“You most certainly will come after me,” I say with a raised brow. “Because I’m this close to getting there myself.”
He lunges forward and scoops me up. My legs are over one arm, and my back is supported by the other. He carries me into the bedroom and tosses me onto the bed.
“Holt,” I squeal. “I’m sweaty. Don’t put me on your bed.”
He pins me in place with his gaze as he strips out of his clothes. “I’m not worried about the fucking bed.”
Before I know what’s happening, he’s crawling over the bed and hovering on top of me.
My breathing is shallow. I can feel the blotchiness in my skin and the stickiness of my perspiration. But, more so, I can feel Holt’s energy rippling off him.
I’m so fucked.
I hope.
Chapter Twenty
Blaire
“You are a damn conundrum. Do you know that?” he asks from above me.
“I don’t know. I think I’m pretty easy to figure out.”
He tilts his head to the side. “I’ve tried to give you space. I’ve gone out of my fucking way to make sure you don’t think I asked you here so that I can have sex with you.”
“I noticed.”
He almost grins. Almost. “And then I catch you in my sauna thinking you’re going to touch yourself with me right here.”
I lift my head off the blankets. “Because you won’t.”
“Oh, sweetheart. I most definitely will.”
My head hits the blanket as he shows me the tie he had on earlier clenched in one of his large fists.
“Give me your hands,” he demands.
“What for?”
He sits beside me. Women would pay big money to watch his muscles flex like this.
He takes my hands and jerks them above my head. The silk slips across my wrists. In a moment, they’re pulled together and bound.
My blood pressure spikes as my heart pounds inside my body. I’m not sure if I like this or if I don’t.
But I am sure of one thing: I trust him.
The realization takes me out of the moment as I process it.
Only one person has ever tried to do something like this to me, and I laughed in his face. But with Holt, it’s hot. It’s safe. And as he springs off the bed and rustles around a drawer, I don’t have any reservations at all except I wish he’d hurry.
I squirm. “What are you doing now?”
“Finding a condom.”
“Good plan, good plan.”
He grins at me over his shoulder. “One of us has to think.”
“Hey, I’m thinking. I’ve been thinking. I thought out an entire plan.”
Kind of.
If he tries to keep me from hearing his chuckle, he fails.
He turns toward the bed and makes his way to me. He climbs on the mattress and stops between my legs.
I pant as he intentionally doesn’t touch me. “Holt, come on.”
I try to reach him with my foot, but he pulls away with the dirtiest, sexiest grin.
“Your hands are up there for a reason,” he says. “So you can’t touch me. Or yourself.”
“Holt …”
“I mean it,” he says, his eyes smoldering. “If you touch me, I’ll stop.”
“You can’t stop if you don’t start,” I say, wiggling around again.
He places a hand on my stomach to hold me in place. “Bend your knees.”
I do as instructed.
His hand comes around my waist and dips beneath me. He cups my ass cheeks in his palms and raises my hips.
I tremble without being touched.
He holds my gaze as he presses kisses up the inside of my right leg. Each touch of his lips feels like it’s being imprinted on my skin forever. As he nears my opening, he stops.
“Holt, I’m going to kill you,” I groan.
His eyes twinkle with mischief. “Paybacks are a bitch.”
He blows across my vagina. The air is cool against my wet, amped-up flesh, and I squirm again. I start to bring my hands down to help guide him along but then remember his command.
The side of his face is roughed against the inside of my thigh. His stubble bites into my over-sensitized body, and I moan in pleasure.
My head feels like it’s going to explode. I’ve never been this turned on and in need—need—of getting off. I can’t take the little bits he’s giving me.
I need it all. I need him.
He pulls his hands from beneath me and uses them to spread my knees wider. I’m totally exposed in every way, and I don’t give a damn.
It’s the wildest, most freeing sensation. It’s one I never thought I’d experience.
He whisks his fingers across the outside of my slit. I hold my breath. But instead of making any kind of contact that would give me relief, he instead runs his fingers along the crease where my leg meets my body.
It’s so good, so intimate, but totally screws with my head.
“You could’ve just asked me to fuck you,” he says like he has all the time in the world.
I lift my head off the bed. “If my being displayed like this in front of you isn’t asking you to fuck me, then I don’t know what to do.”
He grins devilishly. “This is me telling you I’m going to fuck you. This isn’t you asking.”
I smile as sweetly as I can manage through gritted teeth. “Holt, please fuck me.”
“In due time. Patience, sweetheart.”
My head falls back to the blankets again. “You can take your sweetheart and—oh!”
He places a kiss on the outside of my pussy. Then another on the other side. Then another, casually, as if there’s no hurry whatsoever.
I start to reach for him again but stop myself.
He’s in control.
And like a lightbulb went off inside my head, I realize what he’s doing.
He’s showing me I can trust him.
I look down at his head between my legs. He’s watching me, framed by my thighs, and holds my gaze as he licks a deliberate path up the center of my body.
“Fuck,” I hiss, my knees falling apart even more.
He sticks a finger into my opening and uses his thumb to rub the exterior. But what he does not do is go anywhere near my clit. And the harder I try to move to make contact, the farther away he stays.
“Does this feel good?” he asks with a cocky lilt to his voice. “Better than when you were touching yourself?”
“At least I knew where to touch myself.”
He laughs, working his fingers deeper inside my body.
I raise my hips to make it easier for him.
“I know where to touch you too,” he says. “I’m just choosing not to yet.”
“Why? Tell me why,” I whine.
“Because that’s what you’re trying to get me to do, and you don’t need to be in control all the time.”
“Yes, I do.”
His thumb gets close to my swollen bud but doesn’t make contact.
I squeeze my eyes shut. I think I might cry.
“It’s good to let someone else take over things sometimes,” he says. “Even I give up power on occasion.”
“I’d like to see that.”
“I do it all the time with you.”
My eyes fly open.
He’s watching me in that crazy way of his. It makes me feel like the only person in the universe who matters at this moment.
His irises are a mixture of greens and almost blues, and I can’t see clear enough to make sense of what’s happening in there.
He dips his head, his eyes still lasered in on mine, and licks my pussy. Sparks shoot through me like a live wire. I shake as bursts of energy fire through my veins.
He cups my ass again as his tongue finally finds my clit.
“Oh, my God …” I say, each word punctuated with a groan.
My legs stiffen. I can feel the stickiness of my juices on the inside of my thighs. My breasts swell as I press my body against Holt’s face.
&
nbsp; He licks and sucks and gives one hundred percent of his attention to my engorged pleasure point. He treats it like an oasis in the middle of the desert—as though he can’t get enough.
I can’t think anymore. I can’t give him hell, or tell him how amazing it feels, or beg him to keep going. My teeth clench together as the pent-up sexual tension builds and builds and …
I explode all over his face.
I shriek at the almost pain of the orgasm. He responds to my cues and continues to suckle my body. I feel full, so full, and so very wet.
My body hums with total satisfaction. Completely spent, my head falls to the side.
Holt places a final kiss against the inside of my thigh before pulling away.
I shudder as the intensity takes a few moments longer to wane.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
I look down. He’s standing at the edge of the bed, wiping his face with his discarded shirt.
“It was worth the wait,” I say.
He grins. “Good to hear. Now come here.”
“I’m too tired.”
He grabs me by my ankles and pulls me to the edge of the bed. He makes quick work of putting on a condom.
“I could fuck you all night,” he says, “but I think you’ve had enough.”
“I don’t want to have had enough.”
He chuckles. “You sure? Because I can put you to bed and call it a night.”
“Not yet,” I say. “Just a little more.”
He flips me over onto my stomach and gets behind me. I’m so wet that he slides into me with ease.
My body spasms around his rock-hard length. “Holt … Shit!”
“Damn, baby,” he groans as he presses into my body.
He fills me, taking a moment to let me adjust to his size. It’s deliriously wonderful and the feeling of his hands gripping my waist is inherently sexy.
He wants me as bad as I wanted him. I can feel it in the way he moves me and the way he watches me. There’s something so heady about it that I can’t help but feel a bit seductive.
My hands are extended in front of me. My ass is up in the air. My brain is, for the first time in a long time, unable to overthink anything. It’s in a muted state of bliss as Holt fucks me from behind.
“Do you want to come again?” he asks through gritted teeth. “Because, if not, this is going to be over soon.”
“I can’t.”
I’ve basically never stopped.
“Okay then.”
It takes just a few more strokes before I hear him growl. He grips me for dear life as his cock swells inside me. I keep my ass tilted up for him.
Finally, he pulls out. I fall to the mattress immediately, my body and mind depleted from the day. The clock beside the bed shows that it’s well after three in the morning.
I hear the rustle of the trash can and the sound of running water. I’m nearly asleep when Holt comes back in again.
He picks me up and lays me properly on the bed. The mattress dips as he climbs on beside me.
I jump as a warm washrag touches my still-sensitive slit, and my eyes dart open.
He grins. “I can’t let you go to sleep all dirty.”
“I need a shower,” I say, my eyes filling with sleep again.
He tosses the rag onto the floor and curls up behind me. Through my haze, I think he presses a kiss to the top of my head.
“Sleep, sweetheart,” he whispers in my ear.
And that’s the last thing I remember as I doze off.
Chapter Twenty-One
Holt
Moonlight drifts through the drapes that didn’t get closed.
I’ve told myself for the past hour that I’m going to get up. I need to clear my head and get myself together. That won’t happen as long as I lay next to Blaire and continue to run my fingers through her long, silky locks.
But I don’t. I can’t quite force myself to leave her in my bed.
Her hair is tangled from sweat and sex. Every time my fingers find a new little knot, I gently work it out … and wonder what the fuck is happening.
What am I doing?
I sigh, letting my head sink farther into the pillows.
Blaire rustles next to me. Her cheek moves against my chest, her arm rubbing against my abs as she rearranges her position. I hold my breath and hope she doesn’t pull away. Because while I know this isn’t where I need to be, it’s where I am.
It’s where I want to be. And I don’t know how I feel about that.
What is it really hurting? I’ll have plenty of time in the morning with Oliver to make up for lost time.
My head is murky. My thoughts are a complicated web of logic and emotion—the latter clouding the first. This is precisely why I don’t do this. It leads to disaster.
So why am I doing this with Blaire? Why am I pointedly not following my own rules?
Not only that, but why am I instigating it?
It’s usually a woman’s behavior that confuses me. This time, it’s my own.
My motivations are typically social or sexual. This time, it’s not.
I want it to be. Damn, do I want it to be. And maybe I even thought it was when I invited her to stay with me. But it’s beyond that now.
Now, wanting her to stay here isn’t just about sex. I want to talk to her just as much as I want to fuck her. I want to see her various smiles, hear her laugh, and smell her perfume in the mornings. It’s fucked up. But I don’t know what to do about it.
My fingers slip through her hair. The weight of her body against mine feels like an anchor. But instead of presenting like a ball-and-chain, it feels more like a reprieve. It gives me a moment to breathe.
There were definitely ideas that we’d work, then fuck, then go to bed. It was supposed to be an easy few days with a woman who lived a thousand miles from here—a woman who had class and her own sense of detachment.
It was perfect.
Blaire wouldn’t show up at my house once our time together was done. She wouldn’t call me to come over when I was working. There would be no assumptions that we were attending any event together.
It was a week cut-and-dry. It sounded like heaven.
Now I find myself counting the days until she goes home. And not because I’m looking forward to it.
“Fuck,” I whisper angrily into the night.
I slip out of bed. The air is cold and almost assaulting. Blaire stirs but settles again with her head on my pillow.
The sight leaves me with a knot in my stomach as I tuck the blankets around her naked body. She smiles in her sleep—a lazy, unguarded gesture that twists the knot inside me harder.
I turn away and pluck my robe off a hook on the bathroom door.
The house is quiet as I make my way through the hallways. I wander aimlessly through the rooms until I wind up in the den.
I flip on the fireplace and take a seat on the sofa. The flames flicker, giving both heat and the illusion of company.
“What are you doing?” I ask myself.
I rest my head on the back of the sofa and fill my lungs with oxygen. It’s an attempt to clear my mind.
What’s surprising is that I’m not thinking about her body, or how hard I got off, or that she’s still in my bed and I could, theoretically, go back up there for another round. Those thoughts are there—I’m a hot-blooded man, after all—but they’re a definite back seat to other matters.
I blow out the breath. The hiss of air leaving my body is the only noise in the room.
This is going to end badly if you don’t stop it.
I groan, knowing it’s true. I also know that if I don’t get my head out of my ass and finalize the Landry deal, more things than my situation with Blaire are going to end in destruction.
Our current projects are wrapping up, and we have nothing else on the table. We have to get this property. I have to get it. Everyone put their faith in me, and I can’t let them down.
I can’t fuck this up.
Yet h
ere I am. Sitting in the den and not at my desk. Not getting ready to go to the office early like I should be.
Shit.
My brain feels like a room with a bunch of open boxes. The contents of which are spewed around my mind. The harder I try to sort them back neatly, the more they fall apart.
What is Blaire going to think in the morning?
This is not like Picante. This isn’t a spur-of-the-moment fling that neither of us thinks much about.
She’s in my home.
We’ve shared intimate things about ourselves.
She’s in my damn bed.
She has every right to wonder if I’m pursuing her for a reason.
Am I?
I grimace. “No, why would I be? She’s leaving in a few days. She doesn’t want something serious any more than I do.”
But as my words settle in the air, hanging around like they’re taunting me, I realize how bitter they taste.
I look at the chair she sat in this evening. She was still annoyed with me for pushing her on the carriage—something I shouldn’t have done. Yet her opening up to me and sharing things about her life is something I’ll never forget.
It was real. Raw. Profound, in a way.
I’ve never experienced that kind of intimacy before.
So why her? Why now? Why at the worst possible time in my life?
Still, I watch the fire crackle softly and have half of a notion to wake Blaire. I think she’d like the peace of this moment.
“Maybe that’s precisely why it’s her and now,” I whisper into the night. “I’m only feeling these things for her because it’s what we both need right now. It works. There’s a freedom for both of us because she’s going to leave. And neither of us will be worse for the wear.”
I hope.
* * *
Blaire
The coffee maker hisses as the final drips of java flow into my cup. I take it from the tray and inhale the decadent aroma.
Holt’s robe is soft and warm. I found it draped across the bottom of the bed when I woke up and couldn’t help myself from putting it on. It smells like him.
I tug the tie together at my middle before leaning against the kitchen island and gazing across the backyard. The peaceful view helps to settle the wildness that’s still present from last night.
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