Her High-Stakes Playboy

“More,” she breathed. “I want more.” Her mouth still on his, she stepped back enough to push his shirt away from his shoulders, and he shrugged it off.

And she caught a breath of delight. His was a body made for movement, the arms hard and sculpted, the belly corrugated with muscle. She traced her fingers down over the ripples of his abs. When he sucked in a breath, she dipped lower to trace over the swell of his hard-on under his jeans.

She wanted the feel of his skin against hers. Gwen reached for the hem of her own top, but Del caught at her hands. “Oh, no, that’s for me to do,” he murmured. He slipped his hands around her waist, sliding over the bare skin and up under the stretchy crop top she wore. His fingers trailed up her back, and the immediacy of the contact made her shiver, and shiver again when he slid them around to the front to fill his hands with the curves of her breasts. The fabric diminished the sensation, and she strained against him with a noise of frustration. She wanted his touch on her naked breasts. Instead he slid his hands up her sides and along her arms, until the rolled-up shirt was just a memory tossed across the room.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Del said hoarsely as he stepped back and just looked at her in her sheer black bra. She flushed and glanced down, pulling her arms in toward her in what seemed like a reflex action. Catching her wrists, he pulled them gently aside. “Let me look at you. You’re such a turn-on.”

She was delicious, all soft and curvy. He wanted more, though. One minute she was all confidence, the next minute self-conscious. There was something about the way she met his eyes, suddenly hesitant. He wanted it gone. He wanted her wet and abandoned, twisting against him. He wanted to hear her cry out. He wanted to taste her. Reaching down, he unzipped her jeans. “These come off. Now.”

Slipping the denim down, he savored the feel of her silky skin against his palms, then pressed her back onto the ridiculously high sleigh bed that mirrored the decadence of the rest of the hotel. One at a time he pulled off her spike-heeled shoes. Her jeans followed and he tossed them aside.

She sat up. “I want to…”

“No.” He pressed her down. “Let me.” He started at her instep, kissing the tender skin, then tracing the inside of her calves with his tongue. Working his way up her thighs, he pleased himself by teasing her, licking close to the silky lace at the vee between her legs, going just under the edge before moving away. Because he had plans and he was nothing if not a patient man.

Rising, he stripped off his own jeans and leaned over the bed. Her breathing became more ragged and she shuddered a little as he moved up over her flat belly, along the sides of her waist. With a snap he unfastened the front clasp of her bra and peeled back the cups.

Dry-mouthed with anticipation, Gwen stared up at him. The touch, when it came, wasn’t the cupping of a hand or the brush of fingers but the stroke of a tongue, wet and warm against her. She licked her lips and waited for more. When he bent to her breasts again, he took his time, until the suction and rub of his tongue over her swollen nipples started an answering resonance down where she was wet and fevered.

Tension tightened her and she twined her fingers in his hair, drawing him up to her so that she could press a hard, openmouthed kiss on him. She curved her arms around him, mad for him to lie alongside her, but he kept away. “Later,” he promised and moved back down her body.

This time he focused on her breasts, kneading them, rolling the nipples with light pressure as he kissed his way down her body. The brush of the hair on his forearms against her body made her shudder, the warmth of his lips made her toss and turn. When she felt him slip off her lacy underwear, she slid her fingers into his hair. “Oh, god,” she breathed.

The mattress gave just a bit as he settled himself between her legs. She felt the brush of his hair against her inner thigh, felt the warmth of his breath. Every atom of her being was tensed in anticipation. Her hips moved just a bit, involuntarily. He gave a chuckle deep in his throat and settled himself between her legs. “Not until you’re begging.”

Lightly, maddeningly lightly, his tongue brushed the lips that enfolded her clitoris. When he separated them, she gave a hum of satisfaction and expectation, but he ignored the hard bud where she ached to be touched. Instead he licked at her folds, dipped inside her, touched her everywhere but the point that would give her release.

She clawed at his shoulders, pulled him toward her. “Please,” she managed. “Oh, please.”

And then his mouth was on her, sending her gasping and flinging her head back into the pillow. Hard and relentless, he drove her, tongue tracing maddening patterns that sent her flailing upward toward some crest, some climax, some pinnacle of ultimate release.

Yet just as she was trembling at the edge, he backed off again, leaving her achingly unfulfilled while he teased her with other touches, his hands on her breasts, his mouth against her thigh. She dragged at him, hands on his head as she urged him to take her over.

And he did, his mouth driving her up, sending her gasping, hips jolting against him, seeking that final touch. But just when he had her shuddering, crying out mindlessly, just when she could feel the climax looming, he moved away.

“Don’t stop,” she cried raggedly, the pressure of the unrealized orgasm pounding through her.

“I’m not. I’m just changing gears.” Breathing hard, Del slid off to stand beside the high bed. She felt a little thrill as he pulled her to the edge, stepping close enough to stretch her legs up the length of his torso, her ankles hooked over his shoulders. Stiff and hard, his cock jerked just a little with arousal as he sheathed it. Then he took the head of it and slid it into the slick cleft between her legs, running it up and down a few times, each brush of the smooth skin against her engorged clitoris making her gasp.

“Oh, like that,” she rasped, but he shook his head.

“I think you’re resourceful enough to do it for yourself,” he murmured and in that instant pumped his hips to slide into her up to the root.

Thick, hard, solid, it dragged a cry from her. Moving against him, she savored every bit of friction as his cock slid in and out, in and out. She trembled on the edge of orgasm.

But she didn’t quite go over. It was taunting to feel so much, to have his hands sliding up and down her legs and still have her desire remain unslaked.

She had to do something or she’d go mad. She needed hands on her breasts, needed something to ease the throb. One hand crept closer to the vee between her legs. When her finger slid into the warm wetness, when she felt the slide of it over the hard knob of her clitoris, she gasped.

“Oh, yeah, touch yourself,” Del said softly, and Gwen swore he got harder. “Show me what you like.” He caught her ankles and moved them apart a little, watching her avidly, watching himself move in and out of her.

Any vestige of self-consciousness was gone. Gwen circled her finger over her clit, each touch tightening the tension that strung her taut, each touch in time with the hard, swift strokes of his cock. She was almost delirious with the sensation that battered her from all directions. Close to the edge, she was so close she didn’t think but raised her free hand to her breast, brushing the tender skin, squeezing the nipple.

“Oh, man,” Del cried out raggedly, even as the bolt of sensation flung her over the edge to orgasm. It was hard, jolting, tearing staccato cries from her as the pleasure battered her over and over again. And even as she was still shuddering with pleasure, he groaned and spilled himself.

SOFTNESS. WARMTH. DEL REDMOND woke to find his face pressed against a fragrant spill of hair, his arms full of silky, curvy woman. It wasn’t an experience he’d had very much of since his divorce two years before. Or very much the year or so before his divorce, come to think of it. He liked it, the way Nina fit in his arms, spooned against him. He liked it a lot.

As to the night before, well, it had been mind-blowing, pure and simple. The way she’d touched him, the way she’d moved, had brought him astonishing release. The two of them might not know each other from Adam outside of bed, but in it they were incredibly compatible.

Of course, he was in Vegas to work, not to have a fling with a woman. Then again, so long as he got the job done, who was to care? And this wasn’t just any woman. This was a woman who attracted him, who aroused him.

Who intrigued him.

A low whine had him glancing at the nightstand to see his muted cell phone flashing. Recognizing the number, he gave a quiet curse and slipped his arm out from under Nina. She rolled over with a sleepy murmur, dragging the covers with her.

Del rose and headed to the bathroom. “Redmond here,” he said, closing the door and sitting down on the edge of the tub.

“It’s ten-thirty in the morning. Where’s your copy, Redmond?”

“Morning, Perry, how are you?” Del could picture Ed Perry, the Globe’s comfortably paunchy sports editor, his balding head counterbalanced by a neat Vandyke.

“How am I? Not nearly as good as you, I’m sure. So where’s my column on the poker life, champ? What are you doing—drinking, chasing after women?”

Del glanced uneasily at the door. “I wrote a story yesterday. I’ll get it filed this morning.”

“You know, I send you to Vegas, plum assignment. This is not what I expect in thanks.”

“Hey, this was your bright idea, not mine.” Walking to the counter, Del pulled his electric shaver out of his leather toilet kit.

“Who was the one bitching about another year covering the All-Star game?”

“Me,” Del admitted.

“Is that a razor I hear? Are you shaving?” Perry demanded. “You really have spent the day in bed.”

“You’re the one who’s always telling me to multitask,” Del reminded him. “I’m not a gambler, Perry. The last time I was in Vegas was when I played here in college.”

“Not a gambler, huh?” the editor grunted. “So how was it again you fleeced me for forty bucks in last week’s poker game?”

Del moved the razor in circles over one cheek, then the other. “Look, a friendly poker game with the guys to drink beer and shoot the shit is one thing. Out here you’re talking hard core. These people are up all night. Everything I own reeks of cigarette smoke.” He ran the razor along his jaw.

“Switch that thing the hell off, will you? It’s buzzing in my ear like a mosquito.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch.”

“Me? What about you? Anyway, you were getting stale. I figured something different would shake you up.”

Del snorted. “Hardly. You just wanted to distract me from the newsroom job.”