She nodded, finding it almost unbearably intimate to be joined with him like this while he watched her with a heavy-lidded desire that made her insides quiver. Squeezing her eyes shut, she started to move, rotate her hips, taking him deep inside her, then shallower, establishing a rhythm that made him groan. He caught her chin in his fingers. “Look at me, Iz. I want to see your face.”
She did. Because something in him grounded her. Always had. She let the heat, the focus in his gaze as she rode him, excite her unbearably. Make her experiment. The thick muscles of his biceps flexed against the bed. “Theos,” he bit out in a raw voice. “You feel so good...I’m not sure how long I can stand this.”
“Let go,” she whispered. Rode him harder, faster, until his breath was coming in short, shallow spurts and his dark lashes swept down over his eyes. She wanted to make him come apart for her. To feel that control. She pressed down on him hard, taking him even deeper inside of her, the friction as she took him again and again so delicious she was getting close...so close...
“Izzie,” he groaned, his hips driving up into her now, setting the pace. “I need to— I can’t—”
She sank her fingers into the hard muscles of his shoulders, felt his body swell inside her, shake against her, come apart, his face dropping into the curve of her neck. She held him to her, reveling in how uncontrolled, how complete his release was.
His ragged breathing slowed. He pushed back so he could see her face. “That wasn’t how it was supposed to be,” he growled, a dark frown slanting its way across his face. “I don’t lose control like that.”
She bit her lip, dropped her gaze to the dark hair dusting his chest. “I wanted it to be good for you.”
He tipped her chin up with his fingers. “You were incredible,” he assured her, a gravelly edge to his voice. “You were close?”
She nodded.
He slid his fingers under the straps of her dress and pushed it off her shoulders with a deliberate movement. “Then let’s get things back on course.”
Her heart galloped like a high-strung racehorse anticipating extreme excitement. He moved his hands to her thighs and urged her up onto her knees. “Put your hands over your head,” he ordered. She obeyed and he yanked her dress off, leaving her clad only in her lacy bra.
He set his palm to her chest and pushed, sending her back into the duvet with a soft swoosh. Then he picked up the bottle.
A protest rose in her throat. He wasn’t actually going to—
“You’re going to ruin your duvet,” she breathed as he straddled her, bottle in hand.
“To hell with the duvet,” he murmured, tipping the bottle upside down and spilling the amber liquid over her heated flesh. “I always thought Cristal couldn’t get any better, but this might change my mind.”
“Alex,” she protested, raising herself up on her elbows. “I don’t think—”
He pushed her back down with a flick of his wrist. “Relax.”
Oh. Her stomach churned with anticipation as he put his lips to the curve of her breast where the champagne trail began. Took a lace-covered, champagne-soaked nipple into his mouth and sucked deeply. Her insides twisted, heat flaring in the moist, aroused part of her that had been left unfinished. He lavished the same pleasure on her other breast, driving her higher, making her squirm against the whisper-soft down beneath her.
She bolted upward as he pressed his mouth against the trembling skin of her stomach. “I’ve never—”
His mouth stilled on her inflamed skin. “Don’t tell me that selfish boyfriend of yours didn’t indulge you in this either.”
She shook her head. He pressed a kiss against the tense muscles of her abdomen. “You are so beautiful, Iz. I want to see, taste every part of you...”
She melted. Completely. Released her anxious grip on her muscles, let him part her thighs and arrange her to his satisfaction...follow the trail of liquid downward to her most sensitive flesh. “Oh,” she gasped as he parted her, tasted her, the act so soul-baringly intimate she dug her fingers into the bedding and squeezed her eyes shut. But then the hypersensitivity turned to white-hot pleasure as his tongue began a slow, hot torture that made her hips buck off the bed.
“Easy.” He held her down with firm hands as he pleasured her with long, slow strokes of his tongue.
“I can’t...I don’t—oh—” Digging her nails harder into the sheets, she willed herself to accept the pleasure he was offering her. But she was too far gone and when his tongue moved against the hard nub that was the center of her pleasure, she couldn’t take any more.
“Alex, please—”
“Shh.” He slid a hand under her bottom and lifted her to him. “I know.”
And then he was sliding a long finger inside her, stroking deep, adding a whole new layer to her pleasure, and she was jerking in to his hands, begging him to give her release. He did, the magic slide of his fingers tipping her over the edge into an orgasm so intense her entire body shook, her head flinging back against the pillows.
Shivers snaking through her, feeling as though she’d been hit by a ten-ton truck, she lay there trying to catch her breath. Alex slid up her body, rested his elbows on either side of her and ran a finger down her cheek.
“You are full of surprises, Isabel Peters,” he drawled softly.
Her cheeks heated fifty shades of red. “You don’t do so badly yourself.”
He dug his hands under her and scooped her up into his arms and carried her to the en suite bathroom. “We need to shower this off you or you’ll be a sticky mess.”
We?
He flicked on the taps, ran the water hot and pulled her into the huge walk-in shower with him. She closed her eyes as he washed her with an erotic thoroughness that made her want him all over again. Then he carried her back to his bed and made her wish come true.
Izzie let her head drift to his shoulder, absorbing the feeling of rightness she always felt with this man. How utterly complete and protected he made her feel.
Tomorrow she might wonder if she’d made a huge mistake. Tonight, she didn’t care.
CHAPTER TEN
THREE THOUGHTS OCCURRED to Izzie as she woke up in Alex’s bed, the vibrant blue of the Pacific sparkling beyond the French doors. She was sprawled on top of him as if she owned him. She’d made a huge decision with wide-ranging career implications last night, and she had a flight to catch in a few hours.
The last thought, in particular, had her gingerly detaching herself from him and rolling onto her side to look at the clock on the bedside table. Ten o’clock. She needed to leave in a couple of hours. Plenty of time.
Plenty of time to ruminate over what she’d done.
A glance at the man who was normally out of bed by six confirmed he was still asleep. He looked so sexy with a dusting of early-morning stubble covering his jaw, his long, dark lashes swept down over his cheeks; her heart tripped over itself. Oh my.
She collapsed back against the pillows and let out the quietest of sighs. In the space of twenty-four hours, she’d slept with her interview subject, agreed to give up the story of a lifetime and committed to starting over with a man who could and surely would break her heart.
Awesome. Way to go, Izzie. You definitely have your priorities in order.
The cold light of day literally and figuratively crowding in on her, she covered her face with her hands. James was going to flip his lid. But what choice had she had? Ethically, she couldn’t have continued to work on a story on a man she was now sure she was head-over-heels infatuated with.
She grimaced. Fingered the fine silk sheet draped over her. James wouldn’t see it that way. He’d see it as a foolish, shortsighted decision. A wasted opportunity few ever got. Which brought up the question, what was she doing? How had she gone from being an ultra-independent woman who knew the value of providing for herself to a blithering idiot when it came to this man?
Was she in love with Alex?
“That’s a pensive look if I’ve ever seen one.”<
br />
She jumped at the mockingly spoken words, her gaze flicking to a now fully alert Alex. His slow smile melted her insides. “I’m thinking about my boss’s reaction on Monday morning.”
“He’ll get over it.”
She twisted the sheet around her finger. “Everything depends on my anchor appearance now.”
He captured her hand in his. “You’ll be great.”
She stared at her tiny hand wrapped in his much larger one. “I have a history of blowing these things when they matter most.”
He lifted a brow.
“My mother set up a big interview for me with a national news show when I was fresh out of school. I blew it badly. It’s been my Achilles’ heel ever since.”
He shook his head. “You’re beating yourself up over something that happened when you were still wet behind the ears?”
“It’s hard not to when nothing you’ve ever done lives up to your mother’s expectations.”
He frowned. “Why do you care so much about what she thinks? You could spend your whole life looking for parental approval and never get it.”
He should know. She retrieved her hand from his. “I’m doing this for myself. I need to prove I can do this.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then nodded and held out his hand. “Come here.”
The dark glitter in his eyes made her pulse quicken. “I have a flight to catch.”
“Stay. Fly back on Monday with me.”
She shook her head. “I need to get back to New York and talk to James.”
“One day isn’t going to make a difference. Call him. Tell him I’m being difficult.”
“You are difficult.”
“Then it’s the perfect excuse, isn’t it?” He rolled her beneath him, his muscular thighs pinning her to the mattress. And then she didn’t care about James, her flight or anything but the hedonistic side of her that seemed to have taken over.
Hedonism seemed less than a solid choice on Tuesday morning as Izzie stood in front of her boss in his office, her romantic, off-the-charts-hot weekend with Alex a distant memory in the frantic buzz of the newsroom.
“Tell me you have an update for me,” he prompted impatiently, from behind his paper-cup-strewn desk.
Her stomach rolled as though she was on the high seas. “I need you to give the Constantinou story to someone else.”
He screwed up his face. “Sorry?”
She picked a spot on the wall several centimeters to the right of his face and kept her eyes glued there. “I need you to give the story to someone else.”
He sat up straight. “Why?”
She swallowed hard. “Because Alex and I are involved.”
“Define involved.”
“Involved.”
“You’re sleeping with him?”
She nodded.
He raked his hands through his hair and threw her a disbelieving look. “Since when? Was this going on that night at the Met?”
“No.” Which was the truth. Technically. She gave him an imploring look. “We confronted our feelings this weekend and I—”
“Dammit, Iz.” He slammed his hand on his desk so hard brownish liquid from an old coffee sloshed over a pile of papers. He cursed and shoved them out of the way. “You were screwing him while you were supposed to be getting the story?”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “That is not what happened. I didn’t intend on having anything to do with him and then things—things just happened.”
“While you’re working on the most important story of your career?” he roared. “How could you be so stupid? You of all people, Iz. You’ve always put your career first—been clear on your priorities.”
Apparently not anymore. She pushed her hair out of her face with a shaky hand. “We have something, James.”
Her boss snorted. “He’s a man. A goddamned shark. You think you’re going to be any different than any of the other woman in this town he’s gone through?”
Her chest tightened. “It’s done. I can’t take it back.”
He pressed his hands to his temples and pushed out of his chair, pacing to the other side of the room. “You’ve been off ever since you came back from Italy. Did you actually get concussed in that elevator? What is wrong with you?”
She wasn’t actually sure.
“My God, Izzie.” He looked at her disbelievingly. “This story would have given you exactly what you needed to win this anchor job.”
She bit her lip. “I’ll have to prove myself in the audition.”
“That would be the understatement of the year.” He let out a long breath. “Did you at least get anything good out of him?”
“Not much,” she lied, her insides twisting. “The man is a closed book.”
His mouth tightened. “I could make a crude remark right about now but I’m going to abstain.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Would you rather I’d kept my mouth shut?”
“I’d prefer it if I had my smart, rational reporter back.”
Bile climbed the back of her throat. “James—”
He waved her out of his office with a dismissive hand. “I need to figure this out. Go out there and do your job. If you can.”
Humiliation and confusion mixed to form a potent cocktail as she left, tail between her legs. She went out, shot her story on a heroic mutt who’d saved an elderly lady from having her purse snatched, filed it on autopilot and escaped home before James could give her one more pained look, as though she was his deviant teenager.
Alex had flown her home this morning, then left immediately on business to Toronto, which left her alone in her cozy little apartment with only her mad actions to keep her company. She poured herself a glass of the emergency chardonnay she kept in the fridge for girlfriend visits, stepped over her still-unpacked suitcase and collapsed on the sofa. She’d done the right thing. She knew she had. She was just going to have to put her head down, knock this audition out of the park, and everything would work out.
Wouldn’t it?
Alex Constantinou is a shark. She flinched at James’s depiction of the man she’d just thrown a piece of her career away for. Was she was a total idiot? Had her near miss in that elevator spurred deviant behavior rather than the courageous sort she was aiming for? Because right now the shark was out wining and dining a client who could be a six-foot amazon for all she knew. And could she really compete with that?
She groaned and covered her face with a pillow. Those two days in Malibu had made her feel things she’d never even knew existed—mad, unexplainable feelings for a man who was as interesting and smart as he was sexy and gorgeous. When they hadn’t been in bed together, they’d spent the day on the beach, gone out to dinner and barbecued on the housekeeper’s night off. Their discussions, ranging from politics to classic literature to the science of a good run had proved that their natural chemistry together was just as strong out of bed as in it. But even if they had that, was it enough that she should think she was any different? Or was James right and she was risking everything she’d ever wanted for a man who would move on when the wind turned?
An image of her mother walking out the front door of their little bungalow flashed through her head. She’d stood there crying, certain she was leaving for good this time, her father’s blank face as he’d tried to fight back tears forever imprinted on her mind.
Her throat ached; her eyes burned at the memory. After that had come the seemingly endless amount of tears her father hadn’t been able to hide. His complete and utter dissolution. Her and Ella’s attempts to make everything right when nothing was.
She reached for her wine and took a big gulp. A blank slate. No expiration dates. No rules. Alex hadn’t promised her anything. So where was she getting her carte blanche to throw her master plan away? Her “take care of yourself at all costs” plan that had been suiting her just fine. Depend on nothing. Then no one could hurt you.
She clenched her jaw. Told herself she needed to ref
ocus and refocus fast on what was going to sustain her. Her career. Alex might be in her life, but that didn’t mean abandoning all common sense. And now was the perfect time to reset the speedometer—when Mr. Testosterone was out of town.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IZZIE SAT IN the chair in the makeup room of the studios a week later, her stomach rolling like a ride on the deadliest of roller coasters. Where the week had gone leading up to her anchor appearance, she didn’t know. She just knew she didn’t feel ready. Didn’t know if she’d ever feel ready.
Her gaze flicked to the clock on the wall. Thirty minutes. Actually, to be accurate, twenty-nine minutes, thirty-two seconds, before the fate of her career was decided. Her hand shook as she took a sip of water. No pressure there...
“I’m going light on this, Iz,” Macy, NYC-TV’s makeup artist, said, sweeping powder over Izzie’s nose and forehead. “That mother of yours gave you some perfect skin.”
Izzie wished her mother had passed along some of her arrogant self-confidence, too. She could have used some of that right about now. Sixty minutes, she told herself. It was like one measly yoga class. Surely she could do that?
Macy twirled a fluffy brush into some rose-colored powder and ran it along Izzie’s cheekbone. She drew back, added some more color to the brush, and eyed her subject. “You look different. Alive...you got a new man or something?”
“Of course it’s a man,” James grumbled, striding into the makeup room, a bouquet of flowers in his hands. “What else would fry her brain into giving up the story of the year?”
Izzie made a face at him. “Are those from you?”
“Nope. Was on my way over here and said I’d bring them.”
She looked up at him. After his initial fury, he’d moved on and put all his energy into prepping her for tonight. She was lucky to have him.
“Thank you for all your support the past few weeks.”
The cynicism faded from his face. He deposited the flowers on the counter and rested his elbow on it. “You’re going to rock this tonight,” he said quietly. “Believe in yourself and do what I know you can do.”
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