Stark After Dark (18 page)

“Offering to wait on me?”

“Anything you want,” I say. “Anything you need.”

He squeezes my hand. “I have everything I need.”

My smile is so wide that it almost hurts. Around us, I see other customers watching us and grinning, too, as if our passion is infectious. I recognize a few as neighbors, who undoubtedly know that we are newlyweds. Then again, considering how much the tabloids and social media report on our every move, I imagine that the whole world knows we're newlyweds.

I swipe my finger through the chocolate that is left on Damien's plate, then lift it to his lips. His brows rise ever so slightly, and then he draws my finger in, lightly sucking and sending such sparks of ecstasy through me that it's a wonder I don't moan with pleasure.

When I pull my finger gently away, I can't help my smile of victory. I'm quite certain that at least someone on this deck has a smartphone and a Twitter account, and that picture will be all over social media within the hour. Normally, that would bother me.

Right now, I not only don't care, I want it.

I want the world to see us in love. To see the way we look at each other. The way we complete each other.

I'm happier than I've ever been, and if I can't shout it from the rooftops, then I'll just let the world shout it for me on social media.

“You're smiling,” Damien says.

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“Good point.” He stands. “Ready?”

I nod, then start to head for the door into the bakery. He tugs me to a stop and nods to the stairs. “I'll come back for the car when I go for a run later. Right now, let's walk home.”

I love Southern California. Although it is technically winter, the temperature is already in the mid-sixties, with the forecast predicting highs in the seventies. I take off my shoes, and Damien does the same, and we walk in the surf, where the water is frigid no matter what the season.

We hold hands and talk about everything and nothing as we walk home. “Hard to believe we're already into the second week of February,” I say, thinking that we've just come back from our honeymoon and now it's almost Valentine's Day. I feel a bit like a kid whose birthday is the week before Christmas. “I wasn't even thinking about the timing when we picked our wedding day.”

“You mean the weather? It's usually a bit colder this time of year, but it's always comfortable.”

I glance sideways at him, wondering if he's really that clueless. His expression, however, is entirely unreadable.

“I just meant—” I cut myself off, frustrated.

His brow furrows. “What?”

Communication,
I think.
Marriage is all about communication.

“I was just thinking that our first Valentine's Day is almost here.”

“Not even close,” he says.

“Um, less than a week. That's right around the corner.”

I don't realize that he's stopped until I've gone a few more steps. I turn back. Damien actually looks a little worried, and I confess I'm surprised. This will be our first Valentine's Day together, and knowing Damien and romance, I'd anticipated him doing it up big. I tell myself it's stupid to get my feelings hurt, especially since there's a week to go, and Damien could pull off amazing with only five minutes' notice.

Still, I can't help feeling disappointed. Which is completely and totally unfair, but there you go.

I draw in a breath and plaster on one of my best pageant smiles. “Actually, you're right,” I say. “As far as you and I are concerned, a week is practically a lifetime.”

“Nikki. Come here.” His voice is low and apologetic, and I keep my face bland because now I am certain that he forgot. He just…forgot.

People forget things, though, right? Even newlyweds.

Even Damien Stark.

I move into his arms, in part because he asked me to, but also because I want to be close enough to him that if I tilt my head down he won't see the stupid, foolish, idiotic tears that are starting to well in my eyes.

He slides his hands over my arms, moving them until I'm cupping his ass—along with the small, square box tucked into his back pocket.

“Take it out.” His voice is firm, but I think I hear a faint hint of amusement.

I blink, then do as he asks. It's a small, white cardboard box, the kind that department stores use to package jewelry. Confused, I look up at Damien, and I no longer wonder if he's amused. It's very clear that he is.

“Open it.”

I'm starting to feel very foolish, but I do as he asks and gently tug off the lid to reveal a necklace on which hangs a tiny glass bottle. Inside the bottle is a rolled up piece of paper.

I look up at Damien, confused. “It's lovely.”

“Take out the scroll.”

“Really?” I don't wait for his reply, but use my fingernails to pull out the tiny cork. The paper is harder to get out, but Damien fishes a little army knife out of his front pocket, then passes the tiny pair of tweezers to me. I realize as he does that he'd brought the knife in anticipation of this moment.

Even with the tweezers, it takes some skill to fish out the paper. I finally manage, though, and I unscroll it, then squint at the tiny writing.

For my wife for Valentine's Day,

A proposition, if I may—

Three clues for you,

You know what to do—

And if you want your present to claim,

You're going to have to play my game.

Now here's the clue that I speak of:

Tell me, darling Nikki, what is sweeter than Love?

“Damien.” My voice is soft, muted by the happy, astounded tears that have clogged my throat.

“I can't claim to be a poet,” Damien says, though I think the poem is charming, and all the more wonderful because Damien wrote it.

He hooks his finger under my chin and tilts my head up so that there is no way I can hide my tear-filled eyes. “Three clues. Six days. I think you'll make it.”

My heart has swollen so much it seems to fill my chest, cutting off my ability to breathe. “You didn't forget.”

The softness I see in his eyes just about slays me. “Oh, baby. I could sooner forget my own name than our first Valentine's Day.”

“I love you.” The words seem thin compared to the emotion that pours through me.

“And I you. But, Nikki,” he adds, and now his voice takes on a harder edge, belied only by the slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. “You doubted me. I think that deserves a punishment.”

I cock my head, wary, then squeal when he smacks my bottom. I laugh and take off toward the house at a run.

But not too fast. After all, I'm hoping that Damien will catch me.

Since Damien is in exceptional shape—and since I'm not exactly trying hard to get away—he catches me easily enough. He tugs me to a stop, then scoops me into his arms. I kick and squirm a little just for form, but there's no denying that I am a very willing captive.

I keep my arms hooked around his neck as he carries me up the path and then surprises me by veering off onto the newly constructed tennis court.

There is a plush lounge chair on the sidelines, which I have recently realized he put there so that I would have a place to sit and watch him practice. That's not all it's good for, though, especially as it is as wide as a twin bed and at least as comfortable.

“Damien,” I protest as he pulls my sweater over my head. “It's broad daylight.” I don't add that there is still a chill in the air. The temperature may be in the sixties, but right at this moment my skin is so heated that I could be naked in Antarctica and not even notice.

“So it is.” He doesn't even slow down, however. Instead he reaches for the button on my pants. He unfastens it, then eases the zipper down. He tugs the capris down over my hips, then moves lower until he reaches my feet, still bare from our walk on the beach.

He brushes a finger over the arch of my foot, making me squirm. Then he pulls the pants fully off, leaving me in only a bra and my very tiny panties.

Damien's eyes skim over me, the heat in his gaze affecting me as potently as if his hands were skimming over me. I feel my body go soft and wet, and when his focus turns to my crotch, I moan softly in anticipation of his touch.

Slowly, he peels me out of my underthings until I am naked on the lounge chair and burning under Damien's gaze.

“Beautiful,” he murmurs, and I feel the warm current of a blush as it creeps up my skin.

Slowly, he traces his fingers over my body. Up my shin, over my thigh, then along the soft skin of my inner thigh. He moves with casual ease over the scars that once embarrassed me, but that I rarely think about now with Damien. And then his hands are traveling up, over my belly, up my rib cage. He slows at my breasts, using the tip of his finger to stroke and tease before lightly pinching my nipple and sending a shock of pleasure through me that is so sweetly profound it makes me arch up, but whether that is because the sensation is too intense to endure or because I am trying to make it last even longer, I do not know.

“Stand up,” he finally says. “I want to see you.”

I do, standing naked on the court at the foot of the chaise, my body soft and ready. My breasts are tight, my nipples like pinpoints of need. And my clit is so sensitive that even the slight breeze is driving me a little mad. I am wet—so wet—and my sex throbs with demand, my arousal growing with each beat of my heart.

“This isn't fair,” I say, though I'm not entirely sure how I have managed to form words. “I'm naked, and you're not.”

“I'd hate for you to think I'm inequitable, Mrs. Stark.”

I watch, mesmerized, as he eases out of his clothes. He is exceptional when he is fully clothed. Naked and erect, he is like a god, wild and virile and powerful.

He lies on the chaise, then crooks a finger to call me. I don't hesitate, and I ease over him, my knees on either side of his hips so that his erection strokes me, making me tremble. Making me even more wet.

Since I am pretty much certain that I will die if I don't have him inside me right this instant, I take his cock in my hand—intending to stroke and position him against my sex—but I am foiled by the shake of his head and the crisp way that he says a single word. “No.”

“I—what?”

He makes a spinning motion. “Turn around and come here. I want to taste you.”

I hesitate, not sure why I feel suddenly awkward. It's not like Damien's never gone down on me. As far as I'm concerned, his tongue is magical.

But to straddle his mouth, and backward…

The thought is both arousing and a bit disconcerting.

“Nikki.” He says my name in the kind of voice that brooks no argument, and I comply, both because he has ordered me to, and because I want it, this new intimacy. With Damien, there is nowhere he can take me that I won't go, and so help me I want to go everywhere with him.

His hands cup my rear, and I understand the benefit of this position the moment his tongue strokes me, soft and teasing. Because although Damien is holding me, I have more control. I can shift and move, and make the pleasure build fast or slow.

More than that, I can see him. His long, muscular thighs. That gorgeous chest with just the slightest hint of hair. Those rock-hard abs that my fingers know so well.

And the beautiful cock, so hard now that I think it must be painful. And what kind of a wife would I be if I didn't give my husband just a little relief?

Feeling both aroused and mischievous, I lean forward at the waist, which has the added benefit of moving my hips slightly even as Damien's tongue thrusts inside me. I swallow a moan as my body tightens around him.
Christ, yes, I want his cock
. If not inside me, then in my mouth. I want to feel him get harder. I want to taste his arousal. I want to make Damien feel as wild and crazed as he is making me feel.

And so slowly, I lick the crown, then smile in satisfaction as he grows even harder. As he groans against my cunt before teasing me more, his tongue working magic on my clit.

I take him in, almost coming merely from the taste of him, all heat and male, arousal and spice.

Above us, the sun shines down. I feel the warmth on my back, and the knowledge that we are outside, so deliciously intimate, makes me even more aroused. A tremor runs through my body, and I know that I am close. That the storm is building and soon Damien will take me over the edge, and I so desperately want him to go with me. I use my tongue, laving and stroking, and I feel him getting harder, tighter. Closer.

Then it's right there—so close, I'm so goddamn close—

And then his touch is gone, and I'm left stranded on that precipice, aroused and ready with no one to take me over.

Damien has managed to extricate himself from beneath me, and now he is stretched out beside me. And though he looks just as aroused as I feel, there is no denying the amusement that flickers in his eyes.

“What the hell?” I demand and earn a laugh from my husband.

“I'm pretty sure I told you this was a punishment. For doubting me, remember?”

I open my mouth, fully prepared to call him a nasty name, but then he tells me to bend over his knee.

I stay quiet. And then, because I'm feeling bold, I say huskily, “You do realize that's not a punishment at all.”

“I know,” he says, and the dark promise in his tone makes me shiver.

He moves to sit at the foot of the chaise, and I eagerly bend across his lap, already more aroused than I was just moments before. It's not about the anticipation of pain, though there is no denying that I will always want the pain. But I do not need it nearly as often as I used to. Now I want it only from Damien's hand.

But this is not about battling my demons. This is about letting go. About surrendering to Damien. About letting him take me and fill me.

And, yes, it's about pleasure. About passion.

And as Damien and I know better than most, pleasure and pain have the same core. And I willingly surrender to both of them.

The first spank makes me gasp, the sting spreading out, and then calming down as Damien rubs the curve of my rear, softening the sting. He smacks me again, just a little harder, and I feel my sex clench with longing. He slides his hand between my legs to stroke me, and I know that he is aware of how aroused he is making me. Of how much I want this—and how much I will want him after, once my ass is red and he has had his fill.

Again and again. Five more spanks and I am on fire, from the sting of flesh against flesh, but also from the erotic need to be fucked, to be taken.

“Damien.” I only whisper his name, but it is enough, and he helps me up, then settles me on his lap, my knees on either side of him so that I am straddling him as he sits on the end of the lounger, his hands at my back keeping me steady.

“I want to watch it build in your eyes,” he says. “I want to see the moment when we float away.”

“Yes.” I rise up on my knees, then lower myself onto him, slowly at first and then faster and faster until that precipice looms in front of me again, and I can see the explosion building in his eyes, my own passion reflected right back at me.

“Now,”
he demands when we are both at the edge. “Now, Nikki, dammit, come with me.”

I arch back, a slave to his demands, and burst into a billion pieces even as he explodes inside me. He holds me tight, keeping me from getting lost in the ether and providing a tether to bring me back to myself.

I collapse against him, breathing hard, relishing the comfort of his arms, strong and safe, closing around me.

“Damien.” That's all I can say, but it is enough.

“Yes,” he says, his voice so tender it brings tears to my eyes. “I know.”

Later, he carries me up to the house, because I am not at all convinced that I will ever have the power to walk on my own again.

I manage to stand for a shower, then dry off and settle back on the bed, naked, as Damien stays in the bathroom to shave.

I drift off, sated, only to be roused by his voice wafting over me. “Now, that is a very lovely view.”

I stretch and roll over, opening my eyes to find him naked in the doorway—and once again fully erect.

With a laugh, I prop myself up on an elbow. “You, Mr. Stark, are insatiable.”

“You make me insatiable,” he counters, coming to sit beside me on the bed. “I could spend the entire day here with you. Maybe the week, the month, the year.”

“I like it. Though we'd have to figure out how to eat.”

“Oh, I intend to eat my fill,” he says, nipping his way down my belly.

I squirm, delighted by his touch, and then I tense. I cock my head as something pokes at my memory. Something about eating…about sweetness…

About love.

I twine my fingers in his hair. “Wait—”

He lifts his head, one brow cocked.

I glance at the clock, see that it's still early enough, and grin at my husband. “Sorry, sweetheart, I'm cutting you off.”

“Oh?” His expression is vaguely amused. “And why is that?”

“I've nailed the first clue.” My tone is smug. I am certain that I'm right.

“Really?” He eases his way up my body until I am trapped beneath him. “Tell me.”

I shake my head. “Nope.”

He kisses my neck. “Please?”

“Not a chance, buddy. At least not until you buy me a meal.”

“A meal?”

“Lunch,” I confirm. “In Beverly Hills. And after my meal,” I add with a wide, smug grin, “I want my dessert.”

We end up having a late lunch at one of the outdoor tables at 208 Rodeo, and we split an order of sweet potato fries and a burger while we do the people-watching thing, scoping out both tourists and locals as they stroll along Rodeo Drive or wander up the stairs to Via Rodeo. Not surprisingly, there's a significant amount of reciprocal watching, and I catch sight of more than a few people taking surreptitious snaps of us with their phones. A few even stand boldly across the street and aim powerful zoom lenses in our direction, clicking furiously as they rattle off shot after shot.

Again, I don't care.

It's a gorgeous day. I'm with my husband on a Valentine's Day scavenger hunt. And I'm still basking in the glow of some outstanding morning sex.

Seriously, life is good.

A perky waitress who looks like she's ready to star in her own sitcom bounces to our table. “Can I get you some dessert?”

I meet Damien's eyes. “Thanks,” I say. “But we've already got a plan for that.”

We settle the check, and then stroll the two short blocks to Love Bites, the exceptional bakery owned by Sally Love. She's been featured on every food program known to man and has graced the pages of wedding and food magazines. She's known Damien for years, and I adored her—and her cakes—from the moment I met her. And after just one bite of her dark chocolate and Kahlua cupcake, I knew that no one else could cater our wedding.

I'm convinced that
what is sweeter than Love
leads like an arrow to Sally Love and Love Bites. Valentine's Day and love go together—and love leads to weddings. So how could the bakery that catered our wedding not be where the clue leads?

But though I might be certain, Damien, damn the man, has steadfastly refused to either confirm or deny.

Soon enough, though, I'll know if I'm right.

I'd called Sally just seconds after my
aha
moment, and though the bakery is technically closed on Sundays, she said that she was on-site getting ready for a luncheon she's catering tomorrow and invited me to stop by.

“Look at you two,” she says the moment she tugs open the glass doors to her sugar-scented shop. “The very picture of marital bliss.”

I simply grin and return her enthusiastic hug.

“Now, what's this all about?”

“Apparently my wife has a craving for your cupcakes.”

“Does she?” Sally says, her brows rising. “I'm flattered, but what brought this on?”

I look between the two of them, suddenly unsure of myself. “Um, it's just that nothing is sweeter than love, right? So that must mean your cupcakes.”

She points a finger at me. “Now, there's an excellent slogan for an ad campaign. Mind if I borrow it?”

I glance toward Damien. “You'll have to ask him.”

“It's all yours,” he says.

“Easiest deal I've made all day,” she says with a wide grin. “But seriously, what do you need from me, Nikki?”

I hand her the tiny piece of paper and watch as she squints at the words. When she looks up at me, I see both interest and confusion on her face. “This is from where?”