Saving the CEO(50)

“Finally, something to credit the ballerina girls with,” he rasped, moving his lips against her neck as he spoke.

She was standing on her tiptoes, angling her hips toward him. He grabbed a thigh, hitching her leg up over his hip, but the height differential between them was still too great. He had to have her. Now. So he hoisted her up. She emitted a little squeal of surprise. Backing her against the wall in the entryway, he was finally able to grind his erection against her, and she moaned at the contact, rocking her hips against his. That little tilt of her hips was enough to push him almost to the edge. Pulling his mouth from her warm skin, he lifted her off the wall, still holding her flush against him.

“What are you doing?” she breathed.

“Taking you upstairs.”

“No.”

He stopped in his tracks. Christ, if she put the brakes on now, there wasn’t a shower in the universe cold enough to set him to rights.

“You promised me the kitchen island.”

“Fuck,” he groaned as lust shot through him, nearly liquefying his legs at the image she’d conjured.

“That’s the idea.” She pressed her palms against his chest and he loosened his hold. His eyes practically rolled back in his head as she shimmied down his body. No sooner had her feet hit the floor than she was gone.

Left alone in the entryway, he almost didn’t know what to do. Well, he knew what to do—he wasn’t a complete idiot—but something made him pause. The idea of Cassie, laying herself out for him in the kitchen. But also the idea of what would happen afterward—a bath, maybe a movie. She might even tell him what the hell to do about Carl. The fire inside him had mellowed, replaced by a strange liquid warmth pooling in his lungs. But it wasn’t suffocating him—it was like he was a fish and he could breathe the warm, golden water.

It was like he was happy.





Chapter Thirteen


What was it about Jack that turned her into such a…slut? Normally, she hated that word, but something about him made her want to do the hottest, most forbidden things she could imagine. With him she felt wanton—slutty in a good way. Liberated.

Lying belly down on the marble island with her legs hanging over the edge, she’d just gotten to the point where a niggle of doubt was starting to worm its way into her bravado. Maybe she did seem like a slut. He’d waited out there just long enough to make her wonder if she’d misread the signs yet again. She’d laid herself bare—literally—and she wasn’t sure she could take another dose of his indifference. But when he finally came into the kitchen, she heard him breathing heavily. Then he went completely silent for a few beats before breath returned, shallow and uneven. The pulse of desire between her legs became an insistent drum beat.

“Tomorrow is Wednesday,” he said.

What? That was the last thing she expected him to say. She started to push herself up.

“Don’t move.” A hand settled on her back, and she stilled. “Tomorrow is Wednesday. I assume you have to work at the bar.”

She nodded, trying to twist her head around to see him. She couldn’t read his tone without seeing his face. He sounded almost angry.

“And we leave early Thursday,” he went on. “And then it’s done.”

She nodded again. He must need reassuring once more that she wasn’t going to try to cling to him beyond the confines of their agreement.

“Between now and then, with the exception of your shift at the bar, you will be here.”

She tried to say something about having to go to her place at some point to pack, but he wasn’t listening. He just talked right over her.

“Right now, I’m going to fuck you senseless. Then, between now and Thursday morning, I’m going to make you come so many times that you’ll be begging me to stop.”

She hadn’t finished a sharp, involuntary inhale of surprise—and desire—before he was on her. The crinkling of a condom wrapper, and then he was pushing his way inside her. There was no foreplay, and she didn’t want any—she was already wetter than she could ever remember being. Just his warm hands anchoring her hips as he entered her. Once he was buried to the hilt, he paused. She loved the feeling of being filled by him and released a shaky sigh. His hands travelled up from her hips, over where her dress was bunched up around her waist, and along her arms until his hands covered her own. He guided them up, over her head, and wrapped her fingers around the lip of the counter on the other side of the island.

“Hold on,” he whispered. And then his hands were back splaying her thighs and he was pounding into her, the only sounds in the room the slap of his balls against her ass, his labored breathing, and the gasping she couldn’t seem to control as heat coiled in her belly. He was pounding into her so hard she was inching forward on the island. She never wanted it to stop, but all too soon, he groaned, and time seemed to stand still for a moment as he froze, buried in her. Then his hips bucked wildly for a moment, and he collapsed on her.