The Player:Moorehouse Legacy(15)

"Which bedroom are you in?" he asked.

"Down the hall. Second door. Left."

He scooped her up and started walking.

As he strode along, his face was familiar and strange at the same time. It was still the same bones, still the same dark hair framing the features, but arousal had transformed him. His eyes were dilated, almost unseeing. His brows were down tight. His skin was flushed and his breath was punching out of his mouth.

Looking at him, she thought about telling him she was a virgin, but the last thing she wanted was to give him an excuse to put a lid on their passion. It was her body. Her choice to have him. Besides, she was familiar enough with sex to know she was so turned on it wasn't going to hurt that badly. Maybe he wouldn't even know.

Gray kicked open the door to her room and carried her over to the queen-size bed. After he laid her down, he shut them in, throwing the lock.

There was no going back, she thought as she watched him come at her. He was going to stay and make love to her. And yes, he was probably going to leave and never look back. And yes, she would be devastated.

But she had him right now.

Looming over her, he tore off his jacket and tossed it onto a chair. Then he wrenched his tie from his neck.

Her body arched up for him as he joined her on the bed.

"Are you sure, Joy?" he asked. "Are you sure you want this?"

She nodded and buried her hands into his thick hair. "Oh, yes. I am very sure."

He closed his eyes for a moment.

And then he kissed her.

The dress melted away under his hands. He seemed to know precisely how to work the zipper and buttons and she tried not to think about how many women he must have undressed to be that fast.

Any such preoccupation flew from her mind as he looked at her body. He was positively reverent and he slowed down, touching her softly, stroking her neck and her collarbone and then moving downward.

He kissed her again, his tongue sliding into her mouth, and she felt his palm on her breast, the sensation jolting her back off the bed. When his lips sought out her nipple, she was utterly gone, incoherent, lost in him.

So she was only dimly aware that one of his hands had moved between her legs.

At least until he touched her heat.

"Gray!"

He lifted his head, his hooded eyes conflicted. "Am I going too fast?"

"I love you," she breathed.

"What?" His eyes peeled open with shock.

She winced. Oh, no. She couldn't possibly have let that out.

But when she looked up at him, she saw she wasn't the only one cringing. God, if he were any more horrified, they could have used his expression as a Halloween mask.

"Nothing. It was nothing," she said in a rush. Then she covered her face with her hands.

Oh, sure, she wasn't about to rush into the whole Virgin Speech. But she was more than willing to kill the moment with the only other thing that could hit a man like cold water.

I love you.

As Gray jumped off the bed, she grabbed the duvet and covered herself up. It seemed only fair considering he was making a beeline for his jacket and tie.

"Listen, I really need to go," he said back to her.

Yeah, I bet you do, she thought.

She wanted to tell him that she hadn't meant it, but nothing she could say now could change the effect of the words. Nothing was going to get them back to where they'd been.

And calling more attention to what had come out of her mouth was not going to help anyway. At this point, it would be like looking at a mushroom cloud on the horizon and saying, "Hey, you don't suppose a bomb just went off? Maybe we need to get moving here."

Besides, he really should leave. There were a couple of things she had to get to urgently. Like throwing up in the bathroom. Bursting into tears. That sort of thing.

He paused at the door. Looked back at her. "You are … "

Go ahead, she thought. Say it.

She was a total fool. She'd embarrassed them both. God, why had she let those words come out of her mouth?

"I'm sorry," she said.

He shook his head. "You're not the one who should be apologizing. I am. I should never have let things go so far."

"Let's just forget this ever happened, okay?"

"Yeah. Let's … do that."

The moment the door closed silently behind him, Joy shot off the bed and went for the shower. Under a blistering-hot spray, she scrubbed the makeup off her face and washed her skin as if in doing so she could go back to the start of the evening.

She paused with the bar of soap on her upper arm.

Or at least back to the part where Gray was on top of her, his eyes wild, his breathing labored, his big body straining to get into hers.

She closed her eyes. He had felt so good.

He'd been a taste of ecstasy.

Why did she have to go and make a mess out of everything? Hell, he probably thought she had stalker tendencies. Or was after his money.

And she'd proven she was about as sophisticated as a root vegetable.

One shot. And she'd blown it completely.

* * *

GRAY STALKED INTO his suite at the Waldorf.

She hadn't meant it. She couldn't possibly have meant it.

But then he thought of her eyes staring up at him before she'd realized what she'd said. They'd been glowing. She'd believed the words when they'd left her mouth.

Sweet girl. Beautiful, sweet Joy.

What a mess.

Although, man, he couldn't remember ever being so turned on. She'd been like warm honey under his mouth and hands, her skin softer than any he'd touched, her scent more delicious than any perfume. She'd made him feel male all the way down to his chromosomes. Hot. Hard. Powerful. Every time her breath had come out in a hiss or her body had surged under him, he'd wanted all of her. He'd wanted to take everything she was offering and then demand more. He'd wanted to consume her, burn her up from the inside and catch fire himself.

So thank God she'd spoken when she had. If she was naive enough to confuse great sex with emotions, she was absolutely the wrong woman for him.

Not that he'd ever doubted it.

But damn it, leaving her had been so hard. He'd hated the look of mortified embarrassment on her face as he'd bolted for the door. He'd wanted to tell her she had nothing to be ashamed of. That she was beautiful and he was running from her because he had to, because it was the right thing to do. Because she deserved to be treated with respect.

Except as he'd stood at the door, he'd been tongue-tied. And quite sure that if he stayed a moment longer, he just might have gone back to her.

At least they were driving up to Saranac Lake together tomorrow. In the daylight, he'd tell her everything he hadn't been able to tonight. He'd make it right between them.

As Gray took off his clothes, he caught a whiff of her perfume on his shirt. The scent hardened him again and brought back the kind of images he knew damn well were going to keep him up all night long.

For the next month. Or two. Or six.

He got into bed, turned off the light and stared into the darkness.

Five hours of tossing and turning later, dawn came and he watched the sun come up, wishing Joy was with him. When room service brought him the breakfast he'd ordered, he wondered idly if she would have shared what was on his plate. Did she take her eggs scrambled? Over easy? He would have enjoyed feeding her bits of croissant, and if she liked strawberry jam, even better. He could have licked the sweetness from her lips.

Maybe she would have licked it from his fingers.

He went to his meeting aching as though his skin had shrunk or his body had swelled. And when he pulled up in front of Cassandra's building, he couldn't help imagining what would have happened if he'd stayed. He and Joy would have made love two or three times during the night. He'd have satisfied her until she was hoarse from calling out his name and then he'd have had the pleasure of watching her sleep in his arms.

It was hard not to feel as if he'd cheated them both.

But it was better to have walked away when he did. Hell, his retreat was arguably moral, a righteous act of self-control he could use to balance the scales against all the crap he pulled for a living.

"Mr. Bennett?" The doorman's voice was muffled as Rodney peered through the car window. "Are you waiting for someone?"

Yeah, wrong verb there, buddy. Try desperate.

Gray got out. "I'm picking up Mrs. Cutler's guest. I'll be right back."

The doorman tipped his hat as Gray strode into the lobby. Cassandra was just coming out of the elevators.

She looked a little confused as she saw him. "Did she forget something?"

"Sorry?"

"Joy. Did she leave something behind?"

He frowned. "I'm here to pick her up."

"She's already left. She took a train back early this morning. Didn't she tell you?"

Gray felt a strange kind of panic. "No, she didn't."

Cass's eyes narrowed. "That's odd."

He dragged a hand through his hair and cursed, thinking if he drove like a bat out of hell, he could be at White Caps in four hours.

"Did she, uh, did she look okay?"

"Maybe a little tired. She said she couldn't wait to get home, but other than that, she was perfectly happy."

Perfectly happy.

And then it hit him. She was on her way back to Tom.

Tom. Her boyfriend.

"Gray, are you all right?"

He smiled, thinking his cheeks were going to split open. "I'm great."

"Sure you are. You look miserable. What's wrong?"

"Talk to you later, Cass."

Gray went back to his car. By the time he was on the New York Thruway heading north, he decided it was best not to make White Caps his first stop when he got to the Adirondacks.