Kitabı oku: «One Night Of Consequences Collection», sayfa 10

“But the frosting is the best part.”

“You didn’t try the cake yet.”

He shrugged and raised his hand to his lips cleaning off the frosting she’d left behind, then he moved his finger near her mouth. “Taste?” he asked.

In that moment, it felt like her vision tunneled, reduced to nothing but Zack. The game, the sounds of the whistle, the crowd, the announcers, faded, blood roaring in her ears.

It was innocent. Or it should have been. She tried to tell herself that for about ten seconds. Because there was no female friend on earth, no matter how close, who would have offered what Zack was at the moment.

So it wasn’t innocent. She looked up, her eyes clashing with his.

They were dark, intense. Aroused. The air between them seemed to thicken, the only sound her breath. Too loud. Too obvious.

It wasn’t innocent at all.

She’d promised herself it wouldn’t happen again. That their last night together had been exactly that: their last night together.

It won’t happen again. I just need a taste.

She leaned in and slid her tongue along the line of his finger and her entire body tightened when a rough groan escaped his lips. The salt of his skin gave bite to the super-sweet frosting. If her cupcakes were a bust maybe she could just spread it all over Zack.

No.

She pulled back sharply, shaking her head. “Sorry. Just … sorry, I …”

He wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her, deep and long, his tongue still coated in icing. When he released her, she felt dazed in the very best way.

She licked her lips. “You taste like a pineapple,” she said, her breath erratic, her heart pounding.

“Is that a good thing?” His voice sounded strained, like each word was an effort.

“I might have to … test it out again.”

He smiled and her stomach curled in on itself. “I’m more than willing to aid you in the testing.”

He dipped his head and she closed the distance between them, sliding her tongue over his bottom lip, reveling in the rough groan that rumbled in his chest.

He dipped his fingers back in the bowl and tugged at the hem of her shirt, drawing it over her head. “I feel at a disadvantage,” he said, sliding his fingers over her stomach. “Because you got a chance to taste me this way, and I haven’t gotten to do the same.”

He bent down and slid his tongue over her stomach. She shivered, gripping his shoulders, knowing they were going too far, not sure if she wanted to stop.

He stood and reached behind her, unhooking her bra with one hand. “You’re better at that than I am,” she said, her voice shaking.

“Good. That’s kind of the idea. I’d hate to think you’d be better off doing this for yourself.” He cupped her breast and slid his thumb off her nipple, leaving a faint dusting of icing covering her there. He bent his head and circled the tightened bud with his tongue before drawing it into his mouth.

She forked her fingers through his hair, holding his head to her as he continued to lavish attention on her breast.

“Oh, no … I could not do this by myself,” she breathed.

He lifted his head and captured her lips, sweetness clinging to his tongue, his grip tight on her hips as he tugged her body against his. “You’re beautiful,” he said, abandoning her mouth to skim kisses down her neck, across her collarbone.

“You make me believe it.”

He raised his head, his expression serious. “You should never doubt it, not for a moment. You make me lose control.”

The words hung between them, an admission that held power. Because she knew Zack, and she knew what he prized. His control. Above everything. She knew why now, too. She even understood it. And he was saying that her beauty, her body, took it from him.

“Me?” she asked.

“You,” he repeated, his voice hard. “Everything about you.” He moved his palm over her breast and she shuddered. “Now that I’m allowing myself to look … I can’t stop myself. I can’t stop at just looking, I have to touch you, then I have to taste you. And it’s still not enough.”

Zack’s heart raged out of control. It was more than just arousal. His chest burned, the need going so much deeper than sex. It was pleasure and pain, heaven and hell. But he couldn’t turn away from any of it. He didn’t want to.

This wasn’t what was supposed to happen tonight. He’d missed Clara, Clara his friend. The companionship she provided, the safety. She was the one person he ever let his guard down with. The one person he laughed with. Relaxed with.

It wasn’t supposed to turn into this. But his desire for her was like a storm, devastating everything in its path. Devastating his control.

And he’d admitted it to her. Because what else could he do? She’d brought him to his knees.

“It’s a nice apartment,” he said, trying to lighten the moment, to bring himself back to earth. “I bet the bedrooms are really nice.”

She snorted a laugh and buried her face in his neck. “You’ve been in my bedroom.”

He sifted her hair through his fingers. “I’ve never slept in your bed.”

“Do you want to?” She posed the question as though she was asking if he wanted something purely innocent.

“After we get some other business taken care of.”

“I’m in complete agreement with that.”

He swung her up into his arms and she squeaked, looping her arms around his neck and laughing as he dashed to her bedroom.

Zack set Clara down when they got inside her room. A room he’d been in more times than he could count. But never like this. She kissed him, her mouth hungry, pulled his shirt off him in one swift motion. Trading piece of clothing for piece of clothing until they were both naked, limbs entwined, her full breasts pressed against his chest.

It was almost enough for a while, to simply lay on the bed with her, moving his hands over her bare curves, kissing her. Doing nothing more than kissing.

It was almost enough, but not quite.

He swore sharply. “I don’t have anything. I didn’t plan this.”

“It’s okay,” she said, wrapping her hand around his length, squeezing him. He groaned, her soft flesh against his almost making up for the fact that he couldn’t be inside her. Almost.

He put his hand between her thighs and drew his fingers over her clitoris, then repeated the motion.

She gasped and arched against him, tightening her hold on his arms, fingernails digging into his skin. “Oh, Zack,” she breathed, his name on her lips like balm to his soul.

Everything after that was lost in a frenzy of movement, sighs and graphic words that he’d never heard come from Clara’s mouth before. But it was only more exciting, because it was her. Because he knew that he was able to do that to her, to make her say things, feel things no other man ever had.

They reached the peak together, his body shaking down to his bones as he found his release.

He held her soft body against his afterward, a sort of strange contentedness spreading through him that he’d never felt before.

“You’re beautiful, you know?” he asked, pushing her hair to one side and kissing her neck.

She turned to look at him, rolling to her side, making the curve of her hip rounder, her waist smaller. And her breasts …

“You keep saying that.”

“So that you can’t doubt it.”

“I’m starting to believe you, actually,” she said, a smile curving her lips. She reached out and put her finger on his biceps, tracing a long line up to his shoulder. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

“I’m flattered.” He leaned forward and kissed her nose, the contentedness morphing into something else. Something that felt light and … happy.

He wrapped his arms more tightly around her and rolled onto his back. She planted her palms on his chest, her body half on his.

“Hi,” she said, smiling.

“I just want you to know that you’re not second to anyone,” he said, cupping her cheek. “There’s no other woman on earth I would rather be with.”

Her brown eyes glistened. “You really are good for my ego.”

“I’m glad. Someone has to be.”

He wanted to say something. Something bigger than he should, than he could. He just wanted more. In that moment, with her body, so soft and bare and perfect, pressed against his, with her smiling at him like he could solve all of the world’s problems, he wanted to offer her the world. He wanted more than temporary, more than distant for the first time in his memory.

She rested her head on his chest, her fingertips moving lightly over his skin until her breathing deepened and her eyes fluttered closed.

It wasn’t until she was asleep that panic slammed into him. The full enormity of what had happened. He’d lost control. More than that, he’d been letting go of it, inch by inch, with Clara for the past seven years.

With everyone else he was guarded. He never dropped his defenses. He never talked about his past.

He’d cried in front of her. He had allowed real, raw weakness and emotion to escape in her presence when he never even let himself give in like that in private. She was under his skin. So much so she felt like she was a part of him.

A necessary part.

What if he lost her? No, it wasn’t even a matter of if, it was when.

The terror that thought evoked, the absolute, gut-wrenching horror was a sobering as a punch to the jaw. He was playing a game he had no business playing, flirting with things he shouldn’t be. Tempting feelings he couldn’t risk having.

He slid out of her hold and she stirred briefly, stretching, arching her back. His mouth dried. He shook his head and bent to collect his clothes, dressing and walking out of her bedroom, closing the door quietly behind him, ignoring the continual stab of pain in his chest.

He paused in her living room for a moment, the weight of the familiarity of his surroundings crushing him, a feeling of claustrophobia overtaking him.

He had to leave. He had to think. He had to find his control.

He walked out her front door, closing it behind him and making sure everything was locked so that she would be safe. He walked out into the cold night, sucking in a deep breath and blaming the cold for the pain that came with it.

“Where were you this morning? When did you leave?” Clara whispered the words when she went into Zack’s office in the early afternoon. He’d been out of the office all morning, and he had been very noticeably not at her apartment before that.

“I had some things to do,” he said, his voice flat. “Could you bring me a coffee?” His phone rang and he picked it up. She stomped out of the room and picked up the freshly brewed pot that was sitting in the main area of the office. She poured a half a cup and dumped powdered creamer in, no sugar, and stirred it halfheartedly with one of the little wooden sticks that was on the coffee station.

There were still little lumps of powder floating on the top.

She went back into his office and plunked it onto his desk, letting some of it slosh over the side. He didn’t flick her or the coffee a glance as he continued his phone call. He picked it up and took a sip then grimaced and set it back down, shooting her an evil look. She responded with a wide, saccharine smile.

“I’ll call you back,” he said into the phone, hanging up. “Do you have something on your mind?”

“Yes. Where were you this morning, and do not give me another half-assed answer.”

“Clara, there’s a way I conduct physical relationships. I don’t always stay for the whole night.”

She felt like he’d slapped her. Like she was just the same as every other physical relationship he had. But she wasn’t. She knew she wasn’t.

Anger made her scalp feel prickly. “Don’t give me that. Don’t even try. I made you shake last night. Made you lose control.” Boldness came from anger, and she could’t regret it.

His eyes glittered and he looked like he might pounce on her. But he didn’t. “I just went home, so that I could get a good night’s sleep. I have to go over some legalese in the contract I’m having drawn up for the deal with Amudee. That’s all.”

That wasn’t all. She knew it wasn’t all. But she didn’t know what the rest of it was, either, so that didn’t help.

“And that looks like it’s going to go through?” she asked, looking down at the ring again, the ring she was starting to hate, willing to let the subject drop, for now.

“Looks like, but nothing is finalized. So we’re still in this until the ink is dry.”

She nodded. “I know.”

It was all about the contract to Zack. Last night … she could have sworn that last night something had changed. There had been more in their lovemaking. There had been fun. Their friendship had been in it.

It had been special.

Well, today things felt different. It just wasn’t the sort of different she’d been hoping for.

“I’ll be down in the kitchen,” she said, eager to get away.

It was going to take a whole lot of cupcakes to make this day feel okay.

The next few days Zack really did manage to be busy and stay busy. He didn’t stop by her apartment late at night, or any time of day. Her head hurt and her bed felt empty. Which was silly, since her bed had been empty of anyone other than her for twenty-five years.

It was just the past couple weeks she’d had Zack sometimes. And she found she really liked it, and it wasn’t just because of the orgasms. It was just listening to him breathe. Feeling his body heat so close to hers. Just being with him, finally, finally able to express how much she wanted him. To not have to hold such a huge part of herself back from him anymore.

She loved the way he made her feel about herself. That he wanted her in a sexy red dress, or yoga pants, or nothing. That he made her feel beautiful. That he made her see things in herself she hadn’t seen before.

And if she told him that he’d undoubtedly run away screaming.

Tonight, the contracts remained unsigned and that meant they still had plans to go to the big charity event. Something to do with a children’s hospital. She wondered if that was by design. If it would bother him. Make him think of his son.

Her heart hurt every time she thought of Zack’s past. Of what that false front of his was created to hide. To hide what he’d been through, who he really was. He had perfected a persona, controlled, light, charming, and even she had bought into it. Not even she had seen everything.

But she was starting to.

Tonight was going to feel more like a real date. A public event with just the two of them, not with Mr. Amudee sitting by, watching their performance as a couple. She was dressing up in a dress she’d selected this time. Something between her usual fare and that screaming, sex-on-a-hanger number Zack had picked out for her.

It was a full-length gown with a mermaid-style skirt that conformed to her body before flaring out around her knees. It swished when she walked, and a halter-top neckline showed her cleavage. And she felt sexy in it. She felt like a woman who was ready to conquer the world. One who could outshine other women, at least for the man she was with. And that was what mattered, anyway.

She heard a knock on her door and she tried to shove her feet into stilettos, while standing, and fastening dangly diamond earrings. “Coming!”

She opened the door and all the air rushed out of her body. Zack was a wearing a suit, black jacket, crisp white shirt and a perfectly straight black tie. He was the epitome of gorgeous. He always was, half dressed, all dressed or completely naked. But there was something about a man in a suit.

It sort of reminded her of his wedding. The wedding that wasn’t.

“You look … you look great,” she said.

“So do you. I brought you something,” he said.

There was something strange about his tone, something formal and distant. It matched his clothing. Cool, well-tailored, nothing out of place. And yet, that in and of itself felt out of place. Zack wasn’t formal with her. Why should he be? They’d known each other for years. They had slept together for heaven’s sake.

She held her hand out and smiled, trying to make him smile. It didn’t work.

He took a flat, black box from his jacket and opened it.

“Oh, my … Zack this is … it must have cost.” None of her words would gel into a complete sentence, everything jumbling and stalling half thought through.

It was a necklace, a truly spectacular necklace, not the sort you saw under the display case of just any department store. Not even the sort of thing you saw at Saks. It was too unique, too extravagant.

She reached out and touched the center stone, a deep green emerald, cut into the shape of a teardrop and surrounded by glittering diamonds.

“I don’t think I can accept this.”

“Of course you can,” he said, his voice still tinged with that unfamiliar distance. “Turn around.”

She did, slowly, craning her neck to look at him. He swept her hair to the side and took the necklace from the box, draping it over her, the stone falling between her breasts, the chill making her shiver. He clasped the necklace, his fingers brushing the back of her neck as we worked the tiny clasp.

“This isn’t … this isn’t a friendships gift,” she said, her voice trembling.

That did earn her a short chuckle. “Maybe tonight friendship isn’t what I want.”

His words made her shiver, the sensual promise in them turning her on. The underlying, darker meaning she couldn’t quite grasp making goose bumps break out on her arms. “It really is too much,” she said, turning to face him, her nose nearly touching his.

He straightened putting some distance between them. “It’s a perfectly fitting gift for a lover. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she said, turning his choice of word over in her head. Yes, she was his lover, in the sense that they’d slept together. But there was something in the way he said it, something that seemed cold, when a lover should be something warm. Something personal.

She touched the necklace, the gems cold beneath her fingertips.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE charity ball was crowded already when they arrived, a sea of beautiful people dressed in black positioned around the ballroom, chatting and eating the very expensive canapes.

Heads turned when she and Zack walked down the marble staircase and down into the room. Everyone was looking at Zack, because it was impossible not to. She was fully appreciating just how he was viewed in the community now. A man of power and wealth, a man of unsurpassed beauty. If you could call what he possessed beauty. It was too masculine for that, and yet she wasn’t sure there was another word for it, either.

Pride flared in her stomach, low and warm. All the women in the room were looking at Zack with undisguised sexual hunger. And Zack was with her. Touching her, his hand low on her back, possessive.

She turned and pressed a kiss to his cheek. He looked at her. “What was that for?”

“Because,” she said.

He looked at her for a moment, a strange light in his eyes. “Let’s go find our table.”

“Okay,” she said, trying to ignore the tightening in her throat.

There was a table, for two, with place cards set on each empty plate. Zack held her chair out for her and she sat, her heart slamming against her ribs as she read the name that had been written in calligraphy on her place card.

Hannah Parsons.

With Zack’s name tacked on to hers, even. Clara felt dizzy. She looked down at the ring. Hannah’s ring. Hannah’s seat. Hannah’s man. She had to wonder if the necklace had been meant for Hannah, too.

She wrapped her fingers around the card and curled them into a fist, crumpling it and tossing it onto the marble floor.

“What the hell?” Zack asked.

“It had the wrong name on it,” she said stiffly.

“Does it matter?”

That hit even harder than seeing the name. “I suppose not.” She put her foot over the crumpled paper and squished it beneath the platform of her stiletto.

“You’re the one who’s here with me.” He stretched his hand toward hers, covering it, stroking her wrist. “No one else.”

She knew it. And in some ways she knew his words were sincere. But there was also something generic in them. There was something strangely generic to the whole evening and she couldn’t quite place what it was or why.

“Of course.” She looked into his eyes, tried to find something familiar now. Something of her friend. But she didn’t see it. She only saw the man as he presented himself to the world. Aloof, put together, charming. But there was no depth there. No feeling or warmth.

It was frightening.

Dinner was lovely, tiny bits of sculpted beauty made to be admired before being eaten. Of course it was marked up extravagantly, because the whole point of the evening was that the charity received donations.

A woman in a long, flowing dress walked up onto the stage, her air of authority making it obvious that she was the coordinator of the event, and a hushed silence fell over the crowd.

“Thank you all for coming tonight,” she said. “And for the very generous donation of your time and money to the Bay Area Children’s Hospital.”

She turned and looked toward their table, a smile on her face. “And tonight, we would also like to give special acknowledgment to Mr. Zack Parsons, who has donated enough money to revamp the entire Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit. Everything in the unit will be state of the art. It will be the best equipped facility in the state of California. There have been major advances in the field of Neo-Natal medicine over the past few years. We’re able to offer hope to babies, to families, who wouldn’t have had any as little as five years ago. And now, we’re able to offer even more. So, thank you, Mr. Parsons.”

The room erupted into applause and everyone stood. Except for Zack. Except for her. Her eyes stung, her entire body feeling numb.

Zack lifted his hand and nodded once, his acknowledgment. Her heart broke for him. What a wonderful gift he was giving to so many families. A gift he hadn’t been able to give to himself, to his own son.

She wanted to howl at the universe for the unfairness of it all. And yet there was no point. And Zack was there, broken, and probably in pain. She could be there for him. It was all she could do. And she would. Because she was his friend. His lover.

The speaker went on to talk about some more donations and then invited everyone to stay for dancing and an open bar.

After the applause died away, people started to wander around the room, talking and laughing, some people came to talk to Zack. She wanted to tell them to go away. Because she could feel the dark energy, the grief, radiating from him like a physical force. How was everyone else missing it?

She didn’t understand how they could miss what was so clear to her.

“Let’s go.” She put her hand on his, felt his pulse, pounding hard in his wrist. She ran her fingers along his forearm. She didn’t think he would accept loving words, but she could offer him comfort in another way. A way he could accept.

There was no question where things would end up tonight. No fighting it. They both knew it.

He nodded once and stood, she stood, too, and went to him, putting her hand on his back. He wrapped his arm around her waist as they headed out of the ballroom.

Zack’s chest felt too full. Everything felt like too much. The whole day. He shouldn’t have brought Clara with him tonight. It was one thing to sit in a room full of strangers and have them talk about his contribution to the NICU, but it was another to have someone sitting there, knowing why he’d done it. Someone else thinking of Jake. It was hard enough to be alone in it. Sharing it made it seem more real. It made him feel exposed.

It made him feel like everything, his failures, his pain, was written on him. Something he couldn’t hide, or scrub off no matter how many layers of control he tried to conceal it with.

Clara saw him.

When he’d picked her up tonight, he’d fully intended on keeping her at a distance, putting her in her place. A new place. Because he had mistresses, women who were with him for the sole purpose of warming his bed and accompanying him to events.

He wasn’t friends with those women. He didn’t eat their baked goods, he didn’t know that they wore yoga pants to bed when there wasn’t a man around. He didn’t know that they were insecure about their bodies, or that their favorite band was still that group of long-haired teenage boys that had been so popular in the nineties.

He didn’t know anything about them beyond what they looked like naked.

He knew the other stuff about Clara. And he knew the naked stuff. And tonight he’d been determined to focus only on the latter. If he couldn’t keep her as only a friend, and he’d proven he wasn’t doing a very good job of that, then he would have her as a mistress. Because what had happened at her apartment, the way they’d shared dinner, jokes, then made love, him holding her while she’d slept … he couldn’t do that. It was too reckless. To out of his control.

He had to move her into the compartment he could deal with. And she seemed determined to push her way back out.

The expression on her face when she saw the wrong card in her spot had been so sad, stricken, as though someone had slapped her.

And he’d felt it in him. As though her emotion was his. He’d always felt connected to Clara, but this was different. Sharper. Impossible to deny. Beyond his control.

He should have taken her home. Yet he’d still taken her back to his house. Because he had planned on having her tonight, had been obsessed with it all week. If only to prove that he could sleep with her without having his insides flayed. Sex was only sex. It didn’t have to be personal, it didn’t have to mean anything. It didn’t have to be related to the awful, tight feeling in his chest.

She was beautiful tonight, incredible in that form-fitting black dress and the gem, enticing in the valley of her cleavage, drawing his eye, tormenting him.

She was standing by the massive living-room windows, the bay in the background, city lights glittering on the inky surface of the waves. He wanted her. Here and now. A good thing he’d planned for it. It wasn’t spur-of-the-moment, it wasn’t beyond his control.

He had condoms and everything else he needed. He was in control. He desperately needed the control. He tightened his hand into a fist, steadied it, ignored the tremor that ran through his fingers and skated up his arm, jolting his heart.

Ignoring the strange tenderness he felt when he looked at her. This wasn’t about feeling, not in an emotional sense. This was physical. It was sex.

“Take off your dress,” he said.

She reached behind herself and unzipped the gown, letting it fall to the floor. She wasn’t wearing a bra, only a small triangle of lace keeping her from being completely bare. That and the necklace, the emerald heavy and glittering between her breasts.

She reached around to remove it, her breasts rising with the action, pink tipped and perfect.

“No,” he ground out. “Leave it on.” A reminder. A reminder that she was the same as every other woman he’d ever been with. The exchange of gifts, jewelry, that was how it worked. It was invariable, it was safe. It was unchallenging.

She dropped her hands to her sides and he walked closer to her, loving the way the moonlight spilled silver over her pale curves. The way the deep shadows accentuated the dip of her small waist, the round fullness of her hips and breasts.

She was a woman. There was no denying it. And he was starving for her.

But he would wait. He would draw it out. Because he was the master of this game. He was always in charge. He had forgotten that sometimes over the past few weeks, had allowed her inexperience, the nature of their friendship, to change the way he approached it.

Not now.

She’s a woman. Only a woman. The same as any other.

No. Not the same. His mind rebelled against that thought immediately. There had never been a more exquisite woman, that much he knew for certain. There had never been a figure, not since Eve, better designed to tempt a man.

She was the epitome of sensual beauty, more seductive simply standing there than any other woman could have been if she’d been trying.

Clara.

Her name flashed through his mind, loud, a reminder.

No. He didn’t need it. He wasn’t thinking of her. Only of his own need and how she might fulfill it. He would pleasure her, too, as he did all of his lovers. But it wasn’t different. It couldn’t be different. Not again. Not after that night in her apartment.

“Turn around for me,” he said. “Face the window.”

She obeyed again. She was like a perfect hourglass, the elegant line of her back enticing. He walked over to her, extending his hand and tracing the dip of her spine. She shivered beneath his touch.

“Do you like that?” he asked.

“I’ve liked everything you’ve ever done to me.” Her voice, so sweet, a bit vulnerable. Not a temptress.

Clara.

He put his hands on her hips and tugged her back against him, let her feel the hard ridge of his arousal, the blatant, purely sexual evidence of what he wanted from her. Her indrawn breath, the short, sweet sound of pleasure that escaped her lips, let him know that she was tracking with him. Important.

He would never do anything she didn’t want.

He put his hand on her stomach, soft, slightly rounded. He liked that about her, too, that she was so feminine, curved everywhere. Absolute perfection.

He cupped her butt with his other hand, her flesh silken beneath his palm. “You’re beautiful,” he said. She leaned back against him, her head against his chest. Her slid his hand up to palm her breast, teasing her nipples as he continued to stroke her backside.