music dimly entered her consciousness from far away as they danced, him leading her through the erotic steps as he lowered her zip and exposed her breast to his hand and mouth.
She sang breathy notes of acute pleasure and sensual agony, wanting this twisting, exciting play to go on for the rest of her life. But everything he did made the sweet pleasure intensify. Their lovemaking grew better and better, driving her up the scale of passion to exquisite heights. When he ran his hand up the bare thigh that bracketed his hip, and branded her buttock with his palm, lifting her into his quickening thrusts, she moaned in approval, needing that faster pace, that wild stimulation.
Climax arrived suddenly and more powerfully than the first. She clawed at him, stunned by the release, fixated by the intense sensation of his fullness inside her while she orgasmed. He cried out raggedly and shuddered over her and within her, pushing to take deep possession of her, holding them both on that place of ecstatic perfection.
Suffused with bliss, she didn’t move afterward, just waited for her heart to slow and listened as his breath settled. In the distance, the music continued and voices rose in conversation and laughter.
At the first shift of his body to relax and leave hers, the first easing of his implacable lock of his hips against hers, she dropped her hands and removed her leg from his waist. Her long history with bandage changes gave her the knowledge that quick and ruthless was best, even though it hurt like hell.
He surprised her by merely shifting his weight off her a little before he pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth then nuzzled his lips down her bare cheek to her ear. “That was incredible. Thank you.”
She couldn’t help the smile that grew unseen in the dark, or the way she warmed with pride and eye-stinging gratitude. “Thank you. I didn’t expect anything like this to happen tonight,” she confessed, even though she could hear the delight in her voice. He thought she was incredible.
“I’m pleased I could make your first time memorable.”
Her heart stopped. “You could tell it’s my first time?” She felt like the most gauche girl alive.
“I come to all of these. I know the regulars, and I’ve never seen you before. I would have remembered,” he added with another buss of warm lips against her cheekbone.
Oh, God, that’s what he meant. She swallowed her relieved laughter, then stiffened as voices approached their cabana.
“We should go somewhere more private.” He gently lifted off her, chivalrously flicking her skirt to cover her as he rolled away.
Everything in her protested, but she sat up on the other side of the narrow bed. As she tucked her breast back into her dress and closed the zipper, his hand curled around her upper arm, hot and commanding, drawing her into tipping back against him.
“I’m on the top floor. Are you closer?”
“I can’t,” she whispered with genuine regret, senses distracted by the musky scent surrounding him and the damp heat of his chest so close to her nose. She tilted her face to find his lips in a soft kiss of reluctant goodbye.
He didn’t move his lips against hers except to say, “Why not?”
“It’s complicated. I shouldn’t have come out at all.” Their breaths mingled. “I hope you will remember me,” she admitted, feeling safe to reveal the bald longing here in the anonymous dark.
“I’ll always wonder why, won’t I?” he said with edgy dismay.
“And then you’ll remember I wanted to keep this unspoiled by real life.”
This time when she pressed her mouth to his, he kissed her back. Hard and thorough, so her heart rate picked up and her arms wanted to snake around his neck.
She wasn’t about to hang around until the lights came on, though. She didn’t want to see his face when he saw hers.
Pulling away, she stood and shook out her skirt, stepped her underwear off her heel and left them on the mat. Quite the cheeky Cinderella move. Her mother would never quit the slut-shaming if she knew.
Tiffany felt no guilt, however, no shame and no embarrassment as she slipped out of the cabana and up the stairs, past the pool and its raging party, toward the elevators and back to her room. Only sensual satisfaction and poignant what-ifs followed her steps.
RYZARD’S WATCH GAVE a muted beep, reminding him he had a meeting in ten minutes.
Annoyed, he rose from the small table where he’d sat for the last thirty minutes eating a meal he would have preferred to have taken in his room. He swept the breakfast room once more for a certain woman in a mask that made him think of a falcon’s smoothly feathered head. A woman who was both gloriously uninhibited, yet had been so tight, he had feared as he entered her that she would call a halt.
A light sweat broke over him as he recalled possessing her, never having felt so—
He cut short the thought, stung by a dart of shame that he was on the verge of elevating a meaningless hookup past the only woman he would ever love. There was no comparison. Forget it all.
Good thing he hadn’t allowed the petite q to send a message on his behalf. He’d been tempted, but the tight security here did him a favor, preventing him from a weak moment. All he’d had was a description of her mask, but when he had inquired to the nearest petite q, she had assured him she could deliver an invitation to the mysterious woman to join him at breakfast. She couldn’t, however, divulge the member’s name or moniker.
He’d declined, not wanting to look desperate. Not wanting to feel so desperate, but after the blood-chilling thought he’d just had, he didn’t wish to see her again. Their somewhat literal bumping of two strangers in the night was nothing significant. A letting off of steam. If it had seemed particularly intense, that had been leftover adrenaline from the false alarm when the fireworks had exploded. For a second he’d been back in the heat of Bregnovia’s civil war, his life in danger along with the woman in his arms.
Shaking off that terrifying second of not again, he assured himself this urgency to see her again was merely his libido looking for another easy pounce and feed.
That’s why he’d had to force himself to take his time rising and dressing in the cabana last night, despite a nagging desire to hurry. It wasn’t that he’d wanted to catch another glimpse, to actually catch her and convince her to strip down completely and stay with him all night. No, he was merely still horny.
Wondering why she hadn’t stayed was pointless. He’d never know. Everyone at Q Virtus had places to go and people they preferred not to be seen with. Did she know who he was, he wondered?
She hadn’t been wearing a watch that he’d felt. He’d checked his own as she’d left, trying to read her identifier before she had moved out of range, but no luck. Perhaps she’d run off to rejoin her husband or lover.
That thought infuriated him. Waiting to marry Luiza until it was too late was one of his few regrets. When you did make a lifelong commitment, you didn’t break it. If she had...
He refused to dwell on any of it. She was a wet dream and he was awake now. Time to
