Reflected in You: A Crossfire Novel

It felt like good-bye.
    “Need your love,” he whispered against my skin. “Need you.”
    He touched me everywhere. He was constantly inside me, with his cock or his fingers or his tongue.
    My nipples burned, made raw by his sucking. My sex throbbed and felt bruised from his wild, hard drives. My skin was chafed from the stubble that prickled over his jaw. My jaw ached from sucking his thick cock. My last memory was of him spooned behind me, his arm banded around my waist as he filled me from behind, both of us sore and exhausted and unable to stop.
    “Don’t let go,” I begged, after I’d sworn I wouldn’t.
    When I woke to my alarm, he was gone.

Chapter 15
     
    I stopped by Cary’s room before I left for work Thursday morning. I cracked the door open and peeked in. When I saw he was sleeping, I started to back out.
    “Hey,” he murmured, blinking at me.
    “Hey.” I entered. “How are you feeling?”
    “I’m glad to be home.” He rubbed at the corners of his eyes. “Everything all right?”
    “Yeah . . . I just wanted to check on you before I head to work. I’ll be home around eight. I’ll grab dinner on the way back, so expect a text around seven to see what you’re hungry—” I interrupted myself with a yawn.
    “What kind of vitamins does Cross take?”
    “Huh?”
    “I’m never not horny, and even I can’t pile-drive all night like that. I kept thinking, ‘He’s got to be done now.’ Then he’d start up again.”
    I flushed and shifted on my feet.
    He howled with laughter. “It’s dark in here, but I know you’re blushing.”
    “You should’ve put your headphones on,” I mumbled.
    “Don’t stress about it. It was good to find out my equipment still works. I hadn’t had a chubby since before the attack.”
    “Eww . . . Gross, Cary.” I started backing out of the room. “My dad comes in tonight. Technically tomorrow. His flight lands at five.”
    “You picking him up?”
    “Of course.”
    His smile faded. “You’re going to kill yourself at this rate. You haven’t gotten any sleep all week.”
    “I’ll catch up. See ya.”
    “Hey,” he called after me. “Does last night mean you and Cross are okay again?”
    I leaned into the doorjamb with a sigh. “Something’s wrong, and he won’t talk to me about it. I wrote him a letter basically puking out all my insecurities and neuroses.”
    “ Never put stuff like that in writing, baby girl.”
    “Yeah, well . . . all it got me was fucked half to death with no better idea of what the problem is. He said it has to be this way. I don’t even know what that means.”
    He nodded.
    “You act like you get it,” I said.
    “I think I get the sex.”
    That sent a chill down my spine. “Get-it-out-of-your-system sex?”
    “It’s possible,” he agreed softly.
    I closed my eyes and let the confirmation slide through me. Then I straightened. “I gotta run. Catch you later.”
    * * *
     
    The thing about nightmares was that you couldn’t prepare for them. They sneaked up on you when you were most vulnerable, wrecking havoc and mayhem when you were totally defenseless.
    And they didn’t always happen while you were sleeping.
    I sat in an agonized daze as Mark and Mr. Waters went over the fine points of the Kingsman Vodka ads, achingly aware of Gideon sitting at the head of the table in a black suit with white shirt and tie.
    He was pointedly ignoring me, had been from the moment I walked into the Cross Industries conference room aside from a cursory handshake when Mr. Waters introduced us. That brief touch of his skin against mine had sent a charge of awareness through me, my body immediately recognizing his as the one that had pleasured it all night. Gideon hadn’t seemed to register the contact at all, his gaze trained above my head as he’d said, “Miss Tramell.”
    The contrast to the last time we’d been in the room was profound. Then, he hadn’t been able to keep his eyes off me. His focus had been searing and blatant, and when we’d left the room he’d told me that he wanted to fuck me and would dispense with anything that got in the way of his doing so.
    This time, he stood abruptly when the meeting was concluded, shook the hands of Mark and Mr. Waters, and strode out the door with only a short, inscrutable glance at me. His two directors scurried after him, both attractive brunettes.
    Mark shot me a questioning look across the table. I shook my head.
    I made it back to my desk. I worked