is.”
“Actually, I do. I was sitting on it.”
He groaned and briefly cupped her cheek as she swung her legs off the bed. “Don’t get up. I can find my way to the door. And if you walk there naked, the temptation may be too much for me.”
She wanted to lure him back into her bed—just to curl up against his strength and warmth—but she knew how selfish that was. He needed to go back to solving his corporate clients’ issues for heaps of money. Although she had an idea that the money wasn’t what drove him—it was the sense of responsibility. He’d made a promise to help them, so he wouldn’t stop until he had solved their problem. That certainly applied to the gym’s weird issues.
She crooked her finger so he would bend down before she gave him a long kiss that had him seizing her shoulders to bring her in closer. Then he released her and stepped back, her effect on him visible under the denim.
“Work. I have to work.” His voice was a rasp. “I’ve got to go.” He spun on his heel and strode out of the room as though the hounds of hell were chasing him.
She fell back on the bed, a delicious lassitude seeping through her arms and legs so that she couldn’t force herself to get up to lock the dead bolt and set the alarm. Yet.
Her body hummed with the satisfaction of two fantastic orgasms, but that wasn’t what made her hug a pillow to her chest and grin like an idiot. No, the joy bubbling through her was because she’d fallen asleep with Leland’s arm locked around her waist, yet she’d only wanted to snuggle closer to him.
She’d been wrong all these years. She hadn’t needed a weak, controllable man to feel safe. She’d needed a powerful man who could help defeat her fear. She just wasn’t sure how that had happened.
Leland rummaged in the limo’s insulated storage compartment to find a container of lasagna. He pulled a fork from a felt-lined drawer of utensils and dug into the still-lukewarm pasta. The first meaty, garlicky bite made him groan with appreciation before he shoved another one into his mouth.
Forget hunger . . . great sex was the best sauce.
He focused on the food, trying not to think about Dawn in hopes that the erection smashed inside his jeans would subside.
However, images of her head thrown back as she came with his name tearing from her lips or the way she’d cupped her breasts and offered them to him or her peaked nipple parting the long, silky fall of her hair kept his cock hard, no matter how he fought to banish them.
“Oh, hell!” he muttered, adjusting the denim in an effort to ease the pressure.
He polished off the lasagna and grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler, sipping it as he sagged back against the seat to analyze the real problem.
Why had it been so hard to leave? Work always took precedence in his life. His mother had held three jobs in order to get him the best education she could. His father’s family, who could have spared private school tuition without even noticing it, considered him an unfortunate but minor consequence of a spring-break romance. They pretended he didn’t exist.
He didn’t care about their acknowledgment, but his mother’s life would have been a hell of a lot easier if his father had shown the smallest amount of guts in forcing his family to offer some financial support.
So his mother had dedicated her life to proving that Leland not only existed but was valuable. He owed his success to her. Even more, he owed her his success. He couldn’t fail because that would make all her efforts meaningless.
The headlights from other cars strobed through the limo’s windows, illuminating the rack of wineglasses, the burnished wood paneling, and the hand-rubbed leather of the seats. Riding in this luxurious car, driven by a man who was paid to wait hours for Leland’s convenience, heading back to an office stocked with tens of thousands of dollars of cutting-edge computer equipment purchased for his sole use: This was where all that work had gotten him. And it had been what he wanted.
Until tonight.
He braced his elbows on his knees, lowered his head into his hands, and massaged his temples as a wave of longing swamped him.
Longing for how Dawn had made him feel for a few hours. As though he didn’t have to prove anything.