The Satin Sash (31 page)

Toni shut the door behind her. By the cautious way she advanced, he was certain he’d been spotted.

She flicked a lamp on, her eyes landing on him. So rumpled. Her hair was tangled, her mouth swollen. She had just been fucked.

She moved to him and stopped a few feet away, her eyes never straying. He let the pen fall on the cushion, roll to the back.

“Grey.” It was there in that tearful tone—oh yes, she’d let Heath fuck her.

He shoved his pants and underwear down to his knees and the pink rod of his cock popped out, slapping his abdomen. “I’ve had this for hours,” he rasped.

Glimmering green eyes followed the pronounced veins pulsing up the lengthened flesh.The crown was bloated, stretched taut as a drum, and it quivered painfully.

Her purse fell to the floor, her shoes were kicked off, and she fell to her knees between his thighs, as though helpless to stand.“Grey.” Her fingers trembled as she reached out to grasp him, and he lifted his hands to stroke his fingers down her cheek.

“Kiss me.”

She pressed her lips to the tip and kissed once, twice, then licked down the length. Groaning hurt. Just sitting here, wanting, hurt.

She cradled his balls in the bowl of her hands, using her thumb to stroke the seam where they joined. He sifted his fingers through the tangled silk of her hair, fisting a handful at her nape so he could pull her head back.

“Did you come?” His voice was terse and gruff, and the air felt dense with his arousal.The scent of him wanting her.

“I didn’t fuck him, Grey.”

Something let loose in him. A breath. He grazed her temple with the pad of his index finger, then smoothed her hair gently back. “Thank you.”

She peered at him through her lashes, her gaze both needy and coy, as though two hours being separated had grown into hundreds. As though they had more between them than time, more than mere inches.

“Make love with me?” he asked as she kissed the bloated head again, tenderly, lovingly using her tongue to draw the milky drop at the tip into her mouth. “Just you and me, like before.”

Good-bye.
No more Heath touching her. No more hands on her other than Grey’s. No more Heath haunting her.

He fought to keep his head from rolling back, to keep his eyes open, but her mouth was so warm, so sweet around his cock.

Fabric rustled as she guided his pants down the rest of his legs and tugged them free of his ankles. He watched her, feeling too big for his skin, near bursting at the chest.

“Suck me,” he whispered. “Take me in your mouth and eat me like there’s no tomorrow.”

She drew his dick up from his stomach and her mouth enveloped him fully at the tip, her lips sliding down. He stretched his arms on the couch back, bracing himself with his hands.

“God.” He bucked up, and a shuddering breath tore out of him. He pumped up again, and she moved her head down, her tongue flat under him. Delicious.

They established a rhythm that gradually increased in speed. He groaned through a strained throat, blind, glassy eyes staring up at the ceiling. His every cell thrilled, his penis an oversized stick gliding in her silky, wet mouth.

“Ride me.”

The sound she made was muffled by the engorged width of his flesh. She let it slip out of her mouth and rubbed her face against him, nuzzling his balls, his penis. Her words quivered against him. “I love you.”

He let his eyes drift shut, tightly shut. Maybe he hadn’t really heard it before. Or maybe he hadn’t heard it in a while. Maybe he just needed to hear it more than he needed air. Maybe that’s why his chest throbbed. Why it cramped and released at just hearing it. Maybe that’s why he needed to hear it again.

Almost violently, he grabbed her hair and lifted her face up, his words exploding out of him and into her moist mouth. “I adore you.
Adore
you. I love you passionately. Completely. With all my heart and my soul.”

Trails of wet tears met his palms on her jaw, and as though to hide them, she buried her face in his neck as she took his penis inside her. She clutched at his shoulders and he wrapped his arms around her, groaning when they were one. Why was she crying? Why was she crying?

For Heath. He knew it was Heath. He nudged her face to the side and rubbed his lips over the tears, salty on his tongue. “I’m sorry I don’t say it.” He wiped the drops with his hands, his mouth. “You make me weak, and I fear that you can hurt me. But you like hearing it, don’t you?” She choked on a little sound. Oh yes, she did love it, she wanted it. “I love you—god, you
know
I do.”

She clutched his face, kissing him passionately, the taste of tears on her lips. “You won’t stop loving me?”

“Never.”

“Ever?”

“Toni.” He shifted her, still inside her as he lay her down the length of the couch and made love to her so, so softly. Dying a little. Dying a little more. Tracing her collarbone with his nose. Tracing her cheek. Inhaling her. “You’re like my skin—how could I feel without it? Like my blood—what would my heart pump without my blood?”

And she cried more. And Grey didn’t know what to do but move. Fold her legs around him and move. And move and move and forget.And tell her how good she was. How sweet. How warm he felt inside her. How she was his home, his heart, his everything living. Until she whimpered. And she forgot Heath, too. And she came. And Grey came. And there was no one else coming but them.

Chapter Thirteen

Mr. Carstairs wanted his money back. He did not like Toni’s design.

“He’s right—it sucks.” Toni grimaced, dropping the proposal atop the rest of her clutter. Dinner had been awful. She had never been so unprepared and unfocused. She braced her hands on the edge of her desk and tried to calm down, gather her thoughts.

From his position lounging on the couch, Grey scrutinized her in silence. She sensed him waiting for her to offer more, and she rubbed the tense muscles at the back of her neck and sighed.

“I just can’t understand why I can’t come up with anything original. It’s like my muse completely dried up. Now I have no pending clients, and of the appointments I rescheduled, two of them canceled. I’m going nowhere with the Viscevis logo, either! If I hadn’t been gallivanting around Mexico so irresponsibly . . .” She went quiet, flipped open her proposal, and fingered the design.

“So how is Heath?” The casualness she tried to inject in her tone was not evident when the words came out a little high-pitched.

A long, dreadful silence followed before Grey answered. “He’s fine.”

Fine. Of course. He was fine.Why wouldn’t he be? He was big and dark and determined....

She needed to stop thinking of Grey and Heath and Mexico. She needed to reclaim her life, her work, to land more business.

The Viscevis logo. It would be such a coup. She shuffled a pile of papers until she came across the two logos. One a sleek cylinder inside a vine forming a circle, the other a solid gray ball in motion. How to integrate the two . . . ?

She sighed within minutes. “I’ll never do this.”

Grey was on his way to her when she pivoted around. He framed her cheeks in his hands and touched his nose to her forehead, then kissed her so gently she sighed.“It’s all in here. In this brilliant brain of yours. All you have to do is find it.”

“It’s not that easy. . . .” she protested. Things weren’t always so simple. Not all designs could merge.

When he captured her lips with his, she whispered his name in a reverent breath, allowing him access to every recess and nook of her mouth.

“I didn’t say it was easy, sweetheart. But I do know my Toni can do that and more.”

After checking in at the hotel, Heath rode out to see the land that had caught Grey’s eye. A rolling hill with a partial view of the English Bay and the imposing Art Deco-style Burrard Street Bridge. Lush and green, it was an impressive place, from any standpoint.

Grey wanted to build a hotel here. The wider, sweeping hill next to it offered more. A view of the entire city skyline. But it wasn’t for sale, of course. The most beautiful never is. The most beautiful is taken. Always taken.

After a leisurely walk around, smelling the dampened earth and maple, lost in his thoughts, Heath got in a cab to go to their construction site at a residential area in Cole Harbor. He’d been gazing out the window for what felt like hours when he spotted her.

She stood with a group of women at a corner—women dressed to entice a man; women ready, it seemed, to get down to the dirty. She was dressed like a nurse. A nurse. Someone to lick his wounds. Someone that wasn’t
her
.

Heath halted the car, popped his head out the open door. “Get in.”

All heads swiveled in his direction, and she stepped away from the group and righted her little white hat, her heels tapping on the sidewalk. “Can you afford me?”

“I said get in.”

Raven-haired and willowy, she shouted something at the “girls” and slid into the cab. She pulled a piece of gum out of her mouth and jammed it into the ashtray, rolled out a couple of sexy words to him, finishing with the word
lover
. She had glossy red lips and vivid red nails to match the tiny cross on the breast of her dress.

She would do. Anyone would do.

He didn’t speak to her as he let her into his hotel room. She had been talking during the ride, but he hadn’t listened to a word. His eyes were blurry. They stung. His throat felt cramped and his heart numb.

A fuck. That was all he was. A fuck. Grey held her, stroked her, supported her. He bought her earrings. He washed her hair. Heath just fucked her.

The nurse kicked her heels off and he felt her arms go around his neck. “What’s it gonna be, tough guy?”

Her fingers were fiddling with his hair, and it bothered him. Pulling them back, he leaned on the door, swallowing back the bile as he unfastened his jeans. “Blow it, fuck it, or play with it. Just do me.”

Helping him slide his jeans partway down, she weighed his newly bared testicles, fondled his dick. “Oooh, you’re big. Try to get a little hard for me, huh, big guy?”

Heath clamped his eyes shut when he felt the stinging moisture there. Good god, what was this? The pills.The plane. Leaving her.

“I’m not feeling well,” he said thickly.

“Oh, honey. Sweetie. Let Nurse Tina help you. I’ll make you hot for me.What do you like? Let’s get these off you first.”

Her hands got busy and he let her strip him fully of his shoes, his jeans, his socks. Her hand moved to stroke at his penis, trying to work it up. He felt her lips graze the tip.

With his head back against the wall, he tried to suck air into his lungs, feeling suffocated. He tried to picture this woman’s breasts. Her red mouth around his cock. Something to entice him, arouse him.

His cock was a limp, heavy weight in the nurse’s hands.
What have you done to me, Antonia?

He cursed as he grabbed her cap and a handful of hair, noting that it was dry and stiff, unlike Toni’s virgin tresses. “Don’t,” he said and hauled her up.

“Let me try a bit—”

“Just don’t. Here. I’m sorry.” He bent to his jeans and slipped several large bills into her hand. “Go.”

“We could try something—”

“Go!”

She fumbled with the door, and she was gone. A woman he could have had, even if paid for, even if only for an hour. Gone. He gritted his teeth. “Fucking
fool
!”

He’d been curious? He’d wondered what it felt like to care for someone? He was an
idiot
. Caring was not for him. He had stopped caring years ago,
years ago
, and now he remembered why. Nobody wanted him to give a shit.

Storming to the tiny closet, he jerked off his shirt and rummaged through his suitcase for his boxers.

And saw a flash of shimmering red among his jeans.

The sash.

His heart leapt up to his throat. He fished it out from the bottom and touched the satin with his fingers. His body responded to its texture, its scent, his cock distending, stretching until it was jutting out of his body in a painful lance. He brought it to the bed and lay on his side as he spread it across the center of his palm, folding it around himself. He gave an upward stroke, the silk gliding, gliding around him. He tightened his fist and groaned.

And he saw the rosy nipples he’d suckled raw. The light little hands feathering across his body. Green eyes, forest dark with passion.
Toni
. He tried the word out loud, a low, guttural murmur. “Toni.” His mouth made love to it, and he turned his head to the coverlet and muffled his next words. “Cat . . . oh, kitten, this is me making love to you.This is me loving you.” And he rocked his hips and pulled his heart out.