Working Stiff: Casimir (Runaway Billionaires #1) (26 page)

His bare skin made his tattoos stand out even more abruptly. When her fingers traced over a tendril of tattooed flame over his ribs, the texture of the ink under his skin made her catch her breath.

The dark fire of his tattoos clung to his skin, starting in a swirl of flames around the nipple and flaring over his pec and burly chest. The ink formed a bird’s head that was almost just another sharp tongue of fire, but it had a peacock’s small fan on its head, an open eye, and crying beak. Black flames of the phoenix’s wing shot up and over his shoulder and spiraled down his muscled arm in a full sleeve. The flames ran down his rippled side, along his trim waist and the strong vee of his Adonis belt, and disappeared into the waistband of his jeans.

Lord, the
tattoos,
his
skin,
the rounded and lean
muscles
roping over his body. She could just explore him with her fingertips for
hours.

When she looked up at him, she knew her eyes were too wide, and her grin pulling at her face had to be absolutely gleeful.

Cash laughed and fell forward, catching himself on his elbows to kiss her deeply again. His tongue swirled with hers, and his body flexed above her.

Maybe that thing about having sex in the pitch dark last time had just been a kink. He didn’t seem shy at all right now. Maybe the dark had just been part of
hot and dirty,
and this time, she got to explore him.

She hoped that he didn’t want to turn off the lights. Rox really wanted to see what happened to those tattoos that ran down his side and seemed to trickle past his waistband and belt, and looking at the deep grooves between his hard abdominal muscles and the swells of his chest and arms was
wonderful.

Cash reared up to stand on his knees again. His hand closed around her shoulder, and he lifted her.

He turned her over, the bedsheets warm on her stomach, and he nipped the back of her neck with his teeth. His hands were splayed on both sides of her, and his bare chest rubbed along her back on both sides of her spine like he was dipping down to bite her.

Did he
only
do it from behind?

Or only with her because she was—

She refused to think of any word other than
curvy
right now.

“Do you only do it this way?” she squeaked.

“What way?” He mouthed down her spine to her bra clasp and sat up, straddling her legs, to unhook it. The elastic released around her ribs.

“From behind,” she said.

“I like looking at you like this.” His hands molded her body, caressing her down her ribs and waist to her hips, and he cupped her naked ass with both hands under the swells of it. “And I like
your
behind a great deal.”

Rox pushed herself up to her elbows and turned to look at him.

A devilish half-smile curved his mouth while he stared at her ass. He looked up at her from under his eyelashes without lifting his head. “And then there’s how you look back at me over your shoulder with your lingerie falling off you. That’s delicious.”

He slid his arm under her waist and dragged her up to press against him, throwing her bra aside, and he lifted her boobs in his palms. Her plump boobs overflowed even his large hands. “And I can do this to you.”

Rox could not help herself and arched against him, raising her arms above her head and reaching back to him.

Cash smoothed his thumbs over her nipples with lazy strokes that made her whole body tighten. She gasped and held onto his neck, her eyes closed.

His low voice whispered near her ear, “And then there’s this.” He pushed her down, and she caught herself on her hands and knees. He stepped off the bed and held her hips, pivoting her butt around.

Rox’s eyes flew open. She glanced back at him, about to say something, and he parted her butt cheeks and smiled another one of those devilish, naughty grins that bunched up the bandage on his cheek.

If he was going to shove himself into her hard, she wasn’t quite ready yet, and he was a lot bigger than any other guy she’d ever had.

His head dipped.

Wet warmth pressed her clit, a long, slow swipe, and Rox grabbed onto the bedspread to hold on.

“Oh!”
Rox felt like she couldn’t breathe but she couldn’t keep quiet, either.

He wound slow, lazy circles around her clit with the thick, flat part of his tongue, and then he pushed his mouth against her core, licking her deeply from her top to her center.

Rox’s arms started trembling. Every rub and thrust of his tongue inside her, licking roughly, shot through her. She rocked forward from his force but he pulled her back with his hands around her hips and sucked her clit.

Her arms collapsed and she fell forward, burying her face in the bed. The sheets cooled her cheeks.

As he plundered her with his tongue, her body began to compress, to knot inside.

Rox pushed with her arms, panting,
“Cash!”

He grabbed her hips and flipped her so that she landed on her back, bouncing on the mattress. Heat flooded her, burning for him, and she reached out her arms.
“Please!”

Cash fumbled with his jeans, shoving them and his underwear down his legs. The falling cloth revealed more fiery black ink that traveled down his side, over his trim hips, and flamed out on his muscular thigh.

Rox curled up and braced herself on her elbows.

Licks of fire trailed into the hollow of his hipbone and pointed one needle-like tip toward the dark ruff of hair at the base of his erection. His dusky peach cock stood up, pointing back toward his navel and rippled stomach. She reached out her right hand, sitting up and trailing her fingers down his skin and the ink on his side while he stripped his pants off his feet.

He poked his shaking fingers into one of the pockets of his jeans and came out with a condom packet that he ripped open with his teeth. He slapped the condom on.

He grabbed the blankets around her and shoved, pushing her toward the middle of the bed and sliding the comforter with her, and clambered on. The mattress bent under his weight, and he dove onto her, his mouth hot on her neck and his body heavy on her. His cock nudged her thigh. She tried to slither downward so he could push into her, but he pinned her with his hands under her armpits so that she couldn’t move.

“Cash,” she panted. “Come on.”

“Not yet.”

“I’m good. Please. Please,
now.”

“Lie back,” he growled.

Cash propped himself up on his arms and kissed her, his mouth slanting across hers. The bandage on his cheek tickled hers. When he moved down to open his mouth and use his tongue on one of her breasts, she wiped the tickle off her face.

She saw him glance up and see her rub her cheek, but he went back to running his tongue over her nipples, curling his tongue around them and sucking until she wasn’t thinking about her face anymore. Rox dug her fingers into his thick hair and arched under him.

He kissed her mouth again and lifted up. “Look at me.”

Rox tried to open her eyes, but she pushed her hips up. “Cash—”

“Look at me.”

Her breath fluttered in her chest, but she managed to get her eyes open.
“Please—”

“Look at me,” he said, his voice gruff and low. “Hold onto me.”

She wound her arms around his neck, spreading her hands on his back. Under her right hand, the rough ink of his tattoo felt velvety on her palm.

“Hold onto me,” he said again. He hovered over her, his green eyes dark with passion. “Hold on.”

He moved his hips, bowing his strong back. The tip of him parted her folds, and he slid through her, rubbing his length over her clit.

The sensation shuddered through her, and she arched, closing her eyes.

“Look at me,” he whispered, his lips brushing hers. “Feel me.
Look
at me.”

She opened her eyes again, trying. His lips were parted, and his emerald eyes looked almost tortured.

He said, “Hold onto me.”

Rox slipped one of her hands around to his cheek, the one without the bandage, and pressed her palm to his skin. Her voice choked in her throat, but she managed to whisper, “I am.”

He blinked a few times but didn’t look away from her, and she could feel him pressing into her, so very slowly.

The moment drew out, held suspended around them, and felt like this was their first time, really. Last time, outside, had been
hot and dirty,
all right. They had both been starving for each other.

Now, his body fitted into hers, opening her to him. Pressure built as he filled her with himself, breaching her.

This must be why everyone was so bereft after he left them, because this felt like a hell of a lot more than just
hot and dirty.
The intensity in his green eyes made her shake, but she didn’t let go of him. She held on, resting her palm on his cheek and holding his shoulder with her other hand.

He sank farther inside her until his hips nestled in hers, pressed against her. He was so big, so hard in her that tears wavered in her eyes. Just from the pressure, she told herself, not because this felt like more than sex, more than intimacy.

His wide-open eyes looked like his soul was as open to her as her body was to him.

“Rox,” he whispered, and he started to move in her.

Every stroke rubbed inside her and on her clit, a long slide of increasing ecstasy. He crawled forward over her, bracing himself on his arms above her shoulders and spreading his knees and hers wide to push more deeply into her.

Rox tried to keep her eyes open, she really did. She tried to watch every moment of him because, as she had so often heard, there would not be many moments like this before it was over.

His eyes searched hers, even as they became foggy with passion.

With each of his slow thrusts, she closed her eyes at the top, an instant of blindness and darkness and his body inside hers.

He slid inside her again and again, stroking her.

Those blissful moments lengthened, deepened, until she was wound so tightly that she was crying out but couldn’t hear herself. She clutched him, hanging on, so close to the edge.

Cash held her closer, his arms around her. Her arms were cinched around him, her body rigid as he drove inside her. His breath scorched her shoulder, and she inhaled the male musk of him with every breath.

Her world went white, a starburst of life and joy, and Rox bowed against Cash, her voice harsh in her throat. He growled beside her ear and pushed deeply into her one last time, his body straining against hers.

Rox held onto him, her arms cramping, as she whispered, “Cash, oh Cash.”

He tightened his arms around her and held her for the longest time before he moved away.

Rox pulled the comforter tightly around herself, hiding. No wonder all the other girls in the office were so heartsick after he ghosted on them.

Pain lanced through her heart at just the thought.

She wasn’t going to be able to bear it.

DARKNESS BEFORE THE DAWN

In Cash’s dark bedroom, all through the night, Rox didn’t sleep much. She didn’t know how many nights she would have with Cash spooned around her, his arms and sometimes his leg heavy on her. His warmth and the faint musk from his body, now erotic, filled the sheets around her. She drifted in and out of wakefulness, savoring the moments, trying to remember everything.

This couldn’t last long.

When he stirred, though, he reached for her. When his fingers found her, he quieted and slept.

She hovered on the precipice of sleep, not quite falling over, when Cash’s deep, slow breathing changed in the dark. He inhaled and held it, his head moving near hers, and he rose up on one elbow to look over her before he blew his breath out.

The blue lines on the nightstand clock formed the numbers 6:45. Wan sunlight trickled in through the dark wooden blinds on the window.

He began to shift, lifting the covers and sliding away from her.

“Cash?” she asked, her voice hoarse with sleep.

“I’ll be right back. Go back to sleep.”

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah. I just need to do something.”

“Oh. Pee. Sure.”

Hey, they had been friends for years. On a business trip to Brazil, she had tossed anti-nausea medicine and Gatorade into his hotel bathroom when he had texted her that he was in trouble.

When he came back a few minutes later, the sun had risen farther, and enough sunlight was leaking through the wooden slats that Rox could see him a little better.

He had taped a fresh gauze pad on his cheek.

She asked, “Is it healed up under there? Because if it’s not, you need to see a doctor,” she mumbled.

“It’s healed.”

“Dude,” she said, pushing herself up to her elbows, “you didn’t need to put on a bandage. That’s like the first couple times that we traveled together when I used to get up at five o’clock to shower and put on full make-up and curl my hair before we met at the hotel gym at six-thirty.”

“Yeah, you don’t do that anymore.”

“Heck, no.”

“It was peeling off,” he said. “It itched.”

“It’s just me,” she said, flopping back on the pillow. “I don’t care if there’s a hole in your cheek and I can see your molars through there.”

He chuckled. “It’s certainly not that bad. We can sleep another hour or so before we have to get up.”

Rox smiled as she cuddled closer to him.

The dawn cast ruddy lines through the horizontal blinds. The room gradually brightened, and Rox slept.

THE EARL OF GIVESNOFUCKS

The next morning, after Rox had awakened with Cash’s arms wrapped around her and they had eaten breakfast—she was just getting ready to broach the subject of gathering their papers and laptops to ready themselves for the drive to the office because they had that DiCaprio meeting at one o’clock and they should
both
be there—when Maxence’s deep voice called through the house, “Casimir! I need some help, here!”

The cats, who had been lounging under the kitchen table, sprinted for Rox’s bedroom.

Cash glanced at her, startled, and Rox pushed back from the table. They both ran to the door that led from the garage.