She’d wanted to scream like a petulant child. She’d wanted to drop to the floor and pound her heels against the tile, hurt herself in body as she was hurting inside, wail for what she could not have again. Nine days since she last saw him. Nine days since her brother had come to her apartment acting the part of a father who was long dead. Everyone seemed to be doing exactly what they wanted to do. Her mother had married again. Her sister, Luna, managed to earn enough scholarship money to go off to Yale while her brother thrived at the marine-biology program at the University of Miami.
Everyone had what they once yearned for. Everyone had the kind of life they wanted. The life she had sacrificed for. Now it was time for her to get something of her own. But as the days passed between that first morning and now, she did not know how to reach out to take it. Then she’d walked into Seven and Bailey’s beautiful condo and seen Marcus among their friends.
She had been overwhelmed by relief—and fear. Here was the universe giving her a chance to get what she wanted. Now, could she take it? Could it be as simple as reaching out with her own two hands? And so, she had followed him to the bathroom. Reckless. Thoughtless. Her body ruling her.
When she had put her dessert spoon in the nearly empty bowl with a decisive click, Bailey turned away from her conversation with Alyx and looked at Diana with a question in her eyes. Diana only shook her head minutely and excused herself from the table.
The steps she took away from the dinner party felt heavy and significant. She pressed her palms into the fabric over her thighs as she walked down the quiet hallway where Marcus had disappeared.
And when he walked out of the bathroom, looking sinfully sexy—hard mouth, sultry eyes, his body beautifully muscled under the white linen shirt and pale blue slacks—something inside her imploded. His touch lit her from the outside in. A sudden fire. Fierce and undeniable.
In the bathroom, she whimpered under his hands as the desire rose higher in her. He pulled her away from the door and shoved her against the wall between the commode and the shower. She gasped as her back hit the wall. Her mouth opened to take more of his sweet kisses.
The pulse pounded in her throat. She quivered with desire for him, the urgency building inside her while his masculinity branded her belly through his pants and her dress.
“Diana, Diana…”
Marcus dragged his mouth away from hers, grabbed her thighs and lifted her abruptly against the wall. Diana balanced one foot against the sink, the other on the rim of the commode. He pulled aside the soaked string of her thong until she was wide open to him, a coolness brushing against her hot center. His fingers probed delicately, circled until she gasped and clenched her fingers harder in his skin.
He found a rhythm that maddened her, brought whimpers of pleasure to her lips. She gasped his name as he caressed her. Firmly, quickly.
Something pulled tight inside her. Snapped. Pleasure imploded throughout her being. She wanted to scream from the force of it. Instead, she clenched her teeth against the wailing cry that rose in her throat.
Suddenly, the doorknob rattled. “Is someone in there?” A woman’s voice.
They both froze, Marcus with his fingers still inside her. Diana’s foot slipped from the edge of the sink in her sudden panic, but he caught her with ease. She reached up and covered his mouth. Oh, God!
“Give me a moment, please!” she called out, her heart racing as much from the recent orgasm as the fear of getting caught having sex in her friend’s bathroom. “I just had a little emergency.”
“Do you need any help?” The voice on the other side of the door lowered in feminine confidentiality. “Do you need anything?”
“Thank you for asking, but no. I’ll be out in just a moment.”
“Take your time,” the woman said. Her footsteps retreated down the hall.
She blinked furiously, pushing at Marcus for him to release her. He let her go, allowing her feet to touch the floor, moving back, eyes roving hungrily over her body, as if someone didn’t wait somewhere on the other side of the door to ruin them both. Quickly, she fixed her dress, pulling the skirt down and the bodice up. She turned to see him coolly collected, pants and shirt straightened, breath even. Only his gaze was still hungry, lips parted to show a flash of white teeth as if he wanted to devour her. Diana quivered.
She twisted away from him to push open the bathroom window. He washed his hands, splashed water on his face, then dried his hands and face on one of the folded white towels in a neat pile beside the sink. Then he reached for her and quickly kissed her mouth. His eyes commanded hers.
“I want to see you again,” he whispered urgently. “Don’t run from me.”
She licked her lips. “I’m not running anywhere.”
Surprised pleasure burned starlight in his eyes. He nodded, then after another quick kiss, he left the bathroom. He closed the door behind him.
The click of the latch was loud in her ears. Diana pressed her hand to her lips and turned to stare at herself in the mirror. What was she doing? What had she done?
The woman in the mirror stared at her with pleasure-heavy eyes, mouth rubbed pink and bare of lipstick, hair a messy tangle around her face.
“Get yourself together.” She had to say the words out loud to jolt into action. To wash her hands, press a damp cloth to her face and reapply her makeup. Only once she was certain she looked calm enough to face Bailey and her guests did she step out of the bathroom.
But with each step she took toward the other guests, the more she wished she was back in the small room again, falling away from herself as the pleasure writhed between her and Marcus, her body and his the only things in the whole world that mattered.
Chapter 15
Diana went back to the party feeling like she had sex written all over her face. But when she exited the wide hallway, no one paid her the slightest attention. The dinner part of the evening was over.
Kisha and Clive had migrated to the wraparound terrace to admire the stellar view of Biscayne Bay and the glittering Miami skyline. Bailey sat on the burgundy velvet couch between Alyx and Bette, laughing with her arm thrown casually around her sister. Marcus was nowhere to be seen. Diana put her purse on the side table and joined the women. They immediately made room for her on the couch.
Alyx’s shrewd gaze flickered over Diana’s face. “Did you put on makeup in the bathroom? You look positively radiant.”
Diana fought down a blush. “Do I?” She couldn’t for the life of her remember whose voice it was at the bathroom door. Maybe it had been Alyx. It could have been anyone; she had been so flustered and focused on Marcus. “I had a little stain on my dress I had to get out,” she said.
“Come.” Bailey gestured for her to sit closer. “Bette was just telling us about her latest clubbing adventures.”
“Misadventures is more like it,” Bailey’s sister said.
The woman was pretty in a vintage pearl-gray 1950s dress that skimmed her body, the scooped collar modest and a perfect complement to her dramatic long dreadlocks and theatrically made-up face. “Celebrities are crazy.” She named a rapper who hadn’t had a hit record in a few years. “This guy charged into the burger joint and had the biggest hissy fit about being served over everybody else in the long line. I’d never seen a big man act so much like a bi—”
“Bette!” Bailey pinched her sister’s arm.
“Sorry. Are we in mixed company here?”
Alyx laughed. “I think she’s trying to spare my feelings. I’m not used to people cursing around me.”
“Really?” Diana looked at her in surprise. “Weren’t you raised in a family of artists?”
“No. Missionaries.”
Diana’s brow rose in surprise. Just then, Marcus and Seven appeared from the kitchen. Both men had drinks in their hands as they walked into the living room, talking quietly to each other. Diana couldn’t help but notice how Bailey glanced up when her husband walked into the room, her face going soft with love. By the time Diana loo
ked up at Seven, he was already turning away from his wife, a hand in his pocket, the picture of confidence and control.
Sometimes she wondered how the two of them had ever found each other. They were so different. But then she had noticed moments during the evening when Seven touched Bailey with an easy intimacy that made Diana blush.
They did nothing that warranted embarrassment, but it was her own imagination, seeing that simple harmony between them and imagining how that translated to the bedroom. But it wasn’t as if Bailey and her husband had started kissing each other in front of her or emerged sweaty and postcoital from the bathroom. At the thought, she flushed again and looked away from her friend’s husband.
But her gaze stumbled into Marcus. His heavy-lidded gaze, full mouth. The easy and masculine roll of his hips in the slacks that reminded her of how they had felt between her thighs the night of the storm. She squeezed her legs together and forced a smile.
“Baby.” Seven moved to stand behind the couch near his wife. “Marcus just told me about his latest idea—a fund-raiser for Building Bridges.”
Diana looked at Bailey’s husband in surprise. “What?”
Marcus grabbed one of the heavy antique chairs and straddled it, bracing his arms along the low back. He looked at her, something in his expression both tender and conflicted. She glimpsed a trace of worry in his eyes. “I was just telling Seven what that tree did to your office the other day. Even though your landlord’s insurance would probably cover it, I want to have a fund-raiser for you, something at my place, to raise money for the repairs and anything else you might need.”
Diana didn’t know what to say. Her gaze flickered to Marcus. She hoped he didn’t feel he had to buy her something just because they’d been intimate a couple of times. She didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding between the two of them where their business and personal lives were concerned.
“That’s not really necessary,” she said after a moment. “You don’t owe me anything.”
“Of course I don’t.” Marcus made a dismissive gesture. “But I want to do it.”
With everyone’s eyes on her, she had no choice but to agree to the gift. Diana looked away from the brilliance of his eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “You know the foundation and I both appreciate it.”
“It’s my pleasure,” he said.
Their eyes met again and Diana tumbled into the dark gold for one moment, unable to catch her breath. With him looking at her that way, she would have agreed to anything he wanted.
“Okay.” She sighed.
The rest of the dinner party passed in a haze of heated looks and wonder. They did not get the chance to be alone again, but Diana never lost her awareness of where he was or what he was doing. He was usually nearby and watching her.
At the end of the evening, she kissed the Carmichaels goodbye and left the condominium with Marcus. He walked with her to the elevator while Bailey watched them from the doorway. It was a long time before Diana heard the door close. Marcus pressed the button for the elevator.
“You’re making me very happy tonight.” He stood at her side, his body radiating a seductive heat.
“How am I making you happy?” She watched him from beneath her lashes, a tentative joy spreading through her.
“Because I want you, Diana.” His voice was low and matter-of-fact. “I want you so bad that it hurts. After that first night, I never thought I would have a chance with you again. I’m glad I was wrong.”
Diana swallowed, hands tightening around her purse. Well, she had asked.
The doors of the elevator slid open and Marcus stepped aside, allowing her to get on first. The doors enclosed them in the small space. He pressed the button for the ground floor and stepped back to the other side of the car.
Whatever she had expected from him, it wasn’t this. He was respecting her space and not responding to the hunger that she knew blazed from her eyes. Other things were on her mind—her family, the idea she might be making a mistake—but she wanted him, too. “I want to take you away,” he said. “Will you come with me?”
For a moment, Diana allowed herself to imagine that she could say yes. Running away with him and leaving all her responsibilities behind was such a fantasy that it was impossible.
“I can’t,” she said. “I wish I could, but I just have too many things to take care of here.”
After a moment, he tilted his head in acceptance. “All right, but one day I’m going to get you all to myself. And I won’t let you go.”
Chapter 16
Marcus leaned on the railing at the top of the staircase, watching the ballroom below him quickly fill with some of Miami’s richest and most generous residents. At this celebration of the Building Bridges and the woman who had helped to make it what it was, Marcus was only there for Diana, and he was waiting patiently for her to arrive.
After that heated evening at the Carmichaels’, he’d dreamed of her every night, wondered what it would have been like to have her for the entire weekend at a hotel somewhere or maybe on a boat. Just the two of them indulging their senses in each other. He vowed that one day he would make that fantasy a reality.
He drew a calming breath and turned his attention back to the ballroom.
A five-piece jazz band played Louis Armstrong from the raised platform at the front of the room just beneath the stairs, while the crystal chandelier threw shards of light over the gathered company in their cocktail dresses and sports jackets. In the center of the room, a large, cut-crystal box stood on a pedestal, waiting to be filled with money.
Diana’s boss from Building Bridges was already at the party and was vocally excited about the fund-raiser and the party’s guest list. Diana, however, was obviously a little suspicious of why Marcus had planned the event.
He had battled with himself over what he wanted from her and even what she thought of him. He’d never had these thoughts about any other woman. But that internal war hadn’t made things any clearer. He didn’t believe in lasting relationships now any more than he did a few weeks ago when he’d first met her, but he knew that he wanted her in his life. She was becoming too precious to him. Too necessary.
And that thought frightened him. It made him want to pull away from her and send her back to her straitlaced world and pretend they had never met. It would have been easier if she’d been just like the others—focused on his money and on what he could give her. But she didn’t seem to give a damn that he was worth billions, that he could buy her the city if that was what she wanted.
Some sixth sense made him lift his head as the butler escorted another guest into the party from the foyer. He saw Diana walk into his house to the slow and rousing music of Claire de Lune. She smiled politely at the butler, though Marcus could see the trepidation in her face.
She was wearing another of her vintage designer dresses. This one was yellow and high-necked and clung to her slim hips like a dream, the hem ending just below her knees. A white belt hugged her slender waist and she carried a small white clutch as her only other accessory. She walked into the ballroom, her steps graceful but hesitant.
Within moments, she found her boss and a woman he didn’t recognize. But she didn’t stay with them for long. She wove through the room, greeting the billionaires as respectfully as their paid escorts, along with the community organizers and reporters, treating each person to a stretch of her soft lips, a strong handshake and solid eye contact as they spoke with her.
Marcus’s body tightened with each step Diana took. He had brought her to his home to reveal what he was about to do with Baltree Heights, to soften the blow with the money from the fund-raiser. But as he watched her, all he could think about was making love to her again, pressing that slim and responsive body against his and making her cry out his name until they were both satisfied.
It was at that moment that she looked up and saw him. He noticed that her body softened at the sight of him, that her hands clenched around the small leather clutch. He felt her eyes
roam up his body from the tips of his shoes to his crown, lingering on his tailored black slacks, the white shirt and black dinner jacket. Only when she met his eyes did he begin the slow journey down the long staircase to the ballroom below.
“Diana.” He called her name softly as he descended the stairs to greet her. More than one person stopped to watch him go to her. Diana’s face darkened in embarrassment from the attention, but she did not pull back when he brushed his cheek to hers in welcome. She smelled like roses and mint leaves, feminine and refreshing.
The desire he had for her was something beyond his control. He wanted her like he’d never wanted another woman, and he wished she’d come to him for the pleasure he had in store for them both. But he also knew that the way she fought him was as integral to their dance as the perfect way their bodies fit together.
“You’re just in time,” he said.
The party had started at seven, and it was almost eight.
“Am I, Marcus?” She said his name, and all he remembered were the moments between them in the Carmichaels’ bathroom, her fingers gripping the back of his neck as he brought her pleasure.
He cleared his throat. “I was just about to make an announcement about the fund-raiser,” he said.
“Oh, good,” she murmured.
He touched her again, unable to help himself. Did he imagine it, or did she relax into him just a little? A smile curved the corner of her mouth. He cleared his throat and left her for the front of the room, where the band was moving into the final strains of “Stormy Weather.” He gave a signal to the lead singer, a voluptuous woman in a clinging black dress, who led the band down-tempo and then to a graceful stop.
Marcus stood on the raised platform with the band as the conversations dropped to a hush, then stopped altogether.
“Thank you all very much for coming here tonight,” he said, raising his voice.
The crowd looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and interest. “I know there are other things you could be doing on a Friday evening, but I’m very pleased you decided to spend it here for this wonderful cause that is Building Bridges, Miami.”
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