And she hadn’t even given him a chance. But then, maybe she wasn’t looking for more. I found what I was looking for. One hot night in a tropical paradise.
Well, dammit, he might have come here looking for a hot fling, too, but he’d found more. So much more. She said she’d never forget him. He didn’t want her to have to try. Nor did he want her to be merely a memory, even if it was the best damn memory of his life. She said she’d found what she’d come for. Well, ultimately he’d come here looking to find himself. And in making love to her, being made love to by her, maybe he’d discovered just who he was.
Not a man who selfishly put his own needs first. Allie had been right about that much. He wasn’t now and never would be a bad boy. But he had realized something else. He might not be a bad boy, but he was no longer the man who simply did what was expected of him and hoped that would be enough. Because it wasn’t enough. And it never would be. If he was going to be happy, fulfilled, then he was going to have to be a man who knew what he wanted…and went after it. And he knew exactly what he wanted.
Allie.
Chapter Ten
Allie looked down at the doodles she was making in the margin of her merger notes. She couldn’t seem to pay attention to what the CEO was saying. Which was not a good thing as this was the final meeting before she and said CEO signed an agreement to join their respective companies.
She’d already played her mental dominatrix game, something she’d taken to doing over the past several weeks since her return from Intimacies. Her own little form of entertainment during otherwise mind-numbing board meetings. Meetings she was usually chairing. But role-playing scenarios weren’t holding her attention either. All it had earned her this morning was a suggestive look from one of Maxwell’s board members. A rather dashing and handsome member, too. One who had already made it clear during lunch that he’d be interested in comparing…notes, later.
But she couldn’t work up any interest there, she thought as she doodled the shape of a man’s hand, a hand with thick long fingers. She shifted in her seat a little, trying hard not to picture Cam’s hands, and what they could be doing to her right now.
Cam. Now there was definite interest there. In fact, too much of it. She thought about him far too often, dreamed about him even more.
It was a weekend fling, she reminded herself for the millionth time. You got way more than you bargained for. And her little adventure had brought about the desired results if Mr. Handsome and Dashing’s reaction was any indication. She’d gone shopping immediately upon returning and chosen business wear that was more flattering to her figure. She’d even taken the time to learn how to apply more than just mascara and lip gloss. But more important than the surface changes was the way she felt in her own skin. Comfortable. Sexy, even. Definitely female.
And she had Cameron to thank for all of it.
Cam. She wondered for the gazillionth time what he was doing, wondered again if she’d done the wrong thing by ending it so abruptly. But it had seemed the right thing to do that morning when she’d awoken to find him sleeping so beautifully next to her. He’d looked even better, slumbering amidst all that white lace and linen, than she’d imagined.
Her heart had tripped, dangerously. And she’d known even another day with him, much less another night, and her heart would go beyond tripping into a giant, headlong, free fall. And neither of them had gone there looking for that.
Love. She swallowed a sigh. She could have loved him. You don’t even know him. You ran away before you could. Guilty as charged. But she’d asked herself if it was better to wonder “what if” than to risk living through his Mr. Nice Guy rejection when he realized she wanted more than a weekend fling. Better to leave when it was still the perfect memory.
“Ms. Walker? Does that meet with your approval?”
Allie jerked her attention back to the long conference table and the ten men and two women seated around it. She was at the opposite end from Ted Maxwell, CEO of Soft-More, Incorporated. His business created software programs for high school and college courses. Her company was going to provide the technology to integrate his software into a nationally available online curriculum that would benefit schools and universities all over the world.
She was very excited about the merger and all the possibilities it entailed, the first of which was going to be a relocation of the bulk of her company to the East Coast, to be closer to SoftMore’s parent company’s headquarters.
Given all that, the very last thing she should be thinking about at the moment was how much she missed Cam.
“I—” She was saved from having to bluff her way through an answer when there was a tap on the door.
“Enter,” Maxwell stated, and a slim brunette slipped in the door and quietly passed him a folded piece of paper. Maxwell read it, then nodded to her. He turned back to the table and said, “I’m very sorry, but I have to step out for a brief moment.”
Allie nodded, then sighed in quiet relief at the reprieve she’d been given. Get a grip, she scolded herself, all the while smiling confidently at Maxwell’s board of directors. This is your whole life here. Pay attention.
The seconds ticked away and she returned her attention to her notes. But they were a blur. She was wondering if Cam had been upset to wake up alone. Or relieved. She remembered how it had felt, having him pull her protectively into her arms as they both fell asleep. Not the actions of a man wanting to make a quick getaway. But he’d been exhausted, satiated. Come morning, in the light of day, he might wonder what in the hell had gotten into him.
Nonsense, she told herself. She knew there had been something between them. Knew it. She should have stayed. Should have found out more about him. His last name would have come in handy. But it was too late now.
Her whole life was about to change in a major way. And yet, despite her excitement at the challenges that lay before her, she knew the real change had happened on a bed of Victorian lace in the Caribbean.
Maxwell’s secretary poked her head into the room again and cleared her throat. “Ms. Walker? Could you step out here for a moment?”
Surprised at the request, Allie smiled and nodded, calmly excusing herself and following the secretary into the hallway while wondering wildly what this was all about. Had she been so out of it that Maxwell had noticed? She didn’t think so. Besides, today’s meeting was really more formality than anything, a chance to introduce her to his board of directors. He’d met hers the week before. But it was important that she make as good an impression as possible to ensure that the transition went as smoothly as possible.
“Right through here,” the secretary said, motioning her to Maxwell’s personal office.
“Thank you,” Allie responded, wondering what Ted wanted that couldn’t be said in front of the whole room. Bracing herself, she pasted on a smile and entered the room—and froze. She blinked, certain she was hallucinating. But he was still there, standing across the room, smiling at her.
She opened her mouth, but the words refused to form.
Maxwell cleared his throat, dragging her attention unwillingly to him. “I, uh, this is highly unusual,” he stammered.
Allie was peripherally aware that Maxwell was uncomfortable, not angry.
“As you know,” he went on after clearing his throat, “Soft-More is a subsidiary of James and Son, Indust—”
“Just James, now,” the man by the window said. “James Industries.”
“Right, right, sorry, sir.” Maxwell darted a gaze between the two of them, apparently as aware as Allie of the tension arcing around the room. He cleared his throat again but Allie couldn’t stop staring…and not at him. “James Industries is headquartered here in Atlanta as well, and Mr. James here—”
“Ted,” he said quietly, “if you could just give us a few minutes?”
“Certainly,” Maxwell said, looking enormously relieved as he hurried to let himself out of his own office.
And then they were alone. Allie…and the man s
he’d never thought to see again.
“Say something,” he said softly, looking so directly at her she felt her entire body flame in response.
But they weren’t at some private sex club now. They were here, smack in the middle of the real world. Her entire world. Allie’s thoughts careened wildly. Well, now she knew his last name. James. As in Cameron James IV. Owner of a good percentage of all the technology industry on the East Coast. Had he somehow discovered she was the Allison Walker behind Walker Technologies and was going to call off the deal because of what had happened between them? “What—what are you doing here?” she finally stammered.
“I hardly recognize you,” he said in response.
She fingered the hem of her fitted suit jacket, then smoothed her dark hair back from her face. “I…wasn’t really a blonde.”
He held her gaze. “I know.”
She flushed, unable to stop the heat from climbing…everywhere. “Yes, yes. Of course you do.” She cleared her throat, remembering exactly how he’d know that. “I…dyed it back, when I got home.” She tried to laugh lightly and failed miserably. “Blondes do have more fun, but being a brunette is more my speed.”
“It suits you. Your skin glows.”
She shifted her weight, wanting badly to squeeze her thighs together to assuage the fierce ache that had already sprung to life there. “Thank you.”
“I’m making you nervous.”
“I’d be a lot less nervous if I knew why you were here.”
“Did you not want me to find you, Allie?”
“I—I didn’t know you would come looking.”
“Didn’t you?” he asked, and for the first time she noticed the tension beneath the calm. He leaned, seemingly relaxed, against the windowsill, but his knuckles were white. “After what we shared, did you honestly think I’d let you go?”
She stilled. “What do you mean?” She should be angry at his presumption, as if he owned her or something. But explain that to her libido, which was raging…or her panties, which were soaked through.
He finally pushed away from the window and walked toward her. It took everything she had to remain where she stood. Mostly she managed it because she wasn’t sure that if she did move, whether it would be to run from the room…or into his arms. “What do you want?” she asked again, only this time there was a tone of command in her voice. And maybe a touch of panic.
If he touched her, she was fairly certain she’d let him do anything he damned well pleased…right here in Maxwell’s office. Hell, right on the boardroom table. With the entire board of directors watching.
That was the effect he had on her. And in that moment, she knew he always would. No matter where they were.
He stopped just in front of her and lifted his hand.
“Don’t,” she whispered, and he stopped. If she wasn’t such a knot of need and confusion, she’d have smiled. Still Mr. Nice Guy, no matter what. “Tell me what you want. What you came here for.”
“I came here for you.”
She looked into his eyes then. “This isn’t about the business?”
“That’s the other thing I wanted to know. When I pursue you, personally, is it going to bother you that, technically, I’ll own a piece of your business?”
“Pursue?”
“I hated waking up alone, Allie.”
She looked into his eyes and saw that he spoke the truth. “I’ve missed you,” she said, finally, softly.
“Then why did you go?”
“I—” She stopped, shrugged, looked away. “It was the most perfect night of my life. And I guess I knew that it was about more than the sex.” She looked back at him. “I was already starting to…feel things. For you. I didn’t want to put you in an awkward position. I know that’s not what you came there looking for.”
“Maybe I didn’t know what I was looking for. Until I found her.”
“But—” Now that she knew who he was, it was impossible not to put the pieces together. Within the industry it was no secret what he’d been through in the past couple of years, from the salacious details of his mother’s bouts in rehab to the media highlights of his father’s trial. With some juicy tidbits of his divorce tossed in just for fun.
He must have read it in her eyes. “Don’t let what’s happened to me, what you think you know about me, change what you already know to be true.”
“But I don’t know you.”
“Oh yes, you do. You know the real me, Allie. The me I want to be. With you.”
She wanted to deny that, but she’d had the same exact thought about him, that he was the one person in the world who really knew her. “How did you find me?”
“It wasn’t easy. Part of it was serendipity, with our companies joining. I suppose if you believe in such things, that would be some sort of karmic sign or something, that we belonged together all along.”
She smiled a little. “What are the odds, right?”
His lips quirked a little, but the tension lines still bracketed his mouth. “Exactly. What are the odds, Allie?”
She knew what he was asking. “I don’t know.” Trembling now, she lifted her hands and tentatively laid them on his chest. “But I’m willing to play them and find out.”
His self-control snapped the instant she touched him. He pulled her almost roughly into his arms and his mouth was on her a second later.
Allie all but blossomed beneath the heat of his kiss, like a flower that had lain dormant in the dark, until the sun rose again.
She grabbed at him, unable to get him close enough to her. There were suddenly far too many layers of clothing between them and she’d have given anything to be alone with him. Truly alone.
“Tell me again, Allie,” he murmured against the now damp skin of her neck.
How she was ever going to go back into that boardroom she didn’t know…and didn’t much care. “I missed you, Cam, missed seeing you, hearing your voice.” She looked up at him and stroked her fingers over his face. “Missed tasting you.”
His pupils all but exploded with desire. He pulled one of her fingers into his mouth, making her gasp, then swallow hard against the need to moan.
“I like knowing I can make you wet, just by looking at you.” He tugged her hips snug up against his own and almost growled when the rigid length of him pressed between the juncture of her thighs. “Do you like what you do to me, just by looking at me with those incredibly beautiful blue eyes of yours?”
She did moan then, and moved against him. “Yes,” she managed, “yes, I do.”
“I could take you, right here. On Maxwell’s desk.”
“Yes,” she said, a pleading note in her voice that secretly thrilled her. “Yes, you could.”
“Should I lock the door? Or does the chance of discovery thrill you?”
She laughed then, but it ended on a gasp as he pushed her back against the back of the tall, padded leather chair that fronted Ted’s desk. “I think you know how I feel about that,” she said. “I only like an audience of one.” She grabbed his tie and slid the knot open, then tugged it off altogether. “You.”
He grinned then and she finally relaxed and let herself believe this was all really happening. She was going to have this man. And, blessed merciful God, he was going to have her. As long, and as often as possible if she had any say in it. And, she decided, a bit wickedly, she most certainly would.
She let his tie dangle from her fingertips and ran her other hand along the side of the chair behind her. “You know, I never did get back to Bungalow Three.”
“Bungalow Three?”
“The leather lounge.”
His eyes darkened and she felt electric with the need that pulsed in her. He went to Ted’s desk and pressed a button on his phone. “Sandy, please tell Ted we’ll need his office awhile longer. The merger plans are fine. We’re just working out the…details. He can dismiss the board.” He looked over at Allie and she nodded. “Ms. Walker will sign the final papers tomorrow morning.”
/> He let go of the button, then crossed the room and flipped the lock. “Just so you’ll feel more secure.”
“Once a Mr. Nice Guy, always a Mr. Nice Guy,” she said with a smile.
He crossed the room directly to her and whipped his tie from her fingers. “You know, speaking of things we never got to do,” he said, fingering the long length of silk and looking at her wrists.
She shuddered…but didn’t resist when he took them in his hands and turned her around, pulling her wrists behind her back.
“You know that saying, don’t you, Allie?”
“Saying?” she managed, a bit breathless already, need pulsing in her, the ache between her legs already beyond her ability to assuage by clenching her thighs together.
He tugged the silk into a knot around her wrists, then turned her back around…and pushed her legs just a few inches apart, making her whimper at the loss of the one thing she could do to give herself even a measure of relief. He held her gaze as he slowly began unbuttoning her suit jacket. “I missed the taste of your nipples.”
She shivered. “That’s a saying?” She gasped as he opened her blouse, then undid the front clasp of her bra, baring herself to him…and leaving her vulnerable to whatever he wanted to do to her. Thank God.
He leaned down and flicked first one nipple with his tongue, then rolled it between his fingers while he pulled the other one into his mouth. She moaned and her knees threatened to buckle.
He turned her around then, and bent her over the chair, pushing her skirt up her hips. She was immensely gratified when she heard him gasp. “Garters,” he said on a strangled moan. “Dear God.”
“My taste in lingerie has improved,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “yes, it has.”
He traced his fingertips along the edge of tender skin at the tops of her silk hose. Making her thighs twitch. He moved in behind her as his fingers slid from the silk hose, to the silk panties just above them. He fingered the slender band of elastic, until she was barely able to remain upright, thankful to be trapped between the heavy chair…and his hard body. Oh, so deliciously hard.
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