No second thoughts, only a wild, frenzied passion blistering the air.
Jackson yanked the zipper of her dress and slid the shoulders and sleeves down her arms. He thanked whatever gods were listening that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were beautiful, just the right size and looked so tempting, he didn’t wait another moment.
Covering them with his hands, he pulled and tweaked with her hardened nipples and listened to Casey’s soft moans and whispers as if they were the sweetest music ever composed. He bent his head to taste first one erect bud and then the other and knew he had to have more of her.
Her hands at his shoulders tightened, holding him to her, even as she swayed from the impact of his actions.
“More,” he murmured, his tongue circling her nipple. “All.”
And he pushed her dress the rest of the way to the floor. It fell in a sapphire puddle at her feet and he helped her step out of it. Her fingers were at his suit coat now, shoving it off, then loosening his tie and tearing at the buttons of his shirt. His hands roamed over her amazing body, sliding over cool, lavender-scented skin again and again, as if he were trying to memorize every line, every curve.
Then her palms were on his naked chest and he felt the zing of heat slice into him. Quickly, he tore off the rest of his clothes, picked Casey up in his arms and carried her to the nearest flat surface. He wasn’t going to wait another moment. He had to have her. Be in her. Had to know what it was like to be surrounded by her heat.
“Now,” she whispered as he laid her down on the extra wide couch in the living room of the suite. She opened her legs for him, reached up her arms and in the pale wash of golden lamplight, her eyes burned an arctic blue. “Now, Jackson. I need…”
“Me too,” he admitted, willing to let her know just how affected he was by her. No games. No secrets. For this woman, this moment, he wanted her to know that from the first moment she’d smiled at him from across the room, he’d been aching for this.
Then the talking was over and all that was left to be said was said by their bodies. He entered her with one hard thrust and she gasped, arching into him, silently demanding he go deeper, harder, faster.
He did.
Every move she made only fed his need. Every response quickened the fires inside. Every touch, every slide of skin to skin, every gasp and moan and sigh worked together to push him higher than he’d ever been before. And Jackson wanted more.
He looked into her eyes when he felt her climax nearing. He watched as pleasure flashed across her face. He heard her gasp, felt her body’s tremors. Then she locked her legs around his hips to hold him tightly even as she rocked her hips and cried out his name.
Something inside Jackson burst wide open and seconds later, his body erupted, throwing him after her into the wild, surging storm.
Casey woke up in the middle of the night. Her body felt sore and stiff and, she silently admitted, fabulous. It had been a long time since she’d had sex. She’d almost forgotten how good it could make you feel.
Until the guilt started seeping in.
She wasn’t the one-night-stand kind of girl. She’d never done anything like this in her life and she was still trying to come to grips with the fact that she’d done it now.
Moonlight spilled into the hotel bedroom through the glass French doors leading to what she assumed was a balcony. She hadn’t really had a chance to explore the suite, after all. She’d gone from the couch to the bed and that was about the sum total of her “tour.”
God, Casey, what did you do?
Turning her head on the pillow, she looked at the sleeping man lying next to her. He was on his stomach, the silk duvet pulled up just over his hips. He had one arm stretched out toward her and Casey had to curl her fingers into her palms to keep from reaching out and smoothing his dark hair back from his forehead. In sleep, Jackson looked less dangerous, but hardly vulnerable.
There was still a hardness, a strength about him that seemed to resonate around him, even when sleeping. The man was a force of nature. She was lying there, naked and well used in his bed as a testament to that fact.
She hadn’t planned to have sex with him.
Although, what they’d shared couldn’t be called simply sex. Sex was just a biological function. At least, it always had been before that night. But what she’d shared with Jackson had gone way beyond anything she’d ever experienced before. Even now, hours after his last touch, her body was still humming. And that wasn’t a good thing.
Because she wasn’t looking for a relationship. Heck, she’d gotten what she’d come there for while they were still in the bar. How she’d allowed herself to end up in his bed was something she still wasn’t sure about.
The only thing she was certain of, was that it was beyond time for her to leave. Best she do that before he woke up and tried to stop her. Quietly, stealthily, she slipped from the massive bed and the air in the room felt cool against her bare skin.
Moonlight lay across the silk duvet-covered mattress, spotlighting Jackson’s broad, tanned, naked back in a silvery glow. He shifted in his sleep, and the duvet slid down his skin, revealing a paler swatch of flesh just below his waist. Casey took a breath and forced herself to look away. She didn’t need to be tempted to stay. This was not part of her plan. She’d already gone too far. Allowed her hormones and her need to sweep away rational thought.
Tiptoeing across the moonlit bedroom like a naked burglar, she hurried into the living room of the luxurious suite and in the dim light, wasted several minutes trying to spot her clothes. But she didn’t dare turn on a light. She didn’t want to chance waking him up. Didn’t want to risk him tempting her back into his arms. Into his bed.
“You are such an idiot,” she whispered, hardly able to believe she’d let herself get into such a situation. She was usually so much more careful. Restrained, even.
When she spotted her discarded dress, Casey grabbed it up, hitched herself into it and clumsily worked the back zipper. Shouldn’t these things be on the side? Finally, she was at least dressed—minus the panties that seemed to have disappeared. She picked up her heels and searched for her clutch bag. Finding it on the floor, half under the couch where she and Jackson had first come together. Swallowing hard, she avoided looking at the couch, snatched her purse and then headed for the front door.
She turned the knob carefully, opened the door and let the hallway light fall into the room in a narrow, golden slice. Before she stepped through the doorway though, Casey turned for one last look. She’d never been in a hotel room this elegant. She’d never been with a man like Jackson. In fact, this room, this man, were so far removed from her real life, that she felt like Cinderella at the end of the ball. The magic was over. The spell was ended.
She stepped into the hall, closed the door behind her and nearly ran to the elevator.
Time to get back to the real world.
Two
“Her name is Casey. She’s about five foot five, has blond hair and blue eyes.”
“Well,” his assistant Anna Coric mused, “at least that narrows it down. Blue eyes, you say?”
“Funny.”
