as he straightened and shrugged off his tuxedo jacket. Nope, no padding in them there shoulders. His starched, white shirt clung to a physique that could make a girl weep with appreciation. Realizing belatedly that she was all but drooling at him, she answered, enunciating carefully so she wouldn’t slur her words, “I’m too boring. And neat. Men hate neat.”
Trent laughed as he stripped off his cummerbund and tossed it aside. “That’s not how I hear it. Most men love a woman who’ll pick up after them. When I settle down, I’ll hire a butler to do the job. It’ll save on resentment from the ladies in my life.”
Ladies. Plural. Of course a man like him had scads of women chasing after him. “I’m just one more in a long string of conquests, aren’t I?” she accused. Who knew whiskey brought out such a brutally honest streak in her?
He laughed lightly. “Never. You’re one of a kind, Chloe Jordan.”
At least he knew her full name. The way she heard it, that was an exception for most pick-up artists. For surely, this man was a master of the art. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to care as his hands slid over her ribs and cupped her breasts, lifting them and testing their weight. She wasn’t all that stacked, although she’d always privately thought her breasts were rather nicely shaped. Trent seemed to think so, too, as his mouth captured one pert, rosy peak and sucked gently. Lightning bolts started at his mouth and spread outward through her body.
“Oh, my,” she sighed. “That’s lovely.”
A strong arm swept behind her knees and she was tipped on her side all of a sudden as he picked her up and laid her on the bed. The down comforter gave beneath her weight, and the room spun lightly around her. And then Trent was there, stretched out beside her, propped up on one elbow, yanking the knot out of his bow tie with his free hand. Shirt studs went flying as he jerked his shirt free of his trousers and all but tore it off.
She reached up to help push the shirt off his shoulders and gaped as acres of tanned chest appeared before her eyes. “Yowza,” she breathed.
He laughed heartily and she glared up at him. “Are you laughing at me?” she demanded.
“Yes, I am. It has been a while since I’ve gotten that sort of reaction out of a woman from taking off my shirt.”
“Do you only date blind women?” she retorted.
He leaned close to kiss her lightly before answering, “No. Jaded ones. Like I said, you’re one of a kind.”
“Hey. I didn’t fall off the pumpkin truck yesterday, you know. I live in San Francisco and work at a very upscale address. Of course, I’m going to take that company down, but—”
He stopped her rambling with his mouth against hers. She wasn’t sure how he got his trousers off or how the covers got thrown back, but in a moment, she was lying on her back on Egyptian cotton sheets with a thread count so high they felt like velvet against her skin, and Trent was stretched out in all his naked, unconcerned glory beside her.
“Please tell me you’re a little bit drunk, too,” she muttered.
He grinned, flashing that million-dollar smile at her again. “I’m drunk on you, baby.”
She rolled her eyes and he laughed back at her. He really was incorrigible. But then the smile faded from his eyes, leaving them a dark, smoky gray that pierced through her whiskey-induced fog like high-beam headlights. All of a sudden, heat radiated from him. A promise of sex so steamy it would burn away all the fog and bring the night down around them.
Her breath caught on a gasp as, without breaking his gaze into her eyes, his hand traveled down the valley between her breasts, across the flat plane of her belly, and hooked inside the thong that was her only remaining defense. His fingers slid across soft flesh that was so sensitive she thought she was going to come apart this very second.
And then his fingers dipped lower, sliding across strangely swollen flesh that raged with lust in response to his touch. “Whoa!” she exclaimed.
He froze against her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong!”
“Then why did you yell for me to stop?” he asked cautiously.
It took her whiskey-fuzzed brain a moment to sort that one out. Then she blurted, “Oh. I get it. No. I was reacting to how great that felt. You know. As in, whoa, that’s awesome, dude.”
He burst out laughing. “So you don’t want me to stop?”
“No!”
“You have no idea how glad I am to hear that,” he murmured. For a second time, the humor fled from his gaze, leaving behind a raw, sexual hunger in his eyes that completely undid her. Men never looked at her like that. And certainly not men like him.
He whisked the thong off her and it joined her other clothes somewhere across the room. And then he did that surrounding her thing again, all muscle and heat and impatient man. The room spun more wildly now. Where the whiskey stopped and the intoxication of this man making love to her took over, she couldn’t rightly say. It was a heady cocktail, though.
His muscular thigh nudged hers apart and she tensed. He stared down at her as if waiting for her to say something.
“I’m overthinking again, aren’t I?” she mumbled.
“Relax. Enjoy. Let go.”
His voice was so darned seductive. It was so easy to sink into the pleasure of the moment, to lose herself in the whirling lights and giddy lust dancing around her and in her.
His other thigh joined the first one, and he levered her legs wide apart. This time she arched toward him with a soft cry of need. If she was going to do this, then by golly, she was really going to go for it. She flung caution to the wind and launched herself toward him. He caught her up against his shockingly hard body and kissed her deeply. And then he took her. There wasn’t another word for it. He invaded boldly, filling her to the point of delicious discomfort, and then he made her his. Fast then slow, gently and then with driving force, he made love to her.
When she would have closed her eyes, embarrassed over how wantonly she was throwing herself at him, he wouldn’t stand for it and made her open her eyes to look at him. When she would have shrunk away from the hoarse cries of pleasure torn from her own throat, he kissed her until she gave those cries to him. And when he drove her to release a second and even a third time, he ripped away any last vestiges of inhibition she might have clung to, with the sheer excess of pleasure he gave her.
Her entire being was raw and exposed to him. He played her body and soul like the master artist he was before he finally joined her in one last, shattering climax. It tore his name from her throat on a primal note she’d never sung before. It was, in a word, magnificent. And better yet, she wasn’t alone.
He collapsed beside her on the now-damp sheets, breathing heavily. She rolled over and pushed up on his chest to stare down at him, and that was when the full broadside of the whiskey hit her. Dizzy and reckless, she retained just enough reason to know this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a girl like her. One not to be missed.
“If I let you rest a little, do you think we could do that again?” she asked.
A broad grin spread across his face.
