The Millionaires' Club: Ryan, Alex and Darin: Breathless for the Bachelor

Hiking herself up on an elbow, she clutched the sheet to her breast and turned onto her side so she could watch him. Bless you, moon, she thought with a smile as it illuminated the room like a golden twilight, allowing her full visual access to his sleeping form. There was nothing about him that didn’t fascinate her. His back was so broad. His skin was so smooth and tanned, and beneath it lay muscles that contracted when she ran her hands over him. Like she wanted to run her hands over him now. All over him.

“Like what you see, do you?”

Her gaze shot upward from his hips to see he’d cracked one eye open and was watching her.

There was mischief and seduction blended with the sleep-gruff huskiness in his tone. Feeling brazen and confident of her new, devirgined status, she made a very un-virginlike move.

Grasping the sheet where it covered his hips, she peeled it slowly away, until his tight, muscled buns and thick strong thighs were completely uncovered.

“Like it even better now,” she said, and boldly ran her hand along his leg, from his knee upward around the curve of his buttocks.

He closed his eyes, sank deeper into the bedding. “You’re playing with fire, little girl.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I happen to have it on good authority that you’ve got a hose big enough to put it out.”

The minute she’d said it, she clamped a hand over her mouth. Felt her face turn ten shades of red. With very deliberate movements, she eased onto her back and, mortified, pulled the sheet up over her head and held it there.

The bed shook with his chuckle. “Wanna run that by me again?”

“Noooo. Oh, help. I can’t believe I said that,” she groaned, her words muffled by the sheet.

He laughed again as the mattress shifted and dipped and she felt the warmth of his lean body nestle up beside her.

He tugged on the sheet.

She held it fast. “I’m being embarrassed here. Don’t bother me.”

His index finger drew coaxing circles around her navel through the sheet. “If you come out…I’ll let you play with my hose.”

When she shrieked, he burst into laughter. It was contagious. She was laughing, too, when she lowered the sheet and tucked it beneath her breasts. That didn’t mean she wasn’t still embarrassed.

“Well…obviously, I need a little more practice with my pillow talk.”

“How about this?” He rose up on his elbow and gave her a slow, deep kiss. “You need a little more practice with this, too?”

She turned toward him, wrapped an arm around his ribs at the same time he threw a muscled thigh across her hips. “I don’t think I’ll ever have enough practice with that.”

His mouth curved into a smile against hers. “Lucky for you, I’m a very patient instructor.”

“Lucky for me,” she agreed as he opened his mouth wide over hers and delved inside with his tongue.

It was magic, his mouth. The way he could move it over hers with such hunger and skill…it made her heartbeat quicken. Made her blood pulse in places that retained rich memories of the pleasure he’d given her in the night. She couldn’t imagine anything better than the way his mouth moved over hers.

But then he started moving his kisses lower. To her breast. To her belly. Her eyes went wide, a little shocky when she realized his intent.

“Let me,” he whispered against the silk of her inner thigh when she clamped her legs together in an involuntary reaction to her growing sense of vulnerability.

“Let me,” he whispered again, this time a gentle, insistent command.

He kissed her hip point, ran his tongue down the sensitive groove where leg met body and with persuasive pressure and husky assurances, pushed her thighs apart and settled his shoulders between them.

And then he showed her the real magic of his mouth. With skilled fingers, he parted her feminine folds. With murmured praise, his warm breath whispered against her swollen flesh. With a single-minded dedication that sent her heart rate soaring and stalled her breath on a keening sigh, he surrounded her with wet heat and the electric glide of his tongue…and introduced her to the true wonder of being selflessly loved by a man.

West Texas was known for its brilliant sunsets. Sunrise could be a full-blown religious experience, as well. The colors painting the sky this morning rivaled any Ry had ever seen as he stood, fully dressed in jeans, flannel shirt and boots, staring out the kitchen window listening to the coffee perk. But the canvas of brilliant apricots, golds and lavenders splashed along the eastern horizon were lost on him. His mind was full of Carrie.

The red of her hair, the dusky brown of her sensitive nipples, the creamy ivory tone of her skin…especially the skin covering her belly and the inside of her silky thighs. His senses were steeped in the scent of her, in the sounds she’d made when he’d made love to her, the uninhibited joy she’d discovered in her sensuality.

Everything about last night had been incredible. Everything about her had been wonderful.

And everything had been wrong.

Jaw clenched with self-condemnation and guilt, he swore under his breath and called himself ten kinds of fool. He never should have started with her, but once he had, he hadn’t been able to stop. Inexperienced, untutored, virginal…even one of the three words that had applied to her should have been enough to make him put on the skids. Combined, there was more than enough reason to curb his baser instincts. But with Carrie, what should have been deterrents were unbelievable turn-ons. She’d been so hungry to know…so willing to learn…so incredibly responsive to the slightest touch.

Inexperienced, untutored, virginal. Now she was none of those things. He’d taken them all away from her.

With movements of automation, he reached for a mug, filled it, then resumed his study of the breaking dawn. And tried to figure out where to go from here.

By the time he heard her soft footsteps on the terra-cotta tile of the kitchen floor a few minutes later, the time for figuring was over. He knew what he had to do.

He turned slowly, schooled his face into a blank sheet of paper…and felt his heart hit the floor when he saw her.

He wasn’t sure where she’d found that shirt; it was old and blue and soft from many washings. And it had never looked like that on him.

She was all long, golden legs and demure smiles…and when she lifted a hand and shoved her hair from her face, revealing that Whelan cowlick that entranced and fascinated him, it was all he could do to keep from marching her backward toward his bedroom and tumbling her onto the mattress covered in tangled sheets and the scent of her.

He knew what she wanted. A “hello lover” smile. Open arms. Reassurances that last night was as wonderful for him as she obviously felt it was for her.

And she deserved all of that and more. But all he could manage was a grim scowl and what he felt was the right, if not the best, resolution to atone for his mistake. “We need to get married.”

Eight

Carrie felt liquid and languid and pretty darn pleased with her new status as an experienced woman when she eased out of Ry’s bed that morning. She stretched, and smiling at the memories, ran her hands gingerly over some wonderfully tender spots. It was then she realized all her clothes were in the living room.

It was a long way to walk birthday-suit naked on the morning after the most incredible night of her life. She shouldn’t be shy…not after the things they’d shared. The things they’d done. But even as she stood there, knowing Ry could come walking back into the bedroom at any moment, even knowing he knew her body more intimately than she did, she felt a warm flush of color creep through her blood and heat her skin.

His closet seemed like her best option. She snagged the first shirt she found, held it to her face and breathed in the scent of clean and Ry. As she slipped it on, she figured she should probably worry about her hair, but just then the only thing she was worried about was catching Ry before he left the house to start his workday. She needed to see his face. Look into his eyes and find the same love and longing she felt for him.

So when she walked into the kitchen and saw him standing there facing the sunrise—his broad shoulders wrapped in dark flannel, his lean hips tucked into work-worn jeans—her heart did that little stutter step it had been doing for years whenever she saw him. Only, this time she knew why it fluttered so. He was her lover. And he’d made her feel things she’d never dreamed possible.

Something must have alerted him to her presence. His shoulders tensed in the moment before he set his coffee mug on the counter. When he turned, she was smiling…feeling a blood-quickening mix of sweet anticipation and morning-after uncertainty. An uncertainty that grew when his beautiful face remained a mask of unreadable emotions.

She touched a hand to her hair, nervous suddenly and not knowing why.

Until he spoke.

“We need to get married.”

She stared at the mouth that had been soft and sensual and needy in the night. This morning it was set in a hard, tense line—yet still, some part of her brain waited for the Good morning, lover. Last nightwas fantastic. I can’t get enough of you. Let’s startall over again.