“I’m trying to keep this decent, but god I want to worship your pussy with my tongue and taste the juices I know are already waiting for me. Do you feel the heat?” He took my hand in his and I watched fascinated by the difference in the size of our palms. I forgot what it felt like for him to do something as innocent as hold my hand, but there was nothing innocent about what he was doing at that moment. He shoved my hand and his between my legs, and I felt the inexplicable heat that washed over our hands like steam rising from manholes on a New York winter day.

“Tell me that’s for me. Tell me I’m not alone in this. I need you,” he groaned, and I felt the weight of his body finally give way to mine, relinquishing all of the torment that he’d endured at my rejection of him.

The elevator slowed and it was as if time stopped as the doors peeled opened. Joel looked at me with an intense need in his eyes. A look that one night wouldn’t be able to snuff out. This was all I was giving him, so before the doors could close I took his hand in mine and escaped, dashing out into the corridor that stretched endlessly before us.

“You’ve got thirty minutes.”

The words had barely left my lips before he was yanking me down the hall to room 913.

“You’re killing me with the time limit, but I can make my pretty bird sing in less than five minutes. I’ll make do.”

He searched his pockets for the key card and I handed over mine—the one he sneakily passed me, much like he’d done everything. I felt my lips fall into a smirk, and his green eyes gleamed like brilliant rainbows in a drop of dew.

“Strip and get on the bed,” Joel said in a voice that could be felt more than heard, and boy did I feel it. It licked up my ankles, across my skin, circled my hips, and made my nipples pucker.

Once naked, I eased back on the bed watching the lion pace his cage. Joel looked like he was measuring just what to do next—now that he had me exactly where he wanted me.

“Thirty minutes starts now.”

Joel whipped off his clothes, tossing them to take up residence somewhere on the floor where my bathing suit resided. He dived onto the bed between my spread knees, his tongue spearing straight for my core. A couple licks in and I’d already felt the web of muscles spanning my legs and pelvis snap tight. The muscles clenched with every bit of strength my body possessed, coiled until I thought my body would knot. It was the most exquisite pain I’d ever experienced—a euphoric feeling that made me want to laugh and cry. I hovered there on that precipice, quivering against his tongue that teased and ravished me until I thought I was delirious. His mouth closed down around me, and it came. The release. The unsuspecting orgasm crashed through me, and I yelled something resembling a death-cry. I was never happier to be alive than at that moment with Joel lapping between my legs.

I watched him beyond my pelvis and when my orgasm subsided and I, once again, found the breath that had escaped me, he rose his head just enough and winked at me. The arrogant bastard knew what he did to me. What he did to all women, I presumed. I couldn’t act indignant. I needed him, and despite his cocky attitude, he needed me, too.

“I would hate for you to waste all thirty minutes down there,” I said trying my best to hold the same amount of cockiness that he conjured so easily. I wasn’t sure it was a success, seeing as how breathy and desperate my voice sounded in a room that mirrored breathy and desperate.

When we entered the suite, I didn’t spend much time looking at the furnishings, but now with the first orgasm out of the way, I could see beyond the tunnel of seduction. This room was made for one-night stands, but then again maybe I was seeing through sex-colored glasses. Everywhere I looked seemed to have a smoky haze. The fabrics were too soft, the room too quiet—something about it made you want to whisper. This room was to travelers what Joel was to women: the ultimate seduction. And the combination of the two made me feel like a whole new woman.

Pulling him up by his arms, with a superhuman strength I didn’t know I possessed, I urged him to crawl up my body until his knees cradled my neck. His long, gorgeous shaft was poised at my lips. A bead of pre-come already leaking from the tip. I licked the tip of him, relishing the way his body quivered in response, before I swallowed him whole. I surprised myself by this feat—that I could take him down with ease. For once, my body and mind seemed to have one goal in mind.

He tasted just as I’d remembered—slightly bitter, a little tangy, and 100% male—like a decadent piece of chocolate from a specialty shop in a foreign city you can’t pronounce. It was truly one of a kind. Joel held the headboard and eased in and out of my mouth, all the while groaning and writhing like he couldn’t get enough.

I knew the feeling.

Just watching him restored the blaze that swept through my veins at the mere sight of him.

“No,” he shouted, escaping my mouth with a resounding pop of my lips. “I have to come in that snug cunt of yours. The next time you orgasm I want that pussy clutching me for all it’s worth.”

He rolled off of me, and before I could make out the large appendage that seemed to cast its own shadow in the filtered light, he was pulling me astride him—my back to his chest. I watched as he broke the foil wrapper open, sheathing his erection with a condom. Two bruising hands clasped my hips. I rested my palms on his thick thighs, admiring the raised veins like tree roots breaking soil. The hairs of his chest tickled that sensitive spot bridging my shoulder blades. His lips were at my ear, each breath warm and heavy against the shell of my ear.

“God you’re better than I remembered. How can you give this up? Give us up? Fuck, Blaire. You know what? It doesn’t matter because right now I own you. And I’m going to spend the next thirty minutes proving it to you.”

I wasn’t sure we were still talking about what was happening in that very moment, in that hotel, in that room. Was he talking about owning my body, or did he want something more? It didn’t matter; I put it all aside and did precisely as he asked, no commanded.

I rode him, hard and fast, without pause, without letting up. Joel’s chest was pressed against my back so close I felt his heart compete with the drumming of mine. He pinched my nipple and flicked my clit, and I climaxed, screaming his name until my voice was hoarse. He grew thicker and fit tighter inside my body, and when he erupted, I felt my body instinctually pull him in deeper, holding him into the recesses of me. With every jet that shot into me, his hands found new places to touch, to hold, while he rocked himself until we both sank back into the mountain of disarrayed pillows, spent.

Did I say anything to him before I left? I wasn’t sure. I answered Kerri’s questioning look, telling her I went inside to get a drink so I wouldn’t have to wait in the heat. All the while I lied, I brushed my hair and fidgeted with my sarong placement. It wasn’t an outright lie. I did go inside.

Chapter Six

After a day from hell, all I wanted to do was return home and find solace in a bottle of wine and some mindless TV. Anything to help me forget about the worst parts of my job and, more specifically, the assholes I worked with. Well one asshole in particular, but who’s counting? Kerri warned me that morning that Fitz came in with a chip on his shoulder, but as it turned out, it was more like a boulder. Sarah said Henderson had been riding Fitz’s ass especially hard over the Lara Farrows case. The only gratification I got from the whole situation was the fact that at least Lara seemed to be a problem in everyone’s life and not just mine.