Black Tie Billionaire. Naima Simone

Scraping her nails over small, flat nipples, mapping the thin network of veins under his skin, following the path of hair that started midchest. Dragging her fingertips down the delineated ridge of muscles covering his stomach. Tracing the black lines of his tattoo, wishing she could aim more light on it so she could decipher its shape.

      He stood still, letting her tour him without interference, though he fairly hummed with intensity, with barely leashed power.

      “Are you finished yet?” he growled, and she tilted her head back to meet his hooded gaze, her fingers settling on the band of his pants.

      “Not even close,” she breathed. “Kiss me.”

      Someone with his extraordinary sense of restraint most likely didn’t take or obey orders from anyone. But with a flash in those eyes, he gripped the bun at the back of her head and tugged. She gave only a brief thought to the security of the wig before her neck arched. The next breath she took was his.

      Her groan was ragged and so needy it should’ve embarrassed her. Maybe it would tomorrow in the harsh light of day. But tonight, with his tongue twisting and tangling with hers, she couldn’t care. Not when he tasted like everything delicious but forbidden—chocolate-flavored wine, New York cheesecake, impropriety and wickedness. Not when he nipped at her bottom lip, then sucked it, soothing and enhancing the sting before returning to devour her mouth. As if she, too, was something he knew he shouldn’t have but couldn’t resist.

      He lifted his head, taking that lovely mouth with him, and she cried out in disappointment. But he shushed her with hard, stinging kisses to the corner of her lips, along the line of her jaw, down her chin and neck...over the tops of her breasts. In seconds, he stripped her of her bra, baring her to him. His big hands lifted, cupping her, molding her to him. To his pleasure. And hers.

      She grasped his shoulders, clung to him, her ability to think, to move, to breathe a thing of the past as he lowered his head to her flesh. All she could do was stand there with increasingly wobbly knees and receive each lick, suckle and draw of those sensual lips and tongue. And enjoy them.

      Unable not to touch the lure of his hair, she swept her fingers over his head, tunneling them under the knot containing the midnight strands. Eager to see him undone, she briefly wrestled with the thick locks, freeing the tie restraining them. The rough silk fell over her wrists, cool and dense, sliding through her fingers.

      “Oh,” she whispered, at a loss for words as the strands tumbled around his sharp cheekbones and strong jaw. They should’ve softened his features—should have. Instead, they only emphasized the stark planes of his face and his visceral sexuality.

      “God, you’re beautiful.” The praise exited her mouth without her permission, but she couldn’t regret the words. Not when they were the truth.

      Pulling his mouth away from her breasts, he dragged a hot, wet path up her chest, her throat, until he recaptured her mouth. This kiss was hotter, wilder, as if the tether on his control had frayed, and suddenly, her one purpose was to see it snap completely.

      With a small whimper, she trailed her hand over his shoulder, chest and torso, not stopping until she cupped his rigid length through his pants.

      Damn. She shivered, both need and feminine anxiety tumbling in her belly and lower. He more than filled her palm. Reflexively, she squeezed his erection. God, he was so thick, hard...big.

      A rumble emanated from his chest, and his larger hand covered hers, pressing her closer, clasping him tighter. His hips bucked against her palm in demand, and she gladly obeyed. Even as his mouth ravaged hers, she stroked him, loving the growl that rolled out of him. Wanting more.

      Impatient, Shay attacked the clasp of his pants, jerking them open and tugging down the zipper in a haste that would later strike her as unseemly. But right now, she didn’t give a damn. Nothing mattered but his bare, pulsing flesh in her hand. Touching him.

      But just as she reached for him, an implacable grip circled her wrist, stilling her frantic movements.

      “Not yet, moonbeam.” He lifted one of her arms and placed an openmouthed kiss to the center of her palm, the resulting feeling radiating straight to her damp, quivering sex. With a quick crush of his lips to hers, he swiftly divested her of her remaining clothes and shoes, leaving her trembling and naked before him, except for the decidedly unsexy plain, black panties.

      A burst of self-consciousness flared inside her chest, and she fought not to edge backward, away from the weak glow of the cell phone’s light. But as if he’d read her intentions, Gideon cupped her hip, preempting any movement she might’ve made to hide.

      “When a man stands before beauty like yours, there’s only one position he’s supposed to be in,” he murmured. Slowly, he lowered himself to his knees, tipping his head back to continue to meet her gaze. “You deserve to be worshipped.” He swept his lips across her stomach. “And pleasured.” Another sweep, but over the top of her sex. Heat coiled tight, and her core clenched at the tantalizing caress. “Give me permission to give you that.”

      It might’ve emerged as an order, but he wouldn’t continue without her go-ahead. She somehow knew that.

      “Yes,” she breathed, tunneling her fingers through his hair. Holding on tight.

      With a deliberate pace that had her internally screaming, he drew her underwear down her legs and helped her step free of them. Big, elegant hands brushed up her calves and thighs, and once more she wondered at the calluses adding a hint of roughness to the caress. But then she ceased thinking at all.

      “Gideon,” she cried out, fisting his hair, trying to pull him away or tug him closer—she didn’t know. Couldn’t decide. Not when pleasure unlike anything she’d ever experienced struck her with great bolts of lightning. Jesus, his lips, his tongue... They were voracious. Feasting on her, leaving no part of her unexplored, untouched. Long, luxurious swirls, decadent and wicked laps and sucks... He drove her insane with pleasure.

      Just as he’d promised. Just as he’d assured her she deserved.

      He spread her wider, hooking her leg over one of his wide shoulders, granting himself easier access. Like a ravenous beast, he growled against her sensitive, wet sex, and the vibration shoved her closer to the edge of release.

      “You’re so fucking sweet,” he rasped, nuzzling her. “So fucking sweet and pure. A man could get addicted to you. But you have more to give me, don’t you, baby? I’m a greedy bastard, and I want it all.” He uttered the last words almost as if to himself, and with one palm molded to her behind, he dragged the other up the inside of her spread thighs.

      Then he was filling her. Two fingers plunged inside her, and like a match struck to dry kindling, she sparked, flared, exploded into flames. Dimly, she caught his rough encouragement of “That’s it, baby. That’s it.” She loosened a hand from his hair and clapped it over her lips, muffling her cries as she came against his mouth, her hips rolling and jerking.

      Raw, dirty ecstasy, stripped to its barest essentials. That’s who she’d become in this moment as he lapped up every evidence of her desire from her flesh, from the insides of her thighs.

      “Please,” she begged, weakly pushing his head away as he circled her with tender but relentless strokes. “I can’t.”

      “That’s nothing but a challenge to me, moonbeam,” he rumbled, standing, his mouth damp. But when he lowered his head and took her lips in a torrid kiss that replicated how he’d just consumed her, she didn’t back away from the flavor of herself on his lips and tongue. No, she opened wider to him, turned on so bright it ached.

      Palming the back of her thighs, he hiked her in the air. On reflex she wound her legs around his waist. He crossed to the couch, and with each bump of her swollen, sensitive core against his stomach, that recently satiated heat flickered back to life, and she moaned with each caress.

      Her back met the cushions, and Gideon towered over her, half his face cast in shadow. That obsidian gaze never left hers as he removed a thin wallet from his pants pocket and withdrew a