Stripped Bear (4 page)

“I think I’ll put that one above our bed.” He indicated the candid shot of a rural street and old, weathered buildings to Leah’s right.

She kept her gaze forward and forced her breathing to slow. “
Our
bed?”

“Yes.” Cade kept his tone light. Conversational. “Our. Bed.”

“So, you’re going to continue with this?” It was cruel of him to play with her emotions.

“I am.” His insufferable calm made Leah want to crawl out of her own skin. “Have you broken off your engagement with Alan yet?”

“Adam,” she corrected. Her gaze slid to the side. “And why would I do that?”

Cade looked amazing in charcoal slacks, a white dress shirt, and matching waistcoat. He’d forgone the more formal jacket but rounded out his ensemble with a striking gold silk tie that brought out the blue in his eyes. He clasped his hands behind his back as he regarded the large black-and-white photo as though Leah wasn’t even there. She didn’t need to have his eyes on her to feel the weight of his attention, though. Every inch of her body came alive with awareness of him.

“Because you’re not marrying him,” Cade continued. “I’d think it would be easier on him to let him down now instead of the day of the wedding, don’t you agree? Give him time to call his relatives, cancel the caterer and all that.”

Leah didn’t want to admit that Adam had had so little involvement in their wedding plans that she was honestly concerned that he didn’t even know what church the ceremony would be conducted in. “I
am
marrying Adam,” she said after a moment. “Where would you like the collections shipped? I’ll get a bill of sale together for you now so you don’t have to wait. I’m sure Jensen will be thrilled to know he has such a generous patron.”

“I can wait to conduct business after the show,” Cade said. He let his arms hang at his sides and turned to face her. “I think I’ll have a look around until then.” And without another word, he sauntered away.

Leah’s jaw hung slack. His rolling gait was nothing short of hypnotic. The perfectly tailored slacks hugged the swell of his ass and traced his thighs, tight enough for her to know that beneath the fabric lay bulky muscles that contracted with every step. He stopped to accept a proffered glass of champagne from one of the servers and continued on his way as though he didn’t have a care in the world.

As though he hadn’t completely uprooted her life.

Four

Cade bent over the desk in Leah’s office and signed the check for fifty-two grand and some change. He handed it over to Leah along with a business card with the address to his Manhattan penthouse where he wanted the framed pictures delivered. It was a chunk of change to drop on a bunch of glossy black and whites of rural America, but he could tell that Leah truly loved them, making them worth every penny.

He needed to prove to her exactly how serious—and how determined—he was to have her. The mate bond was nothing to balk at. With every passing day, the animal instinct to couple with Leah would become harder and harder to ignore. And likewise, withholding himself from her would slowly unravel him until he was nothing more than a mindless slave to his base desires. As a shifter, the duality of Cade’s nature was unique. For creatures created through a bite like a werewolf, the animal part of their psyche lived as a separate entity. Two beings that inhabited a single body. Cade had been born a shifter. He and the bear were one and the same. A single creature, two sides of the same coin.

He couldn’t tell that part of him that yearned to couple with Leah to shut up and go away. She’d claimed Cade. He recognized her as his mate. He wanted her. And gods damn it, he was going to have her.

Leah leaned down to enter something into her computer and it was all Cade could do to keep from bending her fully over the desk and hiking up her tight gray pencil skirt. His gaze traveled downward, over the full curve of her ass, down her thighs and her calves to the black stiletto heels that he imagined would look fantastic when he flipped her over to her back and hiked her leg up over his shoulder before he pounded into her. Cade reached down to adjust his erection, which pressed uncomfortably against his zipper. He might have walked away all of those years ago, but not because he hadn’t wanted Leah. No, he’d walked away because he’d wanted her too damned much.

“All right, you’re all set.” Leah hit a button on her keyboard and straightened. A moment later the printer spit out a sheet of paper and she handed him the paid invoice. “The collection will be delivered in a couple of weeks. I’d do it sooner, but I have too much to do before the wedding to get everything packed up and ready to ship. I’m sure you’re anxious to get back to your life now that you know Luanne is feeling better.”

Cade took the invoice from her waiting fingers and leaned a hip on her desk. “Still stubborn after all these years. There isn’t going to be a wedding, Leah, and you know it.”

“Enough, Cade.” Leah reached up and pulled a pin from her hair and then another. She shook out the knot at the nape of her neck and let the locks of her chestnut hair spill over her shoulders. Beautiful. She rubbed at her temple with the pads of her fingers as though releasing a lifetime’s worth of tension. “There
is
going to be a wedding and no amount of suggestive talk from you is going to change my mind.”

“Suggestive?” Cade said with a smirk. “I don’t make suggestions. I make promises. I give orders. And I expect them to be obeyed.”

Her gaze flared with heat. She could pretend he didn’t affect her all she wanted, but Cade knew better. Her body betrayed her, and he was lucky enough to have the keen sense that allowed him to pick up on the telltale signs of her desire.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree then,” Leah responded. “Because I sure as hell don’t
obey
.”

Cade could easily bring Leah to her knees. Tonight was as good a night as any to prove it to her. He stepped close, giving her no option but to turn and face him. Leah braced her hands behind her on the edge of the desk and Cade inserted himself between her thighs, hiking up the hem of her skirt in the process. Leah had always been unafraid. Defiant. It was one of many things about her that both scared and excited him. She bucked her chin up, set her jaw sternly, and met him look for look as though daring him to do his worst.

“You walked out of my life, Cade. Don’t think you can saunter back into it so easily.”

“Oh, but I can, love. You made sure of it when you claimed me.” Cade reached out and captured a lock of Leah’s hair between his thumb and finger. The strands slipped through his grasp like silk. Her lips parted on a breath and her breasts heaved above the plunging neckline of her pristine white blouse. She’d left it unbuttoned dangerously low so that it gaped away from her breasts. A more tantalizing sight Cade had never seen. His hand fell away from her hair and he traced a finger along one exposed swell.

“Claimed you?” Leah asked with a disbelieving bark of laughter. “You act as though I should know what that means. Do you realize how crazy you sound?”

“You’ll understand soon, Leah. I have a lot to explain to you and not a lot of goddamned time to do it.” McAlister was breathing down his neck and demanding he get his ass to L.A. immediately. One thing was certain: he wasn’t moving a damned inch until things were settled between him and Leah. “Trust what you feel. What you know is true. You’re mine. You gave yourself to me the moment you took my hand and made me yours. Tell me you don’t want me, Leah.” He let his fingers wander over her collarbone, up the pale column of her throat. “Tell me that you don’t feel me in every microscopic cell of your body.” His fingers wandered to her pulse point. His thumb feathered over the diamond stud that graced her earlobe, and she shuddered. “Tell me that you don’t want me to spread your thighs wide and fuck you right here on your desk. That you don’t want my cock so deep inside of you that you won’t know where your body ends and mine begins.” Her eyes drifted shut and Cade put his mouth to her ear. “Tell me your pussy doesn’t
ache
for me. Tell me it’s not dripping wet and ready for me and I’ll leave right now.”

His cock throbbed behind his fly. He was so hard that it hurt. The scent of Leah’s desire bloomed around him, the heady sweetness of it intoxicating. A whimper escaped her lips, so quiet that had he not possessed supernatural senses, Cade might have missed it. Leah’s back arched and her breasts brushed against his chest. He wanted to tear her clothes from her, lay her out on the desk, and fuck her until every ounce of the desperation that choked the air from his lungs evaporated. Cade wrapped his fingers around Leah’s throat, and he rested his thumb along her jaw. He trembled with restraint, his need to take her nearly overriding common sense. “Tell me you don’t want me, Leah,” he murmured against her mouth. His jaw clenched and his voice roughened with the command, “Say it.”

“You left me.” She kept her eyes shut and her voice quavered on the words. “I bared myself to you and you called me a spoiled child. You walked away.”

The words stung. But even after all these years, she couldn’t understand why he’d left? Leah had been fourteen, still a child, when she’d made her feelings for him known. So brave, so unafraid, so damned brazen even then. Cade had been twenty-one at the time. When all of his friends had left home for college, he’d stayed. For Leah. Because of his feelings for her.

He’d left because he had to. Because he couldn’t reconcile his emotions. Because she’d been so young and he’d had no right to want the things he wanted with her. Now, though, he understood. He knew what his grandmother and Lawrence had suspected all along. Leah was his. She’d always been his, and he wasn’t going to live another minute without her.

“You know why I walked away, Leah.”

Her eyes opened. The clear blue depths darkened with her anger. “You were a coward.”

She could try to rile him all she wanted. Nothing she could say would push him away now. “I was,” he admitted. His grip on her throat slackened and he caressed her jaw with his thumb. “And a fool. Is that what you want to hear? That I was wrong.”

“You’re too late.” Tears pooled in Leah’s eyes. “It’s too late for us, Cade.”

*   *   *

She’d spent years hating him. And after that, she’d felt nothing at all for him. When she’d been old enough to gain a little perspective, Leah had realized that their age difference had posed too many problems at the time. He’d been an adult and no matter how much she’d known her own heart, she’d still been a girl. Too young for what she wanted with him. Morally—legally—had there been any other option for Cade than to break her heart? She only accused him of being a coward now to push him away. He could have been gentler with her, though. He could have told her he’d wait for her. At least acknowledge that a spark had ignited between them. Instead, he’d callously hurt her. Insulted her. Torn her fragile heart to shreds. He’d made her feel as though she’d been an annoyance. The kid who accompanied her dad to his grandmother’s house. The silly girl who hung on his every word. After years of convincing herself she’d finally put her hopeless crush behind her, the last thing Leah wanted was to fall for him again.

Didn’t Cade realize how much his words hurt her even now? How dangerous it was to reawaken this want that had lain dormant within her for so long? None of this was fair, damn it! Because no matter how much she wanted to say the words, she couldn’t push them past her lips. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him the things he dared her to say because they weren’t true. Leah wanted Cade with an urgency that caused her pain.

“Goddamn you, Cade.”

His mouth claimed hers. Leah pushed away but he held her, his fingers gripping her throat not hard enough to hurt her, but with enough pressure that she knew his intent. His free arm wrapped around her and settled at the small of her back. He jerked her away from the desk, against the unyielding wall of his chest. The length of his erection brushed her hip and Leah swallowed a gasp. This couldn’t happen. She couldn’t lose herself to Cade ever again.

Cade thrust his tongue past the barrier of her lips. The kiss wasn’t a gentle request, he wasn’t asking for her permission. Cade’s mouth made a demand on hers. She had no choice in the matter. All that was expected of her was obedience. Fire rushed through Leah’s veins. He nipped at her bottom lip and a renewed rush of wetness spread between her thighs. Her clit throbbed in time with her pulse and her heart threatened to beat right out of her chest. She’d never known this kind of passion. Such raw intensity that consumed her and swept her up in a whirlwind that left her breathless and shaking with want.

She’d never been more afraid of what she felt than she was right now.

Leah placed her palms on Cade’s chest, prepared to shove him away. Instead, she gripped the lapels of his waistcoat and pulled him closer, holding on as though afraid he’d once again turn his back on her and walk away. Any rational thought evaporated under the onslaught of his greedy kisses. Cade devoured her and Leah wanted nothing more than to be his meal.

Sanity blew the fog of lust from her brain in an instant, and she ripped her mouth from his. “Stop,” she gasped, filling her lungs with desperate gulps of air. Cade refused to let her go, and it was probably a good thing. Leah’s limbs shook and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to support her own weight. She couldn’t do this to Adam. Couldn’t disregard the promises she’d made to him. Cade might not care about boundaries, but Leah did. She had to. Otherwise, she’d never be able to live with herself.

Cade’s gaze held hers and everything melted away. Leah felt herself slip and fall down the rabbit hole where nothing existed but her and him and this moment. She released her grip on his waistcoat and brought her trembling fingers to her lips, which were still hot and swollen from the punishment he’d inflicted on them. Her pussy clenched around nothing, as greedy and hungry as his kisses had been, and a flush of shame rose to Leah’s cheeks.

“You’re mine, Leah.” Cade’s voice was rough with passion.

“I can’t be yours.” All she could manage was the barest of whispers. “I belong to someone else.”