It’s past midnight and raining hard outside the window when he says he doesn’t know how she likes him so much, how she can be as crazy for him as he is for her. So she tells him - or she starts to tell him anyway - all the parts that can come out as words, because there’s more of course, there’s so much more inside her but it's all emotion and feeling and too much to ever translate into crude, indelicate words. But she do...

Olivia knew his work when she saw it. She'd never really followed art, and still didn't. But seeing Aron’s paintings was like seeing a glimpse of his soul, and after five years of studiously blocking out the memories, everything resurfaced as though no time had passed at all. Five years. Five years was long enough to get a degree and graduate. Long enough to get married and have kids. Five years meant it shouldn’t affect...

The next few days passed in a haze. Everything felt riskier, more on edge. It seemed like continuing work on Abel's book was merely an act to cover up the undercurrent of desire and yet that was exactly what they did. She'd feel his eyes on her in the silences and it went deeper now. Too deep. She'd struggle to hold her composure. It was becoming impossible around him.  "We should just fuck and get it over with," he'd say...

Summer woke late the next morning. For a few blissful moments she felt totally at ease and then the stark reality of the previous night came back to her. She sat up too fast and her head spun. The house was quiet. Sunlight streamed in through the window. She didn't know how to act anymore. Everything was out of control. She picked up her phone to see a dozen messages from Brady. It was his birthday. She was almost glad sh...

Abel woke up around nine and went downstairs for his usual morning swim. He was wearing a pair of trunks this time, which wasn’t his usual practice, but with Summer in the house he was going to have to make a few adjustments. It didn’t matter that she’d surely seen him stroking himself the night before. As he swam a few laps, he wondered what she’d think if she knew what had been running through his mind at the peak of hi...

He was trying his best to leave her alone, but she was sitting at his desk working on his laptop, a position Abel Edwards had never allowed anyone to occupy before Summer.  It was like watching someone go for a hike in your shoes, whether they fit or not.  But the improbably slender twenty-six-year-old was sitting there like she owned the place, square shoulders and straight spine, head lowered to the screen as she went l...

Leaning back in the taxi, Olive tried to relax as the lazy spring evening sped past the windows. Magnolias, cherry blossoms, camellias. She was passing through the quiet side of the city now, houses with gardens and garages, the kind of upper class pristine suburbia that only seemed to exist in lifestyle magazines.  The sky was deepening and traffic was quiet. His house was half a mile away. She’d never been there before....

He tells her to spread her legs. She frowns and he tilts his head, disapproving. She blows a deep sigh and hesitates. “It’s embarrassing.” “I know.” “Then why?” “It’s one of those things you need to get over. You shouldn’t be embarrassed around me.” “I’m already naked, and you’re … well … not. Shouldn’t that be enough?” He’s standing at the foot of the bed while she sits upright, ass snugged against the pillows, hugging h...

  The living room light was on when Alyssa got home. Alice was still up, paintbrush in one hand, wine glass in the other. She didn’t notice her daughter appear. The canvas she’d been working on was a swirl of white colours, far too delicate to be so arresting. Alyssa stood in the doorway a while, watching the unsteady progress. Alice always painted better drunk, which was good since she was drunk pretty much every night....

Sofia had to get back to the congressional hearing but everything was going wrong. She looked desperately at the camera in the journalist's hand. “Please delete them,” she said. “Delete them?!” He frowned incredulously. “They're priceless! Sofia Jordan, the left’s notoriously outspoken congresswoman has a coke habit? This is gold!” Sofia gazed at him helplessly. They were facing each other on a staircase at Capitol Hill....

He touched the hem of her skirt first. She was wearing a white summer dress that fell just above her knees. Her dark hair was swept up into a ponytail. The window was wide open, summer heat and traffic noise breezing into the small living room. The switchboard operator from the insurance company had put her on hold and she held the phone intermittently to her ear, waiting for the blurry music to give way to a human voice....

The late sun slanted through the windshield over the smooth skin of Lisa’s legs. They were flung across Arch’s lap, her toes grazing the bottom of the steering wheel. They'd been driving two hours now, and she still didn't have a clue where they were headed. He’d kept his free hand on her thigh the whole time except when he needed it to drive, and the scent of the citrus groves they were passing rushed in through the open...

The son of a bitch was fucking her. Cooper knew it the moment he saw Miles Whiteman cast his eye on the dark-haired beauty standing by herself on the other side of the spacious salon. There had to be three dozen people laughing and mingling in between, but the older lawyer’s eyes lit on the much younger woman with the kind of surprised disapproval that could only mean one thing: she wasn’t supposed to be there. Cooper sho...

It was in his voice. Nobody except Lia seemed to notice. There were a dozen people at the table and not one of them caught onto the way his voice changed when he spoke to her. It became something deeper - firmer, and more insinuating. Were they not paying attention? His shift in tone was infuriatingly obvious to her and yet nobody – not her parents, not even his wife – glanced up. Everything inside her moved when he’d spe...

Hunter sat on the sofa in the boxer briefs and T-shirt he’d thrown on after showering. He’d been at a crime scene all night with his partner, Duke. Now, he was counting on Lucy to erase it from his mind. She stood in front of him in a short, white robe, legs gleaming with a salon tan, arms crossed under her breasts. In the five months they’d been married, she’d been the perfect drug. If making a man forget his troubles we...