Bared by Him:

  His temperature rose at the sight of those lace-encased breasts and her small, slim body straddling him, her porcelain skin glistening with sweat, her mouth swollen red and as inflamed as his own mouth felt. “Take off your panties and put me inside you,” he gruffly commanded.

  Her smile faded, and because he feared she was going to deny him, he reached up and grabbed the back of her head and hauled her in for one of those hot kisses they were so good at, making her breathless again, as breathless as she made him.

  “Do it, Ivy,” he ordered, palming her breasts as she pushed her panties aside and took his throbbing cock inside her. “Put me inside you … ah, yes.”

  He fell back. A hissing sound tore from his throat as she seated herself over him, her sex open for him to perfectly watch the way he entered her and the way her pretty, glistening folds parted for his cock to slide between them. He released a growl of appreciation and held her small hips in his big hands, letting her set the pace.

  She chose a slow one. Making sounds. It was killing him. His eyes rolled in the back of his head and he tossed his head on the pillow and grimaced as he tried to keep from rolling her beneath him and fucking her hard. “Faster, baby.”

  She grabbed his jaw, her lips on his. He groaned in pure male pleasure when her mouth opened wide over his. Another sound, deeper, needier, tore from his chest as he parted his mouth and thrust inside her. It almost hurt to kiss her, their mouths were abraded and raw. And yet neither of them would stop.

  They groaned in unison, the tip of their teeth scraping as their tongues danced, twined, tasted.

  He grabbed her ass, and his hips swiveled as his cock drove into her slick, swollen pussy.

  He ached to fill her, his balls tight and heavy. His cock was ready to burst every time it was squeezed by the tight walls of her creamy passage.

  He buried his face in her neck, every atom in his body ready to detonate. “You come with me, Ivy … Come…”

  He drew back and could see her little face twist with pleasure, her hips rolling frantically above him.

  In one swift move, he pulled her underneath him and slid his hand between their bodies to tease the moistened folds with his hand.

  He slid his torso between her thighs and parted her labia with his thumbs so that his lips could greedily lock around her sweet little clit. With a gentle sucking motion, he drew the bud into his mouth, then rolled it with his tongue as he shafted two long fingers inside her.

  The noises she made destroyed him. Each moan, each sigh, sliced through him and fisted around his aching balls.

  “Cade.” Ivy rolled her head and stroked his hair while he worshipped between her legs. Cade lapped her up like a man possessed, luxuriating in the thick, creamy taste of her. He groaned against her clit, his fingers pleasuring her until her small frame tensed and then released in wild, sexy shudders. The sight of her coming shot his pulse to the roof. His cock jerked jealously, and his blood stormed through his body with an avalanche of sensations. He dove for the packet of condoms he’d bought hours before she’d arrived, dreaming he was going to get to tumble in bed with her.

  He rolled one on with unsteady hands, secured her parted thighs around his hips and positioned himself to enter.

  Ivy watched him, dewy eyed and heavy-lidded, still shuddering on the bed as the tip of his erection eagerly probed and pried her entrance apart.

  She clutched his arms, her eyes heavy, her breasts rising and falling. “Kiss me while you fuck me, please.”

  Her words unraveled him. Her pussy parting for him, then closing hot and snug around his width, released a torrent of pleasure through his nerve endings.

  Cade bent over her and dragged his swollen lips all across her red-stained mouth as he thrust deeper into her damp, snug grip with a greedy grunt, plowing one, two, three times. That was all it took to make him groan out her name as he rode his orgasm, kissing her while they both shattered.

  Chapter Three

  In the morning Cade sat at his desk, hands steepled before him as he stared unseeingly at an e-mail, deep in thought. His chest experienced a strange opening sensation when he heard his assistant say, “Miss Ivy Summers to see you, sir.”

  His heart flipped, and all of a sudden the blood in his veins boiled, rushing to his groin with the mere sound of her name. He glanced at his Patek Philippe watch and noted the time.

  “Cancel my eleven o’clock,” he instructed. “Hold all my calls.”

  Thoughts of last night toppled over each other. Her swollen mouth. Her dampened camisole clinging to her slim little body. Her wet panties. Her smooth, lean arms and legs.

  When Ivy walked in, he was rocked by the sight of her. Not a dream, not a fantasy, she was real, and he was hard as granite and trembling, his hands curling at his sides to keep from grabbing her to him.

  Instead he slowly stood, taking in the tan skirt and cream blouse, and how her waist was hugged by a thick leather belt, which only made her look curvier and sexier.

  His own hunger almost devoured him. This need for her frightened him. He was a solitary man, had been too angry, too lonely, for too many years. Sunlight streamed through his office window and it caressed every inch of her skin, skin that he wanted to lick again, touch again, feel again. Holy God, he wanted her so much, he was afraid he’d kill her from screwing her so hard.

  “Close the door.” He attempted to keep his voice level, but the coarseness in it revealed his out-of-control arousal. Her eyes widened in response, but she reached with wavering hands behind her and pushed the door closed. Snap.

  His vision blurred as his nerve endings came alive with desire. “Lock it.”

  She reached behind her, then paused, looking both alarmed and needy as she stood there. “Cade, I can’t be in a relationship right now.”

  “Lock the door, Ivy,” he said with more force, his control slipping. He remembered how she’d twisted beneath him yesterday, how he’d been afraid to hurt her as he took her, how she seemed to like it. To want it.

  Click.

  She turned the lock, her hands shaking, but her honey eyes were both pleading with him and ravenous as they watched him. He removed his jacket and flung it over his chair.

  Her voice broke with palpable need. “I can’t do this, Cade.”

  All he heard was the need inside her, calling to his own urgency. He yanked on the knot of his tie, then pulled it over his head, his thighs both liquid and tense to pounce her, his fingers itching to touch her. “We’re not killing bunnies, Ivy. It’s only sex, baby,” he said huskily.

  She looked bewildered and just as scared shitless of this as he was as she leaned back against the door for support, her breasts rising and falling fast. “But I can’t have anything serious.”

  “I just want to play with you,” he whispered, his voice thick. He feared it was more than that, but he’d deal with that later. Right now, he just wanted her.

  Her fingernails raked the door behind her. “Next week, I have something important to do. And I’ll be unavailable for at least two weeks.”

  “Then let’s fuck like the devil before you leave.” He slid off his Ferragamo belt and draped it on the back of his chair, then he reached for his collar buttons, his heart kicking harder into his ribs with every passing second. “This morning I wanted you, and you were gone.”

  She watched as he unbuttoned his shirt, and her thirsty amber eyes almost gobbled him up.

  “I wanted you, too,” she croaked. She licked her lips as his tanned skin was revealed to her. “But I still need to search for more donation candidates, and I always have a green smoothie in the morning and my … vitamins and things were at my place.”

  “Bring them over this evening.” He yanked his shirt off and as he draped it over the back of his chair, he watched Ivy kick off her shoes and reach beneath her skirt to pull off her panties. Holy God, he wanted her.

  Ivy … Ivy … Ivy …

  The name drummed in his mind like a heartbeat as he started toward her. Ivy.
A penitence. Or maybe, a salvation. A new start. Something beautiful and alive. So damned beautiful and so damned alive …

  Her belt clattered to the floor, and his hands went like vises around her small waist, crushing her against his body. Soft and exquisitely fragile, she all but melted into him when he engulfed her lips with his own. She made a sound—between a moan and a gasp and a sigh—and he almost came undone as she leaned helplessly against him.

  He held her tight and firm against his bare chest and swept his tongue as deep as he could, clashing with her own tongue, already coming anxiously in past his lips. Her touch detonated him, the brush of their tongues sparking him up until he was all fire. She detonated, too. Trembling against him. Sliding her fingers into his hair.

  Their kiss went from blazing hot to supernova, and his arousal was now painful. He had been dead for years, but now he couldn’t get enough of her. He couldn’t get enough of her. She had a freckle right under her chin, and it drove him insane when she tilted her face back and let him see it. When she’d straddled and rode him last night, he’d wanted to go up and lick her there. Everywhere. God.

  “Cade…” She moaned. Her whole body vibrated against him.

  He covered that freckle with a damp swipe of his tongue. “Are you here for my money or this?” he murmured, the mist of their breaths mingling as he lowered his mouth. He was cupping her buttocks now, gripping them until he’d crammed nearly all her flesh into his hands, his tongue lapping at her mouth.

  He pulled her skirt all the way up, until it gathered at her hipbone. She moaned when he touched her crotch and found her labia soaked already. “Oh, God, I never knew I could need something like this,” she gasped.

  In that instant he pressed her back against the door, leaning his full weight on her in his urgency to get closer. His knee nudged her thighs apart as he took both her wrists in one hand and yanked her arms above her head, pinning them there.

  With his free hand, he pulled his pants down with quick, hard jerks, and with a desperation he’d never known, he thrust up inside her. She made a sharp, keening sound, needy and wanton and beautiful, and he groaned in response.

  She hooked one leg around him to open herself wider and he muffled her soft sound of surrender with his mouth.

  He was holding up her hands and wanted to see her breasts, suck them, and was using his free hand to try to tug aside her blouse. “Help me take this off,” he said gruffly.

  She yanked open the top buttons, squirming restlessly. He saw another freckle, a lovely little thing at the rising swell of one breast, and he dove to lick it like mad. “Take it all off. Let me suckle you, Ivy. Let me kiss your breasts and suck your sweet nipples into my mouth.”

  She fumbled but couldn’t. Anxious, Cade boosted her up and carried her to his desk and spread her over the papers, hearing a big crash.

  He gritted his teeth in frustration when he remembered a condom, reaching for his pants again and grabbing the one he’d jammed in there this morning. He rolled it on, his vision clouding at the sight of her golden hair splayed behind her, her glistening sex gaping for him. He wedged between her thighs and wrapped her legs around him, then he laced his hands through hers and pinned them above her head as he rammed into her with a hard thrust, pulsing as he dragged in and out, in and out.

  Her little hands squeezed his tighter as he sank his cock into her flesh and plunged up to her core. He started a rhythm. Couldn’t wait, couldn’t stop.

  As he sucked her tongue into his mouth, he drove into her with all-mighty force, swinging his hips fast and hard, until he shattered and twisted above her, his eyes closed, his world tilting as he trembled against her. Ivy convulsed beneath him, crying out softly, and when he let her hands go, she hung onto him so damned tight it was as if she’d never let go of him.

  And then, Cade wondered if he ever would.

  A minute later, he was still sprawled over her small body on his desk, struggling to come back from the moon. His cock was still inside her. He didn’t want to pull out, was luxuriating in the pleasure of doing nothing except staring down into her face, just for the pleasure of it. Those soft eyes. That soft smile. She studied him back as though she liked his face as much as he liked hers.

  Their chests seemed to rise and fall at the same time.

  He scraped his palm over her lovely long hair, pushing a sweaty tendril back, his voice surprising him in its tenderness. “At what time can you be ready for me to send a car tonight?”

  She straightened herself with a noise that told him she wasn’t precisely happy about moving yet, and when he had no choice but to withdraw from inside her, she scrambled to retrieve her panties from the floor. “I can’t tonight. I have a dinner I’ll be speaking at.”

  Cade unrolled the condom with care, then grabbed some Kleenex from his desk to clean himself. “I’ll go with you.”

  She shot him a wary glance, then slipped on her panties and wrapped her belt around herself. “It’s about cancer, Cade.”

  He clamped a jaw at that, cursing himself over and over again.

  Dammit.

  Silently, he walked over to his desk to pull out the cashier’s check.

  “What time does it end?”

  * * *

  Ivy hurried home to change before the Lincoln Heights Breast Cancer Foundation gala dinner. She touched her lips, and they tingled for him. Her entire body, from the tip of her toes to the roots of her hair, felt warm and fluttery for him.

  Quickly shaking off her fantasizing, she headed to her kitchen, jammed a fresh head of broccoli into her Vitamix blender, added a cup of spinach, a bit of flaxseeds, some cauliflower, salt, a lemon including the peel, lots of water, and then she covered it all and sent it spinning.

  Ivy necessarily screened herself for cancer every six months, because apparently when your mother had it, your risk of getting it was higher. But in the natural circles, cruciferous vegetables were touted as being huge cancer preventers, especially if you ate them raw and had several servings of them a day. Ivy had been practically breathing them ever since she heard of their healing properties.

  Pulling off the top of the blender, she poured the shake and added several drops of graviola, another powerful anticancer plant which destroyed malignant cells. She’d ordered it from a company in the Amazonian forest and had decided to test it several months before recommending it around the foundation. Just to make sure it didn’t have strange side effects.

  This shake tasted like shit, not like those she added fruits to. But she was in a hurry today, and she had to get it down.

  She swallowed it gulp by gulp as she headed for her bedroom and opened up the shower.

  And there, in the shower, his pale silver eyes and sable black hair and dirty mouth were once again in her head. God.

  How long had it been since she’d felt a man’s hands on her body?

  How long had it been since she’d wanted to be kissed?

  It felt like the girl who’d wanted that was a whole other person, not the woman who’d awakened in Cade West’s brutally tender arms.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and touched her breasts as the shower water rained down on her, wishing to feel his mouth on them …

  She became so aroused fantasizing about him, she had to turn the water temperature to cold. She gasped from the shock and then shook herself, because, really? This wasn’t the time to be daydreaming. Focus was key at this point in her life, and she had to keep her involvement with him to the only thing it could be.

  A temporary fling—not even an affair.

  Which, thankfully, was about the only thing a powerful billionaire like Cade West would desire from her.

  In fact, the man would probably be tired of her by tomorrow morning.

  Which only made her more determined to enjoy him while she could.

  * * *

  Cade instantly regretted coming to the gala dinner when he saw all those bald heads scattered throughout the tables. Bald little heads that made him want to turn ta
il and run. Instead, he fought the chicken-shit impulse, locked his jaw, braced his legs, and stood like a sentry by the entrance, suddenly realizing he could hear Ivy’s lively voice through the microphone.

  He lifted his gaze, and his heart did some strange maneuvers when he spotted her center stage. There she was. Ivy, glowing and healthy, standing at the podium, her voice clear and convincing.

  She looked so damned lovely in that white skirt and a white form-fitting blouse with silver sparkles at the collar that he curled his fingers into his palms from the sheer way they ached to make a grab for her.

  She was relating some sort of survival rate list to the attendees, where everyone clapped after each mention.

  “Mary Ellen Wolfander, going for six years now!”

  Clap clap clap.

  “Kathleen Marie Anise, well into four years now!”

  Clap clap clap.

  Cade didn’t glance around to see those who stood. His eyes just refused to leave Ivy.

  She’d gathered her hair up in a twist that revealed her throat, exposing the tender skin between her shoulder and neck. Cade could clearly see, though she’d seemed to have applied makeup, the exact spot where he’d sucked her skin into his mouth yesterday.

  His teeth suddenly ached. That small pink hickey was teased by a blond wisp of hair that fell there, and fuck, what he wouldn’t do to brush that wisp aside, to press a kiss to the steady pulse that fluttered just under her skin, to cup those fragile little shoulders in his hands, push her down on the floor, suck her into his mouth, and bury all his pain inside her again.

  But little bald heads kept popping up in the room and a sensation of blackness opened in his chest. A dark cloud hovered above him, pressuring him.

  There were men here, too. Some maybe sick, some supporting the women. All he knew was that none of them deserved this. Nobody did. But they were here. Supporting each other. Quiet and attentive to her words. The entire room seemed to belong to her. Even Cade.

  He felt both touched and frustrated and transfixed, all at the same time, as she finished with the phrase, “Remember, fighters make survivors. May God bless you all!”