Chapter 25
CASH
Iwas back in the Hamptons. The salt-scented air, the sound of the waves. It was all exactly as I remembered. But something was different. The house was empty except for her. She stood on the balcony, her dark hair with its purple streak dancing in the breeze, wearing nothing but my shirt.
“You’re late,” she said, turning to face me.
I crossed the distance between us in three strides. “I’m never late.”
“For this you are.” Her smile was wicked as she reached for my tie, slowly loosening it. “I’ve been waiting.”
I caught her wrist. “Waiting for what, exactly?”
Her laugh was low and throaty and so her. “For you to want me.”
My control snapped. I backed her against the railing with my mouth on hers. The ocean crashed behind her, but all I could focus on was how her thighs parted for me, how my shirt rode up to reveal she wore nothing underneath.
“Tell me,” I demanded, my hands sliding up her legs.
“I want you,” she whispered against my mouth. “All of you.”
I kissed her deeply, tasting the salt on her lips. She was fire in my hands, responding to every touch with a hunger that matched my own. When I pulled back, her pupils were dilated. She oozed sex. I had never seen a woman so perfectly made for it.
“Stop thinking so much,” she said, unbuttoning my shirt. “For once in your life, Cash Bancroft, just feel.”
I lifted her, wrapping her legs around my waist. Her body melded to mine, all soft and supple. I carried her inside and laid her on the bed. I pulled my shirt from her body and stared down at all her nude beauty.
“Exquisite,” I murmured, running my hands over every curve.
She arched into my touch. “Show me.”
I did. With my hands, my mouth, my body. She writhed beneath me, my name on her lips like a prayer. When I finally pushed inside her, the sensation was overwhelming. So tight and hot. She moved with me, against me, her nails digging into my back.
“Cash,” she moaned.
“Let go,” I told her. “I’ve got you.”
She shattered around me, her body clenching, pulling me deeper. I followed her over the edge, pleasure crashing through me in waves.
I woke with a start, momentarily disoriented. Rome, not the Hamptons. Reality, not a dream.
My cock was rock hard. The real me hadn’t gotten off and was in desperate need for release. I reached for her, fully intending to pull her close for a little morning delight.
My hand found cold sheets. I opened my eyes and rolled to the side. She was definitely gone.
Shit.
I sat up, scrubbing a hand over my jaw, and looked around the room.
Sunlight was already bleeding through the dark curtains.
I got up and pulled on a pair of boxers.
I needed to find her. My morning wood was physically painful and no way was I going to handle things myself when there was a beautiful woman roaming about.
I walked through the suite, which looked like a hurricane had hit. Not a hurricane, a pretty little cyclone. But no Cleo.
The balcony doors were cracked open. Morning air drifted into the space. I knew where to find her.
She was sitting in one of the wrought iron chairs, bent over a journal, writing like she was racing against something.
A coffee sat beside her. Steam curled up from it.
Her purple streak caught the sun. She was wearing one of the hotel’s oversized robes.
It kept slipping off one shoulder and she kept shoving it back up without looking, without stopping the pen.
I leaned against the doorframe and watched her.
I was aware that this was not something I did. I did not stand in doorways watching women. I did not wake up before seven in a foreign city and track someone down through my own hotel suite because I needed their physical touch. I was not that man. I had never been that man.
And yet. Here I was. In my boxers. With an extremely inconvenient problem I was doing nothing to conceal.
She looked up. Her eyes went wide immediately and it wasn’t because of the smile on my face. The pen went still. A beat of silence. Then the pink started climbing her cheeks. She snapped the journal shut like I’d caught her writing something incriminating.
Maybe she had been.
Her eyes drifted back to the bulge that had only gotten bigger since I spotted her.
“Like what you see?” I asked.
Her chin came up. “I’ve seen better.”
“Have you?”
“In museums,” she said. “Marble statues. Very impressive. Much more proportionate.”
I laughed. She was embarrassed and defiant all at once, like she couldn’t decide which she wanted to be. I pushed off the doorframe and pulled out the chair across from her.
“You left,” I said.
“I woke up.” She reached for her coffee and held it with both hands. “Not the same thing.”
“You could have woken me.”
She gave me a look over the rim of her mug. “You were sleeping. I have a feeling that’s not something you do often.”
“I wouldn’t have minded you waking me up. In fact, you did wake me up.”
“I did?”
“I had the most erotic dream. And when I woke up, I had this.” I gestured toward my crotch.
She laughed. “I’m going to venture to guess it’s not the first time that has greeted you upon awakening.”
“It’s the first time you were the star of the show. Come back to bed. Let me show you what I did to you in my dream.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t or won’t?”
“Same thing.”
“Not even a little.”
“Last night was incredible,” she said. “No regrets.”
I could tell by her hesitation there was a lot more she wasn’t saying.
“Last night wasn’t enough,” I said.
She looked at me and almost looked sad. “It was almost too much.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“No. Not like that. It was just… too much.”
My ego did not need that. The satisfaction that moved through me was so thorough and so immediate that I had to work to keep my expression neutral. I wanted to hop up, put my hands behind my back, and strut around like a fucking peacock.
“Come back to bed and I will make sure it’s way too much. You won’t be walking right. Your legs will be like limp noodles. You’ll be so sated—”
“Cash.”
“It’s early. We’ve got nowhere to be. We have this amazing suite and privacy. Two more beds to christen. Several more bathroom counters.”
“Cash.” Firmer this time. She set her coffee down. “We need to talk.”
Those four words. I’d never had cause to fear them before. I was always the one walking away before a conversation could turn into that particular four-word sentence. And now they were directed at me.
It was uncomfortable. It made me feel twitchy.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s talk, but last chance to talk with me buried inside you.”
She licked her lips and her cheeks flushed. She could pretend she wasn’t affected by my words but she was. She wanted me. We just needed to get through this little conversation. “Last night was what it was. And I don’t regret it. I want to be clear about that.”
“Good.”
“But we can’t do it again.”
I looked at her with confusion clouding my thoughts. She liked it. She wanted it. But we couldn’t do it again? I was aware of a distinct and unfamiliar sensation. Discomfort. Her words were wrong.
But I wasn’t about to let her see how badly it stung to be rejected. Cash Bancroft did not get rejected.
I shrugged. “Fine.”
I saw a flash of disappointment. She’d expected more from me. A protest. An argument. I was good at those. I let her wait.
“We’re going to finish what you brought me here to do,” she continued. Her hand was shaking when she brought her cup to her lips. Good. I wanted her unsettled because I sure as fuck was.
“When we go home, we go back to normal. That’s what makes sense.” She paused. “For both of us.”
“Both of us,” I repeated.
“Melody is getting married in less than four weeks.” Her voice was careful now, measured in a way that told me she’d been sitting out here rehearsing this since she’d slipped out of bed.
“She’s pregnant. She’s going to need me in a way she’s never needed me before, and I want to be there for every second of it.
” She gestured vaguely between us. “This is fun. You know it is. But it’s also messy, and it complicates things in ways I can’t afford right now. ”
I said nothing.
“I’ve spent the last few years making sure Melody has everything she needs,” Cleo said. “This is the part I actually wanted. The part I dreamed about. Her getting her person. Having her family.” She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I don’t want to be distracted from that.”
“And you,” I said. “Your dreams.”
She looked up.
“Not Melody’s,” I clarified. “Yours.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry your pretty head about it, Lurch.” She picked her coffee back up. “They’re safe and sound with me.”
Lurch.
I wasn’t Cash anymore. I wasn’t a man in her world. Not a friend. Not a lover. It was back to the nickname. The walls were up. I was on the outside.
I understood what it meant. It was over—or whatever version of over applied to something that had barely started.
I understood it. That didn’t mean I liked it.
I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and looked at the street below, where a man was opening the shutters of a flower stall. I let her words digest.
“I’ll book you on tomorrow’s flight,” I said. “First class.”
“Obviously,” she said.
“There are still a couple of appearances I need tonight. A lunch tomorrow before you go.”
“A few more hours of pretending to be in love with you.” She smiled over her coffee. “Grueling work, but I’ll manage.”
“I’m sure the suffering is immense.”
“Deeply.”
I stood. The bulge was long gone. That thing had retreated when it got rejected.
“We’ll make this the shortest fake engagement in Bancroft history,” I said. “I’ll make sure that goes on the record somewhere.”
She laughed. “I’ll want that in writing.”
I went back inside and headed for my side of the suite. I tripped over one of her heels and couldn’t resist kicking it out of frustration.
I needed a shower. The colder the better.
The woman was infuriating. You could lead a horse to water but it didn’t mean you could make them drink. Cleo had the chance to be with a man that would give her multiple orgasms. She had her dreams of building her own career right at her fingertips.
And she wasn’t going to take it.
There was nothing I could do about it and I sure as hell wasn’t going to beg her.
I didn’t beg for shit and I wouldn’t start now.