Page 23 of A Private Affair
Loud moaning caught her attention and she turned her head to see Chaz through pleasure-blurred eyes. He had removed his jacket. His legs were spread wide, the button, belt and zipper of his pants were undone. His dick was in his hand, thick and long and dripping with his release as he made one final jerk and cursed long and loud.
Moments later he was gone and Riley closed her eyes, ready to welcome a deep sleep. It wouldn’t be the first time that a meditation session had lulled her into slumber and she hoped it wouldn’t be the last. But just when she started to slip into dreamland, she felt him touch her.
“What are you doing?” she asked when Chaz’s strong hands and arms moved under her and lifted her from the bed.
“Helping you get cleaned up.”
“No.” She pressed a hand into his chest just in case he didn’t believe she was serious. “I can do it myself. I don’t want your help.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched and Chaz continued walking. He stopped at the bathroom door.
“I wasn’t going to go in with you, Riley. I know you much better than you think.”
He set her down, and when her feet touched the floor, Riley backed away from him.
“I hope you don’t mind but I used one of the washcloths in your closet.”
Because he’d needed to clean up, as well. Her gaze dropped briefly to his now-zipped pants. His shirt was unbuttoned but his chest was covered by a tight black tank. She looked back at him. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied, and Riley stepped into the bathroom and closed the door.
Chaz had admitted to Riley that he couldn’t leave. What she didn’t know was that he’d meant more than just physically getting up to leave her bedroom. By that time he’d had his dick in his hand and his desire to see how far they would go to find their pleasure was a top priority. But aside from that, something else held him to her. It was the oddest and most intense feeling he’d ever experienced. He wanted Riley physically but there was also this nagging desire to just be with her.
Chaz didn’t want to “be” with any woman. Committed relationships, live-in girlfriends, long-term associations, none of those were his thing. And not just because he’d made a name for himself as one of the world’s top bachelors—that was a persona he’d facilitated to grow his business. Now that Conversation Media was a global success, he didn’t have to sacrifice so much of himself to sell the brand. The problem was that he’d adopted a lot of the professional persona into his personal life over the years. It worked for him because he’d watched relationships come together and inevitably fall apart. His uncle was on wife number eight and he was only fifty-seven years old. That wasn’t a promising scenario for Chaz.
Riley stirred and he leaned down to kiss the top of her head.
It was morning. He’d spent the night in Riley Gold’s bed, in her penthouse, with her wrapped in his arms. They hadn’t had sex. The meditation/masturbation session had been enough to wear them both down. Chaz sensed their very busy workweeks had contributed to that, but he wasn’t about to debate the issue.
Last night he’d watched her come out of the bathroom with a perplexed look on her face. He hated that she’d fully expected him to leave. As if he could share something so intimate and thoroughly enjoyable with her and then walk out without saying a word. It dawned on him later that he’d done that many times before with other women.
He was wearing only his boxers when she returned, and when he extended his hand for her to join him on the bed, Riley had simply walked around to the other side and climbed in. She turned out the light on her side and Chaz lay down and turned down the light on his side. Seconds later he’d pulled her into his arms and there she’d stayed all night.
“I don’t know how to do the morning after,” she whispered.
Chaz rubbed his hand up and down her arm, enjoying the feel of her soft skin. He’d been doing that all night. Touching her, smelling her, taking in every aspect of this woman who he’d thought he knew.
“Neither do I,” he replied. “How about we make it up as we go?”
“How about we just get up?” she said and started to move.
Chaz did not want to let her go. He did not want this mood to be over. It was beyond what he’d imagined having dinner with her would be. That both unnerved and excited him.
She shocked him by dropping a quick kiss on his chest before pushing up and away from him. Her curse came next.
“I’m late. Dammit! I have a meeting with RJ and a conference call with my distributor and I’m late!”
Riley jumped out of the bed. She snatched a peach-colored silk robe from the chair and thrust her arms into it as she moved across the room.
Chaz sat up in bed. “You’re an executive, Riley. You can definitely cancel a meeting.”
She was already across the room, pushing a button on the wall to open the door of a massive walk-in closet. “I’m not canceling. This is important. We’ve got deadlines and he’s trying to say he can’t produce the numbers we’ve already presold. It’s a catastrophe and I have to fix it.”
She was talking while moving up and down the aisles in the closet. From what Chaz could see there were more than a dozen aisles of clothes. He could only see the first row of shoes but figured she’d have just as many shoes as she did clothes. Straight to the back was a wall of accessories. Riley came out with clothes and shoes, a necklace dangling from her fingers and a look of sheer panic on her face.
Chaz eased out of the bed. “No worries. I’ll call for my car. He’ll get you there in no time.”
“But what about you?”
