visibly shaken.
Instinctively, Lance pulled her into his arms and held her trembling body close to his and she hung on to him. She knew what she wanted, and she knew what she needed, and deep down she had a feeling he knew, as well.
“Lance?”
He pulled back slightly and looked down at her. “Yes, swee
theart?”
At first she couldn’t get the words out but was determined to do so anyway. “I want you.”
The dark eyes that stared down at her didn’t flicker when he responded by saying, “I want you, too. And I need you and I love you. The reason I wanted time alone with you was to prove to you just how much you mean to me. And even now I don’t think I’ve actually done that.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does.” He released her and took a step back. “It mat ters a great deal. The book I’m working on is called No More Playas. I’ve poured out my heart and soul in this book to get men to understand how a die-hard playa can change his thought processes after meeting the one woman he believes is his soul mate, which is something that I thought could never happen. I was wrong in believing such a phenomenon didn’t exist. And whether you choose to believe me or not, I have fallen in love with you, Asia, and I haven’t touched another woman—not even come close to doing so:—since meeting you, and like I told you, although I wanted to paint a different picture, I sent Rachel Ca- son packing probably before you’d even left the building.”
She stared up at him. “Then why did you do it? Why did you want me to think otherwise,” she whispered.
Lance sighed deeply. “Because being with you, being swamped with emotions I’ve never felt before, scared the living daylights out of me. What I felt for you that day was more than naked desire, Asia, and when I realized the significance of that, I panicked and was driven to do whatever I needed to do to get you out of my life.”
He recalled that day and the hurtful look in her face when he’d pulled that stunt in front of her with Rachel. “It wasn’t until later when I realized and accepted that I’d deliberately made you hate me that I began hating myself. It was then that I also realized that I couldn’t go on without you in my life and had to admit my true feelings for you.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment; then he added, “That night at the Pattersons’ party when I discovered you had gotten engaged to marry Sean Crews, my world came tumbling down.”
Stunned by everything he’d just said, Asia took a step back and sank down in the nearest chair at the table when she felt her legs folding beneath her. For a moment she just sat there, wondering how she had not considered the possibility of what he’d done that night as some devious ploy to get her out of his life because he had begun developing feelings for her . . . just like she had begun developing feelings for him.
“I know I’ve hurt you, Asia,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “But if you give me another chance, I promise never to cause you pain again. I love you and need you in my life. Not just for now, here on this island, but for forever. Will you grant me the chance to do that?”
Asia glanced up at him, and what she saw in his gaze touched her heart. There weren’t just desire and longing deep in his eyes, she also saw love. This hadn’t been a game to him like she’d assumed after all. The thought of that made intense heat swirl through all parts of her and love flow freely through her heart. She suddenly needed to be held by him, in his arms.
“Lance?”
“Yes?”
“Hold me.”
Quicker than she could blink an eye, he was at the table, bending, gently sliding his hands around her, gathering her into his arms. And he stood there, holding her securely against his chest, gazing lovingly down at her before lowering his head to kiss her.
30
It seemed like he’d waited to do this forever, Lance thought, remembering the very first time he had kissed her that day in Dallas, as well as the last time—that night in New York. And now, like then, he was as focused on Asia’s mouth as any man could be. And it wasn’t helping matters that she had her hand fisted in the front of his shirt, clutching it, holding his mouth captive the same way he was holding hers as sensations after sensations hit him, literally squeezed air from his chest while their tongues dueled, melded, and satisfied an intense need that vibrated all the way to their bones. He ran his fingers along her bare arm, needing to touch her skin as her mouth opened even more under his.
He hadn’t intended to possess her mouth this greedily, but he was helpless at the thought that she was here like she’d been in his dreams countless times; in his arms, reciprocating all the things he was feeling and crashing through any measure of self- control that he had. Loving her, he thought, was pure heaven, but he wanted more than the sighs of pleasure that escaped from their joined mouths. He wanted to give her more.
He wanted them to share paradise.
Lance pulled back slightly, breaking the kiss. His gaze was dark with desire when he looked at her and said, “I want to do something with you that I’ve never done with a woman before.”
“What?”
“Make love and not just have sex.”
His words made currents of desire, awareness, and need coil in Asia’s belly, and she reveled in the sensations that were flooding through her. She remembered her decision to become celibate over a year and a half ago. She had always been of the mind that there was nothing wrong with a man and woman sharing a wonderful and healthy sexual relationship, but what she had found wrong was when that relationship lacked love and commitment.
After David, she had needed time to recover, and on more than one occasion she hadn’t done that. She would allow some man and his sweet-talking ways to pull her back into another relationship that she hadn’t been quite ready for, a relationship that was never intended to go anywhere. She couldn’t let that happen to her again. That was one mistake she would never repeat.
From the first, Lance had insinuated that he intended to be her lover but the woman in her—the one who had grown tremendously from those days with David—needed more than a toss between the sheets. He said he loved her and she needed to know, to fully understand just what that meant for them.
“What does forever with me mean to you, Lance?” she asked softly.
He reached out and touched her cheek, letting his finger softly stroke her face. “Forever with you means loving you completely, making a life with you, embarking on a real relationship, a committed one. With other women, I’ve always protected my emotions by being the ultimate playa; now I want to share those emotions with you. I want to marry you, give you my name, my babies, my love, my life. I want you to be the woman I wake up with in the mornings and go to bed with at night. I want you to be my best friend, my soul mate. Right now I love you so much, I hurt at the thought of ever losing you again. Telling a woman that I loved them was something I’d never done, while truly meaning it, but the words flow easily off my lips for you because they are real and meaningful. And I will love you, Asia Fowler, until my dying day and even beyond that.”
Asia sighed deeply, hearing the intensity in his voice with the words he had spoken. He had said what she needed to know. What she needed to hear. And deep down, she believed he really meant them.
He pulled her close to him again. “Now it’s my time to ask. What does forever with me mean to you?”
She looped her arms around his neck. “It means knowing who I want and what I want. Accepting that I love you, Lance. It also means sharing a committed and loving relationship with you. Marriage. A family. Being your soul mate, lover, and wife, till death do us part.” And remembering his words, she added, “And even beyond that.”
She eased her body even closer to his. “It also means becoming one with you, heart, body, and soul, and right now it’s the body aspect that I’m looking forward to the most.”
A grin tugged at the corners of Lance’s mouth. “I think I can safely say that I can definitely handle that.”
“Prove it.”
No sooner had the challenge left her mouth, the lights in the villa flickered. Seconds later, the electrical power went out. Everything would have been thrown into total darkness if Lance hadn’t taken the time to put out lit candles earlier. Candlelight gave the villa a romantic effect, stirred up an already arousing mood, charged an already stimu
lating setting. And then Asia was lifted into strong arms when Lance didn’t waste any time carrying her in the direction of the bedroom she was using. She glanced around the moment they crossed over the threshold. Two lit candles were sitting on the dresser. Their vanilla scent permeated the air, making the room smell heavenly.
Lance placed her down on the king-sized bed and took a step back and when he did so, the candlelight reflected off his features. The planes of his face appeared even more profound, sharp, and sensuous. “Do you have any idea of how much I want you, Asia?” he asked.
She almost asked him that same question regarding her own degree of want and desire for him. “No, how much?”
He came back to the bed, leaned over close until his mouth was mere inches from hers. “I want you so much, I quake inside. Do you know that since that time in my bedroom with you, I go to bed each night craving the taste of you again, wanting to be inside of you, going slow, and then fast, deep. Then deeper still.”
He began kissing, nibbling, licking the corners of her mouth, sliding his tongue down the side of her neck. “And growing larger, harder, within the confines of your body and then the final act where I come apart in your arms, release my seed inside of you, hoping doing so will give you my baby. A child conceived in our love.”
A child conceived in our love. . . Asia’s pulse raced and her heart leaped as she stared into his eyes, and she could honestly admit that a piece of her fell in love with him that day after her speaking engagement in New York at the Betty Shabazz Center. He had approached her more handsome than any man had a right to be—arrogant, confident, and sexy.
She released a breathless sigh the moment he leaned closer still and connected his mouth to hers. Her mind and body went on sensory overload, taking her to the point of no return when he joined her on the bed, gently pushing her onto her back. He continued to kiss her deeply, thoroughly, exploring the insides of her mouth with his tongue, taking possession, staking his claim. Her muscles trembled, her insides quivered and when he finally lifted his head, her breath came out hot, damp, forced.
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