But she was never cold with him.
All during the night, Daniel had replayed the way she’d walked inside and looked straight at him as though he were the apple of her eye. The warmth in her gaze when she saw him would have alerted to anyone looking that there was more to this woman than ice. But that smile, that warmth, was only for him.
Even now, he could still feel the delighted shock of her hand slipping into the crook of his arm. His entire system had zapped in recognition when he heard her light, airy, “Hey, you…”
Just that small touch of her hand had made him want to pull her closer. At five foot seven, Monica was not a petite woman, but compared to Daniel’s six foot three, she was fragile and delicate.
Rarely did either of them venture out alone to these sorts of black-tie events. It caused too much speculation, and having someone on your arm always made the evening more bearable. But she’d been alone, like him, and suddenly it had felt predestined as they kept searching each other out across the room. Daniel had barely been able to take his eyes off her.
Ever since she’d grown up, his cock didn’t seem to be getting the message that she was a friend. Still. She was his only female friend and as valuable to him as his male friends. Hell, as valuable as Chloe, his sister. She was smart and poised and as hardworking as anyone he’d ever met, and during those times growing up, when things had gotten hard for the Ice Maiden, a strange trust had been forged between Daniel and Monica.
THE ICE MAIDEN CRACKS IN THE ARMS OF THE PRINCE!
The press had had a field day with that headline. Monica had been in the eye of the storm when her parents’ divorce became the ugliest divorce in worldwide history. Even worse than any Hollywood movies had ever depicted such dramas, they’d ended up killing themselves, leaving Monica at barely eighteen to have to testify as a witness in court. The War of the Roses had nothing on the Davenports’ famed divorce.
She hadn’t batted an eyelash saying how she found them … when … what they’d shouted at each other …
Daniel still got chills remembering. Monica hadn’t wept. Hadn’t broken. Not while the jury saw. The press had been stunned, and the Ice Maiden had emerged, Monica’s poise exceeding even that of British royalty.
But the press didn’t know Monica had been unable to go back to her home and had been staying with the Lexingtons for several weeks as she got a new place ready. They didn’t know how every night before the hearing she would slip into bed and cry softly into her pillow. They didn’t know how Daniel could hear from his own room, and he’d quietly go to her, slide into bed beside her, and let her cry on him.
Something happened those evenings. They didn’t even talk. It became routine to him. To her. At first, he stayed only until she stopped crying. Later, he’d stay for hours, until they were both tired and groggy from lack of sleep the next morning.
He’d spend all day waiting for it to be nighttime just to have those stolen moments alone with her. The week before she left the household, her tears had long dried up, and yet every night after the others fell asleep and he opened the door, he’d always find her sitting in bed, awake, waiting for him.
They’d forged a bond so strong, they could each guess what the other was thinking. Feeling. In fact, the only time Monica had ever broken down in front of the public had been at her parents’ funeral.
When Daniel put his arms around her.
She’d started sobbing immediately and breathlessly pleaded in his ear, “Don’t let them see this.” He’d hugged her harder and ducked his head, holding her as tight as he could without breaking her bones, but he couldn’t keep the press from noticing, everyone from noticing.
THE ICE MAIDEN CRACKS IN THE ARMS OF THE PRINCE!
How that story made headlines. Soon after, the press tried to pair them as a young couple—Daniel was twenty-four, Monica twenty. Monica bought a place on her own and asked him to stay away from her to let the speculation calm down.
Daniel knew the paparazzi weren’t to blame for this request.
The night before she left, Daniel hadn’t been able to merely hold her in his arms anymore. He’d kissed her cheek. Her jaw. Her temple. Her forehead. Told her how pretty she was … how much he wanted her.… And when he moved to fit his mouth to hers in the way he’d been dreaming of constantly, morning and night, she leaped out of bed and across the room, looking so genuinely startled Daniel had instantly backed off with an apology.
She began dating older men, and Daniel—wound up from two months of sleeping with Monica in his arms, warm and vulnerable and yet completely physically immune to him—forewent the dating and went straight to fucking, basically. Anything that he could. He tried kink, he tried variety, he tried screwing everything and anything that could help him forget those nights, that kiss-that-never-happened, that one girl.
Even with his more lasting involvements of a couple of weeks, Daniel was never again interested in knowing a woman like he knew Monica. Hell, those first few years, he could hardly talk to her, his frustrations flaring every time he saw her cool smile and guarded gaze, every one of their encounters causing him to react like a wounded beast who would go bury his pain between another woman’s legs.
He’d cursed himself for making a move on her for years, for it had taken that long to gain Monica’s trust back.
But all that calmed down with time. Now those evenings were in the past, and they’d gotten back to the point where they could be together comfortably for hours. They laughed, talked, sometimes didn’t have to say anything at all when they sporadically asked each other out to lunch. Daniel was a member of the board of Davenport’s, and he saw Monica every Thursday morning at the board meeting. Sometimes he was early, or stayed late … when he couldn’t quite quell the urge to see her.
Some of these times, he could tell she was eager to see him, as her eyes would flare warm as a summer sky.
Other times, their stares would keep searching the other’s across the boardroom table, and they’d both smile at each other when they clashed.
He could have her, he’d told himself for years. Yeah. He could have her if he wanted to. Maybe he just didn’t want to risk losing her friendship. Maybe he would rather settle for a little piece of her than nothing at all.…
Luke’s voice brought Daniel back to the present.
“I was your friend when all the shit went down between the two of you, Danny,” Luke said. “I read the papers. And when you were drunk, she was the only thing you’d talk about. I’m just saying if you’ve always wanted her, why not go for it?”
“Why the hell are you here so early anyway?” he demanded of Luke. “Can’t Mars men sleep?”
“Got to run off the alcohol in my system,” he said, with a shrug. “Before a family lunch with Peyton’s gang. But dude, last night when that woman came into the room, I had to step back so your boner wouldn’t strike me. So just go tell this bullcrap to some dimwit who wouldn’t know you from shit, dude.”
“I have a better idea. Stop minding everyone’s business and mind your own.”
“I’m not Chicago’s darling, baby. You are. Everyone wants to know what Danny Lexington is up to.”
“Whatever. Go run yourself to a stroke, why don’t you.”
Luke laughed and slapped his friend’s back, and Daniel cranked his neck and stalked outside to plunge into the Olympic-sized pool. He submerged all the way until touching bottom, then he came up for air and slicked his hair back. He heard a whistle as his trainer, Rico Manrico, snapped off some instructions, already thirsting for Daniel’s blood.
“Right,” he murmured, then swam to the side of the pool to start warming up, but his mind was swarmed with nothing but her, his body still primed, still aching for her, his brain replaying over and over the way she’d asked, as casually as only Monica Davenport could, “Will you have sex with me, Daniel?”
Jesus. And not only had she asked for sex, but she’d stripped for him, her figure ripe and tantalizingly provocative as she came the hell
apart for him.
Last night he’d had his fingers in her pussy, and she’d been so seductively wet Daniel leaked into his pants all the goddamned time he held her on his lap, her buttocks scraping against his sex as she pushed her hips onto his fingers.
A fierce new erection tented his swim trunks as a fresh wave of heat overtook him. He’d tried to be controlled, friendly even, while every pore and fiber in his being had screamed with the need to feel every inch of her naked flesh against his. He’d wanted to taste her sweet mouth, to cup the soft, full mounds of her buttocks in his hands and squeeze them as he pumped every last drop of need inside her.
Of course she could not find pleasure in the men she dated.
They were companions to her, not lovers. They’d been shields to keep Daniel away, and it had worked. Daniel had been watching her with them for years, all the while telling himself that she would always be the Ice Maiden to them.
They didn’t understand her like Daniel did. She needed to be challenged, but not completely dominated. She needed to feel both trustful and protected, but not vulnerable. She sought weaker men to feel safe, but she didn’t realize she needed one that was stronger. She was used to pushing people away, and if you got too close, too fast, you were done for.
Daniel was nobody’s fuck buddy.
His buddies were men, all of them except Monica.
But last night he’d have done anything to get in bed with her and finish what he’d started so many years before, in a small twin bed in his parents’ guest bedroom.
He’d agreed to two weeks with her. Two weeks, where the line of physical distance she’d drawn for him a decade ago would be erased, where she would settle on his lap and pump her hips into his fingers and ask to take his shirt off, his pants off. God.
When she’d lightly stroked his straining cock after he’d been watching those moans tumble out of her parted lips, his body had reacted with all the painful intensity of a teenager’s. He’d climaxed like he hadn’t climaxed in his life, but he was still not satisfied.
A deep-rooted need for her gnawed at him, deep in his gut, where it most hurt. His body throbbed. He wanted to feel her flesh caressing him, surrounding him. He had never felt so ravenous before.
He thought he could control this hunger. He’d been controlling it for years. But like some underfed, abused beast, it was out of its cage, and Daniel feared no amount of willpower would hold it back now.
Only Monica held the cards here. She had to be the one that called, she had set the ground rules for him. Now he got to play the part of sitting around, waiting, with this infernal boner. Shit.
He groaned and submerged under water, surfacing to slick his hair back in frustration.
“Lexington!” his trainer called. “Get your head out of your ass and do those fucking laps!”
* * *
Exactly fourteen hours later, his friends were laughing about Daniel firing Rico Manrico.
They were having poker night, at Cade’s place, and Daniel swung down his third Aviation gin for the night with one hand while keeping his cards open with the other.
“So the brass-ball winner of the week definitely must be Daniel,” Luke said, across the poker table from him, still chuckling.
“No shit,” said Cade.
Luke scowled down at his cards. “I always hated that sucker. I’m surprised you put up with him this long, man.” He exchanged two cards from the deck. “Can’t see why anyone needs him when everyone knows the most important muscle gets exercised pretty damned well with fucking.”
“Your cock is not a muscle, dickwad,” Graves said.
“I meant the heart,” Luke accused. “Hell, man, I knew you were going to think dirty. What’s wrong with you, Graves? Is that all that’s on your mind now that Chloe’s moved in? She’s got your brain scrambled.”
Daniel stiffened, then he pulled off his Ray-Bans so he could fiercely glare at smart-mouthed Luke Preston. “That’s my sister you’re talking about, toad.”
“Whoa, hold your horses, buddy. You’re awfully sensitive today. Maybe you do miss getting fucked in the ass by Rico.”
“The only one getting ass fucked today will be you,” Daniel said, going all in. His cell buzzed as his friends started calling his bet, and he set down his cards and tapped on the screen.
Hey u. Are u busy?
His pulse skyrocketed through the roof, and the fine hairs on his body stood up at the electrical thrill of seeing Monica’s name above the text. He quickly replied:
No
A bland lie. He restlessly rubbed the back of his neck as he waited for her reply, his dick already hard as a spike. The memory of her slick sex clenching hotly against his fingers shimmered through him, heating every fiber in his body, making him throb. Come on, come on. Answer me, princess.
“Your face just lit up like Las Vegas. Who is that?” Luke demanded.
“It’s not for you,” Daniel answered, his cards forgotten facedown on the table. His balls clenched when his text pinged again.
Are u home?
His male instincts went crazy at the question, confirming exactly what kind of call this was. A primal instinct surged through him with a need to imprint her with his scent, his flesh; to fill her up with every drop of semen in his body. God, let him only replenish, so he could immediately fill her up again.
He was usually the one who dialed a couple of his usuals when he felt restless, but Monica had said she’d be the one calling, and he was on his feet so quick, he tumbled his drink. He texted back: Where are u?
Monica: Home.
Daniel: B there in 10
“Hey, you’re leaving? Is that a fucking booty call you’re answering? Who is it? Lexi, who are you servicing?” Luke demanded.
He smiled coldly and flipped him the finger. “Obviously not you.”
“I get your chips, it’s my pad tonight,” Cade said, already making a grab for Daniel’s pile. Cade was one lonely motherfucker, but he was also a moody one. There was really no woman who’d ever dared come within biting distance of him. With Cade, one had to be blunt straight away.
* * *
“Hands off, Scrooge. If I’m not back in an hour,” Daniel told Graves as he signaled at his chips, “you give it to my sister.”
“Count on it,” Graves said, waving him off.
“Confess, motherfucker! Who is the lady?” Luke yelled.
Daniel laughed as he strode out, grabbing his gabardine wool coat from the closet. He told himself it didn’t mean anything that his heart was in fast gear, that he just couldn’t push his foot farther on the pedal. It didn’t mean anything except they were friends, fucking, for the second time in twenty-four hours.
But it meant more than that, this booty call.
It meant Monica Davenport wanted him so much more than she was letting on.
* * *
Monica couldn’t understand this hot, reckless excitement. She paced around her beautiful apartment and she just couldn’t stop staring at the clock. She’d never expected to break down and call Daniel so soon. In fact last night, she’d even hoped her first session would have been enough.
Instead, today she’d felt charged and edgy at the office. Her sex pulsed and clenched when flashes of him interrupted her, even when she was speaking to her assistant, reviewing the new designs for next year.
She’d stared at e-mails while only thinking that she wanted his fingers, his mouth, his voice whispering in her ear. A strange hunger yawned open in her body. Suddenly it seemed imperative she appease this need, and the only way she could think of was to give in to exactly what it wanted.
When you were hungry, there would be no way to satiate your appetite but by eating. And Monica wouldn’t be able to sleep with this … this … sexual anxiety. But now that she’d called him, a wild tension gripped her every muscle, her nerves almost overwhelming her.
She gazed around her apartment, everything perfectly in order, the light earth tones having always calmed her. But she was
anything but calm. Once again, she padded into her enormous marble bathroom to eye herself in the full-length mirror.
She’d never worn something so … sheer before, especially when seduction had been out of the question and the last thing she’d wanted was to invite a man’s sexual advances. But today, she had herself a new arrangement, so she’d stopped at the Saks lingerie department to make a couple of extravagant purchases.
Trying on this flimsy sheer white peignoir at the store, she had imagined Daniel removing it, talking to her like he had last night, and her nipples had throbbed as they rasped against the material, just the thought of him getting her aroused.
The skirt fell in a waterfall down to her feet, parted in the middle and held only by three strategically placed satin ribbons, one at her collar, one between her breasts, and one at her waist.
The style was designed for her legs to peek out top to bottom as she walked, and if he dared to part the material, he would get a perfect view of her bare pussy. Which was already wet in anticipation.
She didn’t know if other women dressed up for their special friends, but then there was no way anyone had a friend like Daniel Lexington. He was the man every woman wanted to land, and he was on his way to Monica.
He, who’d been called “one of the country’s most eligible bachelors” by People magazine and “Prince of Chicago bluebloods” by Forbes, was on his way here. He, who’d held her when she was nineteen and had made her have every kind of fantasy a girl her age could have. All of them starring him. All of them scaring her to death.
Her body liked him. Very much. Too much.
And she did not like the uncontrollable urges this aroused in her.
This was exactly why she enjoyed the peace and tranquility of a more mature relationship, based on shared tastes in lectures, food, interests, rather than sexual attraction. She mentally didn’t enjoy the lack of discipline in such passionate responses to a man. In fact, it made her nervous to feel so … strongly toward anyone. But if she ever wanted to consolidate her relationship with Roland, she had no other choice but to venture into this unchartered territory until she had it down nicely.