What the hell was up with her?
“Why do you do this?” I asked, no longer willing to keep the thoughts in my head.
“Do what?” she said.
Somehow, she seemed even more tense. Her back had turned to me now, and though her face had turned, she still wasn’t looking at me. She had only just begun to put her bra back on, and she looked every bit the part of someone who regretted where she was.
In perhaps a futile attempt to put her at ease, I helped her get her bra on, lifting the straps and helping her get it hooked.
“Thanks,” she said.
Maybe it wasn’t so futile after all.
“It’s just... this is all so weird, let’s be honest,” she said. I wanted to laugh, but the serious look on her face told me that would be the worst thing I could do. “Obviously, by what just happened, I’m extraordinarily attracted to you, Chance. I have had to fight very hard not to indulge in you, but I get carried away. I shouldn’t be doing this with out business.”
“Well, I shouldn’t be either, but I don’t seem to mind.”
Layla finally looked me in the eyes, her expression saying, “really?” but at least with a smile attached to it.
“I take my role at the family business seriously, Chance,” she continued. “I don’t want to screw it up. I knew because you’re attractive we would probably end up flirting to some degree. But...”
“But the charm took over, huh?” I said.
She rolled her eyes, and now I allowed myself to laugh. Thankfully, it was no longer the worst thing I could have done.
“Listen, truth be told...”
Well, if there’s going to be someone who makes me who I was before Sarah Hill, this is it.
“I had no intentions of developing feelings either. I don’t like to get involved with women for a variety of reasons. But there’s something about you, Layla Taylor, that has me drawn to you like a starving bee to a newly discovered mound of honey.”
I put my hands on her shoulders. She fought to avoid leaning into me but eventually gave in.
“I really can’t stop thinking about you. Stupid, maybe. Probably, considering this could impact our business deal. But who puts a price tag on romance?”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous and charming, Chance.”
“Why? Because it’ll make it harder for you to say no?”
Her lack of an answer confirmed what I thought.
“Look, we don’t even know each other that well. Let’s meet up for dinner. Tonight. I’ll pay. I’ll show you that just because I’m not making any money here doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself. What say you?”
She folded her arms after putting all but her shirt on. Its tear was, unfortunately, a bit obvious, but at least she could leave the building quickly.
“I say fine,” she said. “But pick somewhere far away from our offices. I don’t need us drawing suspicious gazes.”
I heard her, but I took that as her saying she wanted to flirt with me at dinner. She wanted to relish in the opportunity to touch me again. Who knew? If I found a private enough room, maybe she would put her hand down there again.
“Deal,” I said. “I knew you’d make the right choice.”
Before she could sarcastically reply, I went in and kissed her, this time a little more tenderly.
Except it didn’t last long, because soon, my hands had gone to her ass and I had gotten hard once more. She reached down and touched me, and I pushed her down into the chair.
“Stop, stop,” she said, giggling.
Reluctantly, I pulled up and leaned on the table.
“We have work, you know,” she said. “We can have some fun on lunch, but that still leaves the rest of the work day and evening I have to look professional.”
“Says the woman with a tear in her dress shirt.”
“Mmhmm,” she said, not really addressing my note. “You have my number. Text me where we’re going to go and I’ll meet you there at 7.”
“I’ll meet outside your place at 6:30.”
I could see her brain telling her no. Fortunately, her heart was speaking right now.
“I’ll text you where I live,” she finally said.
“Here, I’ll save you the trouble,” I said, pulling out my phone and texting her the request. “Now you can’t ignore me and pretend that you forgot.”
“OK, Chance Hunt,” she said, finally fully dressed and pulling my chair from the door. “Have some manners. You might get what just happened all over again.”
I snorted my pleasure as businesswoman Layla Taylor reappeared, walking out the door with a strident walk, as if she was not aware of the tear in her shirt. Once it was safe, I took a few steps out the door, looked at the exit, and smiled.
You’re mine, I thought. And not just physically.
I whirled around back to my office. Just before I did, though, I swore I saw Edwin Hunt walking down the hallway, as if he had just been watching me.
There was no... well, unfortunately, there was a way it could have happened—as it just did. What the hell this meant, I had no idea... but it wasn’t exactly the most reassuring thing to see right after what had happened with Layla.
Chapter Twelve
Perhaps the most surprising occurrence of the next six hours was that Layla, in fact, did give me her address, which was located near the upper east side of Manhattan. Only then did it occur to me that our dinner and our bar had been relatively close to where she worked and where she lived; she probably thought that getting away with public sex once might have been fun, but anything more than that was tempting the devil to ruin the night for us.
When I got home, I made sure to put on some nice, sexy attire. I wasn’t looking to blow her world up or look like I was going to the opera, but I wanted to make sure that she noticed—a nice polo shirt that revealed a little bit of my chest hair, tight jeans, a decent watch; it did the trick. Not to sound cocky or anything, but I knew I looked good and I knew that Layla would think I looked good.
Here was the funny thing about what we had become—I was no longer just interested in fucking her. That had already happened, and it was everything I had hoped for and more... but now I wanted a little more. I was taking a fucking huge risk, but it was a risk for a woman that was worth it.
At least, that was what I told myself. I also knew that if it didn’t work out, I’d tell myself how stupid I was for ever thinking Layla was worth pursuing, that I could never trust women, and that that was a chance not worth taking.
But for now...
I took a cab to her place, the better to be ready that much quicker. When I came to her apartment, I stood outside, waiting for the front desk to call her down. I found myself surprisingly fidgeting, a little bit in disbelief that I felt so nervous. I had felt butterflies seeing a beautiful woman before, sure, even after Sarah Hill, but this was like... this was probably worse than when I was with Sarah!
“Chance Hunt.”
Hearing her voice before I even saw her already had me aroused and beyond excited. I turned.
Wearing a sleek red dress, a sharp but delightful contrast to her porcelain skin and dark hair, it accentuated her curves but did not throw them in my face—it was like my outfit in that it certainly drew my eyes, but it was far from the most arousing or most formal thing she could have chosen to wear.
“My God, Layla Taylor,” I said, admiring her curves and everything that somehow seemed perfect, even if objectively it may have seemed imperfect. “You are stunningly beautiful. I do not know what I did to win you over, but don’t ever tell me so that I may never have to charm another woman.”
“Oh my God,” Layla said, laughing.
Even I had to tell myself to slow my roll just a tad. My words were a bit over the top and a bit ridiculous, but I couldn’t deny that I felt immense attraction to her. Her dress really didn’t help—it only got my mind running more how good it would feel to take it off her.
Still, I reminded myself that every time I had
fallen for a girl like this, it had ended in heartbreak and disappointment. The cocky Chance that loved to make women giggle was at times propelled by a dark acceptance that all things ended in grief and pain. Just because Layla had much more going for her than any girl I had been with didn’t mean much of anything.
As I moved closer and kissed her, though, those thoughts completely vanished. Funny how that worked.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Sushi O’Three,” I said. “It’s about three blocks down. Come on.”
“Come on?” she said, befuddled. “Like, we’re walking? It’s close?”
I had forgotten this little detail that she had requested, knowing what kind of a power sushi had. Fortunately, not only was it not a marked restaurant, it didn’t even show up on official website listings. The odds of her bumping into a coworker or friend at this place was minuscule—I only knew of it because of dinners the Hunts had there.
“Do you trust me?” I said.
“I’ve only known you for a couple of weeks now,” she said.
“True,” I said, drawing out the word a bit. “But think of all that we’ve done. You don’t trust me to take you to a dinner place, but you trust me to make love to you in the office?”
I said it all with the kind of charming grin that had pulled in so many women before, the kind that leaves them laughing and shaking their head; whether at me or at themselves, I could never know and I never really cared.
And sure enough, after a couple of seconds, Layla did as I expected. She could just chuckle, sigh, and shrug.
“Touche, sir,” she said.
“Look at it this way, it’ll be just as nice as the bar.”
“Oh, well, in that case, should I run back up and get some baby wipes?”
Now it was my turn for the joke to dawn on me and for me to laugh, sigh, and shrug.
“Touche right back at you, madam,” I said with a sarcastic bow. “Just try and keep your hands to yourself. I know that will be difficult being around me.”
“Oh, please,” she said, squeezing my arm tightly.
We headed down the street, bantering back and forth, our conversation flowing as easily as anything in life ever had. When we got to SO3—as I liked to call it with Morgan—the dialogue continued with as much ease.
We talked about everything except the business in our work lives, which was perfect. She talked about life at Princeton; I told her tales of going to school in Columbia. We talked about our future ambitions—her with her father’s company, mine with opening my own firm and, I had to secretly admit, making more money than Edwin and Morgan Hunt.
Such a plan required probably too much luck for me to think it would work without some sort of divine intervention, but honestly, who cared? The point wasn’t to actually make more money—it was to show that I belonged in the same class as the real Hunts, and that I could make money without having a ten-figure inheritance waiting for me on Mr. Hunt’s death bed.
The dialogue only got hotter and more intense as the appetizer turned into sake, which turned into liquor drinks, which turned into more liquor drinks. Soon, we were whispering to each other about our favorite things to do between the sheets; we wouldn’t say out loud what those were, of course, but by the end of the night, I became convinced that Layla’s sex with me in the office was not only in character for her, it was rather tame.
Boy, it was going to be hard to bite my tongue. But it sure would be easy to bite a few things along the way.
Finally, the desert came, and it got devoured so quickly that I got brain freeze. It was an impressively surprising feeling, considering that I had gotten drunk to the point that I didn’t think I would even notice brain freeze. But when it happened, Layla just teased and said she thought the conversation was hot enough to make up for the brain freeze.
“I guess not,” I said as I slowly came back. “Oh, shit. You might be hot enough, though.”
“Oh, are you needing those baby wipes?” she said as her hand came dangerously close to my crotch.
“Hah, you naughty girl,” I said. “No, not at all. Well, not here, at least.”
I pondered for half a second. There was only a momentary pause before I decided to do something that I really almost never did despite the number of women I got.
“Let’s go back to my place.”
Almost universally, I went over to the girl’s place. My place was my sanctuary, my nest—I didn’t want anything interfering with it, women included. I could be a bit particular about it, I admit it.
What I did not expect was for Layla to seem surprised by the request.
“You think?” she said. “My place is—”
But I wanted to push the boundaries of my limits. I wanted to extend myself a little bit beyond what I normally did, especially for Layla Taylor.
“I wouldn’t want to desecrate your temple,” I said. “But I do want to desecrate you in my place.”
“Ohhh,” Layla said, her eyes arching and her nostrils flaring in excitement. “Well you better act fast while the temperate is still hot, mister.”
I didn’t need another cue. I quickly pulled out a hundred dollar bill, slammed it on the table without waiting for the check to come, and grabbed Layla by the arm.
We hadn’t left the restaurant and she was already talking dirty into my ear about all the things she was going to do.
Chapter Thirteen
Although we continued our flirtatious, dirty talk, the kind that we had to keep in hushed tones even for the usual oddly private New York City walkways, I began to internally doubt that bringing Layla back to my place was a good idea.
Oh, sure, I would have to do so eventually. I had no bones about bringing her to my place in the future. But this might have, once again, been setting myself up for a failure that would take some time to recover from. She was liking me more and more by the second... and I was digging it more and more by the minute. It would only take one thing to go wrong for her to be gone, and then I really would never trust women again.
That, and as awful as it sounds, I just liked being able to leave early after a night of fornication. Maybe that made me an asshole, but I could never leave if I was already home. I suspected that that had had something to do with avoidance issues and trust issues with women, but I wasn’t about to be my own psychologist.
Not when the most beautiful woman I had ever known was all over me and telling me all sorts of filthy things she was about to do to me.
In any case, that self-talk died when my apartment came into view.
“It’s probably not as nice as what you’re used to,” I said as I fumbled for my keys. “You’ve been warned.”
“Oh, you have such little faith,” she said. “I’m sure your place is nice.”
Well, it was compared to a lot of places in New York; having help from Mrs. Hunt would do that to me.
But to pretend it was as nice as Morgan’s place or any of the Hunts’ place was a boldface lie. Obviously, nothing could compare to the manor that the Hunts had in Connecticut, the place of many a heartbreak for me. But this was a good apartment, a B, maybe B+ apartment with the right decor; it was not the kind of place the daughter of a CEO likely spent most of her time at.
I took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and let her step in.
“Ohhhh,” she said.
Positive first reaction. Might not be all bad.
“You do have a nice place, I was right!” she said, laughing. “See, Chance, that’s the funny thing about you. You always seem a little self-deprecating and a little mysterious... but pull back the curtain and you realize that you actually have it pretty good. You are a pretty good guy.”
I just chortled and held back from saying anything more. We had already lost a touch of the hot and heavy conversation that we’d engaged in on the train ride over just by the duration of the walk and journey to my place; I didn’t need to waste any more time with words. I needed to engage in action.
And so, without
another word, I stepped forward boldly, grabbed Layla’s hips, pulled her to me, and kissed her.
Layla, sensing where this was going, threw her arms around me. In the office, we had to worry about making too much noise and protecting against people possibly walking in. Now, here, as I glanced up for a brief moment and saw the glass window looking over the streets of New York about twenty stories below, a dirty, filthy idea entered my mind.
“I’m going to fuck you against that window,” I said, thinking of showing off her curves for all of Manhattan to witness. “You’re mine, Layla Taylor, and you’re going to do exactly what the fuck I say. Do I make myself clear?”
Gasping for breath, her nails buried into my back, her body already heaving despite me not even having touched her in the right spot, she breathily aired out, “Yes, oh, God, yes, Chance, please. Fuck me like that.”
I took a little more care in taking off her red dress, if only because, hey, I could be a gentleman, and I knew she probably didn’t have as many of those laying around as she did work clothes. That, and the ravenous desire to fuck her had turned me into a dumb animal in the office; here, it was more about giving her the erotically delightful experience that would keep her coming and keep her coming to me.
Soon, though, I had her down to just her panties, bra off. I pressed her against the window, hearing the thud of her pressing against the glass. I pushed her back into me and nibbled on her neck and grabbed her breasts, squeezing them in rhythm with the soft moans that came her way. I licked her ear and made my way down.
For just the briefest of times—relative to our whole experience, anyways—I spun her around so her ass faced the crowd. I bit her panties and dragged them down her legs. Wasting no time at all, I pressed my face into her and darted my tongue out.
Her hands grabbed my hair, her nails digging through my scalp. She lifted her right leg, pushing it on my shoulder. I looked into her eyes, trying to capture a glimpse of eye contact. Whether by the sheer pleasure she felt or the unbearable intensity of my eyes, she couldn’t look at me.
Flawed (Hunt Brothers Saga) Page 9
