“You are mine,” he said, so fierce, so primal in his claiming of her, she had already started to shudder uncontrollably.
And then he pushed all the way in, held her tightly to him, so she had all of him. So deeply. Far more deeply than merely a body joined to a body.
She shook hard as he moved his hand between their bodies. Stroked her slowly, up then down, with his finger. “Mine to take.” He stroked her, with his finger, with himself. Up. Down. In. Out.
She cried out as he ripped her along that fine edge, dancing, dancing. Then finally wrenching her completely over. She thrashed, she bucked, wildly, uncontrollably. She begged, she shouted, she screamed. And she came. Over. And over. It washed over her in deep, undulating waves, engulfed her, drowned her, in sensation after sensation.
Still shuddering, still shaken, still overwhelmed, she watched him lower himself over her. So hard, so thick, she’d never felt so filled by him. Aftershocks shook her with each long, slow stroke. The thundering beat of his heart belied the steady control he seemed to so easily possess.
He pressed more deeply into her as he laid his body over hers, pressed every inch of himself to her. He laid his legs on hers, he reached his hands up to cover hers, pressed his mouth next to her ear as he began to move, slowly, deeply. His body matching her position from fingertips to toes. “Mine to be taken by,” he finished.
Tears burned behind her eyes and she longed to hold him, to wrap her arms and legs around him. But he kept them that way as he continued to move, showing her, proving to her that he was as committed as she. “Thank you,” she whispered.
He shifted his head, looked down into her eyes. “For?”
She held his gaze. “Loving me.”
Emotion so deep she couldn’t put words to it exploded across his face. “I’m glad you realize that. Because I do. Profoundly. I just wanted—needed—to find a way to make you understand. What we have. What we can have.”
“I’m beginning to. I want to know more.”
He ripped the cords then, from the upper bedposts, twined his fingers through hers as he pulled her arms down. “You will. We will.” He kissed her, deeply, and with such emotion and honest need and affection she felt the tears trickle from the corners of her eyes as she kissed him back, pouring everything into it that she couldn’t find the words for, hoping it was enough. Wanting it to be enough. For him. For them.
“I do love you,” he whispered.
“Oh, Marsh.” She arched into him, gasping. Crying. Knowing he’d help her be enough, take her when she needed taking, give himself when she needed to have him. It was more than she could have ever hoped for. And she was determined to do whatever it took to keep it. To keep him.
“I love you, too,” she whispered back, voice thick with tears. Tears of unbelievable joy.
And then they were lost in each other. Moving, lifting, sliding. Bodies joined. Hands joined. Hearts entwined.
EPILOGUE
“I’VE GOT ONE WEEK to showtime and your trunks aren’t here.” Samantha tapped her pen against her keyboard as she listened. Her other hand drifted to her throat, as it often had over the past week. She fingered the small gold heart that now dangled from the velvet strip she still wore. Marsh had given her the heart that night. Not that she needed a tangible reminder of what had transpired, or their commitment, but she just enjoyed the feel of it there. It made her smile, knowing she’d be seeing Marsh at the end of each day. No matter if her day ended at midnight or three in the morning.
“Tomorrow?” She blew out a long sigh. “Fine, fine. I’ll be in touch.” She disconnected, then jammed the pen behind her ear and swiveled her chair so she could reach a stack of files. There was so much left to do and so very little time left to do it. “Marcy!” she called out. “Follow up on Matsuoki. Send shipping labels, hire a driver to get the damn trunk to the airport if you have to, whatever it takes. Just make sure it gets here.” She didn’t wait for an answer, she was already punching another blinking light on her phone pad. “Yes, Serena, I’m still here,” she said to one of her more skittish buyers. “Trust me, you’ll love Jamie’s new line.” Sam didn’t have to feign her sincerity or enthusiasm. She’d been in a meeting with him yesterday and gotten a firsthand look at the final lineup. It was going to blow everyone away. She grinned. “Bring your checkbook. You won’t be sorry.”
Sam disconnected, blew her hair off her forehead and debated on whether to tackle her mountainous message pile, or go track down Jamie and catch up on the five million details they still had to go over. Speaking of details, she’d had a call from Mia earlier that she’d never gotten around to returning. “Dammit,” she swore under her breath. “Marcy!” she shouted. “Get Mia on the cell, will ya? Page her, whatever.”
Her stomach was jumpy with both nerves and anticipation. She hadn’t eaten yet today, but she had managed to down a pot of coffee. Food, she needed food. But instead of picking up the phone to call down to the deli, she found herself fingering the heart again. And smiling. Normally she’d be in a frenzied, ulcer-inducing panic at this point. And she was, but only part of the time. All she had to do was think about a certain cowboy, and her nerves settled a bit. Well, the bad ones anyway.
She took a moment to take a deep breath, and thought about Marsh, how much he calmed her, how just knowing he was there for her helped to center her. It should scare her how much she looked forward to having him be the end of her day, how much she’d already come to need him, to step away from the insanity, even if it was just for a few minutes, and look outside herself, outside her work. And look into the face of what was really important.
She’d been afraid her new relationship with him would prevent her from focusing on what had to be done, not just during this intensely important time in the growth of her company, but during all that would come afterward, too. Instead, it had given her the exact opposite. A place to escape to every night, where she could get completely away, indulge herself in something besides work. Indulge herself in the man she loved, in her own needs, needs that had nothing to do with her career. It felt so satisfying, decadent even.
Even if it was only a quick dinner and holding hands while they talked over the day. Her smile broadened just thinking about it. No matter the duration, she’d always returned to work refreshed and clearheaded. She only wondered now what it was she’d been so afraid of.
Life is more than just work, or being your lover.
“When the man is right, the man is right,” she murmured with a smile.
Just then, Marcy popped her head in her office door. “Hey, boss.”
“Did you get Mia?” Sam asked.
“Working on it. And the Matsuoki thing. In the meantime, delivery for you.”
“Whatever it is, just put it in the office down the hall with the rest of the trunks,” Sam said, flipping open the top folder. She still had to coordinate the different pieces she’d chosen into groups for the runway lineup. Then she had to match a model to each piece. Which would be a hell of a lot easier if all the trunks from each designer were already here. International shipping was her current worst nightmare.
“I think you’re going to want this delivery in here,” Marcy said.
Samantha barely remarked on the coy note in Marcy’s voice. She raked her hand through her hair and spared a quick glance at her assistant. Whatever command she’d been about to give died unspoken, however, as Marcy edged into the room with a flat white box, tied in a huge red bow.
With a mischievous smile and a wiggle of eyebrows, her assistant handed it across Sam’s desk. “Here you go, boss.”
Sam would have tossed back some wry comment, but her heart was suddenly pounding too hard. She took the box and started to rip it open, only remembering at the last second she wasn’t alone. She looked at Marcy. “Is there anything else?”
Marcy’s shoulders fell. “I slave away my life for you—”
“For which you’ll be amply rewarded,” Samantha reminded her, lips curving in a knowin
g smile. She’d already decided to personally groom Marcy to take on more responsibility. Her assistant was young, hungry, and most importantly, she could handle it. And that would free Samantha up to spend less time at the office…and more time having a life. A life with Marsh.
“Sure, okay, don’t share,” Marcy teased.
Sam’s fingers itched to tear open the box. “Not this time.”
Marcy playfully stuck her tongue out, but dutifully backed out of the room.
The door hadn’t even clicked shut when Sam was tearing open the box. A card lay on top of the tissue paper. She opened it and laughed at herself for having such trembling hands. The note was short, in Marsh’s masculine slash.
Your turn.
Grinning, even as her pulse sped up, she peeled back the tissue paper. Nestled inside were four very familiar lengths of black satin rope.
“Think you might find a use for those?”
She jerked her head up. Marsh stood in the doorway. He was in jeans, Western boots and a denim work shirt that was a little worse for wear after spending the afternoon teaching inner-city kids what it felt like to climb on the back of a horse. Gathered in the hallway, Sam could see the entire office staff unabashedly ogling him. Marcy shot her two thumbs-ups from just behind Marsh’s shoulder, along with a wide grin.
Sam started to order Marsh to get inside and close the door before she had to explain him to everyone…then stopped herself. Oh yeah, she thought, I don’t have to explain anything, anymore. That warm spot that had sprung to life in her heart the moment she’d spied him in the doorway, expanded until she felt consumed by it.
She got up and walked to the door, very deliberately lifted up on her toes and kissed him soundly on the mouth. “Hey, cowboy.”
“Hey, yourself,” he said, then took her into his arms and pushed her back against the door and laid claim to her mouth.
Sam wasn’t one for public displays, but she’d fast come to realize that where Marsh was concerned, she was discovering she enjoyed all kinds of new things. Breathless when he finally let her go, she could only grin stupidly up into his handsome face.
With what little aplomb she could muster, she shifted her gaze to the now openly gawking group. “Everyone, Marsh. Marsh, everyone.” She glanced back at the man she loved, and her smile was slow and so very satisfied. “He’s all mine. Eat your heart out.”
With cheers, catcalls and hearty applause echoing off the walls, Marsh walked her back into her office.
“Marcy, hold my calls,” Sam managed to call out, just before Marsh kicked the door shut.
“I know you’re busy,” Marsh murmured against her neck.
“The world won’t end if I take a short break.” Samantha fumbled to lock it behind them, then laughed. “But I might be a little later getting home tonight.”
“I’ll send a limo,” Marsh told her.
“Be in the backseat, and you have a deal.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Ms. Wallace.”
Marsh dragged his hips against hers. “Speaking of hard…where are those ropes?”
A real partnership, Sam was fast discovering, was indeed a wonderful thing.
BARING IT ALL
Jill Shalvis
CHAPTER ONE
NORMALLY MIA TENNARIO felt cool as rain, poised under pressure and endlessly calm, but today she was a Tums-popping, head-spinning maniac who was about to chew some serious ass. “What do you mean, you quit?” she asked Todd O’Ryan, aka contractor from hell. “You can’t quit.”
“Watch me.” On the stage of the outdoor Greek Theater, with the July Los Angeles sunshine beating down on them, Todd bent over to pick up his tool belt, showing Mia far more than a two-hundred-pound, five-foot-five, hot and sweaty man should show.
She scrunched her eyes shut but it was too late, the image of his work pants sliding southward, past the Continental Divide, had imprinted on her brain.
Straightening, he glared at her. “Look, you’re asking for a miracle, all right? And your secretary is a raving lunatic. She said I had two weeks.”
“One.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Good luck on that.”
In Mia’s pocket, her cell began to vibrate, probably the “raving lunatic” assistant herself, Jane Jennings. They were both crazed. Glancing down at the cell, she groaned. Thirty-six missed calls, a new record. And her must-do list was so long she threatened national forests every time she printed it off her Palm Pilot. This latest glitch in her day wasn’t a bigger problem than any of the rest but it was the last straw. “You signed a contract,” she said in the most tranquil voice she could muster. Catch the bee with honey, she reminded herself, and added the friendliest smile she could muster as she tapped the rolled set of blueprints tucked beneath her arm. “The plans are done. They’re right here. Certainly if you added a few men—”
“No.” Todd gestured around him on the stage he had yet to begin to transform. His crew of exactly one young kid stood around looking about as useful as Todd’s own belt. “Nobody’s going to be able to pull this stuff off for you,” he said. “Not the catwalk or the archway on the stage—”
“Ancient wonder.”
“Huh?”
“It’s a replica of one of the seven ancient wonders, not just an archway.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. No one’s going to be able to do it in the time you have.”
She understood it was complicated. There were mountains of wood and metal scaffolding already scattered across the wooden floor of the stage, ready to go. The plans in her hands would transform those materials and the stage into an exotic, sophisticated, ancient wonder for her company’s live global satellite lingerie fashion show one week from today. They’d put everything into this show, calling it Sizzling Nights for the hot and wild designs they’d be showcasing, and it needed to go off without a hitch.
But at the moment it all looked grim.
“You’re going to have to delay your panty show,” Todd said, shaking his head. “You know it and I know it.”
“It’s not a panty—” Argh! She was wasting her breath with this idiot. Unfortunately, she understood men like him all too well—her mother had been fond of just such jackasses, and as a result, she knew how to deal with them, which was to grab them by the proverbial balls and squeeze. “Let me repeat. You signed a contract.”
“Yeah, well, you and your panty people can sue me. I’m outta here.”
Panty people. What he so eloquently referred to was Velvet, Leather & Lace, the lingerie catalog company she ran with her two partners, Jamie and Samantha. Mia was a graphic designer by trade; as a partner, her job was to design the cutting-edge layout of the catalog itself and, more currently, the set of the upcoming fashion show. She loved her job, every important and critical aspect of it, since for the first time in her life she felt indispensable.
It’d been a long haul. Still reeling from the tough two years they’d all put into VLL, they were shocked and thrilled by the designer roster they’d attracted for the show, a virtual who’s who of designers from all over the globe. Thanks to celebrity endorsements and the fact that they catered to “real size” women, there was a huge buzz around them at the moment, but as the latest “it” company, one who’d suddenly taken off like a twin-engine jet, they were now trying to capitalize on their moment in the spotlight.
It all centered around this fashion show. In seven short days, the simple but beautifully stark stage needed to be transformed into a showcase fit for fashion royalty from all over the world. They’d go live, featuring the latest and greatest, and potentially boost VLL beyond the thing of the moment and into a full-fledged booming success.
Just the thought made Mia’s head spin. And now Todd was packing up his tools, whistling toward the kid, who’d stopped even pretending to look busy.
“No,” she said. “No, no, no. Don’t go. We can work this out—”
“The only way we’re going to work this out is if you delay the show and give me more time, or
cut back on the details you’ve added, or—” he let out an obnoxious smirk “—add in a hefty bonus so that I can entice my crew to work nights.”
Mia put her hands on her hips, another long-ago learned trick that always seemed to give her five-foot-three frame the necessary authority required to demand respect. “You can’t ask for a bonus after you’ve agreed to the job.”
Unimpressed, Todd shrugged and gestured toward the kid, who followed him stage left. Damn it. “How much of a bonus?” she called out to him.
Todd turned and gave her a lecherous once-over. “What are you offering?”
Eeew. Her stomach twisted. “Get out.”
He did, leaving her completely alone on the vast stage. With a heavy heart, she sat on the sun-warmed wooden floor, risking sunburn and freckles, surrounded by towering stacks of expensive materials, hugging her blueprints. Looking out, she faced the orchestra pit and the 5,700 empty seats, which would soon be filled with the fashion world.
Oh God. At least the theater was gorgeous, nestled as it was on a lush hill in the picturesque tree-enclosed setting of Griffith Park. No doubt she couldn’t have dreamed up a better setting. It was a historic venue, as well, where some of the biggest names in entertainment had been hosted over the years, and they’d been damned lucky to get it.
Still, she was screwed. Completely screwed. Pulling out her cell phone, she dialed the office to check in and make sure this was the only fire.
Jane answered after half a ring. That was the beauty of having an assistant even more anal than herself.
“Tell me it’s going good,” Jane said in lieu of a greeting.
Mia hesitated. She loved Jane but didn’t want to deal with the ensuing panic of informing her they no longer had a contractor. “It’s going.”
“Oh God.”
“Don’t panic.” Hopefully no one would. “Everything okay there?”
Velvet, Leather & Lace: A Man's Gotta DoCalling the ShotsBaring It All Page 18
