His smug smile was gone.
His eyes shone with a light that was almost unholy, and it robbed her of her breath as he surveyed her legs, her panties-covered hips, those eerie eyes raking her top to bottom, bottom to top. When his gaze trekked back north yet again and latched onto hers, there was a crackling energy in the room so powerful Ivy almost felt electrified.
His chest rose and fell evenly, but the pale gray of his eyes had shifted by degrees, and now they glowed silver.
When he spoke, his voice rasped over her like sandpaper. “Do you want to deal, or do you want me to?”
Ivy swallowed and looked down at herself, all those layers of clothing gone—lying in a puddle at her side. She only had her camisole to open her bet with. A strange vulnerable feeling trembled through her, and she just did not have the courage to stand before this man, before those eyes, in her underwear. She sat back down and tugged at the thin fabric, having to swallow before speaking. “This doesn’t come off.”
He didn’t smile smugly, like she expected. His face was tight, almost glaring again, as though his grumpiness was her fault. Everything wrong about his life, her fault. “Well then, I guess I won,” he said in that coarse voice of his.
Panic grabbed her. “No. I … I’ll bet something else as opening bet. I’m not quitting yet.”
His dark black eyebrows drew low over his eyes, eyes that narrowed into glimmering slits. “Bet me a kiss, then,” he said. “And I’ll call it with everything I have.”
She held his challenging gaze, aware that the crackle was magnifying, making her heart pound. They sat there, caught in something without a name, his eyes wild and desperate, Ivy’s rising hunger gnawing her on the inside.
“Come here,” he whispered.
It was as if lightning coursed through her at his words. She had a heightened awareness of every part of her body that his eyes touched, and it made her tremble.
“Come here, Ivy,” he whispered, his voice gruffer.
She rose to her hands and knees and crawled unsteadily toward him, stopping a couple of inches away. He was breathing fast as he reached up with a big hand and scraped a finger over her jaw. When he cupped her entire cheek, engulfing it in his warm palm, Ivy’s lungs became paralyzed. Suddenly his free hand curled slowly around a piece of her camisole and dragged her a couple of inches closer, and fire licked painfully through her insides.
She shuddered as his fingers slid from her jaw to the back of her head, while he continued pulling her by the camisole. A tremor began in her very center, hot and strong, rendering her helpless against his magnetic force, tugging her forward until she stopped a hairsbreadth from his mouth. He was surprisingly gentle with the hand on her nape, but his grip on her camisole was firm. He tightened it harder as he lowered his head, their noses brushing.
Her throat closed with need; she was attracted to every inch of him.
She sensed as his plush lips went lower, and she wanted them so much, her eyes blurred. The moment his mouth touched hers, a rush of sensations burst through her. Her eyes slammed shut as he pushed her lips open with his, and she instantly yielded. He shuddered and let out a sound from his throat, a rumbling groan that blended with her own breathless moan.
Shivers of need ran through her as he thrust his tongue into her mouth and rubbed it hungrily against hers. She could feel the coiled tension in his hands, which trembled against her as he tried to maintain control. She dropped to her knees on the carpet and slid her fingers up his hard abdomen, aching to touch all his muscles, to soak up his strength.
With a pleased grunt, he grabbed her hips and dragged her onto his lap as if she weighed no more than air. Her legs slid around his hips as he deepened the kiss, and within seconds, they both went animal, making deep, hungry moaning noises and groping each other, her nails raking his biceps as she ground against his hardness. She sucked his tongue and he bit her lower lip, and she burst to life as sensations tingled down her bloodstream, her nerves, her skin.
The growl he released made her pussy water as he lay her down on the carpet, spreading his enormous weight over her and tangling his legs between hers.
The heat of his chest seeped past her camisole and warmed her skin as his hands rasped over her hips and slid under the material while their ravenous mouths tasted each other more and more.
His dark voice spilled into her ear. “You know I’m going to fuck you, don’t you?” His fast breath tickled her skin, sending a rush of heat down to her center as he bent his head and bit her nipple through her bra.
She moaned, because this couldn’t happen no matter how much she wanted it to. “I don’t have sex on the first date.”
Which was why she’d never really gotten a lot of sex in the first place. Still, that didn’t stop her from undulating greedily against him.
His arms went like steel bands around her waist and his lips claimed hers again. “This isn’t a date.”
He rocked his hips purposely against hers, and she arched by instinct, the talons of some indescribable need deeply sunk into her womb, her body quivering for him to take her hard enough to break her.
“I still don’t have sex with strangers…”
“Then let’s get on more intimate terms.”
He fingered the clasp of her bra behind her and unhooked it without preamble, then he briskly yanked both bra and camisole over her head. She cried out, sat up, pulled them back, and scowled at him.
Cade’s eyes flashed silver, and his nostrils flared as she hooked up her bra and quickly put on her camisole.
“Ivy.” He halted her with one hand, looking at her. “I’ll forfeit the fucking game. You take your two million. I want you naked and under me. Now.”
She shuddered at the animal need in his eyes, and she wondered if he could even control himself. He looked positively ravenous.
“Please don’t try to pay me for sex.” Sucking in a breath, she edged back to her place on the carpet a safe distance from him, her skin broken out in fever. “Let’s finish the game first, please.”
He slowly crooked his finger, calling her back. “After I have you, Ivy.”
“The game first,” she stressed, breathlessly scowling at him. “Regardless of the outcome, I don’t have sex on … first dates.”
It felt like a lie. Even her tongue tripped as she said it, and she knew that if Cade was as smart as she believed he was, he could clearly see her nipples were puckered under her bra. She ached so badly, was so aroused, she feared he also knew her panties were soaked and that every cell in her body screamed against this rude awakening where she wanted something she had never really had. She was by no means a virgin, but she had never, ever, felt so aware of her body before. Aware of her body desperately wanting something.
Him.
This angry, lonely man. His rawness, his power, his anger—she wanted him so much, she was only in a camisole, bra, and panties, and she was sweaty and baking inside her skin.
Jaw clenched, he shuffled the cards across the carpet from her, and in exchange for her kiss, which had been her opening bet, he opened with every chip he had.
Which only magnified her arousal.
“Let’s just pretend this is date number three.” He looked at her through those dark lashes of his, and the piercing expression in his eyes commanded her to agree.
Ivy could still not catch her breath. “Date number three is still only kissing.”
He pushed five cards in her direction, watching her intently with a tight jaw. “All right, then let’s pretend we’re already fucking.”
Her cheeks flamed and she dropped her gaze to her cards. She wanted to deny what he’d said, but she was dying with every second that she waited, her heart pounding as she wondered who would win.
If he won, then she would have to kiss him again, or take something else off? And if she won, then what would he do? How would he feel? Oh, God, if she let him kiss her again, what would he do to her? Was it wrong to have him? If she wanted him this bad?
Her silence must have made him imagine that her answer was yes. He became more restless at every second that passed. He hardly glanced at his cards, and he didn’t even ask for more. He was already unzipping his jeans as she changed three of her cards and was ecstatic to get her third nine—giving her a full house.
She looked up and her excitement instantly morphed to lust at the sight of Cade’s open jeans.
Need ripped through her as the lowered zipper revealed the band of his underwear—and his huge cock jutting out of it. The bulbous tip burst through the opening, enormous and hard and long, glistening with drops of semen at the tip.
He shoved them off, both jeans and underwear, at the same time, and then kicked them aside.
She swallowed back a moan, undone by the sight of him.
“I have nothing.” His gruff voice melted through her as he set his cards face up, and she barely registered he indeed had nothing, not even a pair. But then he hadn’t even played.
Ivy held her breath and showed her full house, missing the look on his face, for she was staring at what he most definitely had, which was unapologetically on display.
My God, she had never imagined such a perfect specimen of man. He strode toward her with that which was making her mouth water, the biggest, most beautiful erection she’d ever seen.
“Come by my office tomorrow and I’ll have a cashier’s check ready,” he said gruffly, closing that subject authoritatively as he scooped her up and lifted her, fully naked, and Ivy curled her legs around his hips, moaning and out of her mind as she wrapped herself around him and smashed her lips to his.
He groaned and stroked his tongue frantically over hers as he carried her down a hall. He stumbled into his bedroom, and a lamp crashed nearby. He dropped her down on a bed, coming down over her, and he was panting as he kissed her, abrading her neck with the delicious stubble of his jaw.
Thrilling little flutters shot through her bloodstream. She couldn’t remember where she was, if she had ever been kissed like this, or wanted like this, but no, never, ever, ever, in her life, had she been prepared for this.
His hands fisted in her hair, pinning her head as he devoured her so powerfully, it was as if he couldn’t even take time to breathe. Let alone let her breathe. Still clutching her hair in one hand, he cupped a breast and scraped his cock against her plain cotton panties, dampened through her slit. Her insides gripped needfully at the provocative move.
He tore his mouth from hers for a second, and his eyes glimmered urgently, and she could see his intent, could see he couldn’t wait.
Neither could she.
God, she’d lost her mind. This was the worst time to get involved with a man. And this was the worst possible man on earth she should get involved with. But she was burning up in an all-consuming fever. She arched and scraped her tongue over the scruff at his jaw before nipping him. He growled and pinned her arms up over her head, holding them like manacles as he buried his face in her neck and suckled a mouthful of skin so hard, she was sure she’d proudly be wearing her first hickey by tomorrow morning.
“Please.” She rose up and sank her teeth on his plump lower lip, and he cocked his head and plunged his tongue in for another taste of her, his flavor dark and decadent as coffee and chocolate. “Please, please,” she gasped and twisted under him, never before imagining begging would come so easy when you were on fire with this unbearable ache.
“You want me fast?” he growled, then he shoved his hips between her thighs. With his only free hand, he hooked her panties to the side and pressed into her.
“So take me,” he rasped. She felt him at her slit, wide and rigid, pulsing with liquid heat. She wrapped her legs around him, her ankles digging into his butt. “Yes,” he moaned. “Take me in. That’s right, take all of me, Ivy.”
She thrust her hips up, allowing him all the way inside, her flesh so sensitive she felt every pulse of his shaft as he pushed inside her. She moaned with pleasure, her sheath snug around him. He placed one hand between them and began circling her clit with his thumb in a delicious rhythm.
Veins bulged in his neck as his head rolled back. “Christ.” He began to move, braced up on one arm as he thumbed her clit with his other hand, his shoulders straining above her. Glorying in the feel of him, she met his slow, melting rhythm with slow, sinuous moves of her own.
He groaned. “Ivy…”
One of her arms coiled around his neck. Clinging to his strength, she opened her mouth on his shoulder and licked his damp skin—he was warm and salty. “Yes,” she whispered. She wanted him, all of him. She wished he would hold nothing back.
He moved so that he was braced up on both arms now and he pushed farther in, concentrating on his fucking. She felt his muscles go taut on a particularly deep in-stroke.
She mewed and watched him as he pushed inside with hard, violent, animalistic strokes. She was so ready.
Her head rolled back as she arched up, opening to him, and she couldn’t help testing his name on her lips. “Cade.” He penetrated her fully. Deliciously. His possession drove her mad. It excited her, his name, short and powerful. He grunted with his efforts, quiet, maddened with desire. “Cade.” He growled and plowed in deeper, the sound that erupted from his throat telling her how much he liked it, how much it excited him to hear her whisper his name. “Cade…”
He cursed softly and seized her hips in his hands. His fingers bit into her flesh as he yanked out and scraped his cock up her slit and over her clitoris in hard, fast jabs. His face contorted, the rumble of a growl echoing in the room as his orgasm hit.
She felt the warmth of him spill across her pussy as his large, muscled body shuddered while he came.
His orgasm triggered her own, and she gasped and gripped his shoulders as they both shook and moaned, until they collapsed together in a puddle of limbs and panting breaths and sweat, neither of them moving for a long while.
* * *
Cade studied the woman on the bed, and his chest tightened with some strange emotion he’d never felt before. He felt dazed at the sight of her. Drugged.
She was sated and smiling catlike in his bed, languorously spread over his sheets, and he almost felt … satiated.
Until that black, bottomless hunger yawned open inside of him again, and he bent his head, intending to feast on her lips for another hour. He wanted to hear her say Cade one more time with her eyes blank with passion and her mouth parted as she struggled to breathe because he was so big and pumping so hard inside her.
He’d never been so kiss-drunk. He no longer knew the time, his name, just the heat and the moisture of her mouth, and the taste of her name on his tongue. They’d been lying in his bed all night, neither of them sleeping. They’d just been licking and tasting and kissing. Their eyes glowed in the dark, holding each other’s gaze with curiosity and wonder. It was as if she, like him, couldn’t understand what she found so attractive about him in the first place.
He didn’t know why he couldn’t stay away from her—but he was a man, and he didn’t give a shit why. He only knew he couldn’t get enough of this creature.
When she stroked his lips with one fingertip, he ducked his head and kissed her mouth with gentle flicks of his tongue, his cock immediately throbbing for more. Bubbles of pleasure gushed through his bloodstream, the sensation almost new to him, for he hadn’t had someone in his bed in at least a decade. He didn’t want this woman to get up to eat or to drink or even to fucking pee.
He curled his fingers around her hips and kept her locked in place, on her side facing him, as he angled his head and kissed her until he couldn’t feel his own lips, they were swollen and red and wet from her.
“Can you feel your mouth?” He only stopped kissing her to ask her that, and to give her time to answer.
“It’s asleep, I think.”
She lifted her head and brushed those tingling lips against his, and his stomach got into a tangle. He’d bet all his millions that Ivy hadn’t had sex in a while either. Her h
unger was as raw as his, as consuming, and it made him feel not so alone in the world. That there was someone out there, like him. He ducked and stroked his tongue between her lips, groaning when she sighed like she had missed it.
“Do you feel that?” He slid deep inside, all the way past the tips of her teeth, then withdrew.
“So good.” Her eyelids fluttered closed and she shuddered, flicking her tongue against his, her arms tightening around his neck.
He eased onto his back and dragged her up against his side. Her flimsy camisole was plastered to her skin, delineating her belly button, her ribs, her small breasts under a lace bra. He hadn’t even undressed her fully. Her white cotton panties were still on, wet from her arousal. He’d wiped his mess off her pussy and his abdomen, but he could still smell his pleasure in the room. On her.
She hooked a leg around him, her knee almost on his cock, as she bent to continue kissing him.
He scraped his hands up her back and grabbed her ass, grinding her small frame against his larger one. “What date number would we need to be on for me to have you again, baby?” He pushed tendrils of her damp, tawny hair back behind her face with one hand and squeezed her ass with the other, aware that she leaned back to survey him with a coy little smile.
“Usually…” She straddled him fully and rocked sinuously over him, and because the only connection of their bodies was at their hips now, it made him hyperaware of the moist slit of her pussy nestling his erection. “This wouldn’t happen until a couple of months into a relationship.”
He curled his fingers on her waist to pin her in place. “Have you had many? Relationships?”
“Not even one.”
The strange knot that had formed inside him immediately eased. “Then what the fuck are all these rules for?” he growled.
She laughed, her neck curving temptingly when her head fell back. “So I don’t get involved with assholes.”
He released a dark laugh of his own. “Oh, baby, you chose a bad time to break your rule,” he said, but they both sobered when he clutched her pelvis and thrust his cock up against her pussy, grinding against the fabric of her damp panties.