She spread her hands in a gesture of surrender. “And you think that person is me?”
Elliott shrugged. “Stranger things have happened, Horatio.”
She’d learned more in a week at Elliott’s agency than she had in a year at Casterbridge and felt so much happier. As if she’d slipped into a groove always meant for her. If not for one thing, one tiny thing, she’d count herself lucky the evening she’d walked into her first fantasy convention.
Just that one thing.
The knock at the door surprised her but since it was barely 8:00 p.m., it was probably Mrs. Abramovich from downstairs, who loved baking but always made too many cakes or muffins or whatever the dish of the day turned out to be. Smiling, she crossed the living room to the door. At this rate, she’d grow too fat to care. Comfortable, Mrs. Abramovich called it, and she should know. A comfortable two hundred pounds at least, Mrs. Abramovich seemed to enjoy life. And baking. Just to make sure, Allie peered through the eyehole. And froze.
It wasn’t her neighbor. It wasn’t one of her girlfriends, who had, despite all her efforts to stay apart, rallied ’round after she’d got back and threatened to take her out to the latest club or restaurant.
Donovan Harvey stood outside the door.
She could pretend not to be in except he peered back at her. He’d seen her. He knew someone stood inside. She engaged the safety chain and opened the door. “Go away. I don’t want to see you.”
“Yes you do. Let me in.”
“Why? Do you want to shout at me at last?”
“No.” He smiled. Fuck, that smile killed her. She’d missed it so, so much.
“Okay.” She’d received her camera and laptop a couple of days ago, duly wiped of pictures. So it couldn’t be that. Besides, he didn’t carry anything. Only wore a black leather jacket, white T-shirt and jeans. And looked so fucking sexy she could eat him up, damn him.
She slammed the door and disengaged the chain before opening it again. Standing back, she let him in, careful not to let him touch her. He glanced around. “Are you going to ask me to sit down?”
“If you like. But you won’t be staying long.”
Before she could move, he stepped forward and brushed her chin with one finger. “The rose has thorns.”
She gasped, took in a breath of his aftershave and him. Couldn’t move. “Why did you come?”
“To ask for a bed for the night. The rest of the band doesn’t arrive until tomorrow, so I’m homeless tonight.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“It’s you or the Waldorf.”
She forced herself to turn away. “I’m glad you won’t be uncomfortable. You can get a cab from the street.”
His hands came around her from behind and he pulled her into his heat. His body was flush with hers, shoulders to toes, and she couldn’t avoid noticing how aroused he was. She wanted to lean her head back, to give herself completely to him, but she couldn’t. Mustn’t. “So what am I? Your booty call before the guys arrive with the roadies?”
“If you like.” His voice was low and seductive. “Do you want that?”
She caught her breath on a sob and immediately he spun her around to face him. “Another time. At least I hope so. Sweetheart, darling, I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“For what?” His change of mood bewildered her. She must be getting slow.
“For doubting you even for a minute. For believing that clumsy lie. I can only say I wasn’t in a rational state. I’d just told the band I was leaving and I needed you.”
Fear clutched her. All this for nothing? “You’ve left?”
His mouth flattened. “No. No, I can’t. I love it too much. More than the drawing, more than anything else. Almost anything else,” he amended. “Not more than you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I want to put that right. I want to get to know you. I don’t want what happened between us that day to happen again and for that we need to know each other properly.”
She couldn’t move. “What do you suggest?”
“Lots of hot sex?” He laughed. “Fuck, it feels so good to hold you again. I’ve missed you more than I should, more than it’s sane to.”
“Did the L.A. concerts go well?”
“Very nicely, thank you very much. We had to be escorted out of the building. They like us, they really like us.”
The quotation forced a laugh from her and there they were, back to the day before the breakup. How could that be possible? Tears oozed from her eyes, and just when she thought she was all cried out.
“Hey. Hey, no.” Bending his head, he kissed away the wetness, so softly and gently, it threatened to make her cry more. “Please. I never want to make you cry again.”
“Donovan.” She breathed his name, hardly any sound in it, just before his lips met hers.
The Waldorf was around five miles away, but it could have been on another continent, so impossibly far away it seemed now. Even the bed in the room next door lay too far away.
The kiss, at first gentle and consoling, morphed into something else. He ate at her mouth with a ravenousness that totally ravished her. Tasting him, feeling him here, she had no chance of fighting what they shared. Like always, they touched as if they couldn’t get enough of each other.
She pushed up his T-shirt and he started on the buttons of her blouse, unfastening them with care but speed. He caressed her skin and she went wild, urging him backward until the backs of his knees hit the sofa and with only one brief glance, he went down, tugging her with him. Not that she needed any pressing. As if this were the last day of her life, she went at him, unfastening his jeans, tugging them down. He wasn’t complaining because he was as busy as she, until eventually he lay on the sofa stark naked and she hung, panting, over him. “One day,” he said, his breath coming in short gasps, “I’m going to eat you out until you beg me to stop.”
Wetness drenched her pussy. “You’ll have to go at it a long time.” The thought made her weak with need. She glanced down to where his cock reared, dark and waiting, gleaming with its own juices, but as she bent to lick, he stopped her by pressing against her shoulders.
“Don’t. Please. Fuck me, Allie.”
“Oh God,” she moaned and sank down on him. Her body remembered him, welcomed him in. Once she’d sat on him so their pubic hair met and meshed, she tore her gaze away to look into his eyes.
Passion, need and even love waited for her there. She had the feeling that it would wait for her forever, something she’d never thought of in relation to Donovan before. He’d never promised that, had remained insistent on promising “today”. She’d take that if he found it hard to do anything else. She couldn’t fight this intense need anymore.
She did as he asked. She put both palms on his stomach and used the leverage from that and her knees, planted on either side of him, to raise and lower herself. She leaned back a tiny bit, found the spot and started to work him in earnest. He braced his body to accept her plunges, arched his back to push up, as lost in the moment as she was.
There, so nearly. She hovered on the brink until he reached down and placed the pad of his thumb on her clit. That did it, finished her so she collapsed in shuddering pulses around him. He caught her, drew her down, murmuring words she could barely hear but absorbed as part of her.
Allie didn’t know how they made it to the bed, but finally they did, tucked up in her tiny bedroom, which seemed even smaller with Donovan there. Not that she cared. She rested her head on his shoulder and they indulged in a series of long, luscious kisses before either of them had anything remotely coherent to say. They were back together, but they’d solved nothing, discussed nothing.
“What do we do now?” she murmured eventually.
He stroked from her breasts down to her hips. “Now?”
She laughed. “Next. Tomorrow and the day after.”
“I can’t ask you to come with me, because I know what that will mean for you, but I want you to.
I can ask you to marry me.”
She sat bolt upright and turned to glare at him. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m willing. I’m sure, sweetheart. I’ve been sure since the first time we went to bed together. I knew, deep down I knew. Every time I’ve tried to reason, I’ve been wrong. If I go with my instincts, it works out right. If you’re not sure, I understand, but remember that offer stands as long as it has to.”
“Even if I decide not to go with you?”
“Even then. I’ll come to see you all I can. We have one week, longer sometimes between concerts. I’m giving you tomorrow, Allie, all my tomorrows.”
Her thoughts spun. “Don’t they want you for sound checks and rehearsals?”
“They can go fuck themselves. If you need me, you come first.”
She returned to him and kissed him. They didn’t speak for a while. When they did, he was inside her again. “So you’ll marry me?” he asked.
“Eventually.”
They didn’t emerge from her apartment until the next day, when they took the subway to the offices of the Moore Agency.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m sorry, Elliott, but I can’t stay.”
Elliott sat back in his chair and folded his arms. “I see. I take it you’re going to Europe?”
She swallowed. “Yes. We talked about it. I can’t do this.”
“So what about your career?”
“I’ll sort something out.” She sounded so feeble but she couldn’t think of anything else to do.
“I see. While you’re sorting something out, what are you going to do?”
She squeezed Donovan’s hand tight. “Marry him.”
“And have his babies? Sweet.” From the sugary expression on his face, Elliott was obviously not impressed.
“No, no babies, at least not that we’ve planned.”
“No marriage until after the tour either.” Donovan grimaced. “In most countries, you have to establish residency. Plus, Allie has family she wants to invite. So we’ll wait until next year.” He glanced at her. “Maybe. Or maybe we’ll detour via Vegas before we go to Europe.”
“Good of you.” He glared at Donovan. “Look, I get that you’re in love and all, but there’s more to life than romance. You need a plan.”
“Sometimes you don’t.” Allie had accepted that now. She knew that to be happy, she needed Donovan, but after that, she knew little more. She loved him, he needed the band. Once they came off the tour they wouldn’t go on another for a couple of years. By then she’d have something in place. “But we did have one plan.” She glanced at Donovan and he smiled at her. “That book, you know the one Casterbridge wanted me to do?”
“Yeah.”
“What if I did it? Would you represent me?”
Elliott brightened. “Shit, yeah.”
“But it would be an authorized account. Not as racy as the other kind. And the rest of the band needs to agree. They’ll approve every picture and every word before the book sees the light of day.” Put like that it sounded unappealing, but if it didn’t work, she wouldn’t waste time mourning it.
“I’m still interested.”
“Donovan talked to Chick Fontaine yesterday and he said yes, under strict control, that would be something he’d like to do.”
Elliott grimaced, his mouth twisting. “So I get to work with Chick Fontaine? Great. But yes, this is worth it. An authorized tour book, sure. And something else.” He looked from one to the other of them. “Have you two ever heard of something called the internet?” They nodded. “Good. The only way an agency like this is going to survive long term is to go global. I need agents for all kinds of purposes. Now I can’t offer you a full editorial job, but I still need people to read submissions and pick out the cherries. I want people to check out the talent in some areas outside the US, so that if I set up an interview, I want someone I trust on the ground. If you accepted that, it would be a cut in salary, but it would keep you in the game. And if you sign somebody, you get them on your client roster. Clear? Do you need to think about it?”
“No,” she said immediately, smiling. “I can do that.”
A job, the man of her dreams and a future. Sure, she could do that. All day long.
About Lynne Connolly
Lynne Connolly writes for a number of publishers. She writes paranormal romance, contemporary romance and historical romance, and is the winner of two Eppies (now retitled the EPIC e-Book Awards) and a goodly number of Recommended Reads, etc., from review sites.
While these are very gratifying, that isn’t why she writes. She wants to bring the stories in her head to life and share them with others, in the hope she might then get some peace.
She lives in the UK with her family, cat, and doll houses. Creating worlds on paper in miniature seems to be her specialty!
Lynne welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email addresses on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Lynne Connolly
Cougar Challenge: Beauty of Sunset
Cougar Challenge: Sunshine on Chrome
Ecstasy in Red 1: Red Alert
Ecstasy in Red 2: Red Heat
Ecstasy in Red 3: Red Shadow
Ecstasy in Red 4: Red Inferno
Emotion in Motion
Nightstar 1: In the Mood
Nightstar 2: Born on the Bayou
Pure Wildfire 1: Sunfire
Pure Wildfire 2: Icefire
Pure Wildfire 3: Moonfire
Pure Wildfire 4: Thunderfire
Seychelles Sunset
Shifting Heat
Strangers No More
Print books by Lynne Connolly
Pure Wildfire 1: Sunfire
Pure Wildfire 2: Icefire
Pure Wildfire 3: Moonfire
Ecstasy in Red 1: Red Alert
Ecstasy in Red 2: Red Heat
Ecstasy in Red 3: Red Shadow
Skin Deep anthology
Tempt the Cougar anthology
Ellora’s Cave Publishing
www.ellorascave.com
Nice ‘n’ Easy
ISBN 9781419939921
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Nice ‘n’ Easy Copyright © 2013 Lynne Connolly
Edited by Jillian Bell
Cover design by Irene Adler
Cover photography by Romancenovelcovers.com and Fotolia.com
Electronic book publication April 2013
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