Smart girl, Mitchell had said, as if that were true.
Was Arielle smart, though? No one had touched her since the last time she’d slept with her ex, an afternoon that still sliced pain across her heart.
Mitchell Saltonstall’s fingers were in her hair as he tilted her head back to press his mouth to her jaw and neck, and his knee between her legs was a demand for vulnerability, something she thought she’d left behind. And he began to awaken that part of herself Arielle had thought was gone.
When he stroked her temple with his thumb, her skin tingled under his touch.
The heat from his body radiated through his suit and her sundress, feathering over her. Her heart drummed. Air rushed in her lungs.
Arielle kissed Mitchell back.
She’d only been dormant, hiding, not gone.
Now that he had her lying down, his kiss was rougher, almost brutal, as he braced himself on his elbows and his tongue tangled with hers. One of his hands toyed with the hair on the top of her head as if deciding whether to stroke her or grab it and pull her head back.
Arielle twined her arms around Mitchell’s neck, resting them on his broad shoulders.
He shifted backward and slipped from her arms. Panic popped through her, but Mitchell slid his leg off the edge of the bed to shed his suit jacket, letting it drop to the floor. He unbuttoned his shirt halfway before grabbing the fabric and white tee shirt he wore underneath, dragging them over his head and releasing them to fall to the floor, too.
Arielle blinked. The moment he dropped his shirt and looked back to her froze in her mind.
His muscular chest and shoulders were tanned golden with a darker vee at his throat, though his left hand was a little lighter from the single glove most golfers wore. In the light streaming from the lamp beside the bed, his rugged physique cast shadows between his rounded pectorals and the cobblestones of his abdominal muscles.
And yeah, hard cords of muscles slanted down from Mitchell’s waist, framing the hard lumps of his abs that stretched when he breathed and disappeared under the waistband of his suit trousers.
She’d never seen anyone resembling such a perfect male up close before. He was impressive.
Arielle stretched her arms to him, reaching to run her fingers over his split and stacked abs, but Mitchell dodged to the side.
With a flick of his hand, Mitchell flipped Arielle over on the bed and yanked the zipper of her sundress down her back. The dress loosened around her torso.
A whisper alighted on her spine, and then the warmth of his breath floated over her neck before his lips touched her skin.
Arielle lifted her head and shoulders, her fingers clawing the white duvet as she raised herself up. Mitchell’s arm was a strong column pressing into the mattress beside her, and he flipped her hair around his hand, holding her thick tresses and tilting her head forward as his mouth caressed the back of her neck.
Excitement shivered under her skin. Wow, they were only three minutes into this, and already he was doing things to Arielle that she’d never done before, not ever.
The wet warmth of his mouth traced her spine to the small of her back. The feel of his mouth on her skin was absolutely delicious.
A wisp of air entered her mouth as she gasped just the slightest bit.
Mitchell dropped her hair and slid his other arm underneath her stomach, lifting her hips off the bed. He opened his mouth over her lower back, sucking and tonguing as his hot breath feathered her skin.
Arielle’s gasp rasped in her throat as the sensations traveled through her. Every caress of his mouth applied suction to the skin on her back, yet lines of pleasure threaded to her fingertips and toes. She arched against his mouth.
Again with just a slide of his hands around her waist, Arielle found herself lying on her back. Mitchell grabbed the neckline of her sundress and dragged the light cotton down over her arms to her waist.
Maybe it had been an accident that Arielle had worn a brand-new matching bra and panties set in pink lace, or maybe it was prophecy.
Mitchell’s gaze raked over her body, and one side of his lower lip caught in his teeth as he raised his gaze to look into hers again. Excitement sparkled in the green of his eyes, and anticipation, and heat.
He dipped, kissing her lower stomach, and then proceeded upward on her tummy. He breathed over the lace of her bra first, the warmth and humidity of his breath penetrating the fabric and immediately being not enough as she yearned for more. When she arched against his mouth, he flipped the lace aside with his finger and held her breast as he mouthed the exquisitely sensitive peak of her nipple.
Every moment was a blur after that, each stroke of his hands on her skin leading to his mouth caressing her, and then he lifted her like a kitten and arranged her so he could touch her in another way.
A quick flip of his hands, and she was standing on her knees. One of his arms cinched her waist as the other delicately caressed her throat, insinuating just the slightest pressure over her pulse. His teeth raked the back of her neck and shoulder.
And then he pushed her forward with a shove between her shoulder blades, and she caught herself on her hands and knees. He mouthed down her back again, scraping the skin of her lower back with his teeth as his huge hands clenched around her hips and pressed her lace-covered ass against his trousers, where the thick bulge pressed the cleft between her butt cheeks.
And then a touch of his hands again and she landed on her back, and Mitchell was already crawling up to kiss her, hands in her hair and his body heavy on hers, the bare skin of his chest sliding over where she was naked from the waist up, skin to skin, mouth to mouth, body against body.
The intimacy of it astounded her, her body so vulnerable, and her head spun as Mitchell explored her tongue with his.
This was unlike anything she’d felt before.
Mitchell slid backward, his mouth leaving hers and then tracing down the center of her body, his fingers snagging the sides of her panties as he traveled.
And then he was kissing still lower, touching her skin revealed by her panties, sliding down her thighs, and then dropping to the floor.
His mouth was gentle at first, brushing her with his lips and breath, and then he pressed against her, the flat of his tongue dragging over her skin with firm strokes, and then he explored within with every bit of his tongue and sucked on her clit until Arielle reached behind her head with her hands, holding onto the bed as her back arched and she pressed against him.
The jangle of his belt buckle jarred the air that rolled through the room with their breathing. A quick moment as the slick rip of plastic and patter of hand slapping flesh, and then Mitchell was above her, his mouth hovering over hers, his body poised above her flesh, his bare legs peppered with coarse male hair tangling with her legs, warmth flowing off his skin and brushing her.
“Tell me you want me.”
“Yes!”
He slid his hand between their bodies and touched her between her legs, massaging pleasure through her body. “I said, say you want me.”
“I do,” she said, gasping the words. “I want you.”
“Good girl.”
He began pressing inside of her, filling her. Arielle arched under him, and he slowed, rocking back and forth gently as he eased his way in.
And then he stopped, kissing her with his arms braced around her head as her body slowly unclenched.
That was it. That was the difference. Mitchell’s focus on her was intense. His eyes caught every flicker, from the slightest wince when he went too hard to the stretch in her neck and back when something felt great. Within moments, his rhythm became slow and deep, a sensation that wound her up like a spring.
He moved again inside her, grinding slowly at the end of each stroke, a delicious friction. She was sighing, rocking with him, and then he pulled back and out, flipped her over, pulled her ass in the air, and rocked into her that way.
Oh, wow, that was wonderful, too, a harsher friction inside her channel as he guided her over him.
He’d always had an energy about him, bounding up stairs or onto daises to talk to reporters, laughing and talking with a crowd all day without drooping.
And yet now, that energy became frenetic, and he focused on her.
Just as she was pushing back, her body beginning to tighten, his arm hauled her around and over and sat her down on his cock while he lay on his back, a wolfish grin on his lips and dazed eyes.
“Holy cow, leave something for next time,” she panted, rolling herself on him.
His grin widened. “Don’t concern yourself in the slightest. I’ve got many more ideas for next time.”
Arielle grabbed his shoulders and pushed herself back, taking him inside her with a long rub that sent her reeling. His hips rocked up into her, his eyebrows furrowed as he pressed her onto him, over him, until the pulses he drove into her body became an unbearable tension that broke through her in waves. Her head spun, her body became diaphanous, and reality floated around her.
She was lying limp as a wet towel on him when the world swam back into view, and he reached between them when she rolled off him.
Mitchell got rid of the condom in a trash can beside the bed and laid down beside her, pulling her into his arms. “You had done that before, right?”
Arielle was still holding onto the bed lest she fly off. “Yeah. Sort of.”
Mitchell craned his neck to look at her. “Sort of?”
Words, she needed words, but her brain was fuzzy from the friction and orgasm. “You know, if you’ve lived your whole life eating Big Macs, nothing but Big Macs, and then one day, somebody puts something like that simply incredible chateaubriand from the restaurant at the Four Seasons in Chicago in front of you, something that is succulent and amazing and lights up your taste buds and your brain in ways you never imagined? Yeah, you’ve eaten beef before, but you’ve never eaten beef like that.”
He chuckled and pulled the covers over her. “I’ll make sure there are two rooms for us next week.”
Even in her torpid state, Arielle wanted to argue about that. “Yeah, well, but we really got to know each other by having only one hotel room this weekend. It’s kind of like practicing, you know, to make sure we don’t slip up in front of the reporters.”
“Are you saying I should book only one room for next weekend? Because I think that’s a smashing idea.”
“Well, you know, because the reporters might dig into the hotel records, and it would look weird if we were staying in different rooms when we’re supposed to have this hot-and-heavy relationship.”
“Excellent point.
“And in the contract, it says that we have to do ‘everything needed’ to act like a couple to avoid discovery.”
“Right again.”
“So, it seems to me like it would be a good idea, just from an optics perspective, really, to just reserve one room from now on.”
“With your agreement, I’ll book one suite with one bedroom and one bed for next week.”
Arielle nodded. “Yeah, that seems best.”