Kept by Him (10 page)

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.

They were so wound up today, he fucking
knew
he should’ve stayed last night, and held her like before, when the poke of her nipples
through her nightgown against his chest had been the thrill of his young existence.
Sometimes he’d take a cool shower before he knocked on her door, so he could listen
to her and not feel electrified every time her breath hit his neck. Even then, it
had been haunting, overpowering, the need to comfort her, hold her.… He’d been thinking
of fucking kissing her for days, weeks, years. He’d never imagined she wouldn’t want
him.

After that, he’d spoiled his poor rejected cock but he definitely, definitely, never
again thought with it. He had always been a man of precise intellect, perhaps even
ruthless intellect.

But never with her.

He slammed a fist into the elevator wall and groaned. The temptation to go up there
and apologize gnawed at his gut, but he couldn’t. He was too proud, too angry. He’d
never been second place to anyone, much less to a man like Roland. He’d never been
used for sex. He’d been the one who used and discarded, who commanded and was obeyed.

Cursing under his breath, knowing he couldn’t talk to her until he calmed the fuck
down and it was going to take a fucking long while, he went outside and listened to
the pounding rain, and he pulled out his cell phone and snapped at his driver to bring
the car around. In the meantime, he stepped out and let the cool rain smack him in
an attempt to get rid of his infernal boner, which had tormented him ever since he’d
seen her with that cashmere wrapped around her slender body.

*   *   *

As the seconds ticked by, Monica’s incredulity over Daniel’s ultimatum morphed into
anger, until suddenly, she couldn’t contain her rage. She charged across the office
hall, then out of the department store, then outside, overcome with a thousand different
emotions. Her body ached, ached in a way that disquieted her so much, her spirit was
raging to lash at him.

He was outside, standing in the rain while his chauffer pulled the Rolls-Royce up
in front of the building.

“You!” she cried, and he turned with a scowl as she stepped into the rain with him,
immediately getting drenched. “How dare you talk to me like I’m one of your strumpets!”

He stepped in closer to her, his expression thunderous. “How dare
you
treat me like I’m one of your senile lapdogs? Play your role with whoever you want,
but I’ll be damned if I let you play the Ice Maiden with me!”

“I’m not some bimbo who will wait around to pleasure you all day and succumb to your
tiniest wishes, and to whom you can issue asinine ultimatums!”

He grabbed her arm as he jerked the car door open with his other hand and then shoved
her into the back, slid in behind her, and closed the door behind him. Monica ended
up sprawled across the whole seat, with him above her.

“To my place,” he snapped as the driver boarded, then he slid the partition window
closed so the driver wouldn’t hear or see them.

“No! What are you doing? I need to go back!”

Fuming, Monica struggled to sit up, the effort futile against his strength. “Get off
of me, Daniel! Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. You said so yourself, it’s over. I’m
not going to be ordered around by you!”

He pinned her down the length of the seat, his eyes dark and tumultuous, his unmistakable
erection rock-hard solid against her hipbone. “So you want Roland,” he said through
gritted teeth, his hands clenching her wrists, “who’ll stand by your side and hold
your hand and fetch your drink.”

“Let go of me!”

She struggled against his grip, but suddenly he looked terribly big, and terribly
jealous, his eyes flashing bright green. Unexpectedly, her struggles melted into a
shudder of need. He dropped his voice then, and he spoke to her in a seductive murmur.
“If I let you go, then who’s going to do this?”

Her clothes were plastered to her, and his hands released her to reach for the opening
of her shirt, slowly flicking the buttons open. The feel of his fingertips as they
unbuttoned her shirt electrified her. He’d removed his jacket she didn’t know when,
but she could see the outline of his nipples through his soaked black button-down
shirt. They poked, two hard points, into the material.

Heat filled her core, making the cold almost vaporize around her as a rush of cream
gathered between her thighs. Her own nipples responded and, although already erect
from the cold, they pressed harder into her bra and blouse.

He raked his gaze across her curves, perfectly delineated by the flimsy silk blouse
she’d worn, and his nostrils expanded. “You crave my touch, Monica,” he said, suddenly
foregoing the unbuttoning of her shirt and sliding his hands under the fabric to pull
down the lace of her bra and engulf both mounds in his big hands.

He squeezed and caressed, massaged until the pleasure made her every fingertip tingle
in pleasure.

“You ache for this. You beg for it. Your pulse goes crazy. You tremble. You arch and
push up for more. You go wet and hot and desperate. It’s why you keep coming for it …
it’s why you can’t think straight anymore … you want this. You need this more than
you will ever know or even understand.”

She wanted him so much, a fire burst open in her belly, incredibly hot. His thumbs
passed and tweaked the throbbing nipple tips, and her body arched to the almost painful
touch, her hips circling eagerly in search of his erection.

“What do you think would go on with me, Monica?” He gentled his voice, his eyes liquid
green as he pushed the halfway undone shirt aside to reveal one puckered wet breast,
and he proved to her how in control he was of her own body, making her moan deep in
her throat as he bent to devour her nipple until it throbbed.

“I’ve had it bad for you my entire life,” he said, blowing air into the thrumming
crest. “Holding you while you cried in my arms without making you mine was the most
difficult thing I’ve ever done. You arouse me like crazy. I lust for you, respect
you, admire you.… Why do you think we look for what we look for in others? What is
it you think we really feel for each other?”

She tossed her head in protest, but even when bristling, her neglected breast also
ached for his kisses. Her voice was raw with need. “Don’t you dare even imply that
you care,” she said with gritted teeth, grabbing his head and hauling him to her breast,
moaning when he exposed it through the meager parting of her shirt and laved it with
his tongue. “You don’t just wear a B
ORN
F
REE
tattoo and get to say this to me,” she cried.

He pulled her into a sitting position, his chest heaving as he ran a fingertip over
her trembling bottom lip, his face harsh and beautiful in its intensity. “We’ve been
going against what we want for over a decade, Monica. Why is nothing ever enough for
me, not harder sex, not more women? Why can’t you be with another man?”