With her.

Of course he didn’t make it easy for her to remain silent as his hand stroked slowly over her ribs, down to her waist, and then the curve of her hips. She trembled with the effort to keep from voicing her pleasure at his touch. Especially after a night when she’d been able to let herself go completely.

When she simply hadn’t had any choice but to let go.

She’d thought it was just for that one, very special night when all rules—all worries—were off. Only, this time, the sweetness of his touch wasn’t enough to combat the brutal reminder of who he was.

Smith Sullivan, movie star.

How could she have let herself forget?

Not that going back to assess the hows and whys mattered much at this point. The point was that she had forgotten. And, more important, she needed to never, ever forget again.

At least on set, she was constantly viewing him in his producer, director, or actor role. Whereas with his family, at Alcatraz, on his boat—and most definitely when she was in his bed—Smith was simply a wonderful man.

Not to mention the most sensual, most infuriatingly persistent man she’d ever known.

Of course, despite all of the stern warnings and reminders she’d just given herself, during the long minutes that felt like hours as he chatted with her sister and the journalist, Valentina’s body continued to heat up by degrees. Smith never came close to touching her br**sts, or between her legs, but it was almost worse that he didn’t because everywhere he didn’t touch throbbed, swelled with need, even as she prayed for his interview to end.

Although, in her secret heart of hearts, she knew she didn’t want the interview to ever end. Not if it meant she had to finally make herself leave Smith’s arms.

At long last, when she could have sworn he’d run his hands over every inch of her skin but the spots that ached desperately for his touch, he finally put down his phone...and turned his entire focus back to her.

“Sorry about that. Now,” he said as his fingertips drew a trail of goosebumps over the delicate skin on the inside of her forearm, “where were we?”

She took a deep, too-shaky, breath. “I was leaving.”

Most men would have been more than happy to let their one-night stand escape. Heck, pretty much any other man on the planet would have been telling her not to let the door hit her too hard on the way out...and any other woman on the planet would have been begging Smith to let her stay.

When the thought occurred to her that maybe that was why they’d always fit together so well—because neither of them behaved as they should—she fought to shove it away.

His hand didn’t still on her skin. The same slow stroke of heat warmed her more with every pass he made over her curves as he said, “I don’t want you to go,” in a low voice that thrummed up and down her spine and over her skin.

“You know what we agreed last night,” she reminded him.

“I know what we agreed,” he said, “but that was before.”

That one word—before—and all the memories of the after that had included his mouth, his hands, his body over hers, forced her to silently acknowledge her own foolishness.

Had she really thought she could get what she needed from him in one short night to fill her well, scratch her itch, and purge the desire from her system? And hadn’t she known all along that his kisses, his hands warming her skin, his body pressing down hard and perfect over hers, would be akin to a trap?

One she’d never, ever want to get out of.

She wouldn’t deny that somewhere between working together on set and a moonlit dinner on the rocks at Alcatraz, they had become friends. And, oh, to be Smith’s lover was truly an extraordinary thing.

But giving her body and laughter and companionship to him was one thing. Giving her heart to him would be another entirely.

Because no matter how much she enjoyed being with him, regardless of how wonderful he’d been thus far, at the end of the day, he was still in the one profession in which forever truly meant nothing. Valentina’s mother had wanted to believe in that false forever so many times. But wanting to believe in the fairytale hadn’t ever been enough to actually make it come true.

Even worse, the whole thing would end up captured on film, by photographers and cameramen who worked for a public that couldn’t get enough of their stars’ private lives.

“Last night was amazing.” There was less than no point in acting like it wasn’t. “But that doesn’t change who you are. Or who I am.” Only, when her crystal-clear logic didn’t convince him to lift his limbs from where he still had her pressed to the bed beside him, frustration at just how badly she wanted to stay with him had her saying, “You should have let me go during your interview. It wasn’t fair that you kept me here.”

Smith had her all the way on her back with her hands held above her head so quickly that the air squeaked out of her lungs.

“Fair? Do you think any of this is fair?” His eyes went nearly to black right before his mouth took hers in a hard kiss, one that had lost any veneer of gentleness. “Do you think it’s fair that I’m falling for a woman who wants nothing to do with me just because of my job?”

He nipped at her lower lip this time, before taking her mouth again in a kiss that had her own mouth responding to the heady mix of pleasure and pain. And as his free hand cupped her breast, even though somewhere in the back of her head the thought came that she should be frightened of a man who had just lost his control and was now letting loose his frustration on her, she arched into Smith’s touch instead.

How could she ever be afraid of him? He’d been so gentle, so sweet with her from the very beginning. He’d held her in his arms when she’d talked about her father. He’d treated her sister like the precious jewel she was. And she also knew that what they’d shared together the previous night could never be misconstrued as just sex...because it had been making love, from the first kiss to the last gasp of pleasure.

Her tongue was tangling with his now as his hand moved lower, over her stomach, then lower still, before he lifted his mouth from hers, his eyes blazing with heat and frustration and boundless desire as he stared down at her.

“Is it fair that I can’t stop thinking about you for one second when I’m working on the biggest film of my life and shouldn’t be thinking about another goddamned thing?”

If he hadn’t been holding her hands so firmly above her head, she would have reached for his face to comfort him. Instead, all she could do was shake her head.