Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle (Play with Me, Snowfall, and After Midnight) (6 page)

“I … you … we can’t …”

“We can. I’m going to kiss you now, Kali.”

“Kali?” I whisper, unbelievably aroused by my name on his lips.

“Yes. Kali.” And then he is kissing me, his tongue caressing into my mouth, seeming to touch every intimate part of my body, stroking deep, and burning through me. Sensations roll through me, teasing my senses, torturing me with how much I want him and how wrong I know this is. But then his hand caresses my backside, pulling me closer, hard against his hips, his thick erection pressed to my belly, and I can’t remember why exactly it’s wrong. I am lost. Lost in him. Lost in what I feel, and I don’t want to let anything else in. Not the past. Not the last few hours. I don’t care anymore.

I wrap my arms around his neck, crushing my breasts to his chest, and gasp as he tears his mouth from mine. Then he is staring at me, searching my face for something I don’t understand. And I don’t know what he sees, or what he finds, but his eyes soften, and he strokes the hair from my face. “I was right. One kiss isn’t even close to enough.” His mouth comes down on mine again, and my fingers curl into the fabric of his shirt, holding on to him, willing him not to stop. This time the kiss is deeper, a dark demand that I answer willingly, eagerly, my tongue stroking against his.

Suddenly his fingers wrap my waist and he lifts me, setting me down on the wooden dining room table, spreading my legs to step between them.

“What are you doing?”

He reaches up and tugs on the front zipper of my dress. “Undressing you.”

A moment of clarity comes to me, and I grab his hand. “You need to know this changes nothing. I’m still furious about today. I don’t even know if I like you.”

“But you want me. That’s a start.”

He tugs on my zipper and I don’t stop him, my hands going to the table, trying to stabilize myself, though I’m not sure that is possible. This man is shoving my bra down and ravishing my breasts with a hot inspection that makes my sex clench and my thighs ache.

“I …” I pant, and forget what I was going to say. He’s cupping my breasts, pressing them together, and stroking my nipples with his thumbs.

“You what?”

“I don’t know.”

He nudges me backward. “Let me try to figure it out,” he offers, lowering his head, his dark hair tickling my chin, his tongue flicking against my nipple, sending darts of pleasure through me.

I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting for sanity, but his mouth closes down over one of my nipples, sucking deeply, and I am arching my back, offering myself to him. Silently begging him for more. It’s just been so long, I tell myself. So very long since someone touched me like this. So long since I felt like a woman. This isn’t me radiating toward men who like to hurt me. This isn’t me torturing myself. It’s him torturing me in all the right ways.

My hands go to his hair, but he slips away, going down on a knee and caressing my dress up my thighs. “Now I’m going to officially apologize for what happened today,” he vows, his thumbs stroking the bare skin above my thigh highs, then whispering over my panties.

I barely recognize the sound that slides from my lips, but he likes it. He smiles, and it is a sexy, seductive promise of more of this wonderful, delicious something he is doing to me. Caving to pleasure, giving myself to him, I let my head drop backward, staring up at the ceiling without really seeing it. Not when he is shoving the silk of my panties aside and his fingers are stroking the wet center of my body, flicking my clit, sending waves of desire through me.

“Look at me, Kali,” he commands softly.

“No.” I can’t. I don’t know why. Or I do. I think he will see something I don’t want him to see. Something I don’t even understand.

“Look at me,” he orders more darkly.

“No.” I shake my head. “No.”

He rips my panties and I jerk up, straightening to stare down at him. “That’s more like it,” he declares, dipping two fingers inside me. “Stay upright or I’ll stop.”

“You are so unfair.” My lashes flutter, a dull throb deep in my sex expanding, tightening. “I don’t think I can.”

“You can.”

I am suddenly exposed, vulnerable in some unknown way I don’t want to be, and I blurt out, “We can’t do this.”

“We’re already doing it.” He licks my clit.

“Oh … I … oh.”

“Have you forgiven me yet?” His fingers stroke inside me, and the words echo over my sensitive flesh where I want his mouth again.

“No,” I gasp, and reflexively I squeeze his shoulders with my thighs and fight the urge to shove his head back down.

“I’ll keep trying, then.” And, thankfully, his mouth closes over my clit again, suckling deeply. My hips lift with the empty ache inside me that his fingers cannot satisfy. I ignore his command to stay upright, falling back on my hands. He tugs me closer, and somehow I’m lying on the hard surface of the table, my legs around his shoulders.

My hands go over my face, my breasts thrust in the air. He laps at me, licking and teasing, his fingers stroking, pumping, and sensations ripple through my body. I am close, so close to release, but every time I am on the edge, he seems to know, licking to the left or right. My nipples are tight balls of pain, and I reach up and caress them, doing what I have never dared with another man, stroking away the pain he will not. And still it is not enough.

“Please,” I beg. “I need … I need …”

He suckles deeply and pumps his fingers faster, harder, and I am there … I … am … there. My body tenses and buckles with a tight piercing sensation, a moment before a wave of absolute pleasure overwhelms me, stealing my breath. I lose time and my surroundings, gasping back to reality to realize my fingers are twined tightly in his hair, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t been gentle.

I yank my hand back and look to my left, trying to hide my face, trying to process what has just happened. He maneuvers my legs to the side and then his hand slides under me, lifting me, pulling me to a sitting position, where I can’t hide from the depth of his intense stare, which is so much more. It is as if he sees all my broken pieces I wanted to believe no longer exist. It is a daunting thought, and embarrassment swims like shards of glass inside me, pricking already raw places. I have become his conquest, of which I am certain he has many.

I turn my face to the left again, but he cups my cheeks, forcing my gaze to his. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re my boss. Or ex-boss. That’s what’s wrong.”

“Right now I’m Damion. Just a man. A man who wants to be inside you more than he wants to breathe.” His fingers trail down my shoulder, teasing my skin, lower, until he’s teasing my nipple, touching me freely.

Damion
, I whisper in my mind, shivering with the sensual way he is touching me. But I am back inside my own head, too aware of how nearly naked I am in every sense of the word, too aware to not see that he is not. And for a moment I want to run. I want to get away and hide, and this makes me furious with myself. No more running. No more hiding. I shove aside weakness and force myself to think clearly, to claim what I want.

My hand goes to his hip, my courage growing. This is a hotel fling and he wants to fuck me. I want to fuck him, too. I am not holding back. I am not going to romanticize what isn’t romantic. I’m going to enjoy this and then go back to my real life, which does not include this place or this man. I find his zipper, and my fingers trace the hard ridge of his erection.

He groans and I am empowered, hungry for him, urgent to feel his need match mine. To know he burns to be inside me the way I burn to have him there. My eyes lift to his, and I let him see what I feel. I let him see the lust and demand. And it’s like he snaps. Or we snap. Like my action has opened a door and suddenly we are set free.

His mouth comes down on mine, and he tastes wild, hungry. Urgent. I am urgent, too, bordering on lost again. So close to oblivion. So close to having him inside me. I barely register the moment he unbuttons his slacks. Or the moment my hand slides into his pants, but I remember wrapping his shaft, moaning as my fingers spread the silky wet heat pooling at the tip. And then his cell phone rings and it’s like a megaphone.

We both freeze, and he curses, burying his face in my neck. “Mother of Jesus, shoot me now.” He reaches into his pocket and glances at the number. “Fuck.” A pretty good indicator he has to take the call, and he punches the answer button. “Yeah, Terrance, what?”

I know it’s naughty and wicked, but I stroke his cock while he’s trying to talk, feeling the tension of his barely controlled arousal enveloping him as he says, “I’ll be right there.” He ends the call and drops his phone on the table, reaching for my hand. “Stop.” He drags my hand to his chest and sounds pained as he says, “As badly as I want to fuck you right now, I won’t do it with one foot out the door. Not like this.”

“I don’t care. Please—”

He kisses me, dipping his tongue into my mouth, a sweet, sensual caress that leaves me breathless, before he says, “Taste that. That’s you on my lips, and it’s the one thing that will make the meeting I have to go to tolerable.”

“You have to go?”

“Yes. I’ll be back. Soon. I promise.” He leans away from me, running a hand through his dark hair and then grimacing as he zips his pants.

I squeeze my thighs together, hugging myself, trying to cover my nearly naked body. And all of a sudden a waterfall of emotions crashes over me, none of which I recognize. Mostly I am confused. It’s the only emotion I can truly name.

He adjusts his shirt and steps close to me, stroking my hair behind my ear. “This won’t take long. Don’t leave.” His phone starts to ring again and he grimaces, reaching for it. “I have to go.”

“I know. You have a job.” But I don’t, and it’s then that I realize those emotions I am feeling are the aftermath of the past two days.

“We’ll talk when I get back.” He brushes his lips over mine and it’s a bittersweet last kiss, at least for me, before he’s headed to the door and gone.

Talk or fuck? I want to call after him. Because talking doesn’t work for me. Talking only upsets me. The door shuts and I stare at it, fighting a stupid pinching sensation in my eyes. Damn it, why do I want to cry? Why? But I know why. The idea of sitting here and waiting for him to come back and finish what we started just feels … bad. As if I’ve gone from a suspect to a bimbo. If this place and I weren’t done before, we are now. I’m not staying. I slide off the table. We’re done. My boss and I are done.

I need to get out of here so I can have a meltdown, pull myself together, and start over once again tomorrow.

The instant I am in my rental car and the engine is on, the past two days officially crash in on me, and the waterfall flows. I cry like I have not cried since “the incident,” and the concrete blocks crushing my shoulders are many. Losing my dream job, starting a new one, being treated as a criminal, and, the worst of all, almost calling my father and knowing how he would have treated me. Then there is Damion. I try to think of what happened between us as a mutual escape, but I am left feeling like his conquest. Like I lost myself all over again. I don’t like it. Not one little bit.

By the time I pull up to my hotel, I’ve weathered the short, vicious storm and have started to compartmentalize what I’m feeling. I’ll find another job. I’ll work two jobs if I have to, and I will get to the other side of this. I’ll start a blog and create new reporting opportunities no one else can give me. I’ll find ways to make my dreams come true. A year from today, I vow, I’ll look back at all of this and laugh.

Feeling renewed, I ditch my work clothes for sweats and will myself to stop thinking about my cell phone, which isn’t ringing. “Proof you were nothing but an easy diversion for Mr. Damion Ward,” I murmur, settling onto the bed with my computer. The man seemed eager to confirm I’d quit, as if he wanted me to remember it was my decision and not his. Now I wonder if I didn’t do exactly what he wanted. But anger is good. Anger got me here. Anger will get me beyond here.

Well, that and my old-faithful feel-good drug: Chinese food, which I ate a lot of after Kent and I broke up, and not because I missed Kent. Because I’d lost myself. My dignity. My confidence. It took me six months after what I think of as “the incident” to look objectively at what happened. To see it and myself clearly. Kent tried to hurt me. And he did. But it was my father who cut me open and bled me dry. It was my father who made me feel that I wasn’t a real woman. That I was inadequate. And I believed him.

After an Internet search, I order enough food to feed an army and start my online job search. An hour later, I still have no food and I’m about to dial and check on it when a knock sounds on the door. “Thank goodness,” I mutter, heading to answer it and deciding this will not be a pity-party dinner. This is a celebration. I almost had sex with Damion Ward, who, despite being a jerk, is one hell of a man. And not once had I thought that I wasn’t good enough or pretty enough or whatever else I spent six months beating myself up with after “the incident.”

“Who is it?” I ask, being safe before flipping the lock.

“Damion.”

My heart thunders in my chest at the deep, deliciously male sound of his voice, and my emotions are immediately bouncing all over the place. This man gets to me. Really, really gets down deep inside me and stirs something raw and untouched, which I doubt is about him as much as about my past. Still, he is the one who has triggered this emotion in me, which means he can cut me in a way that only losing my mother and being crushed by my father have up to this point. I’m not sure I would survive that right now. Not this soon after … everything.

“Go away,” I call out.

“Not a chance.”

My elation and my fear over his reply collide, and I am weak in the knees. “How did you find me?”

“Your employment file.”

After what he put me through today, that hits a raw nerve. I unlock the door and yank it open. “You can’t do that. I have a right to privacy.”

“I can and I did,” he says, advancing on me. His hands come down on my shoulders, branding me, burning me alive as he walks us in to the room and once again kicks the door shut. “You were supposed to wait for me.”