Stark After Dark (2 page)

Reality returns slowly, like stars appearing in a newly dark sky.

For a moment I have to wonder if I have melted, but it is only the limbless feeling that comes with a release born of pure pleasure.

Damien pulls out, and I mourn the loss of our connection, at least until he lies beside me, our arms and legs a tangle, our faces close. “Thank you,” I murmur.

“For what?”

“For distracting me. From my nightmare.”

He laughs. “I didn't realize I was that transparent.”

“Only to me. Like you said, we know each other.”

He kisses the tip of my nose. “You have nothing to be nervous about.”

I nod, but the truth is that he is wrong. I realize it now. I want this wedding to be a reflection to the world. An outward manifestation of what he and I are together. Beauty and grace and something special and unique. I want it for him. For us. And for the whole damn world.

And so yes, I am nervous.

“I want the wedding to be perfect,” I confess.

“It will be,” he assures me. “How can it be anything else? Because no matter what happens, the wedding will end with you being my wife. And that, my darling Nikki, is the only thing that matters.”

I brush a kiss over his lips, because he's right. I mean, I know that he's right.

But I also know that he's forgetting about the cake and the dress and the band and the photographer and the tents and the tables and the champagne and on and on and on.

Men,
I think, and then snuggle close, reluctantly acknowledging that for tonight, at least, he's distracted me.

For tonight, I care only about this man who will soon be my husband—and who already is my life.

I awake to an empty bed and the smell of frying bacon. I roll over to find my phone on the bedside table, then glance at the time. Not yet six.

I groan and fall back among the pillows, but I don't really want to go back to sleep. What I want is Damien.

I slide out of bed, then grab the tank top and yoga pants I'd left draped across a nearby armchair. I head barefoot out of the bedroom and move the short distance down the hall to the third-floor kitchen.

We're in Damien's Malibu house, and the wall of windows that faces the ocean is wide open, the glass panels having been thrust aside to let in the breeze. The smell of the ocean mingles with the scent of breakfast and I breathe deep, realizing that I am content. Whatever demons had poked at me during the night, Damien effectively banished them.

I glance toward the windows and out at the darkened Pacific. Waves glow white in the fading moonlight as they break upon the shore. There is beauty there, and part of me wants to walk to the balcony and stare out at the roiling, frothing water. But the siren call of the ocean is nothing compared with my desire to see Damien, and so I turn away from the windows and head straight to the kitchen. It is larger than the one in the condo I used to share with my best friend, Jamie, and it is not even the primary kitchen for this house. That is on the first floor, and could easily service a one-hundred-table restaurant. But this—the “small” kitchen—was installed as an adjunct to the open area that serves as a venue for entertaining, and since it is just down the hall from our bedroom, Damien and I have gotten into the habit of cooking our meals and eating in this cozier, more informal area. Usually we're joined by Lady Meow-Meow, the fluffy white cat I took custody of when Jamie moved out. I know Lady M misses Jamie, but she's also enjoying having the run of this huge house, and Gregory—the valet, butler, and all around house-running guy—spoils her rotten.

Now I lean against the half wall that marks the break from hallway to kitchen. Damien is standing at the stove cooking an omelette as if he were nothing more than an ordinary guy. Except there is nothing ordinary about Damien Stark. He is grace and power, beauty and heat. He is exceptional, and he has captured me completely.

At the moment, he is shirtless, and I cannot help the way my breath stutters as my eyes skim over the defined muscles of his back and his taut, strong arms. Damien's first fortune came not from business, but from his original career as a champion tennis player. Even now, years later, he has both the look and the power of an elite athlete.

I let my gaze drift down appreciatively. He is wearing simple gray sweatpants that sit low on his narrow hips and cling to the curves of his perfectly toned ass. Like me, he is barefoot. He looks young and sexy and completely delicious. Yet despite his casual appearance, I can still see the executive. The powerful businessman who harnessed the world, who shifted it to his own liking and made a fortune in the process. He is strength and control. And I am humbled by the knowledge that I am what he values most of all, and that I will spend the rest of my life at his side.

“You're staring,” he says, his eyes still on the stove.

I grin happily, like a child. “I enjoy looking at pretty things.”

He turns now, and his eyes rake over me, starting at my toes. “So do I,” he says when his gaze reaches my face, and there is so much heat in his voice that my legs go weak and my body quivers with want. His mouth curves into a slow, sexy smile, and I am absolutely certain in that moment that I am going to melt. “You spoiled my surprise,” he says, then nods toward the breakfast table where a tray sits with a glass bud vase displaying a single red rose. “Breakfast in bed.”

“How about we share breakfast at the table?” I move to him, then stand behind him with my arms around his waist. I gently kiss his shoulder and breathe in the clean, soapy scent. “Early meeting?” Damien is hardly a slacker, but he usually doesn't go into his office until after nine. Instead, he works from home, then showers after a brief workout before heading downtown. Today, apparently, we're operating on a compressed timeline.

“Not early,” he says. “But also not here. I've got a meeting in Palm Springs. The helicopter's coming in twenty.”

“I've got an appointment in Switzerland,” I counter airily as I step back so he can finish putting our breakfast together. “The jet's coming in an hour.”

His mouth twitches with amusement. The omelette is already on a plate, and now he adds the bacon. I follow him to the table, pour us both orange juice and coffee, then sit across from him. Putting a napkin in my lap, I realize I'm smiling like an idiot. And the best part? Damien's smile matches mine.

“I love this,” I say. “Breakfast together. Domesticity. It feels nice.”

He sips his coffee, his eyes never leaving my face, and for a moment there is nothing between us but contentment. Then he tilts his head, and I see the question rising in his eyes. I should have expected it. Damien wouldn't leave for a meeting without being absolutely certain that I am okay. “No more shadows this morning?” he asks.

“No,” I say truthfully. “I feel good.” I take a bite of the omelette we're sharing, and sag a bit in my chair in ecstasy. I'm a lucky girl in so many ways, not the least of which being that my fiancé can cook. “How could I not with you taking such good care of me?”

As I hoped, my words bring a smile to his lips. But worry still lingers in his eyes, and I reach across the table to squeeze his hand. “Really,” I say firmly. “I'm fine. It's like I told you—I want this wedding to be perfect, which is ironic considering that I've spent my whole life trying to escape from my mother's plan to mold me into Perfectly Plastic Nikki.” I immediately regret mentioning my mother. After years of playing the good and dutiful daughter, I've finally come to terms with the fact that my mother is a raging bitch—one who also happens to despise my boyfriend. She made my childhood miserable, and while I am fully prepared to accept the responsibility for my cutting, there's not a shrink in the world who wouldn't agree that the causative threads of that particular vice lead back to Elizabeth Fairchild and her various quirks and neuroses.

“You're not your mother,” Damien says firmly. “And there isn't a bride in the world who doesn't want her wedding to be everything she's dreamed of.”

“And the groom?” I ask.

“The groom will be happy if the bride is. And so long as she says ‘I do.' And when he can call her Mrs. Damien Stark. And once we get to the honeymoon.”

I'm laughing by the time he finishes. “Thank you.”

“For putting up with your wedding jitters?”

“For everything.”

He stands and refills my coffee before clearing the table. “Is there anything you need my help with today?”

“Nope.”

“We're getting married on Saturday,” he says, as if this was news to me, but the words make my supposedly nonexistent jitters start jittering again. “If you need Sylvia's help, just ask,” he adds, referring to his supremely efficient assistant.

I shake my head and flash him my picture-perfect smile. “Thanks, but I'm good. Everything is on track.”

“You've taken on a lot,” he says. “More than you had to.”

I tilt my head, but stay silent. This is a conversation we've had before, and I don't intend to have it again.

We'd traveled across Europe for a month after he proposed, and while we were there, he'd suggested we simply do it. Get married on a mountaintop or on the sands of the Côte d'Azur. Return to the States as Mr. and Mrs. Damien Stark.

I'd said no.

I want nothing more than to be Damien's wife, but the truth is that I also want the fairy-tale wedding. I want to be the princess in white walking down the aisle in my beautiful gown on my special day. I may not agree with my mother about much, but I remember the care that she and my sister put into Ashley's wedding. I'd envied my sister a lot of things, not really understanding that she'd had her own demons to battle, and when she walked down the aisle on a pathway of rose petals, my eyes filled with tears and my one thought had been,
Someday. Someday I will find the man who will be waiting for me at the end of that aisle with love in his eyes.

And it wasn't just my own desire for the fantasy wedding that made me insist we wait. Like it or not, Damien is a public figure, and I knew that the press would be covering our wedding. It didn't need to be the fanciest affair—in fact, I wanted it outside on the beach—but I did want it to be a beautiful celebration. And since I knew the paparazzi would be pulling out all the stops to get tacky pictures, I wanted a collection of portraits and candid shots that we controlled. Fabulous pictures that we could give to the legitimate press, outshining—I hoped—whatever ended up in the tabloids.

More than anything, though, I wanted the story and photographs to overshadow the horrible things printed just a few months ago, when Damien had been on trial for murder. I wanted to see the best day of our lives on those pages in sharp counterpoint to and in triumph over the worst days.

I have said all of this to Damien, and while I know he doesn't fully agree with my reasons for needing this wedding, I also know he understands them.

As for me, I understand his fear that I've taken on too much. But this is my wedding we're talking about. The nightmares are only my fears; they are not my reality. I can handle it; I can handle anything if the end result is walking down that aisle toward Damien.

“Everything is going great,” I say to reassure us both. “I've got it all under control. Really.”

“You found a photographer?”

“Are you kidding? Of course.” It is a lie. And that's a risk, because Damien can read me better than anyone. I force myself not to hold my breath as I wait for him to ask me details—name, studio, credentials. Those are questions I can't answer because the truth is, I
haven't
found a photographer to replace the one Damien fired last week after we learned the man had made an under-the-table agreement to sell unapproved candid photos of the wedding and reception to TMZ.

And that's not even our only problem. I found out yesterday that the lead singer for the band I'd lined up had decided to drop everything and move back home to Canada, which means we are now entirely without entertainment.

I need to get off my ass and find someone—and I need to do it fast. As Damien had so kindly reminded me, the wedding is just a few days away.

But, hey, it's not like I'm feeling stressed or anything.

I frown, realizing that maybe there is a solid explanation for my nightmares, after all.

“What is it?” Damien asks, and I fear that despite all my efforts to keep these minor ripples in the wedding planning out of his hair, it's about to get gnarly.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just thinking about my massive to-do list.”

I can tell by his expression that he doesn't buy it. But I am a bride, and like most grooms, he knows innately that “handle with care” is standard operating procedure. “In case it escaped your notice, we have the cash to pay someone to help you. Use it if you need it.”

“What? Like a wedding planner?” I shake my head. “For one thing, the wedding's too close for that. For another, as I keep telling you, I want to do this myself. I want it to reflect us, not the latest fad in weddings.”

“I get that,” he says, “but you've taken on a hell of a lot.”

“You've helped,” I respond.

He chuckles. “As much as you've let me.”

I lift a shoulder. “You have a universe to run.”

It's a simple fact that I have more time than Damien. I'm juggling only one small business, which has exactly one employee—me. He's running Stark International, which has about as many people as an emerging country. Maybe more. And, yes, I have been busy, but that's partly because Damien didn't want a long engagement. And since I didn't think I could stand waiting, either, I was happy to agree.

It's been three months since he proposed, two months and twenty-nine days since I started diving into planning and prep, balancing my software development business against the business of my wedding. I'm proud of what's come together, and I'm even more proud that I've done so much of it on my own. Hell, I've actually been getting some use out of all those etiquette classes my mother forced me to sit through. Imagine that.

I aim an impish smile at him. “Maybe you're right. I mean, it is a bit stressful doing everything so fast, but I'm actually having a lot of fun working out the details of decorating the beach and organizing the caterer and pulling all the pieces together. I suppose we could push the wedding back a few months to make things even easier on me.”

His eyes narrow dangerously. “Don't even joke about that. Not unless you want me to scoop you up, toss you on the helicopter, and elope to Mexico. Which, for the record, I still think is a fantastic idea.”

“Vegas would be easier,” I tease.

“There's no beach in Vegas,” he says, his expression going soft. “Even if I'm kidnapping you, I won't deny you the surf or the sunset.”

I sigh and fold myself into his arms. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?”

“Enough to marry me,” he says.

“And then some.”

He hooks his arm around my waist and tugs me close, then brushes his lips over mine. The kiss starts softly, a feather-touch, a tease. But there's no denying the heat between us, and soon I am moaning, my mouth open to him, his lips hard against mine, taking and tasting. He pulls me closer to him, my name like a whisper on his lips, and the embers that are always burning between us burst into white-hot flames.

His hand slides along my back, then under my tank top at its base. The sensation of skin upon skin is delicious, and I sigh with pleasure, then gasp with longing as those clever fingers slip beneath the waistband of my yoga pants and curve over my rear. He tugs me closer, his erection hot and hard between us, as his fingers slip inside me. I'm liquid heat, and I want nothing more than to strip us both bare and let him take me right here, on the hardwood floor.