Beyond Bliss

by Foster, Delia

  “And you should know that I don’t go back on my word, so I have no fucking idea why you’re bringing this back up again. You know the money and resources I bring to the table are going to turn your brand into an international powerhouse. I’m talking on the scale of the Mandarin here.”

  Kai nodded. “I know, but I’m bringing it back up again because I want this built in, hard-wired. I’m okay with you setting the other terms from here on out, but this is my deal-breaker.”

  “That’s not how this is going to work. I get this is a family to you. I’m not going to set the terms, you are. If I agree, we move forward. As much as I can see you feel otherwise, Sophie isn’t here as eye candy, she’s my legal counsel. She’ll structure the deal, and in the process, help us mitigate risk and exposure. Even though I’ll own the majority, I still expect you to be hands on and run the operation with autonomy. I’m not going to get in your way, but this needs to be a profitable operation. Current employees will be grandfathered into the types of annual increases they’re used to, in addition to the living arrangements. Future staff will be paid competitively as determined by going rates in the market. If we have space that doesn’t interfere with guest operations, we can offer reduced rents for them on space built exclusively for employee housing.”

  His voice was low and hard, but it set off something unidentifiable in her.

  Something crazy, something wild.

  He was a shrewd businessman, considered a ruthless shark by many … or so she’d determined after Googling him.

  She should have been paying attention to the quick words that flew between the men, but all she could do was feel everything that was him seep deeper into her soul.

  Her reverie faded when Len, the waiter, returned balancing several plates. When he finished setting the plates in front of them, Kai spoke once more.

  “You’ll also know that my lawyers will be involved in reviewing the deal as well. No offense, Sophie,” he added with a small smile her way.

  The corners of her lips tugged up. “Honestly, I’d be wondering about you if you didn’t.”

  He tilted his head towards her. “Touché.”

  The conversation turned once more towards the plans for expansion. Even though she wasn’t really hungry, the food was delicious, and she consumed every bite while listening to the discussion. Once the deal was finalized, they would start with breaking ground simultaneously in London, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Mumbai. All those days when she’d wondered what Lucas was up to with his office door shut started to make sense. He’d already purchased land in all of those locations, and he had a team already sourcing contracts and bids for construction of the new hotels.

  When the remnants of their meal had been cleared away, Lucas excused himself to the men’s room, but not before giving her a meaningful, lingering look that left her panties drenched.

  “I normally don’t do this, especially when my business is involved, but now that we’ve established that you’re not here as Sinclair’s date, what would you say about being mine at dinner tomorrow night?”

  Her eyes widened in shock as she turned to face Kai. “I’m sorry?”

  His eyes pierced into hers, and she would be lying if she said she didn’t feel at least a tug of attraction to the other man.

  The dark, golden skin of his native Hawaiian heritage contrasted sharply against the open collar of his crisp white shirt. Said shirt also did little to conceal the defined muscles of his arms. Dark hair, a cross somewhere between brown and black was shorn close to his head, likely due to the climate. His clean-shaven square jaw complemented his sharp nose and high cheekbones beautifully.

  Simply put, he was a beautiful man.

  But even though she could appreciate his raw masculinity, she felt … nothing.

  She opened her mouth to let him know she was flattered, to let him down gently when a harsh voice intruded the silence. “She’s busy tomorrow night.”

  Dread settled in her stomach as Lucas took his seat next to hers.

  “How about the night after tomorrow?” Kai asked smoothly.

  “She’s not available then either. Sophie is in a relationship,” Lucas said bluntly.

  The expression on Kai’s face was more amused than surprised, but he composed it into a blank expression so quickly she almost didn’t catch it. “Ah well, I can’t say I’m surprised. You’re a very beautiful woman, Sophie. I hope whoever has you knows how lucky he is,” he murmured.

  “He does, not that it’s any of your concern,” Luke muttered, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his tone.

  At his words, warmth expanded in her chest, but she felt her own annoyance grow, and she shifted in her seat and pointedly glared at him. “Thank you, Mr. Sinclair, but I can also speak for myself.”

  “Oh really?” he challenged. “So what would you have said? Do you want to go to dinner with Kai?”

  Her teeth clenched so hard, she felt the beginnings of a tension headache start to set in.

  Was he insane?

  She channeled every ounce of willpower she possessed into composing herself before she responded. In law school, one of her professors had shared a technique for managing conflict by visualizing it into compartments, putting the compartments into a brown paper bag, folding it closed, and leaving it at a door before walking through the door and shutting it closed. Since then, it worked well to calm her nerves, especially when she’d been faced with an adversary.

  Right now, everything she’d ever learned flew straight out of her head.

  Except for her rage.

  Aware that she was breathing heavily, she tossed her napkin onto the table and rose. “Kai, I’m wiped out, and I need to head back to the hotel. I do want to let you know that I’m deeply flattered, but I’m currently unavailable.” She picked up her bag and slung the strap over her shoulder, before she added, “But if things stay on this track, it looks like I might not be unavailable for very long. I’ll let you know.”

  She coached each foot to keep moving, one in front of the other as everything else faded into the background. By the time she’d made it to the door, she could faintly hear Kai’s laughter, but she was too angry to process it or wonder what had caused it.

  The entrance to the restaurant wasn’t far from the hotel entrance, where a cluster of cabs were parked. Her tall, thin heels clicked sharply against the cobblestone, and she cursed her choice in footwear when one of her heels caught in a groove of cement between the stones.

  Fuck.

  A second, maybe two, passed as she wiggled her foot to free her shoe before a strong arm gripped her arm.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  Now, she struggled both to free her arm and foot, but as she twisted, she lost all grip and her body started to fall. Right before she crashed into the pavement, her body was suspended mid-air, before she was thrown bodily over Lucas’s shoulder.

  She ignored the fact that he’d saved her from a nasty spill and instead chose to pound her clenched fists against his lower back. “Put me down, you jerk!”

  He didn’t respond directly to her, but she heard him muttering about stubborn females and how he couldn’t seem to escape them.

  She kept pounding ineffectually, until he stopped moving. Before she could blink, she’d been shoved into a black leather seat of a town car while he barked out instructions to their hotel.

  She shifted closer to the edge of the door and crossed her arms over her chest, stubbornly staring out at the lush island landscape as the driver weaved through other cars.

  “You going to tell me what that hissy fit was about?”

  She turned for a moment, staring at him incredulously, before she turned back to her window. Was the man stupid? After all she’d shared with him, could he really still be so obtuse he wouldn’t recognize that treating her like a voiceless doll would set her off? Who the fuck did he think she was?

  Legal Barbie?

  Fuck him.

  She stayed silent durin
g the short ride, and when the car halted in front of their hotel, she pulled two twenties out of her clutch and tossed them on the seat before escaping as quickly as her damned heels would let her.

  She moved quickly, and in less than three minutes, she was safely ensconced in her hotel suite.

  Less than one minute later, pounding commenced at her door. “Sophie, open up.”

  Her mouth twisted in a snarl. If he thought he was getting in her room tonight, he had another thing coming to him. She sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off her torturous heeled sandals. Her fingers were in the middle of a foot massage when the pounding at her door stopped.

  She stared at it suspiciously, but nothing else happened.

  Safe.

  She’d have to face him tomorrow, and between now and then, she could figure out exactly what she was going to say to him.

  He, who was so handsome, yet unyielding.

  He, who confused the hell out of her.

  She’d just slipped off the simple sheath dress she’d worn at dinner and was in the process of unhooking her bra when she heard the beep.

  The beep she usually heard when she put her keycard into the door and it indicated she could access her room.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “You’re fucking drenched,” he muttered.

  He growled, deep, guttural and withdrew his touch from her. She cried out, both at the sensation of his wet fingers as they gripped the skin of her ass and at the loss of his touch.

  “Answer me,” he rasped out.

  She almost came at the curt command, coated by the gritty, needy texture of his voice.

  Almost…

  The pressure inside her turned sharp. Unable to bear the piercing sensation any longer, she relinquished the last vestiges of her control.

  “Yes,” she whispered, her hips arching backward in a desperate plea for his touch.

  He still demanded more.

  “Who? Yes, who? Who do you need to fuck you?”

  If her hips weren’t pinned in the firm grasp of his hands, she would have turned over and taken care of her orgasm on her own.

  But they were, and even though she sought release, she wanted—no, needed it to come from him.

  “You,” she panted. “I want you Lucas. I want you to fuck me, just you,” she managed to get out.

  He teased her, rubbing the rough pad of his trembling index finger across her weeping slit. Somewhere, in the hazy depths of her mind, she realized his need was just as great as hers.

  But still, it seemed as if he needed her complete submission.

  “No one else?”

  “No,” she nearly wept. “Just you, just you, will you just fuck me?” she begged shamelessly, past the edge of sanity.

  Seconds ticked by. Her body hung in the suspended, combustible state he’d worked her into for what felt like an eternity.

  Without warning, he positioned the plumb head of his cock against the swollen tissues of her opening and drove himself into the hilt, his strokes merciless.

  Punishing.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered as her body began to convulse.

  She was wound so tightly that pleasure detonated, ripping through her body in volcanic waves the instant he filled her with his thick, hard cock.

  Guttural sounds rumbled in his chest behind her, but the sounds were lost on her as he slammed into her clenched sheath repeatedly, even as she rode the tide of her climax.

  A burst of white light exploded behind her closed eyes, hot and bright.

  She hit the final crest, hard, mindless to everything but the sharp, sweet relief of pleasure and pain.

  The light ebbed slowly as she edged into consciousness, her breathing unsteady, skin damp and trembling.

  But his brutal pace didn’t diminish one bit.

  Instead, it picked up, almost heedless of the orgasm that had just shredded every cell of her being. Her arms flat on either side of her head, she lay helplessly beneath him as he did everything in his power to meld their bodies into one. Confusion flooded her expression when he withdrew suddenly. Even though she’d just come, the emptiness in her pussy ached uncomfortably, but then strong arms cradled her body, lifting her as if she were a rag doll. Shaken and disturbed by her earlier desperation and the primitive, almost animalistic way she’d let him take her, her head fell to the side as she avoided his gaze.

  But he wasn’t having any of that.

  He moved up the bed, setting her body down with care like she was the most fragile crystal before he turned her head to face him. He would see everything if she let him. She instantly shut her eyes.

  “Open,” he murmured, and after what she’d just experienced, it was impossible to not know his meaning.

  Just as impossible as it was to ignore the tight command in his voice.

  She blinked open heavy, drugged eyelids and lost her breath at what she saw. Dark gray eyes burned into her like hot silver, and even though she’d been scared he would see everything, she was stunned by what he let her see. Desperation, need, and want just as strong as hers and … tenderness.

  Her pulse beat wildly against the soft skin of her throat, and his thumb rubbed gently over it before he traced upward along the curve of her jaw before finally resting it on her swollen bottom lip.

  “This is us,” he whispered, as his other hand lifted her right leg and hooked it around his waist.

  Despite the way he now eased into her gently, a glaring contrast to earlier, her womb clenched tightly. He thrust shallowly, never once breaking his gaze from her, and even though the energy from her body had sapped out, her hips instinctively rose to meet his, to take him deeper.

  And all the while she gave him her body, she realized she was giving him something else, too.

  With each stroke and caress he bestowed upon her body, her heart battled with her body—each vying to see which could reach a higher plane. Warmth unfurled in her chest, a tight and pleasurable low burn that spread throughout her veins, that grew stronger as he moved within her.

  It had never been like this.

  Not when she’d been with Zach. Not even during the times she’d been with Lucas before.

  Unbidden, her fingers wandered up to his face, tracing the sharp planes, the soft curve of his lips. A corner of his mouth tugged up, but his eyes stayed tenderly on hers, and all she could think was that this was how it was supposed to be.

  She wanted to freeze this moment, stop time and hold this memory still for the rest of her life.

  This time was more subtle but no less intense than the last. She felt her insides flutter, and she instinctively tightened around him. One of his hands slipped under her head, weaving itself into her hair and holding her head steady as his strokes slowed down but pushed harder. The pressure sweetened low in her belly and with each steady slam of his hips against her core, it got tighter, sweeter, hotter, until she couldn’t stand it any longer.

  For the first time since he’d commanded her to open her eyes, she broke their gaze as her neck arched and climax overtook her. He pressed damp kisses along the exposed curve and words tumbled from her mouth as she rambled incoherently.

  He soothed her body through the all-consuming orgasm, kissing and caressing her sensitized skin until it faintly registered that he was close to joining her. Even though her heart felt close to bursting, she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist and canted her hips up, allowing him deeper. When he looked down at her, surprise etched on his handsome face, she tightened around him and slipped her hands between them, the tips of her fingernails lightly grazing his balls.

  “Sophie—Sophie, oh fuck,” he groaned as his forehead fell against hers. His tongue swept across her lips and she opened for him, allowing him to plunder her mouth until his cry of pleasure erupted as he found his release.

  *****

  It could have been seconds, minutes, or hours until another word was uttered. All she could hear was harsh breathing and the distant sound of gently crashing of waves against the
shore. Her body felt languorously worn out, but it was the sweetest kind of fatigue she’d ever felt.

  And they had discussed absolutely nothing.

  She didn’t remember exactly who had started yelling after he’d barged into her room. He’d yelled about Kai, and she’d responded by taunting him. She could admit the truth to herself, she’d reacted immaturely, but he’d been absolutely unreasonable.

  “You’re a jerk,” she murmured against his skin, her head nestled against his shoulder.

  He pressed a kiss against the top of her head before responding, “I know.”

  It took some effort and draw on her depleted energy reserves, but she raised her head to look at him. Even in the darkness, his handsome features looked peaceful and content. She frowned.

  “You don’t exactly sound contrite.”

  A corner of his mouth tugged up in a smirk she found both sexy and annoying. “The four orgasms I just gave you don’t count?” and then, “Ouch!”

  His eyes flew open, and he glared at her. “Why’d you pinch me?”

  “You deserved it. Those orgasms weren’t an apology. You were trying to mark your territory,” she huffed.

  A wicked light glinted in his eyes as he rolled over so she was underneath him. Her breathing quickened, but then his expression turned serious. “Maybe the first few times. Not the last. Definitely not the last,” he whispered before dipping his head to sweetly kiss her. When he raised his head so they could both catch their breath, he kept her in his hold, tracing the contour of her face.

  “The last time was different Sophie. You know that, don’t you?”

  She was busy trying not to melt under his gaze and focus on the tiny sparks his touch left in its wake, but his words seeped into her very soul and she froze.

  He ghosted his lips over hers lightly, nipping with his teeth. “Tell me you know it was different. Don’t lie to me, but admit the truth to yourself Sophie,” he murmured.

  The words felt stuck in her throat, but she forced them out anyway. “I know,” she whispered.

  He lifted his head and looked at her, his expression happy and boyish, making him look years younger. Warmth unfurled in her chest when he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a soft kiss against her knuckles. “You have no idea …”