Caine’s eyes were contrite when he shot Cat a sheepish grin after scrubbing his knuckles over his jaw. “I’m sorry if we made you feel uncomfortable, too.”
“Apologies accepted. Now let’s let bygones be bygones and get to introductions and the business at hand, okay? The girls are dying to meet you both.”
Caine nodded his dark head. “Perfect. So let’s set about finding our fetishes. Whaddya say, Mistress Taboo?” He didn’t wait for Dixie to answer. Instead he held out his arm to Cat and smiled. “Shall we?”
Cat giggled again, soft and as lovely as she was, but a quick glance at Dixie had her clamping her lips shut and frowning before she regained her composure. She roped her arm loosely through Caine’s, keeping a visible distance between them. “C’mon. I’ll introduce you to everyone and familiarize you with what goes on here.”
Dixie stuck her tongue out at Caine behind his back, and hurried to shuffle up to the other side of Cat, grabbing onto her free arm and winking. Her chuckle was throaty, but her words held the ultimate dare. “Let the games begin.”
* * *
Back in her room, freshly showered and comfortable in an old T-shirt, Dixie snatched her phone with Landon’s text from the nightstand and raised her fist to the ceiling with a shake. “You suck, Landon,” she muttered, making Mona and Lisa stir.
After an hour with Caine, Cat and the women of Call Girls, Dixie’s head was still spinning. She’d thought she’d made her choice the moment she’d thrown down the challenge to Caine in Hank Cotton’s office.
Now? She was regretting her impulsivity. Once Cat had explained the inner workings of the phone-sex business, and only after Dixie was done mentally rolling her eyes at Caine, who’d smiled, joked and blatantly flirted with the ladies while making it appear this challenge was going to be akin to some leisurely stroll in the park, she’d waffled.
As she processed bits of information such as, she was her own boss and her hours were flexible, but some of the best, most loyal U.S. clients called in at night between the hours of midnight and three. And it was up to her to create an interesting, yet alluring phone-sex operator pseudonym, a website for that pseudonym, and an area of sex she specialized in. Scripts on how to handle difficult client calls, calls that got out of hand, all kinds of calls, calls, calls were readily available to them.
Shortly after meeting the women who ran the phones, and introductions, and all the details of the running of a phone-sex company, Dixie began to wilt, exhausted from the day’s events.
Cat, clearly intuitive, had handed her the Call Girls phone-sex operator package, and told her to go get some rest before she made her final decision.
That was where she was now. Making her final decision. Her eyes flew to her bedside clock. And she only had eighteen hours and counting to do it.
Tick, tick, tick.
The only thing she had decided on, if she didn’t chicken out, was the pseudonym Mistress Taboo. Caine had used it to taunt her, but it stuck like an earworm.
Flopping on the bed, she absently flipped through the ream of papers Cat had given her while she stroked Mona’s ear. Her eye caught the list of “specialties” Call Girls allowed, stilling her movement. “What, in all of heaven, do you suppose infantilism is, Mona?”
“Oh, you know, the usual. Men in diapers, baby bottles,” Caine said, strolling into her bedroom on bare feet, in a pair of cargo shorts and nothing else.
The defined lines of his face almost always took Dixie’s breath away. Tonight was no exception as the shadows cupped his strong jaw and enhanced his sharp cheekbones.
Her heart thrummed with the inevitable longing it had since the day she’d set her sights on him in high school. Dixie forced herself to look directly into his eyes instead of at the chest she’d once brazenly sat atop as he... Dixie gulped. “How unexpected to find you’re so in the fetish know,” she drawled, digging for the old Dixie, the one who was cocky and capable of keeping her composure catty and aloof all in one sentence.
Caine’s eyebrow rose in that condescending way while his chest glistened in all its lickability in the dim lamplight. Coming to stand at her feet, he reached around her to give Lisa’s broad head a scruff of his knuckles.
As the skin of his arm brushed hers, she sucked in a breath of air at the tightening of her nipples.
“Wanna see who knows the definition of more fetishes?”
“Almost as much as I’d like to see my spleen advertised on eBay.”
Caine’s eyes narrowed, glittering with amusement while his lips formed a sexy, cocky challenge of a smile. “That’s because you know you’ll lose. What’s the matter, Dixie? All bet-out for the day?”
“I’m all Caine’d out for forever. So what do you want, and why are you in my room? I don’t recall hearing a knock.”
Rising to her feet, she brushed a strand of her wet ponytail from her face, stepping around his solid frame.
“Door was open. And pillows,” he said, jamming his hands into the pockets of his shorts as if he wasn’t standing in front of her with no shirt on. “I know Sanjeev always has extra in here. I need another pillow. Please,” he tacked on with syrupy emphasis.
Dixie’s throat grew dry and gritty. “There aren’t a hundred people on staff who could find you pillows?”
“Unlike you, I don’t want to wake the staff for something as ridiculous as a pillow. I know you’re used to having someone at your beck and call, Powder Puff. I, on the other hand, fend quite nicely for myself and wouldn’t dream of waking them.”
“Look at you here in my room, fending,” she mocked. His insinuation that she was selfish enough to wake an entire household over something as trivial as a hangnail infuriated her. In fairness, it wasn’t exactly an untruth from her past, but it was no less infuriating now in the present.
And that was exactly what Caine wanted. Rather than rise further to his bait, Dixie turned on her heel, hoping the sway of her backside made him salivate just like it used to.
She threw the linen closet door open and peered inside, reaching for the chain to unsuccessfully turn the light on. The bulb was out. For all the fancy, highfalutin’ gadgets Landon had in this house, he’d overlooked the simple things when he’d renovated.
The heavy oak door snapped back at her, smashing into her hip with a hard thud, meaning the spring was broken. Dixie spread her legs to hold it open, using her foot to keep it in place while attempting to adjust her vision to see the interior. The space had a small entry, and was just large enough to house some shelving full of soft, fluffy towels and silken bedding.
The door creaked when Caine came up behind her. Pushing her foot aside, he used his large hands at her waist to move her deeper into the closet. “I asked for a pillow. Not directions to the Fountain of Youth. What’s taking so long?” he questioned, craning his neck upward to glimpse the top shelves.
Distracted by the light press of his fingers and the sting of the fleeting memory when Caine’s hand was never far from hers made her forget about the door. “Don’t let the—”
The door slammed shut behind them with a heavy thud, enveloping them in the quiet, Tide-scented darkness. Caine knocked into her, jolting her forward so her nose just missed the edge of a shelf before righting her with his arms.
Which left his rocklike, warm body pressed tight against her back.
Certainly a dilemma of her libido’s highest order.
Six
“Uh, let the door shut?” Caine finished into her ear, leaving Dixie to fight the shiver his warm breath left in its wake.
Dixie attempted to inch forward and out of his nerve-tingling grasp, but there was nowhere to go. “Impatience be thy name,” she said between the clench of her teeth.
“It’s better than shithead, I guess,” he murmured back.
“Didn’t I mention? Impatience i
s your middle name.”
“That’s downright mean, Dixie.”
“It’s downright true, Caine.”
“Viper.”
“Mistress Viper to you, thank you very much.” Dixie twisted uncomfortably, bucking against Caine’s hand in the process. “Now quit name-calling and open the door. You know how claustrophobic I am.” Just the thought of how claustrophobic she was made the claustrophobia in her stabby and irritable.
His sigh was a wash of raspy honey in the dark. “Stop wiggling around, woman, and let me—” one hand moved from her waist followed by the sound of the jiggling door handle “—open the damn thing...”
Chalk it up to a long day, but locked in a closet with Caine was the final straw that broke her raw nerves’ back. Though, the fight to keep from having any square inch of her body touching Caine’s worked to distract her fear of the pitch-black closet swallowing her whole. “What is the problem, Caine?” she snapped.
“I can’t—”
“If you use the words can’t and open in the same sentence referring to that doorknob—”
“You’ll what?” he huffed, his chest pushing against her back.
“I’ll suffocate you with one of these fluffy towels.”
She heard him jiggle the door handle again.
“Ready your weapon. I. Can’t.”
Slapping his hand from her waist, Dixie managed to turn around in the tiny space, her nose brushing the springy hairs on his chest. “Let me try.” She twisted the handle, her heart pounding out her body’s awareness of Caine’s. “It’s locked, damn it.”
“Oh, Sherlock, still such a cracker jack,” Caine cooed in another of his flowing British accents.
“Oh, Holmes, still just a sidekick with a big mouth.”
“Move over, Dixie, and let me give it another try.”
Dixie snorted to the tune of the irritation in his tone. “You do that, Hulk. I’ll wait over here in the two square inches of space, cowering weakly so the big, strong man can save me.”
They attempted to switch positions only to find themselves so closely fused their bodies were forced to make contact—delicious, heated, full-bodied contact.
Her slip of a T-shirt left little between them, the material so worn over time it was like having on nothing at all.
“So now what, Dixie-Cup?” he grumbled huskily, his chin brushing the top of her head.
Dixie had to close her eyes to keep from swaying as the comfort of the familiar assaulted her. She would not allow her head to move just a hair forward and rest on his chest.
She gritted her teeth. “Get us out of here before I claw my way past you to get to that door. And stop calling me Dixie-Cup!” Because pettily lashing out was going to make this situation better.
Caine’s fingertips twitched against hers. Knowing him the way she did, she also knew he was smiling into the dark. “But I’ve always called you Dixie-Cup, Dixie-Cup.”
“No. Landon called me Dixie-Cup. You called me a liar.” Dixie’s chest tightened with the familiar constriction of his taunts.
Caine’s fingers wound into the length of her hair, tugging her head back. “You were a liar,” he replied smoothly, yet the edge to his voice was hard...raw.
Rivulets of sweat began to form between her breasts, and she wasn’t sure if it was panic because the closet was hot and suffocating—or because Caine was. Fear of both made her strike out again. “Move, Caine, or I swear I’ll scream!”
His response was to drag her to him, her spine arching, driving her against him, a moan rising to her lips when an aching rush of wet heat grew in her cleft. Her body’s reply to him, to the gruff tug of her hair, and the once familiar command it wrought, infuriated her.
“Go away, Caine. Better yet, go back to Miami.”
Caine’s silky lips skimmed the darkness. “Like hell, I will. I was here first,” he said, reaching a hand down to grip her hip, drawing her closer to the rigid outline of his cock, sharply defined against his cargo shorts.
She gave him a shove only to have the sound of the thump of his back hitting the door cut into the darkness. “You don’t want Call Girls. You want to best me so you can flip your middle finger up in the air in my direction while you tell everyone over a round on you at Cooters you whooped mean girl Dixie Davis.”
“Actually, I was going to buy everyone dinner while I did that. I’m disappointed to find you think me so damn cheap.”
Don’t take the bait, Dixie. Be the adult. “The point is you want to win.”
His chuckle was thick to her ears, tipping her off to the fact that she wasn’t alone in her arousal. “Oh, you bet I do. And in the process, adding a multimillion-dollar company to my portfolio won’t make me sad.”
“A portfolio. Nice luxury if you can get it,” she managed, stifling a breathy sigh when he let go of her hair and cupped the back of her head.
Caine’s body curved into hers even as his mouth continued its agonizing path upward. “Are things really that bad off, Dixie?”
Were things really that bad off? Was the sinking of the Titanic just a little boating incident? But Dixie stiffened at his question—the question that sounded warm and sympathetic. Oh, no, sir.
She wasn’t falling for that old trick. The “draw someone into your web by being a kind shoulder to cry on, then wait for the moment you could use their misfortune to up your own game” trick. She was once the master. “Things are none of your business.”
“Pride is a sin, Dixie,” Caine murmured into the darkness, his voice growing heavy, his body melting into hers.
Fight the Caine charisma, Dixie. Fight it like you own a Justice League cape. “Falling for the notion that you’re even a little concerned about me is a sin.” Summoning what was left of her shredding will, she returned her focus to her claustrophobia. It was the lesser of the two evils. The mere thought they’d be stuck together like this until Sanjeev came to tell her breakfast was ready fed her fear.
Her heart began a panicked staccato. The heat of their bodies coupled with the stifling lack of air served her focus on her claustrophobia mission well. “We have to get out of here, Caine!” She shoved at the solid wall of his chest again. Yet it only made him tighten his hold.
“Dixie?”
“What?” she yelped, her voice thin.
“I’m going to do something that’s probably going to piss you the hell off, but I want you to remember one thing after we get out of here.”
Her rising panic squeezed her throat, but she managed to sputter, “Like?”
“Like this is for your own damn good.”
* * *
The moment the words escaped Caine’s lips was the moment he forgot he was trying like hell to remember she’d trashed him. He hauled her to him, planting his lips firmly over hers. His tongue sliced through the soft flesh, quieting her anxieties with the movement of his mouth.
When he suckled her tongue, devouring it in slow sips, Caine forgot everything but his unquenchable thirst for Dixie. The way she angled her lips to fit his, stifling a needy groan. The whisper of a whimper that made him rock-hard, even now, ten years later.
She made him feel things he didn’t want to feel. She reminded him, everything after her didn’t measure up.
But that didn’t stop him from tearing at her T-shirt, driving it upward until her breasts sprang free. The moan he emitted from his mouth, primal and raw, was predatory, possessive when he gathered her breasts in his hands, tweaking her nipples to sharp points.
Christ, she felt like everything he’d been lacking in all the failed relationships he’d had since her.
When she wound her arms upward around his neck, clinging to him in the way that had always sparked some primal instinct in him, he thrust a hand inside her wispy panties to touch her, sliding between the lips of her p
ussy.
And all he could think was, here he was, lost again. Lost in the ultrafeminine vortex of Dixie. Powerlessly, helplessly lost.
He wanted to punish her for opening this hellish box of feelings he’d kept shut tight by sheer will and the determination to never get caught up in her and her lies again.
His breathing was ragged when he tore his lips from hers, as though he’d lose something of himself if he didn’t. He couldn’t see it, but he knew her penetrating gaze was eating him alive in the velvety darkness. “Damn you, Dixie,” he hissed after a harsh pant.
Damn her and this new fragility that left him wanting to fix the things that had left her looking so broken. Damn her for reopening the wound of his anger and spilling it all over him. Damn her for making him question himself, question whether this was all another game, whether she was just crying wolf, or she really needed help.
He didn’t want that. He didn’t want to get tangled up in her again.
But fuck. He did want her.
* * *
The zipper of his cargo pants was a vague sound compared to the rush of her pulse, sounding out the rhythm of her throb between her thighs. In a move so swift, even Dixie questioned the dexterity of it, Caine swapped positions with her, leaving her exposed back against the cool oak door.
He yanked her arms upward over her head, fisting her wrists together in his hand. It made her chest crawl with white-hot heat, with a need so deep Dixie knew it would never be like this with anyone else. With his free arm, he lifted her at the waist until her legs circled his body.
And Dixie went willingly, wantonly hooking her ankles behind his back, holding her breath when he let the head of his hard shaft slide between the lips of her wet sex. Her head fell back, exposing her breasts to his mouth, breasts Caine ran his molten tongue over until the head of his thick shaft sat at her entrance.
In that suspended moment, Dixie forgot his harsh words the night they’d parted. She forgot how much she’d hated to still love him even though breaking off their engagement was what any real man worth his salt should have done.
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