“Are you still uncomfortable, honey?” He inched his fingers into the lace of her underpants.
She nodded. “Terribly.”
He dipped further, touching the tuft of hair, then the moist and swollen bud of her womanhood. “Still?”
“I might die of it,” she said breathlessly.
He eased one finger into her, eliciting a low rumble of pleasure from the throat he kissed. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable,” he whispered into her ear, taking the tender lobe in his teeth as he stroked and caressed her slick flesh with his finger.
She shook her head, unable to talk, her breath ragged and trapped.
He started to kiss his way down to where he touched, anxious and hungry to taste her, dying to make her wildly, insanely and hopelessly uncomfortable.
As he eased her panties down, her fingers dug into his hair, guiding his head. She quivered as his tongue curled against her.
She whispered his name as he blew a soft breath over her. She murmured a plea for more and he tasted her again. Her thighs tightened around his head as he licked her, loving how she trembled and rocked and finally shuddered helplessly with a long, sweet climax.
Kissing the delicate skin of her inner thighs, and nibbling at the dip of her stomach, the underside of her breasts, the heated column of her throat, they finally managed to get him undressed.
“Still uncomfortable?” he asked teasingly.
She half sighed, half laughed. “Not as uncomfortable as I’m about to make you.”
She closed her hands over his shaft and stroked him, making him swell with a surge of blood. He dropped back on the bed, as pain and pleasure and raw need shot up his back, down his legs, blinding him. She feathered his body with kisses and caressed his erection, her soft woman’s hair tickling his chest and stomach as she took him into her mouth.
He groaned in ecstasy, his whole body on fire. Her lips were like satin gloves, her hands steady and relentless as she suckled and stroked and cupped him until he thought he’d scream.
“C’mere, Jessie.” He gently brought her up, as she covered him in more kisses.
The room smelled like sex and flowers, and her lips were salty and smooth. He managed to slide over to the nightstand, retrieve a condom and sheath himself without really ending one long, juicy kiss.
He positioned himself over her, his erection seeking the heat of her. When she lifted her hips to him, he slid in slowly, watching the pleasure unfold over her features, seeing the flush darken her skin and harden her nipples.
She said his name and pulled him down for a kiss, arching sharply to drive him into the warm, wet envelope of her body. As her legs wrapped around his hips, he sucked in a breath, unable to believe the burn, the hot, wicked ache she caused in every cell in his body.
With each thrust, she whispered his name, begged for all of him, dug her nails in his back. Mind-numbing pleasure licked over him as he thrust into her, lost in her sweet, womanly body. Lost in the pretty, fresh sex of Jessie.
She quaked furiously, her muscles spasming around him.
And then he was just so deep and far gone and so utterly lost inside her that he let go until he’d released everything he had inside her.
They didn’t speak or separate or move for a long, long time, until their breathing became normal, and their mixed perspiration chilled their skin. Then he eased himself off her to look at the woman he’d just made love to.
Her hair was everywhere, and her eyes were wide pools of the prettiest color green he’d ever seen.
He’d known she was pretty. Known she was sexy and charming and attractive. But he’d never realized that Jessie Clayton was stunning. He’d never realized she was beautiful.
He broke their peaceful silence. “If I ask you a personal question, will you tell me the truth?”
That made her smile. “If you can’t get the truth out of me now, when we’re naked and basking in the proverbial afterglow, then we’re sunk.”
“You’re right.” He leaned up on one elbow and fluttered some strands of hair through his fingers. “But I really need to know this. To know something about you.”
“What is it, Cade?”
“Why do you hide your eyes and your hair?”
The way she looked at him made him think, We’re sunk.
Five
Cade’s question yanked Jessie from a state of pure rapture to one of stark terror.
“Excuse me?” Her response was a time-buying ploy, accompanied by a not-so-subtle shift in her body that could distract him.
But he wasn’t diverted. “What are you hiding?”
“Cade.” She tried to laugh as though the question were simply ridiculous. Then she leaned up on her elbow to show him her bare, flushed body. “Do I look like I’m hiding something?”
He shook his head, sliding his hands over her waist and backside. “At work, I mean.”
“We’re not talking about work, remember?”
“I just think a woman as beautiful as you would show it off a little.”
She made a face. “I’m not beautiful, but thank you. And, hey, I like my look. If you don’t like it—”
“I like you,” he countered, kissing the tip of her nose for emphasis, then inching down to her mouth. “Can’t you tell?”
She sighed and rubbed her legs over his, their bodies all lined up perfectly again. “I can tell. The question is…”
“Will everyone else be able to tell, too?” He finished her thought perfectly, his eyes glimmering like burned coals.
“We have to be discreet,” she said. “No sex in your office.”
“What about the conference room?”
She narrowed her eyes, but couldn’t help laughing. “Maybe in The Closet.”
His chuckle was just a low and sexy rumble that tickled her insides. As they cuddled into each other, Jessie let the newness of the sensation wash over her. Cade was her lover. Cade McMann was her very own amazing, fabulous lover.
“What about Fin?”
His question jerked her back to reality and she cursed herself for the little gasp she gave in response. “Fin? What about her?”
“She’ll figure it out.”
“I don’t want to shadow her, Cade.” Jessie pulled back enough to look in his eyes. “And you don’t need to tell her about this.”
“I won’t have to. She’s smart. She knows everything.”
Not everything. She doesn’t know her own daughter. “Let’s just try to keep this quiet. It might not—”
“Yes it will,” he said with a tiny squeeze. “It will last.”
Slowly, she raised her face to his. Did he mean that? He answered her with one long, sensual kiss that made her head spin and her body ache for him all over again.
Then he showed her that it could last, at least another hour.
Saturday morning slipped into Saturday afternoon with the same ease that Jessie moved around Cade’s hardwood floors and his comfortably elegant apartment in an oversize Chicago Cubs T-shirt that he lent to her. She called Lainie and told her she’d be home…sometime. He went out for coffee and brought her a toothbrush, then they took a shower in a sparkling marble stall with glass block that poured sunlight over their naked bodies and two shower heads that thoroughly soaked them. They made omelets and made love all afternoon.
In the evening they ordered Chinese and watched Top Gun on a movie channel and afterward, Jessie found a photo album in one of the wall-to-wall mahogany bookshelves, and she “met” his family in Chicago.
His four sisters were as attractive as he, and his mother looked like a modern version of Donna Reed. He walked her through the album, which his mother had lovingly made him when he moved from Chicago to New York. The only sadness in his voice was when they’d come to a picture of his dad, a strapping man who seemed to radiate happiness from every picture, his love for his wife and five children obvious even in the two-dimensional snapshots. Jessie could only imagine how palpable that love must have been in real li
fe.
“Your family is like a storybook of midwestern perfection,” she said, closing the album. “Did you ever argue?”
He chuckled and put the album back on the bookshelf, returning quickly to snuggle with her on the burgundy leather couch. “The girls fought plenty. Over everything. Boys, clothes, who stole whose hairbrush. And, God, don’t even start on how much time they wasted in the bathroom.”
“It must have been fun with all those kids,” Jessie mused.
“My siblings were horses and ranch hands. No one ever fought over a hairbrush. Well, maybe a horse’s hairbrush.”
“But you got the bathroom and all your parents’ attention. I had to achieve perfection—in grades and sports and life—to compete with all those girls.” He pulled her into a horizontal lounge, lining their bodies exactly like they’d been most of the past twenty-four hours.
“I had plenty of attention, that’s true,” Jessie agreed. “God knows they wanted me.”
“Then why didn’t they have more kids?”
Jessie swallowed hard. She’d never, ever lied about being adopted. Why would she start now? Why would she keep that secret from her lover?
“I’m adopted,” she said, glancing up for his reaction. “My parents couldn’t have children.”
His eyes flashed at the news. “Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Well, why would you?”
“I don’t know.” He pulled her more securely against him. “There’s a lot I don’t know about you yet. But I’m glad they adopted you. God, just think about it. I’m so glad…” His voice trailed off, as people often did when they thought about the choice some young unwed mother had to make.
Except that, in this case, that young unwed mother was his boss.
He had to feel the quickening of her heart as she waited for the next question. The one every friend asked: Have you ever tried to find your birth mother?
Before he asked, she slid her hand under his T-shirt and caressed his chest. His low, satisfied groan told her how much he liked her touch. Easily, effortlessly, she trailed her fingers over his skin, dipping into the waistband of his jeans and gliding over the tip of an erection he always seemed to have.
Cade rocked into her fingertips, starting the dance that was already becoming as familiar as it was thrilling. Thank God he was easy to distract. She nibbled his jaw and then his mouth with a long, soulful, openmouthed kiss.
In a matter of minutes, they were shedding clothes and giving in to the temptation to taste and touch each other again.
Naked and ready, Jessie rubbed herself against the muscular planes of his broad chest, the coarse golden hairs tickling her breasts. Cade steadied her hips with his powerful hands and guided her over his erection.
As he entered her, she closed her eyes, dropping her head back as the force of his thrust touched her in the deepest part of her body.
“You didn’t let me finish my thought,” he said softly.
Her eyes popped open, unable to believe he’d go back there now, when they were…
“I know what you were going to say,” she whispered, dipping down to kiss his cheek. “I’m glad she did, too.”
And that, she hoped, would be the last discussion they would have about her birth mother.
But the lie of omission made her heart heavy and when Cade climaxed into her, rasping endearments and words of sweet, honest affection, she closed her eyes and realized that if they got any closer, she’d have to tell him the truth.
And that would change everything.
When they were done, she clung to him, inhaled his scent and selfishly, foolishly, put off the inevitable.
“What are you doing?” Cade tapped on the partially opened bathroom door and it creaked inward. “You’re dressed?”
“Can you imagine?” Jessie laughed at the incredulity in his voice. But, to be fair, she had spent most of the past two days not dressed. She tugged up the black zipper of her new favorite sweater and added, “Sorry, but it’s almost five on Sunday afternoon, Cade. I have to go home and get ready for work tomorrow.”
Cade rubbed the beginnings of a late-afternoon shadow that darkened his cheeks even though he’d shaved that morning. Jessie had perched on the side of the tub and watched, an act almost more intimate than any of the things they’d done to each other’s bodies over the past forty-eight hours. Which, she had to admit, had gone way past intimate.
“I don’t suppose we could both call in sick.” He grinned at her. “Might raise some eyebrows.”
“Yeah,” Jessie agreed. “It might. Because, as you noted a few days ago, I’ve never once called in sick.”
“Me neither.” He leaned against the doorjamb and studied her with a slow, hot gaze, his sexy mouth curled up in a smile.
“But this is just cause.”
Laughing, she turned to the vanity to put away the few items of makeup she’d taken out of her purse. As she picked up the toothbrush he’d bought her, his hand closed over hers.
“You can keep that here.”
She looked at his reflection in the mirror. His smile was gone. “Are you sure?”
“Of course.” He held her gaze. “I told you, Jessie, this is not some quickie office affair.”
“It was anything but quick,” she said, attempting a breezy chuckle.
“I mean it.” His eyes narrowed and his hand tightened on her wrist. “I want you to come back. A lot. Often.”
For a moment, she couldn’t speak. A million thoughts warred for space in her head. How could they be an item and work together? How would they keep it quiet? How could she keep her hands off him at work?
“What about Fin?” Somehow, of all her mental questions, that was the one she let slip out.
“I’ll handle Fin,” he told her. “Anyway, I told you, there’s no rule about dating co-workers.”
“But you…” They covered this last night, but the question still nagged her. “You don’t make mistakes, Cade. That much I know from watching you.”
“I try not to, that’s true. But this isn’t a mistake. It just might be a little complicated.” He managed to slide the toothbrush out of her grasp and placed it next to his. “But we can manage our way around the complications.”
Could they? There were complications he hadn’t even dreamed of. “This could be difficult.”
In a second, he turned her from the mirror, to look at her face instead of her reflection. “This could be wonderful.” His voice was husky, but not from desire or arousal. “You are so different, Jessie.” He pushed her hair back from her face, his gaze sliding from her eyes to her mouth and back up to her eyes again. “I’ve never met anyone like you. I’m willing to take a risk and face some complications.”
“I’m the same girl I was last week,” she said. “You just got behind my glasses.”
“And I like it back there.” His lips hitched up in a knowing smile. “You do know this is real, don’t you?”
She sighed, the idea of real making her dizzy. “I know, Cade.”
“Good.” He kissed her forehead gently and pulled her against his chest.
Jessie closed her eyes and laid her head on his shoulder. “I don’t know how you do it, Cade,” she whispered, “but you’re really good at making me not care about…other stuff.”
“You have the same effect on me.”
The buzzer from the lobby reverberated through the intercom box on the wall. “Cade? It’s Fin. Are you home?”
Fin? A surge of adrenaline propelled Jessie out of his arms as she stared at the intercom. Fin?
Surprise sparkled in his eyes. “Speaking of complicated…Guess who’s in the lobby?” He reached over and pressed the button to talk. “I’m here, Fin. What are you doing?”
“I was on my way to the office and thought I’d drop by and leave some updated spreadsheets for you to study before you meet with Liam. Can I come up?”
He closed his eyes for a second, and gave his head a quick shake. “She never stops working,” h
e mouthed. As he leaned back to the intercom, Jessie slipped out of his arms, certain he would feel the hammering of her heart.
Fin was there. In Cade’s apartment building. On her way up to his front door. With shaking hands Jessie finished packing up her makeup, left the toothbrush, and slid by Cade as he buzzed Fin up.
“I don’t want to be here when she comes in,” Jessie said when he found her in the living room. As Cade started to argue, she held up her hand. “Please, Cade. I’m an intern. You’re the boss.” And Fin’s my real mother.
Jessie buried the thought, concentrating instead on getting out of there. Her gaze darted around the room and she practically pirouetted in a desperate search for her handbag.
“God, I hate this,” she murmured, frustration and guilt bubbling through her. “It feels…” Spotting it, she scooped up the bag and started toward the door.
Cade grabbed her shoulder with one firm hand. “Jessie, stop. I want to take you home myself. I don’t want you to run off like this.”
“I’m not running off. I don’t want to see her, Cade.”
“Jessie, there’s nothing wrong with this. We’re both single and free and we like each other. A lot.”
She eased away, backing toward the door. “It’s just that…”
He regarded her closely, pinning her with his gaze. “Would you tell me why you always avoid her?”
“I don’t avoid her.” Liar, liar. “Is it so hard to imagine that this intern would rather not run face to face into the editor-in-chief when it is painfully obvious that I am sleeping with the executive editor?”
“But you always have avoided her.”
The doorbell rang and Jessie didn’t know whether to curse or thank God for the interruption.
“Let’s get something straight,” Cade said quietly, stilling her with a gentle grip on both shoulders. “I am not ashamed of how I feel about you.”
The words touched her, as honest and affectionate as his fingertips. This had nothing to do with being ashamed of Cade or the fact that they liked each other, and she knew it. He didn’t, but she did.
For one crazy minute, Jessie thought about confessing everything. About opening the door and standing in front of Fin and saying “I am your daughter.”
The Intern Affair Page 6
