Complete Me (The Stark Trilogy)

drink and get a second wind. Others are secluded, tucked away in dark corners for lovers to curl up together and soak in the atmosphere.
    The bouncers downstairs made it clear that no one gets into this bar if they look shabby, and here under the starlight, that policy is obvious. Everything glows, including Damien and me. There is a polish to everything that I see, but I know better than anyone how tarnished something shiny can be underneath, and I can’t help but imagine this place come morning. The sofas stained with spilled drinks. Cigarette butts stamped out on the stone floor. The ethereal candles revealed as nothing more than globby clumps of wax.
    Nothing is as it appears. Not this club nor its patrons nor Damien. And certainly not me.
    We weave among the other patrons to one of the love seats tucked in a darkened corner. Damien sits, and I start to sit beside him. “No,” he says, then pulls me into his lap so that I am straddling his leg, the hard muscles of his thigh pressing enticingly against the hard knot in my ass as I face him.
    I exhale, making a little
ah
sound as shimmers of awareness crash through me.
    “Trouble, Ms. Fairchild?”
    I lift a brow and rock my hips, grinding my rear against him and making this hedonistic tempest crackle and pop inside of me. And—if his face is any indication—my lap dance is driving Damien a little crazy, too.
    “No trouble, Mr. Stark,” I say, as primly as I can manage despite my body being on fire.
    “Christ, Nikki …”
    He tugs me forward so that I am still straddling him, but now I can feel his denim-clad erection against the bare skin of my thigh above my stocking. I meet his eyes, my heart pounding wildly, then moan when his mouth crushes against mine. One of his hands is around my waist, holding me in place at the small of my back. The other slides under my skirt, his fingers finding the thin strip of silk that makes up the thong, then beginning to move in slow, easy circles calculated to drive me crazy.
    “Damien,” I whisper. “Someone might see.”
    “I want you. Right now. I want to watch you explode in my arms.”
    “But—” I look around. There doesn’t seem to be anyone paying attention, and in the dark it’s not obvious where his hand is hidden.
    His fingers curve inside me, and whatever protests I might have raised die right then. His thumb presses against my pubic bone as if my body is a handle, and I gasp as he roughly pulls me closer. “Now,” he repeats. “I want you coming in my arms.”
    “Yes,” I say, because I am too wrecked, too wanton, to say anything else. Right then I think I’d let him lay me out on the dance floor and fuck me with the crowd cheering us on. He wouldn’t, though, and deep inside, under this haze of passion andlust, I know that. We’re still in our bubble, hidden in the dark, buried in the corner.
    But Damien needs this. This man who once told me he doesn’t do public sex. Because that’s not what this is about. Instead, he needs proof that I am really here. That I didn’t leave after talking with Maynard. That the demons of his childhood haven’t pushed me away.
    He needs me to get lost in his arms as much as I need to lose myself to him. To know that he is back—and that he is still mine.
    “Yes,” I repeat, because it is the only word I can manage through my jumble of thoughts and emotions. “Oh, God, Damien, please, yes.”
    “Good girl,” he says, sliding his hand off my back. I’m vaguely aware that he has thrust it into his pocket, but that is not the hand that interests me. Instead, all of my thoughts are centered on the fingers that are teasing me under my skirt, playing with my clit, making me bite my lip so that I don’t rock back and forth with these building sensations. I’m just a girl sitting in her boyfriend’s lap, after all. Not like a woman about to come like she has never come before from the intimate way that said boyfriend is fingerfucking her.
    Just a girl sneaking a brief kiss. Just a girl—
    “Oh, God!” I cry, but my shout is swallowed by Damien’s hard mouth over mine. The orgasm rips through me—not just because Damien’s expert fingers have played me so well, but because of the surprising, shocking, totally mind-rocking vibration of the plug with which Damien has filled me. I want to scream with delight, to writhe and make the sparks build again and again. I want this whirlwind of pleasure to keep pulling me up and up, and the fact that I