Cityscape Affair Series: The Complete Box Set

by Hawkins, Jessica

  David’s eyes dropped to my hand as I tugged down the hem of my dress.

  “And I don’t,” I said.

  “Don’t?” he repeated, riveted as my fingertips grazed against my bare thigh.

  I lowered my voice and rasped, “Flirt with them. Flirt with anyone, actually, the way I flirt with you.”

  He blinked from my hand to my eyes. I had his attention now.

  “Goodnight, David,” I said and turned to leave.

  “Olivia,” he commanded and grasped my wrist. “Stop running away.”

  His touch sent electricity up my arm, threatening to zap any resolve I’d been clinging to not to give in to him. “Don’t,” I said, withdrawing.

  I went directly for the elevator, impatiently punching the button.

  “Where are you going?” David asked my back.

  “Home.”

  “This is your event,” he said.

  “I have to be up early,” I said. It wasn’t a lie. I’d promised George from the local animal shelter I’d spend the day helping him plan their annual masquerade ball. “Just go back to the party, David.”

  The numbers above the elevator car stayed at the lobby.

  David didn’t budge. I knew why. I knew what he wanted in order to leave me alone. What he needed. I had to tell him I didn’t want him, and I had to mean it.

  But it was more than that.

  I had to tell him I didn’t want what he could give me. I had to choose the life I was barreling toward. Lying awake by my husband in the quiet dark, getting myself off in the bathroom, a slower pace, putting a family over my career, a home with a nursery, and a baby to put in it. The decision had been haunting me long before David had come along. Perhaps even before I’d accepted Bill’s proposal. And I was expected to decide now, once and for all, while every fiber of my being longed to run into the arms of the man behind me?

  My chest tightened with panic. With the fucking elevator stalled at the lobby, I turned and bolted for the service stairwell. I burst through the door, slamming it against the wall, and rushed down a flight of steps.

  “Olivia,” David called from above.

  I held my purse to my breast. “I can’t do it, David,” I said over my shoulder. “I can’t. Don’t ask me to.”

  My heart leaped when his hand wrapped around my arm. He was damn near impossible to outrun. Or was I allowing myself to get caught?

  “I’m not letting you run again,” he said firmly. “Tell me why you’re so angry with me. And where’s your coat?”

  I whirled around to face him on the stark, ugly landing, a much more suitable place to have this conversation. The sleek and smooth party happening above us was too perfect, while this cold stairwell resembled the steel cage around my heart, rattling with the emotions beginning to escape. “Why did you come here?” I asked, seething. “We said this was over.”

  “I tried.” He dropped his hand to his side. “Believe me, I did.”

  “Tried what?”

  “To stay away,” he said steadily. “For my own sanity, to protect myself, I fucking tried to stay away, but I can’t.” He glanced down at his feet, and when he looked up again, his eyes blazed. “Come home with me.”

  Breath flushed from my lungs. For him, we were already home. Over his shoulder, a sign with the letters PH in bold red sat above the door. I’d flown down the stairs and landed right at his penthouse. He’d warned me what would happen if I returned to his apartment. I could almost hear my body buzzing, so coiled with desire from our back-and-forth.

  “Why, so I can humiliate myself again?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he asked.

  I watched him closely. “Is this some sort of game for you? You pushed me away in Lucy’s office. Then, you told me you never wanted to see me again. That you were finished with me.” A fluorescent light flickered somewhere above us, as though channeling my anger. “Suddenly you want me?”

  “I have never not wanted you, Olivia. Not for a moment.” He swallowed, his brow furrowing. “I left you in Lucy’s office because there was too much on the line. Because I couldn’t break up a marriage. Because I was afraid of pushing you into something you might regret. But you make it so fucking impossible,” he said, pleading up to the ceiling. His breath turned ragged as he looked back at me with stormy eyes. “I can’t be around you anymore because you drive me crazy every second of the day.” He ran both hands through his hair. “Fuck, if I don’t distance myself from you, I’m going to lose it.”

  I understood. Every word he spoke was true. I wanted to deny it—especially because it made walking away harder. But it didn’t change our situation.

  “And when I stood there in your office and ended our relationship, you just took it. You didn’t even care. Just let me walk out.” He stepped toward me. “Tell me you care, Olivia, and that I’m not completely delusional.”

  How could he think I didn’t care? It oozed from my pores all the time, how much I wanted to touch him, how I thirsted for his attention. “You know I can’t,” I whispered.

  “Then show me,” he said.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked. “You expect me to jeopardize everything—everything—for . . . for what—sex?” My voice bounced off the empty walls. “My marriage, my work, my life. My marriage.” My body swayed. “I can’t do it, David.”

  “How many times do I have to repeat myself? Do you hear anything I say? This isn’t just about sex,” he said slowly, deeply. “And you know it.”

  “Oh, sure.” Sweat formed on my nape despite the cold. My sense of reason began to spin out of control, overtaken by my fear that I wouldn’t be able to walk away. I needed him to be the one to do it. “Isn’t that why you’re standing here now? To see if I’ll fuck you?” I stepped up to him, coming right under his chin, my temper flaring. “You claimed to be a gentleman, but you’re no different from every other player.”

  “Even gentlemen have limits, Olivia,” he said, above me. “Even gentlemen like to fuck.”

  My knees weakened. David had never been shy, but he’d always edged the line of polite—until now. And his crudeness melted my insides along with my resistance. “Well, what’s stopping you?” I put as much venom as I could into the words, and they tasted bitter leaving my mouth. “Why not take me here? Now?”

  “So help me God, Olivia,” he whispered, locking his hands under his armpits. “Don’t test me. I know what you’re doing. I know you’re afraid.”

  “Afraid? I am afraid—of losing everything.”

  “No, of this.” He gestured between us. “I am, too, but I want—”

  “Stop,” I said, covering my ears as I looked at the ground. “We have to stop this.”

  “Olivia, listen to me.” He took an audible breath. “I am afraid. I’ve never touched a married woman. You might not believe what I said before, but pursuing you goes against the man I try to be. But my fear is nothing compared to the agony of keeping this inside. I can’t hide it like you. And if I honestly thought your husband was the right person for you, I’d have walked away long ago.”

  My heartbeat pounded in my stomach, reverberating throughout my body. He paused, waiting until I dropped my hands, raised my head, and consented for him to continue.

  “Come inside and spend the night with me,” he said. “And when the sun rises, stay.” His angular jaw sharpened with resolve. “I want what he has. All of you. All to myself.”

  The confession hit me like a blow, echoing through the stairwell. “How can you say that?” I asked, incredulous but no longer yelling. “You barely know me. You’re with Maria, yet you see other women. You’re Chicago’s bachelor of the goddamn year. Nothing you say means anything. Give up already,” I said, desperation threading my words. “You only want what you can’t have.”

  He took a step forward, our bodies nearly flush. “You think I can’t have you?”

  “Wait,” I said, panicked as his nearness threatened my control.

  “Is that what y
ou think?” He flexed a hand. “I don’t. I want you. And I think you want me, too.”

  He didn’t wait, but neither did I. Our mouths collided for a hard kiss, thick whiskey on his tongue. He took my shoulders, and the warmth of his hands on my skin spread through me. Without removing his lips from mine, he whipped off his jacket and wrapped me in it, pulling me closer, drowning me in a mossy blend of pine and aged leather. In him.

  “Show me you care, Olivia,” he breathed. “I need it. I need you.” He pressed his lips to the spot beneath my ear that made my knees buckle. Feather-light kisses along my jawbone lit chills over my body, and he stopped at my lips. He stilled there as I became painstakingly aware of the empty feeling between my legs I wanted him to fill.

  I looked into his eyes, and for a moment, everything else fell away. He took away the pain, all the things that hurt, that I could never say out loud. Brown eyes pleaded with me to let him take over, to let him ease the hurt.

  He squeezed my arms, reminding me with a flex of strength that if he wanted, he could take me whether I agreed or not. “Show me, Olivia. I need you. Only you.”

  “I . . .”

  Davena had told me to seize the moment in her own way. Desperation for him filled me to the brim. She’d warned me if I tried to stop it, it would leak out, flood me, pull me under. She’d tell me to swim, to submerge myself in the tide of David’s want.

  With my slight nod, David engulfed me in a primal kiss—all mouth, saliva, lips, teeth.

  Our hands, for the first time, explored each other furiously. His traveled behind my neck, over my shoulders, and along my arms. They grazed the crease of my ass as he bunched my leather dress. He pulled me against his erection, but I was already there, tugging his shirt from his pants, reaching underneath, touching his firm stomach—oh, how I’d longed to know what his skin would feel like beneath my fingertips.

  He withdrew suddenly, ripping me from my adulation. “This isn’t right.”

  “What?” I asked with breathless shock. After everything he’d just fought for—

  “Come inside.” He tugged my blazer closed, hiding me in it, and put his lips against the curve of my neck. My face burned from his delicious stubble and only more would soothe the sting. “I want you in my bed the first time.”

  The first time. That implied he’d have me more than once. My eyes nearly crossed with lust, rolling up to the ceiling as if the answer might be written there.

  “Choose me,” he said. “Walk through that door, and I promise I’ll spend every minute, every hour, every day proving you made the right choice.”

  Before I could respond, he picked me up, and my legs locked around him. His hungry kiss stole my senses, my hands taking greedy handfuls of his soft hair. After a beep and a buzz, we moved out of the harsh, fluorescent light into a warm, inviting glow. The stairwell vanished. David carried me away as we consumed each other until I was pressed against a wall. Voracious lips locked on mine as his hand found the hem of my dress. Stiff leather crackled, interrupted only by the treasonous moan that escaped my lips when his rough hand moved against the soft skin of my inner thigh.

  He was going to take me here, wherever here was.

  And I wouldn’t stop him.

  25

  One moment, I was sure David couldn’t wait another moment to have me, and the next, we stood five feet apart in the complete darkness of his penthouse.

  David shut the door behind us and leaned his forehead against it for a weighty moment. He didn’t bother with the lights, just turned to me in the dark as moonlight shone through the living room windows. With his sobering stare, the gravity of the situation set in. After this, there would be no turning back.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said, as if to remind me of it.

  He was a wall of exquisite beauty, rubbing his brow and then pushing a hand through his obsidian hair. He frowned and exhaled. I could just barely make out his expression, full of more than lust and wanting. It held pain, along with adoration, as though I were finally his, something he’d longed for and was now on the cusp of having. Those were the things I thought I saw when I should’ve been talking myself out of this—but with him, it was easy to get lost, it was right, it was as it should be.

  “I . . .” I started, but my voice wavered. “I don’t know how to do this.” I could barely form the sentence, due to an all-consuming desire. “David.” In that one word, I pleaded with him to have the strength I couldn’t and put a stop to this.

  He wet his lips and paced forward until my back hit a wall. He stripped his jacket from me, letting it fall in a heap on the ground, then placed his palms on each side of me, trapping my body with his.

  After the last twenty-four hours, being cornered should’ve frightened me, but with David, I was exactly where I wanted to be.

  Carefully, he reached down, encircled my wrists with each of his hands, then folded them behind my back, stilling my body with his.

  “I’ve fought to get you here,” he said. “But at some point, you have to cross the line to me.”

  “Choose me,” he’d said.

  Letting David bring us to this point was not the same as choosing him. I yearned for the burn of his face on mine. I wanted this, I couldn’t deny it, but I also knew that it was irreversible. “I shouldn’t be here,” I whispered.

  “So leave.”

  Restrained by his grip, I moved against his hard body—but despite his words, he continued to fight against me. For me.

  My chin quivered, and I shook my head, lightly at first and then harder. If he kissed me, I’d give in. But I couldn’t be the one to make the final decision.

  “Olivia,” he pleaded thickly in my ear, the hairs of his cheek tickling me. Nothing rivaled hearing my name on his lips.

  I kept my head turned toward the door, knowing that one look into his eyes would be my undoing. After shifting my wrists into one firm hand at my lower back, he reached up with the other and dug his fingers into my hair. He slid out the bobby pins, each one chiming as it hit the floor. My hair tumbled around my face. He tucked a handful behind my ear, gripped my chin, and turned me to him.

  With the gentleness of a saint, he kissed my wound.

  And with the finesse of a caveman, he shoved his pelvis against me, eliciting my sharp gasp as desire spiraled all the way to my fingertips.

  Leaning in, our mouths all hot air and desire, he was careful not to let our lips touch. I squirmed, but he waited, patiently asking me to make my final decision.

  I twisted my hands to free them, and he let me.

  It was time. Fall into him—or walk away.

  Lifting my hand, I flattened it against his heart with a tenderness that surprised me.

  I closed my eyes, feeling the hard buttons of his dress shirt through his downy sweater, his heartbeat strong under my palm. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, returning my gaze to him.

  Agony crossed his face.

  But the apology wasn’t for him.

  I balled the fabric in my fist, pulled, and suddenly his mouth was on mine, his heat and arms enveloping me, his hands under my thighs, lifting me.

  He kissed me hard as we moved. I furiously undid his tie before being thrown onto a bed. Our mouths crashed as I landed in fluffy down, and my shoe hit the floor with a loud thud. We ground into each other until he sat back to pull off his shirt.

  The apartment’s floor-to-ceiling windows continued into his bedroom, and the city’s warm glow allowed me to take in, for the first time, perfectly formed muscles that pushed and pulled with every movement—a man both lean and muscled, hard but graceful.

  He imprisoned me against the mattress, allowing me the freedom to run my shaking hands along a marble chest coarsened by hair. I leaned up into his earthiness, inhaling a heady pine scent a second before he reattached his mouth to mine. Greedily, I ran my hands over every inch of his warm, naked skin, relishing the firm muscles that detained me.

  He yanked my dress up. With a quick glance down, he groaned
at the white lace panties glowing against my skin. His fingertips hooked under the elastic, and I sucked in a breath as they dragged along the waistband, sending me into soft convulsions.

  He reached beneath the lace to find me slick with longing. I bit my lip when he slid a finger along me. I pulled at his belt buckle, fighting with it until it gave, then threw it. Metal struck the wood floor, ringing through the room.

  “You think since the moment I laid eyes on you,” he said hoarsely between kisses, taunting me with his finger, “that I haven’t wondered,”—he paused, rubbing me harder—“what it would feel like to be inside you?”

  His words cut to my core. Scorching eyes fixed on me as he stood, unbuttoned his pants, and shed his clothing with quick but graceful movements. His erection seemed impossibly big. The thought of taking all of him inside me sent a ripple of heat up my aching body to my face.

  He disappeared into his en suite bathroom and returned barefoot with a condom.

  Disappointment flooded me. David’s skin on mine had revitalized me. I wanted nothing between us. “I’m on birth control.”

  “Trust me, I want to feel you, more than you know . . .” He leaned over the bed and planted a kiss on my pout. “But we have to be extra careful.”

  He was right, but I pushed the reasons why out of my head for fear they’d take over the moment. My hair fanned out beneath me. I writhed, impatient to have him inside me as he rolled on the condom.

  He took my arms and tugged me into a sitting position. Reaching back to unzip the length of my dress, he inhaled a sharp breath. “No bra,” he said, drawing the leather over my head. I pulled my knees to my chest, hugging myself, but he unfolded my arms, drinking in my naked body. “You’re incredible.”

  He climbed over me, guiding my back against the mattress. I lifted my hips as he dragged my panties over my bent knees and down to my ankles, discarding them on the floor.

  His mouth found mine again, his tongue hungry and ravaging, and I pushed back, my teeth nipping at his bottom lip. He covered my quivering body as he slid his arms underneath me, pinning me to him. His hips moved, and his kiss matched their pace. I became even wetter under his control—he was so maddeningly rigid against the inside of my thigh, rubbing his length up me, sliding along my opening before hitting my clit.