Come a Little Bit Closer: The Sullivans (16 page)

She loved the sound of his laughter, loved even more knowing that she’d pleased him. Because oh my, how he’d just pleased her. Again and again, with every touch, every kiss, every stroke of his body against—and into—hers.

“The cupcakes are over here,” she reminded him as he walked beautifully naked across the room to his dresser. He opened a drawer and pulled something out of it.

As satisfied as she’d felt just seconds ago, Valentina’s heart was now beating hard and fast as she wondered what Smith had planned for her. Especially when he said, “Close your eyes.”

“Why?”

He grinned at her. “Trust me, you’re going to like it.”

His easy use of the words
trust me
had her quickly sitting up in bed and her gut clenching. She could give her body so much more easily than she could give her trust to a man.

But as she looked up into Smith’s eyes and saw the careful way he was watching her, she was amazed—shocked, actually—to realize that she did trust him. At least for this one night, when she could be absolutely certain that nothing, and no one, would come between them.

On a long exhale, she let her eyes close, and a moment later, she felt something soft being wrapped around her eyes. Before she could ask him why he was blindfolding her, Valentina smelled sugar and chocolate.

“Take a bite.”

She bit into the cake pressed softly against her lips and every one of her taste buds came completely alive. “
Mmm.
” She started to lick at the frosting she could feel on the corner of her upper lip, but Smith’s tongue beat hers there.

“Delicious.”

He moved the chocolate back to her lips and she took another bite. Dessert had never tasted so good before and she was more than ready to feel Smith’s mouth on hers again when he surprised her with the sensation of something cold across the tip of one breast and then the other a beat later.

“Did you know there was filling inside the cupcake?”

She was so lost in the heady anticipation of what he was about to do that she could barely get out the word no.

“I can’t tell what flavor it is. Maybe you can help me?”

“
Smith. Please.”

He’d reduced her to begging yet again, but she didn’t care, not when she could feel his warm breath on her skin and then his tongue moving over her as he licked greedily at her incredibly sensitive nipples. She clutched blindly at his shoulders as he moved to clean off her other breast in the same powerfully seductive, wickedly perfect way.

Only when every last drop was gone did he move his mouth to hers and kiss her again. When she was completely breathless, he said, “Tell me, Valentina. What flavor was it?”

Love.

He tasted like love.

The forbidden four-letter word popped into her head unbidden, not just once, but twice, startling her into going stiff in his arms.

Instantly sensing her distress, he pulled the tie he’d used as a makeshift blindfold from her eyes and ran his hands slowly down her arms. “I promised I wouldn’t do anything you didn’t want me to do tonight,” he said in a soothing voice. “Was it the blindfold?”

It wasn’t, of course. She had liked that part very, very much.

She reached for him and wound her arms around his neck. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

And he truly hadn’t. She was the one who was going to have to work like crazy to protect herself again come morning. Which was why she should be glad for the small slip. It was the perfect reminder that even as she gave him her body, she needed to hold back her heart.

Trying to recapture the playfulness from just moments before, she said, “But I do feel kind of sticky now.”

His dark eyes held hers for a long moment, until her prayers that he’d let her strange behavior go were answered. He swept her up into his arms and carried her into his bathroom.

As he started the water running, his hands roamed over her skin, his mouth playing at the curve where her neck met her shoulder. She arched into him and there was barely twelve inches of water in the bottom of the tub when he said, “I need you again, Valentina.”

“Yes,” she said as she slid with him into the shallow water. “Again.”

Somehow he found a condom and had it on just in time for her to come down onto him at the exact moment that he plunged inside. She’d have thought this second time would be wonderful, but not anywhere near as special as their first time.

And yet, when he pulled nearly clear of her before driving in so deep and fast again that she had to cling to him tighter, and as she cried out with pleasure at gentle bite of his teeth and the sweet pull of his lips over her breasts, along with the tight hold he had on her hips with his big hands, Valentina knew that their lovemaking could never become ordinary, nor simple.

Not even if they had decades together in each other’s arms, instead of only one night.

Afterward, when they were both clean and dry again, and she felt more exhausted than she ever had before, Smith gently brought her back to the tangled sheets on his bed, tucked her in, and pulled her against him.

She had never slept well while sharing a bed with anyone, not even her sister on the nights when Tatiana had had childhood nightmares and climbed in with her. And Valentina’s decision to spend the night with Smith hadn’t included sleeping like this with him. Only sex.

But with Smith’s strong, warm arms around her, and one of his hands wrapped around hers so that both rested on top of her heart, she simply didn’t have it in her to fight the darkness of sleep...or the sweetness of being with Smith like this.

Chapter Fifteen

More asleep than awake the next morning, Valentina curled into the warm body beside her and sighed with pleasure. It wasn’t until she felt a hand stroke over her hair and soft kisses pressed to her closed eyelids that she finally woke all the way.

Oh God, she thought as she tried to keep her body from going instantly stiff against Smith’s, what had she done?

No, she hadn’t forgotten that she’d slept with him. She’d made that decision with a clear mind and didn’t regret it, wouldn’t ever let herself regret the most sweetly sensual hours of her life. But as morning light shone in through his second-story bedroom windows, she did regret breaking one very important rule: She’d stayed the night.

She was a flesh-and-blood woman full of hormones and desires. One hot night of sex was okay. Great, even, especially if it meant she could stop spending all her time and energy wondering about how it would feel to make love with Smith, and turn her focus back to her real life.

But waking up in his bed, having breakfast, sharing the part of her day with him when she was the most vulnerable...that was most definitely not okay.

Somehow she needed to figure out how to get out of his bed and his house without making a big deal of the one night they’d shared together.

Only, as he softly kissed her eyebrows, then each cheekbone, the tip of her nose, and then her chin, the last thing she wanted to do was leave his bed. Desire rose again, fast and hot, and she wanted so badly to thread her hands through his soft hair and drag his mouth to one of the places she really needed it.

So many rules she’d already broken for this man...so many more she knew she might not be strong enough to keep from breaking as, instead of turning away from him, she started to turn deeper into his arms, her leg moving to slide against his as she arched into his touch, silently begging him for more.

Until the harsh sound of a cell phone yanked her out of the sensual fog.

Her eyes flew open, her hands going flat on his chest. “Your phone—”

“—can keep ringing.”

But she was too well trained by her sister’s schedule to lose hold of an important calendar item, even as deep in the sensual fog as she’d been. Shock hit her that she’d come this close to forgetting. Clearly, making love with Smith had muddled her brain in a serious way.

“You and Tatiana have a phone interview with
Entertainment
magazine this morning.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when Valentina’s phone began to buzz with the ring tone that meant her sister was calling. Tatiana had spent the night at an event for up-and-coming young actresses in Los Angeles, so she not only wouldn’t know Smith had spent the night in bed with Valentina, she definitely wouldn’t guess that he was with her right now. Still, it made sense for her to try Valentina to see if she could reach Smith when he hadn’t called in for the interview.

Smith might be able to ignore his phone, but she couldn’t. Especially not when it was her sister calling. She scooted out from beneath him and tried not to feel shy about her nakedness as she hurried over to her purse across the room.

“Hey, T.”
Please
, Valentina silently prayed,
don’t ask me any questions that I’ll have to lie to answer.

She all but dove under the covers with her phone to her ear, as Smith watched her with still-hungry eyes.

“I’ve got Beth from
Entertainment
magazine on hold,” her sister told her. “She keeps asking me when Smith is going to call in. Did he say anything about canceling to you last night when you were at Alcatraz?”

“No, he didn’t say anything about not being able to do the interview. Maybe he’s just running a bit late. I’m sure he would never want to put you in an awkward position with an upset journalist because he didn’t show.”

Only, instead of leaning over to pick up his phone, Smith put an arm around her waist and dragged her up against his naked body—his very hard, very aroused naked body—surprising her even further with a soft kiss to her mouth.

A half-gasp, half-growl left her lips and her sister asked, “Val? Is everything okay?”

“I’ll see if I can reach him,” Valentina promised her sister, before, for the very first time ever, she hung up on her.

Glad for the rush of frustration that was quickly replacing desire, she was about to lay into Smith when he finally picked up his phone from the side table and started dialing.

“Beth, sorry to call in so late.”

But instead of letting Valentina go so that he could focus on the interview, he pulled her in even closer to him, his arms holding her firmly around the waist, one of his legs a heavy weight over both of hers.

“How’s your son doing? Still tearing up the soccer field?”

Close enough to hear the woman’s cheerful answers, Valentina tried not to make a sound. God forbid either the journalist or her sister could tell that Smith was in bed with a woman.

With
her.

Of course he didn’t make it easy for her to remain silent as his hand stroked slowly over her ribs, down to her waist, and then the curve of her hips. She trembled with the effort to keep from voicing her pleasure at his touch. Especially after a night when she’d been able to let herself go completely.

When she simply hadn’t had any choice but to let go.

She’d thought it was just for that one, very special night when all rules—all worries—were off. Only, this time, the sweetness of his touch wasn’t enough to combat the brutal reminder of who he was.

Smith Sullivan, movie star.

How could she have let herself forget?

Not that going back to assess the hows and whys mattered much at this point. The point was that she had forgotten. And, more important, she needed to never, ever forget again.

At least on set, she was constantly viewing him in his producer, director, or actor role. Whereas with his family, at Alcatraz, on his boat—and most definitely when she was in his bed—Smith was simply a wonderful man.

Not to mention the most sensual, most infuriatingly persistent man she’d ever known.

Of course, despite all of the stern warnings and reminders she’d just given herself, during the long minutes that felt like hours as he chatted with her sister and the journalist, Valentina’s body continued to heat up by degrees. Smith never came close to touching her breasts, or between her legs, but it was almost worse that he didn’t because everywhere he didn’t touch throbbed, swelled with need, even as she prayed for his interview to end.

Although, in her secret heart of hearts, she knew she didn’t want the interview to ever end. Not if it meant she had to finally make herself leave Smith’s arms.

At long last, when she could have sworn he’d run his hands over every inch of her skin but the spots that ached desperately for his touch, he finally put down his phone...and turned his entire focus back to her.

“Sorry about that. Now,” he said as his fingertips drew a trail of goosebumps over the delicate skin on the inside of her forearm, “where were we?”

She took a deep, too-shaky, breath. “I was leaving.”

Most men would have been more than happy to let their one-night stand escape. Heck, pretty much any other man on the planet would have been telling her not to let the door hit her too hard on the way out...and any other woman on the planet would have been begging Smith to let her stay.

When the thought occurred to her that maybe that was why they’d always fit together so well—because neither of them behaved as they should—she fought to shove it away.

His hand didn’t still on her skin. The same slow stroke of heat warmed her more with every pass he made over her curves as he said, “I don’t want you to go,” in a low voice that thrummed up and down her spine and over her skin.

“You know what we agreed last night,” she reminded him.

“I know what we agreed,” he said, “but that was before.”

That one word—
before—
and all the memories of the
after
that had included his mouth, his hands, his body over hers, forced her to silently acknowledge her own foolishness.

Had she really thought she could get what she needed from him in one short night to fill her well, scratch her itch, and purge the desire from her system? And hadn’t she known all along that his kisses, his hands warming her skin, his body pressing down hard and perfect over hers, would be akin to a trap?