“What boss? I’m the fucking boss!”
If she weren’t so utterly mortified she might have found the image of Patrick Holden losing all control laughable. But it wasn’t. Instead she discovered it was…heartwarming. He looked like a wounded, bloody bull, so angered that he would charge at anything—anything to save her.
There was a hushed ting when the elevator reached the lobby.
Holden wrapped a possessive arm around her shoulder and briskly guided her across the marble floor. He had never, ever felt like this. Impotent and worthless and just plain scared shitless.
Patrick had been calling Morris’ office and had found it strange that he hadn’t answered. He usually answered Holden’s direct line on the first ring. It had been the only reason Holden decided to pay him a personal visit. He’d never expected to find him overpowering Lucy, his filthy hand on her beautiful, sexy face, his tongue ravaging her mouth.
Holden thought he would die, like some poor sniffling ninny.
Merely remembering made the bile rise to his throat and his gut twist inside him. Yes, Lucy had not been totally defenseless. Holden had barely thrust the door open and taken in the scene before she’d jerked her knee up and rendered Morris motionless for a few precious seconds. But what if Holden hadn’t walked in there at that precise moment? What horrible thing would Morris have done to her after she’d kicked his stinking cock into its socket?
He could have seriously hurt her. It made Holden feel unaccountably furious and wildly protective of her. It made him realize he didn’t want anyone laying so much as a finger on Lucy Divine except him—and that would be tenderly. Lovingly.
God, he ached to hold her, he ached to bury himself inside her and promise her no one would ever hurt her again.
“Where to, Mr. Holden?” Carlos asked, standing tall as he held the door of the Lincoln, parked just at the curb, open for them.
“I need to take care of some things. Take Miss Divine to my place,” he said, ushering Lucy into the car.
“But Holden—” Instantly correcting herself, she cleared her throat, aware of Carlos still on standby and within earshot. “I mean, Mr. Holden…your costume?”
Patrick didn’t care what Carlos thought—let the world know that Lucy was his. He brushed his knuckles along her pale cheek, marked with that fucking asshole’s thumbprint, the mark fainter now but still rankling him to no reason. “Some other time.”
Lucy figured it was better not to argue with Holden but as soon as Carlos got behind the wheel and started the car, she said, “Carlos, I need to get Mr. Holden a costume. Where do you recommend I do that?”
Carlos smiled into the rearview mirror, his big teeth blazing white against his darkly tanned skin. “I know just the place, Miss Divine.”
“Can you drive me there?”
Carlos hesitated, Holden’s wrath not being something any of his employees wished to invoke.
“I won’t get you into trouble, Carlos,” she assured, certain she could talk Holden out of anything dramatic, especially since the notion of wanting to coddle and hide her in the sanctity of his apartment—simply because she’d been forcibly kissed by a sleaze-ball—although romantic, was also very silly. Except for the slight fright, she was just fine and dandy. She was perfectly capable of buying a costume.
“Just the place”, as Carlos had said, was a huge warehouse in the Lower West Side of Manhattan. It had a red-brick exterior and a skewed, small green door that creaked on its hinges when she pulled it open. When Lucy entered the crowded space, she could barely make her way through the racks and hangers, packed together just about everywhere.
Eying the place over the tops of the racks, Lucy caught sight of a middle-aged woman with a turban and a wide-sleeved tunic calmly sitting on a stool behind a counter at the far end of the room. Through a pair of rare violet-colored eyes, the woman watched as Lucy approached. As soon as Lucy reached her, the woman took a card from the deck she’d been holding and smacked it face-up on the counter.
“Nine of Pentacles!”
“Excuse me?” Lucy said, slightly startled and glancing down at the card. It depicted a lovely woman with a long, sweeping gown and an arm lifted toward the sky, her knuckles serving as the perch for a beautiful bird that looked as if it was just about to take flight.
“Nine of Pentacles, lord of material gain. You’re lucky. It’s a card of hard-earned success and money.” Her violet eyes were ruthless as they studied Lucy’s face, as if Lucy were the keeper of some dark, mysterious secret.
“Pardon?” Lucy blinked.
“This means a mission has been accomplished, or you’ve received a gift or inheritance of great value.” At Lucy’s blank expression, she added, “It means money, blondie. Lots of it.” The woman smiled, displaying a big gold tooth.
Lucy frowned at her, suddenly wondering if the woman was referring to her whopping raise, then dismissing the thought immediately because she’d barely gotten word of the news herself. It was impossible for this stranger to know. “Ah…yes, how nice,” Lucy said, deciding not to argue with a person so clearly out of her senses. “Would you happen to have a good old-fashioned devil costume for an adult male?” she asked.
The woman set the deck down and said, “Follow me.”
Half an hour later, on her way to Holden’s apartment, Lucy told herself several times that she was only going to properly hang the costume in his closet and immediately retire afterward. But once there, she found herself lingering. First she rearranged the order of his ties, starting with the lighter colors and ending with the darker ones. Then she rearranged a few of his suits, pausing to smell them only to verify if they were clean—not because she felt a sudden urge to bask in the scent of his cologne, of course.
When she opened his underwear drawer, she finally realized she was turning into a little pervert. So she closed it and admitted to herself that she was merely making excuses to see him. Be with him. Although she’d have never thought it possible mere weeks ago, she physically ached to be in his arms.
After her encounter with Morris, all she’d wanted was to throw herself into Holden’s arms and ask him to hold her. But businesswomen needed to be tough, so she’d stifled the urge and tried not to dramatize. But the truth was, she realized—she had been scared. And when she’d seen Holden standing in the doorway she’d felt incredibly relieved, like a silly, whimpering little maiden being rescued by a knight.
Okay, knights shouldn’t scold the maiden afterward, and they shouldn’t curse and be all grumpy, but even that had made her heart swell—because it had been out of concern for her that he’d behaved so.
Just please, please don’t fall in love with him, she mentally pleaded with herself. She had her big dreams to pursue, had spent half her life drafting a perfect career plan and she would not, could not, should not spoil it.
As Lucy rearranged the devil costume on its hanger for the fifth consecutive time, she heard voices out in the hallway and her heart raced faster than a champion thoroughbred. Holden is here!
But when she crossed his room toward the sounds, she was surprised to hear Irene’s voice at the end of the hall, not Holden’s. Her voice sounded slightly slurred, and Lucy wondered if she’d been drinking.
“Shut that trap and kiss me, you old fart!” she bellowed.
And then Lucy heard the honorable Mr. Pimwick say, in that monotonous tone of his, “As you wish, madam.”
Lucy clamped a hand to her mouth to silence the delightful squeal that threatened to escape her lips. Oh my God, Irene and Mr. Pimwick are lovers! She would have never imagined. As she crossed the darkening bedroom and flicked on the lamp on the nightstand, she vaguely wondered what Holden would say about his widowed mother having a romp with the butler. But then, Holden was also having a romp with Lucy, so he shouldn’t judge his mother for it.
Is that all this is to him, Lucy wondered, a romp? Even the word was short. And Lucy didn’t want this to end, ever.
In fact, since they’d beg
un their totally-wrong-but-inexplicably-amazing sexual fling, Lucy had felt more alive than she’d ever felt before. Even her walk had a little more sass to it. She felt reenergized, invigorated, and if she had any fear at all now, it would only be to wake up and find this had all been a dream.
Hearing the door to Irene’s room slam shut only made her long for Holden even more. Why was he taking so long? Maybe he didn’t want to see her. Maybe he’d already grown tired of her. Maybe he did this sort of thing with his secretaries as well, and this was the night to fool around with Bitch Number One, Two or Three? Lucy would quite easily want to die if that assumption were true. She didn’t want Holden touching anyone else, kissing anyone else, holding anyone else. She also didn’t want to be one among many other women—because he was one of a very, very precious few. And yet, tomorrow he had a date with his precious Miranda, and Lucy feared that they might want to pick up where they’d left off that night he’d ended up fucking Lucy in the closet.
With new determination, she decided to go home. She was tired of having to brainwash herself every second of the day. It was exhausting to mentally repeat to herself that this was just sex. To her, this wasn’t just sex. And now something much more fragile than Lucy’s body was in the picture—and he could break it like that with something as simple as an unkind word.
She grabbed a notepad from the nightstand and wrote, “Your costume is in the closet. You’re a devil.” She read it then crushed the paper into a ball, not liking the way it sounded and wrote another that read, “Poor Miss MacFadden, she’ll have a devil of a time tomorrow.”
She reread it three times and was just starting to like the sound of it when she felt a pair of strong, familiar hands wrap tersely around her hips and pull her back against a big, warm body.
“I missed you,” he whispered against her ear, his breath moist and hot.
“Holden.” Closing her eyes, she lifted her hand to cup his cheek while he planted a damp, ardent kiss on her earlobe. The day’s stubble on his jaw scraped the flesh on her palm, a striking contrast to the smooth, tingling touch of his tongue on her ear.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t wait for me,” he breathed, rubbing his thumbs along the slightly protruding bones of her pelvis in slow, dizzying motions.
“I was just about to leave,” she confessed, opening her eyes and staring unseeingly at the wallpaper bathed in the soft glow of the lamplight. At his nearness, at the smell of his musky male scent and the heat of his body seeping into her clothes, she turned pliant and weak and could do nothing but lean back against him. His grip tightened on her hips and she felt, rather than heard, a low vibration in his chest. Just being here, so near him, made heat curl and twirl in her insides, spiraling out in undulant waves to every nerve ending in her body. “I’m glad I didn’t leave, Holden. I wanted to see you so much.”
“Hmmm…” He rubbed the fabric-clad, rigid length of his erection between the cleft of her buttocks. “You feel so good. I couldn’t wait to come to you, touch you.”
Cupping her breasts over the soft fabric of her shirt, he playfully swirled his thumbs around her nipples. Moaning, she arched backward, resting the back of her head on his shoulder, her blinded eyes settling on the plain white ceiling above before closing. He tilted his head sideways and captured her lips with his, kissing her slowly and thoroughly. She sighed into his mouth, kissing him back with complete and total abandon.
Groaning at the scalding contact of their tongues, his fingers dug into her breasts, clutching them hard as he deepened the kiss.
Lucy’s body rested back against his in a limp, nearly dead state. But she wasn’t dead…she was very much alive, with hundreds of otherworldly sensations ricocheting inside her. Colors in every hue imaginable, from blue to bright, blinding red, swam past the curtains of her closed eyelids and jolts of fire traveled through her blood in torrents.
With one hand still clamped possessively around her breast, he slid his other down to rub her sex through the fabric of her skirt. Growling at the obtrusive material, he used both hands to unzip it and thrust it down to the floor. He fumbled with his pants and within seconds they fell to the floor with the loud, telling thump of his belt buckle. A low sound of desire tore through her lips when his demanding cock rubbed against her butt cheeks and his hand skimmed past her belly and slowly pulled her panties down past her hips. The flimsy material fully cooperated by sliding the rest of the way down her legs, where she kicked them off eagerly.
Not one to waste precious time, Holden cupped her pussy, pressing the heel of his hand against the nub, his touch sending a jolt of electricity down her spine. Wantonly rocking her hips against his hand, she urged his thumb as it grazed her curls, seeking to toy with her clit. When he found it and circled it with his thumb, she cried out in pleasure and shoved her butt back against him in urgency.
“Easy baby,” he soothed against her ear, but he didn’t really mean it, because his body was shaking hard with desire and his breaths were coming too fast.
The back of her legs caressed the full front of his and Lucy briefly marveled at the perfect fit of his dick as it pressed against the comfortable dip between her buttocks. What would it feel like to have him slide inside her other…?
She didn’t have to wonder long. Slowly, torturously slowly, he entered her from behind at the same moment his finger slipped into her wet, slippery sex. She yelped in a mixture of agony and bliss at this new, wondrous, unexpected double invasion.
“Am I hurting you?” he rasped hotly against her ear, withdrawing his dick slowly.
“No,” was all she could say, and even that single word, uttered in the throes of her passion, managed to sound hot and bothered and horny.
When he grazed his teeth over the back of her neck and slid his cock inside her again, burying himself deeper, she cried a low, husky, “Yes!”
She had never been taken this way. It was brutal and primitive and erotic. He was everywhere. His cock slowly sinking between the mounds of her buttocks, pushing her ass wide and frightfully open for him, while his finger, strong and determined, slipped into her creamy, swollen sex and his mouth claimed her neck and ears and now, as she twisted her neck sideways, her lips. His kiss was searing, savage and starved.
He filled and stroked her ass in the same way his finger filled her pussy, and all she knew was that she loved it, loved this wild, primitive pose. A pose arising out of instinct, stemming from a basic animal need to mate and join, where the male possesses the female wildly, fiercely, in an uncontested, elemental way of saying “mine”.
The raw emotion in his voice rasped her flesh when he spoke. “No one’s ever going to hurt you. You’re mine now.”
He uttered the words as if he’d read her thoughts. Sliding his finger out of her pussy and cupping her hips with his hands, he held her in place with an iron-clad grip while he slowly sank his cock farther, deeper into her ass. Blazing red-hot desire pierced her insides, twisting, blinding desire. Each time he fully sheathed his penis inside her ass, Lucy could feel the soft sac of his scrotum rub against her wet slit, tempting her with that fleeting touch for a wistful moment only to withdraw for a long, dizzying second, until he rammed his cock back in her ass again and sent his balls brushing temptingly against her pussy once more.
Moaning in need and sheer, utter horniness, Lucy folded her body and clutched the edges of the nightstand, her knuckles turning white from the effort as she pushed back against him, wanting him deep inside her.
He bent forward with her, tugging her earlobe with his teeth as he breathed hot, damp air into her ear, the loud, harsh sounds of his breathing proving an indisputable aphrodisiac to her already hotter-than-fire senses.
The tension was excruciating, the torment unbelievable. “Holden,” she gasped when he settled his cock deep in her ass and slipped one hand around to her pussy again, expertly thrusting two fingers inside, bending them rhythmically when he reached her core. The strong, twisting moves of his fingers took her sweaty, fevered
body to a high point.
“Come, Lucy,” he murmured hotly. “Come for me, beautiful.”
She came in his hand before he even finished the words, spasms racking and shaking her body in a wild tornado of emotions. She heard his loud, deep cry of passion and felt him enter her one last time before he followed her, shooting his come inside her.
For several seconds they stood there, his cock still inside her, his hand possessive on her sex, his face buried in the crook of her neck as they both fought to recapture their breaths.
“You’re sleeping with me tonight, Miss Divine, and that’s an order,” he said gruffly, planting a kiss on her temple as soon as he’d recovered. Lucy smiled at that and reached for her skirt on the floor, briskly pulling it on.
“Maybe I’ll stay if you ask me nicely,” she admitted with a smile.
When he grinned back at her, her heart completely stopped beating. It was a full-of-it grin, one that said “I always get my way”. It was strong and arrogant and nonetheless beautiful to her. “I know how to convince a woman to do what I say,” he said with pure male pride.
“Really?” She arched her brows in disbelief. From what she’d heard him tell Miranda MacFadden, and knowing he sent someone else to buy his gifts, she didn’t believe Holden actually knew much about courting a woman. Not that he’d need to court one—Lucy was sure they probably lined up in his office and knelt at his feet when it was their turn.
“Sit and wait,” he suddenly ordered.
He was in his pants within seconds and just as quickly she found herself alone in his bedroom, plopping down on the edge of the bed with nothing else to do but wonder. And smile. Lot of smiling. What did that devilish man intend? Roses, perhaps? Wine? Dinner in bed, maybe? She tried to act calm and collected and dearly hoped he didn’t notice the way her pulse quickened when he strode into the room once again, holding two boxes in his arms, one slightly bigger than the other. He set the smaller one on the nightstand and ceremoniously handed her the bigger one. Her breath deserted her completely.