I love her.
The phrase beat like a refrain in his veins, his heart.
He’d always loved her, almost like a sister, as a great friend. But he was not her brother, and they were no longer friends. He’d buried the deeper, more tumultuous emotions she stirred inside of him by staying away, giving her the distance she’d asked for. All it had taken was a sexual touch to shake him to his bones, to confirm to him that his intent all these years, of seeking so many women so he could resist one, had utterly failed.
Nobody was her.
When he’d seen her in those cashmere blankets, her body exposed for dozens of eyes to see, he’d been shaken by pure possessiveness and the need to cover her, shield her, protect her from one and all. She belonged to him. She always had.
She’d run from love, had run from him, when she’d been nineteen and he twenty-three, when for every night for almost two months, they’d been as close as Siamese twins. He didn’t want to push her away this time, make her feel the threat of the one emotion she had been fighting her whole life not to feel. But he knew her weakness.
Because he was it.
Monica’s aloofness had never worked on him. It never would. He’d been inside her, deep where it hurt, long before she’d put up those walls of ice she built, and she’d locked him up with her.
Yeah, he’d known how afraid she was. And he’d stood back, a part of him as scared shitless as she was. He’d done nothing when she dated the first middle-aged guy he knew, or the second. They didn’t pose a threat, and she’d used the pretext of the press being on top of their relationship to keep Daniel away. He hadn’t pressured. He had, in fact, rebelled against the way she made him feel. He’d branded his tattoo right above his heart, a challenge to any who so much as tried to trap him. But he’d watched her from afar, telling himself she was a friend, she hadn’t wanted him to kiss her, and he did not want her.
Like hell.
He wanted her more than air, more than water. In many ways, they were alike, understanding each other in an intrinsic way that needed few words to be spoken, but in the most fundamental way, they were polar opposites. She had a part of her that needed to be fitted by a part of him … and their bodies were throbbing to make it happen.
Even during the board meeting, the memory of their previous tangle in the throws lingered in her eyes, in the way she crossed her arms and rubbed herself.
They were so wound up today, he fucking knew he should’ve stayed last night, and held her like before, when the poke of her nipples through her nightgown against his chest had been the thrill of his young existence. Sometimes he’d take a cool shower before he knocked on her door, so he could listen to her and not feel electrified every time her breath hit his neck. Even then, it had been haunting, overpowering, the need to comfort her, hold her.… He’d been thinking of fucking kissing her for days, weeks, years. He’d never imagined she wouldn’t want him.
After that, he’d spoiled his poor rejected cock but he definitely, definitely, never again thought with it. He had always been a man of precise intellect, perhaps even ruthless intellect.
But never with her.
He slammed a fist into the elevator wall and groaned. The temptation to go up there and apologize gnawed at his gut, but he couldn’t. He was too proud, too angry. He’d never been second place to anyone, much less to a man like Roland. He’d never been used for sex. He’d been the one who used and discarded, who commanded and was obeyed.
Cursing under his breath, knowing he couldn’t talk to her until he calmed the fuck down and it was going to take a fucking long while, he went outside and listened to the pounding rain, and he pulled out his cell phone and snapped at his driver to bring the car around. In the meantime, he stepped out and let the cool rain smack him in an attempt to get rid of his infernal boner, which had tormented him ever since he’d seen her with that cashmere wrapped around her slender body.
* * *
As the seconds ticked by, Monica’s incredulity over Daniel’s ultimatum morphed into anger, until suddenly, she couldn’t contain her rage. She charged across the office hall, then out of the department store, then outside, overcome with a thousand different emotions. Her body ached, ached in a way that disquieted her so much, her spirit was raging to lash at him.
He was outside, standing in the rain while his chauffer pulled the Rolls-Royce up in front of the building.
“You!” she cried, and he turned with a scowl as she stepped into the rain with him, immediately getting drenched. “How dare you talk to me like I’m one of your strumpets!”
He stepped in closer to her, his expression thunderous. “How dare you treat me like I’m one of your senile lapdogs? Play your role with whoever you want, but I’ll be damned if I let you play the Ice Maiden with me!”
“I’m not some bimbo who will wait around to pleasure you all day and succumb to your tiniest wishes, and to whom you can issue asinine ultimatums!”
He grabbed her arm as he jerked the car door open with his other hand and then shoved her into the back, slid in behind her, and closed the door behind him. Monica ended up sprawled across the whole seat, with him above her.
“To my place,” he snapped as the driver boarded, then he slid the partition window closed so the driver wouldn’t hear or see them.
“No! What are you doing? I need to go back!”
Fuming, Monica struggled to sit up, the effort futile against his strength. “Get off of me, Daniel! Don’t touch me. Don’t touch me. You said so yourself, it’s over. I’m not going to be ordered around by you!”
He pinned her down the length of the seat, his eyes dark and tumultuous, his unmistakable erection rock-hard solid against her hipbone. “So you want Roland,” he said through gritted teeth, his hands clenching her wrists, “who’ll stand by your side and hold your hand and fetch your drink.”
“Let go of me!”
She struggled against his grip, but suddenly he looked terribly big, and terribly jealous, his eyes flashing bright green. Unexpectedly, her struggles melted into a shudder of need. He dropped his voice then, and he spoke to her in a seductive murmur. “If I let you go, then who’s going to do this?”
Her clothes were plastered to her, and his hands released her to reach for the opening of her shirt, slowly flicking the buttons open. The feel of his fingertips as they unbuttoned her shirt electrified her. He’d removed his jacket she didn’t know when, but she could see the outline of his nipples through his soaked black button-down shirt. They poked, two hard points, into the material.