Pride After Her Fall (8 page)

She gave a shout as he rode the corner hard and tore down the strait. She squealed again, shoulders thrown back by the velocity, and he knew exactly what she was feeling because he’d felt it, too. The first time. Every time after.

This
was why he raced.

It didn’t explain why, with her, it felt new.

As he pulled back the speed and gradually rolled the car to a stop he could hear her breathing, her little murmurs of, ‘Oh, my...oh, my...oh, my.’ He knew he had her. What he didn’t understand was why this felt so important.

They got out in silence.

He had his helmet off, but she was still unbuckling hers.

She threw her head forwards and back to release her flattened curls. They fell about her head in a messy tangle she didn’t even try to smooth down as she lifted sparkling eyes to meet his. She was absolutely how he wanted her: messy, confident, excited.

Her lips parted and she was breathing hard and laughing. He knew exactly how she was feeling. The blood was surging through his body but it had nothing to do with speed or the adrenalin rush. She stepped towards him and he found himself making the same move.

Neither of them spoke.

All Nash could think was that he wanted her so badly he would have thrown her across the bonnet of Blue 16 if half a dozen other guys hadn’t been within gawking distance.

Lorelei was looking up at him as if she shared every one of his thoughts.

‘Wow,’ she said softly. ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome,’ he said just as softly.

Lorelei felt herself drift towards him and suddenly Nash was there, in her space, and the atmosphere between them was on fire.

‘Come on,’ was all he said, and she allowed him to take her hand. She knew what he meant.

* * *

He put her in his civilian car, drove the highway just on the limit.

Lorelei didn’t ask him where he was taking her. She was too busy asking herself what she thought she was doing.

He’d barely touched her but her body was literally humming, and the tension in the car was doing her head in.

What was he thinking? Where was this going? Did it really matter?

He’d made it pretty clear he was in charge.

She watched the capable pull and push of his big hand on the gears, his long, strong arm, the cut of musculature running under the high sleeve of his T-shirt, the faint press of his chest as he breathed in and out, the way his jaw settled with precision as he concentrated on his driving. He was driving fast, but he was driving safely. He had made her feel safe since the moment she met him.

They were coming up to the turn-off.

‘Your place or mine?’

It was the first time he’d spoken.

It was a question she couldn’t hide behind, pretending this wasn’t about sex.
I came to the track to find you, to let you know I was available to you...

This never happened to her. Never. She was always cautious. She didn’t meet a man and climb into his car and go home with him... Her breath hitched because she realised they’d come to a stop at the turn-off and she still hadn’t answered him.

Nash cupped her chin, lowered his mouth to hers. Kissed her so sweetly she wanted to cling to this moment.

He did let her go. To decide for her.

‘My place. It’s closer.’

CHAPTER NINE

I
T
WAS
the longest drive known to man, although practically Nash knew it was barely twenty-five minutes.

Lorelei’s soft, sexy eyes on him driving were about as close to actually being skin to skin without taking their clothes off.

Her quiet bothered him, though.

Was she thinking about Massena? Did he need to go there, ask those questions?

He didn’t share.

He was very, very possessive.

Okay, up until now that hadn’t been the case with other women, but it appeared to be the case with
this
woman.

He’d been up all night thinking about her, visualising her with another man’s hand on her waist, another man seeing her home. It was unreasonable. He’d blown her off. He’d been the one to call a halt. Everything he knew about her meant this was playing with fire.

The traffic in town was heavy. The light was leaving the sky and the boulevards were twinkling.

Nash shot the Veyron in and out of snags until they were mercifully prowling into the garage under his apartment complex.

Lorelei’s chest was visibly rising and falling as they sank into the spotlit gloom, the darkness making the space between them more intimate and strangely tense. The excitement and adrenalin rush of the track had been infiltrated by reality. Nash remembered the things he’d said to her, virtually accusing her of being a media-whore, and yet here she was, despite all of that.

‘About my car—’ she said suddenly, her voice low and husky.

‘All taken care of.’

‘I know, but—’

‘Why bother your head about those things?’ He cut her off. ‘It’s nothing—a trifle.’

He could sense in her the need to say more, but all of a sudden she just subsided, looking down at her hands in her lap.

‘The flowers were lovely,’ she said instead.

Nash suspected she was trying to tell him something, but he didn’t want to hear it. This wasn’t about him fixing things for her in her no doubt chaotic life. Nor her eminently female desire to turn their liaison into something prettified with flowers and romantic gestures. He was here for one purpose and one purpose only: to work through this unholy desire to have this woman any way he could get her. All. Night. Long. They’d deal with the morning and where they went from there tomorrow.

For a guy who liked to plan, he was certainly enjoying making it up as he went along.

Which somehow was making this hotter.

‘This is where you live?’ Lorelei said a little breathlessly as they pulled up.

‘Penthouse.’

She looked around. ‘Must be nice being in the centre of everything.’

‘It has its compensations.’ Like now.

‘At least you can park somewhere. So we’re safe from the public ordinance.’

He liked her turn of phrase. He also liked that she was betraying a little feminine nervousness.
No, sweetheart, you’re definitely not safe.

‘Nash?’ She put her hand on his knee and for a moment he had the thought she was going to climb over and straddle him in the goddamn sports car. But then he realised that was his fantasy and she was just looking at him with a question in her eyes.

He didn’t want to answer those questions. Except he was remembering something she’d said to him.
Here was I, thinking you were a gentleman, but you’re just a man...like all the rest.

He winged the door. ‘Stay there. I’m coming to get you.’

‘No, Nash—’

‘Yes, Nash.’ He gave her a slashing smile and in a fluid movement was out and around to her side of the car.

She looked up as he winged her door and hesitated a moment. He liked that hesitation. It made him want to reach in and scoop her out, to take instead of ask, but Lorelei seemed only to need a moment to make up her mind. She swung her lithe legs out, never taking her eyes from his, reminding him in every movement of her class and her poise and why he needed to be a gentleman... She literally stepped out of the car and into his arms.

He felt the delicacy of her bones, the softness of her bare arms as they wound themselves around his neck, the scent of blossoms and honey bees from her hair or her skin or simply the way she was. She brought her lips to his, confident and sure, before his mouth slanted over hers and his plans for tonight disintegrated.

He had intended to thrust deep, to make sure they both got the message that this was about dealing with a problem—sexual attraction—and overturn any idea this was a romantic scenario. They were both grown-ups. They’d both been here before. It wasn’t going to go beyond that. Yeah, he was going to make her understand...

Until now, with her in his arms, one hand curled against his cheek, her lips soft and responsive beneath his, when the kiss turned tender and romantic and deeply fulfilling on some atavistic level he didn’t want to explore. Not now.

Not when he had this.

He heard her sigh his name.

Obeying primal instinct, he tucked his hands under her bottom, shaping the incredible contours, and lifted her until she was sitting on the bonnet of the Veyron. Thinking he needed to get her sky-high and they were currently below ground, he wondered what in the hell he thought he was doing. But he needed to kiss her more.

One more taste, he promised himself, pulling her in tight, feeling the warm skin of her waist as his hands delved under the silky fabric of her top. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her fingers tangling in his hair, making soft, satisfied little noises in the back of her throat that warned him this was quickly going to move out of control if he didn’t get her off the car and somewhere private.

But it was Lorelei who broke the kiss, pulling back, eyes wide, breath coming fast, her whole body quivering. She looked around, not yet past caring.

Nash found himself bringing a hand to her cheek. ‘There’s just us. You and me.’

Her eyes softened. She touched his hand with her fingertips. It was a small gesture but he couldn’t help entangling his fingers with hers, taking that small rough palm in his own.

‘Inside?’ she said a touch anxiously.

‘Inside,’ he agreed.

* * *

Nash lifted her from the bonnet and, taking her hand, strode to the elevator. He swiped the pass key and the doors closed. Even as Lorelei turned into his arms, pressing her face to the hard solidity of his chest, she felt the ground give way beneath her as they were hurled skywards.

She was breathing him in—heady, musky, spicy, hot male and, faintly, soap. The kind of plain soap she liked, not fancy. He was all kinds of good things, and even as her mind was running ahead, fantasising wild and wonderful, she wanted to cling to this moment, when it was just her, burrowing into the strength and solidity of him, and him tightening his hold on her.

She was vaguely conscious of a slight ping, the doors sliding open.

He lifted her as if she weighed nothing and carried her into his apartment.

As he kicked shut the door she took in the downlit expanse of modern masculine interior design. Smooth parquet floors, oyster walls and carpeting, and floor-to-ceiling windows that gave onto a multimillion-euro view of the velvety star-scaped vista of Monaco’s famous marina. Lorelei had been in some fancy homes in this town for parties and receptions, but she’d never made love in one. Faintly she thought there was something to be said for a sky-high room with a view when it came to romancing a woman.

There was also something to be said for being literally swept off her feet.

‘Nash?’ She brought her palm hesitantly to his cheek.

He caught her hand, kissed her palm fiercely and kept going. He kicked open a door and Lorelei could see two dressers, a huge eastern rug, a vast bed. A man’s bed—so different from her own ice-blue silk Art Deco double. She registered chocolate-brown linens and a neatness and uniformity to everything that made her smile a little. But that smile faded as he released her, and she slowly slid down his body until she was standing on her own two feet before him.

She instantly felt a little dwarfed. His shoulders were impossibly wide, and the power of his sheer masculine dominance over her physically and, she suspected, sexually in this encounter gave her a moment of pause.

To even things up it would probably be best for her to step into his arms, initiate what she wanted, make her own demands... And yet as she waited to find her own rhythm in this dance all she felt was longing. For him to kiss her again, to be tender with her, for this to be somehow different from what she’d ever known before. She didn’t know why this man, why...

‘Let me see you,’ was all he said, in a voice so soft it was velvet over her sensitised skin.

Obediently she toed off her canvas lace-ups, but Nash was already enclosing her in his arms, as if he couldn’t help himself, his hands at the back of her neck, tugging at the ribbon that held her top in place.

‘Let me,’ was all he said.

So she let him. He was having trouble with it, and so close against him she could feel his tension. She could offer to help...

But when she lifted her hands he shook his head, bent his head, and his hot breath whispered against her ear. ‘Let me.’

The ribbon gave and with infinite care Nash was peeling off her top, bending down as it fell away to press his mouth to the gentle swells of her breasts above the delicate floral pattern of lace just screening her nipples. He unfastened her fragile gold bra and it drifted to the floor, a cobweb of silk and lace. Lorelei registered the spike in heat between them as Nash viewed her bared breasts in the soft light, felt the splay of his large hands beneath the slight under curves, closed her eyes as his thumbs dragged across her nipples.

‘You are so beautiful,’ he told her.

She opened her eyes to find his expression first intent upon her own and then dropping down. She followed his gaze, drinking in the intensely intimate sight of his big tanned hands cupping the curves of her breasts.

‘I want to see all of you,’ he told her in a roughened voice.

Lorelei unzipped her jeans and his hands joined hers to slide them over her neat hips, to peel them down, helping her carefully to step out. His hands were slightly clumsy as they settled on her waist, and he was clearly drinking her in as she stood naked except for the tiny scrap of white silk that made up what passed for her panties.

‘God, you are more than beautiful,’ he said, almost reverently, and Lorelei, who had been praised for her looks by too many men, and had thought those words had long lost their ability to move her, let alone hold an ounce of truth, believed him.

She stepped against him and began pushing his T-shirt up, baring an abdomen packed with muscle, a wide, hard chest lightly covered in dark hair. The feel of his skin under her hands was remarkably smooth and hot. His body was like a generator for heat. She ran her hands up over his deltoids as he lifted his arms to reef the cotton off, and she had her first proper look at what had been filling out those clothes.

He had a simply magnificent body—all height and large frame, which were the gifts of the gene gods. Although what he’d done with it, Lorelei thought a little light-headedly, the stripped, lean muscle and the grace with which he moved, wasn’t to be overlooked.

No, she wasn’t overlooking anything—including an erection she wanted to explore pressing against denim. But Nash didn’t give her the opportunity to do anything about that as he dipped his head and began kissing her, lifting her so that her toes barely touched the carpet, his hands on her buttocks, moulding her against him. until she felt the long, thick ridge of that impressive erection pressed against her belly.

He released her slowly and dropped to his knees on the rug, his hands cupping her hips. She swayed in against him, shivering as he placed a hot kiss on her belly, and another, and another lower down. He was touching her there, through the silk, and then the silk was sliding down her legs and there was just his mouth, and Lorelei slammed her hands down on the back of his head, tangling her fingers through his silky thick dark brown hair, clutching as the muscles in her thighs convulsed. The faint ache in her hips that was always there after a long day on her feet was nullified by the almost painfully sensitive pitch he brought her to, until pleasure began streaking through her.

Her soft cries came unbidden as the dam burst and the waves of pleasure went on and on. Nash’s tongue moved almost reticently as he gauged just how much she could take as her body convulsed. Just as she thought she was coming down he brought her up again, and again she peaked. When she was weak and clutching at his shoulders, swaying on her feet, he rose up like some kind of victorious sea god emerging from the deep. He gathered her in his arms and Lorelei, a little weakened and blurry from her orgasms, saw his eyes were wild, his tongue swiping a lower lip wet with her essence. He gave her a slow smile full of sexual promise and she just stared helplessly at him.

What had just happened?
Alors,
she knew what had happened, but it had never happened to her before more than once at one time...and he had been so understanding of what she needed...

He lowered her onto smooth, cool sheets and her skin prickled not with cold but with anticipation as Nash stood over her. Slowly he began to unbutton his jeans with one hand, the other palming a square foil wrapper.

‘Such a boy scout,’ she approved a little unsteadily as the condom wrapper crackled.

‘Always.’ His eyes never once left hers and Lorelei watched as the denim parted, revealing his taut pelvic cradle, the cut marks of his abdominals, the deep grooves alongside his lean hips.

He shoved down his jeans and briefs in a single movement and gave her a slow smile as he saw the look on her face.

‘I’m an engineer by trade, Lorelei,’ he assured her with a wink. ‘It’s my job to make sure things fit.’

Lorelei watched him roll on the latex. She knew she ought to be taking the initiative, climbing into his arms and at least setting the pace, but somehow none of that happened.

Nash came over her, so big and dominant she should have taken pause. He dwarfed her, yet her shiver had nothing to do with reluctance.