Can’t wait to finish what we’ve started.
Tomorrow night.
CP
I threw the card down as if it had bitten me.
Finish what we’ve started? What exactly had they started together? I know Declan had mentioned they’d been working together on the charity party, how helpful she’d been. But this wasn’t the sort of note you sent to a business associate. I couldn’t see some investment partner guy sending him this sort of a card.
No, this was seduction. A lover’s note, eluding to hot nights in the past, promising more to come.
Damn it. I should not have picked that up. I would have been better off in ignorance, happily getting ready for a night out on the town, showering and dressing, full of anticipation. Blissful in my ignorance.
Now I felt furious and disgusted, with Declan, sure, but most definitely with myself. Why was I always such an idiot? Why did I insist on looking around me and seeing Candyland when reality was anything but? Declan had never promised me romance. He’d been straight and honest from the start. He was a dom and I was his sub, paid for a week’s service.
It was all on me if I’d gone and fallen for him again. If I lay on his chest and pictured flowering meadows and marital vows, that was my own idiocy. If I quivered with delight over the apple charm necklace he’d given me, that was simply due to my own naiveté. I was sure he had his personal assistant buy it for me, like he did for all the women in his life.
I decided at least I could take a shower. That much I could control.
As for the rest of it, I just had to face facts. I was one of many. He’d never told me otherwise. In fact, he’d put up hard limits around our relationship, clear parameters defining our arrangement. Of course he had other women in his life, others who meant far more than some kind of a sex bargain. Apparently Courtney was one of them, maybe the most significant of them all. And why wouldn’t she be? She fit in much better than I did with his life now.
Anyone with 20/20 vision could have seen their intimacy from the brief encounter at the restaurant, how she’d dragged her blood-red nails across his shoulder. I was nothing to him—low-hanging fruit, a desperate farm girl with no other options offering herself up to him for sex. Now that I’d seen the kind of world he lived in, the high-rollers who were his associates, I realized bailing out my ranch was play money to him. It was the kind of change that fell out of his pocket on the way to board his private jet.
I’d been living in a big fat bubble, but that bubble had burst. I’d been walking around dreaming about the kids we’d have one day, but this wasn’t special to him. This was an easy fuck. To me, it meant everything. And that’s why I had to leave, now.
Out of the shower, I started packing. I didn’t have much. I wouldn’t take any of the fancy stuff I’d bought with Declan’s money. Those were the dress-up clothes of his week-long sex toy. I wasn’t that. I was Kara Brooks and I needed to head home. Somewhere I had my old boots, jeans and t-shirt, the ones I’d worn to our meeting only a week ago. Could it have really been only one week? But, yes, Friday morning I’d walked into his office in those boots and now I needed to find them, put them on and walk back out of his life again. For my own sanity.
“What are you doing?” My heart skipped a beat at the sound of Declan’s voice. Hand up to my chest, I clutched the towel around my naked body. I’d been so intent on finding my old clothes, banging around in the bureau and closet, that I hadn’t heard him come in.
“I’m looking for my boots!” I knew I sounded overly upset but that was the least of my problems. Why had he come back in the middle of this? A few minutes more and I could have been gone, in a taxi to the airport.
“Why do you need your boots?” He kept calm and cool, of course, looking outrageously sexy in a dark fitted suit and deep red tie. He loosened it as he spoke.
“Declan…” I crossed my arms in front of my chest. I hadn’t worked out what to say to him. I didn’t think I’d have to. Finally, I choked out, “I saw Courtney’s note.”
“What?” He didn’t sound mad. He sounded like he didn’t know what I was talking about.
“The note, that square thing!” I gestured out the door vaguely in the direction of the countertop. “I saw her note. How she can’t wait to finish what you’ve started.” My words came out hot, jealous, buzzing in my ears like the stereotype of a spurned lover in a soap opera. I hated playing that part, but I had no choice. I felt enraged, wounded, venomous, the epitome of a woman scorned.
“You’ve been reading my mail?” His voice kept low and controlled as he removed his jacket and tie.
“It was out on the counter. It wasn’t like I searched through your stuff and ripped it open.”
“But you picked up something addressed to me. Pulled out a private note, and read it.”
“Declan, that’s not the point!” I felt shaken and upset, my breathing coming fast, tears close to the surface.
“What is the point?” He took a step toward me. I took a step back.
“It’s what she said. It’s what’s between you two.”
“What is between us?” He took another step toward me. I retreated again, coming up against the wall.
“I don’t even want to know.” I shook my head and looked away, trembling, hating myself for still wanting him to reach out and reassure me.
He didn’t. “You shouldn’t read things that don’t belong to you.”
I exhaled, frustrated. “As if that’s the problem here.”
“That is the problem here.” Now he stood right next to me and I could feel the heat radiating from his powerful body. How he could make a suit look so virile, so male, I didn’t know. Up until now I’d always preferred the jeans and cow
boy hat look. Now, though, I didn’t know, I didn’t know anything anymore.
“You think Courtney’s my woman?” He brought both hands, palm-down, against the wall on either side of my head. Leaning down, he brushed close to my hair, breathing deep, scenting me.
“You belong together.” My voice came out breathy, my body already beginning to respond to Declan’s nearness. My mind still clung to anger and my sense of betrayal, but my body had other ideas. I brought a hand to his chest in protest, then kept it there, spread against his strength.
“Hmmm.” I could feel his chest rumble under my palm and I shivered. He brought his mouth down to my ear and kissed me, lightly, teasing, bringing his lips down to my earlobe to suck and bite. “Is that right?” Dipping down to my bare, exposed shoulder, he kissed and licked, trailing his hot, wicked lips along my skin.
I tried to fight it, but my entire body sang under his attentions. I was helpless, my own worst enemy.
“Declan.” I forced strength into my words, willed my hand against his solid, muscled chest to push away. “I don’t…if you’re with her, I don’t—”
“There’s no one but you,” he growled, possessive. So fast I didn’t know it was happening, he grabbed my wrists and pulled them up over my head, pinning them against the wall under his huge hands. Without my arms at my sides, my towel fell to my feet, leaving me completely naked, pink and exposed and panting under his heated gaze. I wriggled under his grip, but he easily kept my wrists hard against the wall in one hand, then brought the other down to my breast.
“You may not accept it yet,” he said, lazily caressing my soft mound. “You might not want it. But you’re mine.” As he said it, he brought his fingers to my nipple and pinched. A sigh escaped my parted lips, my eyes half-closed. “Your mind wants to fight it. But your body knows.” His hand circled my other breast, drawing closer to my other nipple. I arched into him. I craved his touch, the sensations he brought to me, the intensity of the pain and pleasure washing my mind blank with desire.