“If we go through with this tonight, you’re going to wake up tomorrow morning regretting the hell out of it. I can’t let that happen.” He pressed his forehead against hers and stared into her eyes. “When we do make love, I want to know it’s because you want to be with me, not because you had too much champagne.”
The disappointment that had consumed her since he’d halted their kiss had been replaced by something much more profound. Gratitude. That he was enough of a gentleman not to take advantage of her when she was literally handing herself to him on a golden platter spoke volumes even to her inebriated brain.
Cedric took her by the hand and gently prodded her toward her bedroom. Once there, he sat her on the bed. Payton’s hands went to the hem of her dress, but he halted her movement.
“Wait until I leave. I can only take so much.”
“Sorry,” she murmured, contrite.
She didn’t move a muscle until her bedroom door clicked. When it did, Payton was too tired to do anything but fall onto her pillow.
When she awoke the next morning, she was still in her favorite black cocktail dress. Foundation was smeared against her beige pillowcase, and her head felt as if every marching band in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was serenading her. All at the same time.
Coffee. She needed coffee now.
Payton took a deep breath and decided she needed a toothbrush even more. She stumbled into the bathroom and scrubbed the remaining makeup from her face before brushing her teeth and pulling a brush through her hair. She stared into the mirror, shaking her head in shame at the image staring back at her.
What had she done last night?
Unfortunately, the morning’s hangover didn’t include memory loss. No, she remembered every minute of it. The wine and champagne she’d overindulged in. The way she’d thrown herself at Cedric.
The orgasm he’d given her.
She clutched the edges of her pedestal sink as her body trembled involuntarily at the memory. If they had gone through with what she’d wanted last night it would have been disastrous on so many levels. But it also would have been phenomenal. She knew that with every trembling fiber of her body.
“Forget last night,” Payton told the rumpled woman staring back at her.
She peeled out of her black dress and pulled on a robe. Before she showered she needed to get some caffeine flowing through her system. She headed for the kitchen, but the massive helping of male sprawled on her living room sofa stopped her dead in her tracks.
Cedric lay with one hand behind his head, the other atop his flat washboard stomach, which was covered only by a thin undershirt beneath his unbuttoned shirt. He’d kicked his shoes off and unzipped his black pants.
Payton tiptoed to the hallway linen closet, but when she returned with the crocheted blanket her mother had given her for her high school graduation, Cedric’s eyes were staring back at her.
“I was going to cover you,” she said unnecessarily. She was in serious inward-cringe mode. It had been a long time since she’d done the awkward morning-after routine, and they hadn’t even gone all the way last night.
Thank God.
He pushed himself up and made room for her on the sofa. Self-preservation demanded she stay right where she was, but Payton took the seat next to him anyway.
He sat with his elbows resting on his knees, his clamped hands hanging between them. His head was bowed and Payton could see the tension in his shoulders.
“Thank you for stopping me last night,” she said. When she thought about the disaster sleeping with him would have created, Payton wanted to bury her head back into the pillow. Yet her body still mourned the pleasure she knew Cedric would have given her.
“That’s not what I meant to do last night,” he said.
“You…what?” Payton asked.
He looked at her. “I wasn’t stopping anything. Just postponing the inevitable.”
“Cedric—”
“Don’t sit there and tell me you don’t want me, Payton. If you try I’ll remind you of every moan that came out of your mouth last night.”
“Cedric, please.”
“The only thing that stopped me was the fact that you’d had too much to drink. But you’re awake and sober this morning and I want to throw you on this sofa and bury myself inside you more than I want to take my next breath.”
Payton nearly orgasmed then and there.
She’d never gone for the alpha types, but the force of Cedric’s words did things to her she was ashamed to admit. How was she supposed to function around him, knowing what he wanted to do to her? What she wanted him to do to her. And she
did
want it. Desperately.
“We can’t,” she said, hating the words, but knowing they needed to be spoken. “It would compromise everything.”
“It’s already compromised us, Payton. Do you think I can look at you and not remember the way you came around my fingers last night? From this point on, that’s the first thing I’ll think about when I see you. And you’ll know it’s what I’m thinking about.”
Pleasure rippled through her. She squeezed her legs together and swallowed the moan that nearly escaped her throat.
“One time,” he said in an achingly gentle voice. “Can’t we just go there one time and get it out of our systems?”
“Would one time be enough?” Payton returned, knowing the answer before she even asked the question. One time would never be enough for her. “I’ll admit that I want you,” she said. “But…”
Cedric shot up from the sofa and ran both hands over his head and down his face. He turned to her, and the desperation on his face caused an ache to settle deep within her chest.
“This has gone way past me just wanting you, Payton. I
need
you.”
“Oh, God,” she groaned. Cradling her head in her hands, she massaged her temples, wishing she could take back the past twenty-four hours. She knew things were heading this way between them, but she’d had a handle on it. If not for the kiss at that rec center yesterday, or all the alcohol she’d drank last night.
If she hadn’t let him bring her to orgasm right in this very room.
“Oh,
God,
” she groaned louder, giving in to the urge to bury her head in the throw pillow on her sofa.
“That’s not the response I was hoping for,” Cedric said in a velvety voice.
Payton’s shoulders tensed as he covered them with his hands. She opened her eyes to find him crouched in front of her, his penetrating stare aiming straight to the heart of her. He captured her chin in his fingers and leaned forward, brushing his lips against hers. With gentle insistence, he urged her mouth open, pushing his tongue inside.
With a soft cry, Payton closed her eyes and accepted her fate.
She slipped her hand around the back of his head and clasped him to her, meeting his tongue stroke for stroke as he bathed the inside of her mouth with hungry, mind-numbing kisses. She ran her other hand down his back, marveling in the strength of the well-honed muscles undulating against her fingertips.
And when Cedric turned slightly and slanted over her, Payton followed his lead, reclining on the sofa and pulling him on top of her. He quickly got rid of his shirt, then swooped down and reclaimed her mouth. His hand snaked down her torso, unbelting her terrycloth robe. He ran his palm across her bare stomach, then inched lower, tunneling past the rim of her lace panties and delving into the moist spot between her thighs. He slid his tongue along the edge of her demi bra, then drew it across her nipple, lapping at the taut peak through the lacy fabric.
Payton melted against his fingers, mewling in satisfaction as he teased her clitoris into an erect, pulsing bud of sensation. He massaged the nub with his thumb as he slid first one and then a second finger inside her. Payton clinched around him, pushing her hips higher, trying to get his fingers as deep as they could go.
“Cedric, please,” she begged, needing to come with a ferocity that had her mindless with want. He gave her what she needed, pumping his fingers in and out with rapid strokes as he took her aching nipple in his mouth and sucked her hard through the fabric. Payton clamped her hands around his head and held his mouth in place as she shuddered around his fingers.
She collapsed back on the sofa, her limbs liquefied after the shattering release.
“Don’t you fall asleep,” came Cedric’s silky warning. “We’re just getting started.”
He pressed his mouth to her stomach and peppered her skin with kisses, licking his way around her waist as he caught the edge of her panties and pulled them down her legs. Payton heard him emit a low groan, then she gasped with pleasure as he pressed a swift, decadent kiss against her soaking wet sex.
He pushed himself up and hooked his thumbs into his waistband, shoving his pants and boxers past his hips. He picked his wallet up from the floor, pulled out a condom, and swiftly rolled it over his erection. Then he reached over and captured her by the waist.
Pulling her onto his lap so that she straddled his thighs, he ran his tongue along her collarbone. Then with both hands grasping her hips, he guided her onto his erection.
Payton’s back bowed as she lowered herself, taking him inside of her. Inch by glorious inch, he invaded her body, stretching her to the limit with his thick, hard flesh. Payton clamped both hands on his shoulders as she lifted herself up and down the length of him, marveling in each decadent stroke.
Cedric leaned forward and sucked one nipple into his mouth, then switched to the other, teasing the rigid points with his teeth and tongue. With his hands, he directed her movements as she rocked against him, lifting her up his long, solid shaft, then guiding her down. Down, down, down. Until she was completely impaled.
The tempo of her strokes increased as she began to pump faster and faster. She sank her fingers into his shoulders and rode him hard, pounding against his thighs as he drove himself hot and hard inside of her.
Payton shattered around him, her body convulsing as she was hit with wave upon wave of erotic pleasure. She collapsed against Cedric’s chest, her breath coming in labored pants.
She lay upon his sweat-slicked chest, completely spent. Yet before her body could even start to recover from the mind-shattering ride he’d just taken her on, her brain began to assault her with the repercussions of what she’d done.
Shame washed over her.
There were strict lines that she could not cross, and sleeping with her client was one of them. At least she had the excuse of being too inebriated last night. She didn’t have any excuses today. There was no way to justify what had just happened here.
She levered herself up and tried to climb down from his waist, but he gripped her hips and held her in place.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Cedric, please let go,” Payton begged.
“
No.
Dammit, Payton. Don’t start regretting this already.”
She peeled his hands from her hips and lifted herself off of his lap, grabbing her robe and quickly putting it on. She cinched the belt at her waist and scooted to the opposite end of the couch, resting her elbows on her knees and cradling her face in her hands.
“This was a mistake,” she whispered.
She heard his low curse as he pushed himself up from the sofa, then the rustling of his pants as he pulled them up from where they’d pooled at his feet.
Payton took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Just stop talking, all right? If the only thing you have to say after having sex with me is ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘it was a mistake,’ just don’t say anything.”
“I explained from the very beginning—”
“Yeah, I know. ‘Strictly professional.’ Well, what we just did shoots that rule to hell, Payton. We can’t do strictly professional.”
“We have to,” she said. Payton took a deep, fortifying breath. “I know normally this would make things awkward, but we’re both adults. We can make the decision right now to put this incident behind us.”
“Incident?”
The hurt in that single word sliced through her. Payton pushed a shaking hand through her hair.
“I don’t mean to downplay what went on here,” she said. “But we need to bury this, Cedric. Please, for both our sakes, just forget it ever happened.”
“Don’t even try to tell me to forget what just happened,” he warned with a vicious hiss. He shook his head and planted his hands on his hips. “I just don’t get it.”
“Get what?” she asked, trying not to stare at the fly of his black trousers that was still halfway unzipped. Instead she concentrated on the gold watch peeking out from under the cuff of his tailored shirt. “What don’t you get?”
“How you can respond the way you did a few minutes ago and now pretend it means nothing.”
Payton brought her eyes back to his, understanding the frustration she found there. She was experiencing it too, along with about a million other emotions. They were both to blame for the position they were now in, even though the ground rules had been clearly set when they first started working together.
Well, she was not going to allow things to go further.
Payton sat up straight, shoring up her defenses.
“I never said it meant nothing, Cedric, but my career means more. It has to. I’ve sacrificed too much to get to this point and I refuse to throw it all away for sex.”
The look in his eyes was so hard, so intense. When he finally spoke his voice was as hard as his eyes. “If all I wanted from you is sex I never would have stopped us last night. I would have taken what you pushed in my face and been out of here before you ever woke up.”
He stood before her, his arms crossed over his chest. “You don’t get it, do you? I don’t want just sex, Payton. I want
you.
”
Payton dropped her head. Her chest was so tight she could hardly breathe.
“You can’t have me,” she finally answered. “Not in that way. As your agent, you get one hundred percent of me. But that’s all I can give you, Cedric.”
Without another word, Cedric reached over and grabbed the tailored jacket he’d draped across the arm of the sofa. Her eyes firmly planted on the floor, Payton saw him slip into a pair of loafers. She hoped he would slam the door so she’d have something to blame him for, but he wouldn’t give her even that much. Slipping quietly out of her apartment, he softly shut the door behind him.