Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 149209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 149209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 746(@200wpm)___ 597(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
8
A pleasure cloud. Heavy limbs, light head. A gentle throb between her legs pulsing as it slowly abated. Alejandro’s embrace providing warmth, even as he gripped her as if he’d never let go. Ah…
Shanna could happily stay here, connected to him for a while. A long while. There were reasons she shouldn’t, she knew. She just couldn’t remember them now.
Then Alejandro slipped free of her body and broke her sensual haze. She lifted weighty lids to watch him walk past her and snap the curtains shut between them and the audience. Del remained on their side of the drape, and Shanna was suddenly conscious of her nudity and Del’s dark eyes on her.
“Keep them the hell out of here,” Alejandro growled in low tones.
Del clapped his gaze on his buddy, who was now buttoning his pants and wearing a sly smile. “You got it. Tomorrow?”
Ali smiled. “Maybe the day after.”
What were they talking about? It should be obvious, but her brain was so clouded by satisfaction that thinking was just a lot of effort right now.
Del’s laugh barely registered when Alejandro turned and stalked across the floor to her. In seconds, he uncuffed one of her wrists, grabbed her up in his arms, and headed for the stage door.
“What…? Where are you—?”
“Alone.” He said the word like a vow. “No one except you and me, being us together.”
Just in case others could hear, she whispered, “But the blackmailer—”
“If he was here tonight, he already got what he came for. Del will call me if they captured something on the security cameras. Now, this is about us.”
“But you said we would stay all night, if necessary.”
He stopped. “Is that what you want, for me to fuck you again for an audience? Shall we invite more people in this time?”
Sarcasm. Anger. And she understood. Something inside her rejected the notion of more audience time, too. “No.”
“Good. I’m done sharing you with other hungry male eyes.” He pushed through a door, out into a bright hall, past the open door to security. Laughing and clapping ensued from the crew inside the office, and Shanna buried her head in his neck.
“I’m naked!” she shrieked.
“They just watched us on the cameras. They are not seeing anything they have not yet seen. Which is another reason I want you all to myself.”
Shanna didn’t have the chance to speak again before Ali opened another door and let it slam behind him. Now it was dark, and Southern California’s summer evening sky simmered all around them in a velvet hush. Frogs and crickets hummed in the sultry breeze. The lights of the city beyond the hill twinkled and winked as far as she could see.
“It’s beautiful out here.”
“That I would rather look at you should tell you how I feel about your beauty.”
Shanna snapped her gaze up to Ali’s. No smile. His stare was full of gravity—and rising need.
“Alejandro, maybe we should talk about—”
“No. Tonight is about you and me. No conversation, no people, no blackmail, no cameras. I need to feel you like I have never needed before.”
She gaped, totally unable to deny the breathless rush of joy at his words. Did he…care about her?
There was no time to ponder the answer before he spirited her into his cottage, through the intimate cocoon of the hushed night, straight to his bed. In the shadows, she could make out its straight lines and modern flare. It was big, dark, exotic—just like the man.
Then his mattress was at her back, and he grabbed the empty cuff dangling from her wrist, and Shanna expected him to attach it to his bed somehow so he would have her at his mercy.
Instead, he attached the cuff to his own wrist.
They were joined. Together. Bound.
“Alejandro?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he tossed the handcuff key somewhere on the floor, far out of reach, then covered her mouth with his own.
Shanna expected his ravenous hunger, a hard-edged boom-fast-now kind of touch. She was shocked instead by his soft insistence. His kiss was seduction itself. Thorough, unhurried. Slow, deep. Unabashedly intimate, as he conveyed his every want, spoke with his soul, communicating only using his mouth.
It was impossible not to fall under his spell.
A new ribbon of desire tied her stomach in knots as he trailed hot kisses across her cheek, down toward her neck. He exhaled against her neck, close to her ear, stirring sensitive skin. She shivered as his lips caressed her, branded her. He swept a fingertip down the arch of her throat and nipped at her lobe.
“Necesito tocarle, su cara, su piel. Su corazón.”
Shanna had no idea what his words meant, but they melted her. In that moment, whatever he wanted, she wanted, too.
“Tell me…”
He didn’t right away. Instead, he swept his mouth over hers again. The tangle of breaths, lips, tongues became a deliberate kiss of endless hunger. Eloquent, shockingly sexual as the fingers of his free hand sifted into her hair, curling possessively around the strands. Sizzlingly intimate as he tore his mouth from hers to stare, penetrating her with eyes like burning coals in the pitch of night. Ensnared, Shanna could not look away.