One Night Standards(13)

“I need you,” he said, his voice grating with desire. “I need to be inside you.”

“Yes,” she moaned.

He got a condom, his own hands shaking with his need, finally putting the thing on and reaching for her. He didn’t mean to rush, but she was already slick with her own wetness, and he felt her muscles tighten around his cock as he buried himself in her. “Oh, Sophie,” he muttered harshly.

“Yes,” she said, wrapping her legs against his waist. “Deeper. Please, deeper.”

She felt like heaven…or the best sin in hell. He was mindless with it, the pure pleasure of it. He didn’t want to rush, wanting to savor the feeling for as long as he could. He withdrew slowly, his moan of pleasure mixing with hers as she twisted her hips sinuously and her legs pulled him back, drawing him inexorably deeper. She clawed at him, clutched at him, until he could no longer be slow, couldn’t hold back. He pushed deeper into her, his tempo increasing until they almost seemed like one person, the definitions of themselves blurred out of focus by the sheer heat of desire.

“Mark!” she screamed, and he could feel her body contract around his, milking him, shocking him. His body responded by bucking against her, wanting to bury himself in her as completely as possible.

“Yes,” he shouted back, his release slamming through him. He clutched at her hips, pumping into her with breathless abandon.

She clung to him throughout, and her responding “Oh, oh, oh…” echoed the second wave of her orgasm.

When it was finally over, he collapsed on top of her, mindful enough to be sure he didn’t crush her. He couldn’t believe it—how it felt, the whole experience. He didn’t have the words, and for him, that was shocking in and of itself. So he pressed gentle kisses against her shoulders, nuzzling her, wishing that he had something better to do, to say, to describe how he was feeling.

“Mark?” she whispered.

He pulled himself away enough to look at her. Her eyes were luminous, her face placid. “You okay?” he whispered back, pushing a stray curl out of her face.

She smiled back, full of invitation and happiness and desire, shocking him. His body, which he felt had surely shorted out after such an intense experience, started the first stirrings of desire. So soon?

“This,” she murmured, kissing him as if to punctuate her point, “is why I said yes.”

He nodded. “And that’s why I wanted you to,” he responded.

“Mark…in case we never do this again,” she said, and the very words caused a pang in his chest, “we’d better make tonight worth it.”

He rolled off her, but refused to release her, stroking at her sweat-moistened skin with his fingers.

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, and then proceeded to do exactly that.





4




“YOU’D BETTER LET ME DO ALL the talking,” Carol reminded Mark for the fortieth time.

Mark sat in a large conference room at a hotel in Vegas, getting ready for the first big Marion presentation. Carol, when not reminding him that she was the one in charge of the presentation or letting him know “how particularly important this meeting is,” was muttering over her slides, practicing as if she were some kind of Shakespearean actress. Despite his best efforts, she’d managed to veto most of his suggestions and had what was possibly the world’s most boring presentation. She’d only made the barest of mentions as to what sort of products they’d be designing for Marion & Co., focusing more on showing Marion & Co. that Trimera traditionally sold well for them.

Which wasn’t the point at all.

She was allowing him there to keep her promise to Roger and Simone, which irritated the hell out of him. Still, he’d prepared as diligently as he could. He’d even developed a short bullet-point presentation of his own in case he somehow got the opportunity to speak. Say, if someone decided to drop a house on Carol.

He grinned. It was unkind to think, but after all her dismissive remarks, he didn’t really care too much.

Carol and he were early at arrive to the conference room. The huge cosmetics convention was being held at the Monte Carlo, a posh hotel on the strip in Las Vegas. The room was elegantly appointed, and they were still setting up. He saw Mrs. Marion’s assistant—Lily, if he recalled correctly—placing easels on either side of the room, one labeled Trimera and the other labeled Diva Nation.

Stupidly, his pulse picked up.

Maybe it’s just as well I’m not speaking today.

He had promised Sophie that their last encounter would not affect the competition between their two businesses whatsoever. He was intent on keeping that promise. What he hadn’t known then was how much he’d be thinking of her when they weren’t together…. And how distracting thinking of her could be. The slightest thing would set him off into a fugue of fantasy. The midnight-blue shade of one of their skin-care boxes reminded him of her lingerie. The slight waft of sandalwood and rose from a candle in a store left him reeling with the memory of the scent of her hair. He’d itched to call her, even though he’d promised that they would have no more contact until after the competition was over. He’d only been thinking to comfort and reassure her.

He’d had no idea what sort of impact their night together would have on him.

“Can I get you two anything?” Lily, Mrs. Marion’s second in command, asked both him and Carol, interrupting his thoughts. “We’re bringing in refreshments, but if you want water or a soda or anything, I’ll be happy to get them. Oh, and will you be needing help with your laptop, hooking it up to the projector?”

“No,” Carol said irritably, and to Mark’s chagrin, she actually waved Lily away with her hand in a dismissive motion. He noticed Lily’s eyes narrow for a second before pasting her smile back in place.

“Thanks, Lily,” he said quickly, but she was already gone.

“You’re going to have to watch it,” Mark cautioned Carol, causing her to shoot him a look of annoyance. “Lily Hunter isn’t some nobody secretary you can dismiss. She’s important.” In fact, that small sign of disrespect might cost them dearly. He’d need to make it up to Lily later, he reminded himself.

Carol shrugged, completely unapologetic. “I’m trying to concentrate….”

“They won’t care,” Mark said bluntly. “All the stuff about how well our products have sold in their stores? They’re not going to give a damn, so don’t sweat those numbers. We’ve got bigger issues here.”

Carol frowned at him. “You may be director of sales, but I’ve been in marketing and growth for twice as long as you’ve been with the company,” she said, and he knew what Lily must feel like. Carol was an equal-opportunity insulter. “I think I know what I’m doing.”

“I know Marion & Co.,” he countered. “This is relationship selling at its toughest. You can’t just—”

“I’ve got it handled, Mark,” she said, and then turned back to her laptop.

Mark squinted. At least she’d momentarily distracted him from thoughts of Sophie—but he was starting to get a sinking feeling of despair, and while it was different from mind-bending infatuation or soul-grinding lust, it wasn’t a great replacement. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he said grimly.

She glared at him.

“Is this where the…oh, of course, it must be. Okay, Sophie, here’s the room.”

On hearing Sophie’s name, Mark’s head snapped toward the doorway, every nerve standing at attention. He forced himself to breathe deeply, trying to make sure his unruly body stayed in line. He stood when three women entered the room—Sophie trailing behind with her laptop case. With her hair pulled back in a loose braid, wearing a slate-blue dress suit, she looked downright edible.

He felt his heart rate—and other things—start to rise, and quickly shifted his attention elsewhere before things got embarrassing.

He forced himself to examine the other two. One was a younger woman, slightly taller than Sophie, with the same gently curling hair, only a dark honey-blond instead of the toffee-brown he was used to. Her face was less intense, as well…softer. That would have to be the sister. The third woman was obviously Sophie’s mother Olivia, the chemist and product developer. She was intense, like Sophie, and obviously older, her hair cut short, almost the same blond shade as the sister’s. She looked immaculately made up, but her face and her body language communicated tension, almost to the point of brittleness. She kept whispering sharply to Sophie, who kept whispering back in reassuring tones.

Sophie didn’t look his way, he noticed as the Diva Nation party settled into their side of the conference table. She seemed more intent on setting up her laptop than checking out her competition. He should probably do the same, he thought, but like a moth to a candle, he couldn’t seem to pull away.

Mrs. Marion came in, looking like a queen, or at the very least a duchess. She was wearing a St. John knit suit—Mark could remember the models who’d worn that sort of thing, from when he worked the runway. It was impossible not to look regal when wearing one, and she was going for very classy intimidation.