“I’m surprised he hasn’t fired her.” Asha picked up Kade’s tie and jacket, ready to put them in the dry-cleaning pile in the laundry room.
“I think he secretly likes her, in an antagonistic kind of way. And she’s damn good at her job. Travis knows things at the office would descend into total chaos without her,” Kade mused, sitting down on the bed to pull off his shoes. “Put those back or I’ll put you over my knee,” Kade growled. “You aren’t my servant. I’ll take care of them…eventually.”
Asha’s eyes shot to Kade’s face. He was completely serious, and he wasn’t happy. Flustered, she tried to think of how to explain that sometimes she liked to do things for him. “I was just—”
“I’ll give you three seconds to put them back,” he said with deadly calm.
“Kade, I don’t mind—”
“One.” His voice was serene, but laced with warning.
Oh, how Asha wanted to argue. She didn’t fear Kade, and she wanted to help him once in a while. He’d done so much for her. She didn’t feel like she had to clean up after him. It was so different when she actually was doing something for someone who appreciated her. She wanted to help him, and she liked touching and smelling anything that belonged to him. His scent was so intoxicating, so masculine.
“Two.” The warning note in his voice was more pronounced. He dropped the other shoe and his eyes roved over her bare legs, exposed in a pair of old jeans that she had cut off to wear to work around the house. His eyes slowly moved upward, his gaze caressing her br**sts and the ni**les that were beginning to pebble with excitement beneath her old red tank top.
“What if I want to do it? What if I do it just because I love to handle your clothes because they smell like you?” she answered in a breathless rush, knowing they were in a struggle that was about so much more than just her waiting on him. She was actually calling his bluff, daring him to touch her. He’d been remote, careful…and she wanted to see his eyes torrid with passion again, the way they had been when he’d taken her to paradise in the kitchen with his mouth and fingers. The hand holding his jacket and tie were trembling, but she didn’t move. Heat pooled between her thighs, and her ni**les were as hard as diamonds. She stood there, waiting.
“Three,” he growled, springing off the bed and wrapping a corded, muscular arm around her waist. Plucking the jacket and tie out of her hands, he tossed them on the floor and pulled her down on the bed, where she lay sprawled on top of his brawny, ripped body.
Asha struggled to breathe, the feel of his hot, taut, hard muscle beneath her making her heart stutter and rendering her completely breathless. Pushing back the curtain of hair that had tumbled down from its confining clip and into her face, she looked at him, shocked. His arm was still clamped around her waist, holding her prisoner on top of him. And his eyes were like pools of deep blue fire.
“I’m sorry. You don’t understand,” she said tremulously.
Kade removed the clip that was now hanging from her hair carefully and tossed it to the floor. “You can’t say shit like that and not expect me to respond,” Kade said huskily, spearing his fingers into her hair. “If you like the way I smell, handle the real thing,” he demanded. “Touch me, Asha, before I lose my mind. Fuck the clothes; I need your hands on me more.”
It was a command she didn’t want to and couldn’t resist. Her trembling fingers started working the buttons on his shirt, desperate to find his warm, bare skin. She fumbled, unable to look away from his intent expression. Having him need her, if only for a little while, was intoxicating and potent. No man had ever looked at her the way Kade was, and her body was answering his beckoning pheromones, the need to have him inside her almost painful.
“I’m not sure how you want to be touched,” she said nervously, her fingers itching to feel his hot skin.
Kade groaned as she pulled his shirt open and tentatively placed her palms on his muscled chest. “It doesn’t matter. Any way you want.”
Asha moved to straddle his body and wriggled down further, her smoldering core cradling his engorged cock. His skin was fiery and smooth beneath her fingertips, and she feathered her hands over his chest, hesitantly at first, sighing at the feel of all his leashed strength and power beneath her.
Suddenly, it didn’t matter that she shouldn’t be doing this or that she was only here for a job. It might be a mistake to get too attached to Kade, but the fiery need that seethed between them couldn’t be denied any longer. Just once, Asha wanted to feel what it would be like to be needed, desired in the way she knew Kade wanted her.
“These are beautiful.” Her fingers stroked over the tattoo of a colorful phoenix rising from fire on the right side of his chest. After she finished tracing the fierce phoenix, she moved to the other side of his chest to stroke over the rendering of a dragon, predominantly black, but with red, orange, and dark blue intermingled in the scales. There was a fiery football gripped in his ragged teeth. “I suppose this one was a reminder to win your games?”
“The guys all called me ‘The Dragon’ because I always wore my lucky dragon shirt on game days,” he replied raggedly. “Some bastard stole it from the locker room, so I got a permanent tat because I didn’t have my shirt anymore.”
Asha moved her fingers back over the phoenix. It reminded of her of her butterfly, only his creature was soaring with its wings fully spread, straight out of the fire licking at its long, feathered tail. “And this one?”
“Travis has it, too. We were together and drinking one night and decided to get it during the scandal of the death of our parents. It’s the only time I’ve actually seen Travis drunk. We swore we’d rise above being the crazy Harrison family.”
“You did,” Asha answered quietly, admiring Kade’s ferocity to overcome his past. It made her all the more determined to become independent and strong. Mia, Kade, and Travis might still have some remnants that haunted them from their childhood, but they’d all risen like the fiery phoenix on Kade’s chest.
Kade groaned as Asha started to move lower, tracing the happy trail of light hair that ran from his navel to the top of his pants. His body was sculpted so beautifully, and the tattoos just added to his masculine aura.
Fire licked at her entire body, demanding that she have this man, and she was tired of denying herself.