She stared deeply into the camera, anxious to finish, to follow him, to take him in her, in her mouth, in her sex. Yes. I want him. I really, desperately want him. So? was all she thought as she gazed at the camera.
She told that to the lens, to the world, to herself.
A thousand women slept with a thousand men they cared even less about, who were less than friends. Why couldn’t Monica?
Chris screamed, “Yes, that’s it! That is so it!”
She was so hot she was almost perspiring, clutching the cashmere with aching fingers, never in her life having felt like this, staring with eyes that were exposed and open, straight at the camera, feeling both vulnerable and powerful, needy and needed.
When he finally told her it was a “wrap-up,” Monica wound the cashmere around her and tucked it under her arms as she slowly padded to the back, trembling, feeling like her body had been taken over by a stranger, by someone who was starved and didn’t care about anything but gorging on what it wanted. She found him in the changing room. He sat with his elbows to his knees, head hung low, breathing fast.
His head snapped upward when he heard the door open and close.
His eyes looked about as lost as hers. And a little wild.
Their gazes clung desperately to each other and an avalanche of emotions crashed over her, and she knew deep in her gut that none of these emotions was normal; they couldn’t be. They were both too aroused, too stimulated, while staring at each other, almost sensing what the other was feeling, wanting, needing.
He stood and pulled the throw loose from around her and it pooled at her feet, and once again, he was lifting her in the air, sucking her nipples almost voraciously. She cried as he tried the other, and then he set her down, crushing her mouth fast. Too fast. “I want you. I’ve never wanted anything like this.”
“I want you, too.”
He sucked her tongue and pressed her against the wall, their bodies grinding. “You look so sexy … Christ, you feel so good.” His mouth meshed strongly into hers, firm, urgent fingers probing into her sex, pressing anxiously inside. “God, Monica,” he rasped anxiously as he continued pressing, taking her mouth in one hungry kiss, pushing his finger all the way into her pussy. “We can’t do this here, princess.”
“No, don’t stop, don’t stop,” she pleaded as she curled one leg around him, pulling him closer. Closer. He wasn’t close enough and she mewled as her hands quickly unbuckled his belt. She didn’t know if it was an orgasm she sought, or possession. Penetration. Or just that soul-wrenching incredible connection. But she wanted it bad.
He grabbed her wrist and halted her, his forehead gently weighing down on hers as he dragged in a haggard breath. She was panting, breathing through her mouth, and the sounds made him raise his head and tempted him to push his wet finger into her mouth.
She licked him mindlessly, recognizing her taste from yesterday, and his eyes flashed green fire as he watched.
“If I stay, every single one of your employees out there will know I’m fucking you. Is that what you want?”
She released him and shook her head, swallowing, hating at this very moment the very image she had tried her entire life to create. One that never erred. Hardly human. The paparazzi would never find anything in Monica Davenport to soil, to hurt, or to try to destroy. The first stabs of physical desire denied struck her with painful force, and she could barely look up at the source of her desperate wanting without aching all over.
“Thank you,” she murmured, reaching out to cup his jaw, but she caught the motion and dropped her arm before another touch ignited the uncontrollable fire again.
As the door shut behind him, Monica sat down in the one chair, trembling, aching for him to come back, her body out of order. Haywired. She massaged her temple and talked to herself inside her head, saying that this was only a sexual thing, like hunger, and there was no need to panic. He would be hers tonight again. He’d said so. He’d be in her bed tonight, and she’d feel him inside her. She had over a week to get this matter resolved before her talk with Roland, and by then, she’d better get this situation under control.
It took her long minutes of deep breathing to try to get her emotions under grips. Then she put on her Botox face—the one devoid of emotion—and her clothes, and headed upstairs to the boardroom.
He was the first one she saw. As always, his presence dominated the entire room and the rest of the eight members of her board. She greeted and smiled softly at everyone, but especially softly at Daniel, and in her eyes she knew he could see the words I want you. I want you inside me again.…
As the reading of the minutes from the previous board meeting was underway, Monica could still feel that telling dampness between her legs, so creamy that it slid down the inside of one thigh. Her body didn’t even allow for the normal workings of her brain. It astounded her when she couldn’t follow the conversation. She’d never had thoughts about anything other than Davenport’s during a board meeting before, but now her mind scrambled and only seemed to focus on him, across the table from her.
She wanted to slide her fingers down his body and over the thatch of blond hair where his sex began. She wanted to see if he was still hard, if he still wanted her like she wanted him.
Her assistant poured coffee for the gentlemen, and Monica envied her nearness to Daniel. Every meeting, Monica would always watch him more than anyone else, noticing whether something that was said would make him tilt his head, narrow his eyes, or look down at his pen with a bored expression.
She rarely openly asked for his advice, and yet her ultimate decisions always, always, weighed in Daniel’s reactions. Today, he seemed about as interested in the conversation as she was.
His attention seemed solely for her, and his eyes were so hot she felt seared by them. His eyes repeated his previous words in the cashmere throws, all that and more, reverberating inside her as he looked at her. I could eat you up alive. I’m going to lick you. Bite you. Fuck every little part of you.
She trembled in her seat and almost moaned. She wanted his mouth, his hands, his skin. It was foreplay at a boardroom table and Monica knew it was wrong, wrong, wrong, but she’d been pressed against Daniel only moments ago, surrounded by him and cashmere, and she had never, ever, wanted anything like this.
Even her assistant, Kristy, who’d only admired him from afar, had been gushing for minutes about Daniel’s body, his face, how hot he was. And she hadn’t gotten to feel his erection. Hadn’t had to listen to him tell her that it was for her. She had not had his fingers inside her, his mouth behind the stage, melting into hers.
Envying her proximity to him, Monica watched her assistant as she went to refill his cup. She saw how she pressed her breast into his shoulder as she poured his coffee, and Monica’s insides suddenly froze.
A surprising sensation snared her in a deathlike grip, tightening around her stomach as Kristy’s breast remained there, lightly brushing against his shoulder. She bent her head in an unmistakably seductive move and asked if he liked the coffee today, and Monica boiled in silent anger. Daniel didn’t move, but his eyes flicked up to Monica. He smiled mischievously at her.
Seething, Monica pulled her eyes free and stared at her own steaming coffee. She didn’t know what Daniel answered, but she heard the rumble of his voice say something in response.
Jealousy spun round and round inside her. Jealousy which, although thoroughly confusing, was also totally unfounded. He was her friend. They weren’t monogamous. He might, and could, have tons of other fuck buddies at the moment. They were friends. Friends. With a temporary arrangement.
That was the logical explanation, she kept telling herself.
But the illogical was the sticky, icky, awful roiling sensation taking hold of her. The fact that she was sleeping with him made her feel incredibly, strangely proprietary, and suddenly Kristy could have been her father’s stewardess pressing her breasts into his hands during a flight, and Daniel could’ve been her father letting her, and
Monica could have been her mother … slowly dying when she found out what else had happened next.
Her eyes blurred, unexpectedly, at that memory.
They had been so happy as a family. Her father would raise her in the air and she would be an “airplane.” Her mother would teach her to bake every Saturday because a woman had to be a “complete” package and know a little of everything. They had called each other dear and my love and honey, and they had called Monica their baby. Then they had started calling each other bitch, asshole, and whore, and Monica had stopped getting hugs and kisses from them for months before their end.
She had been so careful not to let anything like this come inside her.
And now she sat here, in her very own boardroom of the very company she had dedicated the last decade to; here she was struggling to push out all the emotions she had stupidly let in by asking Daniel Lexington to sleep with her.
Why, oh, why, had she sought Daniel out?
She’d thought it would solve her problems with Roland and help her unearth her strange lack of affection for her romantic partners. She’d thought she would begin a healthy relationship with her own body, not believing that a woman who could have made such a success with Davenport’s could have such a lousy private life to begin with.
Except her body was rebelling against her logic, and now it craved more.
It craved everything from a man who could easily have other “special friends” at the moment. He was Daniel Lexington, and he would never belong to a woman, even when he was sleeping with her. He would be as untamable as a storm, and Monica would be stupid to step deeper into the eye of it.
These were the sorts of feelings that made people do stupid things. Like fire your prized assistant. Commit infidelity and murder. Take your own precious life and leave your daughter behind like she meant nothing.
Her mind drifted to Roland.
He was her shield against all of these memories that hurt her, all these passionate feelings that went up so mighty and high, there was no choice but to suffer when they came plummeting back down. Roland was safe and gentle. He didn’t get accosted by groupies hounding him when he went out, who launched at him and kissed him like his mouth was public property.
Exhaling thinly as she searched for calm, she avoided Daniel’s gaze and focused on the love of her life—Davenport’s—until the meeting was adjourned.
She said good-bye to everyone with a “See you next week,” then walked to him. “Can I talk to you privately?”
He followed her to her office and shut the door as she went to her desk, where she braced herself slightly before she spun to face him. “You seem to find it funny that my assistant puts her breasts all over you,” she said.
He shrugged, smiling wickedly. “Nothing new.”
“Oh. So she’s done it before?”
He cocked his head, and was surveying her like he were the ringmaster, and she were an animal that had just stepped out of its ring.
“And you let her?”
His smile remained, but the light in his eyes was dimming. “Considering that it’s both amusing and harmless and I’m used to it, yes, Monica. Whatever body part she presses against me makes no impact on me.”
“I can’t believe this.”
He was such a sexual force, he was even used to these sorts of come-ons!
Daniel closed the distance between them and cupped her face, his hands as warm as his voice. “Hey … you’re wound up. We both are. Nothing’s going on here. I’ll come over tonight.”
She stiffened at the stroke of his thumb across her lips and quickly moved away. “Please don’t. I’m sure we both have better things to do. But I do apologize for my assistant. I’ll talk to her.”
“Monica—”
“You’re a member of my board, Daniel.”
“It’s not the only board I’m on.”
“Well, I care about my board, not the others.” My board and my man! Scowling at the last thought, which was as senseless as all the emotions she was feeling, she went to the window and stared down at the city without seeing any of it. “Her behavior is rude and unprofessional. I expect more from my employees. You should’ve told me.”
She thought about Roland and how she didn’t have this sort of problem with a man like him, and she immediately wanted him to take her back. Today. Tonight. At the gala, where they would meet. Then she heard Daniel behind her, his voice low and a little rough. “Are you jealous, Monica?”
When she refused to answer that, indignant he even asked it, he came closer, pressing softly against her, his voice insistent. “Are you?”
She’d die before she admitted it, even to him. Jealousy, anger, the rage. Her parents had raised her. Good, normal people, in all appearances. But too obsessed. Too in love. She ducked her head and rubbed her temples. “I miss Roland, that’s all,” she said, as softly as he had spoken to her.
It was a good, much needed reminder to herself. Daniel may have tons of lovers. This was not a novelty to him, but this was a novelty to her, and before she started thinking of him as anything other than a friend, she’d sooner end their arrangement.
“And I just ask that … you please refrain from sleeping with people in my employ. It makes me extremely uncomfortable to think about it. Although maybe you already have?”
She met his gaze, and his expression had morphed.
He approached her painstakingly slowly, catching her arm, his voice instantly rough, his eyes dark as thunderclouds. “You seem to be mistaking me for one of your elderly lapdogs. I’m not a man to be ordered around, not even by you, but now that you’re making demands of me, then I’ll gladly issue some demands of my own. The first one is, don’t you ever, ever, say his name to me again as long as I’m fucking you. I may be your friend, but I’m also your lover. It’s my name you call when you come. It’s my eyes you look into when you’re begging and writhing. It’s me you wanted to fuck last night, me you wanted to fuck just an hour ago—not Roland.”
“Roland was my partner for over a year and he’s been after me forever. You and I are nothing but fuck bud—”
“I am nobody’s fuck buddy, Monica! I agreed because I wanted you. But that’s over. If you want me, we’re doing this my way, and I hope you realize that I will want sex daily, I will be demanding in bed, and I will certainly expect your exclusivity.”
A tap on the door came a second before her assistant opened it. “Ms. Davenport, I have the Loro Piana collaborator on the phone for you. Oh, why, Mr. Lexington, you’re still here…”
Before her assistant could even finish, Daniel had dropped her arm and stormed outside, and Monica stared at the vacant space where he’d charged out the door, dumbstruck at his explosion. And she thought she’d been jealous?
My God, she’d never in her life seen Daniel like this!
* * *
Holy shit, he hadn’t handled that well.
No, not at all.
But he was burning in his skin, burning with desire, with jealousy, with frustration.
It was the hardest thing he’d ever endured, sitting across the boardroom table from her, when every cell in his body clamored for her, when every fiber in his being knew that she needed him, that as she sat there, in her clothes, with her glacial mask on, she was still burning for him.
His mind had been fresh with the memory of her in a blanket of cashmere, in his arms, his flesh feeling tight and hot, his body pulsing and aching. The hunger to caress her had been so powerful it nearly paralyzed him.
He hadn’t even been able to keep track of the conversation and was, like her, speechless and silent, pretending to listen, when he would have done anything to seclude her in any nearby room with a lock, and fuck her so long he’d be dry and she’d be raw and they’d both be bone-tired with exhaustion.
I love her.
The phrase beat like a refrain in his veins, his heart.
He’d always loved her, almost like a sister, as a great friend. But he was not her brother,
and they were no longer friends. He’d buried the deeper, more tumultuous emotions she stirred inside of him by staying away, giving her the distance she’d asked for. All it had taken was a sexual touch to shake him to his bones, to confirm to him that his intent all these years, of seeking so many women so he could resist one, had utterly failed.
Nobody was her.
When he’d seen her in those cashmere blankets, her body exposed for dozens of eyes to see, he’d been shaken by pure possessiveness and the need to cover her, shield her, protect her from one and all. She belonged to him. She always had.
She’d run from love, had run from him, when she’d been nineteen and he twenty-three, when for every night for almost two months, they’d been as close as Siamese twins. He didn’t want to push her away this time, make her feel the threat of the one emotion she had been fighting her whole life not to feel. But he knew her weakness.
Because he was it.
Monica’s aloofness had never worked on him. It never would. He’d been inside her, deep where it hurt, long before she’d put up those walls of ice she built, and she’d locked him up with her.
Yeah, he’d known how afraid she was. And he’d stood back, a part of him as scared shitless as she was. He’d done nothing when she dated the first middle-aged guy he knew, or the second. They didn’t pose a threat, and she’d used the pretext of the press being on top of their relationship to keep Daniel away. He hadn’t pressured. He had, in fact, rebelled against the way she made him feel. He’d branded his tattoo right above his heart, a challenge to any who so much as tried to trap him. But he’d watched her from afar, telling himself she was a friend, she hadn’t wanted him to kiss her, and he did not want her.
Like hell.
He wanted her more than air, more than water. In many ways, they were alike, understanding each other in an intrinsic way that needed few words to be spoken, but in the most fundamental way, they were polar opposites. She had a part of her that needed to be fitted by a part of him … and their bodies were throbbing to make it happen.
Even during the board meeting, the memory of their previous tangle in the throws lingered in her eyes, in the way she crossed her arms and rubbed herself.