She wouldn’t know. This had been her first, Niall thought in rising disorientation.
He didn’t say anything as she scooted to the end of the bed, but she sensed his gaze on her back. She quickly readjusted her bra and found her panties. She didn’t stand and turn to face him until she’d pulled her dress back over her head. It struck her as surreal, how she’d been lying beneath him just minutes ago as he pried and pounded his essence seemingly into every cell of her being, and now they were apart, separate . . . once again what they truly were to each other.
Complete strangers.
A lump formed in her throat when her eyes lowered across his muscled, lean torso as he lay there in repose. His jeans were still shoved down around his thighs. Perhaps it had been wrong to say that he was in repose. His cock may not have been as iron-hard as it had been when he’d hammered it into her body a while ago, but it was still ample. It lay along his taut belly, still stretching the latex of the condom tightly . . . still glistening with moisture.
Her mouth went completely dry. Those were her juices coating the most shapely, beautiful cock she’d ever seen. The sight should have made panic rise in her.
But it didn’t. Desire swamped her instead, the magnitude of it shocking her.
She opened her mouth to speak, but there was nothing she could say that wouldn’t seem ridiculous under these circumstances.
Niall turned and left the room. She fumbled as she picked up her purse, dropping it clumsily in her haste to get out of there. She’d made it to within three feet of his front door when he called her name from directly behind her. She stopped dead in her tracks, afraid to turn around.
Afraid to face him.
She made a choking sound of longing in her throat when she felt his hands encircle her waist. He leaned down, brushing aside her hair with his lips and nose before he pressed a hot kiss against her neck.
Vic sprang off the bed, quickly disposing of the condom in the bathroom and jerking up his jeans before he followed Niall.
He cursed himself for not just letting her go. She was trouble. A woman as beautiful as she was, a woman who seemed formed for the express purpose of making a man hunger and want—how could such a woman not be selfish? How could she not drain a man of every last bit of himself, all of his energy, his creativity . . . his self-worth?
And once you were just the shell of the man that you had been, when you could no longer give her everything that she demanded of you . . . everything she needed? She’d go elsewhere to find it. It was only natural.
A woman like her was like a bright, blinding star that consumed as fuel everything—and everyone—in its path.
He should know. He’d learned that lesson firsthand from Jenny. It had taken him four years to recover. Only recently had he begun to truly be satisfied again with his life and his writing.
And what was he doing, but setting himself in the path of another woman so beautiful that it made him ache to look at her, unable to resist her steady, magnetic pull?
He reached, snagging her even as she stretched out a hand for the front doorknob.
He closed his eyes as Niall’s sweet, musky scent filled his nostrils. He spread his hands wide across her belly and hips as his lips brushed and rubbed against her silky skin. She was so small in comparison to the voluptuous women he usually favored. But Christ, hadn’t she cradled him like she’d been tailor-made for his cock?
He inhaled slowly. She smelled different from Jenny. She felt different. Niall obviously hadn’t been intimate with a man for a long, long time.
That was a significant difference from Jenny. Jenny couldn’t exist without a man in her bed . . . someone to constantly be holding up the figurative mirror that reflected her undeniable brilliance back to her, assuring her of its existence. Even though he’d built a career with words, Vic had failed miserably at providing her with what she needed. He couldn’t say it right for her, couldn’t say it fast enough. He couldn’t read Jenny’s enigmatic female mind and give her what she needed just when the desire occurred to her.
Yeah, Vic accepted that he was a complete and utter failure at understanding women . . . even the one that he’d wanted to comprehend most.
But no matter what Niall was or what Vic wasn’t, she deserved something more from him than what he’d given her just now.
Vic didn’t let himself think about why it was so important for him to prove to Niall Chandler that he could be soft as well as hard.
Niall tilted her neck to grant Vic more access to her skin. Her throat vibrated with pleasure as he kissed and nibbled with a potent mixture of patience and hunger. His hands moved over her belly, waist, and hips in a sensual caress.
She should stop this, shouldn’t she? How could adding to the foolishness of her actions make things any better?
“Vic? I’m not so sure this is a good idea.”
“I am,” he replied in a gravelly voice. He turned her in his arms. Her head fell back as she looked up at him. His eyes burned like flames in his otherwise stony countenance. He looked so hard and formidable that it took her lust-impaired brain a few seconds to interpret what he said next.
“You haven’t been with a man in a long time, have you?”
Her lower lip fell open in surprise. “I . . . Was it that ob—?”
She stopped abruptly. Her cheeks flooded with heat. She’d been about to ask him if it had been that obvious when she realized how stupid that would have sounded. Her body had been so stiff and resistive to his presence that he’d probably wondered if she was a virgin. Humiliation swamped her awareness. She noticed the way his eyes narrowed as he looked at her face, and she glanced away uncomfortably.