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He wasn’t about to tell his friends where he was, especially Luke Preston, the loud-mouthed son of a bitch who was up on everyone’s cases, all the damn time. Good thing Luke was a little tamed now that he had a new woman, a real sexpot who seemed to know just what to do with Luke Preston, but Cade still snorted at the thought that it would even last. Nothing good ever did.
He and Ivy were …
Shit, they were probably not going to last more than a week.
He felt like he’d just swallowed a bowling ball, and he scowled once more at the waiting message. No, he was not telling Preston or anyone he was at a cancer dinner. They wouldn’t believe him. Hell, they almost pitied him, and always danced around the subject of Laura. Nobody dared speak her name around him. They tried to pretend she’d never existed, which was something that irked him, for it prevented him from ever really … venting at all.
Busy.
He shut his phone off after texting that brief word, and waited for a half hour more, thinking of all the things he ached to do to this woman. He waited. Keenly aware that for once in his life, anger didn’t dominate his every thought. For once in his life, he actually gave a shit about something.
Even it was only burying himself inside of Ivy.
* * *
Ivy kept stealing glances at Cade across the room, and her heart flipped and vaulted in her chest every time she spotted him. In a black suit, and already without the tie he’d worn this morning, he scowled as he gazed around the busy room and hung back from the crowd.
Her heart grew wings for him. Because he looked so good—even if he appeared like he sorely needed something to drink. The rigid line of his jaw hinted at a frustrating day at work, and the scowl deepening the crease on his forehead said he’d rather be anywhere instead of here. But a hunk was always a hunk. And Cade defined the word, scowl or no scowl. Not in a clean, boy-next-door way, oh no. More in a dangerous, raw, and real way that was proving unbearably attractive to her.
Because she was over the fairy tales. She liked the truth, straight up and out front, and that was what you got with Cade West.
His virile face, with every one of its perfect features, was what Ivy had seen today in her mind’s eye when she woke, brushed her teeth, had breakfast, lunch, dinner, even when she spoke to all those people. But seeing those thick-lashed gray eyes in person and that dominant nose and that sensual mouth had her rapidly approaching the point where she would tackle him down on the marble floor and take him right there in the lobby. In front of everybody.
She was that desperate. That utterly hot for him.
Sharp black business slacks covered his legs and a snowy white shirt stretched across his wide, square shoulders, his jacket draped on the back of a chair now. His twilight hair was hopelessly mussed, like he had a habit of raking his hands through it when he grew impatient. Places in her body throbbed with yearning. She ached to run her hands through that satin black mass, grab a fistful of it, and yank him forward until that fat, juicy mouth of his was all over hers.
But that fat, juicy mouth was so thinned it almost vanished.
And why didn’t he look at her?
He stared absently at the ladies at a table, his profile proud and masculine and utterly wrecking to her body—which she’d feared after so many years of not using it might have gotten a bit rusty. Well, it throbbed now, every inch of her. Her breasts and nipples tingled, and she’d creamed her panties the instant she’d seen him walk into the room. Her tongue felt so heavy she couldn’t seem to speak and she was damned glad her discourse was over.
She observed as he glanced at his watch, all impatient, and so adorable her vagina clenched painfully tight.
Finally, she watched him get up, and out of the corner of her eye, she became excruciatingly aware that he came over, a few heartbeats later she felt his hands curl around her hips possessively. He drew her closer until the force of his chest was palpable against her back. “Can we leave now?”
His voice was low and velvety, a decibel away from shattering her to pieces. It brought forth memories of him whispering other kinds of words to her last night.
She’d never known a need so powerful, so consuming. She ached to lick his lips, feel the strength in his muscles bulging under her fingertips. Taste
his flesh, his male parts, every hot and hard inch of him.
Normally she stayed at these events until the very end, but tonight she found that she couldn’t concentrate. Didn’t want anything but … him.
So she nodded.
Chapter Four
He’d arrived in another Bentley, one with polarized windows, including the one that separated them from the driver. Cade slid in after her, and when the car eased into traffic, he engulfed her in his arms and started kissing her.
Ivy pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his slacks and slid her fingers up his smooth chest, feeling his hard stomach rise and fall on each breath. He spoke in her ear, his breath moist and hot, his textured voice just about the sexiest thing she’d ever heard. “I ordered a complete farmful of veggies for your breakfast tomorrow. And for the weekend as well. I’d like to spend it with you.”
She nodded, breathless with desire. “Yes,” she said, and he closed his mouth over hers.
She felt like cotton against his chest, his drugging kiss, no more aware that people walked past, car motors hummed, for her, there was only Cade. His mouth burning, his tongue thrusting hotly into her.
She shivered when he pulled her onto his lap, her hands grasping the dark locks of his hair as he dipped his head and spread her silk buttoned shirt open so her heated skin could receive his kisses.
