1
ROSE
“How’s my fiancée doing this morning?” Zander’s raspy voice, half-drowsy with sleep, fills my ears.
“I’m very good,” I whisper.
“That you are, my beautiful Rose.”
My fingers tighten around the phone. Since the morning he proposed to me, Zander has taken it upon himself to call me by my name.
“What’s your plan for today?” I ask, simply because I want to hear his voice more.
“Meetings, meetings, and some more meetings.” Hearing his sigh, you’d think he hates all those meetings. “In your language, all CEO stuff.”
My lips curl up, and my heart warms when he repeats my words from the past. They are subtle reassurances of Zander’s love for me.
“How is the planning for your birthday weekend in Cherrywood progressing?”
I hear the rustling of covers as he settles onto his huge bed, where I have the pleasure of sleeping whenever I visit him in St. Peppers.
“You know Kristy. She makes a big deal of everything.”
“She should. My girl deserves all the pampering.” His voice is soft and husky. I close my eyes and bite back a smile. I am his—his girl.
A few years ago, when my best friend, Kristy, and I came to Cherrywood for a job interview, I didn’t know my life would change like this. Now, I have people who want to pamper me on my birthday, who want to celebrate a day which might not even be the actual day I was born.
“Will you be here?”
“No one could stop me. Are you honestly not going to tell me what to get you?”
I turn on my side, pulling the covers up to my neck. Zander’s words, as always, fill me with a toasty, cozy feeling. “I need nothing. I have you and I have Kristy. That’s all I need.”
He groans. “You say all these sweet and cute things, and I want to pull you into my arms, but all I have is a fucking cold and empty bed around me.”
“That’s not true. You have four pairs of my lingerie that I know of. But looking at my diminishing underwear drawer, I suspect you have more than that.”
“Maybe I’ll buy you several pairs of your favorite Victoria’s Secret panties. On your birthday, I’ll make you wear each one of them, and then we’ll spoil them, all ready for me to take back home.”
His hot and breathy voice tickles my ear, and my heartbeat accelerates at his words. I’m sure no one would believe that Zander Teager, CEO of Elixir Inc., could be such a raunchy, dirty talker.
“What do you say, babe?”
“You are nuts,” I mumble, hiding my face in the pillow, my body all hot and sweaty.
Every morning when he wakes me up with a phone call, I have no clue which Zander I’m getting. Some days, he’s sweet and cute, making me emotional. But others, like today, he makes me delirious with need. On such days, I want to crawl inside the phone and just hide in his arms—or in his king-sized bed.
“Breathe slow. You’re making me real crazy here,” he groans in a voice I’ve become well acquainted with. It’s a voice he uses when he whispers my name as he stands me in front of my big bathroom mirror and takes me from behind. It’s the same voice he uses when he mumbles or curses while I’m lying on the bed and his head is buried between my legs.
“Crab,” I murmur. My pulse quickens and his breathy groans from the other side are making me delirious. “What are you doing?”
“You know…very well.” He continues to mumble my name and some expletives before releasing a heavy breath. “You like to unman me.”
What did I do?
He’s the one who did everything, while I’m a hot mess over here.
“Do you need something, Rose?” Zander drawls with his familiar teasing lilt.