“Yes yes yes yes,” she whispered. He was in her hand, hot and hard, like steel.
He held her face in his palms as she stroked him, his eyes closed. “You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about you, needed you, made myself crazy thinking about you. Remembering every glorious moment we were together.” When he opened his eyes, his gaze burned through her, deep and dark and bleak all at the same time.
“I want you, Cal. Please. Now.” She’d never begged before in her life. But she wouldn’t stop begging him until he gave her what she wanted. Everything she wanted.
She rose, sliding down on him until he was so deep she swore she felt him in the center of her soul. And finally—finally—she felt whole again.
“You feel good. Too good. So good.” Then he kissed her, ravenously, with everything he had.
Their lovemaking was crazy and wild and frenzied, his mouth and his body consuming her at the same time she consumed him. She’d never been so out of control. Never needed anyone like she needed Cal.
Sensation shot down to her center, their bodies joined as one. When she felt him pulse inside her, it was her undoing. His name was on her lips, and he took the sound into his mouth.
Bliss was all there was. All there ever needed to be.
As long as she was with Cal, she’d never need anything more.
* * *
He had lost himself in her. It didn’t matter how wrong it was. Lyssa was all he’d thought about—obsessed about—for more than a month. And now that she was in his arms again, he didn’t know how he’d ever convince himself to let her go.
But in the back recesses of his mind, he couldn’t forget that she deserved so much more—he could give her jewels, but he couldn’t give her a whole, undamaged heart.
At last, the music drifting down from the hotel seeped back into his senses. And he belatedly remembered where they were and what they were doing. The place was swarming with Mavericks. Her brothers or parents could stumble upon them at any moment.
Something broke in him when he forced himself to lift her away.
She swept her thumb across his mouth. “My lipstick,” she whispered. “It’s all over you.”
There wasn’t even a smudge left on her luscious mouth. It was all over his lips, a beautiful, heartrending symbol of what they’d done.
With one last caress, she said, “There, all better.”
He was dazzled, he was dazed, but he wasn’t even the slightest bit sated. He needed so much more of her. More he couldn’t have.
He smoothed her dress down her thighs, then bent to retrieve her shoes and hand them to her. She was slipping into them as he did up his belt buckle.
Which was when he heard footsteps on the path. He found himself at the opposite end of the bench without even knowing how his feet moved. A good, safe distance.
Until he saw her panties on the ground just under the bench. His heart pounded, his gut twisted, and he’d only just scooped them up and shoved them in his pocket when Daniel Spencer stepped through the break in the hedge.
“Hey, I wondered where you’d got to,” Daniel said.
Cal now knew exactly what my blood ran cold meant.
Daniel was looking at Lyssa. Did he notice her lips were bare of lipstick? Had she gotten every smudge off Cal’s face?
Being with Lyssa had been fast and cataclysmic, unbearably divine, and insanely stupid. If Daniel had arrived thirty seconds earlier, he’d have caught Cal buried gloriously deep inside his sister.
Cal knew he was all kinds of an idiot, but his fingers caressed her silky panties in his pocket.
“I needed a few minutes to talk to Cal about the gala,” Lyssa lied smoothly. “He hasn’t been around the office much lately.”
“The gala?” Daniel asked, a little dumbfounded.
“Yeah,” she said. “The fundraiser for the foundation. The one Dane Harrington is spearheading out of the goodness of his heart.”
She sounded so normal, so in control, as if they hadn’t just screwed the hell out of each other five minutes ago.
Screwed. It was the wrong word. Hot and crazy and amazing, what they’d done couldn’t possibly be called screwing. It was something more. So much more. Something he was terrified to put words to.
He’d never felt wild like this, not until Lyssa. But when he was with her, such warmth blossomed deep in his chest. A warmth that would spread through him, if only he could pull her into his arms again and never let her go.
But even then…he could feel the brokenness inside him. He could never give her everything she truly deserved.
“I thought Gideon told you.” She prodded Daniel. “We’ll all be dressed to the nines again and heading to Dane’s resort in the wine country to inspire as many Silicon Valley moguls as possible to give freely to the foundation.”