by Chloe Cox
“I don’t understand this,” she said. “I’ve never felt like this before, I’ve never…I’ve never wanted anyone like this.”
She moved her hips against him, and he groaned, louder this time, his hands digging into the round globes of her ass. Cate stifled a moan, as though she knew what it would do to him if she let it out. It didn’t help.
Fuck. He wanted her so, so badly, so much that it was beyond want. He felt like if he didn’t have her he would… He didn’t know. He didn’t just want to come. He wanted that closeness back, in the moments after he’d held her, when she’d let herself feel something real in his arms. He wanted her to trust him in the way she needed to. He wanted her to be safer than she ever had been before. He wanted to pull her back from whatever place she’d retreated to when they’d started talking about lies.
He wanted her.
With a growl he stood up in one motion, scooping her up with him. She weighed nothing. He loved the feel of her arms wrapped around him, of the way she dug into him, the way she buried her face in his neck.
He couldn’t have her now. But he could get her back.
He set her back down on the table, and unwrapped her legs from around his waist, his hands gentle. He took a moment to touch her face before he kissed her.
“Don’t move,” he said.
It took him only a second to get what he needed. Thank God Volare was well stocked.
When he turned back to Cate he found her eyes wide, her shoulders tense, her nipples hard. She gripped the edge of the table, her knees together, her back slightly hunched, like she had sensed the change. She didn’t know what was coming, and that made her nervous, that fired up old patterns in her brain. But she was still there.
Soren came back to her and slid his hand between her legs, smiling as her expression softened and she sighed.
“C’mere,” he said, and he kissed her, long and soft and thorough, just so she’d be grounded again. Hell, so he’d be grounded again. His cock felt like it was about to turn on him in protest, but he knew he needed to do this for her. For him, too.
“Down,” he said. He pushed her down on the table and climbed half on top of her, wanting to keep his face close to hers. Wanting to see every last thing.
That was the whole point.
He had to show her she didn’t have to be afraid.
Soren put his weight on her, slowly, inexorably, holding her down. She was breathing hard already, almost hyperventilating, and he’d barely even touched her.
“I told you I wouldn’t until you were ready,” he said. “Are you scared?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t know why I would be.”
He smiled. “It’s because I can see your face.”
Cate stared at him. “Oh God.”
“What’s your safeword?” he prompted.
“Red.”
“Good. I’m going to hold you down,” he said. He held up the purple vibe he’d gotten from the toy chest. “And I’m going to put this inside you, and I’m going to watch you come every damn time I tell you to, until I decide it’s enough. My choice. My rules. You’re not gonna be able to hide, and you’re just going to have to take it until I’m through.”
He felt the shudder run through her. Felt he subtle arch in her lower back, watched her pupils dilate.
“And when I’m done, Cate,” he whispered, “you’re gonna know it’s safe, because I don’t get to have you until you do. You understand?”
She blinked those wide hazel eyes and licked her lips.
“Say ‘yes, sir,’ if you understand me, Cate.”
A soft, breathy laugh escaped from her throat, and she tossed her head to the side, smiling, until she remembered what he’d said, and turned back to look him in the eye. She was scared and excited and her eyes were shining.
“Yes, sir,” she said.
And then he touched her.
Slowly at first, but she was already so wet, and Soren was so hard and wanted her so much, and this was the best he was going to get tonight, and so it didn’t take him long. He toyed with her a little, let himself watch her face screw up, watch her laugh a little when he tickled her in a new way, watched her gasp, but holy hell, he was only human, and if he dragged this out too long he didn’t know if he could hang on.
He cock hurt, it wanted her so bad. He hurt, he wanted her so bad.
And then it started to get close, and real, and raw, and he saw it in her face. Watched her get a little bit uncomfortable, watched her strain and squirm and try to look away. He held her, and slid the vibrator in inch by inch, his own ragged breathing matching hers as she struggled with the feeling, with knowing he saw.
As she started to moan helplessly.
Jesus Christ, he wasn’t going to last. He couldn’t do this. He needed to do this.
Why did he need her like this? Need to see her up close, to know he was right, that every time he felt like they had that connection, like they understood each other, it was real, like this physical connection wasn’t just in his head.
Goddammit, he wanted inside her.
“Don’t look away,” he growled at her. “Don’t you look away. Come for me, Cate.”
He picked up his pace, sliding that vibe in and out of her, angling it, holding her down while she bucked and jerked. She needed to see that he could do this for her. She needed to be made to come bare and see…
“Fuck!” he shouted and twisted the vibe, his hand on her forehead, his face close to hers, her eyes on his. Begging. “Now!”
And she came all over his hand, the liquid gushing forth like a freaking geyser, drenching him. Cate convulsed with a shattering scream, her eyes dead on him until they rolled back in her head, and Soren held himself perfectly still. Watched the orgasm roll through her, waited until she came back down to herself, dazed, bleary eyed.
And he kissed her. He let her up, he held her, and he kissed her until her lips and chin were red from his stubble, until she was breathless all over again. Until he couldn’t stand it one more second.
He nearly propelled himself off the table, sure that if he touched her for one more second he wouldn’t hold out.
“You ok?” he barked.
“Oh God, yes,” she said. “More than ok. Are you?”
Soren looked away. She was lying there on that table…
“I’m going to go take a shower,” he said, his voice tight. “There’s a bathroom suite attached to this room if you want to do the same. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes for this debriefing you wanna do, and we’re going to do it with all our clothes on, and we’re going to do it in a conference room in the office building.”
“Yes, sir.” He could hear her smile. “Soren?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Her voice changed. Soren looked at her and saw that he hadn’t been wrong—this had meant a lot to her. She looked free, and relaxed, and still maybe a little bit shy after what she’d let him see. Whether it would be enough was another question. But he was damn well going to find out.
He held her eyes and said, “Don’t make any weekend plans.”
Cate grinned, leaning back on her arms while her hair fell in her face. “Why not?”
“You already have them,” he said gruffly. That was it. He had to leave.
As he stepped out the door, he heard her incredulous question: “All weekend?”
And that won’t be nearly enough.
Nine
Cate opened the door to the Imperial Gardens restaurant and tried to pretend like she wasn’t full of…what, adrenaline? Girlish glee?
She was definitely full of something. She was only here to pick up takeout for her core staff back at the law firm, who would be working all weekend on the case, and then she was driving out to Soren’s place in Malibu. Ostensibly on business. Sort of. Not really.
Who was she kidding? Definitely not. She wouldn’t bill one hour of it, but no one at the firm needed to know that.
Cate waved a
t Amy over at the counter and smiled. Coming to this place had become a tradition, over the years—it was only place that had consistently accommodated her crazy orders and fulfilled her late-night cravings when working all-nighters before she made her first big case. In fact, it was practically the only tradition she still kept around from what she had begun to think of as the “Jason years.”
Didn’t mean Amy needed to know she was getting a divorce. Almost no one knew she was getting a divorce, and that was the way Cate wanted it, at least until she could get Jason to sign an agreement that contained a very robust nondisclosure clause.
“Hey, what happened?” Amy asked as Cate approached the counter. “You pregnant?”
Cate’s mouth dropped open. Instinctively she looked down—no, her stomach was the same as it had been for the past five years. Probably. Approximately.
Amy laughed. “Your face!” she said. “No, you have the glow.”
Cate stared at her. She was glowing? She was glowing. It felt almost…embarrassing to be that affected by just the anticipation of going to see Soren.
On the other hand, it wasn’t entirely irrational, either. She’d be fantasizing about that “meeting” at Volare until she was old and gray.
Amy was still looking at her, clearly expecting an answer.
“Face cream,” Cate said.
“Uh huh. You should invest in it,” Amy said. Clearly not convinced.
“Well, and I’m excited about my case,” Cate said. “Not that I can really talk about it, obviously.”
“I saw you on television!” Amy squealed. Ah. This was what she had wanted to talk about all along. “When do we get to see him?”
Cate just shook her head. “You know I’m not going to talk about it, Amy.”
“Oh, come on,” Amy pleaded. “Did he really do those things? Is that woman really just a liar after his money, like you said? I don’t want to believe he could do it, I mean, he’s just so…”
Amy shivered.
“Well, you know.”
Cate certainly did.
“So did he do it? Is he really a bastard?”
“Amy!”
“Come on, wink or something.”
“He really, really isn’t a bastard,” Cate said. “You know I don’t take cases I don’t believe in.”
“Oh, I hope you’re right,” Amy sighed, handing over Cate’s giant bag of takeout. “That man is too pretty to be one of the bad ones.”
Cate smiled as she handed over her cash, and then froze as she looked toward the exit. A man had just come in. A man who was storming toward her in a blazer and wingtips and perfectly combed hair.
Jason.
“Well, you can’t always tell the good ones from the bad ones so easily,” Cate said softly.
It took her too long to snap out of it. Jason had almost reached her by the time Cate realized that whatever crazy thing was going to come out of his mouth, she didn’t want Amy to hear any of it. Cursing at the fact that Jason would know to find her here, that her staff wouldn’t know to tell him to go away when he demanded to know where his wife was, that she was still stuck in this situation at all, she waved her soon-to-be-ex-husband over to a table in the corner.
It wasn’t until she got there that she realized that being alone with Jason was still infinitely worse than being embarrassed by Jason in front of other people.
Her throat felt like it was about to close up.
“Don’t even want the girl behind the counter to hear what you did, huh?” Jason sneered.
“Her name is Amy,” Cate said.
“Who gives a shit?” Jason hissed.
“What do you want?”
Jason’s eyes bulged a little, the way they did when he’d was outraged at Cate’s insufficient response to some imagined slight. It was overly dramatic and foolish, and if it were anyone else, it wouldn’t be so scary.
“What do I want?” he said. “What do I fucking want? I want my wife to keep her fucking legs closed. I want my wife to know better than to go on television with Soren Andersson.”
“Jason, he’s my client,” Cate said.
“Are you fucking him?” Jason demanded. He was practically spitting.
Cate stared at him, horrified that she had once been married to this man. She’d married him. He was so unambiguously monstrous, yet she’d married him.
She’d thought that little of herself.
Worse, she found herself actually questioning her conduct. Had she given anything away? Had she been somehow less than professional in public? She’d been so careful, she’d worked so hard, how could everybody know? There was a genuine, terrible moment of self-doubt, a moment that reminded her what every moment being married to this man had been like.
But then she looked at the veins throbbing in Jason’s neck and remembered: he was the one with a problem. Not her.
So she said the bravest thing she could think of.
“None of your goddamn business, Jason.”
It was brave, but not smart. Because while she was right, she’d also antagonized a man who she knew to be abusive and nuts, even if it felt like she couldn’t have said anything else.
Where did that come from, anyway?
“You are my wife,” Jason seethed. “Don’t you forget it. I swear to God, Cate, I’ve been indulging this little temper tantrum of yours, but you better get it out of your system soon. If you fuck him, if you even let people think you’re fucking him, I swear you will regret it.”
Cate fixed her eye on the door behind him. She figured she might remember this moment later as the moment when she knew she was truly done. She had nothing more to say to this man.
“Get out of my way, Jason.”
“Don’t you walk away from me,” he said, and grabbed her arm. “If I wasn’t waiting on this offer from Cheedham, I’d kill him. Don’t test me.”
Cate looked down at where he held her arm, his knuckles white, his intent obviously to hurt her.
“If you don’t let go of me, I will scream, and I will press charges,” she said evenly. “I have photo evidence of the last time you hit me, Jason, and I have sworn statements. We both know I have agreed not to use them provided that you agree to a divorce on my terms, but if you ever, ever touch me again, I will ruin what remains of your life. Don’t test me, Jason. I’m a much better lawyer than you are.”
“I was drunk,” he said, as though that mattered. Cate noticed he let go of her arm, though the vein in his neck looked like it was about to burst.
“You’re often drunk,” she said. “And I mean it, Jason. I’m done with threats like this.”
“So am I,” Jason said. Then he smiled this nasty little smile. “Be careful, Cate, because when you come to your senses, you’re going to regret pissing me off. And if I find out you’re spreading your legs for that piece of shit, I’ll do it.”
Cate froze.
“I’ll enjoy it,” Jason said. “I’ll release all of your dirty, slutty little fantasies. Every chat log, every story, every photo, every little thing you thought was private. You don’t think people will be interested in the sex life of Soren Andersson’s slut lawyer? Everyone will know what a fraud you are. Everyone will know the real you. You will be over.”
Cate used the drive out to Malibu to try and decompress. Leave it to Jason to try to ruin the one thing she’d been looking forward to all week by scaring the shit out of her before she got to Soren’s.
And she had been scared. Truly scared, once again. The man was an artist at terrorizing her. “Everyone will know the real you?” Way to zero in on her greatest fear and then just…stab it.
Ironically, if Jason were a different person, he could have used that sort of perceptive sensitivity for good. The world had lost a talented psychologist the day Jason Whittier had gone over to the dark side. Cate remembered how enraged he’d gotten back in law school when she’d did better than he did on exams—it was always because a professor was trying to get her into bed, or because she had flirted
her way into the grade. He always needed to cut her down.
And now he’d try to do it again, only this time the whole world would believe him.
All of that was almost par for the course. The truly remarkable thing, she thought as she got closer and closer to Soren, was that it wasn’t devastating.
She was still standing!
Just a few weeks ago the very idea that Patrick Cross might see her at Volare and tell Jason about it had been enough to send her literally diving for cover. Not that she wasn’t on edge and freaked out, but she wasn’t hiding, either.
So that was interesting.
It was so interesting that by the time she pulled into Soren’s circular drive she was smiling ear to ear. Because Soren Andersson was waiting outside the door of his home, leaning against a sleek modern wall under the front light, looking sexy and dangerous and so damn promising, she could melt.
And he was waiting for her.
Not even Jason could take that away from her.
Cate had been thinking about it all week. She’d been thinking about everything Soren had said, everything he’d done, and everything he didn’t do—and he’d been right. And because he’d been right to wait, because he’d held back and he’d done what he thought was best for her even when he could have had her, she did trust him.
Clever man.
Clever, gorgeous, muscular, sexy man.
Holy shit, did she want him.
She waited while he walked up to her car, and couldn’t quite believe how pleased she was when he opened her door for her. Little thing, that. Simple thing.
Made her feel…feminine.
As did the look on his face when she extended her leg out of the car.
“You’re late,” he said gruffly.
“I’m not!”
“Any time would be late. I’ve been waiting all week.”
Cate took his hand and pondered that. Had he been thinking about this as much as she had? The thought made her feel slightly giddy, and then slightly weak, and the combination was powerful.
She looked up into Soren’s face—and felt her stomach drop. God, he was even more beautiful now that she knew what he could do. And totally, utterly unreadable. He looked almost…stern?
