They arrived in the weight room, where she waved him toward a bench. Once he was in position on his back, she handed him a pair of dumbbells. “Skull crushers, so I can talk while I’m spotting you.”
He nodded and straightened his arms above his chest. “You upped the weight.”
“It was time.” She knelt beside his head, noticing that the shadow of his beard had darkened overnight. Her fingers twitched with the urge to test its heavier texture. “Okay, start.”
He bent his arms at the elbow and lowered the weights on either side of his ears while she kept her hands at the ready to support the dumbbells.
“How long do you need with the router?” she muttered as she tilted in closer.
“It depends on the level of encryption. I won’t know until I get started.” His face was taut with exertion, sweat-curled strands of hair clinging to his temples. God, she wanted to brush them away.
“Better go in late, then, after Vicky and Ramón have left. Around nine o’clock.”
He smiled, a drawing back of lips from clenched teeth that spoke of effort and evil intentions. “How much free time do you have between now and then?”
“I’ve got clients until six.”
“Three hours.” His smile grew even more lascivious. “Think what we can do with all that time.”
Desire jolted through her to curl low in her belly. “Right now you have to do another set of skull crushers.”
“I feel energized enough to push out two more sets.”
She bent lower to lock her gaze with his before she said, “Don’t overdo it. You’re going to need all your strength for three hours with me.”
“Game on,” he said with a throaty chuckle.
The next fifty minutes were exactly as Leland had predicted: delicious torment. She made it worse by adding extra little touches that glided along a tempting swell of muscle or a patch of sweat-glistened skin. He retaliated in kind, brushing against her thigh or shoulder when he shifted positions and giving her long stares that made heat singe through her.
When he lay down on the mat for the final stretching portion of the session, she had a moment of madness as she pictured ripping her pants off before she straddled him. She nearly came right then. He must have seen something of her thoughts in her expression because he was back on his feet, standing so close that they were nearly touching, before she even knew what was happening.
“The hell with stretching. We need to go someplace private,” he said, his voice a tense rasp. “For our last fifteen minutes.”
She’d thought she was aroused before, but his words were like a match to gasoline. “Do you have protection?”
“I was coming to see you, so yes.” He patted the pocket of his shorts.
She knew where to take him because one of her fellow trainers had once confessed to having sex with another trainer there. “Fair warning. Where we’re going is not romantic and it’s not climate controlled.”
“If you think I’m going to notice anything but you, you’re wrong.” He walked along beside her, electricity crackling up her arm every time the backs of their hands brushed.
She led him through the hall, past the locker rooms, to the door that led down a flight of utilitarian cement stairs to the basement. Vicky hadn’t spent any decorating dollars there, so it looked like what it was before Ramón had bought it: an old college building that had been neglected for a decade. The cement and cinder blocks were painted dingy gray, and an array of exposed pipes were festooned with cobwebs hung from the ceiling. An undertone of mildew and ancient sweat drifted through the cool air.
None of it dampened Dawn’s arousal. She pulled open one side of a set of double doors and stepped into a room filled with a jumble of old football practice equipment, broken treadmills, and obsolete weight benches. As soon as Leland was inside the door, he slammed it shut and thrust his hands down inside the back of her track pants to cup the bare skin of her buttocks.
As he pulled her against his erection, his mouth came down on hers, a hot, hard demand, and she forgot everything except the need to have him filling her. She pulled back from his kiss. “We don’t have much time. Get the condom,” she commanded.
He laughed, a low, husky growl that vibrated through her. Then he slipped his hands out of her pants and reached into his pocket.
She started to push down her trousers.
“Stop!” he said. “I’ve been fantasizing about stripping those off you ever since you walked up to the treadmill.” He handed her a foil envelope. Before she could do more than accept it, he had hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her track pants and panties and yanked them down to her ankles in a single, swift movement. “Now that was satisfying,” he said as she kicked her clothing the rest of the way off.
“My turn,” she said, doing the same to his gym shorts and briefs, his cock springing upward as soon as she’d freed it. She wasted no time in rolling the condom over his erection.
As soon as he was covered, he walked her back against a wall. “This looks like the least dusty surface,” he said.
When he began to press his body into hers, sandwiching her between him and the wall, she felt her throat tighten and her breath go shallow. She forced herself to inhale slowly, reminding herself that this was Leland as she fought against the panic. Then he bent to grip the back of her knee, dragging it up the outside of his thigh until her hips tilted to meet his cock at exactly the right angle. The lightning charge that shot through her obliterated panic, replacing it with a need so intense that she reached down between them to bring the head of his cock inside her.
“Yes!” he said and drove in and up so deeply that her other foot came off the floor. The sensation of being filled so suddenly started a clench of orgasm. She braced her back against the wall so that she could wrap her legs around his hips, opening and anchoring herself for whatever he wanted to do.
“You . . . are . . . in . . . cred . . . i . . . ble,” he said, punctuating each gasp of a syllable with a thrust.
His hands were under her bottom, supporting and massaging while he entered and withdrew faster and faster. She tried to fight off the orgasm that kept threatening to explode before she could fully savor the ferocious pleasure of stand-up sex with Leland. Until he surged hard inside her and worked his hand between them to find her clit. One skillful touch and her entire body convulsed in a paroxysm of release that made it feel as though every muscle screamed its delight individually. At the first spasm of her orgasm, he began to pump within her, his hips rocking so that he hit her clit again and again to multiply the sensations shattering her.
Wordless sounds of pleasure tore from both their throats, reverberating off the hard surfaces around them, wrapping them in a cocoon of lust and satisfaction.
He gave a final push and kept his weight pressed in to hold her as diminishing aftershocks rippled through her. When her body went quiet at last, he sucked in a long breath and blew it out so that it whistled past her ear. She burrowed against his neck, breathing in the delicious scent of sweat and hot sex.
“So that’s what an hour of continuous foreplay does for you,” he said. “I’d say I’d like to do it again but I’m not sure I would survive the experience.”
“At least you don’t have to go back upstairs and attempt to stay upright when your bones have pretty much melted.”
“Worse, I have to try to think when you’ve fried every brain cell I have.” He slipped out of her and eased her feet to the ground, grasping her shoulders when she swayed.
She glanced at the fitness watch strapped to her wrist. “Shit! I’ve got to get back to the gym now.” She scrambled into her panties and track pants while Leland dealt with the condom and picked up his clothes. “Can you find your way upstairs? We probably shouldn’t be seen together anyway.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You weren’t worried about that on the way down here.”
“Because I was crazed with lust.” She rose onto her toes and gave him a swift kiss on the mo
uth. “I’ll text you when I’m leaving the gym.”
He ran his palm down the outside of her arm. “I’ll have the limo park a block or two away from your apartment building to keep a low profile.”
She spun away and cracked open the door before she decided to kiss those firm, warm lips again and longer. As she expected, no one was in the dim hallway. She took off at a brisk jog, taking the steps two at a time and arriving for her next appointment breathing heavily but on time.
Leland rubbed his hand over his face before typing in another set of numbers to see how his changes would affect the RFP for Fincher. His vision blurred for a second and he closed his eyes to give them a short rest.
“You look like hell.”
Leland opened his eyes to see Tully with his hip propped on the desk next to him. “This RFP is a pain in my ass,” Leland said.
“I told you to say no. In fact, I said no for you but you’re such a stubborn SOB that you had to take it on.” Tully angled over to look at the screen. “If I knew how to shut down this program without screwing things up, I’d do it and make you get some sleep.”
“Go bother someone else.” Leland turned back to the monitor. “I’ve got work to do.”
“You were here most of last night. Driving yourself to exhaustion will not help KRG. And it won’t bring your mother back.”
“Fuck off.” Leland was too tired to put any heat into it even though the mention of his mother twisted a blade in his chest.
“What are you trying to prove? That you work harder than anyone else here? We already know that.”
“You’re here on a Saturday.”
Tully didn’t give an inch. “I went home and slept in my own bed last night.”
“I’m leaving at five o’clock, so get out of my way and let me finish what I need to do before then.” That had the virtue of being true.
“I’ll be back here at 5:01.” Tully stood up. “You’d better be gone.”
Leland waited until Tully was out of sight before he slumped back in his chair and closed his eyes again.
What was he trying to prove?
That his mother could be proud of him because nothing came before his job. Not a dark web node. Not sleep. Most especially not a fascinating, sexy woman who made it harder and harder to put her out of his mind and focus on work.
He’d learned from his mother how a reckless relationship could derail your life. He wasn’t going to let her hard-won lesson go to waste by falling prey to that.
Opening his eyes, he sat forward in the chair and checked the numbers on the spreadsheet again. He’d transposed two digits in one entry, which was why the total had looked off.
Cursing, he retyped the numbers with ferocious concentration.
Chapter 10
Dawn frowned down at her phone as she walked toward her apartment. She’d texted Leland before she headed out the gym’s front door but had received no response. Had he gotten hung up at work or just decided not to come?
When she reached the block her building was on, she saw no tall, lean figure loitering on the sidewalk. Maybe he thought they shouldn’t be seen together even away from the gym. After all, her place was pretty close to Work It Out.
She went through her usual ritual of checking that no one lurked inside the foyer and started up the stairs when her phone pinged.
Sorry for the delay. Be there in five.
Relief and anticipation sent her running up the stairs so she could unlock and turn off all her security. She’d seen Leland eyeing the overkill the first time he’d come in with her. She’d just stowed her gym bag in the coat closet when the front-door buzzer sounded.
“Dawn, it’s Leland.”
The slow southern honey of his voice made it unnecessary to check the video feed. She hit the enter button and opened her apartment door.
In under a minute, he had his arms wrapped around her and his mouth locked on hers. She wound her fingers into his hair and held on as a wave of heat swamped her, spiraling down to pool between her thighs.
He groaned against her lips and ran his hands down to palm her butt and pull her hips against his. She tucked her fingers into the back pockets of his jeans and upped the pressure, while she rocked into him.
He lifted his head. “I’ve been thinking about this ever since I left you. It did not help my concentration.”
She tilted her head back to look up at him and frowned. Despite the hunger lighting his face, he looked exhausted. Shadows were smudged under his eyes, his cheeks were drawn, and his usually clean-shaven chin was rough with at least a day’s growth of whiskers. Not that she minded the feel of it, but it meant he wasn’t taking care of himself.
“What?” He scanned her face.
She moved her hands to push against his chest. “You’re going to bed.”
A lustful smile twisted his lips. “I have no problem with bypassing the sofa.”
“Sorry, let me rephrase. You’re going to sleep.” She pressed harder until he released her.
“The hell I am,” he said. “The only thing that’s kept me going is the thought of making love to you.”
She took his hand and started toward the bedroom. “That’s my point. You don’t have to keep going any longer and you shouldn’t.”
He let her lead him to the bed. “Now I have you exactly where I want you,” he said with an exaggerated leer as he sat down and tried to pull her onto his lap.
She used his own momentum to push him back on the bed while she remained standing. “And that’s where I want you. With your eyes closed. Snoring.”
“I don’t snore.”
“That was a metaphor. Or something like that.” She picked up his legs and swung them up on the bed.
He grabbed her wrist and held on, his blue eyes glinting. “I’ll sleep but only with you beside me. Naked.”
“That’s not a good plan.”
“Fine. Bra and panties.”
She parked her hands on her hips. “And what will you be wearing?”
“Boxer briefs. It’s only fair.”
The thought of snuggling up to Leland’s mostly bare skin in the cozy nest of her comforter was too tempting to resist. “No fooling around, though. Just sleep.” Not that she was anywhere near being tired.
“For an hour.”
“We are not negotiating some business contract here,” she said.
He gave her a slow, lazy smile. “This is much more important than business.” Then he sat up and yanked his T-shirt over his head, leaving her breathless at the sight of the flexing muscles of his bare chest.
They both shucked off the rest of their clothes—except for undergarments—and crawled into her bed together. Leland spooned her up against him so that she could feel the warm satin of his skin pressed to her back and the shape of his semihard cock nestled into her bottom. She snuggled into him and surreptitiously set the alarm on her fitness watch for two hours later. She had no intention of waking him up in a mere hour, even though she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep herself.
He nuzzled a kiss into her hair. “Sweet dreams, my favorite tyrant.”
It took only a couple of minutes before his arm went slack over her waist and his breath slowed into the rhythm of sleep. She lay reveling in the heat and solidity of him against her back, wanting to imprint this on her memory in case it never happened again.
An hour later, she started awake as an unfamiliar alarm chimed from the bedside table. Leland stirred, and she realized he must have set it on his phone. She stretched to scoop up the phone and dismissed the alarm. “Go back to sleep,” she murmured, dropping the phone on the mattress.
His grip on her tightened. “Want you,” he muttered in a groggy voice.
“Later,” she said. “You need to rest first.”
He said something that sounded like “mmmpf” and subsided.
A strangely tender feeling flowed through her. For all his power and wealth, he still needed someone to care about his well-being. For another hour that s
omeone would be her.
Leland crawled out of a deep sleep as someone shook his arm, a relentless yet soft female voice telling him it was time to wake up. As his senses began to register, he realized a warm female body was snuggled against him and his cock was already interested.
His mind snapped to attention as he remembered that he was in Dawn’s bed with an almost naked Dawn in his arms. “Life is good.”
“You might not think that when I tell you that it’s after eight o’clock,” she said over her shoulder.
“But I set an alarm.”
“You barely moved when it went off. I killed it and you happily went back to sleep.”
He groaned. Not only had he not gotten enough work done, he hadn’t even had the pleasure of sex with the delectable woman in his arms. “I thought we had a deal.”
She turned within his embrace so she faced him on the pillow, her dark eyes liquid with concern. “I’m not going to be the cause of you collapsing from sleep deprivation. Furthermore, we both need to be sharp tonight.”
He hated to admit it but the sleep had helped. He felt far more clearheaded than he had when he arrived. Now a new worry jabbed at him. “You let me in the office and you leave. That’s nonnegotiable.”
“I came up with a good cover story. You think you left your phone at the gym. You came back to look for it as soon as you could. We’re checking to see if it’s in the office for safekeeping.”
“Will we need a cover story? I thought Vicky and Ramón would be gone.” Now he regretted allowing her to be involved.
She shrugged her slender, bare shoulder. He wanted to kiss it. “I think there might be a security camera in the hallway outside their office. I meant to look earlier but you, um, distracted me.”
“I would label it mutual distraction.” He gave in to his impulse and pushed up onto his elbow so he could taste the silky skin on her shoulder.
“Mmm,” she purred before she braced one hand against his chest and pushed. “We don’t have time for that now.”
“We got it done in under five minutes the last time.” He kept his arm banded around her waist so the lower halves of their bodies were locked together.
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