Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (33 page)

He chuckled low in his throat. “You won’t be able to lie still, I assure you.”

“It sounds like you’ll be doing all the work. Planning all the things.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Like you’ll have all the control.”

“Yes. That’s exactly it.” His warm lips pressed the place where her shoulder met her neck.
“Breathe.”
He ran his hands up her arms and pressed her hands flat against the wall. “Trust me.”

A trembling started deep in her chest. “Trust you?”

“Close your eyes. Just breathe.”

“How do I know that you won’t just tie me up and leave me here, helpless?”

“You’ll have to trust me.”

Rox sucked her lower lip into her mouth and bit down.

“Think of this: in three years, have I ever betrayed you? Have I ever not been there for you when you needed me?”

“You screwed a buttload of other women.” Her tone was a little drier than she had meant it to be.

“You were married, or you said that you were. You do not get to be angry about that.”

“Yeah, well,
that.”
This was why she was not a litigator’s paralegal. Her arguments were stupid when she was all het up.

He said, “I ran myself to the ground, trying to keep my hands off of you, to keep myself from seducing you into breaking your vows.”

He sure thought a lot of himself that he just assumed that she would fall on her back and break her fictional wedding vows if he had crooked his little finger at her.

And yet, the moment he had put his arms around her on the deck, she had fallen for all his games.

She said, “Yeah, screwing all those women must have been rough on you, poor baby.”

His deep voice vibrated near her skin. “But I’ve always been there whenever you needed me, no matter what happened. Together, we assaulted a man in Athens when he tried to hurt you.”

A huge man had grabbed her, thrown her up against a wall, and groped her boobs. She had kneed him in the nutsack, but the guy hadn’t gone down. If anything, it had made him angrier, and the liquor on his breath had made her dizzy. Cash had spun him around and cold-cocked him in the jaw, slamming the guy to the ground.

She said, “Um, yeah.”

“And I carried you across that river in Brazil.”

“I couldn’t believe those other lawyers insisted on that hike. The current was too strong. I couldn’t keep my feet. I didn’t want to see Sting’s rain forest quite
that
closely.”

“I have always been there when you needed me. I’ve always protected you and kept you safe. I will tonight, too.”

She couldn’t seem to breathe all the way down into her lungs. “But what if you can’t? What if something happens? What if it turns out that I’m allergic to nylon or whatever those ropes are made out of?”

Twisted skeins of ropes hung in a glass-front case, sorted by color and thickness. They reminded Rox of her great-aunt’s knitting yarn stash and yet were so different and freaky.

He whispered, “You’re arguing to argue. First, you tried to argue the law, saying that the underlying theory was retrogressive—”

Yeah,
retrogressive.
That was the word she had been looking for, dang it. Trust the European guy who had learned high-falutin’ English to take the vocab-heavy Law School Admissions Test to know the twenty-dollar word.

“—but I refuted your logic. Then, you argued the facts of the case, saying that you couldn’t trust me. When I rebutted that with concrete examples, you began to just argue, throwing out a squirrel case about the allergenic qualities of the ropes.”

He chuckled against her neck, and then his teeth nipped her skin. A shiver passed through Rox, and she let her head fall back against his strong shoulder.

His hands curled over hers, high above her head.

“Here is your choice: you said that you wanted me to teach you what goes on in these clubs. You’ll have to give up all responsibility and control to me. You’ll have to trust me to know you, to do it right, and to stop if that’s what needs to happen.”

It seemed like too much to ask, and yet, the thought of laying down her burdens for just a few hours was unreasonably attractive. “Okay.”

His voice near her neck was almost a whisper, “You have to say, ‘I submit.’”

She sucked in a breath to argue about those words, but he was right. She was arguing just to argue.

Rox swallowed hard to get rid of the worried lump in her throat and choked out, “I submit.”

He dragged his hands down her skin and wrapped her in his arms. “Thank you. It’s a gift, for you to give up control to me.”

She nodded, feeling smaller and more helpless in his burly arms than she ever had before. His biceps, pressing on her upper arms, seemed larger, more powerful, like he could grab her weaker body and break her into pieces if he felt like it.

He said, “You need to pick a safe word.”

“I don’t know what that is. I don’t know anything about this.” Her voice was still a bit soprano with panic.

He said, “A word to signal true distress, a failsafe that you will say if you are overwhelmed, if you want me to stop everything and untie you.”

“Oh, okay. That seems fair.” Her voice felt a little stronger.

“You need to pick one.”

“Um, can’t you pick one?”

“No. You have to do this.”

“Okay.
Um.
Caveat?”

“Latin for a warning. That is an excellent one. Would you like one that means that you are in some discomfort, that means not to stop, but to be careful or to modify what I am doing?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

“And it would be?” She could hear the smile in his voice.

“Sub modo,”
she said.

“
Sub modo,
to modify a contract with agreement of all parties. Good. Now turn around.” He stepped back enough for her to pivot.

Rox turned around, but he was still standing so close to her. The cold, stone wall was right behind her, and she leaned back against it. Chill passed through her clothes and trailed along her spine and butt like a ghost.

“Good.” He touched her chin, lifting her face with his fingers.

He positioned her head where he wanted it, tilting her face a little to the right.

This kind of control, this micromanaging, felt alien. She was used to managing people. She was used to working
with
him.

This vulnerability felt like an invasion into her mind.

He kissed her, gently, almost lovingly.

She really shouldn’t think things like
lovingly.
Like Wren had said, Cash was all about fun and games. This control thing, this dominance-submission thing, must be just another game to him.

His lips caressed hers, and she melted against him.

He nudged her backward with his mouth, bracing himself with his hand on the wall behind her, and pressed his body against hers. Luckily, she was still wearing her high heels, so he didn’t have to bend down ridiculously far.

Her hands crept up, finding first the strong cords of his abdominals around his waist, then the smooth rounds of his pecs and shoulders.

He was even kissing her differently tonight.

Usually, or at least before, when he had kissed her, his mouth had devoured her, an expression of passion and lust. It had only been a few weeks since the first time he had kissed her in his bedroom, when she had tried to rip that bandage off of his cheek.

Tonight, his lips caressed hers, lightly sucked at her lower lip, and his tongue stroked hers, but it all seemed deliberate, calculated. The bandage on his cheek didn’t brush her face at all.

He traced her arms to her wrists and lifted her hands away from his neck, placing them at her sides and pressing her hands against her thighs.

“I want—” she began, her lips still against his.

“Let me,” he growled.

He held her hands against her own soft thighs and kissed her, his mouth straying to her jaw and shoulder but returning to her lips.

She wanted her arms around him. She wanted to touch him and finally lick those tattoos that flamed along his left side from his muscled shoulder to his corded thigh.

His broad chest pushed against her, pressing her back against the wall. Cold stole through her blouse, freezing her back and butt.

He stepped back and pulled her with him, leading her with his hands and his lips.

She followed him, walking blindly.

In the center of the room, Cash settled his hand on her shoulder, stopping her. “I’m going to undress you now.”

She nodded, even though she had a feeling that she didn’t need to.

He took his own shirts off first, unbuttoning the neck of his dress shirt and pulling it and his undershirt over his head, baring the dark flames of the tattoo on the left side of his body and the three shields arranged on his right forearm. His body undulated with muscle as he stripped, all those thick ropes of muscle moving under his skin like he was dancing. He pressed the bandage back onto his cheek after the shirts had snagged it.

Rox tried to look like she wasn’t staring, but she totally was. As he peeled his sleeves down his arms, baring his thick forearms with a thin veil of brown hair on them, she couldn’t look away. Dark, tattooed fire gripped his skin all down his left arm and covered the inverted triangle of his lats to the waistband of his suit slacks.

He tossed his shirts on the floor and turned back to her. His hands rose to her suit jacket.

She had planned a solid meeting at the office and a nice, quiet supper with Maxence and Arthur. How had she ended up on a private jet and then in a sex club in another state?

Insanity.

Cash smoothed his hands over her shoulders, pushing her jacket back and down her arms. He caught it before it fell off of her hands and laid it over a crossbar on a thing that looked like a gym’s pull-up tower.

He walked around her like he was inspecting her, but his fingers kept darting out to touch her, to caress her skin on her bare arms or the back of her neck.

When he came around to stand in front of her again, he reached for the hem of her shirt, sliding his fingers underneath, touching her waist, then lifting it over her head.

His eyes dipped, noticing her pale blue silk bra. “I do like this one.”

“You’ve already seen it once today. You’d think you’d be sick of it by now.”

He touched his fingers to her lips. “No talking except to say one of your safe words.”

“I beg your—”

“No talking.” An evil twinkle lit in his green eyes. “Or I’ll turn you over my knee and spank you.”

Her mouth dropped open. “You
wouldn’t.”

His smile widened a little. “Are you trying to make me spank you?”

Rox felt her breath stop in her chest, and she shook her head no.

“Then let’s not play that game.” He walked around behind her and unbuttoned her skirt’s closure at her waist. His warm fingers dipped inside her waistband, and her skirt loosened as he unzipped it. The fabric dropped to the floor, baring her matching blue silk underwear.

She felt his fingers stroke her hips, lightly rubbing the lace that stretched over her skin.

“Step out of the skirt.”

She did, still wearing her high heels and nothing else except wispy underwear.

Behind her, Cash sucked in a breath.

Warmth covered her back, and he whispered near her ear. “Thank you for allowing me to do this.”

Something like happiness suffused through her. She nodded.

Cash slid his hands from her shoulders to her hips and rocked her back against himself, running his hands over her.

He whispered, “I love how soft your skin is.”

Rox leaned against him, relaxing into his massage.

Cash’s firm palms stroked her, sliding over her body from her shoulders and down her arms, then he circled her waist. He rubbed down her hips, almost dancing with her, but one hand drifted upward and across her chest to cup her breast through her thin bra. Even with his huge hands, she overflowed his fingers.

His other hand stole lower, lightly stroking her folds over her panties.

Rox sighed and let her head fall back against his shoulder.

“That’s good,
lieveke.
Relax. Let me hold you.”

He pulsed his fingers around her breast, almost pulling at her but he was too gentle for it to hurt at all.

With each grasp, his hand slid farther down her breast until he drew his fingers over her nipple, and she stretched, pushing against his hand.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. “Just stand still. Feel me.”

Rox tried to comply. She really did. His hands loved her skin, holding handfuls of her body like he was gathering every bit of her to himself. His fingertips brushed her clit, and even over the silk of her panties, a shiver tightened inside her.

She moaned.

His whispered shush near her neck floated along her shoulder.

He moved one hand behind her to unhook her bra. The straps slipped over her arms. He caught the scrap of silk and tossed it near the growing pile of clothes on the tile floor. Both his hands caressed her hips, sliding under the lace of her underwear, and he worked them down her thighs until they fell.

“Step out.”

She lifted her feet, her high heels clicking on the rough tile. Cash flicked the panties toward the pile of clothes.

His hands roamed her naked skin now, caressing and almost pinching her nipples and clit, always on the verge of hurting her but never quite sliding over from intense sensation to pain. She swayed on her high-heeled pumps, the only things that she was wearing.

A pinch to both her nipples shot a burst of pleasure through her, and her knees buckled. Though she caught herself, his arms swooped around her, and he lifted her to his bare chest.

She started to grab his neck, but Cash shook his head. Rox crossed her fists over her bare breasts, and he took all of her weight with his arms. He carried her as easily as if she were a kitten, looking into her eyes the whole time. The dim, golden light turned his eyes impossibly dark green.

Passion hummed in her blood, but being carried so easily made her feel so small, so
helpless.
She laid her head on his shoulder, huddling closer to him.