He thrust forward, taking his time with each inch, nearly losing it right then. “Or else what?” he managed despite the slight tremor in his voice.
“Why don’t you sit down and find out?”
* * *
Landon stood over her, the look on his face a mix of determination and lust.
All she wanted was for her legs to cooperate so she could make good on her promise. Since he had laid her onto his desk, she’d been coming apart at the seams, her mind dancing, her thoughts muddled. But she didn’t want to be sated and as boneless as a jellyfish while he continued to exert himself. Well… she did want that, but more than that, she wanted the position of power.
And right now, she had his full attention. So she was going to take advantage of it.
“On. The. Chair.” It was more a sigh than a command, but he obeyed, sliding from her body on an expelled breath and making her almost regret her request. He shot her a heated look that said this better be worth it before pulling the cushy, dark red chair over and sitting down.
This would be worth it; he had nothing to worry about.
Willing her muscles to work, she sat up. The hard surface of the desk wasn’t all that comfortable. Her spine protested, her butt bone, too, as she pushed to standing. Landon’s hands gripped the arms of his executive chair and a mini boss/secretary fantasy she didn’t even know she had popped into her brain. She eyed the wide seat before arranging her knees over his thighs, lining up and, without a word of warning, sliding home.
His head dropped back as his hands clutched her bottom, his fingers grazing the inside of each cheek. She rocked against him, delighting when he closed his eyes and gave himself over to her. Low sounds of pleasure eked from his throat as he lost himself in the rhythm she set.
Using the high back of the chair as an anchor, she picked up the pace. His hands tightened around her ass, and she rode him until his entire body went rigid, his muscles turned to steel, and a drop of sweat formed on his brow. He was trying to hold out, but she wasn’t about to let him. One last pump and he came on a shout, her name bursting from his lips, his teeth grinding, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.
Her orgasm followed; her high cries of ecstasy mingling with his in the warm air of his office. She’d been trying to make this about him, but her body greedily took its own release. Unable to support her own weight, she dropped her arms from the back of the chair and fell against him.
He turned his head, his heavy exhalations fanning her hair. With a soft kiss against her temple, he breathed her name again.
* * *
The sexiest woman he’d ever seen draped over him like a wet towel. Only Kimber didn’t feel like a wet towel. She felt like a warm, sated woman. Her limbs and soft scent wrapped around him, rendering him useless.
When he’d followed her in here, the goal had been to make her come twice… maybe three times, but she hadn’t allowed him to get that far before she’d demanded he sit down and she gave him the ride of his life.
He had no regrets.
Tonight had been a fantasy come to life.
Number eight. Check.
What were there? Two left? Maybe once they reached the end of the list, they could start over at one again. Against the door…
He smiled. He could go for another round against the door.
Her teeth closed over the tendon running from his shoulder to jaw, and she bit him lightly. “You’re tense here,” she said against his heated flesh. She pursed her lips and kissed him gently, soothing the phantom sting of the bite.
“I don’t know how.” He was still inside her, his arms lying limply at his sides. He wanted to wrap them around her, lift her off his lap, and carry her to the nearest shower. Or to bed. But he couldn’t find the energy.
“Me, either,” she mumbled. “This is the least stressful week of my life.”
Her delivery was so dry, he laughed, the sound tumbling through his chest, loosening him more. Being with her was so easy. He didn’t remember ever having been with a woman and it being easy at the same time. Lissa hadn’t been cuddly, and he hadn’t, either… until now, apparently. All he wanted to do was sit here and continue breathing in the faint sweetness of Kimber’s hair. And he was in absolutely no hurry to remove her from his lap.
She had more willpower than he had, pushing off him. He groaned when the cold air hit his skin, his eyes still closed, his brain on vacation.
“Oh,” he heard her say.
“Oh?” he repeated. A tap on his shoulder forced him to open his eyes. She stood at the front of his chair, gestured to his lap, and bit her lip.
He dipped his chin and looked down at the condom. Oh? More like Oh shit.
The latex had broken. Wide open. And he’d stayed inside her long enough to…
Shit. Long enough.
“I’m… um…” She shook her head instead of finishing her thought, then pointed to the door and shuffled out of his office. He heard her footsteps retreat down the hall, toward one of their bedrooms, he guessed.
He surveyed the mess on his lap again. No good.
Potentially very bad, if he were being honest.
After a brief stop in the bathroom bisecting the hallway to clean himself up, he checked his room. Empty. He walked the corridor to the opposite end and entered Kimber’s old room. She was in there; he could hear the shower running in the attached bath.
He let himself into the steam-filled room and refused to panic. Or maybe he refused to accept the possibility that they’d just made a baby on his leather office chair. Wasn’t like there was a whole hell of a lot they could do about it now, anyway. The shower in here was smaller than the one in his room, the air infused with cucumber body wash his housekeeper must not have thrown out. It smelled like Kimber in here. Cool, refreshing, sexy Kimber.
“It’s me,” he announced like a moron. Who else would it be? He parted the dark blue curtain and found a soapy and very distraught redhead inside. “Wash your back?”
She smoothed her wet hair and nodded, rivulets of water running down her face. He stepped beneath the hot, hot spray to stand next to her. “I hope you’re not trying to scald me off of you.” He thought he was kidding, but the words were a lance to his chest.
She shook her head. “I’m not.” She braced her arms over her breasts, looking… well, terrified.
He planted his hands on her arms and rubbed, bending to meet her eyes. Green eyes filled with doubt. With fear.
“What are the odds?” he asked her, a smile plastered to his face. Because the truth was, the odds were pretty slim with him and Rachel but she’d wound up pregnant, too. He swallowed a wave of nausea.
This is not that. It wasn’t the same at all.
“Slim,” she admitted, closing her eyes.
“Take a deep breath for me.”
She lowered her arms and sucked in a lungful of air. He shouldn’t, but couldn’t keep from admiring her pert pink nipples and the water streaming off of them. It took everything in him not to put his tongue on one for a taste.
A bottle of body wash stood on a shelf over her head. He poured some on his hands and rubbed them together. “One more breath.” She inhaled again, and he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around, rubbing the stress from her back and from her arms, kneading the tension from the muscles in her lower back. Her shoulders fell and she relaxed into his slow, gentle massage, his touch meant to soothe and pull her out of her panic.
Caught up in his task, he didn’t register at first that she’d spun around until he was palming her breasts. His hands stilled. She tilted her chin, asking for a kiss. So he kissed her, stroking her tongue with his as they stood under the pounding water. Then he slid his hands from her breasts to her bottom and massaged there, too.
When the kiss ended, she sent him a smile. “I don’t think even that accident made me want to stop having sex with you.”
“That’s a relief.” He wasn’t done having sex with her, either.
“Is it?” The wo
rry returned, a line forming between her frowning brows. Rather than answer, he made quick work of rinsing her off. They toweled dry and he steered her from bathroom to bedroom.
The sheets were fresh and cool against his overheated body as he slid in next to her. She scooted closer, draping a leg over his. “What’s number nine?”
He’d created a monster. Which made him kind of proud. But more sex wasn’t what she needed right now, and they both knew it. He pushed a wet strand of hair off her forehead. “Nine is talking in bed after a hot shower.”
Her gaze clouded. “I don’t want to talk.”
“Sure you do.” He trailed his fingers down her face and thumbed her bottom lip. “You’re a woman and women love to talk. Let’s have it. What’s on your mind?”
The clouds cleared from her vision. She watched him with her crystal-clear gaze. “What if we just made a baby?”
A jolt of anxiety lit his bloodstream. He caged it. If he let the beast free, he’d stumble down the pained and brambly trail of what-ifs and yeah-buts. That was the last thing either of them needed.
“We’ll deal with that if it happens.” The intentional calm in his voice even reassured him. He forced the next question out of his lips, unsure how he’d managed to ask it without bursting into hives. “Have you ever been pregnant before?”
She shook her head, her hair brushing against the pillowcase. He lifted his eyebrows. “There you go.”
Sure. Like that is the end of this discussion.
She didn’t buy it, either. As evidenced when she asked the question he should’ve seen coming. The last question he wanted to answer. “Have you ever gotten anyone pregnant?”
The query busted him open like a piñata. And he wasn’t sure if he should spill the truth to her or keep his secrets to himself.
* * *
The answer was yes.
She could see it on his face, the way his mouth tightened at the corners, the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed, the subtle tensing of his shoulder muscles.
Then his expression eased into a controlled mask, and he forced a calmer-than-you smile onto his face. “You have nothing to worry about, Kimber. Either way.” He leaned in and kissed her and she let him. But it bothered her that he hadn’t told her the truth she so clearly read in his eyes. Against the white pillowcase, his eyes appeared their natural green-mixed-with-gold hazel. They had no color to blend with or fade into. He was naked before her. In every sense of the word. It occurred to her that his eyes were a representation of who he truly was. Hiding, blending in to his environment, and rarely showing his true self.
Only, she thought he’d shown her his true self. Had she been wrong? The urge to point that out, to call him on his lie, was strong. She resisted. She didn’t want to lay skin to skin on potentially their last evening together, and lob accusations in his direction. She didn’t want to fight with him.
It didn’t stop her imagination from concocting scenarios of what the truth might be. Was it Lissa who’d been pregnant? Did she miscarry? Terminate? Was a secret baby the real reason behind their relationship’s demise? Kimber shut her eyes.
Don’t jump to conclusions. Don’t make yourself crazy.
Landon’s low voice cut into her thoughts. “My girlfriend from college.”
Her eyes flew open. His lips were pressed together as if conflicted about how much more to say. Or like he’d regretted saying anything at all.
She should tell him he didn’t have to talk about it… but curiosity forced a question from her lips. The two words were a whisper of sound in the dark, quiet room. “What happened?”
“She… she… didn’t have it,” he said with a frown.
Kimber stroked her fingers up his arm, up the length of sinew and long, lean muscle to his solid biceps. “She lost it?”
Silence permeated the room, and his eyes lingered, unfocused on something over her shoulder. “She had an abortion.”
Those four words begged more questions. Was it at his request? Did they go to the clinic together? Had he persuaded her to get it, or had she made that decision on her own? Guilt radiated off him, so much of it, her stomach tossed. She glided a palm onto his chest and rested it over his heart. Beneath the impressive muscles, golden skin, and fair hair, beat his heart.
His broken heart. Broken for a baby that never saw this world. Her heart pinged in sympathy, even as she warned herself not to feel his pain like her own. “I’m sorry,” she said.
He clutched her hand and squeezed, his eyes boring into hers. Eyes filled not with tears, but regret. She didn’t push, couldn’t bear to make him hurt any more than he hurt now.
The initial panic over the broken condom had passed. She was relaxed and warm, had Landon’s full attention, and an entire house to themselves without interruption. They also had time. As much time as they needed.
The chances of her getting pregnant were slim. She’d never had a condom blowout before, and reason suggested using one form of birth control was more risky than two. But she’d never gotten pregnant before, and the incident that happened to Landon had happened years ago.
Sixteen years ago, to be exact. She remembered when he’d returned home that summer, sadness hanging over him like a dark cloud. The sound of defeat in his voice when he’d told his mother he and his girlfriend had split.
She’d lost the baby by then.
And Landon had been mourning. Over more than just a girlfriend.
She palmed his face, and his brows lowered, maybe in confusion. There was no way he could know the direction her thoughts had taken. That she ached for him. Ached for the loss he’d suffered back then. Ached for the loss he still suffered.
“I love you,” she whispered.
His eyes widened, his cheeks darkened, and his mouth pressed into a hard, unforgiving line.
She hadn’t meant to say it. She’d meant to say something about that summer, or let him know she’d witnessed his sadness back then. But her stupid heart, that always fell too hard, too fast, had wired a message to her mouth. The very last thing she should have said aloud. Or to herself. At all, really.
So dumb.
He recovered quickly and tweaked her chin, bringing a halt to her panicky thoughts. “Safe space, remember? That was part of our agreement.”
She shook her head against the pillow, tears welling in her eyes. Tears of anger, tears of fear that what she said might really be true. What if she did love him? She felt like she meant what she’d said, but didn’t she always?
“I’m sure when you suggested a safe space you didn’t mean for me to say…” she trailed off, her voice wobbly. “I’m—this is something I do. I feel too much.” A tear escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek. She wasn’t sure if she felt embarrassed… or… or doomed. But something. Something not good.
A soft kiss landed on her lips, and he scooted close enough to touch her nose with his. “You’re walking away, remember? This is your fling. This is yours to savor.”
She blinked several times, weighing his words. What could have been an awkward ending to an already awkward evening felt almost… normal. He was giving her an out. An out she’d be stupid not to take. “It’s… I’m not sure why I said that.”
“So say something else,” he said simply. “Then we’ll move on to the last item on the list.”
The last item on the list. And then she could walk away and leave her awkward pronouncement behind. A shimmer of pain spread across her chest. Was he really so unaffected by her words? It doesn’t matter. She decided not to think about it any longer, to take the reprieve he’d offered.
Earlier she’d wondered if Landon, man of many talents with his lips and tongue and body, had started going warm and gooey on her. He’d soaped her up and hadn’t taken advantage of her even when she’d put her breasts in his hands. And she’d been desperate to get them focused on the physical, out of the emotional cage she’d been trapped in since she’d stepped into the shower to wash the remnants of him from her inner thighs.
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Flings were supposed to be fun. Flings were supposed to be string-less. Pregnancy sounded downright stringy.
He stroked her thigh now, but not in a sexual way, just with the tips of his fingers. Just to let her know he was here while she worked through her meandering thoughts. His touch felt so good, she wanted to curl into him and purr. Except that he wanted her to talk. And she wanted to talk about something other than pregnant girlfriends and her haphazard emotions. There was one foolproof way to douse that fire.
“Tell me about yours and Lissa’s relationship,” she blurted.
His fingers stilled halfway up her leg before starting back down again. “You want to talk about Lissa?”
She didn’t answer.
Taking a breath, he spoke. “Lissa and I didn’t have a romantic relationship.”
He’d told her about their “arrangement,” but their relationship hadn’t been a romantic one at all? The thought hit her like a dead fish to the face. A slimy slap that made her want to scrub her skin with both hands. At least when she’d been with Mick she’d convinced herself she loved him at the time.
Is that what you’re doing with Landon?
She refused to answer that question.
Trailing his fingers back down her leg, he let a few seconds pass, even though she was sure he saw her unfavorable reaction to his admission. “I met Lissa at a party for RedAd,” he continued. “I was employed there right out of college. Stayed ten years. They still want my head for branching out on my own.” He smirked, proud of that achievement, she could see. “Anyway, the cocktail party celebrated some account we’d landed and they’d hired pretty girls to hand out drinks at the event. She was one of them.”
“I’d ask what drew you to her, but I think that’s fairly evident,” she said, picturing Lissa’s long, honey-colored hair, slender, tanned body, perfectly proportioned breasts, and an ass that defied gravity.
“She’s very beautiful.”
Why it hurt to hear him confirm the obvious, she had no idea.
“In a commercial way,” he added.
He was downplaying her. For Kimber’s sake. That was nice of him, but she didn’t need coddling. “Is this the part where you tell me I’m beautiful, too, so I don’t get jealous? Because I don’t need you to.”
The Millionaire Affair (Love in the Balance) Page 16