I tug at his shirt, suddenly desperate to feel his skin next to mine. To know if it will feel as good as I’ve imagined it would. My fingers slide beneath the cotton material, absorbing his body heat and the warmth of taut skin over hard muscle.
His mouth trails over my cheek to my ear. “Together,” he promises again, his warm breath teasing my sensitive flesh and sending a shiver down my spine.
“Yes,” I whisper, and I don’t let myself think about trouble or tomorrow. I cling to him, arching my body into his, trying to get closer to him, afraid I will never get close enough.
He cups the back of my head, slanting his mouth over mine, kissing me deeply, passionately. Breaking only to seductively trail his lips over my jaw, my neck, my ear, and I am lost in the haze of desire.
“I want you naked,” he murmurs, tugging my dress up over my hips, and, with that, an unwelcome jolt of reality hits me.
I grab at my dress and pant, “Wait. We can’t. Not here. We could get caught.”
“The door is locked.” He turns me to face the wall, pressing my hands to it, his on top of mine, his big, wonderful body encasing me. He leans in close, his mouth at my ear. “And,” he murmurs, “if you’re still worried about getting caught, I need to do a better job of distracting you.” He tugs on the zipper of my dress, and I open my mouth to resist, only to moan as his tongue begins to follow the metal downward. And his tongue is magic burning through me, sending waves of sensations to every nerve ending I own.
He slides the material off my arms, kissing my shoulders, caressing my sides, my breasts, my nipples. My knees wobble, and his hands brace my hips. My dress pools at my feet and he lifts me, kicking it aside as I slip off my shoes, leaving me in only my bra, panties, and thigh highs. I am exposed, open to him, but I am not shy. I am not intimidated or inhibited. My nipples are tight, my sex slick.
His hands go back to where mine rest on the wall, encasing me with his body, his cheek rasping over mine, as he whispers, “This is where I touch you, lick you, and fuck you. What do you say to that, Kali?”
I moan from nothing more than the promise of what he will do to me. And I know I thought this was trouble, but I no longer know why. My answer is easy. “Yes. Please …”
Part Ten
Sex therapy …
I am nearly naked, still facing the wall and living the fantasy of being at Damion Ward’s mercy, and he wastes no time leaving us with zero barriers. He unhooks my bra, and my nipples tighten and ache with the promise that his hands will follow, but they do not. Instead, he gently shackles one of my hips, his hand caressing my backside before his knee widens my stance, his fingers tracing the silk string along the crevice of my cheeks. I moan with anticipation and his hand scoops low, closing around my panties and yanking them free.
I gasp, weak-kneed with arousal. “That’s two pairs you owe me.”
“Don’t wear them and I won’t rip them off,” he says, his hand flattening on my belly, caressing up my body, until I am no longer leaning on the wall but am cradled to him, my back to his chest, and his hands covering my breasts, teasing my nipples.
I am already panting by the time one of his hands glides down my belly, into the “V” of my body, and his fingers are suddenly pressed into the slick heat of my arousal and stroking my clit. Waves of sensation rush over me and I reach behind me, clinging to his jacket and trying to turn for his mouth.
He turns me and presses me to the wall and I don’t wait to find out what he plans. I reach for his tie, needing to feel his skin against mine. The sound of his cell phone ringing freezes me in place.
“No,” I whisper. “Tell me no.”
He grabs his phone from his pocket and turns it off, stuffs it in his jacket, then shrugs off the jacket and tosses it to the ground. “Problem solved.”
My lips lift and I laugh. “Problem solved,” I repeat, but my hand is shaking as I drag his tie from his neck and help him unbutton his shirt, a gnawing ache in my belly at the reminder that we are breaking rules and there could be consequences. I don’t want him to suffer.
He grabs my hands, and his eyes find mine. “Easy, baby. Relax. Nothing is wrong. Everything is right.”
I nod, wanting to believe him. “Yes. Okay. But hurry.” I shove his shirt over his shoulders, the springy dark hair of his chest teasing my nipples. “Before some other problem needs to be solved and something goes wrong and this never happens.”
He frees his arms from his shirt and tangles his fingers into my hair. “Nothing is going to stop this from happening,” he promises. “Not this time.” And then his mouth comes down on mine, his tongue finding mine, a hot demand and a sweet promise all at once. There is something happening between us, a growing bond, a connection that logic says I should fear after the hell of the past months, but I do not. I just … don’t. Not with Damion.
That realization—the understanding of how much I feel for this man—has me wrapping my arms around his neck and melting into him, trying to get closer. He deepens the kiss and I moan, savoring the deliciousness of finally really, truly, being skin-to-skin, embracing the sense of barriers falling away.
Another sweep of his tongue, a caress of his hand on my breast, a tease of my nipple, and I am instantly lighter, freer, and somehow every part of me is laden with desire. This is the power of Damion, and I revel in his ability to make me all things at once, his ability to bring me to a place where there is only him and me. I am wild and hungry, touching him, moving against him. And he is as wild and hungry as I am, as passionate, as intense. We are lost and found together, touching each other, pressing into each other. His hand is on my breast; mine sweeps down his hips, stroking the thick ridge of his cock. I ache to feel him inside me.
“Damion,” I whisper. “Damion—”
“I know, baby,” he murmurs, kissing me quickly, as if he needs one last taste before he steps away from me and unzips his pants. My heart rate doubles as I watch him shove down his pants and boxers in one sweep. He grabs a condom from his wallet, and, I swear, as impossible as it seems with this confident, amazing man, his hand shakes.
Finally he stands naked before me, gloriously ripped, his body pure masculine beauty, his cock jutting forward, thick and hard, and I cannot breathe as he rolls the condom over himself. He steps toward me and a knock sounds on the door. I jerk toward the sound, my heart lodging in my throat.
Damion wraps himself around me, burying his head in my neck, his lips near my ear. “Ignore them.” He presses me against the wall again, his shaft fitting thickly between my thighs. “Think about me. Think about us.”
Another knock sounds, this one louder, and my hands flatten on his chest. “Damion—”
His mouth comes down on mine, his tongue driving away the voice of reason. No. The voice of Terrance is calling Damion’s name, but Damion acts as if he doesn’t hear it. He deepens our kiss, dragging me back into the swell of passion, and somehow we are on the floor, and now his back is against the wall.
His hands frame my hips, anchoring me, and a mix of urgency and anticipation burns through me. Reaching behind me, I lift my body and press the thick pulse of his shaft inside me, sliding down the hard length of him, sighing as he moves deeper, filling me, stretching me. I lean into him, wrapping my arms around his neck.
Damion’s hand caresses my back, molding my chest to his, and he seems to inhale my scent before whispering, “Finally.”
The way this one word echoes what I feel, the way it tells me he craves and needs me as I do him, stirs emotions in me I cannot ignore. I press away from him, leaning back to see his face, urgent now for another reason. “I don’t want you to regret this or me.”
“I am never going to regret this or you.”
“Your job. I do not want to hurt you.”
“You won’t. Stop thinking about what happens outside this room.”
“I’m just—”
He kisses me. “I’m inside you.”
“Yes,” I whisper, and he kisses me again, de
eper this time, a claiming, a seduction, and I moan as his hands drag a path down my shoulders to settle at my waist.
“I’m inside you,” he repeats.
“I know,” I pant. “Believe me, I know.”
He frames my face, forcing my gaze to his. “Say it.”
“You’re inside me.”
“Where I plan to stay.”
I touch his face, and I fight the urge to make him promise, but he is already dragging my mouth to his, kissing me, pressing me down on him, and I cling to him, move with him. There is a desperateness to what I feel, to the way I sway and push against him, and I feel it in him, too. There is an explosion of desire between us, a wildness that makes everything else fade. I need more and more. Him. I want him. More him. I think there is another knock on the door, but this time I don’t care. This time there is only the frenzied rush of us grinding together, us panting together.
“Come for me, Kali,” he commands near my ear, and the erotic, sexy words are enough to drive me to the edge. And the edge is so good that I cling to it and to Damion, trying to hold it off. Trying to make that wonderful “almost” sensation last forever, but it’s already too late. I am there. I am tumbling over the almost wall and crashing into pleasure.
I bury my face in Damion’s neck, every muscle in my body tensing. His arm tightens around my waist, and I have this sense of being with him, really with him, present in every way. My sex clenches, and I jerk with the impact of the spasms closing down around his cock. A deep growl escapes Damion’s throat as he pulls me hard against him. I feel him shake but I cannot move with him, frozen by the overwhelming intensity of the sensations sliding through my body. I don’t even know when or how I come back to the present. The next thing I know, Damion is lying on his back and holding me close.
My hand settles on his chest, and I don’t even care that we are naked on the floor of his office. I snuggle against him, unwilling to give up this moment in time with him, but as the silence ticks by, I can almost hear him thinking.
“What do you want to know?” I ask, but I don’t look at him, certain I’m not going to like his reply.
“What happened between you and Kent?”
Still I don’t look at him. I can’t look at him. “I told you I don’t want to—”
“Did you love him?”
I prop myself up on an elbow to face him. “No. No, I did not love Kent. That was the problem. I met him because he works for my father; we started dating, which evolved into moving in together. Then I was just with him, and for a while it was comfortable.”
“If all you were was comfortable, he wouldn’t have elicited the kind of emotion I saw in you today. I saw the hurt in your eyes. I feel that hurt in you now just talking about him.”
My chest tightens painfully. “He proposed and I declined. He was angry. He lashed out.”
Damion sits up and drags me against him. “Did he touch you? Did he physically hurt you? Because if he did—”
I press my lips to his, tracing his jaw with my fingers. “No, he didn’t touch me, but I think that would have hurt less.” I look down, staring at our legs pressed together. We are both stripped of our clothes, but I am naked clear to my soul.
His finger slides under my chin, gently forcing my gaze to his. “If you don’t want to tell me—”
My hand goes to his. “It’s not that. I do. I want to tell you.” After what he did for me today, after how he jeopardized his job, I owe him the truth. “But it’s hard to talk about.” I lean away from him and curl my knees to my chest. “When my mother died, my father started drinking and never stopped. He also married an attorney he’d hired in the office, a thirty-year-old Pamela Anderson lookalike, who was after his successful business and his money.”
“How soon after your mother died?”
“A year, but I lost my father the day my mother died. It was like the bottle tipped. He became a complete prick, and my stepmother doesn’t help. She hates me, of course, because I inherit the money she wants. Or I did. I’m disinherited. She and Kent made sure of that.”
Damion wraps an arm under my legs and pulls me closer. “How? What did they do?”
“He set me up. They set me up. He says they didn’t, but I know better. We had dinner planned and I was meeting him at work. It was after hours, so, as I normally would, I headed straight to his office, which is where I found him buried inside my stepmother.”
Damion jerks back, his expression as shocked as mine must have been when I found them together. “What? I knew I should have beaten that little prick’s ass. Tell me your stepmother is now your ex-stepmother.”
“She’s not. I was sure she would be, though. I went to my father, worried about this hurting him, thinking we’d both share in the horror—but, no, that’s not what happened. He blamed me, not her or Kent. No protective papa for me. I was furious and hurt by his reaction, and I lashed out. In short, I told him she was white trash and he was a drunk. He disinherited me and now we don’t speak. And that’s how Kent shredded me. Kent knew how much I craved my father’s love and so he took it from me, the way he felt I had taken mine from him.”
“How the hell could your father blame you for what happened?”
His reaction reminds me of how he protected me with Kent. How good it felt to have him there at just the right moment, and it gives me courage to share the most painful truth with him. “I didn’t think he would, but I guess, working with my father, Kent knew him in a way I didn’t allow myself to know him. The quote from my father went something like: ‘You aren’t as pretty as her, so try spending less time chasing worthless stories and more time on your knees. Then maybe you can keep a man.’ ”
Damion tightens his hold under my knees and drags me closer. “You know you aren’t to blame, right? And you’re gorgeous. Absolutely fucking beautiful.”
I reach out and trace the handsome lines of his face. My Tony Stark. “Thank you,” I say. “I had a rough six months of questioning myself. I’d lost my mother and my father. My job was going nowhere. And even though I wasn’t in love with Kent, he was gone, and life had changed. It all fell apart at once and so did I. I’m not proud of it, but I did.”
His thumb strokes my cheek. “You didn’t fall apart. You’re strong and you’re a fighter, or you wouldn’t have come to Vegas on your own, with barely a resource in your pocket. You’re right. You didn’t run, and I’m a prick for saying so without knowing the truth.”
“It’s done and I’m okay. Or I’m getting there. It’s been a long process.”
He draws my hand to his lips. “I’m going to make you better than okay,” he vows.
I don’t question that he means what he says. I don’t question us. I question what happens when we leave this room. “I can’t believe we let the world know we’re …”
“Together?” he finishes for me.
“How can we be? You are my boss.”
“A technicality.”
“It’s more than a technicality, Damion.”
He stands up and pulls me to my feet. “Get dressed and let’s get this day over with.” He kisses me soundly on the lips. “Then I’m taking you to dinner.”
A knock sounds on the door, and, no longer drugged by arousal, I jump and snap up my clothes.
“Damion, damn it,” Terrance calls out. “Read your text messages if you aren’t going to answer the damn phone or the door.”
I frown. “Why isn’t your office phone ringing?”
“I turned it off when I saw your letter.” He grabs his pants and pulls them on, then reads the text messages Terrance is screaming about. He grimaces at the content. “Wonderful. More potential breaches. The mob was easier to deal with than this mess.” He slips on his shirt. “I heard about the missing charity funds.”
Already dressed, I slide on my shoes. “Did you see the coded messages on the back of Natalie’s pictures?”
“Not yet. Terrance has an update on what it is, though.” He reaches for my hand and pulls me close
. “I can’t wait to get you in my bed tonight.”
I grab his tie and slip it around his neck, pulling the knot for him, but I don’t step away when I’m done. I hold on to it like I want to hold on to him. “Damion—”
“Stop worrying and let me handle things. And that’s an order, Ms. Miller. I’m still the boss.”
* * *
Once Damion is gone and I’m at my desk, business is back to usual. No one seems to want to ask me questions, and I can’t help but wonder if Damion has done something to make sure they don’t. I spend the rest of the afternoon doing final confirmations for the charity event, and I email Terrance the complete list of participants.
Finally, near six o’clock, Dana gives me a shy wave goodbye, as if I’m the plague, and the press releases for the charity event land in my in-box. And they are bad. So bad that I’m appalled. The overall promotional plan is lacking, as far as I can see.
The sound of footsteps in the hallway carries to me in the silence of the now-empty offices, and I hold my breath, expecting Damion. Instead, Terrance appears, his suit and security jacket pressed and perfect, his blond hair a bit longish and wild. I know why he’s here and I lean back in my chair, hugging myself, ready to put all conversations of Kent behind me.
“I’ll get right to it,” Terrance says, stopping in front of me. “My team messed up. We were so wrapped up in protecting the company in the midst of internal havoc that we got too aggressive in our actions. I can’t take back what we did.” He leans forward on the desk, fist on the wooden surface. “But I can promise you that if he comes near this place or you again, he will land flat on his ass, and I’ll enjoy putting him there.”
My spine stiffens. “Damion told you.”
“He told me the bastard was worth the mud on my shoe, nothing more. But I saw the footage. I saw how upset you were. That’s enough. He won’t get to you again.”
My heart squeezes at the realization that I’ve gone from having no one care to having two men who seem to be willing to fight for me. “Thank you.”
“And I told the staff you had a family emergency and ‘Mr. Ward’ was helping you deal with it. You’re both still in the closet.”