Three

      When it was over, when she could breathe again and her scattered thoughts finally came back to her, Desi didn’t know what to do. What to say. How to act.

      There was a part of her that was shell-shocked. A part of her that couldn’t believe she had just had sex with a stranger in public. And not just in public, but on the balcony outside a gala that she was supposed to be covering for work. If someone had told her an hour ago that before the night was over she’d be pressed up against the hotel’s outside wall, her legs wrapped around Nic, whose last name she didn’t even know, having just had the most intense orgasms of her life… Well, she wouldn’t have called that person a liar. She would have called him or her a damn liar and then laughed herself silly.

      But here she was. And the kicker was, she wasn’t even sorry. How could she be when her body was so blissed out that she still wasn’t sure her legs would be able to hold her when Nic decided to set her down? Which—­thankfully—he hadn’t yet made any move to do.

      “You okay?” he asked after a minute, pressing his lips to her neck.

      “I don’t know. That was—” Her voice broke and she swallowed in an effort to get some moisture into her too-dry throat.

      “Amazing,” he said, kissing his way over her collarbone. “Incredible. Earth-shattering.”

      She giggled. It was a totally foreign sound to her, one Desi couldn’t ever remember making in her adult life. She wasn’t the giggling sort. Then again, she wasn’t the one-night-stand, public-sex-against-a-building sort, either. And yet here she was, with absolutely no desire to move. And absolutely no regrets.

      Nic lifted his head, gave her a mock frown that in no way reached the beautiful green eyes she could just barely make out in the shadows. “Are you saying that making love to me wasn’t earth-shattering?”

      He slipped a hand between them, circled his thumb around her. She gasped, arched against him. She knew exactly what he was doing, knew that he was teasing her, but she couldn’t help it. Normally, she never let a man get the upper hand, but with Nic she couldn’t help it. Everything about him appealed to her, drew a response from her that she had almost no control over. His sense of humor, the intelligence she could see in his eyes, the careful way he held and touched and kissed her. And, of course, the fact that he was the hottest man she had ever met certainly didn’t hurt, either.

      “I’m saying,” she said, her voice more breathless than she would have liked, “that I very much enjoyed having sex with you.”

      “Sex, huh?” He rubbed a little harder, a little faster, and shocks of electricity sparked through her. Just that easily, he made her ache. Made her want. Again.

      “Nic,” she whispered, cupping the back of his neck with her palm, even as her head fell back against the cool stucco wall.

      “Desi.” His voice was low, teasing, but she could hear the sudden thread of tension as clearly as she could feel him hardening once again within her.

      “Don’t play.” Suddenly she was as needy, as desperate, as if she hadn’t come at all.

      He scraped his teeth along her jaw, bit lightly at the sensitive spot behind her ear. “I thought you liked it when I played.” His breath was hot against her skin, the words a whisper that worked its way deep inside of her.

      “You know what I mean.” She clenched her core around him to underscore her words, took great delight in the sexy hiss the movement elicited from him. He closed his eyes, dropped his forehead against hers, and the hungry noise he made had her tightening her inner muscles again and again.

      He cursed then, a harsh, sexy word that only ramped up her arousal more. From the moment he’d taken her out onto this balcony—hell, from the moment he’d kissed her on that dance floor—Nic had had the upper hand. She’d be lying if she said it didn’t feel good to get a little of her own back. Especially when doing so was so incredibly pleasurable for both of them.

      Nic’s hand tightened on her behind as he lifted her nearly off him before letting her slowly sink back down. He did it a second time and then a third, all the while continuing to stroke her with his other hand. It took only a minute or two before ecstasy beckoned—brought even closer by his careless demonstration of strength—but just as she was about to go over the edge for the third time in less than an hour, he stilled.

      “What’s wrong?” She forced open her too-heavy lids, tried to focus on his face despite the urgent need lighting her up from the inside. “Why’d you stop?’

      “Come home with me.”

      “What?” She was so far gone that her brain had trouble assimilating his words.

      “Come home with me,” he repeated, thrusting deep inside her for emphasis. She moaned despite herself, tried to arch against him and get that last bit of needed pressure. But he held her firmly, refused to let her move. Refused to let her come.

      “Please,” she gasped, her whole body shaking with the need for release. “I need—”

      “I know what you need,” he whispered, taking her mouth in a kiss that was somehow both hard and tender. “Say you’ll go home with me and I’ll let you come.”

      She bit his lip, not hard enough to draw blood but definitely hard enough to make him take notice. “Let me come,” she countered breathlessly, “and maybe I’ll go home with you.”

      He laughed then, a low, dark sound that sent shivers down her spine even as it made her entire body melt. “I want you in my bed.”

      She tightened around him yet again, taking great pleasure in the fact that he groaned deep in his throat. “You know what you need to do then.”

      “Is that a yes?” He stroked her once gently. Too gently, but she wasn’t complaining as her nerve endings tingled.

      “It’s not a no.”

      He laughed again. “Damn, I like you, Desi.”

      “I certainly hope you do, considering what we’ve spent the last forty-five minutes doing.” She had to bite her tongue, but somehow she managed to resist adding that she liked him, too. A lot. She hadn’t been with that many men—only