Bared by Him (The Billionaire's Club 5)

Ivy strode straight across the living room and down the hall, failing to see Cade sitting over by the unlit Christmas tree as she padded directly to her bedroom.

She may think he was still with his friends, he supposed, so he followed her to her bedroom and heard the shower running in the bath. He tried the knob, and it opened.

For a moment he stood at the threshold, getting aroused while at the same time getting emotionally assaulted. She … God, she did things to him. There were no words, no freaking words, to describe her slim, little naked figure, and what it did to him. She was facing the water, scrubbing her face, giving him an ample view of her lovely curved butt.

Heart pounding as animal instincts roared to life, he jerked off his T-shirt. Maybe she would get pissed, for she’d made it clear a dozen times that she didn’t want him to see her fully naked. Cade didn’t care. He shoved off his pajama bottoms and shut the door quietly behind him, the sound muffled by the running water.

They’d been apart all day and it had felt like another decade.

He opened the glass door and felt the water mist over his skin as he entered. Soapy bubbles slid down Ivy’s face, tilted up to the showerhead. Easing up behind her, Cade curled his arms around her waist and splayed his hands possessively across her abdomen, pressing his erection up her backside.

She stiffened in his arms as he bit her earlobe into his mouth. “You okay, baby?” he asked.

“Cade.” She melted on that whisper, melted back against him, and melted his insides as well.

His hands slid upward and covered her small breasts for the first time, flesh to flesh, and his cock jumped like he was a teenager with his first feel up. They were small and the nipples puckered in the water and he wanted to see them and lick them and suckle them dry.

She turned in his arms and hid herself from him, burying her face in his neck, her hands tight around his neck as the water pounded her back.

“I got you something,” he whispered into her ear.

“What is it?”

“You’ll see in a bit.”

He soaped her up first, and she let him, bringing her arms to cover her breasts several times. He wanted to coo at her, to tell her not to be shy, but it endeared her to him, and he didn’t want to pressure her. Genghis had been broken when Cade had gotten him out of the pound, and the only way Cade was able to gain his trust was to back off until Genghis felt like coming to him.

He got out first, toweled off, and brought a clean towel for her.

“I’m not looking,” he said, a hand covering his eyes as he handed it to her.

She took it, with a little laugh, then wrapped it around her small frame.

“You can look now,” she whispered, going up on tiptoe to kiss his jaw.

The small towel didn’t even cover him, hips to his knees, but it covered Ivy from her breasts to well below her knees.

As she brushed her shoulder-length hair, he brought her the checks he’d wheedled out of his friends today when he’d invited them to lunch. Luke, Daniel, and Graves had each written her foundation a check for a million dollars.

Ivy set down her brush to take them and gasped when she realized what they were. She covered the O of her mouth, her eyes lit with gratitude when she looked up at him. “Cade! Ohmigod! You didn’t have to do this.”

A thousand knots twisted in his chest, then released in an explosion of emotions. Making her happy suddenly made him feel like … like a man. Like her man. “My friends have money,” he said roughly, nodding meaningfully at the checks. “They can help. Your foundation. And your friends.”

“They?” She slid her hands into his hair, then tucked her head down and cuddled. “You’re helping, too, Cade.”

“Ahh, because I’m selfish,” he murmured against her scalp, holding her close. “This way you don’t need to go search for donations elsewhere now. And I can keep on playing with you a couple of more days…?” He glanced questioningly into her face.

Her head tilted further back as she regarded him, and a sadness he didn’t expect spread across her expression then, taking him aback. “I still need to go.” She cupped his jaw in both of her cool, small palms and kissed his lips, softly and sweetly, which only served to open a rabid thirst for more inside of him. “Thank you, Cade. You have no idea how much this helps.”

He brought her back against him and kissed her harder, with his tongue, his appetite voracious after their blood-stirring shower petting session. She squirmed in his hold and whispered, “Let me put on something.”

“Why?” His breathing had escalated. Both of them were naked under the towels, both of them wet and hot. “I’m taking it off anyway.”

“Hush, and don’t complain.” She cocked a saucy brow and spun free. “I got you something, too.” She playfully stuck out her tongue before disappearing into her closet.

“It better be a fuck,” he growled.

“It is!” she yelled back.