That’s all he says. That one last word sounds frustrated, aroused, annoyed, confused—almost pained. Before I can get him to get into the kiss, Malcolm takes my face between his large hands and looks at me with ice-green eyes that carve into my soul. “I’m not the guy anyone comes to for comfort, Rachel. But I like that you came to me.”
I realize that he looks rawer this morning, on edge, his eyes not shuttered or icy like usual. He looks . . . like he’s burning on the inside. I swallow the strawberry jam and lick the corner of my lip, finally realizing how much last night must’ve tested him.
“You didn’t sleep, did you?” I whisper.
He brings me closer to him, his breath hot against the back of my ear as he lowers me to his lap. It feels so good, and at the same time I can’t stop shaking.
“I haven’t had anyone in bed with me for a while. It’s harder for anyone to hit my engage buttons. It’s because of you.” I can’t help but notice how heavy his lids seem to have become. I lick my lips, anxious.
His attention drops to where my breasts press into his chest, and my body homes in on how good this contact feels, how oversensitized the tips of my nipples are.
“Saint . . .” I trail off.
He cups the back of my head; then he silences me by pressing his mouth to mine and sweeps his tongue into my mouth.
“I’m obsessed with you,” he says.
He tastes of toothpaste and coffee as he teases my lips apart, one of his hands planted on the back of my neck. My hands seem to get away from me, and before I know it, they’re caressing his hair. “Saint,” I moan, pushing my breasts upward.
He groans, pulls me over and around him, adjusting my body over his in a straddle position, his hands on my ass.
I’m aware of the heady friction of our clothes as I let him adjust my body so that we’re both fitted so right; if our clothes weren’t between us, he’d be inside me.
And that’s the way he kisses me for a long while. A piercing need floods me, the kind of longing I’ve never known before. He opens my mouth with a firm parting of his lips; then he tastes me, his tongue relentless against mine, pushing hungrily over and around. The heat and seductive dampness of his kiss make me quake for more, every stroke thrusting me deeper and deeper into a whirlwind that revolves and focuses entirely on him, Malcolm Saint, the one who makes my heart race, my life spin faster and faster, my every waking thought now centered on what he does, who he’s with, what he likes, who he is. . . .
He doesn’t break the kiss as he keeps me on his lap, all while his greedy mouth keeping mine attached to his.
I straddle him better, shifting on top of him, seeking to bring the biggest, most delicious hardness I’ve ever felt as close to me as I can; he’s so big and thick, I almost jump from shock but instead I rock against it, wanting it. Needing it. A pained groan rumbles up from his chest as he brings me down by the hips, rocking me harder against his hard lap, his breathing rough and uneven in my ear.
“Come back tonight. I’ll send someone to pick you up after work. We can grab some dinner. . . .”
“No! No dinner.”
“Why not dinner?”
Because I can’t bear to be online like one of your floozies. I press my hands against the smoothly shaven flesh and hard bone of his jaw and whisper in his ear, horny as fuck. “Because you know what I want,” I breathe. It presses between my legs. It looks at me. It’s touching me. It smells good, tastes good. “Because,” I say, “I want you.”
20
TONIGHT . . .
I’m at my desk, editing, when a flower arrangement almost larger than the guy carrying it stops by my chair. “For you,” the guy says from behind the forest of orchids.
Shock freezes me for a second. I glance around, narrow-eyed. Did somebody in the office decide to play a prank on me? They’re all typing, but some are glancing curiously my way.
Then I realize the poor guy is about to pass out from exhaustion. I scramble to clear a little space for the vase and let him set it down. Then I stare at the most wild arrangement of orchids you can imagine. I pluck the card nestled in between all those white and purple beauties, and my heart quivers so hard I need to sit down.
It didn’t seem right for you to spend another day without the luxury of a gift from a man who thinks of you.
M.S.
I shake my head and put the card down. Sandy, one of my work colleagues, stops by to see them. “Wow. A man after Rachel’s heart!”
Valentine peers into my cubicle. “Trust me, he’s aiming lower.”
Victoria and Helen want to know how it’s going. “I’ve got so many folders,” I tell them, hedging but trying not to appear that I am.
I tell myself that the time I spend with him tonight will be just mine. Just mine and his.
I’m stealing it, and this makes me a complete sinner, but I’m aching to Sin. Throbbing.
Thank you, I text him.
Thank me in person tonight
He knows; we both know what’s going to happen. I can’t wait for it to happen. I’m anxious for the day to end, can’t eat or think without him present in every thought in my head.
Everyone in the office seems to have Saint on their mind; they can’t stop discussing how fresh and exotic the explosive combination of flowers is, how perfectly they’re arranged, how much they must have cost.
Victoria comes to peer into my cubicle and tries to open the card. I snatch it away and quickly tuck it into my bag.
“Wow. Protective much?” Her eyebrows furrow, but then she laughs lightly and strokes the petals of a small fuchsia orchid with her fingertips and smiles. “Best quality.”
“I’m busy, Vicky,” I sigh.
“You didn’t look busy.” She crosses her arms and leans her hip on the edge of my desk. “You were staring off into space. Into the space of these flowers.” She happily points at them.
“Did you need anything?” I ask.
“Yes. Tell me. Does Saint usually send flowers to the women he seduces?” She taps the corner of her mouth and pretends to think. “Hmm. I’d never heard that before. What’s the secret?” She smiles in mischief. “You’re playing him well and good, aren’t you?”
I think of how seduced I feel. How much I ache. His kiss. His touch. How I can’t sleep. How I can’t breathe. How I can’t go on without feeling him inside me at least once. And I can’t help but feel like the one being played expertly could be me. . . .
I’m so in over my head, I’m drowning in air.
But I stand and lightly brush her away by pulling out the files under her bum, and say, “Trade secrets. Now scoot, you’re breathing my fresh, flowery air. Go get your own flowers.”
When she leaves, I look at mine. Majestic and unapologetic, they take up all of my oxygen in a way I love, and I swear to myself I’m going to look just as good and smell just as good for him tonight.
I doll up for him that night. Pink lace undies with a little bow at the top, the same bow in the middle of my front-clasped lace bra. I slip on an A-line skirt that twirls a little when I walk, and a slinky spaghetti-strap ivory-colored top that lets him see the pink strap of my bra peeking out from underneath. It screams I want you in the most blatant way I know how to say it.
He texts me that he’s outside my building.
Gina isn’t back from work, so I leave a note like the kind I leave when I’m camping out with Stop the Violence, saying: Sleeping out tonight. XOXO R
Both an eternity and a heartbeat later, I climb into the back of the Rolls and see him. Did he dress up for me too? He’s so handsome in a black button-down shirt and black dress slacks that my breath can’t seem to go past my throat. His hair looks wet from a recent shower, the top button of his shirt undone and the cuffs rolled to his elbows. The glimpse of his golden body under his clothes makes my heart beat more rapidly. The privacy glass is in place, and he whispers, as if for my benefit, “He can’t hear or see us.” I didn’t know I was so desperate, but when he reaches out a
nd pulls my body closer to his and slides his hand under my top, to the bare skin of my back, I wedge a little closer.
Another corner kiss.
I shiver.
He grazes the second corner now, his lips warm but firm.
I slide my hand up his hard thigh, wanting to know he’s hard, not certain if I have the courage to let my hand wander higher. It feels so hot, his skin under his clothes. His eyes are so green and so dark.
“Where are we going?” I whisper.
“My place,” he murmurs. He brushes my lips with his and looks at them, then edges back so he can look at me completely.
I start to put a little distance between us, trying to get myself under control.
“Come here, I want you close to me.”
He slides his hand around my waist, and with a small press of his fingers on my ribs brings me closer. Heat bubbles in my veins as I press my lips to his thick throat. He lets me. I rub my fingers up his shirt and he slips his hand under my top.
We shift so that I’m straddling his thigh.
I lick between his lips.
He drags me over his lap so his erection is right between my legs. “I’m so hot for you,” he rasps.
Pleasure ripples through me when I feel the hard erection beneath me. I wanted to know? Now I know. He’s pulsing. Huge and perfect, hard as steel, his need a living thing biting between my thighs. In contrast, his lips are soft and brushing feather-like against the edges of mine, incredibly gentle. “I want to taste you here, right here. To take you all night. My god, you’re ravishing,” he whispers, drinking me in with his eyes and savoring me with his hands.
My responses are ungoverned. Unplanned. I nibble my lip, aching.
We share a stare—eyes, lips, eyes, lips, lips. Lips. He ducks his head, and the idea of not tasting him is suddenly intolerable. We kiss. Just lips first. A graze, a press, then easing back, breathing hard.
He trails his hand down my back. “How do you want it? Hard? Soft?” He looks down at me like I’m some goddess.
“Hard. No. Soft. Soft, then hard.”
I’m so excited and nervous.
He eats me with his eyes as he pours wine for us, and we drink and look at each other, and when I set my cup aside, he does the same and pulls me close to him so he can tease my lips apart with his mouth and taste the delicious red wine I just sipped. He smiles when we arrive at his apartment building. We head into the lobby, and I feel the knowing glances come at us from every corner.
Saint curls his hand around my arm and tugs me into the elevators.
“How many women do you bring here?” I ask. He gathers so much attention. I can’t imagine ever getting accustomed to that.
“I haven’t brought one in a while,” he admits as the doors close and we ride alone to the top. “Since I saw you.”
I laugh. “You don’t have to say that.”
“Why would I be lying right now?” He tugs me closer to his hard lines, my breasts aching as they press against his chest. “You’re here, aren’t you?” He runs a hand down my hair, and suddenly I feel so precious under those twinkling, knowing eyes. “You’ve got every intention of letting me do anything I want with you,” he whispers in my ear.
“You really haven’t brought anyone?”
I can’t seem to make my voice rise above a whisper. My body feels so tense with wanting, it’s an effort to stand here and not let my fingers and tongue have their expedition on his body. God, my attraction to him has nothing to do with reason. Nothing.
He shakes his head, his gaze intimate on my face as he basically admits to being celibate for what has to be a record time. I’m so undone by the thought, I drop my lashes and gaze with sudden shyness at his throat.
“What about the after-party I couldn’t go to? You got a show from . . . those girls?” I quietly ask him, stroking one of his shirt buttons with a fingertip. Why does he make me so shy? I’m afraid he’ll see that I’m jealous, but I have to ask.
It feels like this elevator is our own cocoon and nothing can come between us right now, nothing in the world outside this perfect space.
His throat: it’s so masculine. I watch the thick tendons and his Adam’s apple move as he answers now, his voice warm, his breath moving the hairs along my temple. “The Ice Box that night was a way of me distracting myself—I had every intention of fooling around. But you appeared, the very thing I wanted to distract myself from, and I couldn’t go through with having anyone else after the way you looked that night.”
The elevator stops at the penthouse, and I blush as he takes my hand and leads me in, my brain almost flooded with pleasure from what he just said.
He called his friends when he was riding in the car with me on our second interview. He was attracted to me then, while I’d been fascinated with the water he’d drunk, almost wanting to drink from the bottle he’d left behind—not even understanding what was happening to me.
Saint would’ve seen me for another interview—I would’ve made sure of that—but I’d have never known whether, while I lay wanting at night, he went and buried his desire for me between another woman’s legs.
I’m glad to know; he didn’t need to tell me this, and yet he did.
“Do you do that often?” I whisper. “Take just any woman in exchange for the one you want?”
He lets his head fall back and shouts with laughter, squeezing my hand. “Rachel, I never settle . . . not in business, not in pleasure. You were going to be the exception because you were a reporter. I never mix business and pleasure.”
“I ended up being that exception. To not mixing business with pleasure,” I say, almost to myself, flushing again when I think of the way I’ve totally mixed things too. I step away for a moment and stare out his massive windows at Chicago, admiring the thousand tiny, flickering lights that awaken in the city after sunset. “Your views are incredible. You have a completely different view of the world . . . both from your office and from here.”
“I like my view right now.” He speaks from behind me, and I inhale sharply and savor the butterflies in my stomach, the melty sensation in my knees. His voice is like tree bark now, raspy, firm and steady underneath, firmly rooted. When his tongue plays with my earlobe, I feel weightless, leaning back against him.
I part my lips just to breathe, noticing the large erection swelling prominently against the small of my back. Oh, how I want that. I want that so much. He turns my face to him. He slides a hand to cup my breast.
“I’m so ready, we can skip the foreplay,” I breathe.
I frown a little when he stills his hand. Um, not the reaction I was going for. I twist my neck a little.
His lips curl, a glint of mischief entering his gaze. “I’m taking my time, Rachel.”
Oh no. More foreplay? How wet does he want me to get? I’m so swollen I’m afraid nothing could go in right now. “Saint, don’t be a dick! I want you—”
“I want you too.” He kisses the corner of my mouth; then he heads to a huge black granite bar and brings us each a glass of wine.
He sits down on the couch and looks at me. It’s too easy for me to lose myself in the way he looks at me. Too easy to do anything else but want. Want, want, want.
“Come here.” He offers me a glass. “I want to know if you liked my gift.”
“I drank enough in the car. Didn’t you?”
He sips calmly.
I frown.
Suddenly I want to just toss his cat-and-mouse game right back at him and go home, but something in his expression stops me. It’s so male. So completely concentrated. Somehow it makes me wetter. Whatever it is I see there, the energy and power of a male establishing domination over a female, it pulls at me harder than my pride can. I’ve never had a relationship. I’ve never been attracted to a man as infuriating, impossible, and beyond hot as him.
I would physically fight a woman right now, naked and in mud, for the rights to him tonight.
So I tug my top down my arms and let it fall on
the floor, barely suppressing the urge to cover myself when he has his first full look of me. Oh, fuck, did I just strip like a hooker? Before Saint? I did.
His voice is thick. “If you’re going to do that, do a little dance at least.”
“Fuck you,” I murmur.
“I’d rather you do it.”
I open my eyes, and he’s sipping his wine, devouring me with a small smile. He’s so virile, testosterone pulses around us. I want to rip his shirt off. God, I want to be reckless with him, wild with him. Somehow, within that recklessness, he gives me a measure of safety.
“In case you missed it, I’m willing to have sex with you,” I tell him, flat-out pushing my shyness aside.
He laughs softly, slowly setting the wine aside.
I start for him in anger. “Saint! I hate you! I am throwing myself at you here! At least fucking catch—”
He yanks me down on him and presses his mouth to mine. “Shh. I think I like you mad.” Then he sweeps his tongue into my mouth. He pulls me over him, adjusting me with his hands on my ass. He sucks on my tongue, and the low sound he makes along with his greedy sucks give me the most exhilarating, delicious sensations I’ve ever felt.
“You do want me,” I breathe.
He lifts me up in his arms as if I weigh nothing, and I hang on with my limbs around him as he carries me to his room. He lowers me down on the bed and I sink into all that softness. Then he edges back, his breathing as ragged as mine. His eyes are green lava. All the pent-up desire of the past weeks is about to explode inside me.
“Malcolm,” I beg as I pull open his shirt and pop his buttons free. He stands at the edge of the bed and lets me get on my knees and push it off his chest. Then he quickly shrugs it off his shoulders and lets it fall while I run my fingers up the grooves of his abs, his flat chest, pressing my lips wherever they fall. I manage to free his belt and throw it aside too. He pushes my hair behind my forehead, and I ease back on the bed, locking my hands on his nape so that he has no choice but to follow me down. He sweeps his head down and his lips are hot, tasting my mouth as he slides his hand up the side of my body. His mouth goes downward as his hands go upward.