30DaystoSyn (6 page)

Once again she nodded, more afraid of him than
she had been before entering the room. Her intent to defy him vanished like dew
in the hot sun of morning.

“It pleases me to provide for you,” he said
and his tone softened just a bit. “I’m not buying you, Melina. I am investing
in you. Can you comprehend the difference or am I flattering your
intelligence?”

She raised her chin—aching to berate him
for insulting her—but she remained silent.

“I asked you—”

“Yes Sir,” she said and watched his eyes
flare.

“I didn’t give you permission to speak!” he
snapped at her and when she arched a brow, he shook his head. “Don’t do it
again until I ask you—” He stopped, apparently realizing the wording he’d used
before she spoke, then let out a long, hard breath.

Impossibly he moved closer until she could
feel the press of his cock against her lower belly. At the contact she sucked
in a quiet breath and when he slowly slid his arms around her and drew her body
tight to his, she had no choice but to turn her head to rest her cheek against
his chest. Not knowing what to do with her hands and hoping he wouldn’t rebuke
her for doing so, she placed them cautiously on his rib cage. She heard him
sigh.

He simply held her for a moment or two
without speaking, without moving, then she felt his palm soothing over her
back.

“I know what it is to be hungry,” he said
quietly. “I want you to eat. Okay?”

She nodded against his chest. She could
hear the steady beat of his heart, the rumble of his voice through the
dark-green T-shirt he was wearing. He smelled so good and she wondered what
cologne it was he wore. The scent aroused her.

His hand moved up to cup her head—pressing
it closer to him—and his other arm tightened around her waist.

“Are you
afraid
of me?” he asked,
moving his hand to her neck. “Ah, you are. I can feel the blood pounding in
this vein.” He traced it with his thumb. “I’m not going to hurt you, baby. I’m
going to make you feel really good.”

Just as she began to relax against him, he
released her and stepped back. “You may leave now,” he said then turned his
back on her and walked back into the darkness, disappearing as though the room
had swallowed him.

For a second or two she stared into the
blackness beyond the shaft of light coming from overhead then angrily pursed
her lips. She spun on her heel and marched to the door, savagely twisted the
deadbolt open, yanked open the door then slammed it behind her as hard as she
could.

He was trembling as he moved back to his
chair. A raging hard-on stabbed at the front of his jeans and when the door
slammed shut, he jumped.

“Temper, temper, little beaut,” he said
then snorted.

Slowly he took a seat in the overstuffed
wingback and put a hand to his crotch. He hurt he wanted her so badly. Feeling the
treacherous organ leap at his touch, he snatched his hand away. He was
determined to refrain from rubbing one out though he wanted to so badly he
could taste the need in his mouth.

He laid his head along the back of the
chair and closed his eyes. He had not instructed her not to wear perfume so she
had. It was a light, delicate scent and it drove straight to his libido and did
things to his groin that should have been illegal. He wanted to know precisely
what brand that perfume was because he intended to buy a couple of gallons of
it. It was all he ever wanted her to wear.

The image of her wearing nothing at all
save the perfume made him groan.

His cock hard as steel and throbbing in his
tight jeans, there was no way he could ignore the pain beating at him. More
than ever he wanted her beneath him. He wanted to be tight inside her untried
cunt, filling her with every inch of him. He wanted to fasten his lips on her
nipples and suckle until she was moaning with the same depth of need goading
him.

But it wasn’t time yet.

It wasn’t anywhere near time yet.

He groaned again and shifted uncomfortably
in the chair. In denying her, he was denying himself but when the time came to
take her, the wait will have been worth it.

She shoved the outside door open and hurried
to the Town Car.

“Are you all right?” Jono asked. He had
been leaning against the front quarter panel with his arms folded when she came
bursting out of the building. He’d quickly straightened, arms going to his
sides, eyes concerned.

“Just open the damn door,” she said, trying
to hold back the tears that hovered behind her lids.

“What happened?” he asked as he pulled the
door open for her then shook his head as though he realized he shouldn’t ask.

“I don’t want to talk,” she said as she
threw herself into the car.

All the way back to her house, she stared
out the window not seeing anything beyond the glass. Her lower body was aching.
It felt heavy—damp—from his body having been pressed to hers. If just the touch
of his body could cause such a reaction, she thought, what would his actual
lovemaking do? What degree of unbridled lust would his hands on her cause?

A hard shiver ran through her at the
thought of that hard bulge that had pressed so intimately against her. If that
hardness was any indication of what lay behind the denim of his jeans, she knew
she was in for a helluva wild ride.

Night Three

She was surprised to see a straight-back
chair placed within the cone of light. Bottom lip tucked between her teeth, she
took her place in front of it, fingers twitching at her sides.

There was no wait this night.

“Unbutton your blouse.”

A quiver ran down her spine and heat pulsed
between her legs at his words. She put her hands on the buttons and was working
her way down them as he came out of the darkness. She lowered her eyes to the
last button as she pulled her blouse from the waistband of her skirt.

“Look at me,” he ordered.

She brought her eyes back to him. He had
stopped about two feet from her. Once more he was dressed in jeans—black this
time—and a pale blue T-shirt with the national flag of New Zealand emblazoned
across the front. She started to shrug out of the blouse.

“I didn’t tell you to take it off.”

She stopped—hands curled around the two
sides of the blouse.

“Hands down,” he told her.

She did as he commanded.

One step and he was close enough to touch
her. She watched his right hand come up and she tensed, held her breath.

He placed the tips of his fingers against
the soft hollow at the base of her throat where she knew her pulse was racing
like crazy. She knew because she could hear the thud of blood beating against
her eardrums.

Slowly, he dragged his fingers down her
chest to the front closure of her bra. He tipped his head slightly to the right
then pushed her blouse to one side and over the lace cup of her bra, tucking it
between the side of her breast and her arm. Unhurriedly, he molded his palm to
her breast and gently squeezed. Though his palm wasn’t in contact with her
nipple, she could feel it harden.

“I don’t like this bra,” he said, running
his thumb along the underwire beneath her breast. “You should always wear lace
and I hate these damn wires. A woman’s breasts should not be caged.”

She knew when she came home from work
tomorrow, the bras he preferred would be delivered the same way the ton of
groceries he’d ordered had been that morning.

She stopped breathing as he tightened his
hold on her breast and twisted gently from side to side. A small smile tugged
at the corners of his mouth and his eyes took on a boyish gleam of
mischievousness as he stared at her breast.

“I love boobies,” he said and the word made
her laugh despite the intensity of the moment. The moment his eyes flashed up
to hers, she knew that had been the wrong thing to do. Her laughter stopped and
the smile slid quickly from her face.

The warmth and impishness left his gaze. He
glared at her for a few heartbeats then snatched his hand back.

“You may leave now.”

Frustrated, her breast tingling from his
touch, the heaviness between her legs gripping her, she took a step away from
the anger on his handsome face. The backs of her knees struck the wooden chair
and had it not been for his quick reaction, she would have fallen backward over
it. As it was, he snaked out a hand and grabbed her upper arm, pulling her to
him to keep her from falling.

“Watch what the hell you’re doing!” he
snapped. “You could have been hurt!”

She opened her mouth to tell him it was his
fault she’d almost fallen but he moved so quickly all she could do was gasp as
his mouth came down hard, his lips covering hers, his tongue thrusting boldly
between her teeth.

The man knew how to kiss! Dear Lord did he
know how to kiss! she thought as her knees buckled beneath his assault. Had he
not been gripping her upper arms, she might well have sagged to the floor. The
kiss was brutally hot and his tongue expertly probed her mouth. The heat and
hardness of his body as he clutched her to him sent waves of sheer lust
rippling through her cunt. She heard him groan and answered in kind as his kiss
turned from hot to scalding. His hands slid from her arms to the sides of her
face as he anchored her head—the better to press his mouth to hers.

She clung to him. Her fingers snagged in
the back of his T-shirt. Peripherally she could feel the tensing of the muscles
in his back as he ground his lower body against hers.

He was feeding from her. Drawing from her.
His mouth was sweet, his tongue wet and questing. The firmness of his lips
covering her own was a heady experience in itself.

“Melina,” he whispered huskily against her
lips then twisted his mouth over hers in the opposite direction.

She didn’t know what to call him. It wasn’t
right that she didn’t know. She
wanted
to know his name. She
had
to know his name but she dared not ask.

Almost as though someone had thrown iced
water over him, he jerked away from her, stumbling back with eyes wide and lips
parted. He stared at her as though she would attack him then shook his head
savagely.

“Leave,” he said in a deep, grating tone.
“Leave now!”

His hands were opening and closing and he
was dragging shallow, harsh breaths into his lungs. The look on his face
disturbed her and she all but ran to the door. In her haste, she didn’t close
it behind her. Instead of waiting for the elevator—she wanted to get away from
the threat she’d seen stamped on his face—she shoved the door to the stairs
open and hurried down them.

Scraping his hand over his short hair, he
spun around and went to the laptop on the desk. He wanted to see her in the
elevator. He needed to see her face. He needed to know how his kiss had
affected her. But when he raised the lid and found the screen with the elevator
empty—as well as the screen that showed the closed door of the cage—he hissed
like a cornered panther with his lips drawn back from his teeth.

“You took the fucking stairs?” he shouted.
“The stairs, Melina?”

There were no cameras in the stairwell. An
oversight on his part but come tomorrow there would be.

His gaze shifted to the front door as she
came running out of the building. He barely had time to type in instructions to
switch one of the screens to an interior shot of the car before she collapsed
in the seat—her hands over her face.

“Did he hurt you?” he heard Jono demand.
His friend was leaning into the car, his hands on the door opening. “Lina, did
he hurt you?”

“No,” she said. “Take me home, Jonny.
Please?”

“Jonny? Lina?” he repeated silently and the
snake of jealousy hissed and struck. When, he wondered, had she taken to
calling him Jonny? How dare he call her Lina?

It didn’t matter, he thought.

He’d put a fucking stop to that shit!

“
No, I didn’t fucking hurt her. Get in
the goddamn car and take her home
!” he yelled.

He watched with satisfaction as Jono
flinched and slapped a hand to the ear bud nestled in his right ear. Jono
turned his head and glared into the camera where only he and the installer knew
it was as he yanked the ear bud from his ear.

“Knob head,” he saw Jono mouth before his
friend shut the door and walked around to the driver’s side.

“
Don’t you fucking call her by her given
name again
!” he shouted but he doubted Jono could hear him.

That was okay too. He’d have a talk with
his friend before the night was through!

All the way home in the car, she shifted
uncomfortably in the seat. Need—deep and abiding—had built between her legs and
she knew of only one way to assuage it.

Day Four

“No session tonight.”

No explanation either, she thought as he
hung up the phone. He’d sounded angry, but then again, he almost always did.
Relieved and disappointed at the same time, she replaced the receiver and sat
down at her kitchen table.

What now? she wondered. What was she to do
with her evening?

She’d spent the day with Drew. In less than
two months Friendship Manor would be closed and Drew would be moved either to a
state-run home or—with any luck at all—Cedar Oaks. The premier long-term care
facility was holding a bed for him and she knew that was because
he
had
made it so. She suspected—though the officious woman at CO would not admit to
it—that he had already paid for Drew’s place there.

“You’ve got more confidence in me staying
the course than I do,
Sir
,” she mumbled as she swiped at some crumbs on
the tabletop that she’d missed with the dishrag.

Sir.

The word poked at her like a stick to a
wasp nest. It kept buzzing around in her head and she was beginning to hate the
title.

“There’s got to be a way I can find out who
the hell you are,” she said.

How did one go about finding out the
identity of someone if you didn’t know their name?

“Fingerprints,” she said. “DNA. Facial
recognition.”

All the ways the guys from NCIS and CSI
would go about it, she thought with a snort. None of which she had access to.

But she did have a computer and the World
Wide Web was only a few keystrokes away.

“I’ll bet you own that office building if
not the entire park,” she said. “Why didn’t I think about that before?”

Getting up, she hurried into the living
room and over to her desk. The computer was already on, connected to the
internet. She pulled out her chair, sat down and put her hands on the mouse.
Instantly the black screen gave way to her Hotmail homepage. She noticed she
had three messages but ignored them as she moved the mouse to the address bar
so she could type in the address.

“I don’t know the address,” she said with a
whimper.

And not because she hadn’t tried to
discover it, she thought. She knew how to get to the office park but she’d
never seen any street signs off the Morrison Parkway. She’d seen no building
numbers or names. At night, the only building out there that had any manner of
lighting was the one to which Jonny took her. If there were numbers and names
they would have been hidden in the darkness. The trouble was she’d scanned the
building she visited each night and had never seen number or name attached to
it.

She might not know the name of the office
park but she did know how to get to those buildings!