by Shara Azod
For some reason, Toni had got it in her head that he enjoyed the social whirl here in Atlanta. He hated it. He hated everything about the artificial society in which he lived his entire life. He detested the false smiles and even falser friendships. Hell, he couldn’t even trust his own business partner further than he could throw him, and Jeremiah McCarthy weighed close to three hundred pounds, so he wasn’t going to be throwing him anytime soon.
She was looking for excuses. Leland understood that. What he didn’t understand was why Toni was running so hard from something that was so very real if only she would let it be. It was deeper than his color or his family. Toni was terrified of falling in love, and Leland wanted to know why. What was it that made her shut herself off at the mere mention of a long term relationship? Honestly, a long term girlfriend wasn’t what he had in mind ultimately. He wasn’t really sure when it had happened, but Leland knew that what he wanted from Toni was forever.
There was no way in hell they were going to have sex tonight. Toni needed to understand this was not all physical. Their sexual chemistry might be off the charts, but there was so much more right in front of her face. Two people didn’t just click they way they had from pure physical attraction alone. He could let down all his guards with her; he didn’t have to be anyone other than himself. He didn’t have to worry about social niceties, didn’t have to dress to impress, didn’t have to woo her with diamonds and other gems. Flowers meant more to Toni than a fortune in precious stones. Besides, how could any stone outshine her natural beauty?
Oh he would spoil her. Once he got her to admit what they could be together, there was nothing in world he wouldn’t do for her, buy her, build her. But right now, gifts would be looked on as an insult. Toni was fiercely independent; there wasn’t a damn thing a man could buy her to impress her.
Shaking his head, he looked in the direction she had disappeared to. It was going to be one hell of long night. Lying next to her, holding her without being inside her was going to be a new kind of hell. He wasn’t sure he was man enough to do it. He couldn’t even think about her without getting hard. Wanting her had become as natural as breathing. That woman could turn him on with a look.
He had to do this. He had to be strong. He couldn’t let her continue to think this was all about sex. Great sex. Hot, sweaty, calorie burning sex.
Shit! He was in over his head.
Electing to keep his underwear on at the very least, he slid between the cool sheets, pulling the petite beauty close. Her ass snuggled right against his crotch, making him break out in a sweat. Toni had a great ass. It was all round, full and high. Grown men cried looking at an ass like that.
“Lee?” Toni’s voice could turn smoky and seductive in a heartbeat.
Did she have any idea what she did to him when she talked to him like that? Probably not. He had never met a woman so completely unaware of her innate sexuality.
“Yeah, sugar?”
“What are you doing?”
He had to smile. She sounded downright bewildered.
“Going to bed.” He kissed her forehead, rubbing her belly. He didn’t dare touch her anywhere else. He was holding on by a thin thread as it was.
“Yeah, we are in bed,” she sounded exasperated now. “Aren’t we going to…I mean, don’t you want to?”
“To what?” He almost moaned when she wiggled that ass back against him. Luckily he was able to bite it back.
“To have sex!”
This was it. He had to choose his words carefully, or she just might rip him a new one. Still, she needed to understand this was not the Toni Show. She needed to see him as a man, not a willing dick with no brain attached.
“Toni, I have no desire to have sex with you.” When she stiffened, he thrust forward, just a little so that she could feel proof of his attraction. “I want to make love to you. Until you are ready for that too, we will just cuddle.”
“Are you insane?”
She tried to move away, but he held her tight. He couldn’t afford to give her an inch. I just might be, he thought.
“Go to sleep, sugar,” he murmured instead of getting into it now. It would gain him nothing.
Thankfully, she didn’t try to fight him. Not yet anyway, but he had no doubt he was in for it tomorrow. Too bad he would be leaving for his office early in the morning. Unless he was sadly mistaken, and he was pretty damn positive he wasn’t, his mother would be paying a visit bright and early.
He had no intention of leaving Toni to his mother, but he felt maybe a little time alone wouldn’t hurt either of them.
Much.
Chapter 9
Leland had never been so glad to roll out of bed as he was at that moment. He had only been half right; it had been hellish to lie next to Toni without making love. Still there was something so damn fulfilling and right just holding her close to him. He had fluctuated between supreme contentment and absolute anguish all night long. At some point during the night he had lost his boxers. Toni’s hand had a firm grip on his painfully erect dick, and it didn’t look like she was letting go anytime soon. He probably had no one to blame but himself. Sleeping with clothes between them seemed a sacrilege.
He looked down at her, sleeping so peacefully. She was a stunning woman. Her eyebrows delicately arched, her full sensuous mouth, the way her body curved in all the right places despite the fact she was a tiny, little thing. It was truly a marvel the way she was stacked without being stacked at all. Those breasts of hers just stood right on out there, taunting him with their lush fullness, though she couldn’t be more than a “C” cup. Decadently dark nipples goaded him, “Don’t ya wanna taste?” Hell yeah he did.
Trying carefully to extract himself from her firm hold, he hissed through his teeth when her hand tightened. That hurt, yet it felt so damn good. His hips were moving without his permission, and he knew he wasn’t going to stop until he was balls deep inside her snuggly goodness.
He wasn’t going to make it. There was no hope for it, he had to have her.
Shifting her so that she lay on top of him, he breathed a small sigh of relief when she finally let go of his package. His reprieve was short lived, however. She might have let go of her stranglehold on his member, but now she was sliding up and down on it. A trail of moisture coated his cock as she moved in her sleep, stroking him with her increasingly wet pussy from root to his throbbing mushroomed tip.
Leland had to call on every fiber of his will to reach down and still her hips. She grumbled, but didn’t fully wake. Perfect for his purpose. He had learned a few things about Toni in their short time together. For one thing, she melted at a well drawn out “Sugar.” It was her catnip, but it usually lead to the sexual. Another thing about her was that she was brutally honest, even with herself when she was in the vague state between sleep and waking. She tended not to hold anything back and let go of truths she would never otherwise admit to.
“Toni?” He spoke softly, afraid he would wake her a little too much if he spoke too loudly.
“Ummm? Let me have it, Lee. Pretty please?”
Yeah she was still only half awake.
“Do you only want me for my cock?” He really needed to know how she really felt. There was no way she would ever just tell him. Toni tended to keep her thoughts and feeling all bottled up. It killed him to see her pulling back. He had to know if he was wasting his time.
“No,” she sounded like she resented the fact. Well, damn.
“Then what else, sugar?”
A low moan was her only reply at first. He was very scared that maybe it was all physical for her. That all the emotion was one sided.
“I like you for you,” she sighed and snuggled her head between the crook of his shoulder and his neck. He thought that was all she would say, but then she continued. “I feel comfortable with you. Never felt that with a man before. Well besides my family. I like you as a person and it pisses me off.”
“Why? Why would that piss you off?” At least he knew she real
ly did like him. That alone was incentive to fight for her.
“I don’t want to fall in love with you. You are going to hurt me.”
Aw, hell. Vulnerability was the last thing he expected. He would rather saw off a limb with a rusty blade than hurt her. He would kill any man who ever dared to do such a thing, whether she was his or not. Just watching her over the summer had made him fall halfway in love. Making her his had finished the job. Now to get her to recognize she was his, that was going take some doing.
“I would never intentionally hurt you, baby.”
“Not on purpose,” she replied into his shoulder. “But you will. When you start thinking about all the things you are missing by being with me. When your friends start treating you different because you are dating the black girl, then you will leave me.”
“I swear I won’t ever leave you, baby.” And he wouldn’t. She couldn’t know it, but he really didn’t have “friends”, not in the true sense of the word. He had tons of associates and acquaintances, but none he had ever really called a friend. It was one of the consequences of living the life he lived.
“Yes, you will,” she sounded absolutely certain of it. “All men leave.”
Warning bells went off in his head. She had just told him a hell of a lot.
“Who left you, sweetheart? Who hurt you?” He would kill him. He would track him down, whoever he was, and skin him alive. It was bad enough he had to pay for some other idiot’s mistake, but that anyone could hurt Toni just pissed him off.
“Roger,” she said as if he knew the asshole. “Gave him the panties and he was out.”
Now he hated him.
“Roger who, baby?”
Yep, he was going to look him up. He wasn’t sure what he would do when he found him, but he would find him.
“Lee, I need you.”
She was squirming again. His hold had relaxed on her hips, and she resumed her sweet torture of sliding up and down his erection. Instead of stopping her this time, his hands clasped the generous globes of her behind to assist. Felt too damn good to stop.
“Let me love you, Toni,” he groaned against her hair. “Please, baby, let me show how good we are together.”
“Yes. Oh, damn Leland, yes.”
That should have been good enough, but it wasn’t. He didn’t want her unconscious reply. He wanted her wide away and aware when he made love to her. Not fucked her, not had sex with her, but made slow, determined love.
“Toni, wake up!” It was harsher than he intended, but it did the trick.
Her movements stopped. She lifted her head to blink down at him.
“What?” she was groggy. Probably didn’t remember what the hell was going on.
“I want you wide awake when I make love to you.”
It looked like she would argue his terminology, but strands of their conversation when she was asleep must have came to her because she closed her mouth and just stared. His heartbeat stuttered, terrified she would say something he really didn’t want to hear. Instead she bit back whatever she wanted to say and rolled off him. He followed, shifting to his side to look at her, but he didn’t touch her.
“That was a dirty trick,” she grumbled, sticking out her bottom lip.
It was a far gentler reaction than he had anticipated. Leland didn’t know whether to be grateful or weary.
“Would you have told me otherwise?”
“No,” she admitted. “Why couldn’t you just let it be? Just let this be what it is?”
“Because I want more.” Madly, desperately.
It was strange; whenever Leland had pictured his future “someone”, he had always imagined she would be quiet, soft-spoken, never speaking above a velvety smooth drawl. Of course, she was blonde and perfect, never interfering with his job, quietly supportive, always there for him. Man, had he been a misguided dumbass. Now he couldn’t imagine his life without a firecracker with dark skin and eyes that flashed fire.
“Give me a chance, Toni. Give us a chance.”
“Okay,” she sighed as if giving in. “I’ll try.”
She was lying. He knew it, and he knew good and damned well she was aware that he knew it. It was all he was going to get this morning, so he decided to take it at face value.
*****
It was hard to get in the mood after such a bald faced lie. There was no doubt in Toni’s mind Leland knew she was lying. It was just easier than going on with this conversation. There were two facts she knew for sure; one, she didn’t have the willpower to fight her attraction to him as long as they saw each other every day. That meant she would be sleeping with him for the duration of the project to restore her cousin’s new home. The second fact was that as soon as the project was finished, this affair had to be over. She just couldn’t take the gradual withdrawal, the unanswered phone calls, the missed weekends. She had replayed the scenarios in her head over and over again. It always ended the same-her heart broken and alone.
It was unfortunate, but Toni had a very fertile imagination. She had played various ugly scenes in her daydreams from the morning she had first woken up in his arms. She would become all needy and URHG, feminine. She would call him every day they weren’t together. It would be all perfect at first, but then, he would become increasingly unavailable. He would have his secretary take messages when he was “in meetings”. The woman would become nastier and testier each time she called. Eventually Toni would get it in her head to surprise him in Atlanta, and find him wrapped up in some blonde, the surprise being on her.
Maybe it was unfair to project something that hadn’t even happened yet on Leland, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. The daydreams seemed so real she could reach out and touch them. Surely they were premonitions, right?
“Come here, sugar.”
Okay, he was doing that on purpose. He must have figured out her major weakness for that damn word. She was leaning into his embrace quicker than batting an eye. How could arms so wrong for her feel so right? His lips skimmed over her forehead, down her cheek, her jaw line, stopping to pay special attention to one of her spots—her neck right under her ear. The small, piercing bites sent electricity sizzling through her. She had to admit, the man was skilled at turning her on.
“Let me love you, sugar. Just for now.”
Now how could a girl say no to an offer like that? At least he wasn’t still asking for the impossible.
“For now,” she agreed, giving herself over to his capable hands.
Thank goodness they were already undressed. Toni didn’t think she had the patience to disrobe. Leland hadn’t mentioned a thing about missing his boxers. Maybe he didn’t realize she had slipped them off during the night so she could torture him. She felt justified seeing as how he dared to lay there looking all delicious and not making a move. It wasn’t right, getting her all worked up and then denying her what she wanted like a crack head wanted a hit.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” Leland murmured, running his large hands over her torso.
She loved that he paid far more attention to the valley between her breasts, her shoulder blades, everything put the places men usually focused on. There was something deeply erotic about his touch that was far from blatantly sexual. He made her feel beautiful. She had never really associated that word with herself before. Sexy in some eyes, maybe, but not beautiful. There was something in the word that implied so much more than physical attractiveness.
The warm, supple lips traveled all over her neck, to her shoulders. Hands cupped her underneath her chest, still not touching her sensitized mounds or her aching nipples. The little points were so hard they could probably cut glass.
“So perfect,” Leland breathed against her skin, bringing out a crop of goose bumps all over.
She almost wished she really was perfect, perfect for him. Oh, how she wanted to be. By the time he moved his body on top of her, she was a shivering mass of pure need. How did he manage to do that without traditional foreplay? She was wetter
than she had ever been in her life, and he had not once played with her breasts or gone anywhere near her pussy. Yet her body was alive, soaking up every touch, every caress. The light smattering of hair on his chest grazed her rigid peaks, sending shards of painful pleasure straight through her. He had to touch her! He had to do something!
“Leland!” She wrapped her legs around him, trying to drag him forward, but the damn man wouldn’t budge.
She arched, opened her thighs, closed them around him again, but she couldn’t force him closer. He took his sweet ole time, kissing his way down her body without stopping where he knew he damn well should. Who knew the shoulders were an erogenous zone? Or that hand gently stroking the outside of a thigh could send the libido into overdrive?
“Shhh,” the infuriating man seemed completely unaware of what he was doing to her. “Relax, baby. Just let me love you.”
Relax? How was she supposed to relax when he was destroying her? This had to be the lowest of the low. There was no way in hell another man could EVER come close to making love to her like this! And he hadn’t really even done anything yet!
Then finally, with a harsh groan, his lips captured a puckered nipple, pulling on it while he suckled. His tongue circled her areola, making sure it was well loved before moving to the other. Blood rushed to her head, her heart pounded against her ribs. She was going to come! She was actually going to come just by having her breasts played with. Her hands fisted in his hair, pulling him closer into her chest. She opened her mouth to cry out her pleasure, but no sound emerged. Sharp teeth biting into her tender flesh never felt so good.
Yet, he still wouldn’t let her rub her rapacious quim against him. She was helpless, panting between some small satisfaction and nearly insatiable yearning while Leland made his way deliberately down her body, stopping far too often for her liking to explore her belly button, or the hypersensitive flesh near her hips. By the time his broad shoulders lay nestled between her thighs, she was half out of her mind. Toni had begged, pleaded, yelled, but Leland was determined to drive her insane. If this was what he called making love, she wasn’t sure she could handle much more. This was a torture Tomás de Torquemada might have thought up, had he been a real man and not a punk bitch.
