More Than Fiends (17 page)

Those kisses with Logan had started up a chain reaction that was now impossible to stop. Maybe Rachel was onto something with the bottled-up theory. I felt like I'd been shaken like crazy the last few days. The minute a bottle opener came anywhere near me, I was going to spew.

Okay, perhaps not the best mental image.

But I have to say, it felt a little weird, letting Logan get my engine running only to hand the keys over to Devlin. Was that really bad? Probably. Best not to think about it.

The music stopped, then started again, sliding into a fast song with drumbeats that reverberated up from the floor to bounce through my body.

“Would you like to go upstairs with me?”

I stared at him.

Upstairs?

To where the sex toys and swings and pillows were lying in wait? To where people all over the country dreamed of going? To the happy little land where orgasms lived?

“Sure.”

H
e gave me another smile, but this time I was ready for it and locked my knees. Didn't want to risk fainting just before the good stuff.

“Come with me.”

Interesting choice of words, I thought, and hurried through the crowd, keeping pace with his longer legs with an ease born of eagerness. We stopped by our secluded table just long enough for me to snatch my bag from the linen-covered table-top. Then Devlin's hand tightened on mine, and he led the way down a long hall, bypassing the amazing staircase in favor of a private elevator.

When the doors swished shut, I was suddenly speechless. I know. Hard to believe. But there it was. The walls of the elevator were painted a dark red, and the lighting resembled candlelight.

Couldn't have been more romantic.

Thank
God,
there were no mirrors in the elevator. I just don't think I could have looked myself in the eye and gone through with this. Yeah, yeah. I talk a good game, but let's remember, I don't get out much. My last date was two years ago, and my last sexual experience was a special moment between me and my shower massage!

“Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes. Fine. Sure.”
One
would have been enough, idiot. No, I wasn't all right. Nervous. Worried. Did I remember how to do this? What if I sucked at it? God. Performance anxiety.

“I've been thinking about you since the first moment we met.”

Thinking about me? Thinking
what
exactly? And did it matter?

Devlin turned toward me and wrapped his arms around my waist. Oh, those arms felt good, and when he pulled me in close, I knew
he
was feeling pretty good, too.

Oh God. What was I doing? Was I really going to go through with this? Was I really stepping into sex-toy central with a guy I'd known about a week? Was he aware that I was silently shrieking?

Maybe, because in the next second he did his best to distract me. And damned if it didn't work. He bent his head and kissed me, his mouth moving over mine with practiced seduction. Not that I needed a hell of a lot of seduction at the moment. I was primed and ready to roll.

It had been so long, I could hardly
remember
rolling. So now, open the gates and step back, people.

His tongue tangled with mine, and I heard someone groan. I was pretty sure it was me. I grabbed hold of him, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and holding on for life.

As kisses went, this was an 8.5 on a scale of 10. I knew Rach would demand comparisons later, wanting to know who was the better kisser…Devlin or Logan.

So, in the interest of fairness, I decided to let Devlin do his all to impress me.

He was so big. So muscle-bound. Even through the fabric of his once-great suit, I could feel the shift and play of a really toned body. And I so wanted to see it. Feel it. Taste it.

But even while he was kissing me senseless, tugging the tail of my shirt free of my skirt and sliding his hands up over my skin, my brain started screaming at me again.

Slut! Worse, easy slut!

One date. A bottle of wine, a terrific steak and a little chocolate mousse and, bingo, there goes Cassidy!

But it had been so long, I reasoned with my logical self.

So what? You couldn't wait two more dates? Are you really that pitiful? Have you no pride? Have you no decency? No self-respect?

“I want you bad,” Devlin muttered, dropping his mouth to my neck.

Shut up! I silently shouted at my logical self and made the decision to be a slut for the night. So what? Would worlds collide? Apocalypse time? The seas rise and overtake the land?

I didn't think so.

Besides, I'd killed a demon today. I owed myself an orgasm in reward.

The elevator doors opened, and I leaped back from him. I have no problem being a slut (apparently) for one man, but I'm not doing a striptease for any customers who might be wandering the halls.

He chuckled and hauled me up close again. “Relax,” he said. “We're on the third floor. My private apartment.”

Whoa.
Impressive. And yet, I was a little disappointed that we wouldn't be swinging on a vine in the Tarzan room. God. I could almost
feel
Hell's flames licking at my feet.

“Private apartment? But you have that house on the coast highway and—”

He was steering me down the hallway now, toward a set of double doors that probably led straight to Hell.

“Some nights,” he said, “I just stay here rather than drive home.”

“Handy,” I murmured and braced myself when he opened the doors.

Forget it. I wasn't braced. I was struck dumb.
Again.
The place looked like a palatial hunting cabin, for God's sake. It was sitting on top of a notorious sex club in a tiny beach town in Southern California, and it could have been in Montana!

Wood walls caught the soft gleam of a fire burning in a hearth tall enough that I could have stood up in it—if I were fireproof or had a death wish. The matching sofas were covered in some plush-looking dark green fabric, and there were braided rugs on the polished floors.

Directly across the room, there was a bank of windows with a view of the moonlit ocean that made me go even gooier than I already was.

“This is amazing,” I said, walking into the room and turning my head from side to side, wanting to see everything. “Why didn't you show me this place before I put the bid in?” As soon as I asked that question, I turned to look at him. “If cleaning this apartment is part of the deal, the bid's going up.”

He grinned, tossed his suit jacket onto a nearby chair and shook his head. “No, I have a housekeeper here.”

“Here?” I said, spinning around, half expecting to see some tidy little woman spring up from behind a chair.

“Not here
now,
” he said and came toward me, with a look in his eyes that told me the talking part of our evening was done.

And just like that, I got nervous. Slut puppy becomes virginal librarian. Give me a break; it's been—God. Way too long.

“Wait a sec,” I said, holding up one hand, like that was going to accomplish anything. The man was enormous. If he didn't want to stop, he wouldn't have to. But he did and waited for me to speak. Don't know why I hadn't thought of this before. Hell, maybe I was just lucky I'd thought of it at
all
. “Um, I don't exactly travel with condoms or anything, so maybe we shouldn't be hasty about this—”

“I have some.”

“Of course you do,” I muttered, and didn't know if I was pleased or disappointed by that. Okay, pleased, but let me have my illusions.

“And you're healthy?” I asked, although the condom thing would take care of that worry. “I mean, it's an ugly question, but—”

“I'm healthy,” he said, “and I'm guessing that you are, too, since it doesn't seem like you do this much.”

“Hah! That's what you think,” I said, walking backward, just to get out of arm's reach. “I mean, I do this all the time. I'm a woman of the twenty-first century, you know? Confident, capable, able to have, um…”

“Sex?”

“Right. Whenever I want to.” God, I was babbling. And worse, there didn't seem to be an end in sight. I trailed my fingers across the glossy surface of an antique table and kept backing up. Idiot. “This is no big deal for me, you know. I'm totally sophisticated, spilled red wine notwithstanding, and of course you realize that I was being clumsy just to make you think I was sweet and vulnerable and innocent and—” Somebody
shoot
me!

“Of course,” he said, and he was smiling again.

He really shouldn't smile at me like that, I thought, and took a breath. It just wasn't fair. The man had an arsenal of seductive weapons that, frankly, I just wasn't equipped to fight against. Even if I'd wanted to fight.

“I'm helpless in your seductive plans,” he said, still smiling, still walking slowly toward me.

“Okay,” I admitted, “so I don't really do this much, or
ever
.”

“I know.”

“You know? How do you know?” I asked, thinking that all that pretense at sophistication had been a real waste of energy. “Is there, like, a sign on my forehead that says four years since her last man? Oh
God.
” I slapped my forehead with the heel of my hand. “Did I just say that out loud?”

He laughed and moved so fast I hardly saw him, and then he had me flush up against him and—Hell, I didn't care about anything else. I'll admit it. Now that I'd decided to be the big slut puppy of the known universe, I was willing to throw myself into the role.

I dropped my bag—my Judith Leiber bag, the one I didn't allow people to
breathe
on—onto the floor and never gave it another thought.

How the hell could I think with Devlin Cole's mouth on mine?

The man was talented. Sometime during the tonsil exam, Devlin had gotten my shirt off and my bra undone, and now he had his mouth on my breast and his hands up my skirt.

Every single square inch of me was flashing on and off like a broken neon light. I felt hot, then cold, then hot again, and the expectation roiling around inside had me teetering on the edge.

I wasn't wearing nylons (hello, sandals?), so he had really easy access to all the good parts. His fingers tugged at the thin elastic of my best black panties and snapped it neatly in half. I couldn't even care. Then he touched me, sliding his hand between my thighs, and I groaned, tipped my head back and stared at the ceiling while he stroked me with really clever fingers.

I was hot and slick and so damn ready it was a miracle I didn't scream at his first touch. Then he was pushing his fingers high and deep inside me, and I was riding his hand like I was on a prize-winning stallion in a rodeo.

His teeth and tongue tormented my nipples, and every time I swayed like I was about to fall over, he tightened his grip on me with one hand and pushed me nearer the edge with the other. I didn't care that I'd only known the man a week. All I cared about was what he was making me feel. I would have done just about anything to experience a “man driven” orgasm.

I clutched at him, I moaned, I groaned, and I'm pretty sure I promised to give him my firstborn child (sorry, Thea) if he'd just make me come.
Now.

And then he did.

With his mouth on my nipple, his fingers pushed me over that slippery edge, and I pumped my hips into his touch, pleading for more even as a staggering climax thundered over me.

“More,” he said, his voice heavy with need.

“More,” I agreed before the last lovely ripple faded away and practically leaped into his arms. He carried me to the closest sofa, quickly stripped me naked—how the
hell
did he do that so fast?—and then got rid of his own clothes.

The man was
awesome
.

Broad, tanned chest with dark curls of hair spiraling down to his abdomen and—Wow. For a second or two, I wondered if I could sprint to the door and get away before he noticed me running naked for my life. The man wasn't just big; he was
big
. And no way could there be room in me for
that
.

“You should come with a warning label.”

Naturally, being male, he took that as a compliment. “Second thoughts?” he asked.

“And third,” I muttered as his pet monster moved in closer, “and fourth.”

“Don't worry,” he said, reading my thoughts so easily I had to wonder if my jaw had dropped open in a silent scream. “It'll be fine.”

“I don't know…”

He grinned. Pride warred with amusement and, as it would with most men, pride won. “Trust me, we'll fit.”

“If we don't,” I muttered, “and this kills me, tell Thea I love her.”

He laughed aloud, and the sound of it echoed through the room and seemed to take the edge off my nerves. Now that I was relaxing, I had to admit, I'd had one orgasm and I really wanted another. Badly enough that I'd risk that telephone pole he called his pride and joy.

After all, I'd accepted playing at the whole slut-for-a-night thing. Might as well give it my all.

“Okay,” I said, “let's go for it.”

“I'll be right back,” he said and stalked across the room to disappear through a doorway.

“What?” I shouted. “Now I'm ready and you leave?”

When he came back, he tossed a handful of condoms onto the coffee table, and I know my eyes bugged out.