“And I just ask that … you please refrain from sleeping with people in my employ. It makes me extremely uncomfortable to think about it. Although maybe you already have?”
She met his gaze, and his expression had morphed.
He approached her painstakingly slowly, catching her arm, his voice instantly rough, his eyes dark as thunderclouds. “You seem to be mistaking me for one of your elderly lapdogs. I’m not a man to be ordered around, not even by you, but now that you’re making demands of me, then I’ll gladly issue some demands of my own. The first one is, don’t you ever, ever, say his name to me again as long as I’m fucking you. I may be your friend, but I’m also your lover. It’s my name you call when you come. It’s my eyes you look into when you’re begging and writhing. It’s me you wanted to fuck last night, me you wanted to fuck just an hour ago—not Roland.”
“Roland was my partner for over a year and he’s been after me forever. You and I are nothing but fuck bud—”
“I am nobody’s fuck buddy, Monica! I agreed because I wanted you. But that’s over. If you want me, we’re doing this my way, and I hope you realize that I will want sex daily, I will be demanding in bed, and I will certainly expect your exclusivity.”
A tap on the door came a second before her assistant opened it. “Ms. Davenport, I have the Loro Piana collaborator on the phone for you. Oh, why, Mr. Lexington, you’re still here…”
Before her assistant could even finish, Daniel had dropped her arm and stormed outside, and Monica stared at the vacant space where he’d charged out the door, dumbstruck at his explosion. And she thought she’d been jealous?
My God, she’d never in her life seen Daniel like this!
* * *
Holy shit, he hadn’t handled that well.
No, not at all.
But he was burning in his skin, burning with desire, with jealousy, with frustration.
It was the hardest thing he’d ever endured, sitting across the boardroom table from her, when every cell in his body clamored for her, when every fiber in his being knew that she needed him, that as she sat there, in her clothes, with her glacial mask on, she was still burning for him.
His mind had been fresh with the memory of her in a blanket of cashmere, in his arms, his flesh feeling tight and hot, his body pulsing and aching. The hunger to caress her had been so powerful it nearly paralyzed him.
He hadn’t even been able to keep track of the conversation and was, like her, speechless and silent, pretending to listen, when he would have done anything to seclude her in any nearby room with a lock, and fuck her so long he’d be dry and she’d be raw and they’d both be bone-tired with exhaustion.
I love her.
The phrase beat like a refrain in his veins, his heart.
He’d always loved her, almost like a sister, as a great friend. But he was not her brother,
and they were no longer friends. He’d buried the deeper, more tumultuous emotions she stirred inside of him by staying away, giving her the distance she’d asked for. All it had taken was a sexual touch to shake him to his bones, to confirm to him that his intent all these years, of seeking so many women so he could resist one, had utterly failed.
Nobody was her.
When he’d seen her in those cashmere blankets, her body exposed for dozens of eyes to see, he’d been shaken by pure possessiveness and the need to cover her, shield her, protect her from one and all. She belonged to him. She always had.
She’d run from love, had run from him, when she’d been nineteen and he twenty-three, when for every night for almost two months, they’d been as close as Siamese twins. He didn’t want to push her away this time, make her feel the threat of the one emotion she had been fighting her whole life not to feel. But he knew her weakness.
Because he was it.
Monica’s aloofness had never worked on him. It never would. He’d been inside her, deep where it hurt, long before she’d put up those walls of ice she built, and she’d locked him up with her.
Yeah, he’d known how afraid she was. And he’d stood back, a part of him as scared shitless as she was. He’d done nothing when she dated the first middle-aged guy he knew, or the second. They didn’t pose a threat, and she’d used the pretext of the press being on top of their relationship to keep Daniel away. He hadn’t pressured. He had, in fact, rebelled against the way she made him feel. He’d branded his tattoo right above his heart, a challenge to any who so much as tried to trap him. But he’d watched her from afar, telling himself she was a friend, she hadn’t wanted him to kiss her, and he did not want her.
Like hell.
He wanted her more than air, more than water. In many ways, they were alike, understanding each other in an intrinsic way that needed few words to be spoken, but in the most fundamental way, they were polar opposites. She had a part of her that needed to be fitted by a part of him … and their bodies were throbbing to make it happen.
Even during the board meeting, the memory of their previous tangle in the throws lingered in her eyes, in the way she crossed her arms and rubbed herself.
They were so wound up today, he fucking knew he should’ve stayed last night, and held her like before, when the poke of her nipples through her nightgown against his chest had been the thrill of his young existence. Sometimes he’d take a cool shower before he knocked on her door, so he could listen to her and not feel electrified every time her breath hit his neck. Even then, it had been haunting, overpowering, the need to comfort her, hold her.… He’d been thinking of fucking kissing her for days, weeks, years. He’d never imagined she wouldn’t want him.
After that, he’d spoiled his poor rejected cock but he definitely, definitely, never again thought with it. He had always been a man of precise intellect, perhaps even ruthless intellect.