Proud Hearts (Wild Hearts Romance Book 2) (20 page)

Then the camera was back on the clench of Chris’ hips. Wrapping his hands around the bars behind her waist, he pulled himself toward her as her legs folded over his to help increase the leverage in the buoyant water. Sliding his hands up the bars, then spreading his arms to grab the next set of bars to either side and turning his head sideways to face the camera, he positioned himself to thrust.

They moved in synched rhythm, he and Shark Woman, a slower motion sensual dance that the camera followed between cuts to close-ups of their eyes over air tubing that was taking a beating as bubbles rushed around them.

In the last moment, a dark shape rose up behind them. I imagined jaws closing on their fingers, their hands, the exposed bars. But the bull shark only gave them a cold eye, and Chris and Shark Woman climaxed together as the shark swam on by.

With Chris holding tight to the bars to keep them locked together, Shark Woman pulled their mouthpieces out, and there in the ocean’s depth they swapped air instead of tongues before the clip timed out.

I set the tablet down and gulped another flute of the numbing champagne.

At least I knew now that Gary hadn’t lied.

As it turned out, I had plenty of time before Chris returned. Time to finish my burger, to savor each of the eggplant fingers, and to finish off all of the chocolate-dipped strawberries I’d initially thought to share. Time to finish the full bottle of champagne. And time to replay the video clips I’d just watched not only a second time but a third. And time to search online for even more of Chris.

The streaming speed of the internet connection here at the resort was slow in comparison to what I’d known in some metropolitan areas of the States, but it was magnitudes faster than anything I could get out in the bush. Here I could click from one video to the next and indulge in every raw, unbuffered moment.

It was surprising to discover just how famous Chris’ naked butt had become. Was there any movie he’d been in that didn’t require him to strip down at some point so the camera could enjoy at the very least a nice PG-13 butt shot along with some well-choreographed angles that would show him nude while hiding that X-rated member of his from hopeful eyes?

The movie clips didn’t enflame me the way Wolf Girl and Shark Woman did, of course. There was no doubt Chris enjoyed showing off his buff self on camera, but those were all scripted scenes. Gratuitous, to be sure, catering to fans who’d bought tickets precisely to ogle. The
Living With…
episodes, however, those were scripted and edited after the fact, with almost all of it improvised on location. Not that the showrunners couldn’t influence the direction of that improv by setting Chris up with the right kinds of women.

Women Chris
chose
to do his mating dance for the camera with.

For the ratings boost.

Damn Gary. Or bless him for opening my eyes. Whatever his motive.

By the time Chris swayed his way back to the room, on the edge of a full-drunk himself, early though it was with the prospect of having to see Gary and Reena’s flight off at dawn, I still had no plan for how to move forward.

My sober self, no doubt, would have handled things differently. But when Chris plopped down beside me on the sofa and the first words out of his mouth were, “I’ve been waiting for this all evening,” before he began to paw me and maul me with his mouth, the alcohol-laden air between us was all the trigger I needed.

Revenge sex.

I threw myself at him, determined to take full advantage of
him
the way he thought about taking it with me. Only it would end here, tonight. I would wring every pleasure from him, here where there were no cameras.

Give him hope for a future encounter he could commit to film—but then never follow through.

Tonight, though, he would be mine.

Under my spell.

Under my command.

I blinked, wondering for a moment if I’d stumbled into the wrong room. Not that I was complaining if I had. The little beauty on my lap was definitely wriggling in all the right ways.

A glance at the empty champagne bottle on the coffee table was a clue. Had this uninhibited, self-assured sexpot been hiding like a genie in that bottle all along?

When her hand slid intimately yet insistently under my shirt before I even had a chance to slip my jacket off, I took her by the forearms and physically moved her off me.

“Whoa. Slow down. I can wait a little longer.”

“Can you?” she whispered into my ear before flicking her tongue inside it. Then her hand was covering the front of my pants where my well-trained cock was coming to attention.

I groaned, caught off-guard and shrugging from my jacket. She tugged it the rest of the way off, tossing it on the matching chair as she stood up from the sofa.

“Bedroom,” she said. “We won’t see another bed again.”

So she thought she was going to lead tonight. The idea was…interesting…although the alpha in me protested. As a compromise, I swept my arm behind her knees, kicked off my loafers and carried her into the darkened bedroom where I dropped her on the navy blue down comforter that covered the king-size bed.

“How do you like it best?” Her tone was more challenge than seduction. Crawling to the headboard, she flung herself against it, spread-eagle, gripping the top edge. “Like this, or”—she whipped around to her knees, presenting her elevated butt to me—“do you prefer it like this?”

Clearly she was drunk and, although both positions were provocative and I would be happy taking her either way—or perhaps both before the night was out—neither was really
her
. “Let’s try undressing first and see where that leads.”

Kneeling on the bed, in the spotlight streaming in from the open door to the living room, she began a striptease worthy of a burlesque. When she ended stretched out, heels on the mattress, her straightened arms levering her hips and back up from behind, shorts unzipped, I accepted the invitation. Slowly I raked those khaki shorts down over her hips, thighs and curved calves, lifting her feet together in one hand while stripping the shorts over them with the other.

I took a moment to admire that long length of her, naked and available for pleasure. Under my gaze she began to undulate, clenching and unclenching that tight butt in calculated eroticism.

Every signal was clear—it was raw sex she wanted tonight, probably too drunk for anything more tender or nuanced.

That, though, wasn’t how I felt about her. Others I would have used that way without a second thought, but with the promise of a soft bed under us, I had hoped for a more meaningful encounter with Dee tonight. Sex, of course, and plenty of it, but slow and thoughtful and forging a connection of souls as much as bodies.

Not this, whatever Dee was after.

Not that my lizard brain was going to refuse what she offered. Sex without any real emotional tie was what I was built for, what I practiced for. The shadow of remorse that tonight wasn’t going to be something more meaningful passed quickly as I stripped hastily, before Dee might change her mind—or the luscious position of her body.

The light from the living room glinted in her eyes as she stared her lust at me in full arousal. When I fell over her, her arms collapsed behind her from my weight. Gathering her to me, I thrust inside, without foreplay, without even a kiss of permission. Without protection, the memory of it lost in the alcohol.

Her nails dug into my shoulders as she pulled me closer, and it was the work of only a couple of minutes before we both cried out together.

Panting, she twisted in my arms, rose to her hands and knees and wriggled herself against me, half-limp though I was. She was a persistent little vixen, though, and it was only moments before I rose again to her challenge.

I moved to turn her back around to face me.

“No.” Her voice was firm. “Take me like this, like you would a wolf.”

An odd game, but my lizard brain didn’t care. I plunged into her, one hand finding the arch of her pubic bone, my fingers automatically seeking her clit, my other hand wrapped comfortable over her breasts. She fit my hands as perfectly this way as that, and I pounded happily away.

“Who’s better?”

“What?” Why was she distracting me now?

“Who’s better?” she repeated. “Wolf Girl or me?”

Alarms went off in my head, but I was already pitching over the edge of another climax and it was too late to stop as I erupted in her and muscles clamped around me as she fell over the precipice with me.

When I could think again, I knew there was trouble.

“How about we do it in the bathtub next. Underwater.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Where did you think you’d get me to do it for the camera? In the middle of the pride?”

“Do what?”

“Get you your ratings, you bastard. Gary told me. And I watched the videos myself.”

I had a pretty good idea now what videos she’d watched. “What exactly did Gary say?”

“That I’m nothing more than this month’s ratings whore.”

She fought to pull away from me, but I held her easily, still inside her.

“Gary’s a dipshit. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

With a vicious twist of her hips, Dee dislodged me, although she was still captured in my arms. The problem was, I had her but I didn’t know what to do with her.

“Prove it. Explain your behavior.”

“All that…other…was business. You’re…not.”

“No? Then what am I?”

What indeed? Not a commitment. Not a business proposition. Not anything I’d ever met before. “Not…
that
.”

“You’d better believe I’m not
that
. And
this
isn’t happening again. Not on-camera or off. And I want you out of this bed. Now.”

A woman telling Chris Corsair to get out of her bed? Blankly, I tried to process that until I realized Dee was still struggling impotently against me. I released her, and she pushed at my chest, still trying to force me away.

Damn Gary.

Damn alcohol.

Damn sofa where I wound up spending the night.