“For nearly twenty-four hours I’ve been imagining you without any clothes on.”

She shivered against him as he cupped her stunning face in his hands and kissed her, long and slow, taking the time—finally—to learn the corners and crevasses of her sweet mouth. She trembled when he dipped his tongue into the corners where her upper and lower lips came together, then gave a low moan as he nipped her lower lip between his teeth and sucked it inside.

Without giving her any warning, he moved his hands from her face to the bottom of her thin tank top and pulled it up over her head. She started to cover her br**sts and he stopped her hands with his.

“No."

Her eyes were dilated and her breath was coming fast as he slid his fingers through hers.

“I don’t want you to hide yourself from me."

From where he was holding her hands, he could feel her swift intake of breath—along with her rapid heartbeat.

“Take a step back so that I can look at you.”

He could see how uncertain she was, but it only made him more determined to push past it. He could scent her arousal, knew how much she wanted him. He needed to know how she would respond to his natural sexuality, to the innate dominance he’d controlled for too long.

“Now, kitten.”

Her eyes flared with surprise—and heat—at the endearment even as she took a step back. But as Marcus made himself let go of her hands, Nicola blushed furiously.

From what he could recall of seeing flashes of her on TV and pictures on magazine covers, he knew she often wore next to nothing on stage. And yet, if he didn’t know better, he would swear she’d never gotten naked with another man. She was that shy.

“Show me how beautiful you are, Nicola.” He didn’t understand why this was so hard for her, but since it obviously was, he instinctively softened his voice. He was gentle, soothing, as he urged her, “Show me how much you want this. How much you want me.”

The silence throbbed between them for a long while until—finally—she dropped her hands from her chest...and the hit of lust that knocked into him nearly took him down to his knees on the carpeted floor of her penthouse suite.

But even as he was on the verge of losing his mind over her beautiful body, he realized that she was shaking.

“You’re not scared of me, are you?”

She shook her head. “No.” But the way she dropped her gaze from his and lowered her head gave him an entirely different answer.

“You and I,” he said as he moved closer to tip her chin up with his fingertips so that she had to look at him, “we won’t ever lie to each other."

Again, it wasn’t a question. It was simply a truth that had to be.

When she nodded her agreement, he asked again, “Are you afraid of what’s happening between us tonight?”

“I’m not afraid of you. I just—” She made a move to re-cover her br**sts with her hands and when he took them in his to stop her once again, she only shook harder.

“Tell me why you’re scared, kitten.”

But instead of telling him, she said, “Why do you keep calling me that?”

Despite how badly he wanted her, despite the fact that he was working like hell to rein in the caveman inside, he found himself smiling. “Because that’s how you slept on my lap. Like a contented kitten.”

Her eyes softened and her trembling stopped. “I want to rub myself all over you like one,” she whispered shyly.

Oh yes, he wanted to feel all those soft, smooth curves sliding against him. But if she did that he’d be a goner. And she hadn’t yet told him why she’d been trembling.

“I want you to do that, too,” he told her, “but first I want you to tell me what’s wrong.”

“I haven’t—” She stopped, took a deep breath before admitting, “It’s been a while for me.”

Ah, that explained why she was so nervous. “We’ll take it slow,” he promised her in a husky voice. “Slow and easy.”

“Okay,” she said and the trust in her eyes nearly undid him. “But what if I want fast and hard, too?"

In an instant, the thin threads of his control snapped as he lifted her into his arms.

A bed. He just needed to get her to a bed and then he could stop, think, plan what he was going to do with her.

He was almost there when she shifted so that her face was softly pressing into his neck. He could feel her warm breath, and then her lips moving along the cords that ran down to his shoulders. But it was the soft lick of her tongue against his skin, followed by a nip of her teeth, that broke him.

Barely two feet from the bed, he bent his head and took one of her br**sts in his mouth.

She was so sweet, and so responsive. He felt his hold on sanity loosen as she moaned his name and he had to shift her weight so that her other breast was there for him to suckle on, too.

Knowing he’d never experienced anything as erotic as the way her body responded to his touch, Marcus made himself move those final feet to the bed, and lowered them both so that he was sitting on the edge of the mattress. Her fingers were in his hair now, her neck arched back so that she could give him better access to her br**sts. He knew if he left her there to squirm and wiggle around on his lap, he was going to explode before he was anywhere near getting inside her.

He lifted his mouth from Nicola’s soft skin just long enough to reposition her so that she was standing between his spread thighs. Her legs were unsteady and he held onto her hips, moving her small but curvy frame into just the right place.

Her hands stayed in his hair, and the desperate little sounds she was making as he licked and sucked and nipped at her sensitive flesh had him suddenly wanting the night to be so much longer than just a handful of hours.

Chapter Ten

Nicola had never felt this out of control. Her brain, her body, none of it was connected together anymore. Between Marcus’s kisses and his hands on her skin...she lost hold of everything that held her down to earth as in one smooth move he slid her shorts and thong off so that she was completely naked.

As he dragged her mouth down to his for another soul-changing kiss, her hands automatically went to his pants to start unbuttoning and unzipping so that she could get him naked, too.

One of his big hands covered both of hers. “Not yet. Not until you come for me."

Still holding her hand, she was more than a little shocked when he slid both of their fingers between her thighs.

“Tell me how it feels,” he said in a low voice.