Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (14 page)

The way that the snug denim clung to his long legs, muscular thighs, and slim hips mesmerized her. She wanted to run her hands down his legs.

Almost a month of constant temptation was making her crazy.

All sorts of thoughts crowded in Rox’s head: reaching down to unbutton the bolt on his jeans, leaning over to kiss the healed scar just under his ribs, or just climbing on top of him and hanging on for dear life.

In all of Rox’s ruminations, after she made a move, Cash would wind his fingers through her hair and hold her to his chest. Those brilliant green eyes of his would light for her.

But he would never do that. In three years, he hadn’t made any sort of move, excepting one recent, wine-related, tickling transgression of their very firm boundaries.

And she didn’t want him to.

Right?

Her wedding rings sparkled as she folded the gauze.

Maybe she should buy some new ones.

Bigger ones.

As always, Cash was watching her as she prepared the gauze and the tape. His dark green eyes seemed a little amused, and he watched her so closely, like he might be wondering what she was thinking, too.

But she was being silly.

She peeled off the old dressing, pressing her hand to his bare skin and the thick muscles of his abdomen to keep the tape from pulling and maybe yanking off a chunk of skin.
Ouch.

Underneath, a pink scar creased his skin right below the lower line of his rib cage. The scar was melting into the flesh around it as it healed.

She was still resting her palm on his skin, and he breathed deeply, pushing his rib cage against her hand.

If she moved her fingers, she would be stroking his chest.

She didn’t.

Yet, she left her hand resting on his warm skin, feeling the hard ripples of his abs, and she said, “This looks pretty healed up. I’m not sure it needs a dressing on it much longer.”

Cash said, “The surgeon said I could stop bandaging it at my last appointment a week ago.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you tell me?”

He laughed, rolling away from her and clutching his stomach as he did so.

Rox picked up the gauze and flogged him with the trailing end. The gauze unrolled like a streamer and skittered off the side of the bed. “Cash Friso Amsberg! I declare, you will be the death of me! This is just like you, too.”

He rolled to his knees, bracing himself and laughing at her. “How is it just like me?”

“Taking advantage of my kind and caring nature! You’re a cad!” Even though she was laughing, she crawled backward off the bed. “Is the cut on your face healed up, too?”

Cash grabbed the white bandage on his cheek. “No.”

Decision: joke about it or be real?

Now.
She had to decide
now.

Joke.

Rox vaulted across the bed, scampering on her hands and knees to get at him. “Gimme that!”

Cash stepped backward. “Rox,
no.”

She launched off the side of the bed and flung herself against his chest. “Come on! Let’s see it.”

“No!”
He tried to step back, but she was already falling with him.

They ended up in a heap on the floor, but dirt wrassling comes far more naturally to Southern kids than it does to men raised in Swiss boarding schools.

Rox wound up on top. She elbowed away his defending hands and reached, careful about her nails, and pinched the end of the tape that had already peeled up.

Cash blocked her hand with one arm, knocking her fingers loose, and his other hand slid around her.

As soon as his strong arm slid around her waist, Rox knew that she had made a mistake. He wasn’t joking around anymore, and he was a lot bigger and stronger than she was.

His arm settled on her hips, and he pushed up, tipping her over.

The look on his face wasn’t angry, not at all.

He rolled with her, pinning her arms to her sides. In a second, he was on top. His strong, half-naked body pushed between her thighs.

Indeed, it appeared that they had ended up in one of his most accustomed positions.

She yelled, “Hey! Get off me, you big lunk!”

His hair, shaggy from not being cut for weeks longer than normal, flopped over his forehead and around his ears, those natural blond streaks running through it. The heat from his body seeped through her clothes, and when she shoved at him, her weak attempt at a push felt a lot more like she was grabbing his strong shoulders.

His strong, naked shoulders that were rounded with hard muscle.

Between her legs, his waist was lean, a hard line of muscle and sinew.

He froze, staring into her eyes.

His green eyes flicked back and forth, searching for something.

He had pushed himself up on his arms, strong muscles straining, and he hovered over her, still looking into her eyes.

A lingering whiff of his soap and a faint scent of his natural musk—a clean, male scent—drifted to her.

Rox knew she should be pushing him off of her, that she should tell him to get off, but she stroked up his shoulder, up his neck, and cupped his cheek in her palm.

He turned his head slightly, almost touching his lips to her wrist, but he kept watching her.

Everything that the other girls had warned her about Cash turned nebulous and fled, and Rox could see only his dark green eyes, so conflicted, so oddly vulnerable.

He said, “Say yes.”

Rox’s fingers trailed up into his hair, feeling the short silk between her fingers. She whispered, “Yes.”

He dipped like a push-up and took her lips with his.

Oh, God.

His warm mouth caressed her, encouraging her to open her lips, to let him stroke her tongue with his, let him kiss her more and more deeply until he was slanted across her mouth, braced on his elbows, his body pressing hers. He was still between her legs, and he moved, just a little, just a press of his jeans against her.

Rox tightened her arms around his neck, and she gasped at the slow friction between her legs.

She hadn’t been kissed at all for months, at least ten and a half months, and she had never been kissed like
that.
His mouth stroked and sucked her lips, his tongue rubbing hers, and everything he did made her think of what his mouth and tongue could do to other places on her body. He didn’t hesitate at all, and he coaxed her, seduced her, until she was breathless and mindless, desperately wanting
more.

He slowed, sucking gently at her lips, until he rested his forehead against hers. His breath was restless in his lungs, and his eyes were closed. He turned his head slightly so that the gauze bandage didn’t brush her face.

He whispered, “When is your husband getting home from Thailand?”

Every cell in her body wanted to tell him the truth, to open herself to him and beg him to wrap his arms around her and take her. His hard body was so warm against hers, and she trembled inside.

She said, “He called a few days ago. Another month.”

Cash’s grunt sounded like he had been gut-punched. “Rox—”

Her arms tightened around his neck of their own volition, almost pulling him down to kiss her again. Truly, her arms were doing this without her meaning to. Every time she breathed, her breasts pressed against his chest.

“This was an accident,” he whispered. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

He rocked back on his knees and hesitated, his head hanging, before he stood and helped her up.

Rox smoothed her slacks. “Cash—”

“We were drunk,” he said, his bare chest still working as he breathed. “We need to cut down on the wine. If you tell Grant, say that it was my fault. I was a horny bastard and couldn’t control myself.”

“That’s not what happened.” She leaned, almost stepping forward to wrap her arms around him. Her knees felt like they might collapse under her.

“It
is
what happened. It’s what I’ll tell him if he wants to know. I’m the type of asshole who would try to fuck a married woman. Just ask anyone.”

“That’s not what they say.” They said that wedding-ring diamonds were his kryptonite and that he never, ever made plays for married women, and he hadn’t ever with her. “And that’s not what I’ll tell him.”

When Cash looked up, a spark of anger lit his eyes. “Tell him that I said that you were beautiful and that I was there when you needed someone to take care of you.”

DETOUR

The next morning, Cash was sitting out on the deck when Rox found him. An empty cereal bowl lay on the table beside him, and the steaming mug beside him was probably his second cup from the sharp look in his eyes.

“Morning,” she said.

Cash cleared his throat. “Good morning.”

Oh, so formal. Not that anything was weird between them. No, sirree.

She said, “Since it’s Sunday, I’m going to the animal shelter where I volunteer. Do you want to come along?”

See? She was totally nonchalant. It wasn’t that darned hard.

Nevermind the fact that she had dreamed about Cash all damn night long. Every time she turned around in her dreams, he was there, holding out his hand, looming over her, whispering, “Say yes.”

No wonder he could have any woman he wanted.

In the brilliant morning sunshine streaming from behind the house, Cash gestured to his laptop. “I’ve been working on Valerie’s contracts. I did a spreadsheet this morning, and it appears that ten percent of them have gross irregularities. We need more evidence before we confront her.”

Spreadsheet? Rox revised her coffee estimate to three cups. He must have gotten up early.

Or not slept.

She said, “Come with me. The shelter is pretty close to here.”

“I really can’t.”

“Come on, give me company. They give newbie volunteers the cushy jobs like walking the good dogs and socializing the kittens.”

He typed something, bit his lower lip for a moment, and then said, “I was terribly drunk last night. I don’t remember a damn thing. Did anything happen?”

He was dodging the subject and ghosting again, saying that the kiss was just an illusion, that they could turn it to gossamer and blow it away like it had never existed.

Like hell.

Rox braced her hands on the arms of his chair and leaned over his laptop screen.

Cash looked up at her, startled. The bruises and scrapes from the accident had mostly healed, and he was gorgeous, stunning Cash Amsberg again except for that damn bandage on his face.

She said, “Don’t tell me that that kiss didn’t exist. That kiss meant the world to me, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was real. Don’t pretend that it didn’t happen.”

“You’re married,” he said. The flatness in his voice disturbed her. “It didn’t matter.”

“It mattered to
me,”
she said. “Even if nothing can go any further between us because it’ll just end badly and hurt everyone, it mattered to
me.”
That was
all
the truth.

He stroked her cheek with the back of his knuckles. “You’re married,” he said, his eyes turning kind. “I can’t even argue because you’re married.”

She didn’t want to say,
What if I wasn’t?
because the answer was obvious.

If she wasn’t married, he would have fucked and chucked her by now because that was what he always did.

“Fine,” she said. “We won’t argue. Come to the animal shelter with me.”

If she hadn’t been right in his face, close enough to kiss him with only a quick move, she would have missed the subtle shuttering of his eyes and his faint sigh. His glance down looked like the whole world had come crashing down on him.

He said, “No thanks,” and began to type.

“You haven’t left this house since you came home from the hospital except for doctors’ appointments, and then it’s run in, run out, and no stops on the way home.”

“I’ve been recovering.” His tone wasn’t petulant. It was flat, just flat, just stating his truth.

Every ounce of energy had drained out of him. Emotionally, he was lying on the floor with his eyes closed.

She said, “Tomorrow, you have to go to the office for the Watson contract discussion. You have to tell them about the irregularities in the wording.”

“We’ll consider that tomorrow.” He went back to typing.

GIMME SHELTER

Rox walked into the animal shelter, way out on a county road, staggering under a thirty-pound bag of cat food on one shoulder and a thirty-pound bag of dog food on the other. “Yo! Brandy! I’m here!”

Brandy, short for Brandiwine Washington, bustled out of the back room. “Ho, there! Long time, no see! What are you doing!” She hurried over and dragged at one of the bags. “Gimme that.”

“It weighs as much as you do!” Rox protested, grabbing at it, but Brandy already had it in her wiry arms.

“You don’t have to buy these, you know.”

“And yet these animals have to be fed somehow.”

“The county is supposed to feed them.”

“I know you buy food for the shelter out of your own pocket, and there’s another bag of cat food in the car.”

Brandy’s thin arms were dark stripes grappling the white bag. “That’s immaterial.”

“Come on. I’m just itchin’ to clean out those litter boxes.”

Brandy snorted. “Good. We have a noob coming in this afternoon. I want this place to smell nice so that she’ll come back. I think I’ll have her socialize the kittens.”

“Oh, that’s a rough job, playing with the kittens.” Rox thumped the bag of cat food on the floor in the food storage area. “But I guess someone has to do it.”

“Speaking of wild cats, someone brought in a stray. From the look of her, I think she’s feral, but she might just be frightened out of her little wits. I don’t know what we’re going to do if she’s truly feral. Why don’t you see if you can make some headway with her?”

Rox stretched her back. “Aren’t the Emersons taking any more barn cats?”

Brandy shook her head. “They’re full up. We’ve got to find a new farm with a nice, solid barn for any new feral cats.”

“Oh.” Not a lot of farms needed barn cats in urban L.A. “Well, I’ll take a look at her.”

“I tried to call you yesterday,” Brandy said, hefting the heavy sack over her head and pouring the kibble into a dispenser. “Your phone was disconnected.”