The Dare Collection 2018. Taryn Leigh Taylor

his hands around her muscular thighs, pulled her down over him to cover himself in all that sweet, melting heat and ate her like a ripe peach.

      She was slippery, made of sugar and need, and the first time she shook apart, he could hear the headboard creak when she gripped it.

      But he wasn’t done.

      He wanted more, so he took it, his hands moving from her thighs to worship her ass. He ate at her until she was making those wordless little sounds again, the ones that had kept him up at night. He didn’t think he’d ever been this hard or this desperate to get inside a woman, but he kept going. Until eventually she was grinding her pussy into his face, rocking herself against him and sobbing her way into another orgasm.

      Only then did he crawl out from under her. He flipped her over so she was on her hands and knees, facing the big window and the sea and sky beyond. He knelt behind her, choosing not to notice the way his hands shook as he gripped his own cock and dealt with the condom. Then—finally—guided it to her swollen, scalding-hot pussy.

      She moaned. He felt it, everywhere.

      He felt too damned much.

      Charlie notched himself in her entrance, gripped her lush hips and pounded his way home.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      HE WAS LIKE A STORM.

      Elemental. Uncontrollable.

      Maya braced herself on her elbows, arching into every thick, deep surge. He was so hard. Not just his cock, but the granite muscle of his thighs she could feel every time he plunged so deep inside her.

      And she was already so soft. Melting and spinning, but the rough, perfect thrust of him inside her gave her a kind of focus. She didn’t have to think—maybe she couldn’t think—but she could lose herself in the demanding rhythm.

      It was like disappearing and yet staying fully present, all at the same time.

      She dropped her head, surrendered and let him take them both wherever it was he wanted to go.

      Maya expected that he would find his pleasure quickly. What she didn’t expect was that the way he pounded into her—such an intense, delicious battering that stirred up too many sensations she couldn’t count or name—would stir her up all over again.

      She almost didn’t believe it. But he was so deep, so sure, hard and intense. And before she knew it, that greedy fist—red-hot and wild—was crushing her all over again.

      And this time, as he groaned out his own release deep into her, she shattered into a thousand pieces and cried out his name as she fell.

      When she woke up, it was to find herself all alone, sprawled across her bed at a careless angle. Maya pushed herself up to sitting position gingerly, feeling much the way she had the other day after the shed.

      Used, everywhere.

      In the most wonderful possible way.

      Outside her windows, cloud cover had moved in over the water, but she liked it. She didn’t miss the sun, not when she felt so bright within.

      Maya sat for a moment with all that light inside her, telling herself that it was temporary. It would fade. Nothing this good could stay.

      Still, she held on to it as long as she could.

      She stretched, long and luxuriously. Then she crawled across the mattress, swung her feet to the ground and didn’t bother to cover herself as she padded toward her washroom and that huge tub with its sea views she’d been meaning to try—

      But she stopped dead as she passed the doorway that led into the main room and saw Charlie.

      Still here.

      He was damp from what she assumed was a shower, a towel knotted low at his hips, and he was accepting a rolling room-service cart from one of the hotel staff members.

      The room-service man didn’t look up. He didn’t glance around or notice that Maya was there in the other room. He didn’t seem to realize Maya was there at all, but Charlie did.

      That impossible blue gaze of his flicked to her, then away. He signed something, exchanged a few words in Italian, then let the man out.

      “Did you want to give him a show?” Charlie asked after he’d closed the door and took his time turning back to her. His smile was crooked and echoed deep inside her, instantly getting that fire going when Maya would have sworn it had burned all it could. “We can call him back.”

      “No, thank you.” She sounded prim and repressed, as if she wasn’t standing there naked. “I’m not really a performer.”

      “Are you sure?” That wicked gleam in his eyes made her shiver. “So far, I’m a fan.”

      “I didn’t expect you to still be here.”

      Maya hadn’t meant to blurt that out. Not so...baldly, with such obvious recklessness.

      It hung there in the air between them.

      And she fully expected him to overreact. But he only studied her as if she was the one who didn’t make sense and might blow up at any moment. “Why not?”

      Maya didn’t want to excavate the different layers of the dark things in her gut. What she’d left behind, but worse than that, what she still carried with her. She didn’t want to look at any of it. Not when she could look at him instead.

      She cleared her throat. “I didn’t realize it was that kind of thing.”

      And maybe she had the dim notion that he would be abashed at that. Had she wanted him to be? But it didn’t matter, because all he did was grin wider.

      “It can be any kind of thing you want it to be, babe.”

      “Can it be a thing where you don’t call me babe?”

      “Right now it’s a thing where I’m hungry,” he said, no hint of anything like shame anywhere on his beautiful body, much less that gorgeous face.

      Maya was still naked, and that suddenly felt very different from before. When they’d been in the shed, her skirt had dropped down and it was as if nothing had happened. She’d clung to that as she’d walked away, reeling.

      This was much more...obvious. Vulnerable, maybe.

      And she had the distinct impression that he knew it.

      That was why she made no move to cover herself, though she wanted to. She stayed where she was, watching as Charlie rolled the cart over to the table in the corner, then settled himself down, as if he had every intention of sitting there, watching the sea and having a snack.

      And very much as if she wasn’t there at all.

      What surprised her was the kick of temper that wound through her at that. As if this wasn’t new. As if this was an old fight between people who knew each other.

      Get a grip, Maya, she ordered herself.

      She decided temper required clothing, so she swept up the throw she’d left on a chair earlier. And wrapped it around herself as she slipped into a seat at the table.

      “What did you order?” she asked, as he removed the big silver covers from a selection of plates and then slid them into the center of the table.

      “Food.”

      There was laughter in his blue gaze, and Maya still didn’t know why her heart was kicking at her as if they were in a fight. She hardly knew this man. And sure, the sex had left her reeling and fragile all over again, but he wasn’t doing anything. A monosyllable just made him a man.

      The kind of man she’d read about in books or seen on television shows, because the men she knew never said one word when they could rattle off fifty instead. The men she knew