Being Yours

Surely they’d heard the same thing. The Hotel Crillon had formerly been a palace, built for Louis XV. Royalty. Palace. It had seemed funny to her, but her little attempt at breaking the ice fell flat. Instead of cracking jokes, she counseled herself, she should concentrate on accomplishing what she’d come for, then getting out with her skin still intact.“The Hotel Crillon is the closest exclusive, high-priced hotel to the place where—” She stopped again, this time for a different reason, and cleared her throat. “Where—”“Where you threw yourself at me and kissed me,” he supplied, his tone helpful, his expression anything but.At the second mention of a kiss, the attitude of the other two Damarons changed slightly. Now they seemed more interested than hostile. With a glance at each other, they settled back in their chairs, obviously having no intention of going anywhere.Danielle passed her fingers across her forehead. She could feel her face growing hot with embarrassment. “Look. If

He slowly smiled. “Dani.”By the time she returned to the apartment, her friends had already crashed for the night. She threaded her way across a floor full of sleeping bodies and made it to the bathroom. There, she undressed, washed up, and finally, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, sHpped into her own sleeping bag.“Dani?” she heard her friend Marcia whisper.She rolled over to face her. “Yeah?” she whispered back.“How’d it go?”“Somewhere between the Spanish Inquisition and a meat grinder.”“Hey, at least you’re back in one piece.”“I’m not so sure.”“Why?”“He wants me to fly back with him on his private jet tomorrow and attend a ball Saturday night.”“Hey, way to go. Sounds like you caught yourself, Damaron.”“I don’t think so. It’s more like he caught me.”There was a subtle grace about Dani, even while she slept, Nathan reflected as he watched her. They hadn’t really talked since they’d boarded the jet in Paris. As was his custom, he’d pulled out his work even before the jet bega

“The dress had about twenty pounds of beads on it,” she said in further explanation.“I’m sorry,” he finally said, and funny enough she knew he meant it. “I’m afraid I didn’t have time to go out and choose the dress myself, and all my assistant told me about it was that it was black.”“Don’t apologize.” Her reaction to his sincerity softened her voice. “As I said, it was a very kind thing fpr you to do, but it just wasn’t necessary.”In the end she’d gone home empty-handed from her sister’s and delved into her own closet. The dress she’d ultimately decided to wear was very simple, very light. There was a silk strapless underdress of mist blue, then a one-shouldered overdress made out of sheer silk chiffon in the water colors of mauves, greens, and blues. A graceful, floating dress, its skirt fell to an asymmetrical hem, on one side cascading downward in uneven gossamer layers to her feet, the other side stopping at her knees. A handful of blue sequins resembling glistening drops of wa

Heat burned in his eyes and on her skin where he touched her. And deeper inside her, an aching need filled her. The anticipation of what would come had her aroused to the point that she wanted Nathan to start kissing her right there and then and not stop until they were both sated. But she knew he couldn’t. This was an event to raise money for a tremendously good cause, and people needed to be focused on giving money, not on two people in heat on the dance floor. “So, uh, getting back to Helene?”“Right,” he said, his voice rough. Then he let out a long breath, making her realize that he’d been thinking the same thing as she. “I’ve known Helene Sorge much longer than you and I’ve never once sensed she needed someone to talk to.” He paused, his gaze briefly lowering to her lips. The dance floor was crowded, but in moments like this it seemed to her they were the only two people there. “So why were you tlie only one in the place that received that impression?”“Maybe because I’m the onl

Then he kissed her, a hard, hungry, devouring kiss that stole away her breath and any thought of dinner she might have had. It was incredibly easy to simply go with the feelings he aroused in her, the feelings of need and desire that were all so new to her and kept her so on edge. The pressure of his mouth was firm, the thrust of his tongue demanding. She circled her arms around his neck and held on tightly.His hands slid up and down her back, then around to her breasts, stroking and caressing until she moaned with delight. He muttered something indecipherable, grabbed her long, slim legs, wrapped them around his waist, and pulled her against, him. Her skirt slid to the top of her thighs, but modesty wasn’t something she was concerned about at that moment.His hands soon found the bare skin of her thighs and his fingers traced daring patterns higher and higher until a finger slipped beneath her panties to the nub nestled between the sensitive, deficate folds of her femininity. There,