“And are you?”
“I don’t know.” I gasped a little as he slid his hands around my waist and under my jacket. “I don’t think I want to be.”
Mathias moved his hands down to my ass. “You have a decision to make.”
“Really?” I curled one hand into the front of his jeans. “I think I’ve already made enough decisions tonight.”
“Are you sure?” he asked softly as he maneuvered me gently.
I gasped when my back met with the solid surface of the wall. “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t.”
“You make me want some pretty primitive things.” He ran his finger along my jawline and then leaned in to kiss me. “I had plans for this suit of yours.”
“I remember.”
“But, really, I just want to get you naked, lay you out on my bed, and take you over.”
He pushed my jacket over my shoulders, and I let it fall to the floor. The fine linen whispered against my legs as it settled near my feet.
“Tell me I can have you, Jane.”
I sighed against his kiss and wrapped my arms around his neck. “Yes, you can have me.”
He kissed me hard and then took a step back from me. I watched him, caught up in his eyes and the way he looked at me.
There had never been a man like him for me. Why was it so easy to give over to his control? I pushed off my shoes and followed along gamely when he took my hand and started toward what had to be the bedroom.
We stopped at the foot of the bed and I watched silently as he gently unbuttoned my blouse. He tugged it from my skirt, and I shrugged it off. Pulling me close, he unzipped my skirt. His fingers brushed against the sensitive skin of my back with every movement he made. I wondered what he’d think of my missing panties.
I rested my hands on his arms, so relieved to be close to him again. The smoothness of his skin, the heat of his body, and the heady smell of soap and him had all of my senses on overload.
He stepped back as he released my skirt and it fell to the floor. I stood still in front of him clad only in a bra and a pair of thigh highs. The hose felt naughty, even risqué. It was almost worse than being naked.
“Very nice,” he murmured as he ran his fingertip across the top of one breast. “Please tell me you were wearing panties earlier today.”
I laughed at his tone, surprised at the near desperation I heard there. “I took them off in the elevator.”
Mathias moved closer and covered my mouth with his. The sweep of his tongue against my lips made me gasp, and I opened to his sweet invasion. His hands moved down my back to cup my ass. I wrapped my arms around his neck as he lifted me. Being in his arms was amazing, and it was easy to forget everything that had already happened between us.
I released him as he laid me out on the mattress and hovered over me. He kissed my lips softly once more and then moved downward. Mathias placed soft kisses down between my breasts, his lips skirting the edge of my bra, down my stomach until he came to my pussy. I spread my legs and stiffened while I waited.
Carefully he tugged the thigh highs to my knees and then pulled them away. I unclasped the front closure of my bra, pulled it away, and tossed it in the direction he’d fired my hosiery.
He placed a soft kiss on the lips of my sex before he slipped his tongue inside to find my clit. A broken sound burst from my mouth as he pressed my legs apart with firm hands. I jerked against the delicious action of his mouth until he pushed his tongue into me and I shattered under the pressure of orgasm.
Rocking back and forth against his mouth, I let myself drown in pleasure for a few long minutes. The sweet sensation curled into my body and left me wanting more.
“More.” I clutched at his head. “You have to fuck me.”
He lifted off me and unbuttoned his jeans with shaking hands. “I love how you taste. I could eat you for hours.”
I pressed my feet up against the bed as he stood up and took off his jeans. “Now.”
“Let me get a condom.”
I sat up and reached for him. “I need you inside me, Mathias. Just you.”
“Jane.” His tone was one of question.
“I have birth control covered.” I stroked the side of his face and swallowed hard. “I just need you to be as naked as I am.”
“Anything you want.” His lips brushed over mine gently.
He came down with me willingly, the head of his cock pushing almost immediately against my entrance. I spread my legs wider as he thrust into me with ease. The hot, stinging pleasure of taking him stole my breath. I lay beneath him, impaled and loving every second of it.
“Yes. Yes.” I dug my hands into his back. “Fuck me.”
He thrust upward into me, stretching my insides and rubbing against my G-spot in the most amazing way I’d ever known. I was so wet, so hot for it that every thrust of his cock into my cunt sent heavy arcs of pleasure through me.
“I need more.”
He pressed into me hard and stopped. “I’ll give you everything you need.”
I tightened my fingers into his as he took my hands and arched against my body. The feeling of being pressed between him and the bed swept over me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist in an effort to hold him closer. “Harder.”
“Yes.” He pushed his arms under me and started to slam into me.
Every pounding thrust of his cock into me was a tiny bit of satisfaction that layered and layered until another orgasm burst over me. My vision darkened, and I groaned with the pleasure of it. He rocked into me as my body rushed wet with the pleasure he’d given me.
Mathias stiffened against me as he came and buried his face in the side of my neck. “Perfect.”
We held each other, rocking gently against each other as the hot feeling of orgasm drifted away. When I could, I slowly released my legs from his hips and sighed when he pulled his still-hard cock from my body. He rolled onto his back beside me, my hand still caught in his.
I turned into him and rested my cheek on his chest. He brought my hand up to his mouth and kissed my palm. It was the kind of intimate and personal thing that should’ve had me running for the door. “We do have some very amazing sex.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled softly. “We sure do. In fact, you could be the best time I’ve ever had.”
Had there been many women? I could assume so; surely I’d had my share of men. “You’re certainly the most interesting man I’ve known.”
“That’s not surprising.”
I turned and looked at him and frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You date lawyers and probably investment bankers. It isn’t like you to go out of your way to involve yourself with people who will actually challenge and excite you.”
“Are you being insulting on purpose?” I demanded, wondering why he would ruin what had turned out to be a very pleasant encounter with another argument.
“I’m being honest.”
“I’m perfectly fine with not hearing the so-called truth from people who barely know me.” I started to leave the bed but he snagged my arm and pulled me close to him. I relaxed against the heat of him and closed my eyes. “So, if you know so much…why am I here?”
“Because it hasn’t occurred to you that this thing between us isn’t going to go away.”
“How can you be sure?” I curled my fingers into his when he picked up my hand.
“Don’t you feel it?” He maneuvered me onto my back and covered me with his body.
I moved under him and moaned softly when he pushed his cock up against the entrance of my pussy. Although swollen and overpleasured already, I couldn’t help but spread my legs for him and accept, with a needy sound, the thrust of his body into mine. “Yes.”
“Has it ever been so good before?” he asked softly against my lips.
“No.” I shook my head abruptly and tightened my fingers against his. “Never.”
He kept his gaze on mine as we moved together, the delicious friction of his skin on mine push
ing a low sound from my mouth.
“I feel like you were made for me,” he whispered.
I closed my eyes and pulled him down close. There was a part of me that agreed. No man had ever felt so perfect or so right. All of it was beginning to scare the hell out of me. I had plenty of things going on in my life. The last thing I needed was a complicated sexual relationship that kept me off balance and out of control.
6
Pleasure is hard to walk away from. Even when that physical feeling is surrounded by insecurity and guilt. I buttoned the shirt I’d pulled from the narrow closet across from the bed and walked out into the small living room of the suite. He was on the couch, remote in hand, staring intently at the television.
“Anything interesting?”
He tossed the remote aside and held out his hand. “No.”
I slid into his lap with more ease than I liked and settled astride his thighs. Being comfortable with him would lead to things that I was just not ready for. “Tell me where you think this will go with us, Mathias.”
He glanced over my face and plucked gently at the hem of the shirt where it rested on my thigh. “I don’t know. I think it would be a mistake not to explore it.”
“Don’t you think that this kind of play could be bad for us professionally?” It was starting to sound like a very weak argument, but it was what I had.
“I’m an adult, Jane. I can keep my personal life out of my professional one, and I believe that you can too.”
“And if you take over the security contract for the gallery?”
“I’ll be there a few months solid getting things in place and working with the security personnel that I bring in, but Holman’s isn’t going to be my only project in Boston.”
“It’s not?”
“Of course not.” He laughed softly and ran his finger along my jaw. “I came to Boston to be closer to my brother; this is no whim. I’ve been planning the move for nearly a year. My offices will be ready for occupation by the end of the week, and my team will move in.”
“Where are they now?”
“They are all staying in the hotel, but we are using a conference room here for our office space at the moment.” He rubbed my thighs gently, his fingers encouraging my muscles to relax. “You’re getting tense on me.”
“I don’t know why.” I did know why. The thought of him staying in Boston was a source of both relief and immense dread. He was the kind of man that I could spend my life drowning in, and I had plans that didn’t jive with that.
“I do.” He laughed softly. “You thought that there was a chance I’d leave if I didn’t win the Holman contract.”
I had. “You have family in New York as well.”
“Yes, but Shamus is here and this is where he will remain. Once I realized that, I made the choice to come here. Our parents are getting older, and now that they are both retired, they are starting to travel more and more. Kane, our younger brother, will be graduating and coming to college in Boston in the next two years. There isn’t much left in New York to hold me in the long term. I’ll visit, of course, but Boston will be home. It’s a good city for a man to have a family in.”
“A family.”
“Yeah. A snotty, expensive dog; sexy, amazing woman, and maybe a couple of monsters that we produce…a family.”
“Monsters?”
“I was a horrible kid. I’m sure God will pay me back by giving me some of my own.”
The thought of some other woman having Mathias’s babies made me furious. But children certainly weren’t in my future. I didn’t have room for a family. “I see.”
“You have that look on your face.”
“What look is that?” I demanded.
“That look that a career woman gets when a man tells her he wants children.”
I pressed my lips together and tried to think of what to say about that. It was true; I knew a lot of women who broke out into hives when they thought about having children. Pressing one hand against my flat stomach, I considered my future.
There was another part of me that feared that I would end up like my mother. Tied down to a man and children, and absolutely miserable. So miserable that I’d be forced to abandon them all.
I didn’t make it a habit to talk about my mother, and I wasn’t going to start now. Yet there was the thought that I might have the potential to be just like her. “But we aren’t talking about that kind of future, are we?”
“Not yet.”
Not yet. Christ, the man was shifty. “So, what are we talking about?”
“You, me, really good sex, dinners, movies, and no 2 A.M. friend.”
He wanted me to stop seeing Charlie. I frowned and slid off his lap to move down to the other end of the couch. The man was making demands, and I didn’t like it at all. I couldn’t very well rearrange my life to suit a man I’d known only a few days. “You want an exclusive arrangement.”
“Yes.”
“No.” I shook my head. Getting roped into an exclusive relationship is the beginning of a dead-end road. “I told you from the very beginning that I’m not in the market for something serious.”
“It’s what I need.”
“But not what I want. You just can’t decide for the both of us where this is going to go.” I crossed my arms over my breasts and braced myself. We’d traveled this path once already. Mathias wasn’t a man used to being told no.
“I need it, and if it’s beyond you…” He sighed and stood. “I’m not going to share, Jane. If I’m not enough for you, then you can leave.”
“Not enough?” I frowned at him. “The fact is that you are more than I can handle. I’m just not ready for this kind of thing.” I waved my hand around. “I need space.”
“Fine.” He turned away from me and headed toward the small kitchen. “If you change your mind, you know where I am.”
Dismissed. The smug bastard had dismissed me, again. Insulted and hurt, I stood from the couch and started to gather up my discarded clothes. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“I’m not going to share you, physically or emotionally, with another man. You’ve made your choice clear.” He snapped, his voice hard and unrelenting.
“We barely know each other. You have no business making demands on me like this. You aren’t the only person in this situation who has feelings, you know.” I hugged my clothes to my chest and left the living area for the bedroom to locate the rest.
I gasped a little when he grabbed and whirled me around to face him. “Is that how it feels when I’m in you? Do you feel like I’m a stranger?”
My clothes fell to the floor between us as I grasped his shoulders. “No.”
We came down on the bed in a swift, breathless movement, his thigh pressing between mine in a demand that felt so natural that I complied immediately. The flannel material of the pajama bottoms he wore rubbed against my bare thighs as he put his hands on either side of my head.
I could barely stand to meet his gaze, but I wasn’t going to be weak; neither one of us deserved that. He looked angry and, yes, hurt. I felt like the worst person to ever live on earth. Here was a man who wanted me for who I was and had really asked for so little, yet I couldn’t make myself give in to what he needed.
“Do you have this kind of connection with him?” he demanded.
I shook my head. How I felt with Mathias was unique—so unique that I couldn’t remember ever feeling that way about anyone in my life. “No, of course not.”
“Then why?”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”
He slid one hand under my head, fisted it in my hair, and covered my mouth with his. I sank into the hard, possessive kiss with all the neediness of a woman who had no control of herself. I wrapped myself around him and rocked against the erection he pressed against me.
Mathias lifted his head and shook it. “I want more than your body.”
“It’s all I have to offer.”
He released my hair and shoo
k his head. “You do yourself a disservice.”
I closed my eyes when he lifted away, and I let my legs drop to the bed beneath me. This wasn’t the way I wanted things to be between us, but I couldn’t, wouldn’t give in to his demand.
Mercy was sitting across from me in our favorite café, trying to be patient with me. I figured I had another minute or two of silence before I’d be forced to start talking. I’d called her as I’d sat in my car outside of his hotel.
Deanna Lee Page 10
