“Oh God, Marcus. Please. I need you here.”

Her frantic words, her unplanned plea, must have been magic, because in an instant, all of the control that he’d work so hard to hold onto was gone.

He pounded into her with no regard for hurting her, without a thought to whether she could withstand the force of his lovemaking.

And, oh, how she loved it.

How she loved to be in the middle of the hurricane with him as he spun them both higher and tighter. Sounds echoed through the large bedroom, his praise for how beautiful she was, how perfect, along with her moans, gasps, yes, even screams of pleasure. And even when she expected the pleasure to end—it couldn’t go on forever like this, could it?—Marcus continued to rock with her, his hand moving between her legs.

“Give me one more,” he urged her, and she was wondering how he knew there was a little bit left inside of her still, when she felt it wash over her, another wave of pleasure, less intense this time, but still so good, she had to reach for him and pull him down over her so that she could kiss him.

Their kiss was lazier now, slower in the aftermath of all that passion and intense need, and she loved the way his tongue stroked against hers.

A little while later, he shifted them so that he was on his back and she was lying half on the bed, half sprawled across him. Somewhere in there she felt him shift to remove the condom, but thankfully he was reaching for her and pulling her back against him a handful of seconds later, her head on his chest, with the rest of her body curled over and around his very hard muscles.

Nicola couldn’t remember the last time she felt this tired...or this good. And yet, if she slept now, knowing it was all over in the morning, her dreams would be unsettled. Upset despite how amazing her night with Marcus had been.

And the truth was, had she been more awake, more lucid, she never would have asked, “How about two nights instead of one?”

The perfect way they fit together, the way he pulled her closer and stroked his hand over her hair, was her answer. No longer needing to stay awake, Nicola let herself relax all the way into sleep.

* * *

Holy hell.

Marcus stared at the ceiling, the bright lights of downtown San Francisco shining in through the sheer curtains on the windows.

He’d always loved sex, but what had just happened with Nicola tonight...it was way beyond good sex.

His mind wasn’t just blown, his body was, too.

And now, she wanted another night.

Of course, he did, too. How could he not want a repeat of the most spectacular sex of his life, with what had to be the most beautiful, most responsive woman he’d ever had the pleasure of making love to?

But that was just the problem.

It should have been mindless sex. It should have been nothing but pleasure, nothing but checking off one orgasm after another.

Nicola shifted against him, her soft curves arousing him when he should have been long past the point of no return, at least for a good thirty minutes or so.

Maybe if he wasn’t thirty-six years old; maybe if he hadn’t just been deceived by a woman he’d thought he was going to marry; maybe if he hadn’t just been party to something so extraordinary it made his groin throb with renewed need...maybe then he could have told himself the lie he wanted to believe.

But he knew better than to even try.

Because the undeniable truth was that the night he’d just spent with Nicola had been more than he’d bargained for.

He liked her. A whole hell of a lot more than he was comfortable with. Somehow all the visions of her with those kids at the elevator, his memory of the way she’d slept on his lap and then had been so sweetly nervous in his brother’s kitchen, combined with the sex goddess she’d been all night in bed, made her seem like his version of the perfect woman.

If one night could take him this far, then where on earth would he be after two?

Chapter Eleven

Nicola was having the most marvelous dream. She was in a deliciously cozy bed, cuddled into a hard, heated wall of muscle. It was pure instinct to arch into the large hand at her hip, in the hopes that more was coming.

RING! BUZZ! RING! BUZZ! RING!

The loud sound of a cell phone jumping on a tabletop was almost immediately joined by the harsh ringing of the hotel’s phone on the bedside table, barely three feet from Nicola’s head.

Oh no! She jumped up in the bed, her heart pounding.

How could she have forgotten about her video shoot?

She was a heartbeat away from throwing the covers off and running into the bathroom to take the world’s quickest shower when she realized the large hand on her thigh wasn’t a dream.

As the final vestiges of sleep cleared and everything came flooding back to her, she found her heart beating hard for a reason that had nothing to do with being late for work.

She reached for the sheet and pulled it up over her naked body. She knew it didn’t really make sense for her to do that after last night. Maybe it was how flustered she felt waking up so abruptly. Maybe it was that Marcus looked impossibly gorgeous, his skin tanned and dark against the snowy white sheets.

Or maybe it was simply that she wasn’t used to waking up in bed with a man at all.

“I’m really late for my video shoot. I can’t believe I forgot to set the alarm."

She’d made it a point to be early for everything, especially since the debacle with Kenny when her reputation as a wild party girl had blown up around her.

At her blurted words, Marcus’s hand slid from her skin and she immediately missed the warmth of his touch. He shifted on the bed to sit up as well, only he wasn’t at all concerned about his nudity.