A long, low groan came from her and he leaned down and kissed the back of her neck. “You okay, baby?”

“The heat,” she gasped. “The lube has warmed me up. Each time you push into me it feels amazing.”

“I want to fuck you without a condom. Very soon.” He yearned to feel her pussy, naked against his cock.

“Soon. Oh, God, please come. Please,” she cried out.

Reaching around her body, he found her clit slippery and begging to be touched and he obliged. Within moments he felt the change in her pussy as her inner muscles clenched and fluttered with climax. He continued to stroke into her deep and hard as he tried to resist the siren call of those damned inner muscles, but it was a losing battle. The memories of how she’d looked and sounded as she’d fingered herself and the way she felt then rushed through him.

Pushing one last time as deeply into her as he could, pleasure exploded around him as he came.

After long moments, they fell to the mattress and he moved away for a few seconds, coming right back to pull her body against his.

“I love you, Dahlia.”

She moved to face him. “I love you, too, Nash.”

* * * * *

If you liked STRIPPED, don’t miss these erotic romances from Lauren Dane!

SECOND CHANCES

BELIEVE

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Available now from Lauren Dane

and Cosmopolitan Red-Hot Reads from Harlequin

Art student-slash-bike messenger Wren Davis pursues what she wants. And what she wants now is Gregori Ivanov, rock star of the Seattle art scene…

Read on for an excerpt of CAKE, available now!

She heard the music as she ascended the stairs and knew he’d be working. Her heart sped as she hastened her pace. Watching Gregori Ivanov work was a sensual treat. He tended to fall deeply into his work. The building could fall down around him and he wouldn’t notice.

There was something incredibly sexy about that. His intensity was a little overwhelming, but in the best sort of way.

Once she got to his floor, she didn’t bother ringing the bell—Gary Clark, Jr. was playing so loud Gregori wouldn’t have heard it anyway.

She let herself into the front entry of the massive space Gregori occupied. Three stories of windows washed the place in light. He took up a corner of the old building in Pioneer Square. Depending on where you stood, you could see Puget Sound or the redbrick buildings lining First Avenue.

She dropped the envelopes and the box she’d been delivering on the counter and wandered into his studio, leaning against one of his worktables to watch him.

Pale winter sun gleamed against his bare back. Ink trailed along his spine, over lean muscle. Lines of poetry, mainly in Cyrillic, wrapped around his forearms. Barbed wire marked his ribs, interspersed with more words. When he went shirtless, she’d discovered both his nipples bore silver hoops. He wore fingerless leather gloves, one hand grasping some sort of tool as he prowled around a large metal sculpture he’d been creating for the better part of the past three weeks.

His hair, currently scarlet red, stood up in liberty spikes, but other days he didn’t bother with the full Mohawk effect and he put it in a ponytail to keep it from his eyes. On many it would have looked ridiculous. But on Gregori? It worked. Like really, really worked.

He wore eye protection, but she knew beneath the goggles his eyes were hazel, fringed with sooty lashes usually at half-mast like he was thinking of something particularly dirty.

He worked in jeans so old they bore threadbare spots in all the right places and, though he often went barefoot around the loft, today he wore work boots.

In short, he was a visual buffet. And she was really hungry.

He stalked and paused. Bending to tug on something. Or to grab more tools and sharpen a piece. Wren just watched. Fascinated by the way he created.

It went on this way for another twenty minutes until he finally looked up and noticed her there.

He slid the goggles up, a smile marking his mouth. “Wren. How long have you been here?”

His accent was jagged. Like he was. He spoke in staccato bursts, the sharp twists of his words sliding through the air between them.

“I don’t know. Twenty minutes maybe. Half an hour? I brought some paperwork by and a box. Kelsey says you need to sign the papers in the red envelope and get them back to her.” Kelsey was Wren’s cousin and Gregori’s personal assistant.

He often proclaimed to hate signing things and attending to the business side of his art so she wasn’t surprised when he sighed, taking the goggles and gloves off.

Ignoring the sigh, she stepped closer. “Can I?” Wren tipped her chin toward the sculpture.

He shrugged, pleasure mixing through his annoyance. “Sure.”

She took it in. A man, crouched in the grip of briars and something else she couldn’t make out. The metal was polished in some places, hammered in others. Sharp edges fanned out here and there. “Like flames,” she murmured.

“Yes. Exactly.” He moved closer and his scent caught her attention. Sweat, soap, the product he used in his hair. The fuel from the welding stuff he used. It all married together and became essentially Gregori.

“This is brilliant.” Wren wasn’t flattering. It wasn’t a lie. He was a genius. One of those rare few who not only made a living at what he did, but had ascended to art celebrity.

He made a sound. A growl of sorts. “It’s missing something.” They both looked at it for some time longer until he sighed. “Come have tea with me.”

He issued the invitation like a command. He tended to be imperious at times. But she rarely took him seriously, so she let it wash over her and perhaps might even have liked it. A little bit.

“While the water is boiling, sign that stuff or Kelsey will only send me back here.”

They’d known each other for a year or so by that point, she having met him by bringing things to his loft several times a week. Over that time they’d developed a flirty back-and-forth and the more often she came to his place, the deeper the sexual undertones began to dig.

He looked up from where he’d been spooning the loose tea into a pot. “Do you have other things to do instead?”

“Are you asking if I have anything else but bringing papers, checks and doodads to Gregori Ivanov in my life?”

He laughed. “Do you?”

“I do. Shocking, I know, to imagine a world outside running errands for an eccentric artist, but there it is.”

He sniffed, his lids falling as he took in the scent of the tea. “Bergamot. I love it.” His eyes snapped open, gaze homing in on Wren, who’d perched at the nearby table. “What’s a doodad?”

“Little bits of this and that.” At his puzzled look, she got up and moved into the main room. He had a collection of what looked like gears scattered across a shelf. She pointed. “Like this. A generic term for bits of stuff. One of my moms says doohickey or thingamabob.”

“Hmm. I like those terms. I do suppose you bring me all manner of little bits on a regular basis.” The teapot whistled and he turned to deal with it. “There may be something to eat in the fridge.”

She moved to the sleek, stainless-steel work of art that filled her with refrigerator envy every time she saw it, peeking inside. For a supposed wild bachelor, he had a lot of really good things to eat. “Cheese, honey and nuts?”