Tempting Zander

by Carole Mortimer

  “You won’t hurt me. Please, Zander!”

  The heat of their breaths mingled as he aligned his cock up against the entrance of her channel and began to enter her grasping pussy inch by slow inch.

  Kate didn’t want gentle. Right now, she wanted, needed, to obliterate the violence of the day with this mindless taking of each other.

  She hooked her leg over the back of Zander’s thighs as she moved up and sideways, dislodging his cock as she pushed him down onto his back, so that seconds later she was the one lying on top of him straddling his thighs. It was an illusion of power, of course. Zander’s strength was so much more than her own. He was allowing her to take charge.

  She held his glittering gaze with her own as she lifted up onto her knees. She took his cock in hand to slide the broad head along the wetness of her vulva, moistening it, before taking that bulbous head completely inside her.

  She grasped Zander’s hands in hers, holding them captive beside his head as she began to lower herself down onto that turgid length.

  Kate bit her bottom lip as the muscles inside her sheath protested, clenching and then parting, allowing the hardness to enter fully as she sank down to the hilt. She held still for several seconds as her channel felt stretched to the limit, giving her sheath time to adjust to that length and thickness. She was going to ache inside from this invasion later on this evening, but right now, she didn’t care. Instead, she gloried in that nip of pain along with the pleasure. In the knowledge it was Zander who lay beneath her and deep inside her.

  Hot and hard, and so very much alive.

  She began to lift herself slowly up and then down again on those throbbing, pleasure-giving inches. All the time she held Zander’s gaze captive with her own, glorying in the ecstasy and the agony in his expression. Ecstasy when she lowered herself to the hilt. Agony as she slowly rose again and felt the drag of his hard cock over the sensitive knot of nerves inside her.

  Zander thrilled at the intensity of Kate’s concentration on their mutual pleasure. Her eyes were fevered, cheeks flushed, her bottom lip slightly swollen from where she chewed on it. His gaze moved lower, to the nipples dangling just inches in front of his face. Hard, red, tempting berries that were still engorged from his earlier ministrations.

  Kate still held his hands pinned to the bed beside his head, but that didn’t stop him from moving with the speed of a snake as he raised his head and latched on greedily to one of her pouting nipples. She faltered slightly in lifting herself up and down on his cock, and Zander could feel the muscles of her pussy contracting around his hard length as he suckled her nipple hard. He drew harder still on that swollen flesh, feeling the nipple elongate as he deliberately bit down.

  “Zander…!” Kate cried out. Her channel walls began to contract about his cock as her release hit with the force of a tsunami.

  Zander released her nipple to free his hands and grasp hold of her hips, fighting back his own release to take control of Kate’s as she rode out her climax, rode him. When she started to falter, Zander continued to lift and then lower her onto his straining cock, hearing her gasp each time he plunged deeply inside her until the contracting of her pussy walls told him she was coming a second time. Zander let go of his own control then, thrusting up hard and deep as he felt the heat of his release run the length of his cock before erupting from the tip in hot, fierce spurts.

  Kate continued to ride Zander through his climax, relishing each groan as his cock swelled and pumped his release inside her. A part of her wished the barrier of the condom wasn’t between them, and that Zander was pumping his essence deep inside her. Maybe even taking root—

  She instantly shut down those thoughts to concentrate on giving him the maximum pleasure. Zander’s earlier attitude had made it clear this was only sex. A reaffirmation they were both still alive. That blood still pumped and surged through them both. There was nothing permanent about this. Only now.

  His cock remained hard inside her even after his release, encouraging her to keep riding him. Slowly, and then faster, harder, until she felt his cock surge and heard him groan as his second release throbbed and pulsed inside her.

  Kate collapsed onto Zander’s chest, their bodies damp from the exertion, only the sound of their ragged breathing filling the air. Zander felt boneless beneath her as his cock softened but remained buried inside her.

  “Jesus!” Zander finally groaned. “That was… Jesus,” he muttered again.

  Kate purred with the satisfaction of knowing their lovemaking had pleased him as much as it had her. Nevertheless, she raised her head to look down at him anxiously. His eyes were closed, his face pale. “Are you okay?” He might have made light of it, but he had been shot earlier.

  His eyes remained closed. “I’ll let you know when I get the sensation back in my fingers and toes, and can maybe feel my cock again too. Hell, Kate, that second time was… I’ve never… I think you drained me dry!”

  She winced. “Too much?”

  Zander’s arms tightened around her as he looked up at Kate and saw the uncertainty in her face. Another show of her inner vulnerability. She was totally confident of her talent, far less so when it came to her personal life.

  “It was perfect. You were perfect,” he reassured her. “I’ve never come twice like that so quickly before.” The second time had felt as if his cum was being sucked up from the depths of him and now belonged to Kate, despite the barrier of the condom. As if Kate now owned a part of him.

  Perhaps she did?

  Certainly Zander had never felt this closeness to any woman after sex. Never had the desire to linger. To remain in her arms. To talk. To listen to her hopes and dreams, and maybe tell her some of his own.

  He was pretty sure Kate believed him to be merely an ex-soldier now employed by Knight Security. A belief he had nurtured in an effort to keep some sort of barrier between the two of them. Something he had failed at miserably.

  The truth was, he earned good money working for Knight Security, money he’d invested and increased tenfold over the past five years, but he’d also inherited all of his parents’ wealth on his twenty-fifth birthday, and then his grandparents’ when he was thirty. That money was also all invested wisely and earning him huge dividends. He also owned several properties in London.

  Zander was nowhere near as wealthy as Kate, but enough so he didn’t need to work if he didn’t want to. He chose to work. Because until now, he’d had nothing else in his life except that and his friends at Knight Security.

  Until now?

  Was he hoping to keep Kate in his life for longer than the next two months of her world tour?

  Did he want to?

  Hell, yes, he wanted to. He had never wanted anything, anyone, more than he wanted Kate Stewart.

  Maybe they could work something out? There had to be a way for them to be together, if it was what they both wanted.

  “Where have you gone?” She ran caressing fingertips across his lips.

  Zander shook himself out of his daydreams. Because that was all they were. Dreams. The sort of dreams that would leave him in a world of trouble once Kate walked away. As she had walked away from every other man who had ever been in her life.

  Including Taylor.

  Zander understood the other man’s desperation not to let her go out of his life a little better now. That fierce possessiveness Taylor felt in regard to Kate. The same fierce possessiveness Zander now also felt toward her. Not to the manic degree Taylor did, but Kate was one hell of a woman. Unique. Unforgettable. Beautiful. Independent. Utterly fearless in pursuit of what she wanted.

  Right now, she wanted him.

  But there was no guarantee how long that would continue to be the case.

  So I fucking go for it while she does want me!

  “I’m right here,” he said huskily. “With you.”

  Kate recognized Zander wasn’t about to share his thoughts with her. It was part of who he was. He preferred to keep even his thoughts to himself. To
keep himself to himself. She would rather have the part of him he would allow her to have than none of him at all.

  “Roll over onto your front,” she encouraged huskily.

  His brows rose. “I’m going to need prior warning if you’re into the kinky stuff, Miss Stewart.”

  She shot him a reproving glance. “I want to take a closer look at the tattoo on your back.”

  “That isn’t very original,” he taunted, but rolled over anyway before resting his head on his bent arms.

  Kate wasn’t in the least embarrassed as she sat naked on the bed inspecting Zander’s eagle tattoo. The detail of it was incredible. Wings and tail feathers spread. Eyes black as coal. The face majestic. All made more so by the musculature on Zander’s back.

  She couldn’t help herself, had to touch as well as look. “This is how you see yourself, isn’t it,” she murmured, fingertips gliding slowly over his flesh. “A lone eagle far removed from the rest of the world.”

  Zander didn’t flinch, didn’t show by so much as a tensing of a muscle that Kate’s summary of him was the correct one. When he’d had the tattoo done five years ago, that was exactly how he had seen himself. Remote. Removed.

  But not anymore.

  That had changed over the past few months. Living in such close proximity with Kate was what had changed it, he inwardly acknowledged. Something he had realized at the airport earlier today as he sat waiting to board his plane home.

  He had been in more airports than he cared to think about. On his way to a job somewhere or on his way home after completing one. It had never bothered him before in the way it had bothered him today.

  There was no one there to say good-bye to him. No one waiting to greet him when he got back to England. No one to miss him. There was only the aloneness. The loneliness of being alone.

  It was an alien emotion to him. He was always alone, but he had never felt lonely before today.

  There was no hassle involved in being alone. No complications. No trying to second-guess what another person was thinking, and what or if they needed from him.

  All things he had avoided by remaining alone.

  Until now.

  Until Kate.

  He had started to miss her the moment he left the hotel earlier. So much so that by the time he reached the airport, he had wondered what the hell he was doing there.

  He had also wondered if she was missing him as much as he was missing her. Doubtful, after the way he had been so coldly dismissive toward her this morning.

  Then the shooting had started, and he had been filled with another emotion he had never experienced before.

  Fear.

  Not that he might be shot and killed, only that if he was, he would never see Kate again. Never have the chance to tell her he was sorry. That he hadn’t meant any of those things he’d said to her. That he had only reacted that way because her opinion of him was important to him, damn it. The thought of Kate believing he was having an affair with Sophie Cook when the two of them were involved had not only angered him, it had also sickened him. For the first time in his life, he cared what a woman thought of him.

  He rolled over onto his side so that he could look at her. “Isn’t that how you see yourself too?” He reached out to grasp hold of her hand as she would have moved away.

  “Perhaps,” she conceded.

  Zander knew he hadn’t imagined Kate’s aloneness the night Sophie Cook had claimed Taylor had been in her suite. Kate had been surrounded by people that night and yet totally apart from them at the same time. The same distance Zander had always kept around himself.

  These last four months, Zander had tried to concentrate on all the obvious ways they were different, when fundamentally they were very much the same. Both alone in the world. Both emotionally withdrawn. Both wary of relationships. Both preferring to be alone because they wished to avoid the pain of losing someone else they cared about.

  Someone they loved?

  It was too soon for Zander to know if what he felt for Kate was love. Too soon for him to acknowledge it even if it was. Admitting he had missed her today was a giant step forward for him.

  As for how Kate felt about him…

  The most she was willing to admit was a liking for having sex with him.

  A liking he definitely reciprocated.

  He pulled her down to lie beside him again. “I suggest we watch something mindless on the TV for a while, order some dinner, then make love again.” He picked up the remote and turned the TV on, flicking through the channels until he found a chick flick he thought she might enjoy, before lying back against the pillows and taking her in his arms.

  Another first for him.

  He wondered how many more of those firsts he was going to share with this enigmatic woman beside him.

  Chapter 11

  “Where have you been?” Kate prompted sharply. She took the top bedsheet with her to cover her nakedness as she sat up against the pillows and looked across the bedroom at a fully dressed Zander. He wore a black T-shirt that fit tautly across his muscular shoulders and chest, and a pair of faded jeans resting low on his hips.

  She had woken a short time ago and instantly became aware the warmth of Zander’s body was missing beside her in the bed. A quick glance at the digital clock on the bedside table showed it was a little after eight o’clock in the evening. A further glance round the room showed her Zander wasn’t in the dimly lit bedroom or the adjoining darkened bathroom.

  The last she remembered, the two of them had been watching the movie he’d chosen, a romantic comedy that definitely qualified as mindless. She must have fallen asleep partway through it, because she certainly didn’t remember the end of the movie, and the TV was now switched off. They hadn’t ordered dinner either, and she was ravenously hungry.

  Nor had they made love for second time…

  She’d decided to call Bernie before looking for Zander, but her manager’s cell phone went straight to voice mail. Zander had now arrived back in her bedroom before she had chance to go in search of him. “Did you and Ian go to see Joey without me?” She frowned.

  Zander noiselessly crossed the bedroom in predatory strides until he was standing beside the bed. “I only went to check in with Ian, to see if there had been any more developments.”

  “And has there?”

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “Very. I don’t intend keeping you out of the loop on any of this, Kate.”

  “Thank you.”

  They were talking so formally to each other. Zander because… Well, she didn’t know Zander’s reasons. Her own was she felt a little shy when she thought of their earlier lovemaking.

  “Would you like to order dinner now?”

  “In a little while.” She nodded. “When I woke and you weren’t here, I thought you and Ian had gone to see Joey without me.”

  “Unless you haven’t noticed, I don’t have any shoes and socks on.”

  She had noticed. “You could have taken them off in the other room.”

  He arched blond brows. “I believe you specified in our last conversation that I wasn’t to speak to Taylor without you?”

  Her eyes widened. “And you actually took notice of me?”

  Zander smiled ruefully, understanding Kate’s surprise. He wasn’t exactly known for doing what he was told or asked to do. Well, he might be new to this relationship business, but even he knew better than to piss Kate off just hours after the two of them had called that uneasy truce and made incredible love together.

  He sat on the side of the bed and looked at her. Her hair was a silky tangle about her shoulders. Her lips were slightly puffy from the passionate kisses they had shared earlier. There were slightly reddened patches of skin on her throat and the tops of her breasts from the stubble on his chin. His sitting on the side of the bed had also pulled the sheet tighter across her breasts, revealing that the nipples were engorged beneath that flimsy covering.

  In Zander’s eyes, she had nev
er looked more beautiful.

  He nodded. “I believe listening is in the survival handbook for lovers, under the heading ‘Things You Definitely Shouldn’t Do to Piss Off Your Lover.’”

  Or more adorable as her gaze skittered away from meeting his before returning to give him a quick and wary glance. “Are we lovers?”

  Zander understood that wariness too. He was way out of his depth attempting to be any woman’s lover, let alone one like Kate. But he was determined to try. The alternative was not having Kate in his life, and he already knew that was unacceptable.

  He fought back his own feelings of…not panic, exactly, but something very close to it. He’d never had a lover before. “We are,” he stated firmly, as much to convince himself as her.

  “You aren’t going to change your mind in the morning?”

  “No,” he assured her ruefully, knowing he deserved Kate’s doubts. She hadn’t been the only one throwing out mixed messages. “Although you have some serious making up to do for falling asleep before we’d had dinner and made love again. I’m pretty sure I would have been made to suffer in some way if I had been the one to do that.”

  The thing that struck Kate about that teasing statement was made love again. In the past, Zander had used much cruder terms to describe their moments of intimacy. He had also claimed to now be her lover. Officially.

  The thought of that made her heart leap and plummet at the same time.

  It was exhilarating to think of having Zander as openly being her lover.

  But worrying to think of what Joey might do to Zander in retaliation once he was aware the relationship was more than media speculation.

  For the moment, safe in her hotel suite, exhilaration won out. “I’m more than happy to make…recompense for doubting you,” she assured huskily as she moved up onto her knees and wrapped her arms about Zander’s shoulders, bared breasts pressing against the heat of his T-shirt-covered chest.

  “What did you have in mind?” His arms moved about her waist to pull her in even tighter, his mouth so close, she could feel the heat of his breath against her lips.