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.

He was big and hard and for a moment her brain forgot all about business. All she could think was how good it would feel to make love with him again.

And she probably would have done just that, had he not said, “It’s my fault. I kept you up too late last night, even though I knew you needed to work today.”

God, why did their mornings always have to be so awkward? It didn’t help that her phones wouldn’t stop ringing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I need to get that real quick just to let them know I’m on my way.”

She grabbed the phone closest to her and said, “Hi. Sorry.” She had her face in her hands as she said, “I overslept. I’ll be there really soon." She hung up. “That was Lori. She sounds really worried about—”

Her words fell away as she noticed that Marcus wasn’t in the bed anymore, that he was standing on the opposite side of the room and had already put on his pants. She was the one who should have been dressed already and heading out the door, but from the look on his face, he was clearly planning to beat her to it. She could also clearly see from his stiff body language to the regret on his face that he wanted nothing more than to walk away from her, from the incredible night they’d spent together.

Of course, right then, she had to remember what she’d asked him before falling asleep in his arms: “How about two nights instead of one?”

Nicola’s first reaction was to cringe, to feel like a pathetic idiot for having asked for more time with him. She pulled the sheet off the bed to cover herself as she stood to face the man who had brought her more pleasure than she’d even known was possible.

Only, instead of letting him leave before she embarrassed herself any further, she quickly reminded herself that everything she’d ever wanted, she’d gone for.

Despite how hard it was, how potentially mortifying, despite the huge potential hit to her pride, she knew deep inside that she and Marcus had shared something special. Not just the sex, but those sweet moments of connection, too.