Page 71 of Our Chaotic Love Affair

Her laugh was low and throaty and so her. “For you to want me.”

My control snapped. I backed her against the railing with my mouth on hers. The ocean crashed behind her, but all I could focus on was how her thighs parted for me, how my shirt rode up to reveal she wore nothing underneath.

“Tell me,” I demanded, my hands sliding up her legs.

“I want you,” she whispered against my mouth. “All of you.”

I kissed her deeply, tasting the salt on her lips. She was fire in my hands, responding to every touch with a hunger that matched my own. When I pulled back, her pupils were dilated. She oozed sex. I had never seen a woman so perfectly made for it.

“Stop thinking so much,” she said, unbuttoning my shirt. “For once in your life, Cash Bancroft, just feel.”

I lifted her, wrapping her legs around my waist. Her body melded to mine, all soft and supple. I carried her inside and laid her on the bed. I pulled my shirt from her body and stared down at all her nude beauty.

“Exquisite,” I murmured, running my hands over every curve.

She arched into my touch. “Show me.”

I did. With my hands, my mouth, my body. She writhed beneath me, my name on her lips like a prayer. When I finally pushed inside her, the sensation was overwhelming. So tight and hot. She moved with me, against me, her nails digging into my back.

“Cash,” she moaned.

“Let go,” I told her. “I’ve got you.”

She shattered around me, her body clenching, pulling me deeper. I followed her over the edge, pleasure crashing through me in waves.

I woke with a start, momentarily disoriented. Rome, not the Hamptons. Reality, not a dream.

My cock was rock hard. The real me hadn’t gotten off and was in desperate need for release. I reached for her, fully intending to pull her close for a little morning delight.

My hand found cold sheets. I opened my eyes and rolled to the side. She was definitely gone.

Shit.

I sat up, scrubbing a hand over my jaw, and looked around the room. Sunlight was already bleeding through the dark curtains. I got up and pulled on a pair of boxers. I needed to find her. My morning wood was physically painful and no way was I going to handle things myself when there was a beautiful woman roaming about.

I walked through the suite, which looked like a hurricane had hit. Not a hurricane, a pretty little cyclone. But no Cleo.

The balcony doors were cracked open. Morning air drifted into the space. I knew where to find her.

She was sitting in one of the wrought iron chairs, bent over a journal, writing like she was racing against something. A coffee sat beside her. Steam curled up from it. Her purple streak caught the sun. She was wearing one of the hotel’s oversized robes. It kept slipping off one shoulder and she kept shoving it back up without looking, without stopping the pen.

I leaned against the doorframe and watched her.

I was aware that this was not something I did. I did not stand in doorways watching women. I did not wake up before seven in a foreign city and track someone down through my own hotel suite because I needed their physical touch. I was not that man. I had never been that man.

And yet. Here I was. In my boxers. With an extremely inconvenient problem I was doing nothing to conceal.

She looked up. Her eyes went wide immediately and it wasn’t because of the smile on my face. The pen went still. A beat of silence. Then the pink started climbing her cheeks. She snapped the journal shut like I’d caught her writing something incriminating.

Maybe she had been.

Her eyes drifted back to the bulge that had only gotten bigger since I spotted her.

“Like what you see?” I asked.

Her chin came up. “I’ve seen better.”

“Have you?”