Minutes later, with her heels in one hand, she followed Daniel barefoot into his building. She’d been here before. She’d actually lived with his family upstairs in the penthouse for over a month, almost a decade ago. The Lexingtons owned the top two floors, and even after her brief stay, Daniel had later invited her over to proudly show her his new, separate, apartment.
Rather than killer views, he’d chosen security and technology, and Daniel had built the place with steel outer walls that were able to withstand a nuclear bombing, among other natural disasters. Now, as Monica stood next to him, he pressed his fingerprint into the first of three steel doors. When they moved to the second nook, the space narrowed, and he stood behind her, taller and wider than her.
His chest pressed into her back, his outstretched arm grazing her shoulder as his thumbprint was recognized. Her tummy whirled and suddenly she was aware solely of that contact of their bodies. As though her cells had absorbed the knowledge that they would be having sex, she could feel a strange tightening awareness in her breasts, her tummy, her thighs.
They went to the third door, and his body still crowded hers in a way that made her indisputably aware of the fact that he was incredibly muscled and big, and was standing right behind her. His free hand cupped her waist and he bent to whisper in her ear, “You okay?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, and once the door opened, she stepped inside, taking in a deep breath. She was tempted to explain to him she had been penetrated but not really taken … tempted to explain to him she had been kissed but she had never really gotten lost in it … but before she could do all this, he started taking off his jacket. Muscles rippled under his stark white shirt.
“Will you unzip your dress for me? I’d like you in panties when I sit down to talk to you.”
She unzipped without preamble, for physical nakedness had never been the problem with her. She wasn’t self-conscious about her body. She worked hard for it: daily yoga, a marathon a year, and she ate like a rabbit half of the day with greens to spare. Which was, in part, why she couldn’t understand the unsteadiness in her legs as the material pooled at her feet, and the shakiness in her hands as she quietly folded the dress onto a living room chair.
“We could forgo the talking until we’re done, wouldn’t you say?” she proposed.
“I don’t think so,” he said, eyes sparkling as he took inventory of her half nakedness in one quick sweep. “Strip off your bra,” he said as he plopped down on an oversized espresso-colored couch. “And come here for a bit.”
Monica hadn’t really been prepared for doing this tonight. She’d considered her intimacy dilemma for hundreds of nights, wondering why Daniel Lexington seemed to be the only man she felt truly comfortable with. She’d wanted to explore her femininity safely, with someone who would not make her feel judged or defective, but she hadn’t realized tonight would bring the golden opportunity when he’d attended the event alone. As alone as Monica.
Suddenly she stood in her white lace panties, barefoot with red-painted toes, her pearls, and her bun, Daniel’s expression calm and easy as he patted his lap. “Come here and talk to me like you just did.”
She was stiff as a board as she sat on his lap, her lungs closing when his arms enveloped her and he caressed her side with all five tips of his fingers. “How many men have you been with?”
Tingles raced under his touch, his embrace reminding her of the ways he’d held her when she was young and she’d ached to curl up to him like a kitten. A stirring of the longing she’d felt back then unraveled in the pit of her stomach, and she could almost feel the melting of all her inner walls.
“Three,” she murmured as she relaxed her weight into him. Up close, Daniel’s masculine features were so riveting, he could’ve been airbrushed. His jaw held a small evening shadow, and the shadow called attention to his beautifully full, sensual lips, lips which Monica struggled not to stare at as she asked, “And you?”
“Does it matter? I’m not having the least bit of trouble with my erections.”
She laughed faintly, and he smiled and moved his hand to gingerly stroke the tiny rises of her spine. “Just relax. Talk to me. If it will make you feel better.… I’ll tell you I’ve been with an embarrassing number of different women. But then you already know I don’t like to keep one for long.”
She did know. She knew more than she might have liked, but enough to know that he was perfect for this.
She sighed at last, resting her forehead on his. “I don’t know where to begin. I can’t enjoy it. I can’t climax. I can get aroused, but I can’t reach fulfillment. My mind won’t let me.”
His fingers slid up her neck and lightly traced her lower lip before they slid back down to her collarbone. The touch was a whisper, but so powerful, she trembled. “Have you tried to involve it in what you’re doing?” His low-pitched voice carried a unique force.
“Not really.”
Slowly, she unbuttoned his shirt, watching her fingers as they undid each of his buttons. She wanted him to be as naked as she was, and she eagerly, almost roughly, spread his shirt apart. She froze when she saw the cursive letters tattooed on the left side of his chest.
She had never, in her life, seen a more beautiful male torso. Golden skin spread taut over lean and ripped muscles. He was iron hard under her fingers, but also smooth.
She was so engrossed she didn’t realize his fingertips had delved partly into the waistband of her panties, and he was sensually stroking a long finger down the fissure of her bottom.
A bolt of sensations rushed along her nerve endings and she tensed. “Shh. Relax,” he murmured, watching her with eyes that glimmered. “This is just us playing for a bit. Nothing is going to happen here … except this…” He inserted one finger into her pussy from behind, and she gasped and tensed around the intrusion, her sex clenching around his finger as he murmured, “Just that, Monica, for now … relax now … let me in.”
She bit her lower lip, having trouble adjusting, but on his second stroke, her vagina seemed to wetly bloom open, and a sweeping warmth spread along her system. She’d closed herself off to emotions her whole adult life, for emotions had only caused pain. But there was no denying the pleasure of these sensations.
Her hip tilted backward at the same time her upper body surged forward until she was breathing fast against his jaw, barely aware that her fingers were on his shoulders, her senses narrowing to that one hot touch of his amazingly strong finger scraping the sensitive flesh inside her.
“I’m going to let my hand’s partner join in on the fun, all right?”
His chest rumbled as he spoke and he slid his hand to cup the apex of her thighs. She’d had laser hair removal years ago, and every inch of her body except her eyebrows, eyelashes, and hair, was bare and smooth as a dolphin’s. She could feel, without any obtrusion, the slide of his fingers along her pussy lips, the probing fingertip expertly searching along the top folds. “Why don’t you touch me and see how you like it, Monica?” he murmured.
She was losing herself as his fingers stroked along the sensitive nubbin above her sex, her instinctive responses starting to overtake her. Helplessly, she felt her hips move against his hands while soft purring sounds slipped past her throat, sounds she hadn’t even meant to make.
The fact that she was naked on his lap and he was still dressed made her especially eager to strip him. Her voice came out breathy. “Can I take your shirt off, Daniel?”
“Do whatever you want with me, Monica.”
As she frantically pushed it over his shoulders, he stopped touching her in order to be able to jerk it off his arms. Monica’s heart almost stopped, her sex throbbing emptily as a ball of need gathered at her throat.
She watched the sensual flex of his muscles when he tossed his shirt aside, and she stared avidly at the elegant BORN FREE tattoo over his heart. She’d been staring dumbly at his spectacular chest when she realized with a jolt of pleasure that he’d returned to what he’d previously been doing
, using his thumb to roll her clitoris in sensual little circles while a second finger pressed into her pussy along with the first. She was blown over.
Her eyes widened over the sudden contraction of her entire body. Every muscle, just like her sex, had seized; even her hands had gone motionless on his shoulders. Nothing moved in her body except her galloping heart and those fingers inside her. In, out, in, out. God. Those fingers.
He never stopped watching her, his eyes missing nothing. His voice, deeper still, elicited a fresh wave of heat between her thighs, as he said, “Do you like being touched like this?”
“I … yes. It’s hard to think … of anything else.”
“Good, then I’m not as bad as they say I am,” he purred, his voice full of depth and authority as he increased the thrusts of his fingers, caressing deep into her channel. She moaned, and she barely realized it was she who made that sound.
Daniel was motionless, his thighs like iron beneath her, frighteningly tense as his hands moved swiftly, powerfully, and she mewed softly and stroked her fingers along his shoulders, his collarbone, his pecs, a fever breaking along her flesh. “Daniel?” she asked uncertainly, as her body tensed in instinctive rejection of what was coming.
“I’ve got you, Monica. It’s all right. Have you climaxed by yourself before…?” he asked, those intent green eyes still on her face, still watching her.
She nodded because she couldn’t even speak the “yes”.
“Then this will be just like it. Except it might take you even higher. Feel this spot here…?” He pressed deeper, and somewhere inside her, almost against her stomach, jolted her with pleasure. “That’s your G-spot. Do you like it when I touch you there?”
She almost bucked when he stroked again, shooting arrows of pleasure to her toes. She held him like a lifeline as her hips swiveled to his hand, desperate for more, for the release she could feel building, building, higher, higher. In the tiny part of her mind that remained working she noticed his breathing had also changed, almost matching hers. For a brief moment, she caught him staring down at her breasts, his eyelids halfway as he surveyed the swells, before he lifted his eyes to hers.
He was inhaling roughly, his powerful chest rising and falling, and when he leaned closer and his lips brushed her ear, his voice became the sexiest thing on the planet to her. “Now I want you to think of how you feel with my fingers inside you. Think of your breath, Monica, how fast it is.… Do you feel the way you’re rubbing your nipples against my chest? Do they hurt?”
She noticed her nipples, hard as pencil erasers, poking against his chest, and a fresh wave of desire rushed through her.
“You’re so wet and tight around my fingers, I bet those little nipples hurt. I bet if I seized them and pinched, you’d like it. I bet when I roll my tongue over them—”
Her cry of bliss silenced him as she exploded with his seductive words in her ear, his touch, his heat, convulsing as wave after wave of ecstasy crashed through her while his fingers relentlessly pushed in deeper.
Even after the shudders subsided, she found herself still slightly rocking, not wanting to stop, never wanting to stop, but having to when his fingers withdrew from her. She fell still, and then an awareness of her surroundings gradually settled on her.
Her pussy felt sore and hot. Daniel was very quiet, breathing hard and fast beneath her. She reached between their bodies and lightly stroked her fingers over his zipper, caressing the impressive bulge she’d seemed to dampen with her juices. Tentatively, she pressed her hand tighter against him and asked, “Do you want me to…”
“Jesus!” He came apart with that touch, convulsing beneath her, and Monica watched him, shocked, instinctively grinding down with the heel of her palm as he jerked and pumped against her.
The sight of his orgasm, his muscles bulging, his body bucking, his hips pushing to her hand, his face contorted, eyes closed, sent a fresh new wetness between her thighs. She didn’t think she could get aroused again after the orgasm she’d had, but she did. Too much.
Her nipples jutted, her body still hungry. Hungry for another cataclysm like the one he’d given her. But … could men do so many in a row? She’d never watched any want her so soon. It usually took them days to recover.
Suddenly, Daniel pulled her against him and nuzzled her as he struggled for breath. “Tell me I didn’t just go off in your hand,” he murmured.
The reminder made a fresh wave of heat crash over her. Of him coming like that, his big body overtaken.… The mental replay caused a tightening deep in her abdominal wall.
This was too much involvement for her brain.
The sight of him coming would be permanently embedded in her brain now.
She already wanted to go back to her apartment and to bed, where she wanted to relive it just one more time. Or two.
God, this was too exciting. But then this was why Roland had been such a perfect man for her. He was a great man, used to the same kind of lifestyle as she was, but Monica would never be wildly in love with him. He would never really know her vulnerable parts, he would never hurt her to the point of driving her mad like her parents had driven themselves to death.
Searching for the remains of her strength after that mind-boggling orgasm, she knew Daniel wasn’t a man to hand-hold, and if she stayed, he’d want more. She couldn’t handle any more. These strange throbs in her body were completely alien and discomforting to her—and they were shockingly intensifying every second she remained on his lap.
She had to go.
Hating to leave the safe little nook in his arms, she looked into his eyes, her lips curling. “I think that was the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen you do,” she said honestly, feeling a strange heat flow to her cheeks.
He laughed and swatted her butt as she untangled herself and went for her dress, then she called a cab from her cell phone, issuing out his address. She clicked off her phone and noticed he had not taken his eyes off her, and she still needed to put her dress on. “Mmm. I could fly home now, I think.” She smiled, shimmying back into her Vera Wang number, and he leaned back on the sofa, his eyes hooded.
“Seems to me the only lousy thing about you is your taste in men. You’re a little vixen to get a man with my record to … lose it like you just did. I’m not too happy about myself right now,” he said.
She laughed, wondering if he truly meant it or merely wanted to appease her ego.
He’d always been protective of her. Especially after what happened with her parents. When he went to change his clothes, Monica received an alert that the cab was outside, and she wrote him a text that read: Thanks. I needed that. MD
On her way home, she stared out the window at the twinkling city lights, feeling like the entire weight of Chicago had been lifted off her shoulders.
And was now sitting strangely in her throbbing, still-wet sex.
Chapter Two
Daniel hit the gym with particular relish the next day. He was sleepless, grumpy; every muscle in his body was tight with tension as he rammed his duffel into his locker and hung his suit on the hook inside the door. His cock hurt, his chest hurt, his fucking pride hurt.
He needed to kick the shit out of himself, and might even need a good run after his swim. He was so fucking wound up, he couldn’t imagine going to Tritech, sitting in his fucking CEO chair, in this fucking state. Tritech was a massive conglomerate headquartered in Chicago, which controlled a diverse range of businesses from pharmaceuticals to tech innovations and electronics.
A typical day in Tritech was busy as hell, including meetings with the board, his chiefs of operations, and managers. A company Tritech’s size was either in expansion mode, or contraction—and Daniel always tried to make sure it was the former. But it would be pretty damn hard to keep his head in the game when every muscle in his body was wound as tight as a coiled spring.
He glanced around, grateful he was alone. A group of billionaires reserved exclusivity in the premises, an hour in the morning, another in the evening
, so he was thankfully solo as he hopped into his swim trunks before training in the Olympic-sized pool today.
“Rough night?”
Daniel raised his head to find Luke Preston grinning. He was in running gear, his diamond studs glinting. “I saw you leave with the Ice Maiden last night,” he said.
Daniel’s chest tightened. Monica.
Daniel’s and Monica’s parents had been close. Too close. They’d grown up together, even went to Cannes and St. Moritz together. Monica could’ve been another sister to him and yet, he’d never seen her like a sister. She’d been … Monica.
Completely unique to Daniel.
Not compartmentalized into a sexual partner, a sister, a friend, she seemed to be the entire gray area of his life … somehow blending into every aspect, but never fully there. But last night he’d had his fingers in her pussy. Holy God.
He slammed his locker door shut. “Yeah. So.”
“Peyton said she’d never actually seen Monica Davenport drool. She was looking at you, dude.”
Because she wants me to be her fuck buddy, he thought in annoyance.
“I can’t see why you haven’t slept with that woman,” Luke said.
“Because we’re friends.” His instinct to protect her was too great to tell anyone about last night.
“So?” Luke prompted.
“You’re my friend, Luke. Do you see me trying to get in bed with you?”
“Ignoring the fact that I hail from Mars, dude, I happen to be male.”
“I don’t want Monica like that,” Daniel lied.
But his chest cramped painfully once again as he remembered the way she’d looked last night at the ballroom. God, she was as stunning as a star. Monica had always appealed to his protective side. Hell, to all of his sides. But last night, the sight of her walking into the party without anyone attached to her had filled Daniel’s roiling chest with unexpected relief.
She’d been dressed impeccably in an ivory gown that only enhanced the lovely sable shade of her hair, and she’d worn it drawn in a classic bun to reveal her patrician features. Her skin had been as flawless as the large and precisely round ivory pearls she wore on her ears. There had been nothing about her—there never was—that was out of place. The Ice Maiden, the press called her.