Hold on to the Nights

by Karen Foley

  “Say my name,” he demanded. Releasing one leg, he eased a finger into her, feeling her muscles contract around him. “Say it.”

  Lara made an incoherent sound of pleasure and her fingers knotted in his hair. Graeme withdrew his finger and waited. She glanced down at him and he could see distress warring with desire in her eyes.

  “Graeme!”

  The word was no more than a breathless exhale, but it was enough to satisfy him. Leaning over the edge of the bed, he snatched his pants from the floor and pulled his wallet from the back pocket, freeing a single condom from the billfold. Tearing it open between his teeth, he covered himself in one smooth movement, aware that Lara watched him from behind the glittering mask. Catching her once more beneath her knees, he surged over her.

  “That’s right,” he agreed, staring down at her. “I’m Graeme Hamilton. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

  His erection was poised at the entrance to her body, and his entire body ached with the need to bury himself inside her, yet he held back.

  Lara stared at him for a moment, and then pressed her thighs tighter against his body. “Yes,” she breathed. “I already knew that.”

  “Why are you here?” Graeme tensed in anticipation of her answer, not certain he was ready to hear whatever words came out of her delectable mouth, but needing her to say it just the same.

  “Because I’ve fantasized about you.” Her voice broke. “About this.”

  They were the last words Graeme had expected to hear, and they drove him over the edge of restraint. With a harsh sound of need, he captured Lara’s lips with his own as he surged forward in one powerful motion, burying himself deep inside her. She was hot and tight, and made a whimpering sound as he withdrew and then thrust himself into her again.

  “Damn,” he muttered against her lips, “you’re snug.”

  “You feel so good,” she gasped, and clutched his back, her fingers digging into his muscles and her hips matching his rhythm.

  Graeme gritted his teeth, not wanting to let go too soon. When Lara raised her legs and wrapped them around his hips, Graeme turned with her in his arms until he lay against the pillows and she straddled him.

  “Ride me,” he breathed, his hands on her hips. Behind the mask, he could see her confusion, and something in his chest shifted. Despite what she wanted him to believe, she was still innocent. “Just slide back and forth.”

  She shifted experimentally, and her lips parted on a surprised “Oh” of pleasure. Then, with one hand braced on his chest, she began to move back and forth, her thighs flexing with effort.

  “That’s it,” Graeme purred, and held himself ruthlessly still, watching as Lara strove for her own release.

  Beneath the bottom edge of the mask, she caught her lower lip between her small, white teeth. Her movements tormented him, drove him nearly wild with lust, but there was no way he’d hurry this. Each movement of her body caused her breasts to bounce invitingly.

  She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, and the collar and chain around her neck made him feel primal, possessive.

  Graeme slid his hands to her hips and kneaded her buttocks, savoring the resiliency of her firm flesh before smoothing his palms over the fragile framework of her ribs to her breasts. He filled his hands with her and rubbed his thumbs across her nipples until she moaned and covered his fingers with her own.

  He watched her face, wanting to pull the mask away so that he could see her expression, but she closed her eyes and concentrated on her pleasure. Graeme knew the precise instant when her climax washed over her. She shuddered and moaned, and her inner muscles contracted around him, squeezing him. Unable to hold back any longer, he grasped her hips to hold her still and with a harsh groan, came in a white-hot rush of pleasure.

  Lara’s breath came in hard pants, and her expression was one of sublime satisfaction. But when she opened her eyes and looked down at him, he saw something else there. Something soft and wanting, and it scared the hell out of him as much as it confused and infuriated him.

  Instead of pulling her down into his arms, he disentangled himself from her limbs and sat up, swinging his legs to the floor and leaning forward to scrub his hands over his face.

  “Don’t move,” he said grimly over his shoulder. “I’ll clean up, and then we need to talk.”

  Less than five minutes later, Graeme pulled on a pair of jeans and nothing else and watched as Lara pushed the duvet to the bottom of the bed and dragged the sheet up over her nude body. With the mask still covering her face and the gold collar encircling her throat, she looked exotic.

  Mysterious.

  Even now, when his body should be sated by the amazing sex they’d just shared, he wanted her again.

  Damn, he could use a stiff drink. Or a cigarette. But he’d given up both years ago, when his degenerate lifestyle had threatened to consume him.

  He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and blew out a hard breath. “Let’s talk.”

  Lara watched him from behind the mask. “Okay. But before we start talking, I just want you to know that I’ve never done anything like this before in my entire life.”

  “What? Had sex?” He gave a derisive snort. “I think we both know that’s not true.”

  His voice sounded cynical, even to his own ears. Lara’s eyes widened and Graeme could see the near panic in them. She was wondering if he’d guessed her identity.

  He knew he should put an end to their little game, but something inside him wanted to torment her, just a little. “I mean, it’s obvious you’re not a virgin,” he clarified. He should know, since five years ago she had been virginal, until he’d taken care of that.

  Beneath the edge of the mask, her lips curved into a smile. “You’re right, I’m not. But I meant that I haven’t done this before. Gone back to a hotel room with a guy that I—that I hardly know.”

  Well, at least that was the truth. She might have known him once, but he wasn’t that guy anymore. He’d changed in five years. If she had any illusions that he was still the same lovesick lad whom she could wrap around her finger, she had another surprise coming to her.

  “So, what?” he asked laconically. “You’re not into casual hook-ups?” He forced himself to sound careless; irreverent. Inwardly, his gut tightened just thinking about her with another guy.

  “No,” she replied. Behind the shadowed openings of the mask, her eyes shimmered. “At least, not before tonight.”

  “Well, that makes two of us then.”

  That, at least, was a partial truth. He hadn’t done anything like this while he’d been sober enough to remember, and he hadn’t had a drink in over three years.

  Lara laughed softly, but Graeme thought it had a bitter edge to it. “Oh, come on. You don’t have to say that on my account. After all, I know who you are. Women see you and make complete fools of themselves, even throwing their underwear at you. Nobody would blame you for taking what they offer.”

  Her words stung. Did she really believe he was so shallow as to screw a woman simply because she was attractive, or because she threw herself at him? Five years ago, he’d married Lara because he’d loved her and had been unwilling to sleep with her without the sanctity of marriage. He’d wanted her to know then that what they did together mattered to him. That he wouldn’t simply use her for sex, no matter how much he wanted her.

  And God knew he’d wanted her.

  She’d been sweetly shy, but where he was concerned, she’d worn her heart on her sleeve. Her total lack of artifice was just one of the things about her that he’d found so appealing. She hadn’t hidden the fact that she adored everything about him, and most of the time she’d looked at him as if he were her own personal hero. He could have had her at any time during that summer. She’d wanted him as much as he’d wanted her, but she’d been so innocent. So trusting. An incurable romantic who’d believed that eloping was the ultimate act of love. As tough as it had been, he’d wanted to wait until after they were legally mar
ried to make love to her.

  It had only been in the months after she’d left him, when he’d finally accepted that she wouldn’t be coming back, that he’d kicked aside his morals and tried to fill the aching void her absence had left by whatever method he could. Unable to control his black moods, his acting career had suffered. Even directors who knew him and worked with him in the past had refused to cast him in their productions. Embittered, he’d turned to alcohol and sex. Lots of alcohol and lots of meaningless sex that had done nothing to obliterate his memories of Lara and had left him feeling emptier than before.

  It was true that now, all he had to do was appear in public and women came on to him, making their interest in him blatantly obvious. Initially, when his fame was still fairly new, he’d taken advantage of what they offered, but it had been a long time since he’d slept with any of the women he’d met in Hollywood or through the entertainment industry. The experiences always left him feeling as if he’d sacrificed a vital body part. In fact, most of the women he escorted to premieres and parties bored him to tears. With few exceptions, they were superficial and only interested in what might be in it for them. The fact that Lara thought him shallow enough to screw any woman who looked his way irritated the hell out of him.

  “Is that what you think?” he demanded softly, bending toward her and bracing one hand on the headboard, aware his Scots brogue had thickened, a clear indication of his rising irritation. “That I’d fuck you simply because you begged for it? That all you have to do is throw your panties at me and I’ll start drooling? That I have no control over myself? Christ.”

  Graeme flung himself away from the bed with a snort of disgust, raking a hand over his hair. The worst part of it was that with Lara, he really did have no control over himself. He’d never had.

  Even now, he wanted her again.

  The fact that she was here dredged up emotions he’d thought he’d buried a long time ago. But the truth was, the fury and resentment he’d felt all those years ago, when Lara had chosen her family over him, were still very much alive. He’d just pushed the emotions aside and learned to ignore them.

  But seeing Lara again was like opening an old wound that had festered for years and now exposed, felt raw and aching. He’d spent the last few years convincing himself that he was over her. The fact that she’d reappeared in his life and practically begged him to have sex with her should have made him feel smug. Victorious.

  So why did he feel so miserable?

  6

  LARA WATCHED as Graeme turned away from her, distressed and puzzled by his reaction. The heat simmering through her body cooled a little beneath his contempt. But even as her apprehension grew, Lara couldn’t help but admire Graeme as he strode toward the opposite side of the room. He was wearing nothing but a pair of unbuttoned jeans, and the muscles beneath the smooth, tawny skin bunched and flexed with his movements.

  Lara couldn’t believe what she had just done; she’d just had off-the-charts amazing sex with Graeme Hamilton. Whatever romantic memories she’d carried of the two nights they’d once spent together had just been obliterated beneath the powerful impact of his lovemaking.Did she feel guilty for having slept with Graeme? Yes, but most of her guilt stemmed from the fact that she’d barely thought of Christopher while she’d been in Graeme’s arms. That in itself was disturbing, since the whole reason she’d come to Las Vegas was to secure a divorce from Graeme so that she could take her relationship with Christopher to the next level.

  What did that say about her as a person, if she could so easily betray somebody that she cared about? Another, more disturbing thought occurred to her; she knew without ever having slept with Christopher that sex with him would never be as good as it had just been with Graeme. But great sex wasn’t enough to build a life around. Besides, she and Graeme had nothing in common and his lifestyle wasn’t exactly suited to settling down.

  Lara was twenty-three, and while most women her age might think that was way too young to start thinking about marriage and kids, Lara desperately wanted a family.

  With her childhood spent shuffling between her mother in Chicago and her father in Washington—her father spending most of his time at work, her mother attending social events or plotting how she would ensnare her next husband—Lara had grown up lonely. Working with the children at the theatre had only reinforced her desire to settle down.

  Christopher might not inspire her to grand passion, but she admired and respected him. They shared common interests. He treated her well and wanted her happiness. He’d make a good father and he’d be a faithful husband.

  She would still ask Graeme to sign the divorce papers she’d brought with her. Then she would return to Chicago and pick up the pieces of her life, and she would never look back. But for tonight, at least, she’d get Graeme out of her system once and for all. She would gorge herself on him until she couldn’t think about him without feeling a little sick.

  She’d once done the same thing with toasted coconut marshmallows, eating six packages of them until she’d been so nauseous that she hadn’t been able to get of bed. She hadn’t had a craving for them since, and that had been fourteen years ago. Why should Graeme be any different? All she had to do was have sex with him until she felt too weak to move. When she finally reached the point where the sight of him made her feel boneless and queasy, then she’d know that she’d finally gotten him out of her system.

  Now she watched as Graeme paced the hotel room. He scrubbed a hand over his hair and she could feel the frustration that rolled from him in waves. She could have kicked herself. Why did she have to go and ruin everything with her stupid comment about how she never indulged in one-night stands? She groaned inwardly. Even though he didn’t know her identity, she’d wanted him to understand that casual sex that wasn’t something she did.

  Ever.

  And the sex she’d just had with Graeme Hamilton had been anything but casual. It had been heated, intense and completely satisfying. But as she watched him pace the room, a chill of unease slowly replaced the delicious aftershocks of their explosive encounter. Lara dragged the sheet tighter around her body.

  Clearly, her suggestion that he’d had his share of casual hookups had struck a nerve. But what was she supposed to think? That he’d been celibate since their ill-fated marriage? The very idea was ludicrous, and she didn’t believe it.

  He’d never denied the fact that he’d gone through a rough time in England before he’d been cast as the cocky bad-boy hero of Galaxy’s End. He just hadn’t revealed that his run of bad luck had coincided with the end of their whirlwind relationship. Stories still circulated the Internet about his lifestyle during those months—a lifestyle of drunken debauchery that had nearly gotten him killed on more than one occasion. Eventually, he’d pulled his life back together and had been cast in some small independent films before finding huge success in the role of Kip Corrigan.

  If he’d had affairs since that time, who was she to judge him? After all, he’d had no idea they were still married at the time, and probably wouldn’t have cared if he had known.

  She knew how betrayed he’d felt when he’d discovered she’d lied to him about her age. And not just her age, but her identity, too. When she’d met him, she’d wanted him to like her for herself and not because she was Brent Whitfield’s daughter. If she’d told him the truth—that she was seventeen years old and the daughter of the American Ambassador to England, he would have hightailed it in the opposite direction and she wouldn’t have blamed him.

  But she’d been certain, based on the fact that he was here with her now—without even knowing who she was—that he was no stranger to casual hookups. Dragging the sheet firmly around her, she slipped from the bed and crossed to where he stood with his back to her, and tentatively laid a hand against his bare skin. He flinched, but didn’t turn around.

  “I’m sorry,” she offered. “I didn’t mean to offend you. It’s just that…Well, what was I supposed to think?” She gave a small huff
of laughter. “I mean, here we are…complete strangers.”

  He turned around, his expression shuttered. “Not complete strangers.”

  Lara’s breath hitched. “What do you mean?”

  He took a step closer and closed his hands around her arms, his thumbs smoothing over her bare skin. “I mean that you already know who I am. So why don’t you take off the mask and let me see you? We’re only strangers as long as you hide yourself from me. And considering what we just shared…”

  Lara relaxed marginally and gave him what she hoped was a convincingly sultry smile. “I’m not hiding myself from you. I mean, aside from my face, there isn’t anything that you haven’t already seen.” Lara emphasized her words by loosening her grip on the sheet just enough to expose the upper curves of her breasts. “You already said I could keep the mask on, and…” She stopped, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Yes?” Graeme prompted, his expression taut.

  Unable to meet his eyes, Lara drew one finger down the center of his torso. “Well, I can think of so many things I’d rather do than talk. Just for tonight, let’s pretend we have a…connection, like Kip and Lily. Let’s pretend we’re not strangers.”

  She thought briefly of the titillating episode from Galaxy’s End, where Kip Corrigan, in an act of revenge, captured and enslaved Lily, the woman who had been his former jailer, aboard the prison ship. He’d shackled her to himself with a length of chain that ensured she’d have no privacy and no escape from his watchful eyes. But in the end, he’d been the one who’d suffered the most, when he realized that punishing his former guard was the last thing he wanted to do.

  The love scene that had resulted from that reluctant attraction had been scorching. Video clips of the scene had flooded the Internet. The sensual encounter had inspired Lara to write several erotic tales in which she was able to fulfill her own bondage fantasies. Of course, in her imagination it was always Graeme and herself in the starring roles. One of her favorites involved him coming after her and forcibly abducting her. He would bind her to a bed then torment her with his hands and mouth until she begged him for release. Just the thought of being bound to Graeme that way made her insides turn to mush.