Roan (The Henchmen MC 17)

After that, we dressed, he brought me back to work. He'd told me he would pick me up again for lunch the next day.

There was only a small bit of disappointment that he didn't ask me to stay.

And it wasn't until I was back at my desk that I realized he had never shown me what he had picked up.

But, it seemed, when Mikhail and I were around one another with a little privacy, it was completely impossible to think of things like that as we pawed at each other. As we explored with fingers, lips, tongues. As we got to know every square inch of the other's body. As we found the hot spots and the ticklish ones. As he brought me to endless, selfish orgasms. As he instructed me on how to bring him to his own selfish one with my mouth and hand, taught me to take him exactly as he liked, something that made me feel oddly powerful, knowing I could control his pleasure like he so effortlessly controlled mine.

Eventually, stolen delights finally became the first overnight.

"Stay," he demanded one afternoon as I slid my bra on. "Tonight," he clarified when I looked back over my shoulder at him. "Stay over tonight."

His timing was amazing, too.

My uncle was going out of town tonight, catching a plane to Turkey for business. My aunt was at a spa retreat with her girlfriends.

No one would even know I was gone aside from the staff who wouldn't say anything.

I knew I was an adult, that I shouldn't have felt like I couldn't - or shouldn't - spend the night out without permission. But I had been raised on the 'my house, my rules' thing. Which, in my parents' house meant I didn't stay out without telling them first. And, then, well, they would ask who I was staying out with. I had a feeling if I told them it was with a guy, they'd have told me I couldn't go.

Some habits were hard to break.

"Can you pick me up from my uncle's?" I asked, reaching for my shirt. "I just want to grab a few things," I explained, inwardly cringing at the idea of not having a toothbrush or a little makeup to touch-up my face, so I didn't look crazy in the morning.

"Of course. Six?" he asked, not moving to grab his own clothes, just spread out across the bed stark naked, one arm cocked behind his head, the epitome of confidence.

And, well, he had every reason to be sure of himself.

I was pretty sure I had never seen anyone half as glorious as Mikhail Osman.

I didn't care if that sounded cheesy or girlish or over the top.

It was the truth.

He was beautiful.

Just looking at him sometimes made my heart feel too big for my chest, like it was trying to break its way out of my ribcage to get closer to him.

"Six, I agreed, leaning over to sink my teeth playfully into the muscle of his thigh, something that made a low, rumbling laugh move through him as he finally knifed up, started getting dressed, brought me back to work.

A few hours later, though, we were right back in the same positions, clothes off, sheets mussed, hair bed-sexy, bodies limp and heavy, post-orgasm contentedness coursing through our systems as his arm slid under my back, curling me over onto his chest - a place I decided I would happily stay forever - as his fingers sifted softly through my hair, something that was slowly lulling me to sleep.

His body shifted a little, making a low grumble move through me before I settled again, feeling the heavy pull of my eyelids.

"Mack..." he tried, getting another grumble. "Sweetheart," he said, voice sweet. But sweet or not, I was too tired for talking. "Remember that thing I picked up that I never showed you?"

Well, I might have been too tired to talk, but I was never too tired for gifts. At least not for gifts from him.

"Thought that might work," he said with a big smile as I shot up, my hands planting, my hair falling forward like a curtain, making him reach up to tuck it behind my ears before reaching for the little white box on the mattress beside him. "Open it," he demanded as I dropped onto my butt beside him, my elbow and arm resting on his abdomen as I took the box between my hands. It was nothing, really, just a simple white box. But I looked at it long enough to memorize the raised pattern to the surface, the swirling silver logo in the center, the way one corner had gotten dented in.

"The gift is in the box, not the box itself," he informed me, tone light, amused.

With an eye roll, my hands worked the lid off, dropping to down to move the little tuft of clouds covering whatever might be inside.