Free Million Dollar Mistake by Meg Lacey

his chest hair, the tip of her tongue touching his skin, her wild mass of black hair sifting against his flesh, activating his nerve endings with each inhale she took.
    One of her legs was lifted, knee bent to ride over his thighs, but not high enough to disguise the powerful erection that was now lifting the covers like the center pole in a circus tent. Still half-asleep, he prayed she wouldn’t move, and just as fervently prayed she would. He lay there for a moment, trying to regain control of his body.
    God knew he wasn’t a saint. He was a healthy male with all the healthy male responses. The fact that women made themselves available whenever he wanted without too many problems didn’t mean he couldn’t behave when he had to. He was a disciplined man who avoided messy affairs. His hand stroked the nape of Raven’s neck. Hell, affairs couldn’t get any messier than this one. Involvement with Raven was a painful way to commit suicide in Nicholas’s opinion. He groaned as she moved, the aroused buds of her nipples stabbing his chest as her hand crept up to his shoulder.
    His control broke.
    All right. You want it, baby, you’ve got it.
    He moved, his other arm coming around her body to lift her higher on his chest as he clenched his fist in her hair and pulled her head back to ravage her mouth. His lips met hers, harsh at first, desperate to consume before softening to coax a response. A response readily given as her tongue tangled with his. He moaned in her mouth, shivering as she did the same. His hand left her hair, surging down to lift her onto his body. He cupped her buttocks, pressing her against him as his mouth continued to plunder hers. Everywhere he touched there was heat. Everywhere she touched there was fire. He was being consumed and he didn’t give a damn. There was only now, only here, only—
    Raven .
    The realization so startled him that he woke completely, breaking contact with her lips as he reared back to stare at her. Her eyelids fluttered and lifted, revealing eyes dark with passion. They gazed at one another for a moment before full awareness dawned. Nicholas almost wished he had a camera to capture the sudden horror in Raven’s eyes. Of course his probably revealed the same, so maybe not.
    Raven’s mouth was now opening and closing like a baby bird begging for worms. A look of such dismay landed on her face that Nicholas’s lips twitched in an unwilling smile.
    “Not the expression a man hopes to see when his lady first wakes and looks at him, luv.“
    “Wha…wha…wha…?”
    Rapidly regaining both his customary sophistication and his sense of humor, he arched a polite brow. “Pardon?”
    “Wha—what—oh— God!”
    He chuckled, giving her a regretful look. “That’s flattering, but we haven’t even gotten near paradise yet.”
    Raven levered herself up from his chest, unaware that her strap had slipped off her shoulder, the deep V-neckline pulled to the side to reveal the majority of a firm round breast. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    All of the saliva left Nicholas’s mouth as he stared at the ripe fruit offering sin to him as surely as Eve’s apple did to Adam. He tried to speak but only garbled sounds emerged. Unbidden, his hand slid up her back and around her waist to touch the curve of her breast. He lifted his head, wanting nothing so much as a taste of her warm flesh.
    “No fair.”
    “Huh?” Sunk in a sea of sensuality, he grunted as if his brain had turned to soup. He wanted to lick her, circle her nub with his tongue and—
    “No fair taking…”
    Nicholas figured Raven must have read the expression on his face because she jerked herself to a sitting position and grabbed a blanket, pressing it to her chest. Nicholas fell back onto the pillow more exhausted than if he’d dug a tunnel from New York to China.
    “…advantage. No fair taking advantage,” Raven finally gasped the entire sentence.
    He stared at her for a moment before the unjustness of