She faltered. Tugging the blanket higher around her shoulders, she worked her jaw. “Maybe I did. But that doesn’t mean I need you to be my shrink now.”
“I’m not asking to be.” Good Lord. That was the last thing he needed. “But the next time we do this, we can make it better. I can help you down. Give you more. But you have to talk to me.”
At that she stood up straighter. “Who says there’s going to be a next time?”
Was she kidding him? He stood, unfurling to his full height. Crossing the room toward her, he let a little of the energy still humming in his bones roll into his swagger. When there were only inches between them, he stopped.
Breathing her in, he stroked a single fingertip down her cheek.
“Only every single cell in your body.”
And that was the instant she shut down on him completely.
“You may know something about my body, but there’s a lot more to me than that.” Taking a step back, she grabbed her clothes, somehow managing not to let the blanket fall. When she stood again, all her walls were up. The same old Lexie Bellamy who’d been giving him shit and blue balls in equal measure for the last few months. “This was great, Dane. It really was. And now it’s over.” She gestured toward the front of the cabin. “So I’m going to go get dressed and put myself together. Then I’m going to come back out here and get some work done and maybe—just maybe—snag a couple hours’ sleep before we have to go make a good impression on the CEO of the biggest financial company in Spain.”
He had to pick his jaw up off the floor. “Seriously?”
“Does anything about me not seem serious to you?”
Yeah, actually. Maybe the part that was dressed in a bra and panties and stiletto heels and wrapped in a blanket.
Maybe the part of her that, just behind those walls, was trembling.
All night long, he’d been trying to get her to admit that she needed what he wanted to give her, and every time, his insistence had been the thing to set her off.
Well, fine. She liked him telling her what to do when they were fucking, but not when their clothes were on. He could handle that.
Forcing himself to relax, he said, soft, “Lexie.”
“I can’t.” Something in her expression cracked. “I can’t, okay? Definitely not with you. I— Thank you. For tonight. But when I come back out here, I have to be your boss. If I let you hold me, or bring me down, or whatever it is you seem to want so badly . . .”
She’d shatter. The hairline fractures were everywhere.
She shook her head. “I just can’t.”
Dane swallowed hard.
He’d been told no an awful lot of times in his life, and about things way bigger than this. The disappointment churned inside him, though, more sour than it had any right to be.
“So that’s it. You’re gonna, what? Pretend like this never happened?”
“Yes.”
She braced herself, probably waiting for another parting shot from him. But fuck that. He’d made his case. If she didn’t want this, she could walk away.
And that’s exactly what she did.
The door to the bathroom closed with a clang. He waited to the count of five before slamming his fist against the wall. “Fuck.” He punched again and again until his knuckles stung, and it was fucking stupid. He was trapped in an airplane. She’d feel every vibration and hear every impact. He wanted to laugh. The pilot had probably just heard everything.
Whatever. If that was the game she wanted to play, so be it.
Grabbing his tie off the couch, he stalked his way to his seat. He snagged his briefcase while he was at it, too. Fat chance he was getting anything useful done tonight, but he could pretend just as well as she could.
By the time she returned, he had his nose buried in a spreadsheet. The only sign that he’d had the best sex of his life was the loose tie around his neck and the scent of it still in the air. Without so much as a glance at him, she took her seat on the opposite side of the plane from him and did much the same.
Barely a minute passed before he could feel the heat of her gaze. It burned into his skin. It made his gut churn, roaring with the same deep, useless, frustrated resentment he put all his energy into trying to evade most days.
But it also made him patient. She could deny it all she wanted to, but the fact of the matter was that she’d stumbled into a whole new world today. She’d never be able to get that kind of release anywhere else, and now she’d had it, she was going to crave it.
Alexis Bellamy was a natural submissive. Sooner or later, she would recognize that.
When she did, he’d be waiting.
chapter SIX
Lexie swept through the doors of El Escudo with her head high and her shoulders back. She and her team made a hell of a sight. She stalked forward in her favorite heels, her suit striking just the right balance between power and sex appeal, her hair up and her lips fucking crimson. She was flanked by legal on her left and finance on her right.
And one step behind her, footfalls smooth and confident and perfectly synced with hers, was Dane.
She almost faltered, but she found her stride before she’d so much as broken it.
She looked good, all right. She was prepared and primped and ready to tell this company what was about to happen here. But inside she was a mess.
She’d barely slept a wink on her red-eye. Her head throbbed, and the tightness between her shoulder blades felt like it would tear her spine apart. Her Spanx were cutting off her air, her updo pulled at her temples, and the makeup under her eyes might as well have been spackle.
She still hadn’t looked Dane in the eye.
Her fingers twitched, but she kept on walking. They’d had sex. Big deal. Lots of people had sex with their employees. Jordan had slept with her for a year and never let it affect them at work, right up until the day he had. So what if she could still feel people’s judgment? Their stares?
She’d let Dane see her all but naked physically and utterly stripped bare emotionally, but it was fine. He understood that it was a onetime thing. Hell, since the moment they’d gotten off the plane, he’d played the consummate professional.
Maybe a little too much so.
Ugh, that was just the sleep deprivation talking.
She shook it off. As they swept through the lobby, every head turned their way. Nearing the desk, she gave the signal, a subtle flick of her head.
Except Dane already was on it, anticipating her needs like he always did, and right now she was not thinking about just how thoroughly he had managed that last night.
Taking his place at her elbow, he smoothly slid a card across the desk toward the poor, starstruck woman manning the phones.
And what fell out of his mouth might as well have been pure sex. Hot damn. Lexie spoke a little Spanish, but it wasn’t her strongest language. Part of why she’d pulled Dane out of the temp pool in the first place had been his fluency. Still, she hadn’t been prepared. The syllables flew off his tongue, and all she could do was hold on and try not to let it show that the mere deepness of his voice made her wet between her legs and weak in her knees.
Somewhere in the flurry of his speech, she caught her name and the company’s and the name of the man they were here to see. The receptionist replied, her accent slightly different, but they seemed to be able to communicate. At the end of their short exchange, she looked up and smiled at Lexie.
“Mr. Miranda is expecting you. Welcome to Barcelona.”
“Thank you,” Lexie managed.
A few more words passed between them before Dane turned and gestured toward the right. Only Lexie had started moving at the same time, and his hand grazed her arm, and it wasn’t even fair, how deep the heat of his touch sunk into her skin.
“Excuse me,” Dane said, but he didn’t pull back. If anything, he leaned in closer.
For the first time since he’d tried to tell her he could do better the next time he fucked her—Lord help her, if he did any better
she might not survive—their gazes met. The cool blue of his irises burned, and a shiver raced up her spine.
“Uh.”
Dane’s throat bobbed. Still standing way too close, he pointed more firmly. “The elevator bank is this way.”
Oh.
Shit, this was precisely what she hadn’t wanted to happen. He might be acting all professional, but between her exhaustion and her nerves and the ache behind her temples, she wasn’t thinking straight. She was here to do a job, not get distracted by his . . . face. No matter how good it had looked between her thighs.
“Right,” she said. She finally moved away. Inside, she was scorched by his heat and all twisted in a web of sexual confusion, but she’d spent her entire life practicing her mask. Remembering the lessons her father had given her brothers, she squared her shoulders and strode around the corner.
Her entourage followed her into the waiting elevator, and if they’d noticed anything amiss, at least they had the good graces not to let it show. As the doors closed, she asked, “Everybody knows their lines?”
A chorus of yes, ma’ams replied. Good. That was what she liked to hear.
By the time they’d made it to the top floor, Lexie had her game face firmly on. She didn’t glance to the side or sneak a peek at Dane’s expression in the mirror. Instead, she met her own reflection’s gaze.
After everyone had abandoned her, she’d been the one to keep her family’s company afloat. She was strong. She was smart. And she wasn’t walking out of here until she’d gotten what she wanted.
The doors swept open. Showtime.
“Ms. Bellamy.” Hermann Miranda rose from his chair as Lexie and her team swept into the conference room. She met him with her sharpest smile and shook his hand. In clear, only slightly accented English, he welcomed her. “When my secretary told me you were coming, I cleared my calendar.” A crack of weakness showed in his facade. He darted his gaze to the rest of the Bellamy people as they fanned out, distributing folios to the other men and women assembled at the table. “I didn’t realize there would be so many of you. May I ask what this is about?”
“This”—removing her hand, she dropped the last, thickest folio into his extended palm—“is about your company and my company. And the best deal you’ve ever made in your life.”
The instant the door to her suite closed behind the bellhop, Lexie kicked her heels off. They went flying in different directions, one bouncing all the way into what was probably the bathroom, but she didn’t care. The groan she let out as she flexed her arches was close to pornographic.
Or at least before last night, she would’ve thought it was. A memory of heat bloomed beneath her skin. The sounds Dane had wrung out of her had set a whole new bar for sex noises, and as amazing as it felt to walk barefoot across the carpet, it didn’t hold a candle to Dane bending her over a couch and fucking her until she cried.
Stop it.
Jesus, she needed to sleep. Once she got over this stupid jet lag she’d be able to focus and quit thinking about sex. She’d cycled all the way from tired to wired and back about three times now. She’d have just as easily believed it was four a.m. as four p.m. if it weren’t for the late-afternoon light still spilling in through the windows.
She stared in longing at the giant, fluffy bed in the other room, but then forced herself to look away. If she could manage to stay awake for just a few more hours, her clock would reset by morning and she’d be good to go.
The only question was what to do with herself until then.
Well, a couple of things were all but automatic. Shedding her jacket and her bra as she went, she crossed the room to where she’d left her purse and snagged her phone. Tapping on the camera app, she sucked her lip between her teeth and scanned the room for likely suspects . . .
Ah, perfect. A green-and-black swirl of abstract color on a canvas hung by the door. Pretentious hotel art at its finest. The first picture she snapped was blurry, but her second attempt came out just right. With her finger hovering over the button, she double-checked the time differential. It was a little early in California, but not ridiculously so. Shrugging, she sent it off to Evan and waited.
It was a game they’d been playing for ages now. Her baby brother had come home from his first year at the fancy-pants artsy-fartsy prep school Rylan had shipped him off to with all sorts of trumped-up notions of what capital-A Art was. Their mother had whisked the two of them away to Prague for some society event—and then promptly ditched them both at the hotel while she went off shopping. Bored and angry, Evan had taken his Sharpies and drawn an image of his own over one of the awful paintings in the suite. The front desk hadn’t been amused, and their mother had been even less so when she got the bill.
But Lexie couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard. Whenever she went out of town these days, she made sure to take a picture of some painting or kitschy folk art he would hate.
Sure enough, not five minutes later, her phone chirped with a reply. She grinned at the cartoon of an Artist hanging himself that he’d scribbled over the top of the image and sent back.
Not bad, she replied.
Not bad? You wound me. It’ll be priceless some day when I’m dead.
Maybe. His sketches always brought a smile to her face, but a part of her kept waiting for him to give up on his whole tortured artist shtick. For him to bury the hatchet with Rylan and come home.
Apparently, that wasn’t in the cards any time soon.
Speaking of her other brother, though . . .
Plopping down on the couch in the main room of the suite, she tapped on her contacts and scrolled through to Rylan’s name.
He answered on the second ring. “So how did it go?”
She rolled her eyes. And he was the one always giving her shit for skipping the small talk and getting straight to business.
“Really well, I think.” Kicking her legs up to rest on the coffee table, she let her head fall back against the sofa.
And then promptly sprang up, suppressing a yelp.
Crap, that was right. In her hurry to put herself together before their meeting, she’d stuck about a hundred extra bobby pins in her hair. Now at least fifty of them were trying to jab their way into her skull.
“Yeah?” Rylan asked, nudging her to go on.
“Uh-huh.” With the phone clasped in one hand, she reached the other up and started tugging out pins and making a pile of the evil things on the table. “He had no idea what hit him.”
Miranda couldn’t have been entirely surprised by the offer they had made. Bellamy International didn’t bring a boarding party unless it planned on sailing off with your ship. But he’d still seemed taken aback by the brazenness with which she’d presented their terms.
“You think they’ll go for it?”
“They’d be fools not to.”
If he took the deal, Miranda got to keep 80 percent of his employees and his job. There would be some changes, of course. But at the heart of the deal, El Escudo remained the same core business it had always been. Bellamy International just covered all their debts.
And then started reaping their profits.
Naturally, Rylan wanted the full play-by-play, and Lexie was only too happy to give it to him. As long as she was talking, she wasn’t face-planting in that comfy mattress. Or fantasizing about big, strong, tall, insanely well-hung assistants.
Much.
With a silent sigh of relief, she dropped the final bobby pin on the table and shook out her hair. She was about halfway through recounting the day’s events, but before she could finish, a knock sounded out on her door.
She frowned. All her bags were accounted for, and she’d instructed her staff to go get some freaking rest.
“One second,” she told Rylan.
Heaving herself up, she made her way to the door and tugged it open.
Standing behind it, looking way more deliciously rumpled than he had any right to be, was Dane. His gaze seemed to almost subconsciously
rake her up and down, and fuck. Here she was, hair loose and feet bare, not even wearing a bra. What had she been thinking, opening the door? Anxiety and embarrassment rippled down her spine, making her hands clammy and her neck flash hot.
She had only a split second to worry about it, though. He blinked and brought his gaze to meet hers. And then a slow, tired smile curled his lips.
“Miranda’s people just called. You did it, Ms. Bellamy. They’re in.”
chapter SEVEN
For a long second, Lexie just stared at him. With all the willpower he had left, he held her gaze, refusing to let himself get distracted by how fucking gorgeous she looked. It was important to her that he stay professional while he was on the clock, and no way he was jeopardizing his chances of getting under her skirt again just because he couldn’t keep his eyes off the loose tumble of her hair or the hard points of her nipples through her shirt.
Nope. Not this guy.
Finally, she seemed to shake it off. He hadn’t realized she had her phone in her hand, but she brought it to her ear and said, “Rylan? I’m going to have to call you back.” She didn’t wait for him to reply. Pressing the button to end the call, she raised her brows at Dane. “Excuse me?”
Fucking hell, her voice was as ragged as the rest of her. Sexy and husky, it made his cock give a twitch, but there was something else there, too. He looked past her obvious lack of a bra and the mess of her hair to register how pale she was. The slightly unfocused, glazed look to her eyes.
She was exhausted, was what she was. Instinct had him curling his hands into fists. He wanted to turn her around and march her straight to bed and keep her there until she got some goddamn sleep. He’d only managed to snag a few hours on the plane, but it looked like she hadn’t gotten any at all. And yet here she’d been, on the phone with the CEO, probably giving him a status report instead of resting.
Everything in him told him to do something about that. To take care of her. Even if there wasn’t anything sexual about it.
But every time he offered her that, she fought him on it. Whether it was rubbing her back or holding her after she’d dropped, she had to be coaxed into letting him show her any kind of tenderness at all.
Nine Kinds of Naughty Page 7
