Caress part two arcadia, p.1
Caress Part Two (Arcadia), page 1
About this Book
*****CARESS is an erotic romance that includes explicit sexual scenes. Also warm toasted bagels spread with gooey cream cheese, banana splits dripping with extra cherries, and a panty-dropping alpha male who’s good enough to eat all by himself. Side effects may include naughty thoughts, secret smiles, and friends asking what on earth you’re reading. Proceed at your own risk. XXXOOO Josie*****
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Welcome to the Arcadia, Manhattan’s most seductive address.
For almost a century, the exclusive Art Deco apartment building overlooking Central Park has been home to passionate, star-crossed lovers. Now a new generation is about to discover the obsession and mystery hidden within its luxurious walls.
When smart, gutsy Emma Whittaker returns to the building where she grew up, she’s only hoping to gain a foot-hold in a city that has turned cold and hostile since the exposure of her father’s multi-billion dollar financial fraud. Instead, she meets the one man who can make her forget all the hard-learned lessons that life has taught her and tempt her to risk everything, even her heart.
Lucas Phelps is New York’s premiere realtor, the confidant of stars, tech moguls, and oligarchs, gatekeeper to the city’s most sought after properties, none more so than the Arcadia itself. At ease in the world of the wealthiest and most powerful, Lucas has long since hidden his true nature behind steely resolve. But his deepest yearnings will return to haunt him when he crosses paths with the one woman capable of shattering his hard-won control and unleashing his darkest desires.
As the betrayals of the past and the dangers of the present collide within the Arcadia, Emma and Lucas will struggle to overcome both before they can make the future their own.
Table of Contents
About this Book
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Sneak Peek
Chapter One
Emma
Savage, hot desire clawed at me. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. All I could do was feel over every inch of my skin.
The rasp of Lucas’ voice resonated deep inside me, a caress that left tremors in its wake.
“For the love of god, Emma, tell me you want this!”
Want? Was the man insane? How could he possibly think otherwise?
Distantly, I remembered last night on the couch in the screening room, the thrust of his tongue, the clenched power of his body, his finger stroking me where I was so wet and hot. Overwhelmed by the sensations he unleashed, I’d panicked and called a halt.
But that was then and this was…after. After a night of hot, carnal dreams about him. Followed by a morning of longing, wishing, imagining…
The empty morning when he wasn’t there. His sudden reappearance. Alone with him riding up in the elevator, remembering one particularly hot, explicit dream with me on my knees and his cock in my--
My head fell back. I heard a woman’s voice moaning helplessly and realized that it was mine.
“Oh, god, Lucas, don’t stop!”
His hands closed on my bare shoulders. His fingertips and palms were roughened, unexpectedly so for the CEO of New York’s premiere real estate firm. The chiseled perfection of the body that I had glimpsed days ago in nothing more than a towel was evidence that he worked out often and hard. But I still hadn’t understood how seductive his carefully controlled strength could be. Especially not when it was edged by the intensity of his own need.
Margo’s scarlet silk gown that I had decided so impulsively to try on lay around my feet. I was wearing only a scrap of panties and they were too much. I ached to be skin-to-skin with him.
He’d taken off his jacket but he was still in business attire--dress shirt, trousers, even a tie although he’d loosened that at least. I grabbed hold of it, ran my hand up the length of natural silk the shade of pale honey, and tugged at the knot, unraveling it further.
Before I could stop myself, I murmured, “Please…”
The fire behind his grey eyes leaped higher.
“Tell me what you want,” he demanded.
So much. How could I ever explain it all to him? I wanted the physical pleasure that I knew beyond any doubt that he could give me. But I also wanted to let go of the self-protectiveness that had caused me to seal myself off from so much of life and experience. For just this moment, with this man, I wanted to break free.
After years of living so carefully, keeping my emotions in such strict check, I had begun to doubt that I could ever know anything else. My relief at being proven wrong was so powerful that it overwhelmed any lingering hesitation I might have felt.
“I want you,” I said. “I want whatever this is between us for however long it is. I don’t want promises. I don’t have expectations. I just want this moment, the two of us together in it.”
A shadow moved across his face. I chased it, trying to understand what it meant, but it was gone in an instant. In its place was a searing look of raw, hot hunger that made me tremble.
“Fair enough,” he said, “but we do this my way, understand? I call the shots.”
Given our relative levels of experience--or in my case inexperience--that seemed reasonable. Yet the thought of it made the muscles at my core clench painfully. I knew I should tell him that I hadn’t done this before but the words caught in my throat. I didn’t want to say or do anything that could possibly wreck the mood.
His hands gentled on my shoulders. He bent his head and the brush of his lips against mine was tender, even sweet.
“Emma,” he breathed.
Distantly, I realized that he was backing me toward the bed. Suddenly overwhelmed by the fear that I was about to fall, I grasped his sculpted biceps. But I needn’t have worried. He lowered me carefully.
Cool air touched my skin and for an instant I felt starkly alone and exposed. Before I could begin to process that, Lucas stretched out above me on the bed. He held most of his weight on his powerful arms. Even so, I felt controlled and contained in a way that was oddly reassuring.
Leaning on his side, he smoothed my hair back from my face and smiled. Softly, he said, “I have to be out of my mind to be doing this but as long as I am, I want it to be good for you.”
My throat went dry as the full impact of what was happening hit me. I was about to experience sex for the first time with a man I’d known for little more than a week. The same instinct for flight that had seized me the previous evening threatened to take hold again.
But before it could, a kernel of calm opened up inside me. It expanded as I met Lucas’s searching gaze. I did know him, no matter how short our acquaintance.
He was the man who dominated my thoughts waking and sleeping. The man who had a starring role in my shockingly carnal dreams. But he also brought me bagels, laughed at my jokes, taught me to watch for hawks soaring above the city, and coaxed me to open up in ways that I’d never considered doing with anyone else.
Even now, with me all but naked on the bed, and his erection hard against my thigh, he left no doubt that the choice was mine. A man of remarkable strength and will, he nonetheless put all the power in my hands. For the moment, at least.
“Do you trust me?” he asked.
When had I last trusted anyone other than myself? Even before the exposure of my father’s vast financial fraud, his arrest and suicide, and the sundering of our family, I’d been instinctively cautious.
Growing up, I’d wanted to be liked for myself but in the circles I lived in, friendship, or what passed for it, was merely a means to an end. My family’s wealth and influence were a barrier I couldn’t get passed. Ironically enough, that remained the case even after both evaporated like drops of rain on a steaming hot sidewalk.
But Lucas was different. For all that I’d sensed his irritation with his younger sister, Caroline, I’d also recognized the deep undercurrent of affection that ran between them. So, too, he’d spoken of his mother and brother with genuine feeling.
He was capable of caring and, for the moment at least, he gave every appearance of caring about me.
That was enough, if only for now.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” I said softly. It was a half-answer, true within the constraints of the moment. But it was all I had to give him.
Even so, my answer seemed to provide the reassurance that he needed. It also changed the dynamic between us in a way that made me gasp.
His mouth took mine in a soul-searing kiss, his tongue thrusting deep. I moaned again and tried to grasp his thick, silken hair, the color of dark chocolate. But his hands closed on mine, implacably stretching my arms above my head and holding them there as he plundered my mouth.
When he lifted his head at last, I all but sobbed at the sensation of loss. Behind the fringe of lashes that a woman would have killed for, his eyes glittered with the sheen of steel.
“Stay still,” he said. “Understand?”
I frowned. How could I possibly manage that? With every breath I took, the need to touch him grew stronger. I longed to run my finger
“I want to make this good for you,” he said, his voice strained. “But if you touch me right now, I’m going to lose it. I’ll be too quick and too rough. Neither of us wants that, agreed?”
His words were so stark and so carnal that they sent a hot bolt of longing through me. Not trusting myself to speak, I nodded.
“Good,” he said with a smile so predatory that it made me shiver.
I fisted the covers of the bed in a desperate effort not to reach for him again. Slowly, Lucas moved down my body. He dropped light kisses like licks of flame in the valley between my breasts and over my stomach to my navel where his tongue swirled in a motion that made my clit throb for the same attention.
When he came to the rim of my panties, he stopped. Gazing up the length of my body, he licked his lips and said, “I’m going to taste every inch of you.”
Heat exploded inside me. I only just managed to hold on to the covers as my hips arched helplessly.
His deep, knowing chuckle whispered over my skin as he rose to stand beside the bed. Without taking his eyes from mine, he slipped his fingers under either side of my panties and slowly eased them down my legs.
Straightening, the scrap of lace bunched in his hand, he said, “Sweet heaven, Emma, you are so beautiful.”
His praise warmed and reassured me. Even so, I started to press my thighs together.
“Don’t,” Lucas said on a note of warning.
I stopped but that wasn’t enough. The weight of his gaze settled over me as he said, “Spread your legs for me. I want to see you.”
For a moment, I felt paralyzed, no more capable to doing as he said than I was of flying to the moon. But then I remembered that I wanted this. I wanted him. And even more, I wanted the sense of power that came with the realization of how I could affect him.
Slowly, feeling at once acutely self-conscious and deliciously bold, I did as he said.
Chapter Two
Emma
I wasn’t waxed, having neither money nor inclination for that. But I was neatly trimmed. I had to hope that would be enough.
The quick intake of his breath was my reward. That and his harshly murmured words.
“You’ve got the most gorgeous pussy, Emma. Like the folds of a blossom wet with dew and just begging for the sun to coax it open.”
No one had ever spoken to me like that, not remotely. Outside of the pages of certain books I had enjoyed, I had no idea that any man could. Much less had I guessed the impact it would have on me.
I gaped as he grinned and twirled my panties around his finger like a captured battle flag before tucking them into a pocket. The action was at once so intimate and territorial that I couldn’t help being shocked.
But my response was nothing compared to how I felt when he said, “Another time, I want you to touch yourself for me.”
What? I didn’t think that I could do that but before I could voice any such concern, he said, “But that will have to wait.”
Without warning, he took hold of my legs just above the knees and pulled me down so that my butt was on the edge of the bed and my feet on the floor. I managed to raise myself on my elbows in time to see Lucas, still looking every bit the ultra-successful executive that he was, go down on his knees in front of me.
With a wicked gleam in his eyes, he spread my thighs even further and said, “Lie back, baby.”
I more like fell back, unable any longer to hold myself upright. Anticipation lit up every cell of my body. He breathed--so softly!--a mere puff of air against my hot, swollen flesh but the effect was electrifying. I cried out and all but bucked off the bed. Only his firm hands holding my thighs open stopped me.
“Let’s see just how responsive you are,” he said.
“Aaahhh!” A cry of mingled anguish and ecstasy broke from me as the top of his tongue swirled around my clit.
This couldn’t be right! Something had to be wrong with me. He’d barely touched me and I was about to come.
“So sweet,” he murmured.
His thumbs separated the outer lips of my sex, allowing the broad flat of his tongue to stroke me from top to bottom. Heat pooled in my groin, a delicious, melting heat that made me feel as though I was dissolving. That sensation heightened unbearably when he drove his tongue into me.
Deep tremors coursed through my body. I tried to hold off the orgasm that I felt approaching but it was relentless. Distantly, I heard myself sob, in release, in affirmation, in submission to the power of this man and what he could do to me.
I’d come before but never remotely like this. The orgasms I’d given myself in the past were pale reflections of what Lucas unleashed in me. In his hands, beneath his sinfully skillful mouth, I became a woman of fire and passion who refused to be denied. Instead, she rose from deep inside me, bold and unabashed, to claim what he so lavishly offered.
When I was next aware of anything else, Lucas was leaning over me. His expression was a cross between smug male pride and genuine concern.
Softly, he touched the tears I hadn’t realized were slipping down my cheeks. “Are you all right?”
Still so stunned by what had happened, I could only nod. But something more seemed called for. Hesitantly, I said, “I guess I was…on edge.” My cheeks warmed as I added, “I’ve been thinking about you.”
His smile was breathtaking. He looked surprised but undeniably pleased.
“Have you? I won’t deny that you’ve been on my mind a great deal, Miss Whittaker.”
His mocking formality, so at odds with the circumstances, made me smile. “Have I?”
“Oh, yes, often at the most inopportune times. I’ve had trouble working and the other day, I got crushed on the handball court because of you.”
“Me? I wasn’t even there.”
“You were in my head. I couldn’t stop thinking about--” He broke off and slipped a hand down gently between my thighs. “Why don’t I just show you instead?”
He couldn’t mean to-- Again, without taking anything for himself?
His fingers parted me, gently exploring the folds of my slit before he slipped just one into my vagina, stroking in a circular motion. As he did so, he watched my reactions intently.
“Just here, I think—” he murmured, touching one particular spot more firmly, again and again.
“Aaahhh, Lucas!”
In the aftermath of the powerful orgasm I had just experienced, I wouldn’t have thought it possible to become aroused again so quickly. But I would have been wrong.
He was relentless in the best possible way, seeming to understand exactly what I needed and how I was must susceptible. A little harder, a little softer and I might have rebelled. As it was, all I could do was succumb as pleasure built again to a shattering peak of release.
In the aftermath, he stood, tall and indomitable against the darkly paneled walls of the bedroom. Holding my gaze, he pulled his tie loose and tossed it on a nearby chair. Slowly, smiling faintly, he undid the buttons of his shirt and pulled it from his trousers. It, too, landed on the chair.
My tongue snuck out to moisten my lips as I stared at him. The glimpse I’d had of his bare torso the day we met hadn’t quite prepared me for a more intensive appreciation of the work of art that was Lucas Phelps.
Sweet lord, the man was living, breathing temptation!
Taut skin that looked kissed by the sun stretched over broad, sculpted shoulders and a torso that tapered, long and ripped, to narrow hips and the V of muscle that disappeared beneath his waistband. He moved with grace and agility that only hinted at his carefully contained strength. In another age, he would have been a warrior. With a start, I realized that in a sense, he still was, ready and more than able to do battle for anything he wanted.
Helplessly, unable to stop myself, I observed, “You work out a lot.”
He nodded as he bent and removed his shoes and socks, in the process giving me a view of his rock hard ass.
“It helps me to concentrate,” he said as he straightened.
A quiver ran through me as I reflected that he was definitely a man who knew how to focus, whatever the subject of his attention.
