Double-Cross My Heart (23 page)

Literally, physically ached.

His erection sprang up heavy against his leg and he tried to steady himself against rushing her. There were times for fast, hard sex. Hungry bodies straining and pumping…he wanted all of that with her.

But now he waited…for her. He wanted her with him in every way.

Eden seemed to flow around him, her arms around his neck, her body soft and pliant against his, smaller and giving. He felt bigger and stronger and incredibly desirable…she did this to him with just her kiss. The soft sounds in the back of her throat, her questing hands, restless and hungry on him. How could he feel so vulnerable and so damned invincible at once?

Sliding his hand over her back, he felt the tautness of her muscles, the smoothness of her skin seeming pliant beneath her thin sweater.

Body against body, he reveled in her soft, full breasts against his chest, hungering to shape her with his fingers. Tugging her sweater out of her waistband, he drew her down to the thick carpet on his living room floor. Laying her out beneath him, Alex rediscovered the exact color of her aureole, peachy pink with a hotly flushed nubbin. He cherished her with his tongue, suckling and laving her with the tip of his tongue.

Moaning and writhing beneath him, Eden lie back on the carpet, her short dark hair like a witch’s halo around her head. With her sweater pulled up and her bra shoved aside, he ministered to her lovely flesh, took her in and tasted her. One hand cradling her breast while the other rubbed at the juncture of her thighs, Alex felt himself throbbing and swelling in an exquisite torture.

Soon, he’d kneel between her sweet thighs and drive himself into the hot, welcoming heaven there. The fragmented thought drove him nearly insane with an urgent, throbbing need.

“Alex,” she gasped. “Oh, yes. Sweet Jesus.”

“Yes,” he muttered, lifting his damp mouth from her breast as, through her pants, he nudged a knuckle against the tender flesh between her legs.

“Yes!” she said again. “Touch me there.”

Within a moment, he had her naked, her lacy white underpants tossed aside. Hot. So hot and delicate, her body called to him. He stroked her while she frantically drew her sweater over her head and struggled to free herself from her bra. A gentleman would probably have helped her get completely naked, but he found himself engrossed in touching her, stroking her.

Naked now on the floor in front of the loveseat, Eden scrambled at his belt, tugging his shirt off, pressing hot, sweet kisses over his chest, his shoulders.

“I’ve thought about you like this,” he said, touching her, kissing her bare shoulder as she pushed his pants down. “In the night, I’d wake thinking about you. All day, too.”

“Me, too,” she panted, pulling him down next to her on the floor. “Me, too.”

As she lie with her head cradled on his bent arm, she ran her hands over him. Flat over his chest and stomach, curling over his biceps…and all the while kissing him, her mouth open and hot. Alex braced himself, bending over her as he smoothed her waist, her silky tummy, the beautiful dark curls between her legs.

Eden groaned, sinking her teeth gently into his bicep, her body arching up into his hand. Rubbing her there, he heard the change in her breathing, the short, hungry pants and mewling cries. He felt like he was made of concrete, so hard was his erection, heavy between his legs. He’d have to be careful, so careful, not to rush in.

Her head thrown back against his arm, her legs closed around his ministering hand, she stiffened and cried out, her body trembling. In the pale light from the one lamp, he could see the sheen on her beautiful body, faintly glistening between her perfect breasts. Leaning forward he kissed her there, drawing his tongue along the valley between her breasts.

She clutched at him, her hand curling around his penis, stroking and stroking him.

The sensation threatened to send him over the edge and he grasped her hand.

“Wait. Wait.”

Within seconds, he’d found the condom and sheathed himself in the latex barrier. He hated it. Wanted to feel her, all of her, surrounding him, but there was no option…not yet. And this, this was so good…

Positioning himself between her bent knees, he paused a moment, gathering his control, focusing his awareness. He wanted this to be so great for them both.

Moving forward, he inched into her slickness slowly, her moan of satisfaction nearly shattering his restraint. And then they were moving, her rising to meet him as he dove into her body again and again.

“So good, so good, so good,” she chanted, her voice rising.

Clenching his teeth, Alex held back and loved her. Losing the sense of time, he drove into her body, suffered the wonder of her hands on him—his back, his butt—she touched him, urged him into her. With her legs splayed wide, she welcomed every inch of him over and over…he thought he’d lose his mind.

Twice she clenched around him, tantalizing, tempting. The beauty of her satisfaction tightened his body as he felt her response. Finally, as she cried out again, sobbing, he thrust himself into the wet, intense heat of her…and felt his own release shudder through his body…endlessly.

They lie on the carpet panting, still joined, the room sighing with the central heat he hadn’t heard before. After a few minutes, he pulled out of her and got shakily to his feet.

“Let’s go to bed,” he said bending down and scooping her into his arms. “I want to sleep with you.”

Snuggled in bed later, Eden sat propped up against the headboard, Alex half sprawled across her lap, his head heavy on her thighs. She realized as she sifted her fingers through his short hair, her body replete and deeply relaxed, she’d never felt so comfortable with a man.

“You know,” he said, his voice deep and slow with drowsiness, “I don’t sleep much, usually, but making love with you just knocks me out.”

Eden frowned. His sister had said something about him having an insomnia problem.

“You’ve always had a problem sleeping?”

His breathing was slow and even, and for a moment she wondered if he was awake.

“Since I was about ten,” he said, his voice odd.

“When you were ten you just stopped sleeping?”

“I usually get four or five hours a night,” he assured her.

“Wow.” She loved sleeping. What would it be like to only sleep a fragment of every night? “So when you were a kid you used to sleep all night? And then you just stopped?”

He took a deep breath, letting it out like a sigh. “When I was eight, my mother got really ill. Breast cancer. She fought like the dickens for a couple of years, both she and my father. The doctors did everything, but she didn’t make it.”

Breast cancer research. Hospice charities.
She’d never guessed his philanthropy was so personal.

“I’m so sorry,” Eden said, her heart wrung at the thought of the small confused boy he must have been. “That is so incredibly hard.”

“Yes,” he said.

Her hand stroking the broad planes of his strong back, she found herself longing to comfort him. What could she say to ease a hurt that deep?

“Lauren must have been really young.”

“She was eight when my mom died.”

“So you just stopped sleeping after she passed on?” What had he done in the long, lonely hours of the night? A young kid, concerned about his sister, missing his mother. “Did you have trouble sleeping before she died?”

For a moment, he said nothing. “No. Not then. When I was a kid we didn’t have a lot of money and my dad took extra shifts at the factory to help pay for the medical bills. Towards the end, we had a retired nurse Dad hired to come in on the nights he worked. She was a neighbor woman who picked up a few hours at the hospital, too, and then came to our house to sit with my mom. When Mom started getting worse, she needed someone with her all the time.”

The room dark and quiet around them, Eden wished she could see his face. But he lie, relaxed and heavy, on her legs, his head turned away as she brushed her fingers through his hair.

“The night she…finally died,” he said, the words slower, “Dad had to go in to work early. Mrs. Hildenstern was coming as soon as her shift at the hospital was over, but there would be a few hours gap.”

Hearing the whispers of long-ago pain in his voice, Eden said nothing, holding her breath as she waited for him to continue. Hospice. Now she knew why he raised money for the cause, why he sat on the non-profit board.

“I told Dad it would be all right. I knew my mom needed someone beside her bed. It was only for a few hours. There wasn’t anyone else there and Mom had actually had a better day.”

“You were there by yourself when she died.” Eden could only imagine the anguish. Her own mother hadn’t always been easy to live with, but at least she’d always been there.

“No. I wasn’t there when she died. I fell asleep,” Alex said abruptly. “Mrs. Hildenstern woke me up.”

Eden tried to make sense of his terse words. “You fell asleep?”

“I was supposed to be watching my mother, sitting next to her bed in case she called out, needed anything.”

“…and you fell asleep,” Eden said. He’d been there, trying to be responsible for something a ten-year old should never have had to do. And he felt he’d failed. Horribly, he’d failed his dying mother.

Had he been sitting beside her bed, his thin arms pillowing his young head? Sleeping with exhaustion while his mother’s last breath escaped her body? What a horrible situation for a child. How his father must have been over-burdened to have left his young children alone in the house with an ill mother.

Eden felt her eyes grow moist. Her childhood hadn’t been a picnic, but this was so much worse.

Compelled to comfort him, she said, “You know you couldn’t have—“

“I know,” he interrupted, turning to drop a kiss on her thigh. “I know. Believe me, I know it wasn’t my fault. I was a tired kid. My mom would have died no matter what I did. Lauren has told me over and over. Several very expert therapists have assured me of the same.”

Eden’s fingers paused their stroking, hesitating on the steady throb of his pulse at his strong neck. “But you still don’t sleep.”

“No,” he said, his voice matter-of-fact as he burrowing closer to her. “I don’t sleep much. I don’t like letting down the people who I love. So, sleep isn’t usually my friend.”

“You slept longer than five hours the other night,” she said, after a few moments of silence. “After we made love last week.”

“Yeah,” Alex said softly into the dark, “I know.”

Long after his breathing had grown even and deep, Eden lie awake. With him next to her, naked and beautiful in the way only a well-built man is beautiful, she struggled with herself, wrestling with the situation.

This amazing, confusing man had her tied up in knots. With him next to her, her body more relaxed than she could ever remember, her mind churned, trying to make sense of a senseless situation. A senseless relationship.

He…slept with her. It wasn’t just sex. He slept with her when he didn’t normally sleep. Moisture seeped into her eyes and clogged her throat.

He’d been a sorrowful boy all those years and a sleepless man for a hell of a long time. She couldn’t help feeling good that he slept now when he was with her.

Eden stared into the darkness above her.

What the hell was she doing?

It was one thing to conduct business—even dirty business—but this didn’t feel right. After this evening and everything that had passed between she and Alex, Eden couldn’t tell herself she was just having a “fling” with the man who was deliberately screwing her over.

She had no idea what he felt for her, not really.

But she had a cold, seeping fear that he was chipping away at her determination, her concentration on the vital goal of getting control of the company.

This had to stop. She had to stop letting him burrow into her mind…at the very least, she had to stop sleeping with him. Lying like this with him, sharing what had just passed between them, made her lose her focus and, God, lose her heart
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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Alex woke up slowly, the tendrils of a deep, satisfying sleep slowing uncurling their hold on him. He stretched under the covers, loving the bright light flooding in at the window. Any night he slept long enough to be woken by actual daylight was a good night.

Eden.
His brain curled around the memory of their lovemaking, the smile on his face widening. They’d talked late into the night and she’d really listened when he talked about his mother’s death.

Had he ever opened up like that to a woman before?

Lifting his head, he opened his heavy eyelids enough to find her, his hand groping across the bed. When he found nothing but cool sheets, he forced himself to shake off the lingering wisps of sleep and raised himself up on one elbow.

She wasn’t there.

Turning his head, Alex listened for sounds of movement in the bathroom. It was daylight, but still early.

An unmistakable empty silence filled the condo.

Frowning, he rubbed a hand over his eyes, trying to get his brain to wake up. Alex hauled himself upright in the bed, wondering when she’d left and why.