dared to imagine he felt this way about her. No way she could deny him anything now. To have this much of him and not the rest would be unbearable torture. No doubt, being intimate with both a friend and her boss would bring trouble, but she’d worry about it tomorrow. She’d waited years for this moment. She wasn’t waiting anymore.
“I love you, too.”
Peace washed over his face before it darkened again. In that instant, she knew he was wondering how she could have gone to bed with one of her other friends if she loved him. It would only start a discussion that would go nowhere and get them nothing but frustration and tears.
Knowing she had mere seconds to divert him, she reached out and wrapped her fingers around his penis.
Jeremy stilled. “Kelsey ...”
It was a warning, pure and simple.
“Are you done with me, sir?”
She continued to stroke him, and he drew in a deep breath as he hardened, lengthened in her hand. “Of course not.”
Kelsey sent him a saucy smile, then glanced at his erection, now every bit as strong as before. “It appears not.”
“Vixen,” he muttered. “On your back, hands above your head.”
The command came so swiftly, it took Kelsey a moment to process. Jeremy stilled in displeasure, and she scrambled to obey.
Nodding as she arranged herself across his desk, he stroked her belly again. “Legs over the edge, sweetheart, thighs and all.”
Ridiculously eager, she quickly complied.
“Good girl. Legs spread. Wide.” The frown in his voice was reflected on his face. “Wider.”
He tapped the insides of her knees until she opened her thighs to his satisfaction. Her inner thighs burned with the stretch and effort as cool air hit her slick flesh. But nothing could cool her raging need. Hot, ready to burst, she writhed under the dark intent in his gaze. As his palms skated over her breasts, abdomen, her sex, she saw the male craving to dominate and conquer tighten his face.
Jeremy gritted his teeth, then bent to retrieve his necktie. He rounded the desk and approached her, grabbing her hands in his grip. With brisk movements, he wrapped the tie around her wrists, then secured the ends to the metal bookshelf bracket mounted into the wall above her head. Every muscle in his shoulders and forearms strained as he knotted the tie. Twice. No easy fastening, no mere ornament of bondage, this binding would hold until he released her.
“Too tight?” His tone warned her not to lie.
“No.” Her voice quivered, as did her belly.
She was literally at his mercy now. Rationally, she knew he would never hurt her. But she felt so helpless and hungry. Jeremy could either grant her pleasure or withhold it. A fact he was well aware of, given the predatory smile lifting the corners of his mouth.
“Remember, no coming until I say so.”
She had absolutely no practice trying to hold her orgasm back and wondered if she’d be able to.
“Kelsey?”
“Yes, sir.”
He ran his knuckles down her throat, between her breasts, all the way to her drenched sex. With a wicked smile, he grazed her clit. Once. Her back arched, and she gasped, staring helplessly at his dark face. There was no question he was enjoying himself.
“Your whole body is trembling. It’s beautiful to know I hold you in the palm of my hand. I can give you pleasure . . . or make you wait.”
Please, please, give me pleasure.
“Somewhat like you had the ability to choose to give or withhold sex for the last four years.”
Uh-oh. Now her real punishment would begin. The spanking . . . a mere warm-up.
“I see you understand. Do you think these last years have been easy for me, Kelsey?”
“They’ve been difficult for me, too,” she insisted.
His strong, square jaw tightened. “But you let Rhys or Tucker end your celibacy.”
She opened her mouth to explain. He held up a hand and shook his head.
“I don’t want details. You broke a promise, one I took very seriously.”
“I didn’t plan to,” she argued. “Besides, it’s not as if you’ve been without sex.”
The reality that she’d all but pushed him into other women’s arms suddenly filled her with sick regret. Instead of keeping Jeremy at a distance, she could have been with him.
Except there were her relationships with Rhys and Tucker . . .
“Ever notice how many of my dates are short brunettes with curly hair and lush figures?”
A parade of his previous girlfriends marched through her brain. Oh my God . . . “All of them.”
He nodded. “I’ve been substituting, hoping for the real thing, waiting for your feelings and desire to develop, for your trust to grow. I know I’m asking a lot of you . . . Submission, devotion. I wanted you to come to me.”
Kelsey bit her lip and tears stabbed the back of her eyes. “I didn’t know. I mean, I knew you wanted to sleep with me.”
He scoffed. “Did you think I just wanted sex?”
“I—I . . . suppose.”
Surprise flared across his face as he planted his palms on either side of her body and leaned over her. “Let me absolve you of that foolishness. I’m going to do whatever it takes to make you mine in every way. My wife, the mother of my children, my everything. I’ll be thirty-eight in two months. I’ve devoted most of my adulthood to my career. Now, I want to devote myself to you.”
She looked up at him with wide eyes, and her heart flipped. Words escaped her.
Resolution firmed his expression as he parted her legs wide again. She held in a groan and waited. A heartbeat passed, another . . . Then he caressed the inside of her thighs.
“You’re wet. Very.”
And he sounded like that pleased him.
His stare was glued to her face as he eased two fingers inside her and teased the front wall of her sex. Oh . . . wow. She sucked in a breath. That spot. He’d found it immediately. Then he settled his thumb over her clit and rubbed in torturously slow circles.
Her eyes widened as she watched him watch her, ruthless determination all over his face. He intended to drive her up hard, high, fast.
Kelsey’s entire body tensed in the charged silence and she grabbed onto his tie in desperation, spreading her thighs even wider.
“God, you look delicious. You feel incredible, so tight, your sweet pussy clamping down on my fingers, your clit swelling.”
No man had ever talked to her like that. Though she couldn’t explain why, Kelsey loved it. The rawness of his language, coupled with the wonder in his voice, the tenderness in his eyes.
And those magical, unrelenting fingers.
Orgasm began to close in on her, the ache building between her legs, became a sharp burn that rose and grew. Her cream drenched his fingers, dripped down to her back entrance. She could hardly breathe. The anticipation was overwhelming. Fighting off climax became impossible.
Just when she felt the first stirrings of her womb clench, Jeremy withdrew.
Thrashing, she shook her head in protest. “No. Please ...”
He dragged the barest touch over her clit, and she lifted her hips to the touch. He pulled away. “Please what?”
“I need you.”
“To do what?” He grazed her clit again. “Be specific. Make me believe you want me.”
Kelsey stared at him as his eyes drilled her with naked lust. A million thoughts ran through her brain as he slowly grazed her sensitive little bud again and again, keeping her on the razor’s edge of pleasure. It was splitting her open, destroying her mind. Every bit of her burned and strained for him.
Jeremy wasn’t going to relent or give in. He’d accept nothing less than total surrender.
She swallowed and said two words she’d never said in her life. “Fuck me.”
Jeremy rounded the desk, settling himself between her legs, then growled, “No. I can fuck anyone. You’re different. Try again.”
Frowning, Kelsey tried to puzzle it o
ut. She knew what she wanted, but didn’t men usually just want to get off?
Since Jeremy loved her and wanted to devote his life to her, clearly not. She’d underestimated the depth of his feeling again.
“Make love to me?”
He seized her thighs, pulled her closer, and gave her a pirate’s smile. “Yes. Now and always.”
Then Jeremy began easing into her, through her swollen, aching flesh. She burned and hissed as he pressed deep, until he’d buried every bit of himself inside her. Then he leaned over her and canted forward, going deeper still.
Kelsey grabbed the tie with a gasp. She felt him everywhere. No part of her wasn’t filled up with him: her sex, her eyes, her heart.
Jeremy groaned, long and low. “Fuck, I’ll never get enough of you. So tight. Perfect.”
Before she could comment that he felt perfect, too, he withdrew slowly, then rammed home with a power and precision that had her grabbing his tie again until her fingers were numb and she shouted his name.
“Gorgeous. Give everything to me.”
As if she could hold anything back from Jeremy.
His thumb brushed her clit again, then he leaned on his elbows, so close she could see the beads of sweat at his temples and dampening his hairline, so intimate that his breath brushed her lips. “You look flushed, needy, that pretty mouth open and ready to beg. I’ll look at this desk every day and remember your surrender.”
Kelsey looked into his eyes that had gone black with desire and swallowed. She’d look at this desk every day and remember, too. Desire clawed higher, juicing her bloodstream. She was entirely his in that moment—tied to his desk, at his mercy, filled with his cock, slave to his seductive words. She cried out as her body raced closer to the pinnacle of pleasure with each thrust.
As she clamped down on him, seconds from orgasm, he backed away, his stare chastising her. “I didn’t give you permission.”
“I don’t know how to stop it! You—ah, God . . . You make me want so bad—”
“That’s the way I want you. Could you imagine waiting another four years to feel this?”
No. At Jeremy’s first touch, she feared he’d hooked her. She was a pleasure junkie; he provided her fix.
He drove into her again, teeth gritted, shoulders bunching. Her body burned.
“I’ll never say no again,” she promised rashly. She would do anything for the pleasure just out of her reach, for the satisfaction that was so close . . . but so far away.
“You’re right; you won’t.” He backed away and covered her burning clit with his thumb again. “Come.”
In that instant, her entire body went up in flames that started with a burst of pleasure between her thighs, then raced down her legs, up her arms, crashing into her heart. Perspiration slicked their skin, blended as they strained together.
He rode her hard through her climax, muttering words that took her higher and higher. “Yes! You’re gorgeous when you’re this open to me. I’m going to fuck you every day, every night.”
The mental image of being his like this with him always simmered in her blood, keeping her aflame. With Jeremy, she didn’t feel shy about her lack of experience or her body. She didn’t want to cover herself or apologize for having more meat on her bones than she should. Instead . . . she felt possessed. She felt like the most important person in his universe.
His eyes told her that, to him, she was.
“Acknowledge me,” he demanded.
Impossible not to when he began to massage her clit again in slow circles that made her breathless. “Yes, sir. Every day. Every night.”
“Come again. For me.”
Pleasure stacked on top of desire, whipped into a frenzy by his words and touch. It sucked her into its swirl like a black hole, too big, too strong for her to escape. He was still so hard inside her, and her body was strung up tighter than ever. A million sensations cascaded through her all at once, each more stunning than the last, each taking her to a place she’d never been in her life.
“It’s too big. Too much.”
“It’s too much when I say it’s too much, Kelsey.” Jeremy grabbed her hips in a white-knuckled grip and filled every bit of her sex with his length again. “You’re mine—your body, your mouth, your pussy. Even your ass. All mine to take at will. You’re going to climax again with me inside you because I want to feel you come all over my cock. Now.”
Denying him everything he wanted—she wanted—in that moment was beyond her. He’d restrained her to his desk . . . but inside, she needed to let go, believe that the place he took her was both safe and perfect. She needed to give him her absolute trust.
With a ragged inhalation, she latched onto his stare, withdrew her mental safety net, and gave everything she was inside to him.
His eyes flared with the knowledge that she’d surrendered completely. He drove her body higher until she writhed, incoherent pleadings whispered from her lips until he smothered the cry with his mouth.
And she came.
The pleasure was unlike anything she’d ever known, skin tingling and electric, breathing suspended, her mind and heart clasped around him as she vibrated with pleasure. He shouted and came deep inside her, warm and liquid, marking her as his.
Then her consciousness faded to black.
Moments later, she came to and found Jeremy still naked in his office chair, her cradled in his lap. He’d untied her and settled her head on his shoulder.
She blinked against the harsh overhead lights, then found Jeremy’s solemn gaze. The tenderness and possessiveness there took her breath away.
“You know I can never be just your boss again.”
“I know.” Her voice trembled.
What she didn’t know, however, was what to do about Rhys. And what should she do about Tucker.
Kelsey sighed. What happened next?
CHAPTER | FOUR
Watching the sun set, Kelsey drew her legs against her chest and rested her chin on her knees, brushing away the latest bout of tears. Live oaks cast long shadows over the grassy clearing and the little pond a few feet away. The setting was peaceful but didn’t soothe the tumult inside her.
At her feet, her cell phone vibrated. Again. She now had fourteen voice mails: four from Rhys, five from Jeremy, two from Tucker, one from Tucker’s mother. So she might as well count that one from Tucker too. One from her aunt about her cousin’s upcoming bridal shower. And one from Garrison, trying to schmooze her about the Miami job because her life just wasn’t complicated enough.
She’d been hiding for two days and she still didn’t have the faintest clue what to do.
Wednesday night, after her interlude with Jeremy in his office, he’d wanted her to spend the night in his home, in his bed. She didn’t dare. Already dangerously close to agreeing to be his love slave for life, she’d reminded him of her fitting and made up excuses about caring for her parents’ animals while they were vacationing. Reluctantly, he’d let her go. She’d driven to Mom and Dad’s—and had been hiding since, dodging work with an e-mail to Jeremy telling him that she needed to think. She’d eluded Rhys with silence. Though both knew her parents lived on a ranch outside Austin, neither knew exactly where.
But Tucker . . .