Bared by Him:

  All the energy he’d worked off boxing seemed to return as he drove back home and entered his apartment.

  Ivy glanced up from the bed when he opened the bedroom door, and her eyes lit in surprise, then darkened in dread. All kinds of emotions galloped inside him. Her eyes looked gold. The orbs went dark when she was being taken by him and turned a clear pale when she was thoughtful.

  This moment they were shuttered and concerned as she stared at him, as though not knowing what he’d do. “Hi,” she said warily.

  His hands clenched at his sides. He still didn’t know what to do with them. What to do with himself. With her.

  He kicked the door shut and entered the room. “How do you feel?” He couldn’t look at her. He felt too many things, too strongly, all at once.

  Her legs were bare for his perusal, long and slim and creamy. He could see her toes, painted a bright berry pink, and remembered nibbling the soft flat spots on the insides of her ankles.

  Don’t look.

  He jerked his gaze from her and frowned at his dog, lying on the bed, at her feet. “What’s Genghis doing on the bed?”

  “Keeping me company.” She petted him, and the simple act of watching her fingers delve into his dog’s fur made his body scream out in urgent jealousy.

  “He could hurt you! Off the damned bed, you fucking mutt. Off!” Genghis immediately obeyed, then he fisted his hands at his sides and paced.

  Ivy sat up and stared at him, completely alien to him in that wig.

  Look away, look away.

  “Cade, are we going to talk about this?” she whispered.

  He raised his hand to halt her words, and his eyes met hers. She seemed tired and weary and still, so beautiful. She was so freaking beautiful he could barely breathe.

  Cade closed his eyes, counted to ten and back. And no. His body still burned from the inside out. Thinking of himself as a snowman did not help, did not keep him from wanting, needing, to be inside her. It was a need beyond physical, a need to ground her to him, to feel her alive and twisting around him, beyond anything he could comprehend.

  “I know I should’ve told you…”

  He raked his hands through his hair and paced away, only to return, glaring. “Stop apologizing. I’m glad you didn’t tell me. Otherwise I’d…”

  “What? You wouldn’t have set a hand on me?”

  His jaw tightened, and he didn’t answer her.

  “Cancer is not contagious, Cade.”

  He expelled a long breath, hanging on by threads. “Right now I don’t want to hurt you, Ivy.”

  “Why am I even here? I have friends who can invite me over, I think I’d much rather you drive me over to one of them!” She stood up purposefully from the bed.

  “Get back on that bed, Ivy.”

  “I don’t need your pity, Cade.”

  “Get back on that fucking bed!” he roared.

  She glared at him and started walking to the door, and he grabbed her to stop her. “Get up on that fucking bed or I’m tying you to it!”

  “What for? You’re clearly not touching me again!”

  He saw that he was holding her elbow too hard, and he released her, his face melting with pain and regret as he lifted his hands, palms up. “Ivy, I don’t want to hurt you, baby.”

  “Well you’re hurting me now, you fucking asshole!”

  Her voice broke, and he immediately reached out to touch her again, but when she caught back a sob, he jerked his hand away.

  “Don’t,” she pleaded. “Cade, I’m still a woman. I’m still a woman. I need your touch … I need your touch so much.”

  He crushed her possessively in his arms and pressed his jaw into her neck, a dark, desperate feeling spreading through him. “Damn you, you’re not just a woman. You’re my woman, Ivy. Mine.”

  He felt her wig tickle his neck, and he growled and tossed it aside, then scooped her up and carried her back to the bed.

  Ivy gasped in delayed response and covered her head. “No!”

  She reached blindly in the air in the direction of the stupid wig, but it had landed far away. “No, Cade!” Her eyes flashed and she twisted and flailed angrily as he lay her down. “What are you doing? Why do you insist on baring me like this?”

  He caught her wrists and pinned them down. “Stop hiding shit from me. Stop hiding yourself from me. Can’t you see how much I fucking want you? Be real to me, Ivy! I’ve held nothing back from you—nothing.”

  “I am real to you! I’m realer to you than to anyone!”

  “Then stop treating me like I’m only here to fuck you!”

  She started crying, and Cade cursed and buried his face in his hands, scraping them over his own burning eyes. He heard her fumbling with the buttons of her shirt, and he whipped his head up and halted her hands.

  “Stop. Stop. You don’t need to do this now. It’s just that you’re so damned beautiful to me and I feel totally played here. You’re—”

  Prying free of his hold, she parted her ripped shirt open, still quietly crying, and Cade saw her.

  His heart shattered, and then it felt like it got pieced together wrong, because it couldn’t even beat right. If he weren’t already crazy as hell in love with her, she would’ve stolen his heart right this second, when she bared herself to him even when he could see how much it was hurting.

  It hurt to see her, too.

  His eyes blurred at the sight of her nipples. Sore. Bright pink. Two small dressings covering her incisions, just below the curves, of both the breasts she’d been removing.

  “Ivy.” He stroked the top swells gently, then her throat, feeling the sobs that racked her under his fingers. “You’re so fucking perfect. I love your breasts. I love your smooth little head.” He cupped her scalp and felt how smooth and round it was, stared into her eyes with his blurred vision. “I love the way you make me feel. The man you make me. All of you.” His voice broke and he gathered her against him, and he tipped her face back and kissed her lips. “I love the way you fight. Your spirit. How you help people when you need it more. How you saved me. Ivy. Me.”

  She cried harder, her hands on his shirt as her tears soaked it. He trembled at the feel of her, warm and rare like a comet in his arms, and at the sensual brush of her lips against his, seeking more, his lips locked over hers as though gravity were pulling them down. “I love you. Ivy. You. God help me, I do.”

  “Me, too. I love you so much,” she said softly to him in a heartbreaking, tear-laced voice.

  He groaned and he tried not to push his tongue too hard, tried to be gentle, as slow as he could, as gentle as he could, but his entire frame shuddered with restrained force, and when he felt the damp, desperate stroke of her tongue against the seam of his lips, he thought she’d killed him.

  She clung weakly to him, and he was undone for her. Undone with her words, her kiss.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Cade. You … blew me over. Even the first night we were together, I stopped praying to get better and just prayed to have a little more time with you.”

  “Who should I thank, baby? Tell me, who should I thank for bringing you into my life? God, baby? Your generous heart, looking for help from an asshole like me? Tell me.”

  He kissed her, hungrily, desperately, while one last tear slipped down her cheek, and when he drew her onto his lap so he could hold her tight, she gripped his shirt in her little fists and nuzzled his neck, squirming urgently on top of him. Then, he felt her. Hot where he was hot. Wet where he was wet. His need catapulted to such alarming levels, his fingers trembled as he slipped them through the gaping hole of her torn top, carefully touching her skin.

  She whimpered as he stroked around her belly button.

  His heartbeat picked up to an unbearable speed as she suddenly eased off her tattered shirt, then she rolled off him and slid off her little skirt.

  He watched her bare every inch of herself to him, and he would never forget the way she looked as she lay on her back in his bed. Completely naked
, except for the small dressings on the bottoms of her breasts, her lashes golden, her eyes shining for him, she was the most gut-wrenchingly beautiful thing he had ever seen—in all of his thirty-five years.

  He felt earthquakes in his stomach as he cupped her head, stroking his hands along her scalp and pulling her in for a slow, drugging kiss. “From now on, that’s the way I want you when you get in my bed. I want my skin to feel every inch of yours, Ivy, every inch,” he murmured.

  “I’m twisted in knots, Cade,” she said, breathing into his mouth, grasping the front of his shirt. “I need to be with you. I need to.”

  His blood bubbling at her words, he uncurled the fingers of one of her hands and then forced it flat above his heart, where it beat like crazy. “I ache, too.”

  His cock throbbed in his jeans, desperate to join their bodies again.

  “My chest hurts, too.” She nodded as she took his hand, then slowly guided it down her flat abdomen, and lower, to the glistening folds at the apex of her legs. “And here. I ache, too.”

  She pressed his hand there, where her liquid heat seeped into his palm like a live volcano ready to erupt. Cade couldn’t help it, his need was too strong, so he cupped her in his hand for a whole minute, aching to rub and stroke her to orgasm, his every nerve and fiber screaming for him to settle down between her legs and bury himself inside of her. “Ivy…”

  “We’ll be careful, Cade.”

  He met her imploring honeyed gaze while he battled for control. The heel of his palm perfectly cupped her swelling slit and he felt the tiny frissons of need overtaking her little body.

  His insides coiled with restraint.

  God, he wanted her …

  But the bottom swells of her breasts were covered with bandages, the incisions leaving faint pink blood marks on the white gauze. Her nipples still looked so sore, so puckered. Raw, almost, from the procedure. His tongue felt heavy with the need to lave them.

  “Ivy … we can’t make love now.”

  She cupped his jaw and rose upward to brush her lips across his, her breath sweet and warm on his face. “Cade West doesn’t make love, remember?”

  He couldn’t help reaching behind her to fist her hair, intending to hold her for a kiss, and when he realized she had nothing to grab, he cupped the round curve of her scalp instead and devoured her for a full minute, gasping when he tore away. “Cade West makes love only to Ivy.”

  They shared a look that spoke volumes, said everything they needed to know and more, and Cade stopped talking. His throat closed, his feelings too close to the surface, his passion running too deep as he held her, as Ivy clasped him back like she needed him to keep going, to fuel her fight, her energy reserves.

  “Please,” she gasped, nuzzling his neck and grasping at his shoulders. “Please, please, fill me up with you. We’ll be careful.”

  Her voice broke, and her face crumpled when she looked up at him. He could see all of her fears in those eyes. Fears that it would happen to her, the same thing that had happened with Laura. “You’re not going to be able to do this are you?” she asked.

  He couldn’t breathe, his constricted chest felt shackled down. “Ivy.”

  “Please don’t pity me.”

  Gritting his teeth, he took her hand and set it unerringly over his throbbing cock, a giant motherfucker that was bursting in his pants, bursting with semen for her. He wanted to brand her, to spill himself on every inch of this woman, and shout at both God and the devil that if they wanted to take her, they would need to go through him first.

  He felt the way his eyes blazed into her, piercing her until his words penetrated her stubbornness. “Is that pity to you? Do you call that pity?” He grabbed her face harder than he’d planned and kissed her, a kiss without holding back, that let her know in every way possible that as soon as he could, he was going to fuck the living daylights out of her. “I want you, Ivy. I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in my life—I take you in my sleep. I take you any way I can get you, any fucking time I can. When have I not?”

  He didn’t understand why the need to take Ivy was even greater since he found out she was sick. Perhaps the way he’d felt for Laura had been different. They were young, their love more innocent. They hadn’t hurt yet. When they’d “loved” each other they had everything going for them. Cade’s family did well, so did hers. They were an adored couple. She was a good girl, and a woman he would be proud to have raise his children.

  Physically, Laura may have been too pure for him, too good for the ways he needed to take a woman.

  Ivy fed his soul. Her hurt meshed with his. Covered his. Her body’s hunger both stimulated and appeased him. She was his … pair. His mate. The very first woman he’d claimed.

  He felt bound to her, and knew that she was bound to him, by something beyond the physical, beyond this plane. This was why she was here. Why he would not let her leave his damn bed, unless she was taking him with her.

  He covered her lips with his once more, never having been surer of anything in his life than what he felt for her. She shuddered, leaning against him in sensual invitation, which made him groan. “Let’s ask your doctors how soon, baby. And then, nothing on this earth will keep me from having you.”

  She leaned back on the pillow, and her breasts rose and fell on each breath, as though his words had aroused her even more. “He said tomorrow, Cade.”

  “Please don’t fuck with me now, Ivy.”

  “I promise you. He said tomorrow. But he doesn’t know us, Cade. He doesn’t know us … that we need this so much. That we burn so much.”

  She fingered her pussy with her hand, one light, feathery stroke, and for the effect it had on him, she might have been stroking her tongue all over his balls.

  Burning inside his skin, he bent over her and skimmed his hands along her body, looking at her nipples, wanting to devour her with every inch of his mouth, throbbing to sear himself to her and become one. Just one. He bent to her ear while lightly, very lightly, passing a hand over her breast.

  “Pretend I’m kissing these beauties, because that’s all I want to do.” He licked around the shell of her ear, losing a fraction of his control when she let out a breathy moan. “I want to lick them like your ear. They’re the prettiest nipples I’ve ever seen. The loveliest breasts I’ve ever seen. I’m dying to watch them bounce all over me when you straddle me.”

  Her eyes watered. “You can watch them now while you fuck me.”

  He slid his hands down her hips, around her thighs, and then, to search between those little rose petals inside her labia. “Promise me not to move a single muscle, baby. Promise me you’re going to let me do all the work?”

  She grew breathless as his fingers stroked. “I promise you.”

  “Where will your hands be?”

  “Wherever you tell me.”

  He could hear the slick sounds of his fingers sliding along her slit, up to the tight nub above. “Wherever it doesn’t hurt.”

  “As long as I don’t move them fast it doesn’t hurt, and I need to touch you. To feel you.”

  Suddenly desperate, he jerked off his shirt and his pants, and once naked, eased his body over hers, her bare legs deliciously entangled with his, their abdomens warm where they touched. She set her hands on his shoulders as he continued caressing beneath her thighs, and he felt like he’d just come back to life when she rubbed his shoulders, her touch combined with her pussy juices combined with her moans combined with the look in her eyes were about the most provocative things in his life.

  “Ivy,” he groaned.

  “Cade.”

  He grazed his thumb over her clit and Ivy flung her head back with a strangled sob. Her wetness seeped around his finger, and if he weren’t about to take her to heaven, he would have traded his soul with a much lesser being just to be able to push inside her again. To feel her all around him.

  “You’ve never been this swollen,” he said roughly, bending to lick his tongue across her lips. Slick and ho
t, her pussy was more than ready for him, and he didn’t make her wait. Not her. Not him.

  It wasn’t physical, what they needed, but far deeper.

  He wedged his hips between her legs, both their breathing ragged but somehow synchronized, and yet rather than kiss her, Cade carefully kept an eye on her expression to make sure he wasn’t hurting her. The way she looked would be permanently imprinted in his mind as he buried himself inside her; her face tightened, her eyes flared, her pink mouth parted open …

  She gasped, and then her eyes drifted shut as she grimaced with pleasure. “Oooh, Cade … Always so hard for me, Cade.”

  He gritted his teeth at the milking sensation of her vagina, his cock pulsing violently within her, already jerking with come.

  “Argh! Don’t move, Ivy, or I’ll lose it.”

  “Cade,” she groaned, tossing her head, her fingernails digging into his shoulders. “It feels too good.”

  “Baby, stay still and let me.”

  He pulled out, cursing the pleasure, knowing he wasn’t going to last. He added his middle finger into her sheath, watching her eyes glaze over as she parted her thighs wider. When he added his thumb and she tossed her head again side to side, he slowly withdrew his hand and eased his cock back in, the air hissing from his teeth as her snug grip grabbed and dragged him in deeper.

  Her panting breasts made his mouth salivate, the heavy-lidded look in her eyes as he buried himself inside her pushing him to the brink, especially when her hips started rocking.

  He groaned. “God, what did I tell you, Ivy?”

  She was past listening, her hands fisted on the sheets at her sides, her hips swinging up and down, round and round, her eyes sealed shut, her head rolling side to side as her breaths tore out of her chest and she started moaning, provoking him with every jab of her hips. Pleasure slapped him from all over the place, splitting him apart.

  He braced himself up on his arms and delved all the way inside and let her do the rest, and holy mother of God, white-hot arrows of ecstasy shot through his bloodstream with every ripple of her pussy, milking the come out of his cock.