“Fuck.” I crossed my arms over my breasts and sighed. “She wouldn’t even know I existed if she didn’t insist on intruding on her son’s life whenever she feels like it.”
“You’re dating a mama’s boy.” He laughed softly and relaxed in his chair as if he’d just come to the conclusion that Charlie was zero competition for him.
“I’m not dating him.” But, Christ, he was a mama’s boy. Fuck. Fuck. And double fuck.
I glanced up as Mathias stood and walked to me. Every step he took was predatory and thrilling to watch.
“Okay, we’re finished talking about him.”
Gasping, I clutched his shoulders as he picked me up from the chair and walked off toward the bedroom. “Hey, you’re manhandling me again.”
“This is my weekend, and until Monday morning—you are my Jane.” He tossed me on the bed.
I propped myself on my elbows as he plucked up my left foot and pulled my shoe off. “I belong to no man.”
He chuckled softly as he pulled off my right shoe and looked me over. “Wanna bet?”
“I warned you about that arrogant alpha-male crap.” When he pulled at the legs of my jeans, I unbuckled them and lifted my hips. “I’m not some empy-headed twit that likes to feel owned.”
He tossed my jeans aside and curled his hand into the front of the barely there panties I’d put on. “Don’t frown at me, woman, you’ll ruin my concentration.”
I laughed and gasped when he jerked at my panties and they tore away. “Hey, those were new!”
“I’ll buy you some more.” He tossed the tattered silk aside as I pulled my T-shirt over my head.
I watched through half-closed eyes as he undressed. Sleek muscle moved under dark skin, and by the time he was crawling up between my legs I’d totally forgotten why I’d been frowning at him in the first place. He rolled a condom on and spread my legs with gentle hands. Warm, smooth skin brushed against my own as he covered me with his body and his lips drifted across mine.
Wrapping my legs around his slim waist was the most natural thing I’d ever done; the hard press of his cock against the damp flesh of my pussy was just what I needed. He rocked against me gently as he settled his mouth on mine and slipped his tongue into my mouth. I moaned at the gentle invasion and I tightened my hold on him.
How in the hell was I going to function around him after this weekend?
He pushed the blunt tip of his erection against my entrance and paused when I tensed. My insides were slightly swollen from our earlier encounters. I sighed in frustration when he pulled away and lifted his mouth from mine. Mathias moved down my body and placed several soft kisses on my belly, on the slightly puckered scar on my thigh, before he kissed my labia.
The tip of his tongue brushed over my clit again and again as he pressed two fingers into me and curled them upward against my G-spot. I cried out and pressed my lips together firmly to keep from doing it again. The dual stimulation was too much, too fast. I fisted my hands into the sheets and pressed my feet against the mattress as I thrust upward against his mouth. He didn’t disappoint; his tongue quickened on my clit and I shattered with orgasm.
I wrapped around him completely as he moved upward and pressed his cock into me without pause. My body gave way to his invasion, and I buried my face in his neck as he started to move. No man had ever made me feel so weak and so vulnerable, yet in the same instance I felt powerful. He groaned softly when I found the strength to move with him. There it was, the power over his pleasure. No man had ever given me that, or at least he’d never let me know it.
He jerked and shook against me as I tightened my legs around his waist. My clit throbbed furiously between my labia, my own orgasm still echoing in my heated flesh. Mathias stiffened against me, and my name slipped past his lips as he came.
I reached out in the darkness and picked up my cell phone. I flipped it open as I sat up. “Jane Tilwell.”
“It’s me, Mercy.”
Glancing toward the clock, I frowned. “What’s wrong?” She’d never called me in the middle of the night before. It was barely 3:00 A.M. “Are you all right?”
“It’s Lisa. Someone tried to break into her house. She’s fine but pretty shaken up.”
“Do you need me to come out there?”
“No. But I will need you to go to the gallery in the morning. We are getting a special delivery. The delivery service is scheduled to arrive at 8:00 A.M. James has special security in place, but I need someone on hand for the delivery. I would prefer that it be you.”
“Okay. No problem.” I glanced toward Mathias. He was probably awake. “Are you sure I can’t do anything for Lisa?”
“Yes. I’ve finally got her down for some rest, but I just don’t want to leave her alone. Shame is here and we’re going to spend the rest of the night.”
“Call me if anything happens.” I closed my cell phone gently and put it on my nightstand and then turned to look at him. “Someone tried to break into Lisa Millhouse’s place.”
“Is she all right?”
“Yeah, just pissed. Have you met her?”
“Yeah. I oversaw the installation of her security system. They couldn’t have gotten past the motion sensors on her property line.” He sat up. “Maybe I need to go out there and check.”
“Shame and Mercy are there. It’s good that she called them; even a year ago, she wouldn’t have called anyone but her security company. There was a part of me that figured her ex-husband had done such a number on her that she would never get back to the person she was before they married.”
Mathias laid back on his pillow and nodded. “She was a passionate and engaging woman before she married. I didn’t see her for several years, so when I came back to Boston and ran into her at Shame’s…I was stunned by the difference in her. It was night and day.”
“It’s good to see her out and about. She’s great with the kids at the academy.”
“What did Mercy need from you?”
“I need to go to the gallery tomorrow to oversee the delivery of some pieces for a show.” I laid back down in the bed and sighed. “She has motion sensors on her property line?”
“Yeah, and that’s just the beginning.” He laid back down beside me.
“Her ex-husband is a real asshole.” I knew that was the heart of Lisa’s security fears.
Her ex had done a number on her in several ways. Emotional and verbal abuse had often given into physical abuse. The woman I knew Lisa to be didn’t jive with the image of a battered woman, yet she had been. After my first encounter with her, I’d thought she hated men. But now I know that more than anything she hated herself for staying with a man who hit her.
“He should be a dead asshole.” Carefully, he pulled me into his arms and ran his hand down my back. “Get some sleep.”
I chuckled softly. “Giving me orders?”
“Yep.”
Since I’d never allowed myself to spend the night with a man before Mathias, I had no way to compare what I was feeling to past experience. Lying in his arms, his body pressed against mine, was a unique experience, and that was why it felt so amazing and perfect. It couldn’t be anything else. I didn’t have room for complicated crap like love or intimacy.
Yeah, I’m pretty good at lying to myself.
Two hours. I’d sat and watched the delivery man unload his truck for two hours. Once it’d been done and I’d signed all of the paperwork for delivery, I’d dashed back across town to my apartment and found it empty.
He hadn’t mentioned leaving and there hadn’t been a note. Disappointed and more hurt than I should’ve been, I put on some workout clothes and went down to the gym. Forty-five minutes on the treadmill had turned my disappointment into anger. I was totally furious with myself; it wasn’t like he’d promised me anything more than he’d given. Except it wasn’t Monday, damn it.
I took the stairs back up to my apartment, my leg muscles protesting every single step, but I figured the physical punishment would help. It
didn’t. It just gave me a damn cramp. I limped to my apartment door and stuck my key in the lock, frustrated at myself.
Mathias Montgomery was just a man. He certainly didn’t meet my qualifications for a husband. He thought art was pointless and that was irritating, especially for the brother of one of the most influential sculptors in the United States.
I stopped in the entrance of my living room and stared at Mathias. Fury and happiness warred inside me for a few bare seconds while I considered what to say to him. “How’d you get in?”
“I took the spare key when I left.” He stood from the couch and glanced over me. “That wasn’t what you were wearing when you left for the gallery.”
“I went to the gym when I got back.” I frowned at him briefly before I walked toward my bedroom. “I need a shower.”
Jerking my clothes off didn’t cut the edge off my anger. I was so pissed that I cared that he’d come back. I wasn’t supposed to care, damn it. Under the pounding water, I tried to separate out all of my feelings. It was difficult, as I’d never ever allowed myself to be put in a situation like the one I was currently in.
I barely glanced his way when he entered the shower stall and pulled the door shut. I was so damn mad at myself that I almost could have cried. Modern, smart, and collected Jane didn’t get attached to men. But suddenly I was none of those things. He pulled me close and kissed my neck.
“I figured I would be back before you.”
“Okay.”
“Jane.” He turned me gently to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. What could be wrong?”
Everything was fucking wrong. I’d gone and gotten myself attached to a man I barely knew. Hell, I wasn’t even all that sure I wanted to get to know him. But here I was, my heart stuck in my throat like a teenage girl staring at her first crush.
Mathias sighed and rubbed his thumb over my lips. “I should’ve called you.”
“What makes you think I care that you left?” I tried to pull free of him, but he gripped my forearms and held me still.
“It’s written all over your face. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He released me carefully. “I went over to Shame’s to talk to him about Lisa. Then he left to go back out there and pick up Mercy, so I came back over here.”
“Did you tell him where you were going?”
“No.” He pulled me closer and kissed my mouth in that soft way that made my knees weak. “Jane, what’s happened between us isn’t meaningless for me. I meant for it to be. I meant to be done with you on Monday, but I honestly don’t think it’s going to work out that way.”
I’d meant to be done with him by Monday too. “Fuck.”
I turned away from him and reached for my shampoo. He took the bottle from my hand silently and poured the liquid into one hand. I closed my eyes as he rubbed the shampoo through what little hair I allowed myself to have and resisted the urge to lean back against him. I was not going to let this man turn my life upside down. Even if he was the fuck of the century. No. It wasn’t going to happen. Who was I kidding? It had already happened.
“You thought I wasn’t going to come back.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does.” He maneuvered me under the spray of the showerhead and covered my mouth with his.
I moaned against the invasion of his tongue and wrapped my arms around his neck. Raising up on my toes, I pressed my breasts against his chest and then jerked when my leg cramp returned. “Damn.”
“What?”
I leaned my head against his chest and moaned. “I got a damn cramp in my leg.”
“Oh.” He knelt down on one knee and grasped the leg that I had lifted off the tile instinctually. His fingers were firm as they kneaded the muscle, and it began to relax almost immediately.
“Thanks.”
“Is it better?”
“Yeah.” I sucked in a breath when his hands drifted up to my thigh and then to my waist.
He pressed me against the wall and lifted the leg that had cramped onto his shoulder. I closed my eyes as he slipped his tongue between the lips of my pussy. Every time his tongue drifted over my clit, I jerked against his hold. I ran my hands over his head and held my breath briefly. I’d never had a lover so interested in my pleasure.
Mathias pressed two fingers into my pussy and curled them against my G-spot as he lifted his mouth from my clit and met my gaze. “I love how you taste.”
I pulled my leg from his shoulder and he stood. He pulled his fingers away, slid his hands behind me to cup my ass, and lifted me off the floor. Clutching at his shoulders, I hooked my legs around his waist as he pushed into me. The hot, near pain of his invading cock took my breath.
He rested his forehead against mine. “I’ll never get enough of you.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and nodded. “Take all you want.”
“Can I have everything?” Mathias kissed my lips gently. “Will you give me all of you?”
“Yes.” I arched against the tile as he started to thrust into me. “Yes. Everything.”
Everything. I had no time to absorb the fact that I meant it. I would give him everything.
He turned, pushed open the stall door, and tightened his grip on me as we left the shower. Seconds later I was flat on my back; the cool tile beneath me was startling. I let my legs drop away from his waist and pressed my feet against the floor as he pumped into me. Each thrust was harder and more demanding than the last, and I took it all and demanded more.
The pressure of his body against mine, the glide of his cock into my body, was suddenly more than I could take. I came in a rush of wetness and arched hard off the floor. He slowed his pace and tucked his face against the side of my neck as climax rocked his body.
We lay there spent and breathless for at least a minute before he raised his head and met my gaze. “We didn’t use a condom.”
Second time that hadn’t crossed my mind. “Do I need to worry about that?”
“Not on my end.”
“Then we’re good.” I ran my fingers along his jaw and shook my head. “But this floor is cold and hard.”
He lifted off me with a laugh and then picked me up. “Sorry.”
“No problem.”
Mathias tossed me on the bed and then crawled up to lay beside me. “I really didn’t mean to upset you by leaving.”
“It’s okay.” I turned my face away from him and sighed. “I shouldn’t have gotten bent about it. It isn’t like we’ve made any grand promises to each other.”
“No promises.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “No complications.”
“You think I’d be a complication?”
He laughed. “Certainly. In fact, you could be the single biggest complication I’ve ever encountered. I don’t know what I’m going to do on Monday.”
“We’ll get up and go to work.”
“That simple?”
“It can be.” I turned and looked at him then. “Nothing about this has to be difficult.”
“Okay.” He rolled to his side. “And if I still want you like crazy on Monday?”
“You’ll have to smile and pretend that this never happened.” I pursed my lips briefly. “And so will I. I’ve already done a really stupid thing recently. I don’t have any room for maneuvering when it comes to James Brooks. Mercy might overlook it, but he wouldn’t. Business is business.”
“Yet Mercy Rothell had a flaming affair with my brother and he never blinked an eye.”
“Yeah.” I laughed softly. “She still is.”
“They are good for each other.” He reached out and pulled me into his arms. “So, why can’t we?”
“Because I don’t have an Ivy League college education to flounce about.”
“You think James Brooks gives a rat’s ass where you were educated?”
“Boston is about appearances, and I’ve had to work hard to project the right one. I don’t have connections from college or old family friends to get me
where I want to be. I’ve had to work damn hard to get here, and I’m not going to fuck up now.”
“So this master plan of yours doesn’t have a slot for a relationship?”
It did. At least, it had a slot for the right relationship. “Is that what you want with me?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I just don’t like the idea of being dismissed.”
“This was all your idea.” I poked him in the chest and pulled away from him. “I was going to suffer this attraction in silence. But you had to come over here and get me all worked up.”
Deanna Lee Page 7