“I don’t want them,” I say, as Damien cups my breasts through the thin material of the sarong. “I don’t want anyone’s touch but yours.”
“But it turns you on,” he whispers, and I nod.
“Why?” I ask.
“They’re a mirror. You see passion on their faces and you want it. You see the burn of heat on their skin, and you want to feel it. You hear them cry out when they come, and you want to go there, too.”
“Yes,” I moan, as the truth of what he says washes over me. I’ve never thought I had any voyeuristic tendencies, but watching these people—their hands stroking slick skin, their mouths meeting—is like kindling to the fire already growing inside me. “God, yes.”
I lean back against Damien, feeling the press of his erection against my rear. His fingers tighten on my nipples and I cry out, the cry shifting to a desperate moan as his other hand snakes down to my crotch. “Please,” I say. “Touch me.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, and I hear the hard edge of want in his voice.
I nod. I do not want to be the one being watched, but I so desperately want to feel. “The shadows,” I say. “And the sarong is open at the side.” No one will be able to see, I tell myself. But the truth is, I’m not sure I care anymore if they do.
The slit in the sarong is over my hip, but Damien turns it so that it is over my thigh, just barely covering my sex. He slips his hand under the material and strokes me. I bite down on my lower lip to keep from crying out. I am so hot, so sensitive, that I fear I will explode right there in his hand.
“Nikki, oh, god, baby.” He uses the hand that was on my breast to pull my sarong up from the back.
I know I should protest—but I don’t want to. I want the thrill. I want Damien. I want him to fuck me in this dark corner with this cornucopia of sex spread out in front of us. I want the wildness.
I want it all.
“Yes,” I say, and lean forward so that I can hold on to the edge of the alcove. I yank the curtain partly closed—a nod to privacy—but I do not want to block our view.
I am still wearing the sarong, and Damien is behind me, so I know that we have some privacy, but when Damien grips my hips and thrusts himself inside me—when I cry out from the delicious intensity of taking him in and having him pound hard inside me—I know that anyone who looks toward us must know exactly what we are doing.
I don’t care.
All I want is Damien.
All I want is to feel, and I reach around, taking his hand off my hip and easing it into the sarong, silently demanding that he stroke my clit even as he fucks me from behind.
“Don’t close your eyes,” Damien demands, and I don’t. Instead I watch. Passion watching passion. Heat locked onto heat.
He teases my clit as his cock fills and strokes me. He is working me into a frenzy, and his touch combined with the surroundings pushes me over the edge so hard and so fast that I am certain that without Damien to hold me up, I will tumble and fall to my knees.
As the orgasm blasts through me, my body milks him, muscles clenching in a desperate need that takes him the rest of the way, and he explodes into me, his hands closing tight on my shoulders as he cries my name.
He closes the curtain then, and I turn in his arms, then melt into his touch, into his kisses.
“I love you,” he says.
“I know,” I say, then snuggle closer. I am content. And right at the moment, I’m not feeling domestic at all.
We stay a bit longer, enjoying the sauna and the hot tub. Making love slowly in a pirate-themed private room where I let Damien take me captive and then ravage me. It is late when we leave, and I am feeling well-used and wonderful.
“How did you know?” I ask as we exit onto the sidewalk. “How did you know I would like it?”
“How do you think?”
I stay silent; we both know the answer. Because Damien knows me as well as I know myself. And as far as I am concerned, that is a glorious feeling.
I take his hand and pull him to a stop, then lift myself up to kiss him, planning a soft buss, and then laughing as he captures me long and slow and deep.
A bright light flashes, turning the world inside out, and it takes me a second to realize that the light came from the flash of a camera. It is followed in quick succession by a lightning storm of flashes, and I stumble backward, realizing only after the fact that Damien has pushed me aside.
Damien is in the street, and his fist slams hard into the photographer’s face even as I process the words that have been hanging over my head like a cartoon bubble since the first flash went off—“Fucking A. Stark pays for her, then he shares her.”
The accent is heavily British, and when I see the multiple cameras around the guy’s neck as he stumbles backward, his nose a bloody mess, I realize that he is a celebrity chaser from one of Britain’s tabloids.
I don’t even have time to feel sick before I see Damien lunge for the guy.
“Damien, no!” I shout, but my words come too late. Damien grabs the guy by the shirt front and pulls him back. He seems to hesitate, and then instead of breaking the guy’s face, he grabs one of the cameras and breaks that instead.
“Get the fuck out of here.” His words are low and very, very dangerous, and it’s obvious that the photographer knows that. He turns, then breaks into a run. I grab hold of Damien’s shirt, afraid that he will run after him.
“It’s over,” I say, breathing hard and starting to shake. “Just stop. It’s over.”
But even as I say the words, I know that it is a long, long way from over.
Chapter 11
“I’m sorry,” Damien says in the taxi on the way back to the Hôtel Margaritte.
“For not stopping? For breaking his camera?” I make a face. “It’s okay, really. I don’t give a fuck about him. I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”
“Not for that,” Damien says. “For bringing you here.”
It takes me a moment to understand what he’s talking about. “You mean to Paris? To the club?” I tighten my grip on his hand. “Damien, that’s ridiculous.”
“Is it?” His words are tight. Clipped. “I almost canceled this entire trip after I saw your face in Mexico. How much you enjoyed the beach, the solitude.”
I remember the shadows I had seen on his face when we had talked about leaving the resort, and everything falls into place.
“And then to bring you to a city crawling with press—to put you back in that spotlight,” he continues. “And worse, to take you to that club. It was like opening a damn door for every lowlife asshole—”