Insatiable (Unrated! Book 6) Page 8

  “Or maybe for a week.”

  “Don’t push your luck.”

  That boyish, sexy grin flashed again as he disappeared behind the glass-block wall and stepped into the steaming shower. But even through the mist and water, she heard him say, “I always push my luck. After all, if I don’t, how am I ever going to get what I really want?”

  What he really wanted. Meaning her?

  She didn’t want to read too much in to the flirtatious remark, but couldn’t help but shiver in sheer pleasure that he still really wanted her. It was a powerful thing, being desired by a man who was so attractive, not to mention sensually addictive. He was an amazing lover, and she doubted anyone she was ever with for the rest of her life would measure up. Figuratively, or literally. It already broke her heart a little that she couldn’t keep him for long...but maybe she’d keep him for just a little while.

  Hearing a knock on the door to the suite, Viv rinsed her mouth, replaced the towel with a plush bathrobe and left the bathroom. Not one but two room service guys stood there. They pushed a table covered with a pristine linen tablecloth into the room. Domed dishes couldn’t completely disguise a heavenly smell, and she realized she was famished. They’d never really gotten around to having a proper dinner last night.

  “Do you need me to sign for this?” she asked the younger of the two servers—who kept sneaking peeks at her and blushing, ducking his head to hide his embarrassment. He looked about eighteen, and was apparently in training. He reminded her so much of her youngest brother—the only Callahan child younger than Viv—that she wanted to noogie his head. But she suspected that wouldn’t go over well, especially under the stern gaze of his supervisor, who was as starched and stuffy as a British butler.

  “That won’t be necessary,” the older man said, clasping his hands behind his back in quiet dignity. “Is there anything else we can do for you and for Mr. Black? Anything at all?”

  “No, that’s everything,” she said.

  “Yes, there is,” a voice called, talking over her.

  Damien emerged into the room, wearing nothing but a towel slung low around his hips. Viv stared at him. He’d dried off hurriedly and rivulets of water dripped from his dark hair onto those incredibly broad shoulders, riding ridges of muscle down into the light swirl of dark hair on his chest.

  She parted her lips, breathing over them, unable to tear her eyes away. She’d touched, kissed, stroked and savored every inch of the man during the night, but now, seeing him standing there, steamy, wet, so unbelievably sexy, made her knees weak. She had to reach out and grab the back of the nearest chair to steady herself. There was such utter, nonchalant power in the man, from his body to his voice, and as he spoke, the starchy butler rammed his spine even straighter, and the young kid tried to disappear behind his boss.

  “So you’ll have her come up in an hour?”

  Viv hadn’t even been listening, she’d been focused only on Damien, and her unbelievable physical reaction to him.

  “Certainly, Mr. Black.”

  “Great,” he said, already moving away. “Thank you. That will be all.”

  The two men didn’t turn around, they merely began to edge out of the room, bowing slightly. Like they were exiting an interview with a king.

  “Wow. Impressive,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Those guys were scared to death of you.”

  “Not too scared, I hope.”

  “No,” she admitted, realizing she’d worded that poorly. “They were...in awe of you.”

  “Eat your breakfast,” he said with a droll shrug. “I’ll dress and be right out.”

  He headed toward the bathroom, which made her wonder what had drawn him out in the first place. “Who’s she?” she called.

  “Who?”

  “The she who’s supposed to be up here in an hour.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “Mrs. Tate?”

  “Uh, sure.” She hadn’t even heard the name. “Who is she? And why is she coming up here in an hour?”

  “She manages one of the stores downstairs.”

  Viv wrinkled her brow in confusion.

  Smiling, Damien returned to her, reaching up to brush a long strand of wet hair behind her ear. “And she’s coming in an hour to get you fitted for some clothes.”

  Viv’s jaw dropped open. No way was the man going to buy her clothes! She had only promised to stay for a few hours, and she could certainly wear her suit from yesterday. For that matter, she could just stay in this robe—or in one of his deliciously soft, obviously tailored dress shirts.

  “No, that’s not...”

  Damien cut her off with a kiss. She tried to continue talking—to tell him he was being ridiculous—but he just deepened the kiss. When Damien Black kissed her, there was no thinking of anything else. Just him—strong, warm, sexy, gentle, demanding. Nothing and no one else existed.

  By the time the kiss ended, she’d forgotten what she’d intended to say. And judging by the pleased expression on his face as he turned away, that suited him just fine.

  * * *

  “YOU KNOW YOU have to stay away from her, right?”

  Sitting across the desk from Sam Donovan, the team’s corporate attorney, Damien crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the man.

  Stay away from Viv? The lawyer might well ask him to never again take a deep breath. It was not going to happen.

  The meetings this morning had gone on for hours, and had been long, bitter and stressful. Frankly, only the thought of going back to the hotel to Viv had kept him from blowing his stack. She’d been the reason he’d kept his cool. The sooner he could finish with this legal shit, the sooner he could return to her and begin making her see that her career was not over.

  “Forget it.”

  Sam wasn’t giving up. “I mean it.”

  His glare deepened. Unlike most people, who would wither under such sharp attention, Sam glared back. He could get away with it. He was, after all, Damien’s oldest friend—his college roommate, whom Damien had hired as the head of the legal department for the Vanguard.

  “You can’t, Damien.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “She’s your employee.” Sam glanced at his watch—a nice one, fitting the generous salary Damien had offered to lure him away from a big corporate firm in DC. Right now, Damien was regretting that move. “At least, she will be in a few minutes, once the acting general manager calls and tells her we want to rehire her.”

  Damien relaxed into his chair, trying to sound thoroughly reasonable, not wanting Sam to know he was desperate. “She’ll have her job again. Stoker’s out. Neeley’s benched, pending a trade. All’s well that ends well.”

  “Yeah, according to you. What about her?”

  “Viv will understand.”

  Once he explained the truth—that he was the majority shareholder of the team, but he’d had no idea who she was, or what had happened to her—she’d let this go. They could get right back to where they’d left off this morning, before he’d switched on the TV and seen his world nearly blow up in his face.

  “She could still sue.”

  “She won’t.”

  “She could go to the press about the firing.”

  “She won’t,” he repeated. “Whatever you’re worried about, forget it. She’s a sharp, reasonable woman. She’s not a shark, not at all cold and calculating.”

  Unlike some women with whom he’d been acquainted.

  “I know that. I’ve met her, remember?”

  Of course. He’d run in to Viv yesterday; the rest of the staff had been working with her for two months.

  Sam went on. “And I respect her—she’s smart, and she got a raw deal here. I’d give anything to make it not have happened, and I wish I’d
been here yesterday to stop that Mensa candidate from firing her.”

  Sam hadn’t been at the press event to witness the infamous incident, and he’d been at off-site meetings all day yesterday. He’d been as in the dark about the entire situation as Damien.

  Until this morning. When the press had discovered Viv’s name and where she worked.

  “But it did happen,” Sam said. “Now we have to handle it.”

  “Right, and we did. She just has to hear we’re not standing behind Fred Stoker or Bruno Neeley, and she’ll be fine.”

  “You can’t be certain of that. She could make a stink about being let go.” Sam pounded his palm on his desk. “I still can’t believe that son of a bitch did it without even calling me.”

  “Ditto.”

  “Did you hear what he said?”

  Damien had been trying to force the scene from his mind.

  “He found her, what the hell was the word, stimulating? And since he is a happily married man, a devout man, but still felt that way, of course all these poor red-blooded American boys would, too. So she had to go. For the ‘good of the players.’”

  “And ‘their souls,’” Damien snapped, the words gouged into his brain like a seared scar. God, one conversation with the small-minded asshole had given him just a tiny hint of what Viv had gone through. He didn’t even want to imagine how demeaning it had been for her all those weeks working in this building.

  “And as for Neeley...”

  A growl escaped his mouth. Sam heard, and shut his own.

  Damien had been the one to fire gernal manager Fred Stoker, with the corporate attorney there at his side. But he hadn’t been in the room when Sam and the new acting general manager, a quickly promoted assistant, had informed Neeley he was being traded. Sam hadn’t trusted Damien to be there, with good reason. Hell, Damien didn’t trust himself around the guy. Damien had met Neeley, and knew the player had a hundred pounds on him. Still, Damien didn’t think he’d have been able to resist trying to break Bruno’s jaw. Damien would probably have snapped every bone in his hand, but it would have been worth it.

  “How could anybody be so stupid? I mean, was the guy living in the Dark Ages or something? Who goes after the victim of sexual discrimination?” Sam asked, his mind back on Stoker.

  “The Virginia Vanguard. At least, before today.”

  “Exactly.” His friend leaned forward, crossing his arms on the desk. “Which is why you’ve got to steer clear of her.”

  Damien opened his mouth to argue, but Sam held up a hand, forestalling him. “Our team general manager and several players violated our sexual harassment policy—are you going to tell me you’re ready to break your own rules against fraternization?”

  “I don’t work here,” he snapped.

  “Legally, it doesn’t matter a damn,” Sam explained. “You practically own the team, Damien. You can’t get involved with an employee—especially not one who we want to keep happy and nonlitigious. I’m not just worried about the league wanting to stay squeaky clean before the launch. If she makes a stink, the rest of the shareholders might get antsy. You are aware they already believe you’re too inexperienced with professional sports to be CEO.”

  Damien finally realized what Sam was really getting at. The lawyer wasn’t as worried about Viv causing trouble immediately. He was afraid Damien would cause her to make trouble in the future, for more personal reasons.

  “What, you’re afraid I’ll piss her off after you’ve gotten her calmed down, and she’ll sue because of me?”

  “It’s happened before.”

  Damien slammed a hand down. “Don’t fucking mention that.”

  Sam nodded slowly, not continuing the subject. He’d already put the thought in Damien’s mind, which was bad enough. But even the silence was thick and heavy.

  “This is nothing like Georgia,” Damien finally said, anger making him tighten his grip on the arms of his chair. “That woman from the Atlanta hotel was running a scam. I didn’t touch her. It was a bullshit lawsuit from start to finish.”

  “Yes, and it went away. You were vindicated.” Sam slowly shook his head, getting that wise-old-soul expression on his face, the one he’d had from the day they’d met, when he’d been a skinny, nerdy, computer geek who hadn’t been sure what to make of his rich and spoiled, but also sad and a little lost new roommate. “But this time, it wouldn’t be bullshit, now would it? There is a personal connection. And eventually, when it ends, she could accuse you of just romancing her to keep her from making trouble.”

  “She wouldn’t.”

  “You can’t know that for sure.”

  Damien heard a note of unconcealed anger in the voice, and he eyed his friend closely. He suspected Sam was talking about his own recent relationship, one that had ended badly. Considering the person who had ended it was Damien’s youngest sister, and that the breakup had almost destroyed his twelve-year friendship with the other man, he didn’t want to go there.

  “I would never hurt Viv,” he finally insisted, not wanting to rehash something the two of them had already settled. Sam might still have issues with Damien’s sister Johanna, but the two men had moved on.

  “Not intentionally.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Your track record with women isn’t exactly one of long, committed, happy relationships, Damien.”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” he replied sourly. “That doesn’t mean things can’t change. What if she ends up being the love of my life?”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  He grunted. “Jesus, Sam, I met her a day ago.”

  “Plus, you’re not capable of love, remember?” Sam said, treading out onto thin ice, walking a line between friend and employee. “You told me that in college. You said you were just like your dad, and you swore he never loved anyone except his kids.”

  “I don’t have to be just like my father,” Damien snapped before realizing his friend was making him argue something Damien had always held as an unchangeable fact.

  Christ, was this woman really messing with his head so much after just twenty-four hours? Was he seriously questioning something he’d always believed about himself because he’d spent one night in her bed?

  He threw his head back and glared at the ceiling. “This is crazy.”

  “I’m glad you’re realized that. I’m also glad you’ve realized nobody is prewired to automatically fail at every relationship in his life. Now go fall in love...with any woman other than Viv Callahan.”

  “I don’t want anyone else,” he muttered.

  “She can’t be that important to you after one day, right?” his friend said, his voice soft, his tone annoyingly reasonable. “There are a lot of women in the world. So please, Damien, for all our sakes, let this one go. Just forget about her.”

  Let her go? Forget about her? Impossible.

  No, he might not be in love with her—he had never been in love, wasn’t even sure he would recognize the emotion. But he wanted Viv, he craved her as an addict craved a drug.

  There was more, though. Since he’d spied her in the parking garage yesterday, and heard about her no-good, very bad day, he’d felt protective of her. The image of that thug groping her hadn’t left his mind, and the dark visions of what she’d experienced on a daily basis here were almost worse. He was responsible for all of that, for running a company where such things could happen. Where such things could happen to a woman he was rapidly becoming infatuated with!

  No. He couldn’t give her up. Not because his lawyer said he should. Not even if it meant putting his new company—the one thing he felt positive about in his business life—at risk. The other stockholders might try to use the bad press or sanctions from the league to force him to step down or sell out. But if they did, they’d have one hell of a
fight on their hands.

  He always fought for what he really wanted. Which was why he wasn’t about to say goodbye to Viv.

  “Please, at least consider it?”

  A long pause. Finally, a low breath. “All right.” He rose from his seat. “Thanks for your help today.”

  Sam rose, too, and extended his hand. “You’ll be in town for a while, I guess? To make sure this thing blows over?”

  He’d be staying for a lot more reasons than that. Well, only one more reason—but she was a major one. “Yes, I will.”

  “You’re welcome to stay with me if you want out of the hotel. I have a huge place, and there are a lot of single women in my building.”

  He managed a small smile. The guy just never gave up. He had to wonder, not for the first time, what on earth his sister had done to make Sam give up on her.

  “I think our partying bachelor days are behind us.”

  “Okay, just...”

  “Don’t.”

  Sam shrugged helplessly.

  Few people had ever been able to make Damien do something he didn’t want to—one of the big reasons he’d never gotten along with some members of his family. Sam had pushed as much as he could. Because Damien was in no way ready to give up Viv Callahan.

  There was so much to explore between them, but they’d start with the truth. Who he really was, where he’d been for most of the day. He’d lay it all out and ask what she thought about them continuing to see each other. Maybe it would last a few nights, maybe months. Or, hell, he was thirty years old—maybe he’d finally found someone who could make him hear the word family and not immediately want to get to the nearest airport. Stranger things had happened, hadn’t they?

  But when he got to the hotel, walked into the penthouse and heard a thick silence that could only be caused by utter emptiness, he began to worry. “Viv? Where are you?”

  His heart picking up its pace, he hurried through the huge suite, checking both bedrooms, the living area, dining room, media center and bathrooms. The patio was empty, as was every closet. Well, except for one, in which he found something strange. A pair of shoes—women’s shoes. They were strappy heels, sexy and designer, and, he realized when he picked one up and checked the sole, brand-new.