by Alison Kent
When the elevator door closed, he would’ve kicked the damn thing, but he didn’t want Lauren to hear the sound of his frustration echo up the shaft. Instead, he turned slowly and headed to the parking garage, his steps heavy.
For the first time in memory, the sight of his gleaming black Jaguar failed to give him a rush. He unlocked the driver’s side and slid behind the wheel, wondering if it was too late to pay a return visit to Annabel Lee.
Her reception would be warm. She would probably banish this cold emptiness inside his chest.
But she wouldn’t be Lauren.
Acknowledging defeat, Anton fired up the engine and screamed out of the garage. Hell, who needed a woman? His buddy Jack Daniels could warm him up just fine, with far fewer complications.
CHLOE DIDN’T THINK she’d ever been so glad to get home. Halfway across the living room, she tossed her purse to the sofa and kicked off her shoes. The strappy pink heels went flying, leaving her three inches shorter and closer to being able to relax.
She needed to shower, to wash her face again, to wash away her encounter with Eric and the rest of the disastrous night. No matter what Melanie claimed, Chloe wasn’t sure she’d convinced anyone she wasn’t feeling well even if, by the time she’d actually made her way back to the near-empty ballroom, she’d been feeling like ten-day-old garbage.
Melanie had done her best to cover, but Chloe knew she was going to have to clear the air with Sydney herself. It was hardly fair to use Melanie even if the sick-as-a-dog story had been her idea. Chloe was a big girl and needed to swallow whatever bad-tasting medicine Sydney spooned up.
She padded across the thick, cream-colored carpet of her dark taupe-and-mauve living room through the dining area and into her apartment’s nice big kitchen, complete with breakfast nook and walk-in pantry. The complex where she lived was downtown and upscale, and being on ground level meant she was one of the lucky few with a patio courtyard.
After staring blankly into her refrigerator and deciding what she really wanted was a glass of wine—which she didn’t have, so she’d have to settle for a beer—she reached for a cold Corona longneck and a lime.
With stocking-covered feet slipping on the tiled floor, she carried both to the butcher block island in the center of the kitchen and pulled open the drawer where she stored her bottle opener and paring knives. She pried off the bottle cap, sliced the lime, squeezed the juice from a single wedge into the golden brew and lifted the bottle to her mouth.
As her chin came up, her head tilted back and the bitterly cold liquid flowed into her mouth, her gaze naturally rose until she found herself looking down the line of the bottle and out the patio door.
Eric sat on the black, wrought-iron bench that was the focal piece of her courtyard garden. He leaned forward, his knees spread wide. His elbows were planted on his thighs, his fingers playing with a long blade of monkey grass.
He drew the shoot between thumb and index finger, from end to end, holding the base in one hand until, with the other, he reached the narrow tip. He repeated the process. Stroking long and slow. Base to tip. One end to the other. His eyes remained fixed on Chloe’s even when he moved the frond to his mouth, pulling it between lightly pressed lips, then blowing.
The grass fluttered to the ground.
Chloe lowered the bottle slowly, the cold glass beginning to sweat in her hand, the smell of lime a tangy contrast to the smell of the barley and hops. Against the cool floor, the soles of her feet grew damp, as did the pits of her knees, the creases of her thighs at her groin.
What had initially begun as fear, a sharp metallic fright stinging her skin and hampering her ability to breathe, was turning into a wave of sweet expectation, wonder, anticipation and want.
How could she want him again so soon, already, when she’d had him only hours ago? When she’d since sworn to redirect her priorities and make reparations and amends and take control of the direction of her life?
And now here was Eric, his blue eyes unrelenting as he held her gaze, his expression as tender as it was intense. And everything inside her, every part of who she was, knew she would not recover from him easily.
She saw in him so much of what she wanted—was there anything about him she didn’t want?—and yet she’d never truly thought to find her fantasy man, or considered what the fulfillment of her fantasy would mean.
She’d never recognized the threat to her control, the desire to give herself up completely to this man who refused to look away, whose vibrancy and sharply tuned focus warmed the air shimmering around her as surely as it heated her skin from the inside out.
He got to his feet then and Chloe swallowed hard at the picture he made, the uncertainty of a little boy lost, of a delinquent caught breaking and entering, and the determination of a man who’d come to claim what was his.
Chloe felt her restraint crack and chip away. How was she supposed to fight a battle she’d already lost? She set down her Corona, then placed both palms flat on the butcher-block surface, her fingers curling over the edge and seeking purchase. But the solid block of wood offered her nothing in the way of a solid foundation.
She was on her own.
The suit Eric still wore was a deep-charcoal-gray pinstripe cut in classic lines. He’d since rid himself of his tie, and his white shirt gaped open. Chloe swore that even from here she could see the pulse beating in the hollow of his throat.
The patio was lit by sconces on either side of the door and the replica of a gas streetlamp that stood at one corner of the bench. There was enough light to see the moisture in the air. Eric had to be cool. A fine sheen of mist covered his hair and his shoulders.
Chloe wanted to beckon him inside, but she wanted even more to wait for him to make the first move, like William Hurt in Body Heat. The tension between them crackled, the electricity in the air that of a summer storm, sharp and biting and hot.
She breathed as deeply as the anxiety-driven compression of her chest would allow. Oh, how she could taste the heat of her own rushing blood.
And then Eric moved a step forward, and a second, the third bringing him within arm’s length of the sliding glass doors. Chloe prayed she hadn’t locked the latch when she’d filled the bird feeder this afternoon. Or that Eric, somehow, had entered through her front door, releasing the catch when he’d stepped outside.
But he had to have come over the courtyard fence. A proverbial scaled wall. And she realized the lengths he’d gone to to be here, to see her.
To have her.
Her knees shook. Her thighs trembled. Her heart seemed to pound in her throat. And then he reached for the door and shoved. It slid open along the tracks, and Chloe wanted to cheer. One long step and he was inside and crossing the dimly lit dining area, his footsteps determined but nearly silent on the tiles.
And then he was in the kitchen, and his nostrils flared as he caught her scent—whether perfume or arousal, she had no way of knowing. But it hardly mattered any longer because he was there, and his hands gripped her shoulders as he backed her into the refrigerator and lowered his head.
His mouth wasn’t rough, but it was demanding, of her surrender and her acknowledgment that he would not be walking away. Thrilled into submission, she parted her lips and met his seeking tongue, slipped her hands beneath his jacket and skated her palms up the shirt on his back. His skin beneath the fabric was deliciously cool, and she shivered and pulled him into her own body’s warmth.
For a moment she wished she still wore her shoes so he wouldn’t have to bend so far to meet her mouth. But then she realized their difference in height placed the fly of his pants just below her navel. And the press of his erection into the soft give of her belly stole her breath.
His lips teased hers. He played with first the top and then the bottom, then sucked on the tip of her tongue. His movements were alternately soft and hard, daring and subtle, sweet and savage, questioning and bold.
Chloe was certain she’d never known more physical sensation from one si
ngle kiss. It was more than the involvement of lips and tongue and teeth. It was the vibration of Eric’s heartbeat thudding against her hands. The cold tile floor beneath her bare feet. The hum of the refrigerator at her back. The heat of his fingertips where they bruised her shoulders.
All of this amplified by his sweet, sweet mouth. And then suddenly he wasn’t so sweet anymore. He was wildly moved to mate. Chloe hadn’t known a man’s hunger could so suddenly spring to life until he seemed to be nothing but living desire.
Eric’s hands, desire’s hands, were seeking, searching, slipping over her shoulders, down her arms, across her belly, up to her breasts. He kneaded, squeezed, and she moaned into his mouth. He ground harder, desire ground harder, mouth to mouth, erection to belly, and then the heel of his hand moved to the mound between her legs. No preliminaries, no gentle coaxing. Just a kiss that became sex, with no romance between.
All Chloe could do was spread her legs, giving desire room to explore. He went straight for the hem of her dress, hiking it up, digging beneath, finding the responsive warmth he was seeking, and driving his fingers deep.
Chloe gasped at the shocking invasion. She gouged her fingers into his biceps as he pushed in and out with the whole of his hand. She was stretched wide-open and his fingers hit every hot spot of her sex.
His thumb rubbed hard circles around and around the bud of sensation swollen to a tight knot and aching for the contact that would send her over the edge. Already tonight he’d inflamed her this way, and she wanted to return the same maddening torture.
So she sent her hands to the fastenings of his pants and went to work on belt, metal catch and zipper, shoving his suit pants and his boxers down his backside, then moving to his front and stretching the elastic of his waistband and allowing his sex to spring free.
Again he was hugely swollen, erect and jutting upward. The taut skin of his glans fairly glistened, as did the moisture beading at the opening in the tip. Chloe wanted to lean down and take him in her mouth, but Eric didn’t allow her the time.
He stole even the pleasure of touch, bending down for the pants he’d kicked free and the condom he’d stashed in the pocket. Chloe was determined to do this much at least, and grabbed the packet from his hand.
She rolled the rubber the length of his shaft, slowly and with teasing intent, touching her tongue to the bow of her upper lip and watching her handiwork rather than Eric’s face. She sensed the heat of his gaze but refused to answer the visual, visceral pull.
This encounter was all about sex—one hundred percent physical sensation; no eye contact, emotion or meaning allowed—and she was going to take charge. She refused to let feelings come into play as she exacted revenge for the uncertain confusion his earlier possession had sparked.
Standing on tiptoe, she lifted her other leg, wrapped it around his body, dug her heel into the back of his thigh. Hands met between bodies, his spreading her wetness, hers guiding him into alignment. He laced his fingers through hers, then drove his body forward, trapping their hands between.
At that—the joining of their bodies so intimately, with hands so casually clasped—she couldn’t help but look up.
“I couldn’t wait for you to call.” His eyes gazed down with the most tender of emotions, all things kind and gentle and caring and warm.
And Chloe couldn’t take it. She couldn’t handle what his expression revealed. She pulled her hand free of his, moved it around to his backside to prompt him to move. But he remained unmoving. Immobile. His body buried deep with no place to go unless he did as she asked, as she demanded with the squeezing and prodding of fingers and hands.
Still he remained motionless and impaled. Still she urged him into action, growing desperate and emotionally frightened by his insistence on making her wait. She wanted to slap him, to shout. Instead she growled in frustration and scratched her short nails over the small of his back.
He leaned his forehead to hers and whispered, “Shh. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“That’s the problem. You need to move.”
“I will,” he said, and subtly shifted, rubbing up and into her core, which he’d so easily inflamed.
She hated that he held this power over her. That he could make her crazy with a look and nothing more. That he was able to touch her and take her apart until she wanted to scream with pleasure. And cry at the frustrating loss of her cool.
“Maybe you could get to it sometime soon?” She snarled the question, smacked her palm to his backside.
Bending his knees, he slipped the one hand still between their bodies down underneath their slick joining to play between her legs. His fingers tickled the skin of her thighs, moved to tease the edges of her sex, where his shaft remained buried to the hilt.
That one hand incited her to whimper. And at her sound of surrender, his other hand came up to cradle her face.
“Chloe, I lov—”
“No!” She cut him off with her shout, then pressed her fingers to his lips. “No, you don’t. You can’t. Please.” A sob burst free and she hated herself for the weakness. “Just make me come. That’s all I want.”
Eric closed his eyes. His jaw worked to repress the words she knew he wanted to say. When he looked at her again, his expression showed a battle between anger and hurt. Neither sentiment did a thing to set Chloe at ease.
“Not a problem, princess.” Eric’s mouth twisted. “One orgasm coming right up.”
And then he began to move. Before she could protest or tell him to get the hell out of her house, he started to slowly thrust, to withdraw, to push forward, to pull away. He knew her too well, knew how to strike the head of his match to set her fire ablaze.
Her body took over, refusing to listen to her mind or her principles or even her common sense. The friction of Eric’s movements brought her to the edge and sent her tumbling over.
No man but Eric had ever so perfectly met her physical needs.
Even while she hated him, she loved him.
11
MONDAY, MIDMORNING, Chloe checked her reflection in the mirror of the ladies’ room down the hall from her office. The lighting was, of course, perfect, the room’s design conceived by Anton Neville’s firm, with input from all six of the gIRL-gEAR partners.
Today Chloe had chosen to dress more conservatively than usual. Her suit was a pale pink leather, the straight skirt hitting midthigh, the short-sleeved top double-breasted and waist length. Her stockings were a pale cream and her stacked-heel pumps a bright fuchsia.
She’d applied her makeup deftly as well, carefully blending the shades of blues and purples on her eyelids and going with a pale pink frost on her lips.
Tugging the hem of her top into place and smoothing the lines of her skirt, she took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. She was worrying too much over her appearance, when she saw Sydney every day, and cosmetics and clothing weren’t half as important as the confession she needed to make.
Yes, the women were partners, but Sydney held a controlling interest and had the final word when it came to the firm’s business. When it came to personnel issues, as well. And since Chloe had professional issues to discuss with the woman at the top, she’d taken her appearance seriously, because she wanted to be taken the same.
She left the ladies’ room and headed up the hallway to the office at the end. Sydney’s space was no larger than the other five offices located on the executive side of the building, but her space did sit in the primo corner, as befitting her position as CEO.
Chloe rapped her knuckles against the door and peeked into the office, which was decorated in rich shades of peacock blue and olive. “Do you have a minute?”
Sydney looked up from the spreadsheet she’d been studying. “Sure. I need a break. These numbers quit making sense about an hour ago.”
Moving into the office, Chloe sat in the chair opposite Sydney’s desk and crossed her legs. “Numbers haven’t made sense to me since first grade, and one plus one equals two.”
Chloe couldn’t stop the upward quirk of her mouth. “And here I thought you had me pulling the espresso because I made less mess with the grounds than everyone else.”
“Oh, yeah.” Sydney screwed up her nose. “I forgot about that. I have a bad habit of remembering things the way I want to see them until I’m reminded of what actually happened.”
Here we go. Chloe took a deep breath. “That’s why I’m here. To remind you.”
“About the espresso?”
Chloe shook her head. If only it were so simple. “About the gIRL-gEAR gIRL ceremony.”
“You got home okay, I hope? Melanie said you weren’t feeling well. I should’ve called to check on you over the weekend, but I’ve been up to my ears with the designers who are sending samples for the Wild Winter Woman fashion show.” Sydney gathered her hair back into a tail at her nape and rubbed the base of her neck with her other hand. She met Chloe’s gaze with a questioning lift of an elegant brow.
“I wasn’t sick. I was with Eric. I shouldn’t have let Melanie cover for me,” Chloe said as her foot begin to nervously swing. “Though, by the time she found me, it’s true that I wasn’t feeling my best.”
Sydney continued to rub at her neck, moving her hand into her hair to massage the base of her skull. Chloe had no idea what the other woman was thinking. No idea if Sydney was about to lower the boom or if she was still processing what Chloe had said and deciding how painlessly to drop the ax.
Instead of doing either, she let go of her hair and leaned forward, lowering her voice as she asked, “What is going on with you and Eric? Because this can’t all be about your reputation. Not that I thought that plan would hold water.”
Chloe’s foot stopped swinging. “What makes you say that?”
“Because I don’t see Eric Haydon ever being content in the role of your escort, temporary or not.”