Lexie (19 page)

He kept pumping, and it wouldn’t stop. It went on and on, rumbling through her until he too let out a shout. His hips bucked upwards and their bodies locked together until, finally, Lexie went over the top. She slumped down on him, her heart beating too fast. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, and she could hear his breaths rasping in and out of his lungs.

The silence came then, and it snuck up on her fast. Outside the two of them, there was nothing. And it loomed. The quietness seemed loud against her ears. Underneath her, his body seemed too hot. Too masculine. Too naked. Everything seemed magnified. Heightened, somehow. Like the way their bodies were still intimately connected.

She didn’t understand until she realized why. The numbness was gone. It had been stripped away, along with her anger and defenses.

The hurt settled in, and she couldn’t hide from it anymore. Burying her face in the crook of his neck, she let the tears come.

“It’s all right.” He swept his hand up to cup the back of her head. “Let it out, baby. It will be all right.”

Chapter Eleven

Lexie was disoriented when she awoke. The room was quiet and dim. Lifting her head from the pillow, she looked around. Nothing appeared familiar from the shape of the room to the furniture or the blinds. The blinds… Looking at them, she remembered the sound of them clicking as they unfurled. Heat bloomed in her cheeks. In that instant, she realized where she was.

And what she’d done.

And with whom.

She sucked a ragged breath into her lungs and sat up quickly, holding the sheet to her chest. The king-sized mattress was plush, but the sheets were pulled askew and the comforter was on the floor. It looked as if somebody had gone wild in the place.

She bit her lip. Somebody had.
Her
.

Embarrassed, she wondered where Cam was. The master bath was empty, and the door to the bedroom was closed. There was a dent on the pillow next to her, but he’d left her to sleep. After he’d made love to her…and held her while she cried…

She stared hard at that spot on the bed. The man was a constant contradiction. She’d hated him this morning, absolutely loathed him as he’d pushed and provoked her.

But she was beginning to understand why he’d done it.

She rubbed her hands over her face. She felt like she’d been pummeled, but this wasn’t a hangover. Carefully, she traced the line of her breastbone. That was what was still tender, her heart.

She glanced at the bedside clock. For as dim as the blinds made the room, it was only midafternoon. Listening hard, she tried to determine if Cam was still in the penthouse. Hearing nothing, she flipped back the covers and hurried to the bathroom. She knew they’d just made love, but she was self-conscious about her nakedness. She didn’t want him to catch her like this.

Once inside, she took care of her most pressing need. Then she cleaned up and washed her face. The cold water shocked away what was left of her tiredness. She looked in the mirror. Color had returned to her cheeks, but her hair was wild and tussled.

A lot like Roxie’s.

She rubbed her hand over her breastbone again.

Without her brush, she finger-combed her hair into some semblance of order. She needed to get dressed. She needed to put herself back together.

Peeking back into the bedroom, she found it still empty. She picked her way through the clutter on the floor and found her panties. Her search for her dress turned up nothing.

She needed something else she could wear, and she spotted Cam’s shirt on the floor. Still, she hesitated. There was something very personal about wearing his clothes.

And something very sexy.

She picked up the shirt and shook it out. It was crisp and white and male. Hesitantly, she put it on. His clean, musky scent surrounded her, and her thighs clenched hard in response. The scent clung to the fabric and made her feel like she was back in his arms. Distracting herself, she rolled up the sleeves and caught her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. The shirttails hit her mid-thigh, and the vee neckline dipped low between her breasts.

A shuddering breath left her lungs. For a moment, she was back in bed with him, kissing him and riding him hard.

Nonplussed, she picked a pillow off the floor and put it back on the bed. She wasn’t inexperienced, but she’d never felt fireworks like that in bed before. Fireworks hadn’t even been on her mind.

With Cam, though, he’d lit her up from the inside.

She stroked the soft fabric of his shirt, and her belly trembled. Would it be like that every time? If there was a next time…

She raked her hand through her hair, and his shirt pulled high on her legs. The man had her so twisted up.

She couldn’t hide in here forever, and the longer she took to face him, the more difficult it would be. When she approached the door, though, she opened it carefully.

The living room was emptier than the bedroom. Crossing the threshold, she wandered around with curiosity. The light coming from the wall of windows made her squint, and she moved towards the middle of the room. The penthouse was even higher up than Underhill’s offices, but it wasn’t the height that got to her as much as those floor-to-ceiling windows. Whenever she looked at them, she could imagine just stepping out and falling, falling, falling.

She turned away from the view. Cam’s tie was draped over the back of a chair, and her dress was half on the coffee table, half on the floor. Her bra was… Where was her bra? She peeked under the couch, but found only one of her shoes. Her purse was on the foyer floor, but nothing else belonged to her.

Or to him, for that matter.

She surveyed the apartment as if seeing it for the first time. It was impeccably furnished. Every detail had been chosen and arranged—but by an interior designer, not Cam. There was nothing in this room that was him. Nothing personal. No pictures or mementos. Her gaze lit on the paperweight on the mantle. He had no connection to these belongings whatsoever.

Then again, she didn’t know what would be personal to him. She knew very little about the man.

But she was beginning to get curious.

“Cam?” The hollow room seemed to swallow the sound.

He wouldn’t have left her alone, would he?

Fingers toying with the hem of his shirt, she decided to find him. She didn’t want to snoop, but she didn’t want to be alone. She wanted to be with him.

Padding across the carpet, she climbed out of the sunken living room and ventured along another hallway. It was wide and long. She passed a kitchen, gourmet from what she could tell. Another bedroom came next, followed by a bathroom.

She was beginning to think she was really alone when she spotted a room at the end of the hall. Her footsteps slowed when she noticed the door was half-open. To keep her out? Or to listen for her?

She felt self-conscious about barging in, yet she didn’t want to turn back. Catching the doorjamb, she looked inside and felt her belly tumble.

She’d found him.

Oh how she’d found him.

There was nothing remarkable about the sight, really. He was working. She’d seen him do that before, many times. It was the only way she’d ever envisioned him until recently. But this time was different.

Bare-chested and barefooted, he was sitting on a sofa with papers spread everywhere. Charts were taped on the walls and easels, pads and Post-it notes surrounded him. His feet were propped on the coffee table next to a laptop as he talked to someone on the phone.

He was so sexy sitting there, she shivered.

How many times had she sat beside him in meetings? How many times had she seen that intent look on his face as he’d studied something? Yet how many times had she dreamed about the body that had been hidden underneath all those tailored suits?

She doubted she’d think of anything else from now on.

The hatchet man was hot.

And she wanted him. Badly.

Cam heard a sound in the doorway and glanced up. What he saw made the phone nearly slip out of his hand.

Lexie had woken up. She looked soft and tumbled, fresh from sleep and sex.

And she was dressed in his shirt.

On cue, his body hardened. It tended to do that whenever she was around, but this was another thing entirely. She was in his clothes and, by all indications, naked underneath. The shirt caught her mid-thigh, sneaking up higher on the sides of her legs. And they were long and lean… She’d rolled up the shirtsleeves, and there was a tempting flash of skin where she’d left the shirt unbuttoned, low and sexy between her breasts.

Something proprietary set up residence inside his chest.

If sex left her like this, he’d screw her all day long. He never again wanted to see her like she’d been this morning, ragged and close to the edge.

He lifted the phone back to his mouth. “I’ve got to go.”

The voice on the other end of the line disagreed.

“Send me the rest in an email. I’ll call you if I need anything else.” He quickly ended the call.

“Hey.” Sitting up, he closed the folder in his lap and tossed it onto the coffee table. Work was the last thing he wanted to talk about right now, especially this project. He wasn’t ready to show it to her yet, and there were much more important things to take care of.

Mainly her.

He dropped his feet to the floor. “How are you feeling?”

She shrugged the shoulder that rested against the doorjamb. She was acting self-conscious with one leg bent and her toes rubbing against the calf of her other leg. “Okay.”

His cock throbbed almost painfully. He was feeling much better than okay. It was taking everything inside him to keep from striding across the room, picking her up and carrying her straight back to bed.

He patted the spot on the sofa beside him. “Come here.”

She hesitated, her shyness clear. It probably wasn’t helping that he looked like he was ready to launch off the furniture at her—which was a definite possibility. He felt her gaze run over him, and his skin prickled.

Slowly, she pushed away from the doorway. Her footsteps were light as she approached him. She sat next to him, pulling at the hem of his shirt when it snuck up too high. Unable to cover herself, she tucked her legs up beside her.

Cam’s fingers bit into his thighs. She was so gentle and vulnerable. The last few days had to have been hell for her. He just wanted to gather her up on his lap and make love to her until she forgot it all.

But she didn’t need him coming on too strong.

Even if she had only a few hours ago. Lord help him, she’d nearly fried his brain circuits.

Forcing himself, he leaned back against the sofa’s cushions. Giving in to his need to touch her, he cupped her bare knee. Her skin was warm and smooth. He stroked his thumb back and forth. The touch was light, and she accepted it. Relaxing a bit, she snuggled against the leather.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, plucking at the shirttail.

“Mind? I thought the dress looked good, but this beats it, hands down.”

She took that into consideration and got shy again. Her gaze went to the paperwork on the tabletop, but her mind was clearly on something else.

“Lexie,” he said, a warning in his voice.

“You’re not going to make me throw something, are you?”

He fought the smile that pulled at his lips. “No, I thought we’d found a better solution than that.”

Her cheeks flooded with color. “I’m sorry about that,” she whispered.

“About what?”

She let her hair swing forward so he couldn’t see her face. “About jumping you.”

He frowned. “Do you regret what we did?”

She was quiet for so long, he started to get edgy.

“Lexie?”

“No,” she finally admitted.

He caught her chin and made her look at him. “I don’t either. The next time you get upset, you don’t tuck it away inside. You come find me.”

She appeared pained with embarrassment. “I don’t usually do that… I mean, I’m not that aggressive. I’ve never… Oh God…”

He cut her off with a kiss—a solid, slow kiss that heated the longer she let it go on. Cam’s heart started pounding against his rib cage. This was the Lexie he knew. This was the woman he’d lusted over for three months.

But she was embarrassed by what they’d done.

He rubbed his tongue against hers before pulling back. “I’m the one who needs to apologize. I’m sorry I pushed you so hard. Maybe I went too far.”

“I understand why you did it. At least now I do.”

“I hated hurting you. You have to know that.”

“I think it worked.” She licked her lips, and he hardened at the thought of her tasting him. “I feel better. Still screwed up, but better.” She clenched her hands together in her lap. “You’re probably wondering how you got messed up in this. Your family couldn’t possibly be as dysfunctional as mine.”

Resting his arm atop the back of the couch, Cam toyed idly with her hair. “I don’t have much of a family. Not anymore. It was just my mom and me, but she died almost three years ago.”