Kept by Him(10)

trust back.

But all that calmed down with time. Now those evenings were in the past, and they’d gotten back to

the point where they could be together comfortably for hours. They laughed, talked, sometimes didn’t

have to say anything at all when they sporadically asked each other out to lunch. Daniel was a member

of the board of Davenport’s, and he saw Monica every Thursday morning at the board meeting.

Sometimes he was early, or stayed late … when he couldn’t quite quell the urge to see her.

Some of these times, he could tell she was eager to see him, as her eyes would flare warm as a

summer sky.

Other times, their stares would keep searching the other’s across the boardroom table, and they’d

both smile at each other when they clashed.

He could have her, he’d told himself for years. Yeah. He could have her if he wanted to. Maybe he

just didn’t want to risk losing her friendship. Maybe he would rather settle for a little piece of her than

nothing at all.…

Luke’s voice brought Daniel back to the present.

“I was your friend when all the shit went down between the two of you, Danny,” Luke said. “I read

the papers. And when you were drunk, she was the only thing you’d talk about. I’m just saying if

you’ve always wanted her, why not go for it?”

“Why the hell are you here so early anyway?” he demanded of Luke. “Can’t Mars men sleep?”

“Got to run off the alcohol in my system,” he said, with a shrug. “Before a family lunch with

Peyton’s gang. But dude, last night when that woman came into the room, I had to step back so your

boner wouldn’t strike me. So just go tell this bullcrap to some dimwit who wouldn’t know you from

shit, dude.”

“I have a better idea. Stop minding everyone’s business and mind your own.”

“I’m not Chicago’s darling, baby. You are. Everyone wants to know what Danny Lexington is up

to.”

“Whatever. Go run yourself to a stroke, why don’t you.”

Luke laughed and slapped his friend’s back, and Daniel cranked his neck and stalked outside to

plunge into the Olympic-sized pool. He submerged all the way until touching bottom, then he came up

for air and slicked his hair back. He heard a whistle as his trainer, Rico Manrico, snapped off some

instructions, already thirsting for Daniel’s blood.

“Right,” he murmured, then swam to the side of the pool to start warming up, but his mind was

swarmed with nothing but her, his body still primed, still aching for her, his brain replaying over and

over the way she’d asked, as casually as only Monica Davenport could, “Will you have sex with me,

Daniel?”

Jesus. And not only had she asked for sex, but she’d stripped for him, her figure ripe and

tantalizingly provocative as she came the hell apart for him.

Last night he’d had his fingers in her pussy, and she’d been so seductively wet Daniel leaked into

his pants all the goddamned time he held her on his lap, her buttocks scraping against his sex as she

pushed her hips onto his fingers.

A fierce new erection tented his swim trunks as a fresh wave of heat overtook him. He’d tried to be

controlled, friendly even, while every pore and fiber in his being had screamed with the need to feel

every inch of her naked flesh against his. He’d wanted to taste her sweet mouth, to cup the soft, full

mounds of her buttocks in his hands and squeeze them as he pumped every last drop of need inside

her.

Of course she could not find pleasure in the men she dated.

They were companions to her, not lovers. They’d been shields to keep Daniel away, and it had

worked. Daniel had been watching her with them for years, all the while telling himself that she would

always be the Ice Maiden to them.

They didn’t understand her like Daniel did. She needed to be challenged, but not completely

dominated. She needed to feel both trustful and protected, but not vulnerable. She sought weaker men

to feel safe, but she didn’t realize she needed one that was stronger. She was used to pushing people

away, and if you got too close, too fast, you were done for.

Daniel was nobody’s fuck buddy.

His buddies were men, all of them except Monica.

But last night he’d have done anything to get in bed with her and finish what he’d started so many

years before, in a small twin bed in his parents’ guest bedroom.

He’d agreed to two weeks with her. Two weeks, where the line of physical distance she’d drawn for

him a decade ago would be erased, where she would settle on his lap and pump her hips into his

fingers and ask to take his shirt off, his pants off. God.