blue eyes fired with need. Every muscle in his long, lean body looked taut and eager. He was hard for her, and hungry, and so ready that Sarah almost yelped when he turned away.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure you don’t regret this.”
Her dismay became a wave of relief when she saw him extract a condom from the wallet in his discarded pants. She wasn’t on the pill. She’d stopped months ago. Or was it years? Sarah couldn’t remember. She suspected her decision to quit birth control had a lot to do with the realization that taking care of Grandmama and keeping a roof over their heads were more important to her than casual sex.
Showed what she knew. There was nothing casual about this sex, however. The need for it, the gnawing hunger for it, consumed her.
No! Her mind screamed the denial even as she opened her arms to Dev. This wasn’t just sex. This wasn’t just raw need. This was so elemental. So...so French. Making love in the afternoon. With a man who filled her, physically, emotionally, every way that mattered.
His hips braced against hers. His knees pried hers apart. Eagerly, Sarah opened her legs and her arms and her heart to him. When he eased into her, she hooked her calves around his and rose up to meet his first, slow thrusts. Then the pace picked up. In. Out. In again.
Soon, too soon, dammit, her vaginal muscles began to quiver and her belly contracted. She tried to suppress the spasms. Tried to force her muscles to ease their greedy grip. She wanted to build to a steady peak, spin the pleasure as long as she could.
Her body refused to listen to her mind. The tight, spiraling sensation built to a wild crescendo. Panting, Sarah arched her neck. A moment later, she was flying, sailing, soaring. Dev surged into her, went taut and rode to the crest with her. Then he gave a strangled grunt and collapsed on top of her.
* * *
Sarah was still shuddering with the aftershocks when he whispered a French phrase into her ear. Her eyes flew open. Her jaw dropped.
“What did you say?”
He levered up on one elbow. A flush rode high in his cheeks and his blue eyes were still fever bright, but he managed a semicoherent reply.
“I was trying to tell you I adore you.”
Sarah started giggling and couldn’t stop. No easy feat with 180 plus pounds of naked male pinning her to the sheets.
A rueful grin sketched across Dev’s face. “Okay, what did I really say?”
“It sounded...it sounded...” Helpless with laughter, she gasped for breath. “It sounded like you want to hang an ornament on me.”
“Yeah, well, that, too.” His grin widening, he leaned down and dropped a kiss on her left breast. “Here. And here...”
He grazed her right breast, eased down to her belly.
“And here, and...”
“Dev!”
Pleasure rippled in waves across the flat plane of her stomach. She wouldn’t have believed she could become so aroused so fast. Particularly after that shattering orgasm. Dev, on the other hand, was lazy and loose and still flaccid.
“Don’t you need to, uh, take a little time to recharge?”
“I do.” His voice was muffled, his breath hot against her skin. “Doesn’t mean you have to. Unless you want to?”
He raised his head and must have seen the answer in her face. Waggling his brows, he lowered his head again. Sarah gasped again when his tongue found her now supersensitized center.
The climax hit this time without warning. She’d just reached up to grip the headboard and bent a knee to avoid a cramp when everything seemed to shrink to a single, white-hot nova. The next second, the star exploded. Pleasure pulsed through her body. Groaning, she let it flow before it slowly, exquisitely ebbed.
* * *
When she opened her eyes again, Dev looked smug and pretty damn pleased with himself. With good reason, she thought, drifting on the last eddies. She sincerely hoped he still needed some time to recharge. She certainly did!
To her relief, he stretched out beside her and seemed content to just laze. She nestled her head on his arm and let her thoughts drift back to his mangled French. He said he’d been trying to tell her that he adored her. What did that mean, exactly?
She was trying to find a way to reintroduce the subject when the phone buzzed. His this time, not hers. With a muffled grunt, Dev reached across her and checked his phone’s display.
“Sorry,” he said with a grimace. “I told them not to call unless they were about to slam up against our own version of a fiscal cliff. I’d better take this.”
“Go ahead. I’ll hit the bathroom.”
She scooped up the handiest article of clothing, which happened to be Dev’s shirt, and padded into the bathroom. The tiles felt cool and smooth against her bare feet. The apparition that appeared in the gilt-edged mirrors made her gasp.
“Good grief!”
Her hair could have provided a home for an entire flock of sparrows. Whatever makeup she’d started out with this morning had long since disappeared. She was also sporting one whisker burn on her chin and another on her neck. Shuddering at the thought of what Elise Girault would say if she saw the telltale marks, Sarah ran the taps and splashed cold water on her face and throat.
That done, she eyed the bidet. So practical for Europeans, so awkward for most Americans. Practical won hands down in this instance. Clean and refreshed, Sarah reentered the bedroom just as Dev was zipping up his pants.
“Uh-oh. Looks like your negotiators ran into that cliff.”
“Ran into it, hell. According to my chief of production, they soared right over the damned thing and are now in a free fall.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
Detouring to her closet, she exchanged Dev’s shirt for the thigh-length, peony-decorated silk robe Gina had given her for her birthday last year.
“It’s all part of the game,” he said as she handed him back his shirt. “Girault’s just a little better at it than I gave him credit for.”
The comment tripped a reminder of Elise’s disclosures at lunch. Sarah debated for a moment over whether she should share them with Dev, then decided he needed to know the kind of man he would be doing business with.
“Elise said something today about her husband that surprised me.”
Dev looked up from buttoning his shirt. “What was that?”
“Supposedly, Jean-Jacques sent some goons to rough up one of her former lovers. The guy had threatened to sell pictures of her to the tabloids.”
“Interesting. I would have thought Girault man enough to do the job himself. I certainly would have.” He scooped up his tie and jacket and gave her a quick kiss. “I’ll call as soon as I have
