I hooked my hands around his neck and leaned back so that I could see his face. “Even when you were scared and angry, you still thought of me. You’re going to Los Angeles because of me. Because of my dad.”

“Yes,” he said as he took his finger and slowly traced my lower lip. “I can’t not think of you, Kat. Even if you hadn’t come to me—even if I’d never touched you again—you would still fill my days and my nights and my imagination. I’d sketch you if I couldn’t have you, and I would mourn the loss of you in my arms.”

I blinked, and a tear trickled down my cheek.

He brushed it away. “I need you now, Kat. Here and now and hard. Because I need to know that you’re here and that you’re real—and that you’re really mine.”

“You know I am,” I said, my voice breathy because of all the emotion trapped in my throat. I leaned forward and our mouths collided, teeth banging, tongues warring. I felt overwhelmed, taken by him—and damned if I wasn’t taking right back.

His hand was inside my shirt and mine fumbled at his zipper. I have no idea how he managed it, but somehow my shirt and bra ended up on the floor, and I was straddling him, my hand inside his pants, his erection hot and hard under my hand.

“Christ, I need to be inside you,” he said, as he cupped his hand over my sex, stroking me through my jeans as if we were two horny teenagers in the backseat of a car.

“I want you in my mouth,” I said.

“No.” He shifted his hands so that he was gripping my hips, then yanked my jeans down. “I’m going to fuck you, Kat. I need to be inside you. I need to feel you tight around me.”

I felt my body clench in time with his words, and my breath came shallow and hard. “Whatever you want,” I said, my body melting under the knowledge that however he wanted me, I would happily submit. “Whatever you need.” Frantically, I struggled to get out of my jeans, then my panties, until I was naked and on his lap, my fingers fumbling at his waistband as I tried to shove his jeans down.

They didn’t come all the way off, but once his cock was free, I didn’t give a flying fuck about his jeans—I just wanted him. Inside me. Hot and hard and thick. And I held on to his shoulders, straddling him, reaching down to find his cock and position the thick head at my center.

“Now,” he said, gripping my hips and pushing me down, hard and fast, so that he filled me completely. Pain and pleasure shot through me, red streaks brought on by the violence of the motion. The wonderful, desperate intensity of it that had me crying out, “Yes, oh, god, Cole, yes!”

My words echoed in the small cabin, and as the sound surrounded us, my eyes went wide. I’d forgotten where we were, and I saw the twitch of his mouth when he realized what I was thinking. And then, very slowly and deliberately, he reached up and pressed the privacy button near the lightswitch on the ceiling.

“She heard that,” I whispered.

“Does it bother you?” he asked, as he lowered his hand to tease my clit. “Does it bother you if she knows that I’m fucking you? That I’m deep inside you? That you’re naked and hot and that I’m going to make you scream when you come?”

“No.” I could barely force the word out from the pleasure his words and his touch were shooting through me. “No,” I repeated. And then, because I wanted him to know just how much I meant it, I leaned forward and hooked my arms around his neck, putting my body at an angle and lifting my ass off his legs as I impaled myself over and over in a sensual rhythm that made both of us just a little crazy.

“Spank me,” I said, and felt his cock harden inside me with the whisper of my words. “Make my ass red, Cole. I want to feel the sting of your hand, even after you’re done with me. Spank me because the thought that Jana knows what we’re doing makes me so damn wet. Spank me,” I murmured, “because you know you want to. And because, dammit, I want to feel you come.”

He groaned in response to my words, a pure, sensual sound full of need and longing. And just when I was afraid that he was going to ignore my demand, I felt the sweet sting of his palm against my rear. I cried out, the sound silenced when he captured my mouth with his.

“Now,” he demanded, when he broke the kiss, then landed another sweet spank to my ass, making my body arch up in a way that not only teased my clit, but forced his cock deeper inside me. “Come for me now, Catalina.”

And then, because I was his and knew that I always would be, I gave myself over to him, let myself go, and shattered in the arms of this man who had claimed me.

eighteen

“I don’t have to tell you how much I appreciate you squeezing us in today,” Cole said to the positively gorgeous man who sat across the table from us, his stunning wife at his side.

Of course I’d recognized both of them the moment the waiter had led us through the cozy Malibu restaurant to the patio dining area. Not only was Damien Stark a former tennis star turned billionaire entrepreneur, but he’d also been all over the news not that long ago. Sex, scandal, murder. The kind of stuff that the tabloids ate up—especially when you were as photogenic as Stark and his now-wife, Nikki Fairchild Stark.

I’d gotten over my awe quickly enough, though. Damien was casual and friendly and completely down to earth in a plain T-shirt and black jeans. And when Nikki insisted she and I share an order of cheese fries—which is so not the usual fare for model-beautiful LA women, I’d developed a little bit of a girl crush.

“Today’s no trouble at all,” Nikki said in response to Cole’s comment. “Our flight’s not scheduled until much later tonight, so this is the perfect pre-trip dinner.”

“And the gallery’s right next door,” Damien added. “We can swing by there after we’re done.”

“I’d like that,” Cole said. “This trip isn’t about checking up on any of the Knight Holdings properties, but if we can squeeze in a quick run-through, that would be great.”

“An art gallery?” I asked, confused. Cole had yet to explain to me how this trip to LA was supposed to help my dad, and I was doubly confused now that we were dining with Damien Stark. If an art gallery was now involved, I was starting to get a little nervous. Not that I didn’t trust Cole, but this was beginning to feel like he was setting up a long con in order to get out from under a short one.

Cole squeezed my hand. “Nothing to do with the casino property,” he said, apparently reading my mind. His words also told me that whatever he was planning here in LA centered around the land at the heart of Daddy’s problem. And that it wasn’t a secret—or at least not much of one. Otherwise, he’d be keeping quiet about the land around Damien.

“I never did learn how you two know each other,” I asked.

“I’ve known Cole for years,” Damien said. “We met through one of his business partners, Evan Black, and then got to know each other better in the last year or so.”

“Evan bought a few galleries from Damien about a year ago,” Cole added. “He transferred them to Knight Holdings, and I’ve been overseeing their operation for the last six months.”

Our meal arrived, and the conversation shifted to the kind of random tidbits that people talk about on a beautiful spring evening. Plans for the next day, for the summer. Movies, cars, the absolutely incredible cheeseburger the waitress had put in front of me.