Hold Me (Stark Trilogy 4.1)

“Mama’s here, precious,” I say softly. I raise my hand to cover a yawn—it’s been an exhausting day. “Go back to sleep, sweetie.”

“Baba,” she says sleepily, extending her hand.

“I know. Mommy wants Baba here, too.”

“Baba,” she repeats, and this time a sweet smile touches her lips before she breaks into a wide grin. “Baba kiss.”

Damien.

I don’t see him, but I know he’s there. And not just from Lara’s reaction. It’s his presence. His heat. The way he fills the room like a force of nature, so that everything in it shifts just a little, making it impossible to not be aware of him.

I turn slowly, my own smile blooming wider as I see him in the doorway. He’s leaning against the frame, those incredible dual-colored eyes reflecting so much love it makes my heart swell.

“How about a kiss for both my girls?” he says, his smile aimed at Lara, but his gaze going to me.

I nod, then sigh happily as he moves to Lara’s bedside, then bends to kiss her. “Look at you in your big girl bed.” She moved from her crib to the toddler bed only a week ago, and it’s still a source of endless fascination.

“Big!” she says, her expression and her tone making clear that her daddy’s presence is enough to tease her away from dreamland. She thrusts out her arms. “Up!”

“Oh, no,” Damien says, easing her back, then handing her Kitty before pulling up her little blanket. “It’s late. And big girls with big girl beds have to get their sleep. Right, Snuggles?”

“Lara!” she says. “Lara Ashley Stark!”

“Oh, that’s right.” He taps the end of her nose. “This big girl is Lara. Give Daddy a kiss, then time for sleep.”

“Buf-eye,” she insists, and Damien obliges, leaning in to use his eyelashes to give her a butterfly kiss on her cheek.

“And now night-night, okay?”

She nods, her thumb going back to her mouth. “Daba,” she says, and I press my hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. “Nye nye.”

He tucks her in, then stands up slowly before turning to me, a delicious grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Mama, kiss?” he asks, making me laugh.

I hold out a hand, then lead him into the hall. “Kiss,” I demand, then melt as he pins me against the wall, his mouth closing over mine, hard and demanding, as if we’d been apart for weeks instead of just hours.

“I missed my girls today,” he says as we break apart, leaving me breathless. “All of them. But I missed you the most.”

I sigh happily. “I didn’t think you’d be back so soon. You said you were trapped in San Diego.” Even though it’s Saturday, he’d been summoned to one of Stark International’s satellite offices just after lunchtime, and he’d told me that the nature of the crisis was such that he probably wouldn’t be done before midnight.

“For a while there, I thought I might have to fly from San Diego to Pittsburg,” he says. “But we managed to get things back on track around six. I came home in the chopper,” he adds. “You didn’t hear it land?”

Damien installed a landing pad at the same time he built the house, and it’s come in handy on more than one occasion. Usually, I hear him coming and going, but this time, I shake my head. “I guess because Lara’s room is on the other side of the house.”

“Good,” he says. “If I take it home more often, I don’t have to worry about waking the girls.”

“Good point,” I say, then press my hand over my smile, fighting the urge to laugh.

“Helicopters are funny? Because I know waking the kids isn’t funny. That way leads to crankiness.”

“Now you’re being funny,” I say. “No, I was just thinking a few minutes ago that we have more resources than other parents. Your arrival illustrates my point.”

He chuckles, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “Always happy to help.”

I ease up closer, hooking my arms around his waist. Then I lift myself up on my tiptoes and murmur, “I can think of a few other things you can help me with.”

His hands slide down so that he’s cupping my rear, and when he draws me closer, I feel the press of his erection and release a soft moan of anticipation.

He says nothing else, just takes my hand and leads me toward our bedroom.

The master bedroom is on the third floor of this house that Damien was building when we met in Los Angeles. Technically, we’d met six years earlier, but that brief encounter when he was a celebrity judge and I was a beauty pageant contestant is little more than a prologue to the life we now have together.

In a somewhat unique design, the third floor serves as the heart of this house and features a massive area for entertaining that opens onto a balcony with a stunning view of the Pacific. A small but well-designed kitchen dominates the opposite side of the floor. Originally planned as a workstation for caterers, it’s turned out to be our primary kitchen, as it’s much more user-friendly than the commercial monstrosity on the first floor.

The master bedroom is behind the open area, and in fact it shares a wall. And though we rarely used it before adopting Lara, there is another room on the floor that was designed as a guest room. It’s tucked in behind the master bedroom, shares a wall with the master closet, and boasts windows that open onto both the back and the side of the house.

It’s Lara’s room now, done up in a cheery yellow, which is fitting since our cat, Sunshine, spends so much time in there, watching over the little girl that Sunshine has decided is her responsibility. As Damien leads me through the double doors that mark the entrance to our bedroom, Sunshine passes us going the opposite direction, her tail high as she trots toward Lara’s room, ready to curl up in the armchair she’s claimed and guard her charge for the night.

“She’s been checking on Anne,” I say, nodding toward the master sitting area, which we’ve converted to a nursery. Sunshine adores Anne, too, but she knows that she isn’t allowed in the crib, which makes the baby much less interesting to her. Still, our cat has a nightly ritual, and it involves circling the bassinet two full times, as if searching for any possible dangers. Only when she’s certain that Anne is secure does Sunshine head to her nighttime post in Lara’s room.

“I think the cat has the right idea,” Damien says, still holding my hand as he steers us toward our youngest daughter.

I put her down over an hour ago, and now she’s sleeping peacefully, her little hands curled around the edge of the striped blanket that came home with us from the hospital. A truckload of toys and blankets and other loveys from our friends, but her favorite thing in the world is a thin blanket from the maternity ward.

I lean my head on Damien’s shoulder and his arm goes around me as we watch our little miracle sleep. I have a somewhat rare uterine condition, and the odds of me carrying to term were pretty crappy. So Anne is our miracle baby, although every day that I watch her I realize how miraculous every child is.

“What did she do today?” he asks, though I know what he’s really asking is, Did I miss something spectacular?

It’s the hardest part of not being here. Of going away to a job. And as I tell him that our little princess rolled from her tummy to her back for the very first time, I can’t help but wonder what milestone I’m going to miss when I go back to work.

“Did you get it on video?”

“I didn’t have my phone handy,” I admit. “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe she’ll show me herself in the morning.” He leads me out of the sitting area and to our bed. “Right now, I’m thinking of a different kind of rolling.”

I laugh. “Is that right, Mr. Stark? Maybe you better show me what you have in mind.”

Chapter 2

Damien, of course, is happy to oblige.

He takes both my hands and tugs me toward him. He catches me, then falls onto the bed in one motion, my body held tight against his. I laugh and protest, though it’s really only for show. But he shuts me up—first with a kiss, and then by literally rolling us over to the f

ar side of the bed.

“Damien!” I squeal when he pins me beneath him. But my squeal quickly turns into a moan as he slides my T-shirt up over my head, then twines it around my wrists, holding them together.

“I like that,” he says, eyeing me hungrily. He unbuttons his shirt and pulls it off, giving me a lovely view of the tight muscles of his athlete’s body. Then he runs his hands down my arms and cups my now-bare, very sensitive breasts. I rarely go braless these days, what with breastfeeding the little one. But I’d been planning to relax in the bath once Lara was down and had changed into nothing more than a shirt and loose yoga pants.

“And I like this, too.” He kisses the swell of my right breast, and a hot, tight cord of need extends like a fuse from my nipple all the way to my core, making me ache with an insatiable hunger. I writhe beneath him, overwhelmed by the flood of desire that’s racing through me.

I grab one of the vertical iron posts that make up the headboard of our old-fashioned iron bed frame. At the same time, I arch up, silently demanding more of his mouth, his touch.

He doesn’t disappoint, and as his mouth closes over my nipple and his tongue teases me mercilessly, his free hand slides down my belly, lower and lower until he reaches the waistband of my yoga pants. He tugs the cord to untie them, then slips his fingers inside, moving down until he strokes my clit with a feather-soft motion that acts like a flame, igniting a wild passion that rips through me, from my clit to my breasts to every cell in my body.

I gasp and squirm, but I don’t let go of my grip on the bed. On the contrary, I hold on tighter, fighting an explosion that I know is coming as Damien’s fingers so expertly play me.

Except the explosion never comes. Just as I’m on the verge, Damien pulls his hand away, leaving me teetering on the edge, frustrated and needy. “Damien,” I beg. “Please.”