Bared by Him (The Billionaire's Club 5)

“Get back on that bed, Ivy.”

“I don’t need your pity, Cade.”

“Get back on that fucking bed!” he roared.

She glared at him and started walking to the door, and he grabbed her to stop her. “Get up on that fucking bed or I’m tying you to it!”

“What for? You’re clearly not touching me again!”

He saw that he was holding her elbow too hard, and he released her, his face melting with pain and regret as he lifted his hands, palms up. “Ivy, I don’t want to hurt you, baby.”

“Well you’re hurting me now, you fucking asshole!”

Her voice broke, and he immediately reached out to touch her again, but when she caught back a sob, he jerked his hand away.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. “Cade, I’m still a woman. I’m still a woman. I need your touch … I need your touch so much.”

He crushed her possessively in his arms and pressed his jaw into her neck, a dark, desperate feeling spreading through him. “Damn you, you’re not just a woman. You’re my woman, Ivy. Mine.”

He felt her wig tickle his neck, and he growled and tossed it aside, then scooped her up and carried her back to the bed.

Ivy gasped in delayed response and covered her head. “No!”

She reached blindly in the air in the direction of the stupid wig, but it had landed far away. “No, Cade!” Her eyes flashed and she twisted and flailed angrily as he lay her down. “What are you doing? Why do you insist on baring me like this?”

He caught her wrists and pinned them down. “Stop hiding shit from me. Stop hiding yourself from me. Can’t you see how much I fucking want you? Be real to me, Ivy! I’ve held nothing back from you—nothing.”

“I am real to you! I’m realer to you than to anyone!”

“Then stop treating me like I’m only here to fuck you!”

She started crying, and Cade cursed and buried his face in his hands, scraping them over his own burning eyes. He heard her fumbling with the buttons of her shirt, and he whipped his head up and halted her hands.

“Stop. Stop. You don’t need to do this now. It’s just that you’re so damned beautiful to me and I feel totally played here. You’re—”

Prying free of his hold, she parted her ripped shirt open, still quietly crying, and Cade saw her.

His heart shattered, and then it felt like it got pieced together wrong, because it couldn’t even beat right. If he weren’t already crazy as hell in love with her, she would’ve stolen his heart right this second, when she bared herself to him even when he could see how much it was hurting.

It hurt to see her, too.

His eyes blurred at the sight of her nipples. Sore. Bright pink. Two small dressings covering her incisions, just below the curves, of both the breasts she’d been removing.

“Ivy.” He stroked the top swells gently, then her throat, feeling the sobs that racked her under his fingers. “You’re so fucking perfect. I love your breasts. I love your smooth little head.” He cupped her scalp and felt how smooth and round it was, stared into her eyes with his blurred vision. “I love the way you make me feel. The man you make me. All of you.” His voice broke and he gathered her against him, and he tipped her face back and kissed her lips. “I love the way you fight. Your spirit. How you help people when you need it more. How you saved me. Ivy. Me.”

She cried harder, her hands on his shirt as her tears soaked it. He trembled at the feel of her, warm and rare like a comet in his arms, and at the sensual brush of her lips against his, seeking more, his lips locked over hers as though gravity were pulling them down. “I love you. Ivy. You. God help me, I do.”

“Me, too. I love you so much,” she said softly to him in a heartbreaking, tear-laced voice.

He groaned and he tried not to push his tongue too hard, tried to be gentle, as slow as he could, as gentle as he could, but his entire frame shuddered with restrained force, and when he felt the damp, desperate stroke of her tongue against the seam of his lips, he thought she’d killed him.

She clung weakly to him, and he was undone for her. Undone with her words, her kiss.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, Cade. You … blew me over. Even the first night we were together, I stopped praying to get better and just prayed to have a little more time with you.”

“Who should I thank, baby? Tell me, who should I thank for bringing you into my life? God, baby? Your generous heart, looking for help from an asshole like me? Tell me.”

He kissed her, hungrily, desperately, while one last tear slipped down her cheek, and when he drew her onto his lap so he could hold her tight, she gripped his shirt in her little fists and nuzzled his neck, squirming urgently on top of him. Then, he felt her. Hot where he was hot. Wet where he was wet. His need catapulted to such alarming levels, his fingers trembled as he slipped them through the gaping hole of her torn top, carefully touching her skin.