3. 2
He wolfed down the rest of the sandwich and started on his piece of cake.
He watched her while she ate, the rapt expression on her face almost erotic. She ate like she was climaxing every time she took a bite of the pastry, closing her eyes and savoring it before letting it slowly slide down her throat. His burgeoning cock twitched every time she let out a satisfied hum of pleasure.
I’m screwed. Every damn thing she does turns me on.
He yanked his eyes away from her, studying his own nearly empty plate. “Don’t do something like this again, Asha. If you need or want something, all you have to do is say so. What happened to you wasn’t right. You have to ask for what you want. I won’t deny you anything. It makes me happy to please you,”
he said huskily.
“That confuses me,”
she admitted, pushing her empty plate away from her. “I’m not used to it.”
“Get used to it,”
he said, shooting her a warning glance.
“I probably could. Very easily.”
She got up and started putting things away. “And I won’t be with you forever. I’m not sure I really should get used to it. Life isn’t easy out there, Kade. Not for a woman struggling to survive.”
She’d never be struggling again. She’d never have to worry about where her next meal was coming from or where her next job would be. He’d make sure of it. “Your life isn’t going to be like that again. You have family now. You have me.”
He got up and put the dishes in the dishwasher, banging them a little harder than necessary, trying to get a grasp on his instinct to grab her up and make her his until she was completely convinced.
“I’m glad I have friends and family now. But I need to be able to know I can rely on myself,”
she answered stubbornly. “Putting my life into other people’s hands hasn’t been good for me.”
“Maybe you just trusted the wrong damn people,”
he rumbled, slamming the dishwasher closed and turning to face her.
He heard her inhale sharply as she looked at him, her eyes scanning his body. “Oh, Kade. Your poor leg. It must have been so painful.”
He looked down at himself, realizing he was dressed in nothing but a pair of black silk boxers. He hadn’t bothered to put on clothes because he hadn’t planned on seeing anyone else at one o’clock in the morning in his own house.
Her eyes were focused on his mangled leg, and he flinched. “I’m sorry. I would have covered it if I’d known you were down here.”
Dammit! Asha was the last person he wanted to see his messed-up leg. Even healed, the scars were glaring and ugly. “Don’t look at it,”
he snarled, moving closer to her and tipping her chin up. “I can’t even stand to see it.”
“It isn’t the way it looks; it’s the pain you must have suffered,”
she cried, her eyes filling with tears. “How did you bear it?”
Dropping to her knees, Asha’s fingertips stroked lightly over his scars.
“I didn’t have much of a choice,”
he answered gruffly, his heart thundering from the touch of her fingers. Some of the feeling on his skin was gone from the scar tissue, but he could feel the fluttery, careful stroking on some of his leg.
She’s not repulsed by my scars. All she cares about is the pain I felt.
Kade watched her carefully. Dressed in the silky nightgown he had bought her, she looked like an angel, her face revealing nothing but concern.
“And you worry about me being hungry when you’ve been through that much pain?”
Asha scolded, standing again and facing him.
Kade wanted to tell her that it didn’t hurt anymore, not nearly as much as the pain he was suffering from wanting her. “It’s over.”
He wanted to forget about that time in his life. His leg ached occasionally, but he’d survived.
“Does it still hurt? Tell me the truth.”
Yeah. I hurt, but the pain isn’t in my leg. I ache every fucking time I look at you.
“No,”
he replied huskily. “It’s not that bad.”
Not my leg, anyway.
She moved closer to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. The feel of her hand on his bare skin nearly made him lose it. She was trying to comfort him for an old pain, but she was creating one just as acute. He wrapped his arms around her, feeling her softness against his hard body.
“I’m sorry, Kade. I wish this had never happened to you,”
she murmured against his chest.
“Shit happens,”
he replied casually, trying not to give in to the urge to carry her back to his bed and bury himself inside her warmth, take the comfort she was willing to give. But he didn’t want her that way. He wanted it to be mutual, for her to burn for him as much as he did for her. She continued to cling to him, murmuring words into his chest that he didn’t understand and suspected were Telugu, crooning them softly.
“You realize I don’t understand a word you’re saying,”
he told her, trying to contain the tender emotions that were bursting to get free.
“I know. I think it’s better that way,”
she retorted, her voice amused. “And I really think you need to get over a few things from your own past. You’re young, you’re incredibly handsome, you can still walk, and you’re alive. You survived. Other than the pain that I know you suffer sometimes, your leg doesn’t matter. How it looks doesn’t matter.”
Kade knew Asha really meant what she said, and his soul began to heal a little bit more. He lowered his cheek to her hair, inhaling her floral scent and closing his eyes.
Kade wasn’t certain exactly how long they stood that way, wrapped up together as though they were connected. He was pretty sure it was a fairly long period of time, but not long enough. His cock was hard, a reaction that was pretty much a certainty whenever Asha was close enough to feel, close enough to smell, but this wasn’t a moment he wanted to think about his dick. Right now, he just wanted to wallow in Asha’s sweetness, hold her close to his body and drink her in. Being near her had become an addiction, and satisfying her every want and need had become an obsession.
They finally parted and made their way back upstairs. He had to clench his fists to resist the urge to reach for her as she gave him a shy smile and closed the door of her bedroom. Kade flopped into his bed, which was suddenly much too lonely and big. It took him a very long time to finally fall into an exhausted sleep.
The following week turned into some of the happiest days of Asha’s life. She painted, not feeling rushed to complete the project, and she certainly wasn’t worried about where her next meal was coming from. Kade was almost a pain in the ass about her eating. He was spending time in the Harrison offices now with Travis, but every moment he was home, he brought her food. Plying her with chocolate, decadent pastries, and calorie-laden desserts seemed to be one of his favorite activities. In between, he never seemed to run out of other food for her to try. If she wasn’t careful, she’d soon be popping out of her jeans.
She’d started working out with him every morning, always in awe when he continued to pump weights after he was done with his cardio. Although she did a lot of walking, she was a wimp next to him, doing her time on the treadmill and the bike, completely exhausted when she was done. She finished, huffing and puffing, before Kade had even broken a sweat.
Stopping to stretch her back, Asha sighed as she stared at Kade’s bedroom wall. After finishing the painting of a leopard in a rain forest on his den wall, she’d moved up to the master bedroom, still contemplating exactly what would fit here. There was nothing really intimate about his bedroom. It was a minimalist type of room, just like the rest of the house, and it lacked color.
She smiled as she remembered Kade telling her to paint every wall in the house, and his grimace as she’d told him that doing every wall was overkill. He could use some accent and color, maybe one wall in most rooms, but he didn’t need every wall painted. Unhappy with her answer, he’d grumbled, but he hadn’t mentioned it again.
He lets me be free to use my talent. He trusts me with his home.
Kade valued her opinion and he listened to her when she had an idea. He made her feel…important, and she carried that emotion close to her heart. No one had ever made her feel appreciated or valued, and Kade was slowly showing her that she had worth, that she was worthy of far more than she’d experienced in the past.
“Asha?”
A deep baritone sounded near the door, startling her, and pulling her abruptly from her wandering thoughts.
Her eyes flew to him, and her breath caught as she saw Kade standing in the doorway with an amused grin.
Her hand to her chest, she said, “Sorry. I was thinking.”
Looking incredibly handsome in the suit and tie he’d worn to the office, her heart lifted at the sight of him, still managing to be uniquely Kade by wearing a colorful maroon shirt and a tie with very ornate cornucopia for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. On Kade, it looked nothing less than masculine and splendid, an image that always made her heart smile. He had his own style, and he was completely comfortable with it. It was one of the sexiest things she’d ever seen.
“What were you thinking about?”
he asked curiously, shedding the jacket of his suit and tossing it on the chair.
You. What else do I seem to always be thinking about these days?
“Your wall,”
she answered hastily, turning her eyes back to the wall she had been contemplating. She was way too preoccupied with Kade, and she needed to get him out of her brain. He was a client, and maybe a friend. But she couldn’t think of him as anything more than that. “Did Travis like your new image?”
she asked curiously, wondering what his twin had thought of Kade’s bright shirt and tie.
Kade let out a bark of laughter as he undid the knot on the tie around his neck. “No. He said the tie and shirt weren’t really a step up from my shirt with the dancing hotdogs that I wear to the office occasionally.”
He yanked the tie from around his neck and tossed it on top of his suit jacket. “How did I end up with a brother with no sense of style?”
Kade asked mournfully. “Nothing but dark suits and ties. He looks like a funeral director. The only one who saves him from being completely morbid is his secretary, Ally, who he still insists on calling Alison even though she hates it. Or if she’s really annoying him, she’s Ms. Caldwell.”
Asha laughed. “And what is she mostly?”
She’d met Travis just the day before, and although he was cordial, he was rather intimidating. It was almost difficult to believe he and Kade were brothers, much less twins. The two of them were incredibly different.
“Ms. Caldwell. She’s almost always in trouble with Travis,”
Kade answered wickedly. “But she challenges him. She’s good for him. I think she’s one of the few people in the office who isn’t terrified of him.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t fired her.”
Asha picked up Kade’s tie and jacket, ready to put them in the dry-cleaning pile in the laundry room.
“I think he secretly likes her, in an antagonistic kind of way. And she’s damn good at her job. Travis knows things at the office would descend into total chaos without her,”
Kade mused, sitting down on the bed to pull off his shoes. “Put those back or I’ll put you over my knee,”
Kade growled. “You aren’t my servant. I’ll take care of them…eventually.”
Asha’s eyes shot to Kade’s face. He was completely serious, and he wasn’t happy. Flustered, she tried to think of how to explain that sometimes she liked to do things for him. “I was just—”
“I’ll give you three seconds to put them back,”
he said with deadly calm.
“Kade, I don’t mind—”
“One.”
His voice was serene, but laced with warning.
Oh, how Asha wanted to argue. She didn’t fear Kade, and she wanted to help him once in a while. He’d done so much for her. She didn’t feel like she had to clean up after him. It was so different when she actually was doing something for someone who appreciated her. She wanted to help him, and she liked touching and smelling anything that belonged to him. His scent was so intoxicating, so masculine.
“Two.”
The warning note in his voice was more pronounced. He dropped the other shoe and his eyes roved over her bare legs, exposed in a pair of old jeans that she had cut off to wear to work around the house. His eyes slowly moved upward, his gaze caressing her breasts and the nipples that were beginning to pebble with excitement beneath her old red tank top.
“What if I want to do it? What if I do it just because I love to handle your clothes because they smell like you?”
she answered in a breathless rush, knowing they were in a struggle that was about so much more than just her waiting on him. She was actually calling his bluff, daring him to touch her. He’d been remote, careful…and she wanted to see his eyes torrid with passion again, the way they had been when he’d taken her to paradise in the kitchen with his mouth and fingers. The hand holding his jacket and tie were trembling, but she didn’t move. Heat pooled between her thighs, and her nipples were as hard as diamonds. She stood there, waiting.
“Three,”
he growled, springing off the bed and wrapping a corded, muscular arm around her waist. Plucking the jacket and tie out of her hands, he tossed them on the floor and pulled her down on the bed, where she lay sprawled on top of his brawny, ripped body.
Asha struggled to breathe, the feel of his hot, taut, hard muscle beneath her making her heart stutter and rendering her completely breathless. Pushing back the curtain of hair that had tumbled down from its confining clip and into her face, she looked at him, shocked. His arm was still clamped around her waist, holding her prisoner on top of him. And his eyes were like pools of deep blue fire.
“I’m sorry. You don’t understand,”
she said tremulously.
Kade removed the clip that was now hanging from her hair carefully and tossed it to the floor. “You can’t say shit like that and not expect me to respond,”
Kade said huskily, spearing his fingers into her hair. “If you like the way I smell, handle the real thing,”
he demanded. “Touch me, Asha, before I lose my mind. Fuck the clothes; I need your hands on me more.”
It was a command she didn’t want to and couldn’t resist. Her trembling fingers started working the buttons on his shirt, desperate to find his warm, bare skin. She fumbled, unable to look away from his intent expression. Having him need her, if only for a little while, was intoxicating and potent. No man had ever looked at her the way Kade was, and her body was answering his beckoning pheromones, the need to have him inside her almost painful.
“I’m not sure how you want to be touched,”
she said nervously, her fingers itching to feel his hot skin.
Kade groaned as she pulled his shirt open and tentatively placed her palms on his muscled chest. “It doesn’t matter. Any way you want.”
Asha moved to straddle his body and wriggled down further, her smoldering core cradling his engorged cock. His skin was fiery and smooth beneath her fingertips, and she feathered her hands over his chest, hesitantly at first, sighing at the feel of all his leashed strength and power beneath her.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter that she shouldn’t be doing this or that she was only here for a job. It might be a mistake to get too attached to Kade, but the fiery need that seethed between them couldn’t be denied any longer. Just once, Asha wanted to feel what it would be like to be needed, desired in the way she knew Kade wanted her.
“These are beautiful.”
Her fingers stroked over the tattoo of a colorful phoenix rising from fire on the right side of his chest. After she finished tracing the fierce phoenix, she moved to the other side of his chest to stroke over the rendering of a dragon, predominantly black, but with red, orange, and dark blue intermingled in the scales. There was a fiery football gripped in his ragged teeth. “I suppose this one was a reminder to win your games?”
“The guys all called me ‘The Dragon’ because I always wore my lucky dragon shirt on game days,”
he replied raggedly. “Some bastard stole it from the locker room, so I got a permanent tat because I didn’t have my shirt anymore.”
Asha moved her fingers back over the phoenix. It reminded her of her butterfly, only his creature was soaring with its wings fully spread, straight out of the fire licking at its long, feathered tail. “And this one?”
“Travis has it, too. We were together and drinking one night and decided to get it during the scandal of the death of our parents. It’s the only time I’ve actually seen Travis drunk. We swore we’d rise above being the crazy Harrison family.”
“You did,”
Asha answered quietly, admiring Kade’s ferocity to overcome his past. It made her all the more determined to become independent and strong. Mia, Kade, and Travis might still have some remnants that haunted them from their childhood, but they’d all risen like the fiery phoenix on Kade’s chest.
Kade groaned as Asha started to move lower, tracing the happy trail of light hair that ran from his navel to the top of his pants. His body was sculpted so beautifully, and the tattoos just added to his masculine aura.
Fire licked at her entire body, demanding that she have this man, and she was tired of denying herself.
Her mind made up, she rolled to his side and pulled the tank top over her head. She was braless and it only took her a moment to wriggle out of her shorts and panties, dropping them to the floor. Finally, she turned to look at Kade, meeting his eyes with a courage she didn’t know she had. “I want you inside me. Will you do it?”
Kade gaped at her, his gaze skimming over her nude body before his eyes collided with hers. “You just got naked, and now you’re asking me that question?”
“Well…will you?”
she asked, a little more uncomfortable now with her assumption that he would.
“Sweetheart, being inside you is the subject of most of my fantasies,”
Kade answered hoarsely, rising to his feet by the side of the bed, his hungry eyes never leaving hers.
“Only most of them?”
she asked nervously as he yanked off his shirt and let it fall on top of the growing pile of discarded clothing.
He shot her a wicked grin as he shed his pants. “It’s one of the highlights, but it’s not the only thing I’ve dreamed about doing.”
“What else is there?”
Asha asked, confused, laying down on her back and parting her legs. “I’m ready,”