by Bella Andre
“She really said that?” When he nodded, Rosa said, “I didn’t mean to insult her. It’s just really hard for me to trust people right now.”
“You have every right to be cynical. If my sister were going to be a problem, I wouldn’t hide it from you. But,” he warned her, “if you ever call yourself trash again, you’re going to find out just how dangerous I can really be.”
Chapter Thirteen
Rosa was almost positive Drake hadn’t meant to say what he’d just said in a sexy way...but her body didn’t seem to get it.
It was just that she’d never met a man like him before. Not only breathtakingly gorgeous on the outside, but on the inside too. He looked amazing whether clean-shaven or covered in facial hair, well rested or sleep deprived, even wearing paint-spattered jeans with smudges of color all over his hands and hair.
But it was the way he’d repeatedly defended her—even from her own harsh words about herself—that rocked her to the core. And when she was standing this close to him, especially after zinging so many heated words back and forth, it was all she could do not to frame his gorgeous face in her hands and kiss him the same way he’d kissed her in the motel room. With ravenous, desperate passion.
She wanted to rip off his clothes and learn every inch of his body with her hands, her mouth.
She wanted to wrap herself around him again and beg him to take her.
She wanted to lose herself in his intensity, his desire.
And, most of all, she wanted to believe that he was right about her...and that she wasn’t trash.
Only Oscar stealing the sandwich from her hand in a deft move that defied his general air of laziness stopped her. “Your dog is eating your sandwich.” Her words were heavy with unquenched desire. “I’ll make you another.”
Her heart was pounding a rough beat in her chest as she headed back to the kitchen and tried to regain at least a tiny bit of composure.
For the past five years, she’d learned so many tricks for how to change the mood in a room, whether at a press conference or at a party, but being with Drake wasn’t like being with anyone else. Mostly because he didn’t see her the same way the rest of the world did, as nothing more than a vacuous sex symbol who’d “lucked” into a fortune on TV. But was he right? Was she more than that? Had she always been more?
In any case, she badly needed to find some way to drop the intensity level between them. Otherwise, she was very much afraid she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from giving in to the desire that only ratcheted up every time they went deep.
Fortunately, the smacking sounds Oscar was making as he licked the rest of the sandwich from his muzzle helped her pull focus. “Tell me more about your sister,” she said as she took food out of the fridge for another sandwich. “You said she writes computer programs?”
“Suzanne founded her own company when she was twenty. She can do pretty much anything when it comes to writing software, but digital security is her specialty. Her company is based in Manhattan.”
“She sounds brilliant.”
“She is. But I worry about her sometimes, that she doesn’t get out enough or see enough of the real world outside her rooms full of computers.”
“Does she have a boyfriend?”
“Nope. Like I said, she spends most of her time with her computers.”
“Would she tell you if she did have one?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t she?”
“Because as soon as I said the word boyfriend, you got this protective-warrior look on your face.” And her heart had melted even further at how much he obviously cared for his sister. “Is she pretty?”
“Very.” He nodded to the hallway. “There’s a picture of all of us on the wall.”
Rosa put down the mustard bottle and went to take a look. There were lots of family pictures on his walls, and she made a mental note to go back and look at the rest of them later, but for now she homed in on the first one with Drake’s immediate family in it. “Wow, you’re not the only one with killer genes, are you?”
First off, his sister was miles beyond pretty. Tall and elegant, yet curvy at the same time, she could have walked any runway in the world if she’d wanted to. Rosa loved that she’d chosen what was in her head instead of her looks to guide her career.
As for Drake’s brothers? There was no way any woman alive stood a chance against tumbling half into love with a Sullivan, simply from setting eyes on any one of them.
“Alec is the one with the cocky grin.” He said it with affection, and she easily guessed exactly which brother he was talking about. “He builds jets, mostly private, just outside of the city. Harrison is a history professor at Columbia. Everyone thinks he’s the quiet one, at least until they get to know him.”
The brains, looks, and talent in Drake’s family made her head spin. “Is this your father with you?”
“That’s him.” The four siblings stood as one tight unit, but their father was slightly off to one side, almost as though he felt he didn’t quite belong in the family photo. “We all happened to be up at his cabin in the Adirondacks at the same time, which doesn’t happen that often, so Suz made us set up a camera to get a shot.”
“Is that where your father lives?”
“He started building a house in the Adirondacks thirty years ago.” After his mother had gone, she thought with a sharp pang in the center of her chest. “We’d all head there during school breaks, but once we were old enough to be left alone, he sold his place in the city and moved there full time.”
It wasn’t hard for Rosa to put two and two together—not only had his father stopped painting when Drake’s mother passed away, but he’d also retreated from the city.
“I’ve never been to the Adirondacks. Is it nice?”
“With big blue lakes and green mountains that seem to go on forever, most people tend to think so. It’s pretty darn remote, though.”
“More remote than this?”
“We’re in the Hamptons,” he reminded her, his brush never once slowing as they talked.
“Do you see your father much?”
Finally, the brush stopped, hovering just over the canvas. “Not recently. He doesn’t get out to the city much.”
“And you don’t go to the Adirondacks to see him?”
“Not as often as I should.” Drake suddenly looked tired, as if his all-nighter had just caught up with him. “That’s why Suz came—to see if I wanted to drive out there with her.” He paused as if he was trying to decide whether to say more. Finally, he said, “He says he’s got some paintings of our mother to give to each of us if we want them.”
The last thing Rosa wanted was to hurt Drake. But something told her he needed to talk to someone about what was going on with his family without risking judgment. And if anyone knew about weird family dynamics, she did. Lord knew she was certainly in no position to judge.
Which was why, instead of backing off, she decided to step closer to the fire she could see burning inside of him. “Do you want the paintings?”
“My father is a true master painter, and collectors consider the paintings to be priceless, but—” He put down his brush and ran a paint-smeared hand over his hair, leaving it standing on end. “When she left us, she left him so broken that he left us too. The paintings have always felt like a brutal reminder of how having me must have pushed them both over the edge.”
Rosa didn’t think, just crossed the room and put her arms around him. “They were wrong. Both of them were so damned wrong to hurt you.” He’d been angry with her mother, and now she was just as furious with his parents. She held him tighter as she said, “It doesn’t matter how much the paintings are worth. If you decide not to take them, it’s entirely on your mother and father, not their innocent kid who got caught in the crossfire.”
“How can you see my innocence so clearly,” he said as he drew back to cup her face in his hands, “but not your own?”
“If you have an Internet connection here, I’ll show
you why. It will take me less than five seconds to find dozens of pictures I’ve posed for where I’m wearing next to nothing. Where I’m deliberately flaunting my body.”
“You have every right to flaunt whatever you want to. And you have every goddamned right to strip off your clothes in front of the entire world if it makes you happy. But just like I didn’t ask my mother to walk out on me and my family, you sure as hell didn’t ask some creep to take those pictures of you.”
He’d been passionate and intense before, but this was a whole other level. One where it felt like he’d go to the ends of the earth if that’s what he needed to do to make her believe that what he was saying was true.
“You’re not only innocent, Rosa, but I don’t need to see any pictures of you on the Internet to know that you don’t have one single thing to be ashamed of in your past.”
Again, Rosa didn’t think through her next move, couldn’t possibly do anything but feel how full her heart was. She simply went to her tippy-toes, pressed her mouth to his.
And finally gave him the kiss they’d both been waiting for.
Chapter Fourteen
Drake didn’t lose control as Rosa kissed him. Because how could he lose something he’d never had when it came to the woman in his arms?
In the span of a heartbeat, her sweet kiss went deep. Wild. And so hot that he wouldn’t be surprised if his cabin caught fire right where they were standing.
“Love me,” she whispered against his lips. “Please love me, Drake. Here. Now.”
“Anything you want,” he promised her. “Anything you need. It’s yours.”
All night long, as he’d painted her from memory, he’d drifted in and out of a semi-dream state where reality and imagination overlapped, blending until he could barely see their edges. Now, as Rosa’s heart hammered out a fast beat against his, those edges blurred again—the real world outside his cabin disappearing until it was only the two of them and the new reality they were creating together.
One where desire ruled...and any cries were those of soul-deep pleasure.
He wound her hair in his fist and tugged her head back so that he could feast on the feather-soft skin at her neck, laving her throbbing pulse point with his tongue before nipping at the curve of her shoulder so that she shuddered and thrill bumps rose across her skin. He’d never wanted to love anyone so much, or so well—had never known what it was to truly lose himself in another’s pleasure. Not until Rosa had walked out on his cliffs in the rain and changed absolutely everything.
From the corner, Oscar let out a long, low howl. And when Rosa stilled in his arms, Drake worried that the spell would be broken the same way it was in the motel when she’d stopped and told him she was making a mistake.
But all she said was, “I think we’re scandalizing him.”
“That’s his happy sound,” Drake told her as he scooped her up in his arms. She instinctively wound hers around his neck as he added, “He loves having you here.” They both did. “But we don’t need an audience. And I want you in my bed.” Hell, he wanted her everywhere, but the bed would be a good place to start.
“I want it too.” She played with the ends of his hair against his neck, almost shy as she said, “More than I’ve ever wanted anything else.”
They were halfway to his bedroom when he had to stop to devour the mouth that was driving him crazy. Heat spiked even higher as he took her lower lip between his teeth and her moan reverberated through them both.
A split second from taking her right there in the hall, he forced himself to walk the final dozen feet to his bedroom. Kicking the door open, then shut behind them, he all but threw her down on the bed.
“I should be gentle with you.” He hoped saying the words aloud would make it possible. “I need to be careful our first time.”
“No,” she said as she reached for him and pulled him down on top of her, “I don’t want gentle. I don’t want careful.” Her eyes were so big, so honest. “I want dangerous.”
The floodgates of desire had already been yanked open by her kisses. But now?
Now the last wall of the dam exploded as he slid his hands beneath her sweatshirt so that he could take greedy fistfuls of her. But even then it wasn’t enough just to touch—he needed to see, needed to taste.
Thank God she was already tearing off the thick cotton sweatshirt and her bra, baring herself to his gaze and his mouth as he licked out against the swell of one gorgeously aroused breast, then the other. But this back and forth still wasn’t enough—he needed all of her at once, needed to cup her in his rough hands so that he could suckle both breasts at the same time.
“God, that’s so good.” She thrust her hands into his hair and urged him closer as he pressed her breasts together and let his hunger for her take over. “More,” she urged him, “take more of me.”
He felt her arousal climb higher and higher as he used tongue, teeth, and hands all at once, her hips bucking up into his as he ground himself against her. Lust clawed at his insides, driving him half mad as he yanked off her sweatpants and panties, then threw them across the room. He pressed his lips to her belly, then thrust his hand between her legs to find her gloriously wet and ready for him.
Rosa’s scent, the feel of her soft skin beneath his hands, her passionate response—every part of her intoxicated him. But it was the way she looked lying in his bed with her long hair wild on his pillow, her head thrown back in ecstasy, and her eyes closed, her breasts wet from his tongue and slightly abraded from his whiskers, that made time actually stop.
All his life, Drake had seen beyond the actual, then sought to capture his hyper-vision on canvas. But he’d never, not once in his entire life, seen anything as beautiful as the woman in his bed.
“Drake?” Her eyes were open again now, sparkling with so much life and heat and passion that he knew he could paint her a million times and never manage to show it all. Never even come close. “Don’t stop.” She licked her lips, and he had to taste them too. “Please, I’m—” She suddenly looked shy again as she whispered, “I’m so close.”
“Good.” He pressed his mouth to the hollow of her neck as he slipped his fingers from her wet heat to skim them over her sex instead. “Close is good.” He licked her collarbone, then lightly sank his teeth into the sweet curve of her shoulder. “I love knowing you’re nearly there. That I’ve taken you right to the edge.” He circled the wet flesh between her thighs. “Just think how it’s going to feel when you finally fall all the way over.” With his other hand, he lightly rolled her nipple against his thumb. “So much better than good you’re not going to believe it.”
Her breath was coming in hard pants now, her pupils dilated so wide her eyes were nearly black. “It already feels like that,” she said at the exact moment he found her breasts again with his tongue and teeth. “Better than anything has ever been.”
He had to lift his mouth back to hers, needed her to know that it was the same for him. But soon, he was running his free hand and his mouth back over her breasts, and then farther down, over her stomach, pressing kisses to the tops of her thighs before putting his hands on them so that he could marvel all over again at just how beautiful she was. And so aroused that even blowing lightly over her sex was almost enough to send her tumbling into climax.
Drake wanted to savor this moment, wanted to draw out every single second with her so that it never ended.
But how could he resist the need to taste her?
Only, when he finally covered her with his mouth, he needed a hell of a lot more than just a taste. He needed to devour her. Needed to plunge deep with his tongue as arousal spilled. Needed to plunge his fingers back into her to feel her clench tight around him, his name on her lips as her orgasm peaked, then ripped through her.
Something snapped in him—and dangerous was the only way to describe the way he shoved off his clothes, put on protection, and leapt back over her on the bed.
Her eyes were wide as he grabbed her wrists in his hands an
d pushed them over her head. Not with fear, but with an arousal that matched his own.
“Yes,” she panted, pleaded. “Take me. All of me. Don’t hold back.”
But he was already there, dropping one hand from her wrists to reach down and push one leg up and open for him, then reaching around to grip her hip in his hand. He stopped only long enough to take a mental snapshot of her aroused perfection before he thrust home.
One hard, perfect charge forward into heaven.
A gasp of pleasure sounded from her throat as she bucked against him, using his grip at her wrists and thigh for leverage to get closer, to take more of him.
“Oh God. It’s so good. You feel so good.”
Though her eyelids fluttered as bliss washed through her, she never looked away. And neither did he, unable to stand the thought of missing even one second of loving Rosa.
The sight of her flushed skin, the sexy sound of her moans of pleasure, the scent of her arousal—he’d never forget any of it. Would never be able to find anything, or anyone, to rival it. Sex had never been like this before, had never felt this intense. This mind-blowing.
This meant to be.
He crushed her mouth beneath his as he let go of her wrists so that he could pull her even tighter, while she wrapped her arms and legs around him as if she wanted him just as close. The way they fit together, inside and out, he swore she was made only for him.
“Mine.” He left her lips only long enough to tell her the one thing he now knew for sure. “You’re mine.”
He didn’t leave her breath to reply, but he didn’t need to. Not when the press of her damp skin, the passion with which she urged his kisses and his thrusting hips deeper—and the staggering pleasure that took them higher and higher before finally sending them flying out over the edge together—told him that she felt the same.
Chapter Fifteen
He’d nearly killed her with pleasure.
But even if he had, it would have been the perfect way to go. Nothing in her life had ever been so extraordinary, so all-consuming. Especially not sex.