by Lucy Monroe
"Phoebe."
She opened her eyes to find him looking down at her, an intense expression tightening his features. She licked her suddenly dry lips. "What?"
"I'm going to make you mine now."
What was she supposed to say to that? Probably something equally erotic and sophisticated, but all she could do was agree. "Okay."
He pulled away from her and leaned over to open his night-stand drawer. She watched in utter fascination as he rolled a condom over his engorged sex. He turned back to her and smiled at her rapt expression. "You can do it next time."
"I don't know how."
"It's not hard. I'm sure you can figure it out, and I'm bound to enjoy you trying."
He wanted her to touch him? She realized she'd whispered the words aloud when his expression turned rapacious.
"Hell, yes. I want your sweet little hands everywhere, and by the time tonight is over they will have been."
"I want that, too," she admitted.
His smile was all-conquering male. "I know."
She laughed at his ego, but her humor fled fast enough when he came back to her on the bed. Without her really understanding how it happened, he divested her of her remaining clothes, all the while touching her in ways that were guaranteed to make her crazy.
When she was a trembling, naked mass of nerves lying there on his bed, he came down on top of her again. And this time, her brain did a short-circuit. She lost sense of anything except the feel of his body against hers. She could feel his thighs brushing the inside of her own, the blunt tip of his shaft against her virgin opening, his lips molding hers, his hands exploring excited flesh. Her entire world shrank to physical sensation and a burgeoning of love in her heart that was so overwhelming, she thought she might explode from it.
But no matter how much she longed to cry out her love along with her pleasure, she kept the words locked tight in her throat.
He wanted sex, not emotion.
His pelvis tilted toward her, and it started … his possession of her body.
"Does it hurt?" he asked, his voice tight with strain.
How could she answer? It felt like nothing she'd ever known before. Yes, there was some pain, but it was part of a maelstrom of sensations, and she could not distinguish it as separate from the others.
"It doesn't matter," she choked out between panting breaths.
She tipped up toward him, wanting more of him. Needing his complete possession. It seemed to drive him right over the edge, and he plunged deeper into her, breaking through her barrier with one thrust. She screamed. She couldn't help it.
She had no problem distinguishing the feelings now.
"It hurts." She tried to shove him off while doing her best to sink back into the bed away from his marauding flesh. "This is not going to work."
He was about as movable as a rock and definitely as hard as one, but he stopped thrusting.
His shoulders were slick with sweat, the muscles under her hands bulging with the effort to hold still, and his entire body shook with tension. "It's going to work," he ground out.
It was no gentle wooing, but the pain in his expression more than matched her own, and for some reason that made it better. He needed her. He didn't just want to have sex with her. He needed it, and that made the pain worth it. She stopped trying to get away from him.
He moved, just a little, and she gasped as she felt a new shaft of pain arc through her.
"You've got to relax." His jaw was so tight, it could have been hewn from marble.
"I don't know how." She was failing him, and she couldn't stand it. She wanted this to work. Wanted it so much, but she couldn't seem to accommodate him like his other lovers must have done.
He didn't say anything, but his mouth lowered, and the lips that pressed against hers were not hard and angry. They weren't even impatient. They were gentle and coaxing, and bit by bit, the rigidity in her body lessened.
"That's it. You can do it, honey." The words of encouragement whispered against her lips were as tantalizing as his kiss. "That's right, relax for me."
Both tender and carnal, his mouth drew forth her passion despite the lingering discomfort. He started another rocking, this time small movements of his hips that left him deeper inside her with each thrust. And far from pain, she felt an indescribable pleasure.
Finally, his pelvis ground into her own, and she felt full, stretched to capacity. She could not move so much as a centimeter with his heavy body pressing hers down and his hardness inside her.
He maneuvered his legs until they were outside hers, pressing her thighs together and her flesh more firmly around his shaft. She whimpered as the movement put him into almost unbearable contact with her clitoris.
"Are you ready?"
For what? But she said, "Yes," because she needed something and was sure he knew what it was.
She was right. He pulled out of her until only the tip of his big erection was still inside her and then plunged back into her. Hard. He did it over and over again, caressing her clitoris the entire time with that granite-hard shaft. She cried out again, but this time from the incredible bliss of it.
She climbed toward that pinnacle he'd given her once already with a speed that left her begging and trying to move under him. She tilted her pelvis, succeeding in moving enough to increase the friction between his flesh and her sweet spot.
He ground his pelvis against her in a circle with each downward thrust, and her fingers gripped his shoulders, her nails digging into the slick skin.
He tore his mouth from hers. "Now, baby. Come with me now!"
And she did.
Pleasure exploded inside her like an atomic bomb while his feral shout of release rang in her ears and his body bowed above hers for endless seconds. He collapsed on top of her, and she hugged him with arms that felt like limp spaghetti.
His face nuzzled next to hers. "Now you're mine."
Tears of happiness blurred her eyes, and she was glad he couldn't see them. "Yes."
"For a week."
Tears of another kind tightened her throat, but she refused to give in to them. A week as his woman was better than a lifetime of loneliness.
"For a week," she repeated.
It shouldn't, but having her agree with the one-week stipulation bothered Rand.
He asked himself what he had expected. She was a twenty-five-year-old woman looking for sexual experience, not a lifetime commitment.
Even if he had that to give her, which he didn't.
Being raised the bastard son of a leading citizen in the small town of New Hope had taught Rand to guard his heart and be wary of any emotion remotely connected to love. Losing Susan and their son had torn what was left of his heart to shreds.
For a long time, he had resisted even Phoebe's nondemanding friendship. Then Carter had taken his flit, and she had been devastated, in need of some kind of support. Rand had felt responsible. It hadn't made any sense. She'd been nothing to him, but he'd suspected he knew why his brother had called off the wedding. Rand had showed him letters that proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that their father had loved his mother, or at least lusted after her, while remaining married for appearances sake to Carter's.
Something had snapped in his brother, and he'd taken off, leaving Phoebe to face a humiliation she had not deserved.
Rand had offered her his friendship, had tried to protect her from the most vicious of the gossip, and she had repaid him with a deep loyalty and caring he refused to examine too closely. He didn't know when he realized she wanted him, or when he'd started wanting her back, but both feelings had grown.
Making love had been inevitable, no matter how much he had tried to avoid it.
He had nothing but sex to give Phoebe, and she deserved so much more. She was beautiful inside and out, but he wasn't risking his heart again.
The least he could do was to make damn sure it was the best sex she would ever know in her life.
Phoebe soaked in the herbal bath Rand ha
d prepared for her. She had no idea where he'd gotten the bath beads that made the water both soft and incredibly soothing to her sore flesh, but she was grateful to whatever angel had provided them. She didn't know if it was Rand's size, or her recent status as a virgin, or the fact they'd made love several times before he allowed her to drift into an exhausted sleep, but she'd woken very sore.
Probably, it had been a combination of the three.
All she knew for sure was that when he woke her with his sensual lips on hers, she'd been absolutely certain her week with Rand was bound to be a celibate one. No way could she make love again feeling the way she had.
He'd kept his kisses fairly chaste and fed her breakfast in bed. Afterward, much to her surprise, he had carried her into the bathroom where his whirlpool tub was filled with steaming water tinted a deep emerald green.
Bubbles of fragrant water swirled around her now as the pain between her legs faded to nothing and her aching and strained muscles relaxed.
He'd refused to join her, saying that to do so would defeat the purpose of the bath.
She smiled secretly at the thought of herself as irresistible to Rand. He might be getting the deed to Luna Island in exchange for the week together in bed, but he had not been lying when he said that he wanted her. Just her.
It was a heady thought and one she'd much rather dwell on than the one-week time limit to their pseudorelationship.
"Feeling better?"
She opened her eyes at the sound of his voice and smiled up at him. "Yes. Much."
"Good." His white teeth flashed, and gray eyes warmed her with their scrutiny.
She relaxed against the bath pillow behind her. Swirling her hand through the water, she asked, "How did you know about this stuff?"
Rand wasn't the type of man to make love with virgins on a regular basis. His usual date was way too sophisticated for that scenario. On the other hand, maybe other women found his size and stamina a challenge as well.
She hated thinking of him with other lovers and felt her face pull into a frown.
He sat on the edge of the bathtub and leaned over to brush his fingertip along her collarbone. "I called my doctor. He recommended a naturopath who prescribed the bath."
"You must have been up early." And gotten his doctor out of bed, too.
"You were sore when you went to sleep. I knew it would only be worse this morning."
And that bothered him. She could tell. "I was a virgin. It was inevitable that it hurt a little."
He grimaced and withdrew his hand. "I kept at you like a randy teenager."
She reached out and grabbed his hand with her wet one. "I wanted you, too. Every time."
Strong fingers gripped hers. "I know. I still didn't like the idea of you hurting."
"So you fixed it."
He shrugged.
It both touched and embarrassed her that he'd gone to the trouble of calling his doctor. "Thank you, Rand."
He laughed, his expression turning cynical. "It was pure self-interest. I didn't want to spend tonight aching next to a body I wanted to ravish."
What an incredible thought. She could make him ache. "I still think you're a pretty nice guy."
"Don't you believe it. I'm just good at getting what I want."
Right now he wanted her, and she wasn't complaining.
They flew to North Carolina later that morning. Rand spent the day in meetings while Phoebe went shopping in Raleigh's largest mall. She was in the lingerie section of her favorite department store when the idea of a minimakeover took root and grew with the speed of morning glory in the spring.
The salesclerk was pointing out a dress across the aisle from the lingerie department. It was something Phoebe would never have looked at twice. It was too short. Too slinky. Too revealing for her usual mode of dressing.
Usually the idea of drawing any sort of attention to her less than stellar female attributes would have sent her running a mile in the other direction, but Rand liked her small breasts. He had spent hours touching, kissing and praising them the night before.
The thought of exciting him with a sexier way of dressing was way too tantalizing to pass up.
She wasn't going to begin dressing like a tart, but a few skirts that showed her knees and blouses that accentuated her feminine curves would be a good start.
Three hours later, she left the mall with several bags. Some were filled with new, more revealing clothing, and the others attested to her passion for lacy underthings.
She was wearing one of her new purchases when Rand got back to their hotel suite that evening. She felt sexier than she ever had in her life. The short dress of burnished bronze chiffon over satin dipped low in front, exposing the top curve of her breasts. Its full skirt flirted around her thighs in a way none of her old dresses did.
Carter had said she had nice legs.
She hoped Rand agreed. He had certainly enjoyed looking at her in her corselette, and later, after they made love the first time, he'd spent a lot of time just looking at her naked figure on the bed.
She wanted to be beautiful for him. She wanted to dress like a woman who would spend the week in his bed, not her normal conservative self.
His silver eyes flared with desire when he saw her, and she decided the afternoon had been worth it.
She took a deep breath, which stalled somewhere around her windpipe when his gaze zeroed in on her chest pressing against the bodice of her dress. She knew what he could see, because she'd seen them earlier in the mirror. Hard-tipped breasts that exposed the level of her excitement to his knowing gaze.
"Hi."
Tossing his briefcase onto the suite's small sofa, he yanked on his tie. "Hi, yourself. Do we have plans to go out tonight?"
She shook her head. "I ordered room service for later."
His eyes shifted to the standing champagne bucket next to her. Then he looked at her again. "I like the dress."
"I'd hoped you would."
"It's new."
She didn't deny it. "I went shopping this afternoon."
"Did you buy any more sexy underwear?"
It was getting hard to breathe under that stare. "Yes."
"Are you wearing them?"
She shook her head again.
He tossed his tie on top of his briefcase and followed it with his suit coat, then started walking toward her while he unbuttoned his dress shirt. "Does that mean you're wearing boring, cotton panties?"
"Um … no."
He reached her, stopping when the toes of his Italian loafers met her sandal-shod feet. "I couldn't stop thinking about you."
He didn't sound happy about the admission.
Maybe it would help him to know it had been mutual. "I kept thinking about you, too."
"Did you?" He played with the hem of her skirt, his fingers sliding underneath and touching the skin of her thigh.
Sensation shot through her intimate flesh, drawing moisture from inside her to warm the cleft between her legs. "Yes." He moved his hand, and her breath hitched. "I wanted to be with you."
Her heart had gone wild, and her breathing was shallow.
His nostrils flared with arousal. "So, if you're not wearing something new, I guess that means you're wearing sexy stuff you already had."
His finger slipped around to flirt with the seam of her legs, only centimeters from flesh aching for his touch.
"No, that's not what it means," she told him on a breathless whisper.
His hand went up, and he barely brushed the soft curls between her legs with the backs of his fingers, but she moaned anyway. It felt so good.
His other hand cupped the back of her head, and he brought his face down to hers. "There's only one thing I can think of that's more erotic than the thought of you in sexy lingerie."
"There is?" She barely knew what she was saying as her lips brushed his with each movement.
"Yes." He kissed her, softly and slowly. He drew it out until her lips were clinging to his and her fingers were wrapped
like manacles around his neck and the wrist next to her head.
He pulled his lips just far enough away to speak again. "The thought of you wearing nothing at all under that dress."
He touched her once more as his lips laid claim to her mouth, this time his entire hand cupping her mound. She arched toward him with a convulsive movement, and he pressed his middle finger between her already swollen and wet lips as she shifted her legs apart in blatant invitation.
He took it with an animal-like growl, touching her humid flesh with intimate strokes that had her gyrating against his hand. Seconds later, he lifted her and set her down on the hard length of his penis. Her body stretched to fit him with much less difficulty than the night before, but it still took some rocking to get him completely inside.
He cupped her bottom and pressed her more firmly against him. "Ride me, Phoebe. Wrap your legs around me and make me come!"
Mindless with unbelievable desire, she obeyed.
She couldn't have done it without him holding her, but he helped her set a pace that rocketed them both to shattering completion in an indecently short span of time.
Sweaty, dazed and still intimately connected to him, she let her head fall against his chest. "I guess you like the shorter dress."
Masculine laughter rumbled in his chest. "You could say that." He rubbed her back with the hand that wasn't supporting and caressing her bottom. "It's a good thing I had a condom in my pocket, isn't it? I'm not sure I would have made it to the bedroom for one."
"I suppose a man like you is always prepared."
She felt his lips settle against the top of her head. Then, "What do you mean, a man like me?"
She rubbed her cheek against his chest, trying not to let her thoughts bother her. "You date a lot of women."
This time the laugh was short and harsh. "And you think I sleep with all of them?"
"Don't you?"
"No."
Her head snapped back, and she looked into his fathomless eyes. "But I thought. Everyone says…"
"Gossip is rarely accurate."