Harlequin E Contemporary Romance Box Set Volume 3: Falling from the SkyMaid to LoveWhen the Lights Go DownStart Me Up

by Sarina Bowen

  Apparently Nick took her earlier reluctance more seriously than she did.

  “I want it,” she said, gritting her teeth. The cool hotel air on her skin wasn’t doing much to ease the heat that was building in her body. “All of it.”

  “Please be specific.” He trailed his fingertips down over her sternum and dragged them back and forth along the edge of her waistband, just barely pushing underneath the black canvas to skim against the edge of her panties.

  Nick had shown an insane attention to detail during her recitation of production details, but really? She was done with talking. If she had to give him a measured explanation before he’d press his body to hers, she was going to scream.

  Instead of screaming, she tried to sum up.

  “I want your hands and your mouth and your dick on me, everywhere. You have a total green light. I want you to fuck me. Please.”

  She didn’t trust his evil grin. Before he could demand more goddamn details, she said, “And if you ask me to enumerate every frigging body part I want you to touch and how, I swear to god I will strangle you with your own tie.”

  “Sorry. I have plans for that tie.” His hand manacled her wrists again. He looked across the room to where he’d left it draped over the back of the fainting couch, and then back at her wrists over her head.

  Her heart was already pounding. And now every bit of blood in her body rushed south and took up a demanding beat between her legs.

  “Holy shit.” She closed her eyes again.

  “Holy shit, no?” Still checking on her. Her oh-so-careful-yet-just-a-little-kinky lover.

  “Holy shit, yes. Jesus, that’s hot.”

  She felt the bed shake with his laugher and didn’t care even a little bit if he was amused by her eagerness. Nick leaned into her body, hands still in constant motion over her skin, but not. Touching. Anything. Important. Damn it. This long, slow stroking of her stomach, her sides, her clavicle and neck, her arms and face, was going to drive her insane.

  His mouth pressed against hers, lips opening and tongue dancing with hers, delicate strokes into and out of her mouth until she was gasping and chasing his tongue with her own.

  “I so wasn’t planning this. I don’t normally walk around with condoms.”

  “My kit.” She was breathless, panting a little as building desire pulsed through her system.

  “What?”

  “Condoms. In my kit.”

  “Don’t move.”

  He got up off the bed and she heard him drag her stage kit closer. The scrape of a zipper giving up its locked clasp climbed her nerves. It took him only a moment to find the long strip of condoms. He held it pinched between two fingers as if he was disposing of a particularly successful strip of flypaper.

  “Lot of action backstage, is there?”

  She actually giggled at the thought, but then an image popped into her head—her calling the show from Nick’s lap in her booth, her butt pressed to his crotch, the heat of his chest hard behind her back. Her mouth went dry.

  “Don’t be stupid,” she muttered and ducked his gaze. Knowing Nick, he’d be able to read her face in an instant. “You can keep all kinds of things dry if you wrap ‘em in a condom.”

  He ripped one off the end and tossed it onto the bed next to her head.

  “Hmmm. Not the lubricated kind then.” He grinned as he threw a leg over her, trapping her legs, and settled back at her side, his hand rubbing her sternum soothingly as he lowered his mouth to her breast. “I don’t suppose you also have…”

  His breath was hot against her skin. He hovered over her, mouth open, driving her crazy with wanting, until she caved and arched her back, thrusting the hard pebble of her nipple into his mouth. Wet heat and strong suction made her gasp and rock her hips against his leg until she swore her other breast felt jealous.

  “Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.” She pulled one of her hands free and grabbed his, pushing their hands down until they were pressed between her legs, fingers tangled. He curved his fingers, putting hard pressure against her through her pants, just where she wanted it.

  “Aha.” Nick slid his hand up and popped the button on her pants, opening them and pulling them down to her knees. She kicked them off the rest of the way and heard the soft thwap when they slid off the end of the bed and hit the carpet.

  With a sudden turn, he lay back against the pillows and pulled her across his lap so that his right arm was wrapped around her shoulders and his left arm was stroking her body, finally, finally touching her everywhere she wanted to be touched. She let her legs fall open, an invitation if she’d ever extended one. She was aware of blatantly offering herself, splayed naked over the lap of a fully-dressed man whose hard stomach and strong thighs braced her as his hand at last slid between her legs.

  She moaned out loud at the touch of his fingers against her. “Please. Ahhh. Don’t stop touching me now.” He was still teasing a little, stroking back and forth, just barely brushing against her.

  “I won’t.”

  “I’ll kill you if you do.” He plunged one finger into her, then a second. She reached up and gripped the arm that was wrapped around her chest, digging her fingernails into his skin until he grunted behind her.

  She didn’t care that she was moaning out loud in synchronization with his thrusting hand. She didn’t care that her hips were rolling, her head tossing from side to side as she closed her eyes and sank deep into her body, focusing on the flood of sensation swamping her from head to toe with heat and a pulsing tension that climbed higher and higher but didn’t peak.

  But she wanted to feel him. Suddenly the scrape of his pressed broadcloth button-down, the gentle scratch of his summer-weight wool pants against her skin, was frustrating as hell. She wanted skin on skin, the sticky grip of sweat between two bodies, and she wanted it now. Nick never lost his grip on her, but she squirmed until she was fully on top him, his one arm still wrapped around her shoulders, his other still working between her legs.

  “You need to be naked. Now.”

  She attacked his mouth and shoved her hands between them, twisting and pushing at buttons that were not goddamn cooperating. In one smooth move, Nick dumped her off his lap and stood up, stripping down to skin in record time, and rolled on the condom. He crawled back onto the bed, coming after her, and for a second she forgot that she wanted him to catch her and tried to scramble away. He yanked her back against him and pulled her to his chest—one arm locked around her torso, the other arm pulling at her upper leg as they lay on their sides, locked like spoons, his hard erection poking the back of her thigh as he opened her up to him from behind.

  With one quick surge, he pushed into her, the thick length of him sliding in easily on her slick wet heat.

  “Yes. Ah, just…yes.” She arched her back and pushed her ass against him, trying to get him as deeply inside her as she could, even though it hurt just a little when he sank into her until he couldn’t go a centimeter farther.

  He picked up a rhythm that rocked her slowly at first, so she could feel every inch of him sliding out and then back in again. He reached between her legs again to stroke her lightly, and then harder as she started to move. The fingers of his other hand, arm wrapped under her shoulder and across her chest, ended up in her mouth and she sucked on them, licking at the crease between his fingers with her tongue and tasting the salt of sweat on his skin. The strength of him wrapped around her felt so secure and intense and being unable to move much of her body somehow freed her mind to plunge deeply into sensation, heat and slick sweat and hard muscle, until she was flying and flying and crying out as she came.

  All the muscle tension slid out of her body, leaving her a limp pile of humming nerves and shaking limbs beneath Nick as he leaned into her hard and thrust deep and fast until he came with a loud groan and collapsed over her, still buried deep.

  Face pressed into the mattress, she panted until her breathing slowed.

  Nick’s first words were a rum
ble against her back.

  “You really need to meet my mother.”

  She jerked up a bit under his body weight and felt her shoulder blade hit his teeth. Ouch.

  “Ow.” He rubbed his mouth against the curve at the base of her neck.

  She scowled.

  “I’m now questioning whether or not I ever want to see you again,” she said and started to squirm her way out from under him. Nick wrapped his arms around her and declined to let go. His breath was hot against her skin.

  “Mmmph.”

  She started prying at his fingers where they were wrapped around her upper arm. Only the pinkie budged. She banged her fist against his hand.

  “Did you just bring up your mother while you’re still inside me? ‘Cause that’s just a little too funky.”

  She felt him reach down between them and then pull out of her body, heard him strip the condom off and drop it in the bedside wastebasket. Before she had a chance to slither off the bed and find her pants, he’d draped himself back over her, arms and legs pulling her close and tight.

  “Forgot before. I want you to.”

  “God, why?”

  Okay. So it felt a little nice to be snuggled up with him on top of the world’s fluffiest down comforter, which she was not even for a second going to feel guilty for messing up. He reached out with an arm and turned off the bong lamp.

  “You should know.”

  “Know what?”

  “What you’re getting yourself into. Out of your control.”

  She shivered for a moment and he tucked her in tighter against him. The words out of your control didn’t belong in her vocabulary. Didn’t belong within six city blocks of her entire life plan.

  She blocked her fears behind steel vault doors and wished them a speedy death from suffocation.

  “Well, she’s not going to love me. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “Party next week. You’re coming.”

  “Make me.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Says the man who forgot about the tie.”

  His shoulder shook under her as he laughed silently. “You fucked the focus right out of me. Next time.”

  Like before, even the idea of a next time was enough to zip-line pleasure up her spine. Danger, Will Robinson. She ignored the warning vibes—apparently she was dumb enough not to have learned a damn thing from Damian after all—and poked Nick instead.

  “I gotta get up, you know. I’m starving. Haven’t eaten all day.”

  “Shhh. Just stay for a minute. Call for room service. Just a minute.”

  She let her head sink back down onto his arm and the pillow, setting aside the slowly rising growl in her belly and stroking his arm where it wrapped around her.

  “Okay. Just a minute then.”

  Because as much as she might tell herself that sleeping with Nick was an itch she chose to scratch, she had come into his bed because she wanted him.

  And she was staying because she couldn’t make herself leave.

  She hadn’t expected it, but it was surprisingly difficult—let’s face it, Maxie, impossible—to climb out of bed and go home, to separate herself from this man when he was curved around her and murmuring nonsensical things in her ear.

  This wasn’t part of her plan. And while she was happy to indulge in some tear-up-the-sheets sex with this man, Maxie wasn’t dumb enough to think there would be a forever. And when it ended, her career might very well come to a tumbling end, too.

  But maybe, maybe…if she kept a tight grip on herself, controlled every last detail of the production, foresaw every unforeseeable problem, she could cut off any impending disasters before they happened.

  Maybe she could make it work.

  She dug herself a little deeper into the pillows and sighed. His voice was echoing in her head: Damn, I really like you.

  Nick had been hard enough to resist when she had told herself he didn’t like the real her. Sexual attraction she could write off. Or indulge in and then let go.

  Being well and truly liked was a lot harder to resist.

  Chapter Eight

  When the shit hit the fan a week later, the only consolation was that the trouble wasn’t with Maxie’s production.

  “I knew this woman was gonna be trouble!” Maxie held the phone away from her head as Marcus’s voice boomed out of it.

  “What’s the story, morning glory?” She kicked her feet up on the battered desk in a storage closet that served as her temporary base of operations at the warehouse.

  “I got a shitload of guns here is the story.”

  Her feet hit the floor.

  Marcus had already told her about his director’s decision to cast real gang members in her show. “For verisimilitude, darling.” No amount of arguing had made a dent in her plans. Maxie had offered again to drop the show altogether or switch in Ruben as the manager. No amount of money was worth putting one of her employees through this kind of bullshit. But Marcus had dug his heels in and insisted on staying. He was going to run that play like clockwork if it killed him.

  As he told her the entire story, it became clear to Maxie that she should have been paying more attention in recent days. Maybe she would have been there with Marcus when he caught the first kid with a pistol in the waistband of his pants at the backstage door. The director had confessed that she’d gone looking for real guns to use onstage—”no bullets, of course!”

  “She put out word ‘on the street’ at lunchtime, she tells me.” The acid dripping from Marcus’s voice could have etched metal. “Whatever street that is. But enough of these kids showed up with Glock Nines to field a small paramilitary force in the event that we want to invade a Banana Republic or something.”

  “It’s only four o’clock. What the hell? Not even the PTA works that fast.” Maxie’s brain cataloged options, discarding them all at light speed. Wait. “You know what a Glock looks like?”

  “Of course not, but I’m pretty sure the thirteen-year-old bruiser out back does. I’m going to take his word for it.”

  She heard raised voices in the background. Marcus was in a small theater on the far north side. It would take her half an hour to get there. “Shit. Can you just tell them it was a mistake and that we don’t need any more props?”

  The background noise grew muffled as if Marcus had stepped away for privacy. He lowered his voice. “One, I don’t think these guys are gonna be happy to hear that. And two…what if they leave here and shoot somebody with one of these guns?”

  She blew her hair off her forehead, sweaty now. “Man, I don’t mean to be cruel, Marcus, but you’d never find out.” She felt like shit for suggesting it, but the first rule of battle was clear. Always duck a fight you know isn’t going to go your way.

  “No can do, Maxie. I couldn’t live with it.”

  “What about calling the police?”

  Marcus’s voice hit a dolphin-squeak high. “If you want me to die in a violent shootout with the cops, that sounds like a fabulous idea.”

  “I assume they’re not planning on donating them?” She stripped out of her mini-dress. This was not a scene that called for cute. Thank god she always kept plenty of spare clothes at her office.

  “Yeah, right. Do you know what a gun costs on the street?”

  “No. Do you?”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’ll look it up on Google. I’m on my way. Tell Ollie North to spread word that the fire sale is over. No more guns.”

  Three hundred dollars. That’s what it cost to buy a gun on the street in Chicago. Amazing what you could find on Google.

  Two hours and fifteen hundred savings-account-clearing dollars later, Maxie had five guns in a backpack and flop sweat coating her skin as she drove back to her warehouse in rush-hour traffic. Every other car was a police SUV, of course. Three of the original eight gun purveyors had gotten impatient and left before her arrival, which had saved the damn day because she didn’t have an extra twenty-four hundred dollar
s lying around. Coming up with fifteen hundred was going to mean a missed paycheck or two for herself, since she wasn’t about to let this mess affect anyone else on her payroll, and the battle to get reimbursed for this nonsense was probably going to be a long one.

  At the warehouse, she headed straight to her “office.” Clarissa shouted at her from the first aisle, but Maxie ignored her. No way was she going to store these in a cardboard box or clear plastic bin on a shelf.

  She didn’t want any of the damn guns in her office, either. Especially not piled on the scarred laminate of her desk behind a flimsy door with a lock she could jimmy with a butter knife in case of a forgot-my-keys emergency.

  Carefully, very carefully, she unloaded the backpack. She knew perfectly well how to handle a prop gun so that it looked real to an audience ten, twenty, fifty feet away. But when it came to real guns, she didn’t have the foggiest idea how to tell whether the safety was on.

  The guns marched in a menacing line across her desk

  Didn’t exactly add to the homey vibe of her office.

  “Shit.”

  She was scowling down at the contraband when the door to her office opened, making her jump.

  “What?!” Clarissa raised her hands in the air to surrender. “Don’t shoot.”

  “These are real guns.” Maxie kept her voice low.

  Clarissa walked in and slammed the door behind her with a bang, sobering up in a hurry. She kept her back pressed to door. “What? Why do you have real guns on your desk?”

  “Shhh. That’s not supposed to be general knowledge, okay? I’m fairly sure I’m breaking more than one city ordinance there.”

  She explained the walking arsenal scenario that had arrived on Marcus’s doorstep, how this had been their only solution. As she spoke, any hint of amusement fell further off Clarissa’s face. Hell, Maxie couldn’t blame her—hearing the words verbalized was making her question her own sanity. She should have insisted they turn everyone away. Shit. What was the worst that could have happened?

  Death and dismemberment? Too late. It’s done.

  But damn, this was a potentially epic screwup, the likes of which she’d only ever seen on other peoples’ stages. Never her own.