“That people who say that love at first sight is a myth are both foolish and sad. I loved you from the moment I saw you, and though I don’t know how it’s possible, I love you more each day. You fill me up, Nikki. You make me feel as though I own the world and everything in it.”
Her smile bloomed. “Well, you pretty much do.”
“Ah, but you are more precious to me than rubies, and nothing I own or desire can compare to you.”
“You better be careful,” she said, wrapping herself in his embrace. “Otherwise, you’re going to end up spending the whole rest of the day between my legs.”
“Trust me, Mrs. Stark, I’d have no objections at all.”
Chapter Ten
“It’s weird going back today.”
Nikki’s words filtered through the hall to Damien as he moved from the bedroom toward the kitchen. But she wasn’t speaking to him. Instead, she was talking with Bree, who was back on nanny duty.
“I guess it would be,” he heard Bree reply. “Just take it slow. And it’s Friday, so that’s a good way to ease in. Take care of what needs to be handled, then take the weekend to regroup. Start fresh next week.”
“You’re very wise,” Nikki said, and Damien heard the tease in her voice.
“It’s true,” he said as he came into the kitchen, delighting in the squeals of greeting from his two little girls at the table with their nanny. Nikki stood at the counter, and he let his gaze slide over her, reveling in the way her smile brightened the morning. Then he turned his attention to Bree and the girls. “So what do you three have planned for the day?”
“Puppies!” Anne said, making Bree laugh and Lara roll her eyes.
“Not puppies, silly,” Lara said. “Puppets.”
“We’re going to put together the puppet theater,” Bree explained, referring to the birthday present from Jamie and Ryan. “And then I thought we’d make some paper-mache puppet heads and use scrap material to make their clothes. My mom and I used to do that.”
“Sounds messy,” Nikki said. “Try not to paper-mache the entire playroom.”
“We’ll do our best,” Bree said, obviously fighting a smile. “Won’t we, girls?”
“Puppies!” Anne said again, to which Lara responded with her hands on her hips and a shake of her head, looking so damn adult that Damien had to turn away so she wouldn’t see him laugh.
“We should go,” Nikki said, kissing each girl in turn. “I want to pop into Upper Crust and get some treats for the office.”
“Good idea.” He grabbed his watch from where he’d left it on the pass-through bar, then cursed as he glanced at the display.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Just missed a call.” He flashed her a heated look. “Probably came in while we were showering. A small price to pay.”
“True enough. I missed one, too. Guess we really are diving back into the deep end of the work pool.”
He pulled out his phone and frowned at the display, then looked back up at Nikki. “Who called you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize the number and there was no voicemail. Why?”
He turned his phone so that she could see the display. “Sofia.”
“Oh.” She snagged her phone off the charging stand on the counter, then passed it to him. “She’s not programmed into mine. Is that her number?”
He glanced down, and Nikki must have read his expression, because she said, “Guess she really wanted to get in touch with us. Did she leave you a message?”
“None,” he said. “But she knows I’ll recognize the number. Presumably, she’s expecting me to call back.”
“I guess you can call her back from the car.”
He almost laughed at her pageant perfect expression, but he knew better. Whatever detente she and Sofia had reached since Sofia’s apology and Lara’s adoption, it was a tenuous one.
“It’ll be easier to just wait and call her from the office,” he said. “You ready to go?”
Her eyes darted to the kids, and for a moment, he thought she was going to shake her head and tell him she’d changed her mind. That she wanted to spend one more day at home and start fresh at the office on Monday.
But then she squared her shoulders, grabbed her leather tote, and nodded firmly. “Absolutely, I am.”
After hugs and sloppy kisses, they finally found their way into the elevator and then down to the underground walkway that led from the house to the garage, one of his favorite features of the property.
Nikki called it the Bat Cave, and he supposed she had a point. Damien had always loved cars—their sleek beauty. The power of a well-built engine. As a teen on the tennis circuit, he’d had to limit his fascination to behind the wheel. But once he’d left the sport, he’d had the time to indulge his passion. There’d been little time in the early days, of course. Building an empire was a twenty-four/seven endeavor. But he stole hours here and there, relieving the stress and pressure of the world he was creating by re-creating something of beauty from the past.
Now, years later, he had an impressive collection, both of cars he’d bought outright because they appealed to him, and of cars he’d rebuilt himself, taking deep satisfaction in the meticulous process of restoration. And he kept all of them in a twenty-car underground parking garage camouflaged to look like part of the Malibu hills.
“Boys with their toys.”
He glanced at his wife, and she laughed.
“I’m talking about the rapturous expression on your face.”
“Well, it’s a rapturous room.”
She rolled her eyes. “Like I said…”
He pressed a hand against her back, guiding her toward the eighth row and the Rolls Royce Phantom he’d restored a few years ago. “If I recall, you’ve gotten some enjoyment out of my toys, too.”
“All of them,” she said, sidling up to him, then kissing him lightly as her hand cupped his balls.
“Careful, Ms. Fairchild.”
“Or what, Mr. Stark? You’ll make me late for work? I own the company, remember?”
“True enough. My wife is a badass in the business world.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
He watched, amused, as she turned around, scanning the cavernous garage. Then she moved away, following the line of cars slowly, her gaze taking them all in.
“Something on your mind?” he asked.
“This one.” She stopped at the driver’s side door of his shiny red Bugatti Veyron. The very car he’d driven on their first date. Or, rather, he’d driven it to the airport so that they could fly to Santa Barbara for lunch. And it wasn’t so much a date as a step in the negotiations of the terms for her portrait. Either way, he’d been hard from the moment she’d burst into his office, ready to spit fire. But the real heat came later when he held her in his arms and knew that he would never let her go.
“Yes,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “This one is perfect.”
“Definitely.” Considering the rawness in her voice, he was certain that her thoughts tracked his own, and it took all his willpower
not to bend her over the polished rear of the car and fuck her hard and fast, just to claim her once again.
“Damien?”
He saw the flush on her skin, her nipples hard beneath the thin silk top. Her lips were parted, and her chest rose and fell with her breathing.
He met her eyes, his brow rising in question.
“Yes” was all she said, but it was enough. He held out his hand, and she walked to him, slipping out of her heels as she did. She wore no stockings, and was now barefoot on the polished concrete floor that Edward kept pristine.
He turned her in his arms so that his erection was pressed against her back as he slid his hands down over her hips, then along her thighs to the hem of her pencil skirt. He started to ease it up, but she stopped him by cupping her hand over his. “No. Take it off.”
He said nothing, but moved his fingers to quickly unfasten the button at the back, then ease down the zipper. Tucking his thumbs under the waistband, he shimmied it down over her hips, leaving her clad below the waist in only a pair of black panties with a lace back.
Slowly, he stroked his hand over the lace, following the curve of her ass. “Do you like that?”
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Good. Take them off.”
She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “Take them off for me.”
“With pleasure.”
With pleasure. The words seemed to hang in the air as if their shared passion had conjured them.
With Nikki, everything was with pleasure, and his entire body burned with the truth of that. Every breath he drew. Every touch of his skin against hers. Every look, every whisper, every touch.
Every atom within him hummed and swirled with only one purpose—Nikki. She was light and love and romance and candles. She was sex and sin and pain and longing.
She was his, goddammit, and in that moment he was pretty damn sure he’d die if he couldn’t sink himself inside of her. If he couldn’t feel her arching back, pressing her ass against him and silently forcing him to go deeper, to make the connection stronger.
A fool’s errand, because how could they ever be more connected than they were every minute of every day?
He was still stroking her now-bare ass, and he slid his hand lower, teasing his way between her thighs. “Wider,” he demanded, and she complied eagerly, not just spreading her legs, but bending over the back of the sexy little car so that she was wide open to him and just waiting to be fucked.