Tempting the CEO (a Sleeping With The Enemy novella) (Entangled Brazen) (2 page)

“I bet you do.” He produced a card key and thankfully waved it through to a green, opening the door to my suite. “I brought an extra key for when I got it unstuck.” He handed it to me.

“Thanks.”

“For nothing,” Gorgeous Guy added, as the man went by him and responded with a comment too low for me to hear, and they both laughed. A male bonding moment before he headed back to the elevator.

I stooped to pick up the ice bucket, its contents watery now. My neighbor really had been sweet. And hot. And sexy.

He was still standing there, waiting in his open doorway as I stood in mine.

“Go ahead,” he taunted. “Make my day.”

I felt more lighthearted from the last few minutes with him than I had in a long while, and because of it he didn’t seem like so much of a stranger now. Things
were
looking up. If I’d let them. Maybe it was time to “stop the insanity” and do things a little differently.

“I’ll take a quick shower and pop back for that drink,” I called down to him.

Hell, I was entitled to a little fun, wasn’t I?

I closed my door and dropped the towel.

If I was really going to do this, I should consult my best friend, Cassie, who knew all about the proper etiquette of hooking up. I grabbed my cell, tempted to call her, but she’d keep me on the phone too long. So instead I texted:
Gorgeous guy next door asked me into his suite for a drink. What do you think I should do?

Cassie texted back right away,
Go, you idiot!
At least she put a smiley face at the end to soften her real point, which was that I was a little slow on the uptake when it came to situations with men.

Don’t worry. I’m going
, I responded.

A series of short back-and-forths, full of instructions from Cassie like “Go commando” and “Do not swallow,” convinced me yet again that she had a PhD in the subject of sex and I no more than a GED. I decided to ignore most of the advice. You had to learn to walk before you could run and all that.

Her final text reminded me of a rule I always made her follow. To send a picture of the guy so he would realize that somebody knew who he was and that she was with him. Not that every guy was a serial killer. But there was that one in however many millions.

After assuring her I would, I took my shower in record time. Dripping in my towel afterward, I confronted my closet and realized that wardrobe was going to be a problem. Except for the grungy clothes I traveled in, I had brought only suits, one for each day I’d be here, three in all. Each one was as bland as the next. I settled for the knee-length skirt of the black suit and a neutral camisole that I usually put underneath a blouse, but would wear by itself for this occasion. Showing what a wimp I was, though, I still wore a bra and panties, plain old white since it was the only color I’d brought, although at least the bra was skimpy enough not to show through the camisole.

At the last minute, I grabbed my phone for the picture. When Gorgeous Guy opened the door—I really should get down to asking his name—I snapped the picture.

“What was that for?” he asked as I sent it to Cassie.

“Nothing. Just a precaution my friend and I take if we’re someplace alone with a guy. Since we’ll be closing the door and everything this time.”

He nodded, not seeming like a mass murderer at all—so he had that going for him. “That’s a smart idea. You can never be too careful. Especially in New York.”

He had gotten more casual, in jeans and a black pullover. I felt overdressed. Taking me aback a little, he leaned over and kissed my cheek. Light, almost nothing at all, but I must have jumped a mile. He stroked the curve of my elbow. “Sorry. Did I get the wrong message this time?”

I shook my head. I didn’t want him to keep his hands to himself for this round. I wanted them on me.

“Then relax. You’re even more skittish than when you were in the towel. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want.”

Maybe that was the problem. What wouldn’t I want him to do? “I bet,” I said.

At the last minute, I realized I’d forgotten the condom I tucked away in my purse for just such an occasion. I hoped it hadn’t expired. “I have to go back to my room for a minute.”

“Not chickening out on me already, are you?”

“No. I just, er, forgot something.”

“I have condoms, if that’s what you’re worried about,” he said. “But if it was your lipstick or something, I feel like a sleaze for mentioning it.”

I laughed, not bothering to lie, but not going back for any lipstick, either.

He ushered me to one of the sofas facing the panoramic view of the lit-up city, and we sat side by side. He handed me a drink. “It’s champagne. You might not go for beer, but everybody likes a little bubbly, right?”

It was the cool, dry version, expensive of course, and I sipped while he watched me. “It’s good. But it’ll have to be stronger to take the buzz off the coffee I downed today.”

“So caffeine overload was behind all that tugging on your towel? I thought you were tormenting me.”

“Neither. I was nervous at being around a strange guy half naked and all.”

“I take it from that comment you’re not into this kind of thing?”

“No, usually I keep my clothes on and just nod politely in the hall to my next-door neighbor.”

He laughed and I scowled, continuing, “I’ve got to warn you I’m probably not your usual hookup.” It was sort of freeing to drop the pretense and discuss it so openly.

“Why? I find you very attractive.” He trailed his fingers along my jaw, causing a tingling sensation. “I have a weakness for gorgeous women with a good sense of humor, especially if they’re spontaneous. The combo makes me defenseless against their wiles. They always seem to be able to have their way with me.”

Something about his devilish smile made me think it was almost certainly the other way around.

And I guess I should have said thanks for the compliment, except I didn’t like to focus too much on external looks. Besides, I felt there was a big “but” just hanging out there.

“But—”

I coughed.

“And I don’t know how to say this without sounding like an asshole—but usually the women I’m with are a little more, well, eager, I guess you’d say. At this point anyway.”

“What point?”

“Alone in my hotel room after coming in for a drink. Especially if they start out in a towel.”

“Most women get right down to it, do they?”

The mocking tone between us felt mellow and worldly and kind of sexy.

His thumb brushed my lower lip. “Usually. But it’s totally up to you how fast we go. Or whether we do.”

Whether?
Who was kidding whom here? I knew it was a foregone conclusion when I decided to come back for a drink. Unless he started drooling or pulled out a whip and chains—I don’t really mind a little fun on that front but I’d taken all the spanking I could at work all day already—Mr. Gorgeous Guy was good to go.

He leaned in for a kiss, just the slightest bit of tongue, and I trembled a little, feeling it right between my legs.

“Maybe I should have gotten around to this before,” he whispered, “but what’s your name?”

Chapter Two

“Suzy,” I lied, and he raised an eyebrow.

“No, it’s not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’re not a Suzy.”

“I’ve got news for you—I didn’t name myself.”

“If you were Susan, you’d say Susan, not Suzy.”

“Would I?”

He cupped the curve of my neck and was still so close his breath brushed against my mouth.

I wasn’t going to tell him my real name. But I wanted his.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Fred,” he answered, and I laughed.

“You are not!”

“You’re the one who said we don’t name ourselves,
Suzy.”

“If you
were
a Frederick, you’d be Rick or Ricky. You’re too cool for Fred.”

“I don’t feel particularly cool right now.”

“I doubt that. I’m sure you’re a lot more at home with this scenario than I am.”

“Maybe, but don’t expect acrobatics in bed,” he teased. “I’m a meat-and-potatoes guy.”

The phone in my pocket buzzed with a text, and I ignored it as he played with the fingers of one of my hands, kissing a fingertip here and there and sucking lightly. He was so good at it, I could think of a few other things he might apply that suction technique to. I slid my arms around his neck, my fingers sifting through the silky dark hair above his collar, and he nuzzled the curve of my shoulder, running his own fingers through the strands of my hair, the ponytail holder long gone. His lips wandered to the pulse at my throat, my collarbone, until he came to the cleavage above my camisole and tugged it lower, his mouth warm and wet on the bare skin he uncovered. Everywhere he touched came alive. His breath was fast and my own even faster, and I wanted more.

When he made it back up to my mouth, I ran my tongue along his lower lip, nipping, drawing him in as he drew me, ready to climb on his lap or crawl beneath him or roll around on the expensive carpet. In a word, get right down to it. He pulled back with a shaky laugh, as if slowing us down.

But I didn’t want to slow down. I hadn’t come back over here to slow down, and if he hadn’t gotten the message before, I wanted to be perfectly clear about it right now. Deliberately, I brought my hand to his erection—his huge erection—and he sucked in a breath. Talk about meat.

I traced the outline of him, looking down as I did so until a slight hitch in his breath made me look back up. His blue eyes were almost black, and his smile was so slight as to be no more than an upturn of one side of that beautiful mouth.

“You like?” I whispered, enthralled.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “So what are you doing here in New York, Suzy?”

Playing with your cock.

Oh no, that’s right, that wasn’t why I was here. “Work,” I said, not wanting to get into my boring old life right now any more than I wanted to give him my real name. This was fantasy. No need for airing all my mundane biographical details or trying to ferret out all his. This was a hookup, nothing more, nothing less. The exciting stress reliever that all the rest of my generation was enjoying pretty freely, from what I could tell. And this was my turn.

“What do you do for a living?” he asked, his tone a little rough as I continued to fondle him, as if he were the pasha and I were some slave girl hanging out, keeping his cock up for his amusement.

Although I hoped that eventually he’d want to put it to good use for
me
as well.

“Mmm? What do I do? I’m a hand model. You know, dish soap commercials.”

His smirk told me he didn’t believe it for a second. “Well, you do have unusually lovely hands.”

Forget that they were just your standard five fingers, no manicure even.

“Thanks,” I said, wiggling my fingers for emphasis.

“And very talented with them,” he observed.

“Oh yes. How about you, Fred?”

“I’m a heart surgeon.”

That gave me pause and I thought about the kid he’d mentioned, afraid we’d stumbled on to some reality. “Really?”

“No. I was just going to work in some slimy joke about wanting to play doctor with you.”

Phew.

“Actually, I’m an ad man.”

I wasn’t sure I believed that one either, but it fit a little better. “Have you done anything I might have seen?”

“I did the billboard where the sexy girl is offering the guy a cigarette and the caption says, ‘Go ahead, you’ve got to die of something.’”

I laughed.

“It was a limited distribution. I was really proud of that piece of work. But they fired me right after it.”

“Can’t say I ever saw that one.”

He groaned, losing even more of his smile, at a particularly long stroke I took, up and down.

“I’m running out of witty comebacks with you feeling me up like this. It’s kind of making me, ah”—his penis jerked in my hand—“needy.” The way he said it, a lock of that black hair falling over his eyes, made me feel a little needy too.

“Oh yeah? So have at it,” I said, breathy with anticipation.

He didn’t hesitate, but ground his lips against mine, hard, opening his mouth, making me open mine. I was so turned on I squirmed as he pushed me back against the cushions. I relinquished his lips for a minute, but no way was I letting go of that hard toy. I fumbled to open his pants as he got on top of me, and he pushed my hands away, letting me up for breath long enough to order, “Not yet.”

He kneed my legs open and gave me his full weight. God, it was so good as he pushed the heft of his erection right where I needed it. Could a person orgasm with her cotton panties and his jeans in the way? Maybe. I was very close, and I arched up against him, my hands going to his ass to pull him closer. At that, he did away with the undies, ripping them off with one fierce jerk that made me yelp. One down and one to go. With my bottom half exposed, he didn’t waste any time, shoving one long middle finger into me, his thumb flicking against my clit, sending shock waves of pleasure to my core. I gasped at how right it felt, his sure touch against me, in me, as he murmured his approval of how wet I was, how hot, weaving some magic that made me even more so.

And he did it all while he was still kissing me with that expert, all-engrossing attention. Now
that
was multitasking. I moved against his finger desperately and he added another one, sliding in and out, filling me, the rhythm wilder, harder. He was going to make me come before he even took his pants off. I yanked my head away from his kiss, wanting to concentrate on the building feeling, willing to pitch in to do my part, and he nipped my earlobe as I turned my head away. “Come on,” he urged in a raspy voice. “Show me how you come.”

Show him? He was pretty much showing me. I mean, I did this on my own from time to time. Of course I did. Everybody did. But really, he was handling the whole thing way better. I shuddered against his hand, clenching my thighs, trying really hard not to make a funny orgasm face or cry out too loudly. I didn’t, but when I was done, my breathing slowing, my lips still puffy and wet from his kisses, I was embarrassed anyway. Luckily, he wasn’t. He was a man with a purpose, and it was clear who was in charge of this hookup. The one who knew what he was doing.

Quickly standing next to the couch, he scooped me up in his arms as if I weighed no more than—well, no more than I knew I did after munching on junk food in the conference room all day—and carried me into the dark bedroom of the suite. I clung on to his neck for dear life, but he set me down gently. The zipper of my skirt slid down and the cami was whisked off before I knew it.

“Hey.” My hands went to his sweater. “What about you?”

He unhooked my bra. “I want to see you first.”

When I was completely naked, he startled me by switching on the bedside lamp. A fluorescent, modern number. I blinked into the sudden flood of light. Talk about a buzzkill.

Apparently it wasn’t reciprocal, though. He was mesmerized by my, well, my best assets, bringing one palm reverently up to take the weight of one of them, heavy and sensitive from my orgasm. “God, these are pretty incredible.”

I might have faulted him on the objectivizing, but he seemed so reverent, I didn’t have the heart to.

“Uh, thanks.”

He caressed them softly and murmured, “and real.”

“Do you think we could, uh, turn down that light?”

“No.” He whipped his sweater over his head and went to his jeans, getting naked quickly. I was a little mollified by the bright light thing, since it allowed me to take in every finely wrought muscle in a pretty spectacular six-pack as well as an erection that looked every bit as impressive in the light as it had felt under his jeans.

“Wow,” I said simply as he led me to the bed. “Is this the part where we play doctor?”

“Whatever you want.” He smoothed my hair out of my eyes, balancing on his forearms to hold his weight off as I settled beneath him. His long, strong legs tangled with mine and his scorching-hot penis rested against my thigh, branding it. Not knowing what to do with my own hands, I slid them along his shoulders, relishing all the naked skin to skin. He looked down at me, his cheeks flushed. “So, this isn’t too fast for you, is it?”

“Fast? It’s been a good five minutes since I got back here.”

He laughed.

“I held out as long as I could.”

The kiss he gave me started at my lips, but slowly, inevitably wandered down to my breasts. When he tongued and sucked them, each one in turn, I moaned and opened my legs wider, about as aggressive as I got on the bedroom front.

He lifted his head. “You want me to go down on you?” he asked, husky.

“Actually, I was thinking more like the
meat
part of the meat-and-potatoes thing might be nice,” I hinted, one hand drifting down from his shoulder to where the main course rested, jerking when I touched it.

“Yes ma’am.” A quick groping in his jeans pocket on the floor brought out the inevitable safe sex condom, and though I kept my eyes closed in sudden shyness while he rolled it on, I opened them as he slid the end product slowly, masterfully, between my legs.

I tried to keep the moaning to an absolute minimum. But really, if I were by myself receiving this much pleasure—and I don’t think it’d be possible by myself; there was just a flesh-and-blood element to it that my vibrator couldn’t match—I would have been singing arias at full voice.

His first thrusts were so deep and coordinated, I knew this guy was every bit as experienced as I had suspected.

“You’re really good with that,” I couldn’t help offering.

“Thanks. You make it easy.”

“Oh yeah? It doesn’t feel easy. It feels hard.”

“Is that your version of dirty talk? Because I’ve got to tell you, ah, you might want to work on it.”

“How about ‘please do me with your nice big cock’?” I asked in my best porn-star voice, and he laughed, but I noticed his thrust that time seemed a little less controlled.

“Yeah. That’s not bad.”

We made love in silence for a good few minutes at least, the only noise our panting and heavy breathing and groaning, until he murmured in my ear, “You feel so incredible…so much what I need…hot and beautiful…”

Each whispered caress brought him deeper and I couldn’t hold off any longer. I showed him that coming thing again, my fingers digging into the muscled planes of his back and my legs wrapped around his hard thighs, and he showed me his version.

Of course, like everything else about him, his version was extremely cool. His orgasm face was perfect, when I stopped concentrating on my own and even noticed, that is. Head dropped slightly, eyes narrowed, lips thinned as if wringing out that last drop of pleasure from our bodies.

And when he had, there was a lot of stroking and kissing and postcoital petting as we both drifted down and stopped clutching each other for dear life. So by the time he finally pulled out of me and rolled onto his back, there was none of that caveman sensation a girl sometimes got. Like he’d clubbed me and had his way with me and now he was going to go out and hunt for venison or something. No, I felt quite appreciated indeed.

The lamp was still on, though, spilling fluorescent light our way, so I also felt a little overexposed, now that I was out of the moment and all. I pulled the bed covers up to my chin and tried to summon up enough energy to go back to my own room while he got up from the bed and wandered into the bathroom, presumably to dispose of the condom.

When he came back he was holding a fresh one, wrapped in its package and ready to go. He tossed it onto the nightstand and folded back the covers to climb into bed beside me.

The halfhearted protest I made was, well, really halfhearted. “I should get going,” I mumbled while he sidled up next to me.

“Why? It’s early.” Since he ran his lips along my neck so sweetly I declined to call him on that and point out that I hadn’t even checked in until midnight, so by no stretch of the imagination was it now early. Instead, I rolled over onto my side, away from him. I was considering it my preliminary move toward leaving. No need to go about it all at once. I could approach it in stages, right?

But he rubbed my shoulders, a soft touch at first and then putting a lot more into it, and I began to rethink the leaving thing.

“Your muscles are really tight.”

He nudged me over to lie on my stomach so he could have full access to my back, and I let him, of course. Hey, I’m human. The woman who would turn down a back rub is the rare woman indeed. And as to turning down a back rub being offered by a hottie crouching over one’s bare butt…well, let’s just say I doubt
that
ever happens.

His strong, adept hands started at the base of my neck, moving slowly and thoroughly all the way down to the little dimples above my ass. With my head turned to the side and my cheek resting on my hands, I luxuriated in the attention. On the girlie scale, this was better than a bubble bath and painting my toenails. Although I think the actual sex may have won the gold in that category.