Kept by Him (9 page)

“Wow! Holy guacamole, that is
so damned
good
! That is
so damned good
! Whatever it is, don’t stop!”

“Hold you,” he murmured, and his eyes blazed on her mouth so fiercely that she could
remember every one of his kisses from last night, his face stark with need as he gently
nudged her pelvis with his. “But I’m primed to do so much more than that.”

She bit back a moan and buried it against his collarbone, smelling him, then she went
to his ear. “Will you?”

“What?”

“Do something more to me?”

He groaned and turned to whisper back, his lips bumping her earlobe, curling her toes.
“I’ll stop by tonight. To deflower my little Ice Maiden again.”

“Shit, this is crazy! Crazy! All right now look at me past his shoulder, Ms. Davenport,
lift your eyes and let me see what’s in them. Yes! Like that!”

Monica pressed her nose into his collarbone, her eyes lifting to the camera, shamelessly
looking into the lens as his heat whirled and spun in a dizzying swirl around her.
She could almost feel him. Filling her up. Making her feel completed and absolute.
Powerless and powerful.

Her nails bit into his flesh as she tried to get closer, her lips pressing to his
skin so that she could almost feel her teeth gnaw at him.

“All right, now leave her alone with the cashmere, sir! Don’t lose it, Ms. Davenport.
Look at me just like that!” Chris instructed.

Daniel shuddered as he stood, and Monica belatedly realized they had used his sex
appeal to their advantage. They’d used her reactions to him to set her loose, and
now she lay there, dazed and cloudy, watching him tuck her under the blanket almost
like he’d tucked her in her own bed the night before.

She watched helplessly as he grabbed his clothes and stalked around to the back, and
suddenly she knew the time from now until tonight would feel like a century. Waiting
for tonight would be torture. Tonight was too far away and she was going to disintegrate
to ashes if he didn’t touch her before then.

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!