Marriage With Benefits(46)

It was…nice. He understood her, what she wanted. Her dreams. Her fears. And they were partners. Who had amazing sex.

When he pulled back, the smile on his face took her breath.

“More than okay,” he said. “Are you angling to join the firm?”

“Well, my name is Wheeler,” she said in jest, but it didn’t seem as funny out loud. That was a whole different kind of partnership. Permanent. Real. Not part of the plan.

“Yes. It is.” He lifted her chin to pierce her with a charged look. The ballroom’s lighting refracted inside his eyes, brightening them. He leaned in, and the world shrank down to encompass only the two of them as he laid his lips on hers in a tender kiss. A kiss with none of the heat and none of the carnal passion sizzling between them like the first time.

It was a lover’s kiss. Her limp hands hung at her sides as her heart squeezed.

Oh, no. No, no, no.

“We have to find that coat closet. Now,” she hissed against his mouth. Sex. That’s all there was between them, all she’d allow. No tenderness, no affection, no stupid, girlie heart quivers.

His eyebrows flew up. “Now? We just got he— Why am I arguing about this?”

Linking hands, he pulled her along at a brisk trot, and she almost laughed at the intensity of his search for a private room. Around a corner of the hotel’s long hallway, they found an empty storage room.

Lucas held the door and shooed her in, slammed it shut and backed her against the wood, his ravenous mouth on hers.

The world righted itself as the hard press of his body heated hers through the deep blue dress. This, she accepted. Two people slaking a mutual wild thirst and nothing more.

“Condom,” she whispered.

He had about four seconds to produce it. An accidental pregnancy would tie her to this man for life, and, besides, she didn’t want children. Well, she didn’t want to cause herself heartache, which was practically the same thing.

“Right here. I was warned I’d need it.”

Fabric bunched around her waist an instant later, and her panties hit the ground. He lifted her effortlessly, squashing her against the door and spreading her legs, wrapping them around him.

The second he entered her—buried so deep, every pulse of his hard length nudging her womb—she threw her head back and rode the wave to a mind-draining climax.

Yes. Brainless and blistering. Perfect.

When she came down and met the glowing eyes of her husband, a charged, momentous crackle passed between them.

She’d keep right on pretending she hadn’t noticed.



Warm sunlight poured through the window of Lucas’s office. He swiveled his chair away from it and forced his attention back to the sales contract on his laptop screen. Property—dirt, buildings, concrete or any combination—lived in his DNA and he’d dedicated his entire adulthood to it. It shouldn’t be so difficult to concentrate on his lifeblood.

It was.

His imagination seemed bent on inventing ways to get out of the office and go home. In the past few weeks, he’d met a sprinkler repairman, an attic radiant barrier consultant and a decorator. A decorator. Flimsy, he had to admit.

A couple of times after showings, he’d swung by the house, which was mostly on the way back to the office. Through absolutely no fault of his own, Cia had been home all those times, as well, and it would have been a crime against nature not to take advantage of the totally coincidental timing.

Ironic how a marriage created to rescue his business was the very thing stealing his attention from business.

Moore had signed. Walsh had signed. Both men were enthusiastic about the purchases they’d committed to, and Lucas intended to ensure they stayed that way. Cia’s interactions with them had been the clincher; he was convinced.

His dad had gone out of his way to tell Lucas how good this marriage was for him, how happy he seemed. And why wouldn’t he be? Cia was amazing, and he got to wake up with her long hair tangled in his fingers every morning.

The past few weeks had been the best of his life. The next few could be even better as long as he kept ignoring how Cia had bled into his everyday existence. Every time they made love, the hooks dug in a little deeper. Her shadows rarely appeared now, and he enjoyed keeping them away for her. He liked that she needed him.

If he ignored it all, it wasn’t really happening.

Matthew knocked on the open door, his frame taut and face blank. “Dad called. Grandpa’s in the hospital,” he said. “Heart attack. It’s not good. Dad wants us to come and sit with Mama.”

Heart attack? Not Grandpa. That heavy weight settled back into place on his chest, a weight that hadn’t been there since the night he met Cia.