He lifted his hips slightly, and Cailin slid down, taking more of him, trying to relax as the knob fitted itself to the opening of her throat and pushed lightly inside. Back. Forward. Then back again. Together they set up a rhythm that drove them both wild. And when Cailin reached with tentative fingers to surround the tight sac hanging below his shaft, rubbing lightly at the furred skin, Alex’s muscles seized against her, and spurts of bitter cum sprayed into her throat.
“Oh shit! Cailin!”
The sight of Alex, bowed up before her, straining through his completion, seared her heart. Tears gathered, but not from the aching in her throat. From the aching in her chest. When Alex reached for her, dragging her roughly against him, she blinked the moisture away quickly.
His tongue speared inside her salty mouth at the exact moment his semihard shaft forced its way between her legs. At the touch of wet skin to wet skin, he flinched. “Just a minute,” he whispered roughly and broke away, only to reappear with condom in hand. He was sheathed and inside her seconds later. Cailin lost count of the minutes as he took her, made love to her, brought her to a screaming orgasm she’d never even allowed herself to imagine existed. By the time she drifted off to sleep in his arms, she knew for certain: Alex was someone she could fall in love with. He was hers.
Chapter Three
The phone on the bedside table rang, startling Cailin out of a deep sleep. It took a moment for her drugged brain to come online, but she finally fumbled for the handset. “Hello?”
“Miss, this is your four o’clock wake-up call, per your request. Late checkout is in half an hour.”
Late checkout? Turning her head, she listened with half an ear to the dial tone while she surveyed the hotel room. Pillows lay scattered with wild abandon across the thick beige carpet, bringing quickly to mind all the things she and Alex had done with those pillows through the night and early morning hours. Her aching pelvis echoed the sentiment, but the man responsible was nowhere to be found.
“Alex?”
Easing up, she replaced the receiver and moved carefully toward the bathroom, but the door stood open, lights off. Empty. She flicked the lights on and pulled open the shower door, as if he’d be standing in there in the dark with the water off.
No Alex.
It took about three more minutes to search the room with ridiculous thoroughness and realize Alex was no longer there. He’d left, and not a molecule of his presence remained. Not a business card, a note, not even a stray piece of lint from a sock. He was just…gone.
Gone. What else had she expected?
Not wanting to answer that question, even to herself, she scrambled to dress and make herself halfway presentable for the walk of shame out of the hotel. She called a cab and, ten minutes later, hurried through the lobby with her head firmly down to meet it, promising herself the whole time she would not cry.
She kept that promise until she stepped into the shower at home.
The heat of the water mingled with her tears until Cailin’s face was so swollen she couldn’t breathe. She scrubbed every inch of her sore body, taking inventory of each bruise, strawberry, burn mark from the stubble along Alex’s jaw. Yeah, that appeared in some embarrassing places, places she was forced to pat dry carefully after using all the hot water and stepping, shivering, into the cool air-conditioning to run a towel over her body. Avoiding the mirror was difficult but necessary. She’d seen enough of the evidence, and if she didn’t have to look herself in the eye for about ten years or so until she got over her stupidity, she’d be perfectly happy with that.
What an idiot she’d been. And was.
Numb, acting on autopilot, she made herself dinner and sat in front of the TV, her plate untouched before her. The screen could have been channeling messages from God—primarily about her coming judgment, more than likely—and Cailin wouldn’t have flinched. She’d switched off at some point. And would probably be thankful for that if she could feel anything at all. But she couldn’t.
Tomorrow was her first day at her new position with Keane Industries. Knowing that made it easy to abandon food and TV and thinking and climb under the covers instead, carefully setting her alarm clock, then burying her head in the blankets and allowing the world to drift away. Her last thought was to wonder where Alex was sleeping—and with whom.
* * * *
The Atlanta headquarters for Keane Industries were located on the eighth floor of a multistory building situated in the thriving financial center of downtown Atlanta. Cailin held her breath as she walked off the elevator to a complete wall of glass panels displaying a breathtaking—and for someone with a severe phobia of heights, bloodcurdling—vista of the surrounding city. She turned as quickly as possible and made her way toward the receptionist’s desk across the entryway.