Coin Operated
Page 4
She settled slowly, and he followed her down, both of them leaned over the desk, Eli gritting his teeth. When she’d stopped trembling, he pushed off the desk. She made the sweetest, hottest moan of objection that he had ever had the sheer torture of walking away from. He rounded his desk and sat down in the big leather executive chair, facing her.
Breathing too hard, he unfolded his glasses from where they sat on his desk and put them on. He opened one of the files from the stack and began leafing through it. He jerked his head toward the wall.
“Laundry’s there, can you take it tonight?”
She didn’t respond. He glanced up. She looked ravaged. Her hair was mussed from his fingers and her lips were swollen a lush red from the repeated scrape of his teeth.
Bea’s fingers skimmed her lips. “I don’t understand.”
He raised an eyebrow. He teetered on the edge of resuming their encounter. He was agonizingly hard and she was still bent over his desk. How far could he push this before he lost control completely? The thought of how rough, how deep he wanted to take her scared him.
“Sit down,” he growled.
She wobbled upright, straightened her skirt and sank into one of the two chairs that faced him, her eyes huge and unfocused, her chest rising and falling to match the rapid cadence of his own breathing.
He swallowed thickly. He wanted to prolong the look on her face, the shock of lust, to enjoy it and give her new reasons for it. He had to stop himself from getting back up. His cock strained at the thought of how deeply gorgeous she would be stripped naked. How hot she would be, her arms crossed above her head, her legs wrapped around his waist as he drove violently into her.
The silence stretching between them was so acute Eli could hear the metallic whine of the computer desktop. He returned to the file in front of him, clearing his throat. “Bows and Eros tomorrow. Don’t forget the laundry.”
Bea stared at him for long seconds; each one of them set his teeth more on edge and made the itch to get back up less bearable. He waited to see if she balked at his dismissal, or if she craved the control as much as he longed to be its bearer.
Eli was dangerously close to the limits of his restraint when she stood. Without a word, she grabbed his duffel from the far wall. He didn’t look up until she had shut the door softly behind her.
Chapter Four
Bea closed the door to her apartment and sagged against it. She barely remembered leaving the office, let alone driving home.
Holy. Moly.
She had never expected Eli would ever kiss her, let alone drive her to a mind-blowing orgasm within hearing distance of their entire floor.
He seemed to have gained some sense of what he finally wanted between them, and the sight of him stalking toward her was the most erotic thing she’d seen in a good many years.
Now she was confused. Was it confusion making her knees weak, making her slide down the plane of the door to find solid ground? She had played lamb to his normally oh-so-straight-laced wolf, and he’d been all predator when he’d ordered her to kiss him. When he’d hovered close to her, the space between their bodies had become her own fairy-tale tower—a dark, unknown place where she was trapped. Funny how her captor was also her prince. Funny how she liked it.
Bea blew out a breath and got to her feet. She raked both hands through her hair and did a quick shimmy-dance to shake off her jitters. Grabbing Eli’s duffle bag, she kicked off her high heels and curled her toes into the carpet as she walked toward the kitchen table.
She hadn’t known why she’d offered to do Eli’s laundry that first night in the parking garage. She hadn’t known why the second time, when she’d separated the socks from the dress shirts. Now, as she sorted the contents of the duffle, she smiled at how the routine of unrolling the sleeves of his shirts soothed her. The smell of him still nestled in the wrinkles of cloth excited her.
She cherished the process of washing away the weight of whatever day he’d worn it—thinking, as the soap slid through the fabric, how she was helping to put by the spilled coffee, the bad morning in traffic, the extra hours sorting out an accounting error. She did it because it made her feel closer to him. The knowledge that the same shirt would slide over his back the way her hands might never do, that was what broke her heart.
The phone rang on the wall beside her. She paused and looked at it, debating on answering. She let the machine get it. “This is Beatrix, here comes the beep, you know the routine…”
Eli’s voice filled the room, and there it was again—the shaded edge to his tone that was deliciously raspy and made her ache instantly. “Bea, pick up the phone.”
Five words that may as well have been the tips of his long, lean fingers as fast as they revved her up. She swallowed thickly before lifting the receiver off the cradle.
“Eli?”
“I need to talk to you about today.”
Her stomach knotted. She knew that sooner or later they’d have to discuss today, but she’d expected that she would have to initiate the conversation. “Okay.”
She waited, the silence on the other end of the phone so profound, all she could hear was the slight static on the phone line.
“I want you to stop using your detergent on my clothes.”
Bea had never been so close in her life to screaming in frustration. She managed a strangled laugh. “That’s what you want to talk about?”
“What else is there?”
He was being deliberately oblique, and she clenched her teeth to keep from swearing. “What is your problem, Eli?”
Silence again.
Her blood simmered. She couldn’t stomach any more of this back and forth. “I asked you a question.”
“I doubt you’ll get an answer.” There was husky, teasing pitch to his words. He was toying with her.
Bea’s slow simmer went to a rolling boil. “I think you owe me an explanation.”
“I think you owe me an apology for scratching the finish on my desk.”
“I’ll have that to you by morning. Handwritten or typed?” The sarcasm felt good, sharp and cathartic.
“Maybe I should come over there and give your smart mouth something else to do,” he snarled. The dark mischievousness that had lowered his voice was gone.
“Maybe you should, sir.”
His intake of breath was sharp and satisfying.
“Eli, today was…”
“Bea, just stop.”
She inhaled deeply and color rose to her face as she cut him off. “I’ve never come so hard in my life.”
“Fuck. Bea, I didn’t even give you a damned safe word.”
She rushed on. “I’ve always felt safe with you, I—”
“You don’t know what you’re asking for, Bea.”
She grasped at his irritation, savored it like a prize. It seemed the only way to get Eli to respond was to piss him off. “You’re right, because I don’t know what you want. Have you ever, I mean we…”
He groaned. She closed her eyes and tipped her forehead against the wall.
“How the hell did it even get to this?” he asked. “I didn’t mean to touch you. It was a mistake.”
“A mistake that it didn’t happen sooner. I’ve been thinking about you like that for ages. Like that and more.”
“No. I was rough with you.”
“And I bent over your desk and let you spank me. A fantasy straight out of my head.”
He swore again.
“You owe it to yourself to stop holding back.”
“Oh, no benefit to you on that one, right?”
She laughed at his dry tone. “Eli,” she said, “we’ve been through forty-two states, all major holidays and at least three E.R. visits together. Why are you afraid of me?”
“It’s not you that I’m afraid of, Bea.”
Something thick lodged in her throat, a choking mix of frustration and compassion. “Then what are you afraid of?”
“I’m—” His voice wavered slightly. “I’m afr
aid of who I’d be with you. Who I was with you today.”
She couldn’t make him want her the way she wanted him. “What do you suggest we do?”
“We forget it.”
“We still have to see each other nearly every day. We have to get the damned Bows and Eros presentation together for tomorrow.”
“I’ll pull an all-nighter. I don’t want you near Bows and Eros.”
She hung up on him. The ringing clang of the phone hitting the cradle was the perfect punctuation to the start of her tears. To her wrenching sadness at the loss of—what? The chance to sleep with Eli? The hurt that clawed its way acidly up the back of her throat was more than just a reaction to rejection.
They had danced just on the edge of something dark together, something that could have been earth-shattering and beautiful—only to have the warm, sinuous dusk of their attraction stripped away by the harsh light of his inhibitions.
Bea turned and made her way down the hall, yanking at the pins in her hair, scattering clothes behind her until she was bare. In the bathroom, she jerked the faucet all the way to hot and swiped at her runny nose, clamping down on panic as the steam that rose from the tub carried not only warmth, but a realization.
She was in love with Elijah Elliot.
Bea slipped into the tub. The heat of the water only served to add moisture to the fresh wave of dampness that slid down her cheeks. The water stung where he’d spanked her, and the reminder was at once delicious and terrifying.
One time in Boston, he’d gotten food poisoning so bad that after their hospital trip they’d been unable to fly back to Atlanta. She’d sat in the waiting room until 4:00 a.m., had driven him back to their hotel and put him to bed in her room. He hadn’t minded her hands on him then. She’d stayed with him day and night for days, stretched out beside him through the fever that wracked him and, later, the chills.
In New Jersey at a client’s fundraiser, a formal event, they’d danced together in the center of a gilded ballroom. After several glasses of wine, Eli’s warm fingers had drawn lazy, never-ending circles at the small of her back.
When she’d broken a heel and taken a nasty tumble running for a plane in Chicago, he’d inspected her scraped knee.
When he’d spilled mustard on his shirt right before a big meeting, she’d rescued him with a glass of soda water.
When he nodded over late-night paperwork, which was often, she smoothed her palm over his shoulder to wake him.
Last year, when her father had died, he’d held her as she sobbed.
And now he was afraid to touch her?
Bea slid down and submerged herself. She could hear the faint ring of the phone, muffled by the water rushing in around her ears. She closed her eyes and let it ring.
The next morning Bea arrived at the office early to find Eli asleep, his head pillowed on his arms. She tiptoed into his office and left him slacks and a dress shirt. He didn’t budge when she balanced the small zip bag of toothpaste, deodorant and shaving things on the edge of his desk.
Good thing we keep spare clothes at the office, she thought, picturing the untouched piles of laundry back at her apartment. After Eli’s harsh dismissal, the intimacy of the unwashed garments had seemed vulgar to her.
She couldn’t dwell, no matter how much she wanted to. She logged into their shared files and put her brainstorms from last night into something solid they could present to Bows and Eros. She heard the sink turn on in Eli’s office bathroom. She took one last look at her work and saved it, closing her laptop as he appeared in her doorway wearing the clothes she’d left.
“Hey.”
“Hi.”
He looked as skittish as she felt. “I just got off the phone with Lynn Perry from B & E—she’s on her way up.”
Bea nodded, standing, smoothing her skirt. His eyes went to her legs and she quashed the urge to stare at his freshly shaven face.
“I didn’t come up with anything last night.”
She jerked her gaze to him. “I thought you said…”
“Yeah, well, I did stay here all night. I couldn’t work at that damned desk.”
She wanted to go to him. She wanted to press her face into his chest and beg him just as he’d demanded of her yesterday.
Touch me. Love me.
She nodded. “I’ve worked something up.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Good?”
“Very. Hot, sexy, edgy.”
“Let me see.”
“No.”
He squinted slightly. His lips compressed into a tight line.
Bea’s stomach did a flip-flop. “Lynn’s on her way up, right? I have an angle. Just trust me.”
He hesitated a minute and then checked his watch before nodding. “I’ll see you in conference in ten minutes.”
Bea nodded back. It was now or never.
Chapter Five
What the hell was she up to?
Eli had woken to the faint sounds of typing and the smell of coffee wafting through the office. He’d gotten up from an uncomfortably cramped position slumped over his desk to find a fresh set of clothes hanging on the coat hook on the back of his office door.
He’d done everything he could to push the sight, the taste of Bea away and work on the B & E campaign last night, but he hadn’t lied to her—she’d scored the shiny surface of his desk’s finish. His eyes kept straying from his laptop screen to the scratches that marred the otherwise unblemished plane. He remembered the ornate silver ring she’d worn, hadn’t thought of it scratching the finish. He kept feeling her, smelling her, hearing her all over again.
Eli didn’t recall finally giving in to the nodding exhaustion that had overtaken him in the wee hours, but he’d opened his eyes to the same scratches. His dreams had been of Bea and of bondage. He was painfully erect and near mad with frustration when he’d stood, his back protesting, and gone to wash his face, shave and change clothes.
Even after he’d brushed his teeth, his mouth had still been sour with the memories of their phone call from last night. He should never have instigated anything physical. Too bad his libido hadn’t gotten that memo.
She looked gorgeous perched at her desk, the pale, harsh glow of her computer doing nothing to take away from the familiar beauty that had more than his groin twinging. He smoothed a hand over the foreign pang in his chest, forcing himself away from exploring the feeling too much. The front door of the office snicked open softly and Eli went to greet their client and escort her into their small conference room.
Bea hooked up her laptop as she settled next to their client, ready to press Play on a presentation that Eli knew nothing about. He took a deep breath. She’d asked him to trust her. She had trusted him yesterday.
Lynn Perry, the new CEO of Bows and Eros, was a severe-looking woman with more sharp edges than wrinkles—and that was saying a lot. Bea turned toward her, talking as she scrolled through the money rundown of their proposal—a percentage for print ads, a percentage for catalog revamp, a percentage for TV teasers during home shopping network programming.
In the daytime. Damn. That was a bit of brilliance.
Eli shifted in his seat nervously as Bea picked up the remote to the presentation projector. Lynn wanted a powerful presence, something empowering and edgy that would attract women to the brand. Eli trained his eyes on the matte pull-down screen at the end of the conference table and prayed.
And then caught his breath.
The back view of a pair of lovers clad in underclothes, entwined, the woman astride the man, her head thrown back. His hands cradled the small of her back. Her arms were crossed just under his fingers and tied—with a bright crimson length of silk. A black screen fade-in—Love. Lust. Sex.
Holy hell.
A switch to a bottle of Completion on a silky black backdrop, the words in a curling font that made Eli think of the hot curve of Bea’s ass as he’d spanked her.
Eli’s eyes darted to Bea, who was staring calmly at the slides as they changed again.
Find your own COMPLETION at Bows and Eros.
Eli barely heard the rest of Bea’s spiel. He caught brief snippets through the roar in his head.
“…completely automated online ordering…”
“…boutique retail placement of select products…”
“…proposed specialty tie-ins with a local cruise line…”
She was gorgeous. She was brilliant. He wanted her screaming and writhing and soaking the juncture of their bodies with her wet thighs as he pounded her senseless.
Lynn Perry cleared her throat at the end of Bea’s presentation. “Yes, well, that was…interesting.”
Bea’s faced stayed neutral. She handed Lynn a slim folder. “When can we expect an answer, Miss Perry?”
Lynn Perry stood. Bea followed and so did Eli. Something was wrong.
As Lynn gathered her things, she shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ll call you.”
They all walked to the door. Before Eli could think to interject, Lynn was gone.
“Fuck.” Bea swore at the closed door before turning back to Eli. “Too much?”
“Why the scarf?”
“What?”
“The fucking picture for the slideshow. Why are her hands tied?”
Bea arched a brow. “Because it’s sexy.”
“Like hell it is.”
“Like hot, spanking hell, yes. It’s sexy.”
Eli nearly growled. “Her hands are tied, how is that empowering? How does that give her control?”
Bea raked her eyes down his body. “Tell me you weren’t just as caught as I was yesterday.”
“Damn it, Bea, you’re pushing me.”
“It was a good presentation, Eli.”
“Lynn obviously didn’t think so. B & E is a big account. We need to keep them happy.”
“You think the bondage was a mistake?”
“Among other mistakes lately, yes.”
Her eyes flamed. “Fine. It was a mistake. Just like it was a mistake to ever let you touch me.”
Bea froze against the doorway, regretting the words even as they left her lips.