Then he put everything out of his mind—except Shanna.

  He started at her shoulders, but his hands seemed to develop a mind of their own. Down they plunged, right over the curves of her breasts, pushed up by the tight corset. But having those nipples covered wasn’t going to do.

  In a few seconds, Alejandro brushed through the little fastenings holding the garment together. It fell to the stage in a boned rustle of fabric.

  Men groaned in the audience as he bared her breasts to them. Shanna tensed. Ali could feel her shivering. Cold? He didn’t think so. Nerves? Maybe. Excitement. Definitely. He could smell a hint of her arousal.

  Eagerly, he reached around and cupped her breasts in his hands, squeezing her nipples between his thumbs and fingers. She writhed, wriggling her ass against his cock.

  He was about to lose his mind.

  With a yank, he tugged the sheer thong from her body. Another collective groan rang from the audience. Guys shifted weight from one foot to another, adjusted themselves in their pants, sat forward in their chairs. Shanna began to pant.

  Ali dragged his palms down her abdomen. He itched to feel the silk of her pussy, see just how wet she was.

  Moments later, he had his answer. She was wet, welcoming, lush. Shanna might lie about her feelings for him, but her body couldn’t.

  Now was the perfect time to start testing his theory…

  A quick point at Del brought his friend up on the stage. Shanna tensed again. This time, he didn’t think it was due to excitement.

  Before she could say a word, he whispered, “I want to watch your breasts be sucked. Del will help us out.”

  “No,” she whimpered.

  “You change partners all the time. Why does it matter?”

  Del approached her and pressed his body close to Shanna’s. Ali didn’t say a word, just lifted her breasts up to him.

  Just before he bent to her, Del sent her a smile that said he was ready for scorching hot sex.

  “It just matters,” she whispered. “Please no.”

  Lifting dark eyes to Ali, Del waited for a cue.

  Ali had what he wanted for now. He shook his head.

  With a wry grin, Del contented himself by placing a chaste kiss on the curve of her breast. But to show he wasn’t going to be dismissed, he took a seat on a nearby pillow and sent a scorching stare her way.

  In truth, Ali knew they had to play along, just in case their blackmailer was in the room. But he wanted nothing more than to get Shanna alone. Soon, he promised himself.

  Turning her back toward him, Ali watched her stage smile collapse. She looked at him with a mixture of hurt, anger, and relief. Apparently, swapping partners did matter to her. And he sensed that the sooner he got her to admit that about dance, the sooner she’d settle into having one man in her life.

  Impatient to touch her, Ali tore down the zipper of his leather pants and freed his stiff cock. “Suck me.”

  He kicked a pillow under her knees. Shanna hesitated, then sank down, bent her head, and consumed him.

  Oh, hell. Her mouth was a silken oven, soft and scorching and robbing him of breath. She damn sure knew what to do with that tongue of hers, caressing the length of his staff, curling it around the head. She sucked deep and hard, all the way to the back of her throat.

  His heartbeat rattled in his chest. His ears buzzed with the excitement. Faintly, he was aware of male groans and a “fuck, yeah,” from the audience. But focusing beyond Shanna’s hot mouth was growing impossible.

  As wonderful as it was, it had to stop. They had a show to put on for these guests—and a potential blackmailer. A blow job was all well and good, but not blackmail-worthy, compared to Kristoff’s show.

  With a groan of regret, Ali cupped her cheeks and lifted her mouth from his cock. Then he helped her to her feet. In four steps, he had her bent over the huge, cushioned bed, her breasts pressed to the silk comforter. A few seconds later, he was sheathed and deep inside her.

  She gripped him like no one ever had, like every contour had been formed just to clench around him perfectly.

  He seized her hips and tunneled deeper. Then set a ruthless pace.

  She cried out. The sight of her all spread out under him, her hands still cuffed at the small of her back, her pussy taking every inch he had…hell, he wasn’t going to last long. And he didn’t want to go off alone.

  “I ache to play with your clit and feel you orgasm around me…” He hadn’t even finished the sentence before he slid a pair of determined fingers right over the button of her nerves.

  With his other hand, he gripped her hips tight. He thrust inside her repeatedly, dragging the head of his cock right over that sensitive spot that had her muscles tensing, shaking.

  In moments, a low, feminine groan split the air. Almost there…

  “Come for me,” he demanded. “Come!”

  With another brush and press of his fingers over her clit, she screamed. Around them, the audience groaned. Several stroked their own cocks…even Del.

  Then the rippling walls of her sex contracted, tightened, gripping and coaxing him, blotting out all other thoughts. Ali closed his eyes and focused on her. He shouted through clenched teeth as he followed her into ecstasy.

  More than one groan of satisfaction split the air within moments. Ali didn’t care. All he knew was that underneath him was the woman he would not let go of. They had seen to business.

  Now it was time for the real pleasure—and hopefully, the future—to begin.

  8

  A pleasure cloud. Heavy limbs, light head. A gentle throb between her legs pulsing as it slowly abated. Alejandro’s embrace providing warmth, even as he gripped her as if he’d never let go. Ah…

  Shanna could happily stay here, connected to him for a while. A long while. There were reasons she shouldn’t, she knew. She just couldn’t remember them now.

  Then Alejandro slipped free of her body and broke her sensual haze. She lifted weighty lids to watch him walk past her and snap the curtains shut between them and the audience. Del remained on their side of the drape, and Shanna was suddenly conscious of her nudity and Del’s dark eyes on her.

  “Keep them the hell out of here,” Alejandro growled in low tones.

  Del clapped his gaze on his buddy, who was now buttoning his pants and wearing a sly smile. “You got it. Tomorrow?”

  Ali smiled. “Maybe the day after.”

  What were they talking about? It should be obvious, but her brain was so clouded by satisfaction that thinking was just a lot of effort right now.

  Del’s laugh barely registered when Alejandro turned and stalked across the floor to her. In seconds, he uncuffed one of her wrists, grabbed her up in his arms, and headed for the stage door.

  “What…? Where are you—?”

  “Alone.” He said the word like a vow. “No one except you and me, being us together.”

  Just in case others could hear, she whispered, “But the blackmailer—”

  “If he was here tonight, he already got what he came for. Del will call me if they captured something on the security cameras. Now, this is about us.”

  “But you said we would stay all night, if necessary.”

  He stopped. “Is that what you want, for me to fuck you again for an audience? Shall we invite more people in this time?”

  Sarcasm. Anger. And she understood. Something inside her rejected the notion of more audience time, too. “No.”

  “Good. I’m done sharing you with other hungry male eyes.” He pushed through a door, out into a bright hall, past the open door to security. Laughing and clapping ensued from the crew inside the office, and Shanna buried her head in his neck.

  “I’m naked!” she shrieked.

  “They just watched us on the cameras. They are not seeing anything they have not yet seen. Which is another reason I want you all to myself.”

  Shanna didn’t have the chance to speak again before Ali opened another door and let it slam behind him. Now it was dark, and Southern California’s summer evening sky simmered all around them in a velvet hush. Frogs and crickets hummed in the sultry breeze. The lights of the city beyond the hill twinkled and winked as far as she could see.

  “It’s beautiful out here.”

  “That I would rather look at you should tell you how I feel about your beauty.”

  Shanna snapped her gaze up to Ali’s. No smile. His stare was full of gravity—and rising need.

  “Alejandro, maybe we should talk about—”

  “No. Tonight is about you and me. No conversation, no people, no blackmail, no cameras. I need to feel you like I have never needed before.”

  She gaped, totally unable to deny the breathless rush of joy at his words. Did he…care about her?

  There was no time to ponder the answer before he spirited her into his cottage, through the intimate cocoon of the hushed night, straight to his bed. In the shadows, she could make out its straight lines and modern flare. It was big, dark, exotic—just like the man.

  Then his mattress was at her back, and he grabbed the empty cuff dangling from her wrist, and Shanna expected him to attach it to his bed somehow so he would have her at his mercy.

  Instead, he attached the cuff to his own wrist.

  They were joined. Together. Bound.

  “Alejandro?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he tossed the handcuff key somewhere on the floor, far out of reach, then covered her mouth with his own.

  Shanna expected his ravenous hunger, a hard-edged boom-fast-now kind of touch. She was shocked instead by his soft insistence. His kiss was seduction itself. Thorough, unhurried. Slow, deep. Unabashedly intimate, as he conveyed his every want, spoke with his soul, communicating only using his mouth.

  It was impossible not to fall under his spell.

  A new ribbon of desire tied her stomach in knots as he trailed hot kisses across her cheek, down toward her neck. He exhaled against her neck, close to her ear, stirring sensitive skin. She shivered as his lips caressed her, branded her. He swept a fingertip down the arch of her throat and nipped at her lobe.

  “Necesito tocarle, su cara, su piel. Su corazón.”

  Shanna had no idea what his words meant, but they melted her. In that moment, whatever he wanted, she wanted, too.

  “Tell me…”

  He didn’t right away. Instead, he swept his mouth over hers again. The tangle of breaths, lips, tongues became a deliberate kiss of endless hunger. Eloquent, shockingly sexual as the fingers of his free hand sifted into her hair, curling possessively around the strands. Sizzlingly intimate as he tore his mouth from hers to stare, penetrating her with eyes like burning coals in the pitch of night. Ensnared, Shanna could not look away.

  “I said that I need to touch you, your face, your skin. Your heart.”

  Something both shocked and joyous burst inside her. She gasped, and Alejandro swallowed the sound with another drugging kiss.

  With every brush of his lips, every glide of his hot palm, every male moan poured into her mouth he ripped past her barriers until she opened completely to him—parting her lips wider to accept more of his possession, clutching one hard shoulder with her free hand to keep him near, spreading her thighs to invite him inside. She sighed when his narrow hips fit right into the curve of her body as if he’d been made to fill her.

  “Yes.” She arched under him, unable to hold anything back.

  He nestled his free hand under the curve in her back, keeping her breasts and the damp heat of her skin right against him.

  “Yo le tocaré toda la noche. Cada parte de tú sabrás el se siente de mí.”

  “Ali…please.”

  The way he touched her, as if he had not another thought in his head except pleasing her… She burned inside her skin, yet she knew only he could save her. He would shatter her into a million pieces first, then remake her into a new woman. A warning bell went off in some distant part of her mind, but his fingers gripped her hips, fitting her directly against the hard column of his erection. He wound down her body and brushed soft lips against the side of her breast.

  “I will touch you all night long,” he translated. “Every part of you will know the feel of me.”

  She had no doubt Alejandro would keep that promise.

  He suckled her nipples over and over, lavishing attention on her until they stood red, swollen, so sensitive that nothing more than his breath on her induced a shiver. All the while, his fingers free from the cuff whispered across her skin. Her back, her thighs, her buttocks. Even her knees, calves, and toes. Alejandro put that hand on every inch of available skin, finally drawing her leg up high on his hip so he could toy with the sensitive underside of her knee.

  Gently, he rode her clit with his erection. Not pushing or grinding. Not bruising. Instead, a soft nudge of delicious pressure in a hypnotic rhythm, one that took her higher and higher.

  The seed of pleasure under her clit sprouted and bloomed. Shanna panted, trying to resist the searing pleasure for just another moment. She dug the fingers not bound by the cuff into the hard flesh of his back, pressing down his body, far down, until she gripped his ass in her hand.

  Moonlight spilled past the open blinds, swirling in on the evening breeze as he whispered, “La piel estas rosácea, mi amor. Eres maduro y listo, sí?”

  “Tell me, Ali!” She moaned. “Please…”

  “Your skin is rosy, my love. You are ripe and ready, yes?”

  “Yes. Yes, now!”

  He pressed against her again, nudging her clit with his cock. The cream of her arousal spread all over his flesh, and the next time he rocked against her, the bead of nerves he teased leaped at the slick pressure. Blood rushed south, pooled between her legs, gathering need, pleasure, and anticipation right where it impacted her most. She clawed, cried in his arms.

  “Who is here, Shanna? Who is in this room?”

  “Us. Just us.”

  “Apenas tú y mí. Ninguna audiencia. Ninguna cámaras. Nosotros.” He breathed as he gathered the crooks of her knees into his arms. “Just you and me. No audience, no cameras. Us.”

  The way it always should be. The thought ran through Shanna’s mind unchecked, unchallenged, unstoppable as Alejandro paused, probed, then on a long glide, he penetrated her.

  His hard flesh filled her sex, sank deep, deeper, then deeper still. Making love face to face…totally different than being dominated by him for an audience. The slick rasp of his engorged shaft raked against her sensitive walls. A jolt of pleasure coiled, tightened, intensifying, growing faster than she could assimilate.

  “So tight, my love,” he murmured as he drew back and brought their cuffed hands up to her breast. Her palm cupped her flesh as his thumb caressed her nipple. It was as if they were seeing to her pleasure together, and it drove Shanna mad with delirious need.

  All the while, the slow steady pleasure of his thrusts made her into a wild woman. She writhed, lifted her hips, arched—anything to reach more of him, lure him deeper still into her.

  Alejandro went willingly, every lingering slide of his erection inside her lifting her arousal higher. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Heat suffused her body. She could barely breathe. And she didn’t care.

  For the first time in years—maybe in her life—she didn’t just feel; she was wholly alive, driven by something more than a statue of faux gold molded like dancers she wanted to someday sit on her mantle. She lived for now. She lived to feel the man growling words in a language she didn’t understand but adored as he strained to fulfill every promise of pleasure boiling in her body.

  Alejandro gripped the hand joined to his by the cuff and laced their fingers together. He squeezed her hand tight as their breaths merged, their cries mingled. “Come for me.”

  The request from his mouth became a demand from his body as he thrust straight into her core again.

  Shanna splintered into a million pieces, blinded by the brilliant pleasure bursting inside her. In the next moment, he followed her into the white-hot rush of shattering pleasure. Oh, god. He was all over her, everywhere…inside her. Shanna doubted she could wash his possession away with a mere shower. It seemed unlikely that time and distance would completely free her from him.

  She feared she’d given a piece of herself to Alejandro she’d likely never get back: her heart.

  Sated and exhausted, Shanna pulled up in the driveway of the house she’d been raised in. She and all of her siblings had moved out years ago. Dad had stayed in the rambling house alone. Why, she didn’t know. The place was haunted by the ghost of her mother, a woman she vaguely remembered smiling and dancing around the kitchen.

  She should have gone home first. Showered, changed, had a cup of coffee before coming here. If she had stayed in Ali’s bed, he would have offered her all that and more. Instead, she’d pleaded the need to use the bathroom and persuaded him to unlock the cuffs joining them. She’d waited a few minutes, until she was sure he’d drifted back to sleep, then dressed in one of his shirts and a pair of long sweatpants, then sneaked out. Not that it mattered. Ali was with her, in her, in a way that had nothing to do with the fact they’d had unprotected sex and everything to do with the fact she cared far more about him than she should.

  The chilly California air of the early morning hadn’t helped to sort out her head. She was in love with a man who would never mean to stand in the way of her dance dreams, but how could Alejandro not, as consuming as he was? She’d barely driven two miles from Sneak Peek, and she’d begun to feel the withdrawal of his warmth, his acceptance and tenderness.

  Dangerous. She was the Bitch of the Ballroom because she’d adhered to strict discipline and a ruthless dedication to perfection. She intended to win that long-coveted trophy, damn it. When the music was high and the lights down low, the judges didn’t care what was deep in her heart. She’d do well to remember that.

  Still, those moments in Ali’s arms… For the first time in years, maybe ever, she’d felt adored, and not because of what she might achieve or what competition she might win. She didn’t have anything to prove in that moment. Alejandro cared about her. He proved that in amazing, pleasure-drenched ways every time he touched her.