by Jess Dee
He’d taken their spectacular lovemaking and turned it into nothing more than a cheap, dirty affair. To top it all, her body was still fiercely aware of him, of his masculinity and his presence. Still nudging her subconscious to sleep with him again.
Begging her self-conscious. Talk about adding insult to injury—betrayed by her own body.
She had to get away. Using every ounce of energy and dignity she possessed, which, considering the circumstances, was not very much, she straightened the chair she’d knocked over.
Her sense of gloom and humiliation mingled with a need for self-preservation, and as she replaced the papers she’d removed from her briefcase, she looked at Riley. “Just for the record,” she told him, “I slept with a stranger in Melbourne. Someone I’d never laid eyes on before. Our meeting today was my first opportunity to see what AJ Riley looked like.”
“You’re asking me to believe that you had no idea who I was?” The lines around his mouth tightened.
“Believe whatever you want, Mr. Riley.” She no longer possessed the energy to care.
“You knew. I saw the recognition in your eyes as soon as you looked up at me in the lobby.”
“Recognition? I didn’t rec—” Lexi snapped her mouth shut. Riley was half right. She had recognized something then. Only it wasn’t his identity. It was her immediate, overwhelming attraction to him.
She’d hardly grant him the satisfaction of telling him that now. “I repeat—I had no idea who you were.” She closed her bag and prepared to leave. She’d go out looking like a professional, not like some two-bit whore. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, the time has come for me to leave. I’m afraid I made a grave error of judgment coming here today, and I apologize for wasting your time.” Her voice sounded eerily normal. “I’ll show myself out.”
“You’re leaving?” he asked, and even looked a little surprised.
“Apparently my expectations of our eventual meeting were unrealistic. I find you’re not…quite the man I thought you to be, and it’s obvious you want no part in the sibling program. There’s really no point in my taking up any more of your day.” She walked to the door. “Goodbye, Mr. Riley. It’s been…a real delight getting to know you at last.”
—
AJ, you can be a real asshole when you want to.
He hauled a hand through his hair and shook his head. Sure, he’d needed to get Lexi the hell out of his office, and out of his life, but damn, did he have to act like such a dickhead in the process? Why didn’t he just politely refer her to Matt, who usually dealt with charities and donations anyway?
Because, he admitted to himself, Lexi Tanner scared the crap out of him.
If he’d thought spending a night with her could cure his eternal hard-on, he’d been sadly mistaken. Sleeping with the woman had the exact opposite effect. Instead of getting her out of his system, she plagued him. He spent every available second consumed by thoughts of her. Not just images of her naked—although those did take up a substantial amount of time—images of her fully dressed, drinking coffee, eating dinner, having a bath, working, shopping, swimming, sleeping, waking, walking, standing blah, blah, blah.
Worst of all, he imagined her sitting with her feet curled under her legs on the lounger on the balcony of his holiday home, talking. To him. Because Lexi made him want to do that. To sit cozily in his house and just spend time with her.
AJ did not take the time to get to know the women he had sex with. If one pleased him, he saw her again. If she didn’t, he didn’t. Simple. End of story. Lexi didn’t just please him. She fascinated him. Inspired him. Sent his thoughts skittering to the proverbial family home with the white picket fence and the two-point-five children.
That’s why he’d sent her the hell away. He wasn’t interested in any of it. Least of all the white picket fence and two-point-five children.
For fuck sake, Riley. Why’d ya have to go and be such a jerk?
Because she knew who I was. She knew all along.
Bullshit. She didn’t have a clue.
‘Course she did. Soon as Genevieve told me about the appointment when I got back, I put it all together. She set the whole thing up. Realized we were at the same hotel and thought she’d give me a little early incentive, so to speak.
Rubbish, she’s not the type.
Sure she is. She recognized me in the lobby.
She recognized you in your office. Didn’t you get a look at her face?
She’s a good actress.
She was blown away.
She set me up.
Keep telling yourself that. I’m sure it helps.
It does.
Good.
It really does.
I’m happy for you.
I feel way better.
I’m sure she does too.
Ah, crap.
AJ jumped up and took off for the lift. Maybe he could catch her before she left.
“Lexi,” he yelled as he tore past Genevieve’s desk.
“What on…” The door slammed behind him, cutting off the rest of his secretary’s stunned question.
“Lexi, wait.” He reached the elevators in time to see the doors closing. “Damn it, Lexi, wait.” Shoving his hand through the microscopic gap, he prayed to God it didn’t get mashed to a bloody pulp. As the doors touched his skin, he let rip with a steady stream of uninhibited cursing.
Much to his relief, the doors slid open again in the nick of time, leaving his hand very much intact. He marched into the lift and found her eyeing him cautiously. She eased the pressure off the door open button and hit G.
He hit door open. Christ, she was beautiful. Even though loathing radiated from her in waves, she took his breath away. He wanted to touch her again. Needed to touch her.
So he attacked instead.
“Spell it out, Lexi,” he demanded as a nasty pounding began above his right eye.
“What kind of game are you playing?”
“I don’t play games, Mr. Riley,” she told him through clenched teeth. “I outgrew that kind of behavior a long time ago.” She hit G.
He held down door open. “Then what exactly are you doing here?” Shit, he better not be getting a migraine.
“You know what I’m doing here. I came to approach Riley Corporation for a donation. Now I’ve changed my mind. No matter how determined I am to set up this program, I will not prostitute myself for your money.”
Pain shot up his neck and into his skull. She hadn’t prostituted herself. She hadn’t had the foggiest idea who he was. He knew it. “Look, can we talk, please? Contrary to what I may have implied, I actually am interested in the project. I’d like to put money toward it.”
She smiled grimly and shook her head. “Thank you. Your money is no longer required. Now if you could remove your hand, I need to get down to the ground floor.”
AJ nodded and pressed G. “Please,” he said as the lift began to descend, “don’t make any rash decisions. Hear me out first.” He had to sit down before his skull exploded and tiny bits of brain splattered the walls of the lift.
“My decision is not rash. After careful thought, I’ve come to the conclusion that a night of shady sex would not be a solid foundation to base a children’s support group.”
“Shady sex?” he roared, then regretted it instantly as pain whipped down his forehead and over his eye. “You think that’s—”
The lift bumped to a stop and the doors opened. A man stepped inside.
“Lift’s full,” AJ barked. “Take the next one.” He banged on the door close button, and the startled passenger jumped out backward as the doors shut again. If Lexi thought she’d get away with describing their night together as shady…
“What is with you?” she snapped. “Throwing testosterone around like some kind of an animal. Are you on a mission to insult everyone you speak to today? Or is this some kind of twisted attempt to trap me in a lift alone with you? Again?”
Okay, so she was as aware of the irony of their surroundings a
s he was. It didn’t help his head any.
“Was once not enough?” she seethed. “Is this how you prove your male domination?
By trapping unsuspecting women in elevators?”
“Just one woman,” he corrected her. “And you knew exactly what was coming.” And damned if it wasn’t going to come again. Yeah, she may be all fired up and pissed off.
She was also turned on. He’d spent enough intimate time with her to recognize the look in her eyes when she became aroused. Besides, her nipples were hard beads poking through her shirt.
She glowered at him with smoky, hooded eyes.
A fine trickle of perspiration ran down his spine. He had a hard-on and a killer headache, and he wasn’t sure which hurt more.
She bit her lower lip.
“Shit, woman,” he gasped and backed her into the wall. Before she had a chance to resist, he kissed her.
There was nothing tender about his kiss. It was brutal, dragging a response from her even as she beat her fists against his arms. He didn’t want to relish the jolt of desire in his stomach, or the now familiar pull in his chest. Her resistance appealed even less. He increased the intensity of the kiss, pushing his tongue past her lips, rediscovering the velvety depth of her mouth.
Although her wild flailing continued, her punches weakened until she no longer hit him at all. Instead, she grabbed at him. First his arms and then his waist, and then his hips.
He didn’t want to respond to her. He didn’t want to feel anything, except maybe her naked body against his. His head throbbed. He should just have stayed the hell away from her.
No, he shouldn’t have.
Her hands found his ass and molded themselves to it as her mouth hungrily responded to his. This was no loving kiss. This was a fierce battle of wills. Neither of them wanted to be there, neither could stay away. Her tongue tortured his mouth with its violent counterattack. Nothing had felt as good in three long days.
He wasn’t close enough. Had to get closer, had to pull her, full length, against him.
She beat him to it. Grabbing his shoulders, she shimmied against the wall and, using them both for leverage, hoisted her hips up to meet his as she wrapped her legs around his waist.
Better. At least now she was massaging herself on his cock. She rocked against him and he thickened and grew beneath her movements. She groaned into his mouth and he responded by nicking her tongue with his teeth.
The layers of clothing between them only heightened his sense of the forbidden. He shouldn’t be doing this. She was trouble. The thought didn’t stop him from kissing her.
She was aroused and he was hard, and she was bucking wildly against him, making soft mewling sounds that echoed in his stomach and his heart.
God help him, she had him so hot, so aroused, that if they carried on this way, he’d lose it right here in the slowly descending lift. Fully clothed.
Even as he thought it, her legs stiffened around him. She cried out, stilled completely, and just like that, she climaxed.
Her body shuddered and shook in his arms, and she panted in his ear, the warm uneven puffs of air tickling his neck. He held her tight as she slowed to erratic shivers, knowing that if she groaned so much as once, he’d come too. He was so close. So bloody close. There was little to no chance of holding out. Hearing her voice her satisfaction would do him in completely.
Focus on the headache. Suffer the pain. It was a vague tickle compared to the throbbing in his cock.
The lift dinged.
Her horrified gasp gave him the control he so desperately needed.
“Close your eyes,” he ordered as common sense returned in a rush. “Relax your neck, drop your head back and for Christ sake, trust me.”
—
By the time the doors slid open to reveal the ground floor of the building, Lexi lay seemingly unconscious in his arms, her face hot and her breathing irregular.
“She just needs some air,” Riley said as he began to walk, his steps fast and purposeful. “Give me some space and I’ll get her outside. She’ll be fine.”
Just as well he carried her, because the orgasm had ripped through her from nowhere. One minute she was frantically rubbing against him, desperate to have him inside her, and the next she was convulsing madly around his waist before collapsing, once again, in a boneless heap in his arms.
If her life had depended on it, she couldn’t have walked out of the lift.
Oh, God. How could she lose it like that? What was the matter with her? He’d called her a whore, for heaven’s sake. He’d treated her like one. How had she responded? She’d gone and behaved like one.
With one kiss, she’d come apart at the seams.
Except it wasn’t just the kiss.
There was something about AJ Riley. No matter what other emotions he evoked in her—extreme rage or warm content—when he was around, a savage, sexual hunger besieged her. A hunger only he could sate.
A rush of air hit her. They were outside. She opened one eye and looked at him, aware her face must be a thousand different shades of purple.
“You okay?” he asked. The timbre of his voice was warm honey and liquid sex, and she simply could not respond.
He walked to a shadowed alcove. “I’m going to put you down now,” he warned and the hot honey dripped over her skin.
She shuddered.
“I’m going to put you down,” he repeated unnecessarily and didn’t move.
He simply held her and she simply let him.
Until she realized she must weigh a ton and shifted in his arms.
Carefully, he removed his arm from beneath her knees, the same arm with which he held her briefcase, and she eased her feet to the ground. He kept his other arm behind her back, so the only way she could maneuver herself into an upright position without knocking them both over was to slide down his body.
Dear Lord, he was still just as hard as he’d been in the lift—and she was just as flustered. She tilted her head and looked up at him, found herself drowning in his blue eyes. “Mr. Riley, I—”
“Adam.”
She was floored. “What?”
“My name,” he said and smiled. “It’s Adam. Not Riley or AJ or Mr. Riley. Just Adam.”
For a full minute, she couldn’t breathe. The smile lit both his face and the shadowed alcove where they stood. It thawed the ice in his eyes and in her heart. She could have stared at it all day because it was just so damn sexy.
“Adam,” she repeated stupidly. He had the kind of smile that stopped cars. If anyone else saw it, Sydney would be caught in the worst traffic jam in history.
He hid his face from the rest of the world and focused his expression solely on her.
Lexi stood transfixed, trapped against the hard length of his body.
“Adam,” she said again.
He took a deep breath. “It would seem, Lexi, that today’s meeting started out on the wrong foot.”
Crap, there he went again, saying her name like it was a lover’s caress or something.
“There’s a little restaurant just across the road.” He motioned behind him. “Will you join me for a coffee? Maybe we can start again. On the right foot this time.”
Because he smiled as he said it, and kept his arm on her back, she walked beside him without argument as he made his way across the road and into the coffee shop.
Chapter Five
Adam watched Lexi pull some sheets from her briefcase and bite on her lower lip.
That little habit of hers would be the death of him. It was totally provocative and elicited a bone-deep response from him. It should be his lip she chewed, not her own.
He wanted her. So bad, he considered tossing the coffee out of the way, hauling her across the table, onto his lap, and possessing her mouth again. That way, at least, he could hold her sweet butt against his cock, which was still rigid and demanding the release he’d ruthlessly suppressed in the elevator.
The pressure did little to relieve the pain of his h
eadache.
His thoughts stretched back to Melbourne. He couldn’t stop them. Their night together had been the most intense experience he’d had in a decade. The sex had been amazing but it wasn’t the only part that had gotten to him. She’d given herself to him completely, held nothing back. As a result, he’d done the same.
Which was a bit of a shocker really, because he never let go. Not with anyone.
When he’d woken to find her spooned against him, still asleep, his gut had churned with emotion he wasn’t ready to acknowledge. Lexi represented everything he no longer believed in. She embodied life and love and hope, and it vibrated through him, straight to that dark place in his heart. That place where hope had died long ago.
He hadn’t been able to deal with it. He hadn’t wanted to. So he’d come home to Sydney and left Matt behind to complete the business deal. Back at the office, Genevieve had dealt the killer blow. She told him about the appointment.
Two major thoughts had dominated: One—he’d wanted to see her again as much as he hadn’t wanted to. And two—she’d known who he was all along. Both thoughts had been hell to deal with. He should have cancelled. Should have referred her on to Matt.
Why hadn’t he?
“You haven’t heard a word.” Lexi raised her voice slightly, forcing his attention back to her. “I’m not sure why you insisted on having coffee if you’re not interested in what I have to say.” Her cheeks were still flushed, although her erratic breathing had evened out.
He massaged his forehead and thought about her orgasm in the lift. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s not you—”
“Headache?” she asked.
He nodded. “Blinding.” Made worse by sexual frustration.
She scratched around in her bag and pulled out a box of painkillers. “Help yourself.”
Gratefully, he accepted the box, drinking two pills down with a gulp of coffee. He wondered if somewhere in her bag she had a cure for a massive erection.
“Better?” she asked.
“It will be. Thanks.” He passed the box back to her.
“Look, Mr. Riley—”
“Adam,” he corrected and repressed a smile. “After what we’ve shared, ‘mister’ sounds a little too formal, don’t you think?”
