Only for You Read online

  At first she thought he would argue, but then he settled back on the pillows, his exhaustion more apparent with every passing second. She felt his gaze on her back, and she rushed to the bathroom for her robe. She glanced back after she’d covered herself and was walking to the kitchen. He hadn’t moved, but she saw the glint in his amber eyes as he watched her from beneath heavy eyelids. He was still gloriously naked, a gape-worthy landscape of muscle and brawn and relaxed male virility. Her feet flagged as she experienced a strong urge to get back into bed with him and cuddle up to his hard, warm body.

  “Hurry back,” he said gruffly.

  “Oh, I will,” she assured.

  He smiled tiredly.

  In the kitchen, she found that the freezer was extremely well stocked. Along with the dry goods and fruits that Seth had brought, they could stay well fed for quite some time. In her brief observations of his eating habits on the road, not to mention his hard, lean physique, she had a feeling Seth ate healthy. She hoped he would stay awake long enough to partake of the turkey burger, baked potato and sliced pears she’d prepared.

  She wasn’t at all surprised, however, when she walked into the bedroom later and saw that he was utterly still and fast asleep. For a few seconds, she just stood there and admired his form and face. The years hadn’t changed the fact that she found him compelling and beautiful.

  She set the plate and glass of ice water down on the bedside table and gently covered him with the sheet and a light blanket.

  She wasn’t that tired yet, having slept so much on the trip. There was a large entertainment center in the bedroom suite that included a stereo and TV, but she didn’t want to risk waking up Seth. She’d go out to the living room and watch television there while she ate the turkey burger she’d made for herself.

  Instead, she found herself sitting cross-legged on the bed next to him.

  She never told herself to linger there. It was just that watching Seth’s strong, typically impassive features give way ever so slightly as he slept was a hundred times more fascinating than anything the television could offer.

  Thirteen

  She awoke to the sensation of him kissing and nuzzling her breast. Her eyelids fluttered open.

  “Seth,” she murmured, her consciousness hovering in the vicinity between sleep and waking. Nevertheless, she wasn’t disoriented. She’d immediately recognized him and relished what was happening. He answered by drawing sweetly on her nipple. His hand cupped her sex in that tender, possessive manner he used. Slowly, she felt him circle and press, ever so carefully penetrating the cleft between her sensitive sex lips and treating her clit to a subtle little polish with the smooth stone on his ring. Not too hard, not too soft. She moaned. It felt even more imperative and exciting, now that she was shaved clean for his masterful stimulation.

  If she was sleeping, this was a sweet dream. It was a wonderful feeling, to wake to the sensation of being made love to by Seth Hightower. Yes . . . a very sweet dream indeed.

  The king-size bed faced the wall that consisted almost entirely of windows. Although the blinds were lowered on the entire east-facing set of windows, she could see morning sunlight peeking around the edges. She saw the dark shadow of Seth’s chest and shoulders as he hovered over her.

  He paused to run his tongue over her pebbled nipple as if to test her swelling arousal, and then he lifted his head.

  “Do you mind?”

  His deep, rough voice sounded delicious in the hushed semidarkness.

  “God, no.”

  “Good. Because I woke up hurting for you.”

  He shifted on top of her, bracing his upper body on his elbows. He rolled slightly to one side, reaching between his legs.

  Then he was coming over her and sliding his cock between her thighs.

  Her eyes sprang wide at the sensation. Hurting indeed. He must have been aching. He was huge with arousal and had already sheathed himself with a condom. She loved the evidence of his impatience. She shifted her hips to better accommodate him. He groaned as he sank deeper, her flesh giving way and melting around his hardness. Gia whimpered at the sensation of him filling her. She was a little tender from his forceful lovemaking in the kitchen yesterday, but somehow that only added to her arousal.

  “Okay?” he asked tensely. “You were warm and wet when I touched you.”

  “Yes. It feels so good.”

  She wasn’t sure why they kept their voices so low and furtive, except to say that the unfolding moment felt uncommon somehow . . . sacred. He pushed his hips, and she felt him slide into her to the hilt. He paused with his cock throbbing high and hard inside her and leaned down to brush his lips against hers. She gasped against his mouth when he circled his hips slightly, pressing on her clit.

  It felt so full, so incendiary.

  “As if it was ever a remote possibility for me to resist this,” he said quietly. She knew what he meant. They fit so well, like their bodies were designed to lock together. Made to fuse.

  He began to move. She said his name shakily, her hands moving over his muscular back and flexing hips, caressing him, urging him. His strokes were firm and forceful, but measured as he built their pleasure. She moved in synchrony, letting desire guide her in this tight, fluid dance with him. His outline above her looked shadowed and mysterious. She brushed her fingertips over his face as he thrust into her, wishing she could see his face. He paused with his cock high inside her.

  “Put your hands above your head on the pillow.”

  Her fingers stilled their anxious search. “Don’t you like me touching you?” she whispered.

  “No. I love it.” She felt his cock lurch inside her and understood. He wanted this to last. He wanted to be in control. She dropped her hands over her head, exposing the sensitive skin on the underside of her arms. He began to move again. The morning light was growing brighter as it glowed around the curtains. She could make out the rigid angles and planes of his face as he fucked her more forcefully.

  “God, you’re beautiful,” he muttered thickly, and she realized that her features were also resolving out of the darkness. She was growing hot from her arousal. Sweat sheened her upper lip and the valley between her breasts. He plunged into her, rocking her body, her breasts bobbing at the impact. She moaned, lost in the glory of the moment.

  A beeping noise tickled the edge of her fevered awareness. Seth cursed and drew out of her. She gasped, his sudden loss like a slap to the face, it was so harsh and unexpected.

  “Seth?” she asked, disoriented. He was clambering off the bed so fast, she thought she was hallucinating. She saw his large shadow fly across the room. He stood behind the edge of the blinds. She heard the distant sound of a car engine.

  “What’s going on?” she hissed.

  He didn’t reply. His form remained eerily still, adding to her bewilderment. A tiny bit more light seemed to enter the room. He peered into the crack he’d formed. For a brief second, she’d seen his profile perfectly. There was tension in every line of his tall body. His cock protruded between strong thighs, flagrant and huge. She blinked, her anxiety fracturing for a second at the erotic picture he made.

  “Seth? Who is it?” she asked, starting to get up from the bed.

  “Stay there,” he said. His voice was very quiet, but there was a thread of steel in it that made her pause and stay put. A doorbell rang, and Seth’s shadow disappeared. The beeping alarm silenced, and she realized he’d shut it off at the control panel on the wall next to the bed. “There’s a hundred-foot-security perimeter around this house. The beeping was an alert that someone had broken it,” he said quietly. Then he was touching her lower leg.

  “Lie back,” he directed in a gruff voice. She followed his command, dazed. He came over her once again. In the distance, she heard someone start to knock on the front door.

  “But . . . who is it?” she asked in a strangled voic
e. She felt him gently touch her slit and then his cock was entering her again. She groaned, her formal arousal leaping back to the surface of her consciousness.

  “Sherona Legion. Well . . . Sherona Hathoway now that she’s married. A friend. It’s nothing to worry about,” he murmured as he resumed fucking her like they hadn’t been interrupted. “God, you feel good.”

  “But . . . shouldn’t we answer the door?” she mumbled, her swirling confusion fading under the power of Seth’s possession.

  “No. You aren’t in disguise, and I’m not presentable to the public at the moment,” he grated out. He thrust into her and circled his hips slightly, emphasizing his point while she was filled with him. Overfilled. Overwhelmed. She vividly recalled that compelling image of him standing at the edge of the curtains, his cock distended, heavy and glistening. Of course he couldn’t answer the front door to a guest in that condition.

  He put his hands at the back of her thighs and rolled her hips back.

  “Put your hands over your head, Gia. Now spread your legs nice and wide,” he directed darkly, coming up on his knees, his hands bracing his weight on the mattress.

  She opened farther for him, her legs splayed, her feet suspended in the air. She felt totally open to him. Vulnerable. She whimpered in acute anticipation. He drove into her, his deep growl of pleasure thrilling her. Her world began to rock. All thoughts about the early morning visitor flew straight out of her head as she abandoned herself to pleasure. To Seth.

  * * *

  After their lovemaking, they rose in preparation to shower. Gia flipped on the bathroom light.

  “Gia,” he said slowly, an edge to his tone. “Look at me.”

  She turned to him, a question in her clear, shining eyes. His gaze moved over her. Her mussed, golden brown hair spilled sexily around her shoulders and back. A still semi-erect nipple poked coyly through some tendrils of hair, a pink, mouthwatering tease. Her breasts and cheeks were flushed. Her legs looked long and supple, making him recall all too well how strong they’d been squeezing him to her when he’d ridden her just now. Her naked labia were still swollen slightly and glistening from her recent arousal.

  He felt his cock stir.

  She looked fresh and yet decadently wanton at once. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was debauch her all over again. Would he ever get enough of her? He somehow doubted it.

  He jerked his gaze off the arousing image of her newly shaved, flushed sex and grabbed his toiletry bag.

  “I’ll shower in the other room,” he said.

  “Oh . . . okay.”

  He winced slightly when he heard the uncertainty in her tone. He gave her a small smile and glanced down significantly at his reanimating cock. “I think it’d be best,” he said simply before he kissed her mouth and left the room.

  He finished showering before her.

  “Coffee?” he asked when she entered the kitchen a while later.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  He paused in the action of pouring coffee into two mugs, his gaze moving over her appreciatively. She noticed his warm stare and smiled.

  “What?” she asked with a small laugh.

  “Just the obvious,” Seth said shrugging. What man wouldn’t pause to eat up the sight of her? He resumed pouring the coffee and handed her a cup. “You look pretty. I was appreciating seeing you in girl clothes.” He dropped a kiss on her parted lips. She looked up at him, a little dazed. Adorable. “I don’t get how you do Jessie so well. You’re a miracle worker. There isn’t a masculine thing about you,” he said, stroking the taut curve of her hip.

  “Thanks,” she said, looking both pleased and slightly off balance, which pleased him. She was a movie star, after all, one of Hollywood’s elite. It did something to him, to know he had the power to make her blush.

  To give her pleasure.

  “They’re hardly girly clothes, though,” she said, glancing down at herself with a frown. “You told me not to bring any.”

  She looked as if she regretted that fact when she met his stare again. He idly moved a strand of damp hair away from her cheek, glancing down over her. She wore a pair of jeans and a Jessie-worthy button-down plaid shirt. Her unbound breasts looked soft, firm and touchable beneath the cotton fabric. She wasn’t wearing a bra, which was highly distracting. She had the most beautiful breasts. He could make out the outline of her nipples through the thin fabric. The scent of tangerines tickled his nose. Everything about her teased him. Tempted him. “You could make a paper bag look sexy,” he muttered before he leaned down and kissed her temple.

  His kisses on her fragrant skin were becoming more avid when he heard the spring on the toaster release. He grunted in irritation at the interruption, but he supposed he should feed her. He gave her one more kiss and reluctantly went to remove two pieces of thick multigrain toast from the toaster.

  “That smells great,” Gia said from behind him. He heard a drawer slide open as he opened the lid on the margarine. When he turned around to get a knife, she was there handing him one. “So, who is Sherona Hathoway?” she asked as she watched him butter the toast, leaning her hip against the counter.

  “She owns the diner in Vulture’s Canyon,” Seth explained. “John is blind, so when he came up here for getaways, Sherona used to bring him supplies. That was before he met Jennifer. Sherona’s a good person. John told me on the phone yesterday he was going to tell her we were staying up here—me and Jessie, that is. Sherona is kind of the hub of the Vulture’s Canyon social network—a term I use lightly. People around here love their solitude and isolation too much to ever behave too socially. Sherona left us this bread. Here, I already ate mine. This is yours,” he said, lifting the buttered toast toward her lips. She looked surprised by his actions, but took a bite. Her eyes went wide in pleasure.

  “This is delicious.” Before he could place the toast on a waiting plate, she caught his wrist and sank her teeth into the toast again. Their gazes met. She smiled. Only Gia could make chewing the height of sexy.

  “Yeah. Sherona is one of the best cooks I know,” Seth said, blinking to bring himself out of his feral focus on Gia’s mouth. “She left us three loaves of bread, a dozen eggs, two jars of preserves, two pies, some fresh vegetables and a bag of apples. Plus, she brought us two pumpkins, which I left on the front porch. All of the fresh stuff will be from the co-op in town. Sherona’s a big backer of it. Local people work the communal farm, and they distribute the food to families who might not be able to get fresh, healthy produce because they’re isolated. Or poor. It must be a familiar routine for Sherona to come up here when someone’s in residence, because John has an animal-proof wooden box out on the stoop with a lid. That’s where I found all the food after I read the note Sherona left.”

  “That was so sweet of her,” Gia mused. “Vulture’s Canyon sounds like quite a unique place.”

  “The people here are artsy, quirky. Fiercely independent. They’re generous and warm, too, once they get used to you, that is. They tend to be a little standoffish and suspicious of strangers.”

  “Sounds like you’d fit in perfectly here,” Gia said dryly, taking another bite of toast.

  “What?” he asked, wondering if he was misreading the sparkle in her springtime eyes.

  “Most of those descriptors fit you, as well,” she said.

  “I suppose you’re going to leave me to stew about which ones apply and which ones don’t?”

  Her smile was an innocent tease. “Can we go down to the diner later, so we can thank her in person?”

  “It would require you getting into makeup,” he said with a significant glance. “And putting on the act.”

  A shadow crossed her luminous face. She stared at the toast in her hand.

  “You really hate it, don’t you? My acting, I mean,” she said slowly, examining the toast in her fingers like she found the vision fascinating.

 
; “I only meant that if you want to make a trip into town, you have to be in full disguise. I thought you might not want to, once you realized all the effort involved for a casual visit to the Legion Diner,” he explained.

  “No. I realize what you meant. Still,” she murmured, “there’s something about me acting that . . . rubs you the wrong way. Not just in a general sense. On some personal level.”

  He absorbed what she said while he put away the margarine and opened one of the jars of Sherona’s preserves. He really didn’t want to get into this with her. Not now.

  “You’re good at it,” he said shortly, opening a drawer to retrieve a knife. “I’ve never told you. You’ll end up being the best of your generation. Maybe of several generations.”

  Neither of them spoke as he handed her the knife and nodded at the opened jar of preserves. She took the knife, but didn’t otherwise move.

  “Coming from most people, that would be an incredible compliment. Somehow, when you say it, it sounds a little like an insult.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” he stated flatly.

  Her gaze narrowed on him. “What do you mean, exactly, Seth?” she prodded when he glanced away, wariness prickling through him.

  “I know it’s your art form,” he said gruffly. How had they gotten here? He suddenly wished they were talking about anything but this.

  “But?” she pushed.

  He shook his head, exasperated she wouldn’t let the topic go.

  “Seth? I want to know what you think.”

  “It’s just . . . how does a person ever know what’s real and what’s not?”

  Regret swept through him as his words seemed to echo around the sunny, still kitchen, and he took in Gia’s frozen expression.

  “A person,” she repeated in a hollow tone. “By person, you mean you? How do you know when I’m ever being real or not?”

  He shrugged irritably. No, that wasn’t what he meant. He made a sound of frustration, struggling to find the right words. “That night . . . when I opened that door and saw you standing there, I thought you were the freshest, least contrived, most unexpected person I’d ever met in my life.” He raked his hand through his hair, feeling prickly under Gia’s stunned stare. “When I found out you were an actress, it was like . . . discovering something that didn’t fit with everything else.”