Shopping for a CEO's Fiancée

“I’m not broken, though.” Her palms start at my wrists and slide up my forearms, caressing the outer edge of my arms, coming up my shoulders and making goosebumps ripple across me like fire and ice in one stroke. “You fix me in ways that enhance.”

“Good.”

“You potentiate.”

“And you exponentiate.”

She laughs. “This isn’t a contest.”

“I’m not joking. And I’m not competing.” I trace the outer edge of the circle of her nipple on the breast that falls against the other. Her skin tightens, and so do I.

“We’re greater than each other when we’re together,” she says before she kisses me.

She is every fantasy in front of me, a fusion of hot flesh and intelligence and maternal promise and a life’s journey I don’t have the script for but want to live anyhow.

Amanda is mine.

And she wants me right back.

Her ring shines as she reaches up and slides her hand against the back of my neck.

“Then competing is foolish. We need to collaborate.” I kiss her shoulder.

“Work together,” she gasps as I move down, taking that same nipple in my mouth. The vibration of that noise she makes in the back of her throat drives me crazy.

“Find a rhythm,” I growl, mouth still on her, talking around the pink delight.

“Oh, yes,” she sighs, fingers threading in my hair. “Most definitely that.”

I revel in the perverse pleasure of knowing this body that moves beneath me, that responds to my touch and tease, is the only body I’ll know intimately until my dying day. Perverse because I should be horrified, mortified and sad to reduce my pool of female flesh down to a single woman.

And yet it’s the depth of the water that makes the swim so divine.

She comes with a cry of my name like she’s drowning and only I can save her, yet I’m the one who’s sent her into this helpless state, floating and gasping, and as I come up for air she grabs me with such fiery need our mouths crash into each other, her strength so arousing we become damn near violent, the kiss desperate and drawing. Amanda’s body changes after climax, turning warmer and looser, more expansive and distilled into a pink heat that covers her like a magnetic force field drawing me through, captured and captivated.

I’m drawn to it, invited to come into a world where no one else gains entry. A world that only exists when we’re this close.

Her hand runs from my neck down over my pecs, the touch lightening at my abs, fingers tickling the thick hair trail that leads to an even thicker destination. As her hand traces lines on a map that lives only in her mind, I close my eyes, inhaling deeply, tasting and smelling her.

The cool metal on her ring finger warms from my body heat. This ring is permanent. I’ll pair it with a wedding band, one that matches a thicker one on my own left hand, and we’ll be bonded forever.

We’ll make formal what we already know.

A deep tingle pulses through me at the thought, at knowing the search is over, and as Amanda reaches for me and wraps her hand, stroking with her palm, sending a roar of desire shooting through my bloodstream at the speed of light, I open my eyes and look out the open balcony door to find the cityscape staring back, blinking in color and white, the dull hush of wind outside a whisper that chants approval.

And then I grab her, pulling her on top of me, the jumble of legs and arms and moans and gasps settling as she straddles me, then envelops with a welcoming warmth and a pensive smile, her face hovering over me, hair spilling onto my forehead.

“You’re mine,” she says, moving until I groan.

“That’s my line.”

“It can be mine, too. We can both feel it.”

“I’m feeling it.” I move up until she arches back, her control tenuous. I love how her body looks in the moonlight, the landscape full and round, uninhibited. She’s a goddess.

We quicken, the emotion urging us forward, need replacing love at some point, all of the emotions converging until lust takes over our pulses, time becoming meaningless, pushing us to an explosive release, all pretense of the polite shells we wear in public shed like old skin.

Coming together has new meaning now, and as she relaxes on me, her cheek buried in my shoulder, her ass in the air, my hips tight and my hands and feet half numb, the wind pushes the curtains into the bedroom again, the edge brushing against my toes.

“It might rain again,” she says, dazed and slow. A kiss on my ear makes me smile.

“Let it rain.”

I look at the clock with an exaggerated head move.

“What are you doing?”

“That took thirty-nine minutes,” I say, stretching my neck like a rooster strutting.

She smacks my breastbone. “It’s not a competition!”

But it is.

For the record: I am not making the next part up.

Fireworks explode outside the window, the high-pitched whine of a bomb on its trajectory piercing our hearing in the split second before the firework explodes.

Amanda moves and looks out the window as a shower of red and white light dots fills the night sky.

“I knew I was good in bed, but damn,” I say.

She laughs as she moves next to me, hip to toe touching me as she cuddles against my chest and we watch whatever show was long-ago scheduled, timed serendipitously for our engagement night.

Our coming together.

Our declaration of dependence.

Epilogue

Two Months Later…

“Mr. McCormick? Your brother is on the line? He wants you to stop ignoring his texts and talk to him?” Gina’s standing in the doorway, waving at me.