Page 33 of After-Party Consequences

‘Cade, what on earth...’ she cried, her fingers tugging against his hold as he took the stairs to the penthouse level. ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘To your suite,’ he said and tightened his grip.

His EA had given him a key card for her room, which he was supposed to pass to her once they were through at the event. That had been the plan, anyway, to escort her to the suite, then head to his place on Fifth and meet her at the airport tomorrow for their flight to San Francisco.

To hell with that.

They needed to establish some ground rules for the next month, or this arrangement was going to be unworkable. And ground rule number one was to stop pretending this was just about the bet. Because it was also about the sex.

The memory of her in his bed was still giving him hell—pheromones-wise—but worse was the memory of the morning after, when he’d woken up to find her note.

That he was still hung up about that note made it clear they had unfinished business. Business they could only finish by dealing with the sexual tension which had been building between them all night.

He pressed the key card against the door to the High Line Suite and marched inside. The darkness through the room’s glass walls glittered with the lights from the Jersey shore and the boats on the Hudson. The spectacular view didn’t register, though, as he swung around to press Charlotte against the wall and cup her flushed cheeks.

‘Tell me you don’t want this, too,’ he demanded, ‘and I’ll back off.’ But he’d be damned if he was going to avoid stating the obvious any longer.

She stared at him, her lips pursing into a tight line, but her beautiful eyes had dilated almost to black.

‘I suppose you think the caveman approach is a turn-on,’ she said, but beneath the sharp tone was the husky note he recognised.

‘Are you telling me it isn’t?’ he challenged her, brushing the ridge of his growing erection against her belly.

She didn’t push him away. Their showdown bristled with energy, but unlike the one in Lake Como, this time it was heady desire, not anger, which sizzled and sparked between them.

He kissed her neck, captured the pulse thundering in her collarbone, and began to feast on the sweet, sultry taste of her skin.

She swore, then let out a shuddering sigh. And grasped his head to draw him closer.

The last of his control snapped like a high-tension wire, his hands cupping her butt, finding firm, naked flesh beneath the dress.

Another thong, bless the Lord.

She relaxed into the kiss, lifting her leg to hook it around his hip, notching the erection in his pants against the tender spot between her thighs.

He rubbed her through their clothing, feeling the ripples of her response, revelling in the delicious musk of her arousal.

She gasped, her head thudding back against the wall, undulating her hips to locate the perfect contact, to demand more.

‘We need to be naked...’ she managed.

He lifted his head, his mind fraying, her bold request reflected in the shocked arousal in her gaze—which was as vivid and desperate as his own.

‘Yeah,’ he guttered out. But as he fumbled to find her zipper, frantic to feast on her again, she shifted back and batted his urgent hands away.

‘Let me. I don’t want you to rip it.’

He laughed, the indignation on her face releasing some of the tension in his gut.

But as she stripped off the floaty blue fabric and wriggled it past her hips, leaving her in nothing but her bra and thong, the tension cinched tight again.

He cradled one breast, brushed his thumb across the rouged tip visible through the lace.

Damn, had her breasts got fuller, or was that his overactive imagination? Because she looked magnificent. She’d always been beautiful, but her figure seemed lusher and even more mouth-watering than it had their first night.

She jolted against him, the soft sob enough to turbo-charge his own arousal.

He lifted her breast from its lacy prison and captured the stiff peak in his mouth. He suckled hard as her nipple hardened against his tongue. She thrust her fingers into his hair, her body shuddering violently, her response nothing short of electric.

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