Bared by Him:

  “Cade!” His name was a breathless plea, and it made his face tighten as he watched her writhe. He repeated the double penetration of his index fingers.

  “Show me how much you like this, baby. I can tell you do. Your pussy walls won’t let go of me.”

  Her throat clamped down on any words, for what he was giving her was past pleasure, past bliss, past ecstasy. There wasn’t a name for it. No name for the way the flames consumed her. Took her. Shook her.

  Her head thrashed behind her and her spine arched helplessly, his fingers scraping her insides in a preamble to his possession.

  Her breasts jiggled in her bra, and then he slid his hands up her abdomen, his eyes drawn to them. She wanted to tear her bra off and beg him to kiss her there. To love her boobs, because she did not.

  Tiny spasms seized her, zinged in her pussy. Her straining nipples hurt against her bra.

  “Pinch your nipples for me,” he commanded.

  As she pinched them hard enough to shoot pleasure down to her toes, he pressed the head of his cock to the ultrasensitive slit of her pussy. Pleasure ripped through her as he entered her, inch by inch, with tormenting slowness, so that every cell in her body was aware of every inch of his cock, advancing inside her.

  He reached around her and rubbed her ass between his hands, molding the flesh like clay, all while he scraped his cock against her moistened slit. She could feel the need in him like something palpable, in the ragged sound of his breath, the roughness in his voice.

  She trembled when he teased the tip of his cock out of her, then nudged her clit with it. Then, he thrust it back in.

  His thrusts turned rough, impressed by coarse, short grunts and lengthy guttural groans. A red-hot animal need had overpowered him, and her, and they were fucking like it.

  Like animals.

  “Argh! You feel so. Incredibly. Good.” His guttural voice on her ear drove her within reach of her orgasm. Her every muscle contracted as she squeezed her cunt around his strokes.

  Her lips parted on a quiet gasp and her eyes rolled back as her climax crashed over her, taking her with it, drowning her with wave after wave of white-hot pleasure. Cade gorged his thick shaft inside her and let out a carnal, inarticulate sound as his large frame bucked, and then he rocked in spasm after spasm, pumping her all the time he came inside her.

  She was still gasping when he fell on top of her, quickly propping himself up on his elbows to ease some of his weight off her and stroke one hand across her forehead.

  She hummed appreciatively, her eyes drifting shut as she fought to come back to earth.

  He brought his mouth to her ear and grazed her skin as he whispered, “You look like a woman well tended to.”

  She opened her eyes to find him gazing down at her with a cocky smile. She was sure, without having to say it, he could see her feelings in her eyes like in a magic scry. “And you look very pleased about it,” she teased, but she suddenly wished she didn’t want to cry.

  Tomorrow, this was all over.

  She bit her lip and turned around, giving him her back so he didn’t notice her chin started to tremble. Thank God he missed it.

  The mattress shifted when he eased himself off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom to get cleaned, and she took the time to compose herself.

  Watching him return to the room naked, Ivy drew in a breath and moved to recline on the headboard, adjusting her panties and bra.

  Seeing his cock in its new unhardened state felt slightly like spying, taking a glimpse of a still very threatening but far more vulnerable side of him.

  He still looked formidable. His cock so thick and long it dangled heavily between his powerful thighs.

  His abdomen was deliciously ridged by six hard, muscled squares. His chest, arms, and legs were lean and hard and corded, and those endless yards of luscious bronzed skin currently gleamed with sweat.

  She had never seen something so beautiful.

  He dropped down beside her. He kissed her on the lips and stroked his hand along her hair. “I like playing with you, Ivy.”

  Her voice was thick and craggy. “I like playing with you, too.”

  She felt him kiss the top of her head and tuck her into his neck, and with his arm around her shoulders, he fell asleep within minutes.

  She lay against him for a long time, studying his profile, seeing his chest rise and fall, his naked body glistening in the moonlight. She slept for a few hours, but woke up several times during the night, restless, consumed by a thousand emotions, one of them totally new and alien to her, totally directed at the man on the bed.

  He fucked her once, almost asleep, almost automatically, but always it felt as if he needed her to live. As if he needed her as much as she needed him.

  The next time when she lay awake, he seemed to sense her breathing was different from his. He stirred on the mattress, he was so big that it creaked under his weight, and then he stretched out a powerful arm, as if looking for her, and then gathered her at his side.

  He buried his face in the back of her neck and sighed before he started breathing deeply again. Her heart hurt in her chest, because she never thought he could be such a gentle lover and so passionate at once. She never knew he would gather his friends’ money, and pretend he didn’t want to help, but did.

  She knew her body wanted him. She just hadn’t expected her heart would, too.

  Tomorrow was Monday, and Ivy couldn’t stand to think of not seeing him for a day, much less a week, much less maybe for forever.

  She had felt like she’d taken a vacation from reality, and come tomorrow, it would all be back.

  She didn’t want it to be.

  She wished she could stay here, where nothing could ever touch her but him.

  Chapter Five

  I have to go. I really have to go.

  Cade rubbed his eyes wearily, making his way around Ivy’s apartment for one last time. He’d put on coffee for himself, and now waited for it to bubble up. He hadn’t slept shit last night, but he wasn’t about to tell Ivy. She had lain real close to him and had bad dreams, tossing all night.

  She’d been sweating and then she’d sighed, and then she’d moaned as though tortured by some faceless villain Cade had wanted to punch. Even after he’d fucked her and come all over her and she’d gone back to sleep, she’d … been trembling. Not in the way he enjoyed her to tremble for him, but in a way that made him lose his sleep, as well.

  Cade just wanted to know what the hell she was so afraid of, so he could show her she didn’t need to be. He wanted to hold her real close and yet he couldn’t … just like he couldn’t protect Laura. Because Ivy was gone today, out to save the world—or at least part of it—from cancer.

  Damn it!

  The unexpected effects she had on him were not diminishing, as he’d supposed they would if he’d gotten her out of his system. Anger, lust, need, these feelings had emerged so raw he felt sore every time they were together, drunk with her nearness. He couldn’t even meet that innocent honey-eyed gaze for fear of sacking her right there, taking her right there. Mine.

  My. Woman. My. Woman. My woman.

  His soul seemed to be crying out for him to do something about it. But if he didn’t want her to loathe his black devil self for not supporting her cause, then he’d known he’d had to let her go today. Despite the warning flags, the deafening bells in his ears. Despite every cell in his body screaming at him not to. Despite those wide troubled honeyed eyes that had tugged at his most basic, protective instincts. But what did he want to protect her from? He could see it in her gaze when he refused to acknowledge the disease she wanted to combat that she thought he was being petty and small. He didn’t want to be that man to her.

  Still, he couldn’t forget, couldn’t stop hearing that tiny, quivering voice in his head. I have to go. I really have to go.

  Something in her voice—something heart-wrenching and as real as the fist that suddenly curled around his gut—made him feel edgy today.

/>   “How long will you be gone?” he’d asked only an hour ago.

  “A week or two … maybe three. I’ll let you know.”

  He’d kissed her, feeling a little desperate. “Make it one.”

  It was drizzling outside, and as he poured his coffee, the phone rang. He ignored the rings, but he couldn’t help listening to the message left there when the answering machine picked up.

  Miss Ivy Summers, we did not hear from you Friday, so this is another friendly reminder of your procedure of a lumpectomy with possible mastectomy to be done by Dr. Jeff Sabella this morning at ten a.m. at the Prestons Hospital of Chicago …

  The drizzle outside was turning into a wild thunderstorm, and Cade stared at his coffee as he tried not to go back in the past to the time he’d heard his wife was getting one, too. No. Instead he was at the charity dinner less than a week ago, watching as dozens of people hugged Ivy and wished her luck and cried on her shoulder. It had not been because she needed more donations. When she’d said she couldn’t have anything serious with him, it wasn’t because she was too busy. It was because she was sick.

  Ivy.

  Was sick.

  Raw pain opened like a rabid monster inside his chest. His hands curled into fists, as a rush of emotions so deep, so dark, and so painful cut through him, he barely registered that he’d grabbed his coffee cup in his hand. It went crashing to the floor. Followed by the nearest lamp. He ground his footing as the vases on the coffee table exploded on the walls. He wasn’t even conscious of what he did, he only heard glass shattering, paper tearing, pillows being ripped to shreds, the sounds muffled by furious, heart-wrenching bellows that tore from his chest.

  He’d never thought a human being could make a sound like that; it was torn from his gut and some newly vacant, hollow piece of himself.

  He thought he’d shatter like everything he threw.

  He thought he’d die when Laura died.

  He’d pulled himself together—and continued on. Out of sheer stubborn will.

  Nothing would ever be the same for him. Deep down, Cade had known that life would forever lose its glitz. Until … Ivy.

  Sick, beautiful, lying little Ivy.

  * * *

  Ivy stared at herself in the mirror of the hospital bathroom while the humming sound of the razor moved across her scalp. She’d been diagnosed over a month ago with stage 2A breast cancer, having found in her regular checkup a 2 cm tumor in her breast, which had thankfully not yet spread to the axillary lymph nodes.

  Still, because of the placement so close to the nodes, a dose of chemotherapy and radiation were to be done right after the surgery, to ensure no malignant tissue remained. All her friends said how helpless they’d felt when they’d watched themselves shed their hair. Every day finding lumps of it everywhere.

  Ivy didn’t want to feel helpless. She’d rather go Sinead O’Connor, who’d looked as beautiful as a princess with her shaven head, and she’d rather take her hair off by herself.

  This was better.

  She felt air caress her scalp as it all fell down, and she reminded herself that it would grow back. It was just hair. Just hair.

  She stared blankly into her own eyes as she mechanically went through all of her head, remembering the way Cade had pulled her to him before she left. Make it a week.

  Oh, God. Her eyes burned as she thought of having to tell him.

  She’d never thought she would have to. You did not just meet someone and open with the sentence, “I have cancer.” And even when she’d let herself enjoy the pleasure of being with him, she’d never imagined they would get involved beyond a … one-night stand. Or several.

  Cade was angry and strong. He didn’t care about anything. She’d thought that she would have a fling, because, why not? She’d felt angry and helpless, totally betrayed by her own body, and when he’d touched her, igniting all those incredible sensations within her … oh, God, how could anyone withstand that without breaking? He’d made her feel alive, and in those bleak hours when she wondered whether this disease was going to be the end of her soon, she’d ached to live whatever she had to the max.

  The thought of him made the painful burning in her chest spread up to her throat. She hadn’t cried when she’d found the lump on her right breast. It was hidden and very deep inside, but the mammogram had revealed it was a baddie, and it had to come out as soon as possible.

  Ivy had thought of her mother, of all the women who had this, and she had doubled her efforts to help them. She’d quit her job as a graphic designer and lived off both her savings and her mother’s inheritance, which was enough to live comfortably for several years, then she’d plunged wholeheartedly in to helping other women who were in the same position as Ivy, or worse.

  It wasn’t fair to feel helpless and alone. It wasn’t fair to be a woman, the nurturing force in the world, and not be supported to go on. If this disease took Ivy as fast as it had taken her mother, then she would now at least look back at herself with pride, thinking that if she didn’t survive this, then there were many other women who would. They would have enough funds and the support to aid them in their fight for years, and their stories would inspire many other women to come. She’d wanted to gather the most money possible before her procedure, in case she had no time to do much more, and she’d had her heart set on Cade West’s help.

  Well, she had not erred with him. Not even a little.

  Now she swallowed back her tears and set down the razor. It was still her face … with a small, rounded scalp, her lashes were still big, and her eyes were still honey. But, the real, honest to God fear in her eyes was a stranger to her.

  Her chin trembled. But she wasn’t going to cry, not when there was still a chance that she could win this.

  She may “come back” in several weeks, with a new growth of short hair, and she could tell Cade she’d cut it in solidarity with some of her friends. She could tell him a lot of things … she could tell him everything except that she’d had cancer.

  Would it be bad to lie to him, if the cancer went away?

  She wanted him too much to risk losing him. And that was exactly what she would not allow this disease to take from her. She would die before she let this disease take it from her.

  The only chance of love she’d ever had in her life.

  Splashing water onto her face and scalp, she toweled dry, then mentally went through her options as she got prepared for the procedure. In the hospital room, in the bed, she closed her eyes and waited for them to take her to the appointed surgery location.

  The nurses came in and out, in and out, but suddenly footsteps came in, and there was such silence when they stopped near the end of the bed that Ivy wondered if she’d suddenly gone deaf. And then she heard him.

  “Ivy.”

  The word was low, broken. And the impact it had on her was like a cannon blast.

  Her eyes opened, and her vision locked in on Cade like a missile target. The expression on his heartbreakingly familiar face was as harsh and gray as the storm outside. His legs were braced apart, his stance powerful, but he still looked like he’d just been told he had three minutes to live.

  Or that she did.

  He was darker against the whitewashed walls of the hospital. His eyes were red and livid, and he looked very lonely, and very big, and very capable of protecting her from everything.

  Everything but this.

  And then she became acutely aware of her position, her body spread on the bed, about to be cut open, her scalp bare and hairless …

  “No,” she gasped. Panic gripped her, and for the first time, she loathed her body, she loathed her life, she loathed this cancer, she loathed him.

  “No. No. Look away, Cade. Look away.”

  He took a step forward even as a nurse came to the door, her eyes wide.

  “I don’t want him to see me like this!” she cried to the nurse. “Please get him out out out, oh, God, please get him out!”

  She’d been saving her t
ears. Tears for when they told her she’d lost this battle. But instead, she found that she couldn’t hold them back, started feeling tiny tears tracking down her cheeks, followed by a line that wouldn’t stop, and when Cade came to her and pressed his jaw against her forehead, cupping her face in his hands so she could feel all his fingers spread over her shaved head, and when she felt his warm breath as he tried to kiss her lips she wanted to die. To die.

  She could barely speak through her sobs. “Please … go … away…” She futilely struggled against his grip, turning her head away from his hands, his kiss. Him.

  Oh, God! How could Cade ever want her now? How could he ever look at her with lust and desire now? When she was half a woman, half alive, torn in half inside?

  “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Ivy’s sobs were so uncontrollable, she couldn’t even hug herself, her arms trembled at her sides, every part of her body trembled. I’m sorry, she wanted to say. The words rushed through her mind because she’d been unfair to him and she never expected him to find this out—and if she did make it she thought she would just tell him they were not working and she would disappear from his life. I wanted something before I did this. I never thought to hurt you. You don’t care about anything, why would you care about me. Nobody should have to live through this once, much less twice …

  And then the nurse came back with something injected into the IV, and Ivy soon didn’t think anything at all.

  * * *

  Cade paced outside in the waiting room, his guts ripped to shreds. He’d hit a wall down in the hall, and now his knuckles were bleeding … leaving a trail of blood under his feet. He didn’t even feel pain. He could cut off a limb and not feel pain … for his pain was centered deep, so fucking deep inside him, he was already dying a slow death.

  He’d let down his guard with Ivy. Forgotten that he wasn’t a deserving man. Forgotten how easy it was to wish to be dead. No, he’d seen her and wanted her, wanted to be better for her. He’d thought he could be healed, he could pretend that, with her, his life could be normal like the rest of them. Pretend he could be happy with her.