Bared by Him (6 page)

A minute later, he was still sprawled over her small body on his desk, struggling
to come back from the moon. His cock was still inside her. He didn’t want to pull
out, was luxuriating in the pleasure of doing nothing except staring down into her
face, just for the pleasure of it. Those soft eyes. That soft smile. She studied him
back as though she liked his face as much as he liked hers.

Their chests seemed to rise and fall at the same time.

He scraped his palm over her lovely long hair, pushing a sweaty tendril back, his
voice surprising him in its tenderness. “At what time can you be ready for me to send
a car tonight?”

She straightened herself with a noise that told him she wasn’t precisely happy about
moving yet, and when he had no choice but to withdraw from inside her, she scrambled
to retrieve her panties from the floor. “I can’t tonight. I have a dinner I’ll be
speaking at.”

Cade unrolled the condom with care, then grabbed some Kleenex from his desk to clean
himself. “I’ll go with you.”

She shot him a wary glance, then slipped on her panties and wrapped her belt around
herself. “It’s about cancer, Cade.”

He clamped a jaw at that, cursing himself over and over again.

Dammit.

Silently, he walked over to his desk to pull out the cashier’s check.

“What time does it end?”

*   *   *

Ivy hurried home to change before the Lincoln Heights Breast Cancer Foundation gala
dinner. She touched her lips, and they tingled for him. Her entire body, from the
tip of her toes to the roots of her hair, felt warm and fluttery for him.

Quickly shaking off her fantasizing, she headed to her kitchen, jammed a fresh head
of broccoli into her Vitamix blender, added a cup of spinach, a bit of flaxseeds,
some cauliflower, salt, a lemon including the peel, lots of water, and then she covered
it all and sent it spinning.

Ivy necessarily screened herself for cancer every six months, because apparently when
your mother had it, your risk of getting it was higher. But in the natural circles,
cruciferous vegetables were touted as being huge cancer preventers, especially if
you ate them raw and had several servings of them a day. Ivy had been practically
breathing them ever since she heard of their healing properties.

Pulling off the top of the blender, she poured the shake and added several drops of
graviola, another powerful anticancer plant which destroyed malignant cells. She’d
ordered it from a company in the Amazonian forest and had decided to test it several
months before recommending it around the foundation. Just to make sure it didn’t have
strange side effects.

This shake tasted like shit, not like those she added fruits to. But she was in a
hurry today, and she had to get it down.

She swallowed it gulp by gulp as she headed for her bedroom and opened up the shower.

And there, in the shower, his pale silver eyes and sable black hair and dirty mouth
were once again in her head. God.

How long had it been since she’d felt a man’s hands on her body?

How long had it been since she’d wanted to be kissed?

It felt like the girl who’d wanted that was a whole other person, not the woman who’d
awakened in Cade West’s brutally tender arms.

She squeezed her eyes shut and touched her breasts as the shower water rained down
on her, wishing to feel his mouth on them …

She became so aroused fantasizing about him, she had to turn the water temperature
to cold. She gasped from the shock and then shook herself, because, really? This wasn’t
the time to be daydreaming. Focus was key at this point in her life, and she had to
keep her involvement with him to the only thing it could be.

A temporary fling—not even an affair.

Which, thankfully, was about the only thing a powerful billionaire like Cade West
would desire from her.

In fact, the man would probably be tired of her by tomorrow morning.

Which only made her more determined to enjoy him while she could.

*   *   *

Cade instantly regretted coming to the gala dinner when he saw all those bald heads
scattered throughout the tables. Bald little heads that made him want to turn tail
and run. Instead, he fought the chicken-shit impulse, locked his jaw, braced his legs,
and stood like a sentry by the entrance, suddenly realizing he could hear Ivy’s lively
voice through the microphone.

He lifted his gaze, and his heart did some strange maneuvers when he spotted her center
stage. There she was. Ivy, glowing and healthy, standing at the podium, her voice
clear and convincing.

She looked so damned lovely in that white skirt and a white form-fitting blouse with
silver sparkles at the collar that he curled his fingers into his palms from the sheer
way they ached to make a grab for her.

She was relating some sort of survival rate list to the attendees, where everyone
clapped after each mention.

“Mary Ellen Wolfander, going for six years now!”

Clap clap clap.

“Kathleen Marie Anise, well into four years now!”

Clap clap clap.

Cade didn’t glance around to see those who stood. His eyes just refused to leave Ivy.

She’d gathered her hair up in a twist that revealed her throat, exposing the tender
skin between her shoulder and neck. Cade could clearly see, though she’d seemed to
have applied makeup, the exact spot where he’d sucked her skin into his mouth yesterday.

His teeth suddenly ached. That small pink hickey was teased by a blond wisp of hair
that fell there, and fuck, what he wouldn’t do to brush that wisp aside, to press
a kiss to the steady pulse that fluttered just under her skin, to cup those fragile
little shoulders in his hands, push her down on the floor, suck her into his mouth,
and bury all his pain inside her again.

But little bald heads kept popping up in the room and a sensation of blackness opened
in his chest. A dark cloud hovered above him, pressuring him.

There were men here, too. Some maybe sick, some supporting the women. All he knew
was that none of them deserved this. Nobody did. But they were here. Supporting each
other. Quiet and attentive to her words. The entire room seemed to belong to her.
Even Cade.

He felt both touched and frustrated and transfixed, all at the same time, as she finished
with the phrase, “Remember, fighters make survivors. May God bless you all!”

She descended the podium steps, and the incoming nearness of her scent in the air
made his nostrils twitch. No matter how hard he tried to ignore it, it seemed like
the place had come alive by her simple presence, people rising and heading toward
her to say hello. His cock stirred, and it made his lips curl in disdain at himself.
In loathing.

His fucking dick hadn’t worked when it should have. When his wife had lain in the
hospital, dying, begging him to make love to her. And Cade had kissed her and caressed
her—but no. He hadn’t been able to make love to her. Not once.

She’d been too weak, pale and yellow, bald and frail, and he’d been hurting too much
to feel anything but pain.

For years, he’d shut himself off. Convinced he just didn’t want sex like the rest
of humanity. It had taken years for him to begin responding to his dreams, dreams
about faceless women doing shit with him. But it had never been like this. He had
never felt this need. And never with a woman he’d just met. He’d always known he would
never love again, and felt it was wrong to want somebody when he hadn’t been able
to want Laura like this. But
JesusLordChrist,
he wanted Ivy. What she stirred inside him felt so raw and so violent, so fucking
dangerous, all he knew was that he would take her until she begged him to stop.

Heart pounding as she neared, he watched her wind around the tables hugging people
and his eyebrows pulled low. He didn’t like the way the men looked at Ivy. The way
they hugged her, like they wanted to feel her chest against theirs. He fisted his
hands so hard, his knuckles jutted out. Visions of violence teased his mind, until
he saw her come closer still, toward him, and his pulse quieted.

Finally she was near enough for him to hear people wish her luck, like she was this
white knight of theirs, “fighting” to get donations. Cade wanted to be the black knight
who took their white knight away from them and took her somewhere where cancer did
not exist, and was not a word she
ever
spoke again.

“Hi,” she said, reaching him, her cheeks flushed a pretty pink. Her scent did a number
on his senses, and he got more protective, tenser in his stance. Ivy didn’t belong
here.

She. Did not. Belong here.

He set his forehead against hers and pulled her closer to him, his voice gruffer than
he’d intended. “Let me take you home.”

She drew back and gave him a startled look that clearly told him she suspected he
was crazy, which was actually spot-on. “What? Cade, I can’t leave now.” Her expression
softened all of a sudden, and so did her voice as she touched his arm lightly. “I
understand if you want to leave, though. I’ll catch up with you. I promise I’ll stop
by when I’m done.”

He hesitated, but shook his head and remained, almost fevered in his skin by that
mere light, fleeting touch of her fingers.

He wanted her hands under his shirt, all over his torso. He wanted her writhing again.
Moaning his name.

Throat tight with desire, he watched as she once again turned to greet some other
attendants, and he edged back to give her space, tapping his thigh as he waited, hoping
these people didn’t make Ivy cry. He could see her eyes were red-rimmed.

He clenched his teeth. Fucking shit, why did she expose herself to this pain? Again
and again? For new people? People she didn’t know, wouldn’t even have to know were
dying?

He tore his mind away from the black cloud of his thoughts and focused just on Ivy.
On what he wanted to do to her. On how they would both shatter to a thousand pieces
when they got to his home or her home. It didn’t matter. He was so anxious to feel
her he’d do her in a bathroom.

A text popped into his screen.

You coming to poker? We’re sitting here waiting like idiots.

You’re always an idiot.

U coming or not?

He wasn’t about to tell his friends where he was, especially Luke Preston, the loud-mouthed
son of a bitch who was up on everyone’s cases, all the damn time. Good thing Luke
was a little tamed now that he had a new woman, a real sexpot who seemed to know just
what to do with Luke Preston, but Cade still snorted at the thought that it would
even last. Nothing good ever did.

He and Ivy were …

Shit, they were probably not going to last more than a week.

He felt like he’d just swallowed a bowling ball, and he scowled once more at the waiting
message. No, he was not telling Preston or anyone he was at a
cancer
dinner. They wouldn’t believe him. Hell, they almost pitied him, and always danced
around the subject of Laura. Nobody dared speak her name around him. They tried to
pretend she’d never existed, which was something that irked him, for it prevented
him from ever really … venting at all.

Busy.

He shut his phone off after texting that brief word, and waited for a half hour more,
thinking of all the things he ached to do to this woman. He waited. Keenly aware that
for once in his life, anger didn’t dominate his every thought. For once in his life,
he actually gave a shit about something.

Even it was only burying himself inside of Ivy.

*   *   *

Ivy kept stealing glances at Cade across the room, and her heart flipped and vaulted
in her chest every time she spotted him. In a black suit, and already without the
tie he’d worn this morning, he scowled as he gazed around the busy room and hung back
from the crowd.

Her heart grew wings for him. Because he looked
so
good—even if he appeared like he sorely needed something to drink. The rigid line
of his jaw hinted at a frustrating day at work, and the scowl deepening the crease
on his forehead said he’d rather be anywhere instead of here. But a hunk was always
a hunk. And Cade defined the word, scowl or no scowl. Not in a clean, boy-next-door
way, oh no. More in a dangerous, raw, and real way that was proving unbearably attractive
to her.

Because she was over the fairy tales. She liked the truth, straight up and out front,
and that was what you got with Cade West.

His virile face, with every one of its perfect features, was what Ivy had seen today
in her mind’s eye when she woke, brushed her teeth, had breakfast, lunch, dinner,
even when she spoke to all those people. But seeing those thick-lashed gray eyes in
person and that dominant nose and that sensual mouth had her rapidly approaching the
point where she would tackle him down on the marble floor and take him right there
in the lobby. In front of everybody.

She was that desperate. That utterly hot for him.

Sharp black business slacks covered his legs and a snowy white shirt stretched across
his wide, square shoulders, his jacket draped on the back of a chair now. His twilight
hair was hopelessly mussed, like he had a habit of raking his hands through it when
he grew impatient. Places in her body throbbed with yearning. She ached to run her
hands through that satin black mass, grab a fistful of it, and yank him forward until
that fat, juicy mouth of his was all over hers.

But that fat, juicy mouth was so thinned it almost vanished.

And why didn’t he look at her?

He stared absently at the ladies at a table, his profile proud and masculine and utterly
wrecking to her body—which she’d feared after so many years of not using it might
have gotten a bit rusty. Well, it throbbed now, every inch of her. Her breasts and
nipples tingled, and she’d creamed her panties the instant she’d seen him walk into
the room. Her tongue felt so heavy she couldn’t seem to speak and she was damned glad
her discourse was over.