Tension seeped out of her body. ‘You juggle dozens of balls too.’
‘No, sweetheart, my balls are money-related—work. If I drop a ball, I lose money, not a big deal. If you drop a ball, your sisters could be affected, your degree and your second income. Money is easy, people are difficult—complicated. The stakes don’t compare.’
Warmth seeped into her eyes and her hand came up to touch his hair, her fingers stroking his scalp. That was the nicest thing she’d heard him, or anyone, say. And she didn’t know how much she needed to hear the words until he’d said them.
She felt recognised and seen. Understood. And how strange was it that it was this solitary man, someone so different from her in life experiences, who made her feel affirmed. She’d had so little emotional support, so few people cheering her on, that a part of her wanted to ask him to repeat himself so that she could roll around in the sunshine of his words.
‘Thank you for saying that.’
‘But you can be pretty scary and damn bossy when you’re mad.’
She heard the teasing note in his voice and laughed. How could she go from blisteringly angry to laughter so quickly? Did the ‘why’ even matter? He was here with her and they were talking—friends again. And lovers.
Talking about loving... Lex used her core muscles to launch herself upwards, her mouth seeking his, her kiss full of thanks, gratitude and a huge hit of want and need.
‘I think you should take my clothes off,’ Lex instructed, her voice growly with need.
Because he wasn’t a saint, and because making love to her was what he most wanted to do, Cole decided that was a fine idea indeed.
‘You have the prettiest body,’ he told her, pulling her jersey up her ribcage, exposing her pale and lovely skin to his hot gaze. Her bra was plain white, functional rather than pretty, and the thought that he wanted to see her in jewel colours—reds, violets and deep greens—flitted through his mind as he placed his mouth on her nipple and sucked her, fabric and all, into his mouth.
Lex responded to his deep kiss by moaning and trying to wrap her hand around his erection, hampered by the material of his jeans. Holding herself in a half-sit-up position, she pulled his earlobe into her mouth and nibbled on it, sending a warm, fast burst of electricity along every nerve ending he possessed.
‘So you like me when I’m bossy, right?’ Lex asked, his tone teasing.
‘In certain circumstances,’ he replied. ‘For instance, if you told me to get naked, then I’d listen.’
He saw green fire in Lex’s eyes through her half-closed lids. ‘Get naked, Cole,’ she ordered him.
Eager to play this game, Cole pulled away from her, stood next to the bed and pulled off his jersey, slowly. She beckoned him closer and, kneeling on the bed as he stood, placed her mouth on his sternum, her tongue coming out to touch his hot skin. Cole closed his eyes, his clothes falling to the floor as Lex’s clever mouth drifted down across the hard muscles of his stomach, and lower, to where the band of his jeans rested.
He reached down to undo his trousers but Lex smacked his hands away. ‘My job,’ she told him, her tone suggesting that he not disagree.
He pulled his hands away and their eyes connected as she undid the buttons holding his jeans together.
She looked up at him and Cole’s heart flipped over backwards. Damn, she had no idea how sexy she was. He looked down into those eyes that were the exact colour of the nephrite jade Buddha figure he’d bought at auction last year. They were shockingly deep and, like the statue, Lex was rare, special and pretty damn amazing. She was bright, compelling, courageous and massively strong-willed, stronger than she realised and tougher than she gave herself credit for.
He was in awe of her...
In another life, if he’d been another guy, he’d find a way to keep her in his life.
But that was impossible. He couldn’t give her anything more than sex. Their time together was limited. She was raising a family and he was terrible at relationships. He always messed them up by pulling away, by sabotaging them.
But this was the first woman to tempt him into those turbulent waters in over a decade. He had to resist her, had to resist the idea of them. The lines between lust and like were blurring.
Slow down, idiot. Right now. Because, if you don’t, you’re going to come out of this bloody and bruised.
Lex pushed her hands between his skin and the fabric of his underwear and jeans and tugged everything down. He shed his clothes and, when she reached for him, he shook his head. If she touched him with her lips, if she sucked him, this would all be over very fast indeed. No, he needed to wring pleasure out of every moment they had together.
‘My turn to be bossy,’ Cole told her, tugging her to her feet. As she stood on the bed in front of him, he stripped her quickly, throwing her clothes to the floor. When she was gloriously naked, he placed feather-light kisses on her ribcage, nibbled her collarbone and dragged his tongue across that sweet spot between her neck and ear. Lex picked up his hand and placed it on her breast, but he wouldn’t be rushed. This was his time, so he tickled and teased, tasting her skin on the back of her knee, the arch of her foot. He nuzzled the special space between her thighs, but after a few seconds pulled away to nibble her hip bone, to taste her belly button, to suck on her breasts.
And when Lex’s demands became insistent, when her moans deepened, he pulled back and started to explore her lovely body all over again. When she thumped his shoulder with her small fist, when her eyes turned stormy with passion, liquid with need, he placed his mouth on her. That small contact made her orgasm and, wanting her to get off again, he slid two fingers into her and nuzzled her to another high.
Pliant, out of breath and loose with pleasure, she rolled over onto her stomach and lifted her hips, seeming to know what he wanted, how he needed her. He reached for the condom he’d tossed onto the bed earlier, rolled it on and, after widening her knees, slid into her slick warmth and closed his eyes.Home, he thought.
He didn’t have time to interrogate that thought because he felt Lex push back against him and he recognised the tension in her body. She wanted to come again, and he was fully prepared to take it slow, to make her burn. But Lex had other plans...
Suddenly she was rocking, he was pumping and he heard Lex’s scream of pleasure echoing down a tunnel. Her inner walls tightened around him and a stream of pure energy rocketed through him, spinning him away.