Ecstasy (A Contemporary Romance) (15 page)

The applause was deafening as Candace
unsteadily rose to her feet. Strangers reached out to shake her
hand in congratulations. She smiled and murmured thanks, but she
was held prisoner by the intensity of Charlie’s gaze.

I love you and I’m sorry,
her heart
cried out to him, but by the look in his eyes, she knew he was lost
to her.

Wiping away the tear that had rolled down her
cheek, she carefully climbed the small flight of stairs up to the
podium where Charlie was standing.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed to him, but he
ignored her, his face devoid of all emotion.

Putting the check into her trembling hands,
without touching her, he stepped back into the shadows. Fearing her
knees were going to buckle beneath her, Candace clutched at the
podium and held on for dear life.

Looking out at the rapt crowd who was waiting
for her acceptance speech, she swallowed nervously.

“Hi,” she said softly into the microphone,
surprised by the volume of her voice through the speakers.

“I, uh, want to thank the judges for...” She
cut herself off, shaking her head, her face crumpling. “The truth
is, I can’t accept this award. I’m sorry,” she cried as a sob
escaped her.

She ran off of the stage and down through the
tables and chairs in the banquet room. She continued to run through
the lobby and out into the cool evening air, not stopping to
breathe until she tripped in her high heels and landed hard against
a street lamp.

Clutching the street lamp, she gasped for
air, hating herself more and more with every passing second.

She felt a warm hand on the small of her back
through her thin silk dress.

“It’s a wonderful book, Candy,” Charlie said
as he gently rubbed her back.

She shook her head so hard, her gold clip
fell out of her hair and clattered to the sidewalk. “No. It’s not.
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She sniffled and wiped her nose with the
back of her hand.

“Sweetheart,” he said, his voice tender, “I
love you.”

She finally turned around to face him, anger
mixing with her sorrow. “Is that what you told Sherryl Ann last
year?”

“What does Sherryl Ann have to do with
this?”

Candace crossed her cold hands across her
chest and held onto her shoulders, rocking slightly back and forth
as if to comfort herself.

“What kind of
lessons
did you set up
for her? Were they hotter than ours?”

“God no! I edited a couple of her manuscripts
and then passed her off to my agent.”

Candace knew the look of shock and disbelief
on Charlie’s face was pure and she felt like an even bigger fool
than before.

“I understand if you never want to see me
again, Charlie,” she said, staring at the dirty sidewalk between
them.

He slipped one of his fingers underneath her
chin and forced her to look him in the eye.

“Candy, I won’t lie to you. This hurts like
hell. I thought you knew you could tell me anything. Anything at
all.”

“I do,” she protested, but he quieted her by
pressing his thumb over her lips.

“The truth is I’ll love you until the day I
die, no matter what. So if you think I’m going to let the content
of one of your future best-selling novels get in the way of our
future, you’re very much mistaken. It’s gonna take a whole lot more
than a few hot love scenes to change the way I feel about you,
sweetheart.”

New tears had formed in Candace’s eyes, but
this time they were tears of joy. She launched herself onto him,
wrapping her long legs around his waist and kissed him with all of
the love in her heart.

“Oh baby,” she said when they stopped
devouring each other’s lips for a moment, “I love you so much.”

Charlie just smiled and held her closer to
him, heedless of the stares from the strangers as they walked
by.

“Thank god,” he murmured as he bent his head
and captured Candace’s lips in a kiss that went straight to her
soul.

“Now, let’s get home so that I can punish you
for your very bad behavior.”

* * *

And so it was that Charlie finally got to
enact the scene he had been choreographing in his imagination since
the day he first lay Candace naked upon the bed in his guest
bedroom and tasted her sweet pussy.

Charlie sat down on the edge of their bed,
still wearing his tuxedo. “Come here,” he said.

Candace couldn’t hold back the smile on her
lips as she walked towards him.

“What could you possibly be smiling about,”
he said, trying and failing to hold back his own grin, “when you
are about to get spanked until your ass is pink and stinging?”

Candace made a show of demurely lowering her
eyes, before looking up at him through her long lashes. “I am a
very bad girl, and I deserve to be punished.”

“Lie across my thighs,” he ordered.

“What about my clothes?” she asked him,
gesturing to her ankle-length red silk dress.

“Leave your clothes to me. Now get over
here.”

Hiding another smile, but unable to disguise
the twinkle in her eyes, Candace draped her body, face down, across
the tops of Charlie’s thighs.

Through the smooth, thin silk of her dress,
he rubbed her round, firm ass.

“No panties?” he asked hoarsely.

In a subservient voice she said, “I wouldn’t
dare wear panties. Not when you’re already about to discipline
me.”

“Good girl,” he said, licking his lips.

Unexpectedly, he ripped the seam of Candace’s
dress open from her ankle to her waist. She gasped and he said,
“See how upset I am with you?”

She nodded and waited expectantly for his
onslaught to begin. Already, her pussy was moist and swollen, ready
to be touched, sucked, and fucked.

Again, he rubbed the palm of his right hand
on her bottom, warming up her chilled flesh.

“You have such a beautiful ass,” he murmured.
He lifted up his hand and then brought it down firmly.

Candace gasped again as pleasure and pain got
all mingled up inside of her.

“Am I hurting you?” Charlie asked her, his
voice hot with need.

“A little,” she said in a small voice,
equally wracked with the need to be possessed by the man she
loved.

He ran his hand down her ass cheek to the
very top of her thighs and then slid an index finger inside her
swollen pussy. “What about now?” he asked, his breath coming in
quick bursts. “Am I hurting you now?”

“You could never hurt me.”

Abruptly, Charlie ripped the dress all the
way up to her shoulders. She was completely naked underneath and he
lowered her to the soft rug in front of his bed. She looked up at
him with love in her eyes.

“Now for the final punishment,” he said, as
he unzipped his pants and let his huge, throbbing shaft spring
free. Settling himself between her legs, he pushed into her wet,
hot pussy, inch by inch.

“Charlie,” she moaned, her head writhing on
the floor.

“Oh god,” he roared as she moved her hips
slightly, taking him all the way to the hilt. Roughly he grabbed
her hips, feeling her muscles contract around him as her pleasure
spiraled out of control.

Right before they came, Charlie forced their
bodies to go completely still. Holding her hips in his hands, he
watched the rise and fall of her breasts as she panted beneath
him.

“I love you Candy. Don’t you ever forget it
again.”

And then he plunged into her hot folds, and
she milked him dry as a soul-shattering orgasm rocked through them
both.

The next day, they wrote their latest
lovemaking into their new tale of erotic romance and then headed
back to the bedroom for another round of “research”.

~ THE END ~

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* * *

Please enjoy the following excerpts from
Bella Andre’s books...

I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU

Sophie & Jake – The Sullivans #4

© 2012 Bella Andre

Sophie Sullivan, a librarian in San
Francisco, was five years old when she fell head over heels in love
with Jake McCann. Twenty years later, she’s convinced the notorious
bad boy still sees her as the “nice” Sullivan twin. That is, when
he bothers to look at her at all. But when they both get caught up
in the magic of the first Sullivan wedding, she knows it’s long
past time to do whatever it takes to make him see her for who she
truly is...the woman who will love him forever.

Jake has always been a magnet for women,
especially since his Irish pubs made him extremely wealthy. But the
only woman he really wants is the one he can never have. Not only
is Sophie his best friend’s off-limits younger sister...he can’t
risk letting her get close enough to discover his deeply hidden
secret.

Only, when Sophie appears on his doorstep as
Jake’s every fantasy come to life—smart, beautiful, and shockingly
sexy—he doesn’t have a prayer of taking his eyes, or his hands, off
her. And he can’t stop craving more of her sweet smiles and sinful
kisses. Because even though Jake knows loving Sophie isn’t the
right thing to do...how can he possibly resist?

Enjoy the following excerpt for I ONLY HAVE
EYES FOR YOU...

Jake decided to steer completely clear of
Sophie for the rest of the wedding. A little distance from all
those soft curves and plump red lips would help him get his head
back on straight.

“I’ve got this,” he told Sammy, one of his
best bartenders at the original McCann’s in the city. “You can
circulate with the trays.”

Fortunately, the wedding guests were thirsty,
clearly needing some vino or hops to wash the taste of the syrupy
vows from their tongues. Pouring drinks for strangers was as
natural to Jake as breathing, and he immediately got into a rhythm
in the middle of the vineyard as the meal was served and people
kept a running line behind the bar between courses. He couldn’t
remember a time he hadn’t been drying clean glasses, rearranging
bottles. As a kid, when his dad had been the one running the taps,
Jake had been in the back loading and unloading the dishwasher for
a few extra bucks while the cooks at whatever pub they were at
slung together plates of fish and chips and colcannon.

When the female guests flirted with him at
the bar, he flirted back. So what if none of them were even half as
pretty as Sophie? The Sullivans might be pairing up one after the
other like they’d been infected by the same virus, but Jake had had
his shots.

Love
wasn’t going to take him
down.

He knew better than to think that love meant
a damn thing when the going got rough and it was easier to split.
No wife, no kids, plenty of pretty women, but no rings, was what
Jake’s future held. He’d play with all the kids the Sullivan clan
was bound to pump out, would enjoy being Uncle Jake, but he
wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking he’d ever be a good husband
or father.

McCanns didn’t come with those genes.

“You haven’t had anything to eat yet.”

The slightly husky female voice reached in
and grabbed him a split second before he looked straight into
Sophie’s eyes. Her soft sensuality in that pink dress, the sweet
smell of her perfume, were a one-two punch straight to a gut that
hadn’t yet recovered from watching those tears slip down her
cheeks, or the radiant smile that had followed.

Without waiting for an invitation, she put a
full plate on the back table for him and moved around the bar to
stand next to him. “Scoot over. I’ll help out while you eat.” She
bumped her hip into his, his body not giving a damn that she was
OFF LIMITS.

How could her brothers have let her out
looking like this? What were they thinking? Didn’t they care even a
little bit about their sister’s welfare?

While he was standing there losing his mind,
Sophie took drink orders and deftly poured glasses of wine and
mixed drinks for the wedding guests. She was a librarian, not a
bartender. She shouldn’t be so good at serving drinks. And no
librarian should ever be this hot, either, Jake thought as he
clamped his jaw so tight his temple started throbbing. He’d let her
help for five minutes, and then he’d send her back to her table to
celebrate with the rest of her family and make sure she stayed
there for the rest of the reception.

Even if he had to tie her to her seat.

A beer bottle nearly slipped from his grip as
Jake was hit with a crystal-clear vision of Sophie in his bed,
begging for him to—

“I hear you’re a librarian. Read any good
books lately?”

Jake surfaced from his triple-X daydream just
in time to notice a male guest leaning on the bar and looking down
the top of Sophie’s dress.

She didn’t seem to notice any of that as she
smiled back at the guy. She was too innocent to realize when a guy
like this was aiming for one thing, and one thing only.

“Mmm,” she said in that seductive voice,
still slightly hoarse from her tears. “I’m always reading great
books. What do you like to read?”

The guy shrugged, not seeming to care that
there was a huge backup of thirsty people bottlenecking behind him.
“I’m a doct—”

“What are you drinking?” Jake broke in.

The guy shot him a look that said, C
an’t
you see I’m about to score here?

“Corona,” he said to Jake before turning back
to Sophie. “As I was saying, I’m a doctor, so I don’t have too much
time to read. But when I do, I usually read medical thrillers.”

Jake couldn’t believe it when Sophie leaned
over the bar and said, “Oooh, how exciting. Medical thrillers
always leave me breathless.”

Didn’t she get that this loser was way
beneath her? She should be throwing a drink in his face, not giving
him a better view of her body as she leaned down to grab a bottle
of beer. Dr. Dickwad looked like he’d hit a home run, was counting
the minutes until he could strip that dress from her tanned skin
and find out if she tasted as good as she smelled.