Bared by Him by Red Garnier

take her until she begged him to stop.
    Heart pounding as she neared, he watched her wind around the tables hugging people
     and his eyebrows pulled low. He didn’t like the way the men looked at Ivy. The way
     they hugged her, like they wanted to feel her chest against theirs. He fisted his
     hands so hard, his knuckles jutted out. Visions of violence teased his mind, until
     he saw her come closer still, toward him, and his pulse quieted.
    Finally she was near enough for him to hear people wish her luck, like she was this
     white knight of theirs, “fighting” to get donations. Cade wanted to be the black knight
     who took their white knight away from them and took her somewhere where cancer did
     not exist, and was not a word she ever spoke again.
    “Hi,” she said, reaching him, her cheeks flushed a pretty pink. Her scent did a number
     on his senses, and he got more protective, tenser in his stance. Ivy didn’t belong
     here.
    She. Did not. Belong here.
    He set his forehead against hers and pulled her closer to him, his voice gruffer than
     he’d intended. “Let me take you home.”
    She drew back and gave him a startled look that clearly told him she suspected he
     was crazy, which was actually spot-on. “What? Cade, I can’t leave now.” Her expression
     softened all of a sudden, and so did her voice as she touched his arm lightly. “I
     understand if you want to leave, though. I’ll catch up with you. I promise I’ll stop
     by when I’m done.”
    He hesitated, but shook his head and remained, almost fevered in his skin by that
     mere light, fleeting touch of her fingers.
    He wanted her hands under his shirt, all over his torso. He wanted her writhing again.
     Moaning his name.
    Throat tight with desire, he watched as she once again turned to greet some other
     attendants, and he edged back to give her space, tapping his thigh as he waited, hoping
     these people didn’t make Ivy cry. He could see her eyes were red-rimmed.
    He clenched his teeth. Fucking shit, why did she expose herself to this pain? Again
     and again? For new people? People she didn’t know, wouldn’t even have to know were
     dying?
    He tore his mind away from the black cloud of his thoughts and focused just on Ivy.
     On what he wanted to do to her. On how they would both shatter to a thousand pieces
     when they got to his home or her home. It didn’t matter. He was so anxious to feel
     her he’d do her in a bathroom.
    A text popped into his screen.
    You coming to poker? We’re sitting here waiting like idiots.
    You’re always an idiot.
    U coming or not?
    He wasn’t about to tell his friends where he was, especially Luke Preston, the loud-mouthed
     son of a bitch who was up on everyone’s cases, all the damn time. Good thing Luke
     was a little tamed now that he had a new woman, a real sexpot who seemed to know just
     what to do with Luke Preston, but Cade still snorted at the thought that it would
     even last. Nothing good ever did.
    He and Ivy were …
    Shit, they were probably not going to last more than a week.
    He felt like he’d just swallowed a bowling ball, and he scowled once more at the waiting
     message. No, he was not telling Preston or anyone he was at a cancer dinner. They wouldn’t believe him. Hell, they almost pitied him, and always danced
     around the subject of Laura. Nobody dared speak her name around him. They tried to
     pretend she’d never existed, which was something that irked him, for it prevented
     him from ever really … venting at all.
    Busy.
    He shut his phone off after texting that brief word, and waited for a half hour more,
     thinking of all the things he ached to do to this woman. He waited. Keenly aware that
     for once in his life, anger didn’t dominate his every thought. For once in his life,
     he actually gave a shit about something.
    Even it was only burying himself inside of Ivy.
    *   *   *
    Ivy kept stealing glances at Cade across the room, and her heart flipped and vaulted