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WHY WEREN’T THEY KISSING yet? Anda stood in front of the enormous stone fireplace that bisected the dining and living room area of the Dream Suite. Even in the summer, the nights got chilly at ten-thousand feet. The crackling fire felt good, and smelled even better. Bright and citrusy. Like they’d brought in the orange tree logs people burned in Southern California.
But she didn’t want to be warm.
She wanted to be hot. Burning. Melting.
Underneath Chance.
They’d spent all of dinner playing nice for the cameras. Touching at every excuse, as they reached for the bread, the salt, the butter, the water pitcher at the same time. But tangling fingers wasn’t anywhere as good as tangling limbs.
They’d talked about the food. Chance’s interesting /weird/borderline disgusting food experiences around the world on movie shoots. They’d talked about what this ski-in resort must be like in winter.
Anda had never skied because she’d spent every spare hour at her parents boutique growing up. Learning, soaking it all in. And once she was old enough to officially work there? Well, there was no such thing as a spare hour at that point.
The one thing they hadn’t talked about? The Dream Suite.
Until, exactly as she’d seen on so many previous seasons of this show, Chance pushed a heart-shaped red envelope across the table. Using the key inside of it was completely up to her. Which was the same language on the third NDA she’d signed that afternoon. It stipulated the producers did not pressure her into accepting the key. It also stipulated that the producers were in no way responsible for what happened if she did use it.
She’d kicked off her hot-pink stilettos. Handed them to Chance. “Try to keep up,” Anda murmured, before grabbing the key and bolting for the elevator.
Of course, he’d caught up with her. In another sultry, dreamy move he hoisted her over his good shoulder. Spent the whole elevator ride running his hands up and down her legs beneath the white maxi-dress she wore, while she pulled his shirt out of his pants. When the doors opened, there was another camera crew waiting to capture their big entrance into the Dream Suite.
And then? He’d set her on her feet next to the fireplace and disappeared into the bedroom.
Five whole minutes ago.
Was he having second thoughts?
No. No way. Not with Chance giving her the one and only Dream Suite invitation. Was he sick from dinner? With both the waiter and the camera crew cracking up, Anda and Chance had both eaten the Rocky Mountain Oysters. Really, she could eat anything if it was fried and dipped in ranch dressing.
At first ticked off but now worried, Anda padded to the bedroom door. Looked down at the spray of deep pink flowers printed across her skirt, and then crumpled it in her fist. No backing down. No more being careful, right?
She knocked once. “Chance? Are you okay?”
The door flew open. He held a black box, a little bigger than a cell phone, with green lights blinking on the display. Chance put a finger to his lips. Then he stalked past her straight to the fluffy white rug in front of the fireplace. The arm with the machinery was extended.
He waved it across the deep couch, the matching leather ottomans, and the round coffee table. Only after doing the same thing in the dining room and kitchen area did he turn to her with a big smile. “We’re clear.”
“Clear of what?”
“I swept the room for hidden recording devices. Cameras and sound.”
Anda heard the words, but had trouble processing that this was her life. Her boyfriend wielding spy equipment as deftly as a knight would a sword? “You...what?”
“I wasn’t going to take a chance with your privacy. Legally, the show can’t air us having sex. But Hollywood is full of people who’ll cash in on celebrities without worrying about little things like rules. Or morals.”
“You were protecting me.”
Chance nodded hard, making that rakish curl tumble down his forehead. “Damn straight.”
“That’s the sexiest and sweetest thing a man’s ever done for me.” Anda stepped up onto the fireplace ledge, and launched herself from there onto Chance. She wrapped her legs around his hips. Her arms around his neck. And her tongue around his.
His still-recovering leg bobbled under her onslaught, but only for a second. Then Chance swung her around in a slow circle while he kissed the living daylights out of her. His hands squeezed her ass. The rhythm of it had her pushing back and forth with each flex of his fingers.
Meanwhile, his mouth devoured hers. Anda lost track of when her tongue was in his mouth and vice versa. All she knew was that it was hot and wet and stroking with the faint smoke of their dessert whiskey. And with each stroke, goosebumps arose on a new part of her body. Arms. Neck. Calves. Thighs. Belly. Every inch of her skin felt inflamed and super-sensitive. As if a mere stray curl of smoke from the fireplace could trigger an orgasm.
She was so ready to be with Chance.
“Thank you for looking out for me. For us.”
“Of course. I...” Chance closed his eyes. Shook his head. Then he reopened those startlingly light green eyes and quirked a half smile. “I want to take care of you, Anda. I want to protect you and make sure you’re happy. Make you smile. Make you laugh.”
Oh. My. God. Good thing she wasn’t standing, because her legs would’ve gone out from under her at that declaration. This big man, with his brute strength that could turn a motorcycle in mid-air, was turning out to be so thoughtful and open. Even when he seemed to be surprising himself with it.
But Anda decided to save the reciprocity for later. If she told Chance how she felt now, they’d probably end up in a puddle of googly eyes and sweet nothings on the floor.
Definitely time for that later.
Right now, Anda wanted action.
With a throaty purr, she asked, “Is that all you want to do to me?”
“Not even close.” They were on the move now, as he carried her past the dining room table and its eight formal chairs. Chance kicked the bedroom door shut behind them. “I want to make you moan. Sigh. Squirm. Scream my name so loudly that the windows rattle.”
“That’s a good start.”
“And that’s only the start. We’ve got all night. Almost.”
Uh oh. Had she read him all wrong? Had the producers convinced him to line up another contestant for the second half of the night? With dread knotting her belly, Anda asked, “Why ‘almost?’”
“Because I don’t want the cameras to catch you leaving. They want some big, messy-haired Walk of Shame footage. I don’t want you to be portrayed like that. Nobody else is getting an invite to this Dream Suite. It’s special. Just for us. I won’t let them turn it into just a hookup. Not when I’ve found the woman of my dreams.”
Anda couldn’t believe it. Exactly the opposite of what she’d dreaded. This man was...well, unlike any other. Chance was yet again putting her first, making her well-being the priority over his extremely large paycheck. He was too good to believe. Almost.
Still, as romantic and heart-stopping as it was, she’d signed a contract. And didn’t doubt that the production company wouldn’t hesitate to threaten her, if not actually sue her. “Wouldn’t it be breaking the rules for me to sneak out before the cameramen return?”
“Technically, no.” Then he flashed that oversized grin that made Anda think his talents were wasted as a stunt double. Chance was more than handsome enough to be a leading man. “It isn’t written down anywhere in those thirty-seven pages of rules and NDAs. Will they be pissed? Yeah, but I can take the heat. You’re worth it.” He walked right past the oversized bed into a marbled bathroom.
The wall above the bathtub was all windows. In the moonlight, Anda could see the dark shadows of the peaks and the pine trees along the valley floor. Chance put her down. Pushed a panel in the wall that started filling the gigantic jacuzzi tub, and then another button that started the fireplace at one end of it.
“We’re taking a bubble bath?”
“A symbolic one, if that’s okay with you. Thought you could help me wash off the emotional residue of all those other women from the show.”
Anda tossed back her head and laughed. Then she laughed some more. The exact same thought had run through her mind more than once over the past six weeks.
It’d been okay, well, tolerable sharing Chance on the early group dates. But as the intimacy levels ratcheted higher with each solo date, she’d struggled with the realization that every inch of his skin that she touched, some other woman had been touching sometimes as little as an hour before.
“Oh, it’d be my distinct pleasure.” Anda snorted. Didn’t care at all if it was an unsexy sound. “We’ll probably need a couple of loofahs for that.”
Chuckling, Chance bent over the basket of bath products elaborate enough to be a raffle prize on the counter. “Do you want our bubbles to smell like pine, juniper, or mountain laurel?”
“I don’t care, as long as we smell the same and get in it soon.”
“Then get over here and let me start undressing you, Sweetness.” He tossed a handful of mineral salts into the tub, and glugged in half a container of oil. Bubbles immediately frothed up in big clouds.
Anda started unbuttoning his shirt. “I want to undress you.” She only made it two buttons down, exposing crisp black chest hair, before he grabbed her fingers.
“No. No touching until you’ve gone at me with that loofah. I’m barely hanging onto my control as it is.” Chance cocked his head to the side. “Unless you want me to bend you over this sink and take you right now.”
As if contemplating his racy suggestion—that did have plenty going for it, if it wasn’t their first time—Anda tilted her head to mirror his. “How many condoms do you have?”
“Dunno.” He pointed to the green-and-blue streaked blown glass bowl. “But that’s full to the brim with ’em.”
Yeah, subtlety was not an attribute of this reality show. “Good. How about we revisit your suggestion for round three or four?”
Chance tapped his temple. “I’ll add it to my agenda.”
Anda began to worry again. About his...comparative level of experience. Chance worked in actual Hollywood, not the outskirts of it like she did. Was he with a different aspiring starlet every night? Women who pulled out all the stops—and their entire bag of limber tricks—to convince him to get them onto set so they could be discovered?
How could she keep up with his amorphous past, complete with oodles of surgically enhanced breasts, veneered teeth and daily blowouts? She was just a woman who, until a few months ago, had spent all her time at work. All her free time thinking about work. There hadn’t been a window to work through the Kama Sutra with a stable of surfer studs.
“There’s an agenda? For sex with me?” What could be on it?
“Damn straight.” He traced the tip of his finger along the deep vee of her neckline. “I’ve been thinking about all the things I want to do with you, to you, since that first night.”
Oh. That smoothed out the flutters in her stomach. Except... “Chance, there were twenty-four other women—stunningly beautiful women—all introduced to you that night. Did you go to bed that night fantasizing about all of them?”
“Only you, Sweetness.” His eyes latched on to hers, and they glittered with an intensity and a burning desire that made Anda catch her breath. There was no doubting his sincerity. Or his passion. No way was he feeding her line. This unbelievable awesomeness was real. And apparently all hers.
Anda hoped all of her reciprocal feelings were showing in her eyes. “How about we make some dreams come true tonight? No, all of them?”
That roving finger of his followed the bias cut of her dress to where it narrowed into a thin tie. “What happens if I pull this? Because that’s the first fantasy I want to come true. I kept hoping all through dinner that one little yank would have this whole thing at your feet.”
“Try it and find out.”
***
CHANCE DIDN’T WASTE another second. He undid the bow, which left her dress gaping open. It only took a double shoulder shrug for her to make it slither to her feet.
Yeah, his fantasy hadn’t come close to the real thing. Anda was so damned beautiful.
His gaze rocketed down, up, and then back down her body. He followed the same route with his hands a moment later. Because he couldn’t resist touching her for another breath. Not when everything was on display, barely covered by a plunging white satin thong and a matching scrap of a bra.
The dark, deep pink of her nipples showed through the satin. As sexy as it was, the lingerie had to go. Chance pushed both cups below her breasts. Fastened his mouth around the small, perfect roundness and sucked and licked while his hands made quick work of undoing the clasps.
She...shimmered beneath his touch, undulating like water. Every place his fingers, his mouth moved, her skin warmed noticeably. Heated for him. Which was a relief, because Chance was already on fucking fire for her.
Her hands curved down, over his shoulders to stroke the length of his arms. As much as he wanted to drive himself into her? Chance could easily imagine being happy just being stroked by her like that for hours on end. Again, not an impulse he’d ever had before with anyone else. How crazy was it that this show had actually worked? Cuddling had never been on his agenda.
And it wasn’t now.
Now was all about immediacy and satisfaction before they both fucking imploded from need.
“You’re wearing too many clothes,” Anda said, with an adorable pout in her voice.
“My bad.” How was a man supposed to remember to strip with his lips plucking the sweetest nipple into a tight, puckered tip?
Chance backed off long enough to whip his loose cotton guayabera over his head. It was his good luck shirt, picked up in Puerto Rico after wrapping his first feature film there as a stuntman. Way more his style than the coat and tie the producers had tried to stuff him into. The way Anda was responding? The shirt had come through for him yet again.
“You’re magnificent, Chance.” Anda’s hands were all over his chest, raking through the hair, over his nipples, and then down his abs. It stiffened his dick so much that it took two tries to unzip his jeans and push them to his feet.
“It’s all yours, baby.” Chance reached out, palmed her heat just long enough to watch her eyes flutter shut as he pressed harder. Then he added his other hand to rip off her panties.
Her eyes flew open. “Wow. That’s a fantasy come true right there. Every bit as sexy as I’d imagined. Makes me feel like you’re strong enough to tear apart mountains with your bare hands.”
Chance could dead-lift four-hundred pounds. A thong wasn’t exactly a strength challenge. But he loved that Anda appreciated it. “No mountains. But I can do this.” He lifted her into his arms. It was only a few steps to the tub, now frothing and peaked with bubbles. Big enough that he could sit down with her still cradled to his chest.
“Mmm. I’ll bet you could hold me for sex against a wall.”
“I don’t do sucker bets.” He tossed her a mesh sponge ball. “Do your thing.”
Anda wriggled around, which pressed her tight, perfect ass against his dick. Talk about a fantasy come true. She mounded bubbles in her palms and swirled them over his chest, shoulders, arms. Then she twisted around to face the opposite end of the tub. It gave Chance a view of the nip in at her waist that swelled out into rounded hips that he planned to anchor his hands on later.
Then she went up on her knees. Bubbles dripped slowly down her spine. He groaned at the flat-out erotic sight. No way could he sit here without touching her. As Anda slowly dragged the blue sponge along his feet and up each calf, he palmed her ass. The wet heat pumping off her skin almost burned his palms.
He surged forward. Water sloshed as she fell forward onto her hands, lining up that pert roundness like a target. Chance bit and sucked his way across one cheek and then the other. Anda squealed at the first bite of his teeth. Then her back arched, her neck dropped, and a series of low, throaty moans echoed off the marble walls.
Bubbles sprayed onto the windows as she spun around. “You said no sex until you were clean. You’ve got to let me finish, Chance. Because I’ve got to have you inside me.”
“You’re all kinds of distracting, baby.”
“Like you said, we have almost all night. And then... maybe.... more later?”
The number one rule in his contract was to not promise anything to the women. Well, fuck that. Anda deserved to know that he was all in. She was taking a leap of faith to be this intimate with him. “Lots more. There will be lots of this in our future,” he promised.
She practically attacked him with the sponge after that. Wiping and swiping and scrubbing, while they both laughed. It felt so damned good, so right to laugh with her. Naked and laughing. Who knew it was such a powerful combination?
Then, suddenly, the laughter stopped. Because Anda was straddling him. His dick pulsed against her of its own accord. His hands grew frantic. There was no way to touch enough of her at once.
Chance twined his calves over her ankles, locking her in place against him. Legs, hips, belly, breasts—everything lined up. Most of all, her beautiful face. Those warm, hot cocoa eyes that melted him with every look from under her tilted, flirty lashes. That smile that seemed to brighten more for him than anyone else.
He kissed her. Long, slow, deep. It was like drowning in passion. Anda matched every swirl of his tongue, every press of his lips, every twist of his hips. While his hands raced up and down her back and sides, hers drove into his skull as if trying to push their kiss even deeper.
Then he was drowning. Lost in her kiss, Chance slipped under the water. Sputtering, they both scrambled up. “Time to get serious, baby.” They almost raced each other out of the tub. Chance looked through the doorway at the bed. Nah. They wouldn’t make it that far.
He grabbed a condom and knelt on the acres of fluffy rug in front of the tub. Anda knelt, too. But before she could lure him back into kisses, Chance licked his way from her neck down her sternum. Glancing up, he saw that her eyes were shut and a dreamy half-smile tilted up the corners of her lips. This all may have gone fast, but she was right here with him.
Her nimble fingers snatched the foil packet from him. “Let me.” She ripped it open with her teeth, and Chance sank back on his heels with a groan. Her fingertips fluttered, danced over his balls. Pleasure streaked through his body in sharp shocks. By the time Anda finished slowly rolling the rubber down to his root, Chance’s belly was quivering at holding back.
He scooped one hand behind her head, the other at the small of her back, and tumbled her flat onto the rug. “Are you ready?”
“Absolutely. I think I passed ‘ready’ when you untied my dress.”
Chance gritted his teeth to force himself to go slow. Just the tip at first, a nudge against her. But the warm wetness that teased at him proved he didn’t need to be so careful. He thrust deep, all the way. Her back bowed, her hips jerked, and a cry burst from her lips.
Again and again, Chance snapped his hips back and forth. Being inside Anda was a million times better than he’d hoped. And...that was the last rational thought he had. It was all just pleasure. Heat. Softness. Her.
His balls tightened. An orgasm was barreling down on him. From the tight gasps and moans, Anda was close, too. Then her nails dug into his back, hard. A high, thin scream pierced the air as she clenched around him.
Thank God. Chance drove harder, deeper, faster. He buried his face in her neck as he came. Drained, he still managed to roll them over so his weight wouldn’t crush her. Then they both lay there, pressed together in a panting, sweaty, satisfied heap.
With long, lazy strokes of his hand up and down her spine, Chance said, “That was pure heaven, Sweetness.”
“Agreed.” Anda licked her lips and shot him a smug, satisfied smile. “How soon can we do it again? I don’t think I could ever get enough of you.”
He felt exactly the same way. Being with Anda hadn’t scratched the itch of wanting her—it only intensified it. Hearing Anda say what he was thinking proved they were so right together.
Or so Chance thought.
Until the next day, after a long night of mind-blowing sex, when without any warning, Anda up and left the show.
Left him.