Eli was trying to drive her insane. She’d not been prepared for the urgency from him, the echoes of her own hunger on the lips of the man she had lusted after since the day she’d met him. Now all the dark looks and all the hot possibilities she saw in his eyes, the ones she almost thought she had imagined, were manifesting in breath-stealing, shocking, vividly tinged reality.

“Put your hands back.”

She planed her palms against the washer top. A sharp, hot edge of metal flavored her next inhalation as he disturbed the mass of coins in the washer. She didn’t know what he had planned, but impatience made her squirm. This morning she had been a restrained, polite answer to his every professional whim, but now restraint was out the window. What was Eli waiting for? Here she was, bent at the waist, nearly naked in front of him, and he was busy stirring quarters?

Bea’s legs trembled, her pussy wet with a searing, empty ache. His cock branded the seam of her ass, the cloth that remained between them little barrier to the thick imprint of him. She struggled not to turn and strip him as bare as her heart felt—naked, stricken, utterly vulnerable. She wanted his hands on her again.

“I want you to realize how important it is that the accounts be recorded correctly. All mistakes reflect on us. Every number missed makes us look ten times the fool.”

She wanted to move, to kiss him, to touch him, hell, to touch herself. She was soaking wet and each passing second only made her wetter. He was what she wanted. Now.

“Do you want to know how others will see this mistake?” Eli lifted his right hand, the one not occupied in the steaming water, and ran it up the slope of her hip. He spoke at the juncture of her ear and neck, his breath warm.

“Each cent,” he said, “is a weight against us, a mark of incompetence in the eyes of the clients we serve.”

Bea heard him lift the fingers of his left hand from the water, heard the wet slide of metal over metal as he removed one of the coins.

“I’ve worked hard for my business.”

She was trembling, close to begging, confused and aroused and in awe of how she could acquiesce so readily to him. In the world outside this steamy laundry, she was autonomous and her will was her own, but here, now…she was his. She would do anything to have him ease the fiery need that he had kindled inside her.

Just touch me, damn you, she wanted to scream.

He flattened a quarter to the small of her back. Heat bit into her skin and she arched, crying out. Before she could process the small pain, he whisked it away. The hard-edged burn of the coin was replaced with the erotic slide of his firm, expert lips and the wet, rough rasp of his tongue. The echo of the coin’s fire was deeper than skin. It seared into her soul. The soft precision of his lips was a quelling balm.

Bea’s knees went weak so fast that she nearly fell. Eli caught her with an arm around her waist. His mouth made amends for the hurt he had caused before he moved away momentarily. His free hand dipped into the water again. She braced against the washer and at the burn of the second coin, bit back on her cry and refined it into a soft, breathy exhalation that was part prayer and part plea.

“What was that?” Eli traced his tongue over the small red circle she knew must mark her skin.

Bea hissed as he lined a series of five, six more coins in quick succession up her spine, and her eyes watered with the sting. She gasped for breath, and he swept the cooling quarters from the bowed curve of her back. The scrape of his teeth and more feathery sweeps of his tongue ramped up her arousal to a point of near delirium.

Her thighs ran with the slippery evidence of how violently she was reacting to his touch. Her nipples were painfully tight against the cool surface of the washer, and her remaining clothes chafed against her ultra-sensitive skin.

“Eli, please,” she begged.

“Please, what?”

If she gave him the words, he would touch her again. He would ease her out of the greedy mania of want and into the all-consuming perfection of pleasure at his hands.

“Mr. Elliot, please.”

Bea didn’t know the extent of what she was asking. She had the briefest thought that she should ask him what the hell he was thinking, what all of this was really about, if he planned on reverting to the ice prince come Monday morning. The thought was pitifully brief, however, because Eli deftly unhooked her bra. A fiery, rapid new round of monetary adornment crossed her shoulders, into the dip between her shoulder blades. He raked his hand down the line, and the coins scattered, some spinning violently on the washer’s top, some bouncing to the linoleum at their feet.

“Please, what?” he demanded again, scooping his fingers over her hip and into the edge of her panties, his thumb digging just under her hipbone to urge her back against him. The ridge of his erection was unmistakable as her ass met him, flush. Bea ground back against him.

“I’m waiting, Bea.”

Lord, that voice. The same timbre and tilt, as forceful as she’d imagined in her fantasies. She couldn’t find words.

You.

Now. Now. Now.

Eli leaned away. The ragged, scalding edge to his voice matched the temperature of the next coin that he rolled along the side of her neck. He pressed it flat behind her ear.

She moaned, bucked, and ejected through clenched teeth, “I…I don’t know what I want.”

“You do know. You’re lying. You’re just adding to the trouble you’re in.”

Bea wanted him to give up this rough, teasing stretch of what was amounting to pure erotic torture and just get inside her. She didn’t care how it changed things, didn’t care to think of how she would live afterward if he used her and tossed her aside.

“I want…” You, forever, just like this.

“Say it,” he growled.

Bea was in a freefall. She had nothing to cling to but her love for Eli, and if she gave him that, it could become more vapor than substance. Was passion all he was offering?

“I want you inside of me.”

And then he was gone, the imposing press of his body rocking away to leave her exposed in the humid air of the laundry. She almost turned.

“Spread your legs.”

Pulsing, blind with need, she obeyed. Another coin bit, unexpected, into the soft curve of her ass. She moaned.

“Stay still.”

Three more coins followed, each nip of heat sending streaking spasms to her still-empty pussy. He hadn’t given her what she’d asked for. Just when she thought she would expire in a massive puddle of want, she felt the first glide of his fingers over her swollen slit. Eli’s voice came from below her. He had knelt.

“Inside you how?”

He had touched her like this in his office. She had gone mad for him, wild, but it wasn’t enough. Not now.

“Not like that.”

He paused. “No? Why?”

“Not enough.”

“Not enough?” His laugh was sultry and mischievous. “Sweet, hot little Bea. I’ll give you more.”

Bea shivered when she felt his mouth at the base of her spine, gliding over the upper curve of her ass. The last four coins still clung there as he gripped her hips in his palms and raked his teeth down the arch of her left cheek. She cried out. Eli flattened his tongue wetly over her, deftly lifting the cooled quarters from her skin. His fingertips skimmed between her legs, finding her aching clit and circling it softly. Not enough.

She heard him spit the coins out. He would stand now and he’d give her what she wanted. Every hot, hard inch, as roughly as she’d imagined.

He didn’t stand.

“What if I told you this is all you got, Bea? What if you weren’t allowed any more?”

“Please.”

He circled, still too gently. She tried to press her hips forward to increase the pressure, but he pulled away.

“What if I made you stand here and I touched your pussy for hours, until you couldn’t bear it?”

“Eli, please,” she nearly sobbed.

He grabbed her roughly, forced her thighs wider. He yanked the fabric of her panties aside.

“What if all you got were my fingers, my mouth?” He bit the inside of her leg.

She writhed back at him. Oh, his mouth. That would be better. That would be… “Yes, yes, your mouth.”

He opened his lips over her from behind, swiped his tongue upward and forced her hips backward, hard. She fisted her hands against the washer, all the breath leaving her body. Eli growled against her and started her rocking against his tongue.

“Oh. God.”

It was all she could say, over and over as he nearly lifted her, wedging his shoulders between her thighs, making wet, animalistic sounds as he licked and burrowed and sucked at her. She rode his mouth shamelessly, too far gone to care. She didn’t care if anyone walked in. They could be standing in the middle of the Georgia Dome with the whole city watching and she still wouldn’t care.

On tiptoes, she bore back as much as he would let her, wanting the swift, abrasive ferocity of his tongue on her clit. If this was all she could have, she could die a happy woman. She climbed steadily higher, her hips jerking as Eli buried a thumb in her drenched folds and pressed in swift, hard circles over just the right spot.

Almost there.

She chanted his name, she bucked and moaned and thrashed. He swept a hand up the cleft of her ass to rim that taboo spot, the tight passage he’d promised to take. Tauntingly, he circled and she froze.

Would he…?

He slid sharply upward and caught her clit between his teeth, suckling hard as he slipped that finger, slick from her own wetness, inside.

She came too hard to scream, the ripping orgasm seizing her violently enough that she could only gasp and claw for air. There was no oxygen left for sound; it was burned up on inhale and used to keep her from fragmenting into a million permanently shattered bits of glory.

She floated down slowly, weak. Eli held her so hard, she knew she’d have bruises tomorrow.

He disentangled himself from under her and the room was thickly silent.

“Turn around.”

Bea obeyed, and her stomach hollowed and then filled with flame at the sight of the dark, wild man who she found in place of the normally straight-laced Eli. There wouldn’t be any stopping now. She pulled at the shreds of her shirt, dropping the tatters to the floor. She lifted her hands to wrench his shirt from his waistband as he went for his own belt. The sound of their breathing was the only thing that broke the silence as they worked to bare him.

He fumbled in his back pocket, and there was the sound of tearing foil as Bea popped the button at his waist. When his slacks dropped, his shirttails dangling loose, his boxers the only thing left between her hands and his skin, she stopped. He looked at her from under hooded eyes, waiting, daring her to take away the last barrier between them.

Instead of relieving him of that last stitch, she wiggled back and hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her own panties, shimmying out of them and stepping free.

He went incredibly still, and his eyes swept her slowly. Her stomach did a nervous flip.

“Undress me.”

When she hesitated, he caught her hand and lifted it to his lips.

“You are unbelievably beautiful,” he said, soft and reverent. Bea grasped at his words, bolstered by them, emboldened. “And I want your hands on me. Stroke my cock. Now.”

She worked his boxers off his hips and tossed them aside when he stepped back. She knelt in front of him and took the condom from his fingers, closing her eyes to try and rein in her racing heart.

He was scalding and stiff under her fingers as she wrapped a hand around him. He wasn’t fearfully large, but he was impressively thick, and the dusk of his skin contrasted with the paler tone of her fingers.

Bea nibbled up from the base of his cock to the tip, laving him softly with her lips and tongue in between love bites. He growled and lanced a hand into her hair. When she got to the tip, she hesitated and he tightened his hand at the back of her head.

“I should make you beg to suck me.”

Bea raised her eyes to his and smiled slowly, licking her lips. She ran her hands up his thighs and leaned in. “Mr. Elliot, please let me…”

He swore and drew her hands away. “Okay, maybe not such a good idea right now.”

Eli’s skin was velvet-smooth under her lips as she planted a kiss where his leg met his hip. She raked her teeth against his hipbone as she rolled the condom on.

He pulled her up and sat her firmly on the washer’s top.

“I’m going to want to call you Eli again very soon.” She parted her knees and lifted her heels to brace against the washer’s edge.

Eli cursed under his breath as he moved toward her, his palms cupping her upper thighs. The head of his cock nudged against her slit; a heat that rivaled the coins that swirled, forgotten, nearby.

“Bea,” he said, again so worshipfully that she melted.

“Eli.” She cupped the back of his neck, pulling him in and lifting her mouth to his.

He smiled and slid the blunt head of his cock down her belly, teasing her. “How do you want me inside of you, Bea?”

“Slow,” she said tremulously, “at first. Slow.”

Eli pushed inside her in a long, easy slide that faltered the breath trapped between them. The crisp starched fabric of his shirt brushed her belly, strangely exciting her. Bea lurched against him. Nothing in the world could be as hotly sweet, as perfect as this.

 

Eli came unhinged, his limbs loosening at the joints, any handhold in rational thought gone somewhere beyond his reach. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Bea’s long, slender legs wrapped around his waist, from the erotic curve of the undersides of her arms as she clutched the washer’s edge behind her head. The heated, clenching walls of her pussy clamping around his cock milked him of all reason. There was only Bea and his need for her.

His eyes closed at the thought of the perfect small red circles that dotted her skin, marking her for him. She was flame-hot inside, and snug. He shuddered and, after a moment, started slowly, afraid that he would spill himself like a teenager if he moved too quickly. She bowed upward beneath him, her lips parting.

“No noise.” He pressed his fingers over her mouth. Her eyes clouded in question and he thrust sharply, bending to bite at one of her nipples. The quizzical look sank beneath one of glazed need. “I don’t want to hear a sound out of you unless you’re saying you belong to me.”

Bea bit her lower lip hard enough for the edges of the skin to pale. She stayed completely silent. An unreadable expression crossed her face. Eli thrust harder, faster, unable to help himself. The wildness in her eyes answered his new pace, and smug satisfaction thrilled through him at the way she let go of her full lower lip.

He drove into her with measured intent, testing the limits of her control. He braced his forearms on either side of her, angling so that the base of his cock found hard, repetitive home against her most sensitive spot. Bea rose on her heels over the washer. Her mouth opened fully on what was nearly a sound, and he moved impossibly faster.

“Mine,” he growled. “For always. No more wondering, Bea.”

Too close to coming, he shortened his strokes, sliding his hands up to dig into the thick mass of dark hair spread out beneath her head. Bea slicked her hands up his forearms and her nails bit into him. Eli stopped short. His gut knifed. Zips of pleasure tingled along his nerve highways, spreading to where her slick lips pulled at his throbbing shaft. His thighs erupted in goose bumps.

Eli steadied himself, his slow thrusts drawing new agonies, new angles of beauty from her flushed face. Her faraway eyes, the tautness of her legs as she urged and begged him without words. It was the words he wanted. It was the words he’d wanted almost since the day he’d first laid eyes on her.

Eli knew she must be uncertain of him—he had drawn her out before, only to pull away. He wanted to reassure her, but more than that, he wanted her to trust that he had seen the light. “I told you what you were allowed to say, and you know what you get when you say it.”

Bea shook her head, closing her eyes. It tore at him, the small rejection, but instead of anger, gentleness took hold.

“I’m here, Bea. I’m here for you. With you. Inside you.”

He tightened his grip on her hips, his chest heaving, too quickly resuming a punishing pace. She met him over and over again, her eyes glinting from heavy lids, challenging. He was losing it, his own control slipping.

Their bodies made deep, decadently liquid sounds as they jerked apart and plunged back together. The musky smell of sex and sweat mingled in his flared nostrils. The ravager who had bent her over the washer and branded her was being reduced very quickly to helpless putty.

Bea’s hand fisted around his tie. She yanked and the length of silk around his neck drew taut. She arched toward him. He turned his head, avoiding the lush temptation of her offered lips.

“No.” He punctuated the word with a savage thrust of his hips, and several thereafter. “Not until you say it. Say you’re mine, Bea.”

She wouldn’t say it, at least not before he lost it completely. The edges of his vision were tinged a sweet, hot red that fuzzed into his line of sight just before he came, and Bea still wasn’t budging. Eli’s balls tightened. He was going batshit insane waiting for that plush mouth to form those two little words.

His ego would have been more wounded at her silence, except she wasn’t entirely unaffected. Her thighs clenched around his hips and she twisted wildly against him, panting hot jets of breath against his cheek. She clutched his tie, wrapping the silk around her knuckles, keeping him close. Eli buried his mouth in her neck, flexed his fingers in her hair, knew that he was resting his heart in her hands.

The washer spun beneath them, and their momentum, combined with the drum’s rotation, rocked the machine on its legs. With each of his retreats, it returned level with a solid thud that echoed whatever wrenched in his chest.

Bea suddenly froze, then her body shuddered. Eli tried to push up, to watch her face, but she kept hold of his tie. He ground his whole body against her instead, driving his cock harder. She had slicked the skin of his stomach, and he felt his pubic bone grind over the hard nub of her swollen clit. He bore down once, twice, pushing her over the edge.

She didn’t give him words, but he pressed his lips to hers in what would, in more rational situations, be called a compromise. Bea opened her mouth under his and he caught her cries of release, returning his own as her climax triggered his. Pleasure ripped up his spine and scored hot rows at the base of his skull. He came in long, spasmodic, breath-stealing pulses. He tore his mouth from hers and nearly roared in satisfaction as he took a long, wringing freefall.

Minutes later, he felt her hands in his hair. Bea pushed her tongue into his mouth and hummed contentedly. Eli pulled back as something small, round and rough passed from her mouth to his. She let him go as he raised a hand…and spit a quarter into his palm. She stretched under him, grinned saucily. Eli grinned back.

Bea ran her fingertips down her own chest, and Eli caught her hand. The humidity in the laundry room had lent a fine sheen to her skin, and he kissed her fingertips, tasting the salt of her sweat. Eli’s eyes found hers and, for the aggressor, he felt strangely, completely vulnerable.

“I’m yours,” she said softly.

Elation was instant. He tossed the quarter over his shoulder, framed her face with his hands, and kissed her deeply. She tasted of sweet, unhurried warmth, kissing him with an ease that radiated into him. Contentment spread from her mouth to every cell in his body.

Eli had come home.

Bea pulled away to stare up at him. Her eyes shone with a brilliance that he had seen before—the tender devotion he’d witnessed dozens of times over the past years. He’d been too blind to really recognize it.

“Eli, I…” Bea’s eyes went damp and she held her breath. If she was trying to stop her tears from falling, she failed.

“No.” His thumbs grazed her cheeks. “No regrets. I won’t hear them.”

Bea shook her head. “I just… Is this…”

“Real?”

Bea nodded, closing her eyes.

Eli brushed again at her tears, planting soft, lingering kisses on her eyelids, her cheeks and, finally, her mouth. He wrapped her up against him and she didn’t even complain about his weight on her. His stomach twisted and he took a deep breath. “I didn’t know that I would love you.”

Bea’s arms tightened around him. “You what?”

“I’m sorry about what happened. The argument. I was terrified. I love you. I think I ha—”

Bea attacked him with kisses, smothering his words. Between kisses and laughter, he managed to get them up off the washer and standing. He snuck to the trash at the far end of the room to discard the condom and returned to her open arms. When she finally released him, her eyes were shiny with new tears.

“Eli, I love you, too.”

He spent an intense stretch of seconds studying her face.

“This doesn’t scare you? My…I mean, we…” Eli reached out and skimmed a fingertip over a still-bright circle that marked the curve of her shoulder.

Bea shook her head, took his hand and kissed his fingers. “No, Eli. You didn’t scare me at all.”

Eli’s grin nearly split his face as he bent to pick up his pants, as well as the tatters of her clothes, from the linoleum. He wondered how he hadn’t planned far enough ahead to bring her extra clothes. He drew her close. “That’s Mr. Elliot to you, miss.”

Bea tipped her face up to him and plucked the shreds of her clothes from his hand.

“I’m pretty naked right now, Mr. Elliot.”

“You’re pretty anytime, Miss London.”

She smothered her laughter in his neck. He tugged her back.

“Bea, one more thing.”

“Yes, Elijah?”

“Lynn Perry called me today. She’s going ahead with your campaign.”

Bea’s eyes widened. “What? She acted like she hated it!”

Eli cupped her cheek. “She said she loved your presentation, after she left it on her kitchen table and her husband saw your slideshow.” Bea snorted and he grinned. “She wants to mail catalogs with red silk scarves attached.”

“That’s a great idea.”

“The best. She wants us. You and me.”

Bea smirked and pressed closer. “Well, Mr. Elliot, if we’re going to work together again, I think you owe me some money. It seems you’ve lost some of my laundry change.”

“I’m changeless at the moment. How about one of my T-shirts to wear out of here?”

“Can I keep it?”

He lowered his head for another kiss.

“Forever.”