Tempting the CEO (a Sleeping With The Enemy novella) (Entangled Brazen) Read online

  I pursed my lips. “Thanks for the clarification. What were you, a couple rows behind me on the plane or something? I just got here.”

  “No, afraid I have to fess up to a rich-guy thing, even if it makes me more of a creep. I fly private. Saves a lot of time. It allowed me to stew for a good, I don’t know, hour or so after I left the restaurant, before I decided to come after you.”

  “Come after me for what?”

  “To say I was sorry for being high-handed.”

  “You could have called to say that.”

  “There wasn’t a working group list for the deal. I didn’t have your number.”

  “You had my client’s, though. And my address, I guess.”

  “I can be pretty resourceful when I need to.”

  “I can see that.”

  I put the cell down, fighting the absolute—okay, I admit it—thrill that he had come after me.

  “I know you said it was just a hookup, and I guess if you really meant that, I have to, er…” He seemed to be struggling for the concept.

  “Back off?”

  “Well, I was thinking more like try to talk you out of it. But I don’t know, that might be cutting it a little close to that high-handed thing again.”

  “I guess you’re used to it.”

  “Kind of.”

  “The Suzys of the world have come to expect it from you.”

  He smiled. “I did like Suzy. Or I guess I mean I like the Suzy in you. And after meeting your mother, who I’m sure is a lovely woman inside and out—“

  “My God, she gave me an earful after you left.”

  “You deserved it. And don’t even think of mentioning hooking up with me to my mother. That will not go over big. I think she thinks I’m still a virgin.”

  That got a smile out of me. “If she does, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I could sell her.”

  “Seriously, what I was going to say is after meeting your mother I understand why you might be so focused on making sure a guy understands you’re more than a Suzy. I get that. I do. But I didn’t really get a chance to meet Angelina. Other than when she was kicking Bob’s ass, of course, which, fun as it was, wasn’t really a full introduction.”

  I laughed.

  “So I came to ask her, you, out to dinner. After the deal closes, of course.”

  “Which you managed to accomplish in record time, by the way.”

  “Yep. I guess I did. Your client is so lucky he hired the right lawyer.”

  “I’m going to ignore the double entendre in that.”

  “I wish you would. Because I’m being on my best behavior here.”

  I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around his neck. “You are. Although it is sort of high-handed to do all that closing-without-the-lawyers thing too, by the way.”

  “It’s the way of the future, Angie.”

  “Ouch! Now you’re just pissing me off.”

  His sexy blue eyes dipped and I realized my nipples were hardening with him holding me this way. “Is that what I’m doing to you?”

  I was still charged up from all that great sex with him. I’m surprised I hadn’t emitted pheromones through the airport that had wild dogs following me or something.

  His hands circled my waist and then slid a little lower. With the leggings, there wasn’t much of a barrier between what he wanted to get at and, well, what I wanted him to get at. He cupped my ass and nuzzled my neck.

  “It was very sweet of you to come here,” I admitted.

  “I was looking for you outside the hotel earlier, too. I wasn’t just hailing a cab. But I had to wait at least ten minutes before I went after you—I didn’t want it to look like I was running after you, which I was of course—and then I was afraid I’d missed you.”

  I smiled. “And then you saw my mom.”

  “Yeah, it didn’t go quite how I planned. But this is better anyway.” He walked me back into the bedroom, sort of magically knowing the way, and urged me down onto the bed, continuing to kiss me. I ignored the indignant hiss of my kitty as she scurried away.

  He’d win her over too eventually, I was sure.

  “You have a nice place,” he whispered, pulling my T-shirt over my head.

  “Yep. Lots of good places to go to dinner around here, too,” I got in between kisses.

  His hand wandered along my stomach, causing it to jump in excitement. “I’m sure. We’ll have to check them out. Later.”

  Oh, I wanted to. Well, when didn’t I want to with this guy?

  But there was still that body odor thing from traveling all day. I pulled away from his kisses, laughing and trying to sit up. “Wait. Let me clean up first. I haven’t even taken a shower yet and I’ve traveled six hundred miles. And not on a private plane.”

  He grinned. “You know I like it dirty.”

  “That is so cheesy!”

  “Don’t knock it. I almost had you out of your towel with that line.”

  “Please! You did not!”

  He rolled over on top of me, stretching my arms above my head and coming up a bit on his knees so I didn’t take his full weight. Our fingers twined together. And though I felt the hard-to-ignore evidence of how much fun we were going to have, his erection heavy in the cradle of my thighs, there was no urgency now. As if we both finally realized we had as much time with each other as we wanted.

  I hooked my bare feet around his calves as he dusted his lips along my cheekbone.

  “I was down when you showed up last night.” His voice was low. “Really down.”

  I squeezed his fingers and watched his dark eyes shift to a shade of blue I wasn’t sure I had a name for. It reminded me of that Van Gogh painting, The Starry Night.

  “What happened?”

  “You don’t need to hear the gory details. I just wanted you to know that you—”

  “I want to hear, Jed.”

  He leaned closer to nibble my lower lip and then he whispered, “My little brother, Vernon, not my blood brother but my…a good kid. He got away from me somehow. Heroin.”

  I unwound our hands so I could press my palms against his hot cheeks, and he turned his face into one, kissing it with a loud exaggerated smack.

  “Is he okay?”

  “Not yet. But he’s going to be.” His hands free, he got busy pulling my leggings down, leaning a little off me to do it, and I yelped at the transition.

  “Hey!”

  “So I was not in a good place last night, and this perfect-looking, sexy, sweet angel—no, don’t interrupt me.” He smiled as I made a face at his rapturous description, since I’d looked like shit when I checked in last night. Although I was comparing his baby blues to a masterpiece a minute ago, so maybe we were both getting carried away with the newness of this feeling.

  I didn’t care. Carry me away. Knee-jerk embarrassment at our sudden intimacy was not going to stop me from feeling it. I was too open to him now. And I knew instinctively that he was telling me about his mental state last night because he was trying to be open to me.

  While simultaneously divesting me of my clothes.

  I lifted my hips and listened attentively, since I applauded both ventures.

  “So last night I needed your beautiful body—”

  He got my pants off, and I caught up by unbuttoning his jeans, sliding them down while he shrugged out of his shirt and then tackled my bra.

  “—but I think I needed you more than that.”

  Both of us naked now, I rolled on top of him for a change, and with full access to my breasts, he reached up and took advantage, continuing his narrative.

  “You were cool and then you were hot, and the whole time you made me laugh. I wanted to wake up in the morning to see you. And, ah, that doesn’t happen. I’m not explaining this well.”

  I savored his long fingers stroking, fondling, a deft touch that rendered me slick and ready for him below. “I think you’re doing pretty well.”

  He retrieved a condom from his jeans pocket and I rolle
d it on, the novelty of doing it myself cool, his hard cock jerking under my ministrations. The first thrust as I took him deep inside me caught us both sucking in a breath at the pleasure. And then I rocked against him, slow, fast, experimenting with the rhythms as he rubbed his thumbs against my nipples and gripped my ass, urging me on my knees one time and then leaning back another.

  And never taking our eyes off each other the whole time.

  “Intimate” didn’t even cover it.

  And when he mumbled, “No more teasing,” and flipped me over, coming up behind me to thrust hard, I couldn’t tell who was teasing whom. His arms around my waist, at the last second I strained back into him and…well, I did sing an aria then.

  But only in my head. To Jed it probably just sounded like I was panting heavily.

  As we lay exhausted, spooning, I took a deep breath. The scent of sweat and sex and tangled sheets was strong. The aroma made me smile.

  I guess I liked it dirty, too.

  There was always time for a shower together later.

  Epilogue

  Six Months Later

  “This is Bob calling for Angie. Can you please let her know I’m on the line?”

  I had recognized the number and picked up my office phone myself, pretending to be my own secretary.

  Click.

  Just so I could do that.

  It never got old.

  Jed glanced up from the paper he was reading while he waited for me to pack up. “Did you hang up on Bob again? The poor guy is just trying to get you your closing binders.”

  “Bull.” I leered at him. “He’s trying to take me to brunch.”

  Jed tossed the paper away and stood up to lean across my desk and drop a kiss on my nose. “I’ll kick his ass if he takes you to brunch.”

  “My hero.” I laughed.

  “Come on. Are you done here?”

  “I thought you were working on being better about respecting my work.” I threw some papers into my briefcase and clicked it shut.

  “I thought you were working on that life/work balance thing.” He took the briefcase from me and opened my office door to shoo me through it.

  “Well, I guess we’ve both got a little work to do.”

  My cell rang as we walked to the elevator. “Cassie,” I said, glancing at it. “I’ll text her later. I’m so glad she likes you, by the way. That best-friend test is so important.”

  “Not as important as the other one,” he hinted as he pushed the button for the elevator.

  “Don’t start with that.”

  “She wants to meet you, Angie.”

  I put my arms around his neck after we stepped into the elevator and found it empty. “I’m afraid of your mother,” I admitted, only half kidding.

  He put his hands around my waist, his blue eyes sincere. “All right, I’m going to tell you the truth. I had to tell her you took my virginity.”

  I laughed and stood on my tippy-toes to kiss him. “Now I’ll never meet her.”

  “Afraid you’ll have to. She’s insisting on a shotgun wedding.”

  I froze as the doors to the elevator opened and we went out into the Renaissance Center, the high-rise complex where my firm had its offices. The W-word had scared me, but if he could tell he didn’t let on as we walked hand in hand. “Remember how I met your mother and it was a big surprise and everything?”

  I stopped. “You did not. Tell me you did not!”

  He flashed me a tentative smile. “It depends on how mad you’ll be if I did.”

  “Furious!”

  “Okay, in that case, I have to meet my mother for dinner at that steak house you like on the bottom level, but I’ll be at your place to have wild sex with you by about nine. How’s that?”

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “My mom won’t like that.”

  “Jed! How could you do this to me?”

  “I didn’t. She did. She was threatening to fly commercial to Detroit just so she could meet you. And if you knew my mother, well, she doesn’t fly commercial anymore, and she’d be blaming me for it if I didn’t let her have the plane to come here, and then by extension she’d be blaming you and, well, then she’d really not be in the proper mood to meet you. So she flew in with me this afternoon.”

  “Why didn’t you at least tell me?”

  “What? I had to meet your mother at the spur of the moment on our very first date.”

  “You call that a date?”

  “It’s what I was calling it with my mother. And once she found out I’d met yours, you know how that is. It’s a status thing, I think.”

  I shook my head. “You are so going to pay for this later.”

  He grinned. “Bring it on.”

  With a great deal of sighing, I continued walking to the restaurant and he fell in beside me.

  “And here I was absolutely certain I’d cured you of that high-handedness thing,” I said.

  “It was a momentary setback for the greater good.”

  “What greater good?”

  “Getting you to meet my mother.”

  We were almost at the restaurant and I stopped him again and leaned forward to whisper, “Shouldn’t we just go to my place and do what we usually do the first night we’re together? Well, every night we’re together, I mean.”

  “You’re not going to make me stand my mother up by giving me an erection.” He kissed me. “Unless you’re willing to do something really creative with it. I always did want to have sex in an elevator.”

  “The scenic glass ones?”

  “Exactly.”

  I pulled away with a laugh. “Another time.”

  “Don’t say I didn’t offer you an out.”

  Actually, though, I was kind of glad the decision was taken out of my hands. Now that she was here, I couldn’t refuse to meet her. And I had been slow about agreeing to do it, even though I’d been to Denver quite a bit since Jed and I had taken the plunge from hookup to exclusive, which was on the second day I even knew him, now that I come to think of it. I’d met Vernon, a shy, thin boy who looked as if he’d been to hell and back but was recovering. Clean six months. I met some of Jed’s other friends.

  I was crazy about this guy. So, what the hell? I guess I should meet his mother.

  The steak house was dim, but I recognized her immediately, even though I had never seen a picture of her. She didn’t resemble him much. It wasn’t that. In fact, she had red hair, a natural redhead it looked like, and she was tiny. But she looked like him somehow. Confident and funny and—even though it would normally seem odd to describe such a pixieish woman this way—powerful. I shook her hand as Jed set down my briefcase and introduced us.

  “It’s such a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Worth. Jed’s told me so much about you.”

  “Please, call me Mary.” She gave her son a playful scowl. “And I can just imagine what he’s been telling you about me.”

  “All good things, Mom.” He kissed her cheek and took a seat next to me, across the table from his mother.

  “He’s not still using that one about how I think he’s saving himself for marriage, is he? He gets such a kick out of that one. Came up with it when he was seventeen to keep his girlfriends from wanting to meet me.”

  “An oldie but a goodie,” he said without remorse. “Can we have the wine list?” he asked a passing waiter.

  “I was just happy,” she continued, “that the first time I met you, Angie, wasn’t when you were walking down the aisle.”

  I glanced over at Jed uncomfortably.

  “Mom likes to bring up a wedding in the first two minutes of meeting one of my girlfriends. It’s kind of like a litmus test,” he said to me in an aside over the wine list.

  I laughed. “Oh. Okay then. Well,” I told her, “you ought to meet my mother. You two would get along great.”

  “I have and we do.”

  Jed muttered, “I had absolutely no hand in that.”

  “Yes, Natalie was at a spa in the Denver area
and we got together for lunch. You two look just like sisters, I have to say.”

  “You and everybody else who meets us,” I couldn’t help putting in.

  “Jed looks exactly like his father.”

  “Where is he again?” I asked just to bug Jed, even though I knew already. Why should I be the only uncomfortable one here?

  “Oh, in the South of France now, I think. We’re never quite sure. On his I-don’t-know-what-number rich older wife. Living off his looks, which have been remarkably resilient,” she commented while Jed ordered a very fine red wine.

  “Good genes,” I said.

  And then she dropped the A-bomb. “Have you two set a date?”

  Jed shook his head ruefully. “She cannot help herself.”

  “I don’t believe in beating around the bush, Angie. I’ll tell you straight I’ve barely ever met a single girlfriend of Jed’s, or if I do, she’s gone in a week, he goes through them so fast.”

  “That is so reassuring,” I said between my teeth, and she surprised me by laughing.

  “I know. I was just about giving up on grandchildren unless there was a DNA test involved or something. Until he meets you and right away I can see he’s a goner.”

  “Mom, for Christ’s sake.”

  As much as I was eating this all up, I decided to bring us back to the real world. “Your son’s wonderful, Mrs.— Mary, but we’ve only known each other six months.”

  “See, Mom, now you’ve blown it. I had a ring and everything. You’re so not invited to the wedding.”

  I shook my head as his mother’s mouth dropped open. “He’s kidding,” I said.

  “Maybe,” he singsonged.

  “Be nice to your mother,” I scolded as he grinned at me. I knew he was just needling her and tried to keep up a stern face, but as ever, he charmed me. From that first interlude at the ice machine, he had charmed me. It was hard to stay mad at Jed.

  Of course his mother had much more practice.

  She scowled at him again, then said, “Excuse me. I’m going to the restroom.”

  He called after her, “You better not be texting Natalie.”

  I slapped him on the arm when we were alone, but I did think it was funny. His mom’s desperate quest for a daughter-in-law and Jed’s tongue-in-cheek resistance to it.