by Parker, Ali
I was dripping wet and he hadn’t even removed my panties yet. The scent of my arousal hung in the air, but I didn’t mind. The way Blake’s eyes grew darker and became heavy lidded meant he needed me as much as I needed him.
His eyes closed as he breathed in deeply. There was a hunger in them that set fire to my veins when he opened them. It made my clit throb, begging for his attention.
When he reached down again, he rolled my panties off in one smooth swipe, growling when he found me bare and glistening. “Fuck, I can’t wait to taste you again.”
His mouth was on me not a second later. Spreading me open with his fingers, he sank his tongue into my core. The surface of his tongue licked me from my entrance to my clit. A finger sank into my aching core as his tongue started to flick across my bud in the same rhythm.
“Blake!” I cried out.
His only reply was his fingers digging into my hip as his mouth sucked on my sensitive bundle of nerves. It sent the pleasure center of my brain into euphoria.
As he sucked on me, his fingers moved faster and faster.
My body started shaking, my muscles tensing. “Yes, Blake. There, don’t stop.”
My head and neck arched. My butt came off the mattress as my hips bucked against his mouth. White hot heat wracked my body. Light burst behind my eyelids as my orgasm ripped through me with the force of a freight train.
Licking me like a man having a meal at a Michelin starred restaurant, he groaned before crawling up my body and positioning his cock at my entrance.
I spread my legs wider to accommodate his hips between them. I needed him inside me. Now. I’d just had one of the most intense orgasms of my life but if left me aching for more and I knew Blake could deliver.
He coated himself in my juices, his broad crown nudging at me. I didn’t know when he got a condom on, but I could feel the latex sliding against my skin. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, kissing him and pushing my hips up into his. He didn’t question it, sinking into me with a feral growl. Inch by delicious inch, he fed himself into me.
I moaned loudly, glad all our rooms offered soundproofing. “You’re so hard.”
“That’s what you do to me, Aston,” he gritted out.
My muscles clenched and Blake moaned. “You’re so tight, Aston. So fucking wet.”
“Blake,” I breathed, looping my ankles to one another behind his back. My shift allowed him to slide all the way into me. He was so deep.
It was freaking amazing. I couldn’t keep quiet, even if I tried.
Moving with long rhythmic strokes, he sent me right to the edge. His pubic bone hit my sensitive clit on each thrust. I got louder and louder. My fingers dug into the skin on his shoulders. My thighs started to shake.
Blake’s jaw clenched, his muscles tight as he picked up the speed of his strokes, chasing his own release along with mine.
“I’m going to need you to come for me now, Aston.” He grunted. “I’m so close. You feel too good and I’m not going to last.”
His husky moan was all it took.
I went flying over the edge with his next stroke. Waves of pleasure crashed into me, spreading from my core to every inch of my existence.
The muscles in Blake’s back rippled under my hands. He followed me over, whispering my name in my ear.
Fast breaths came puffing out of my chest when it was over.
Blake’s back hit the bed as I tried to catch my breath. “Wow. If that’s what I get for coming out to see you, I’m going to quit my job and start following you around like a groupie.”
He grinned, rolling onto his side and draping his arm around my waist. “That might be fun. We could do our own version of a world tour. I’ll rent a bus with my face on it to take us from hotel to hotel.”
“Sounds like a blast,” I said, laughing, but it really did sound like fun. I would never really do it, but a girl could dream. Reaching for his hand on my hip, I laced our fingers together. We both fell quiet as we caught our breath.
When my heart was beating at its regular rhythm and the light sheen of sweat covering my body had dried, I turned on my side to face Blake. I traced the strong line of his jaw with my eyes, lingering on the dark stubs where his stubble was forming a shadow beneath his skin.
His eyes were closed, but I could tell he wasn’t sleeping. I was learning to read him, noticing small nuances in his expression and tiny differences in the set of his muscles that told me things about him.
“You’re thinking about your family, aren’t you?”
He sighed, slowly opening his eyes. “Unfortunately.”
Trying to choose the right words so I didn’t sound too pushy, I paused. “I think you should go back to the hospital tomorrow.”
“I think you might be right,” he said, turning his head to lock his gaze to mine. “Let’s make a deal. I’ll go if you agree to come with me?”
He wanted me to go with him? My heart rate accelerated again. If I went with him, I was going to meet his mom. I knew he wouldn’t exactly think of it as meeting his parent, but that was what it was. “Are you sure? She might want to speak to you in private.”
“I don’t really care what she wants. I want you with me, if you’d like to come, that is.”
Being there for him was why I flew out to see him. It was flattering that he wanted me with him, but more than that, he was letting me be there for him. Really letting me in. It was a big deal for him to agree to go back to the hospital knowing his estranged mother would be there and he wanted me with him when he went.
It meant something. “Of course I’ll go with you.”
Chapter 42
Blake
Aston and I were in my car, on our way to the hospital. Since it was Saturday, traffic was light, and we were making good time down a wide, double lane road. Palm trees swayed in the light breeze outside, splashes of bright green against an otherwise clear blue sky.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” Aston breathed. Her eyes were glued to the scenery as we drove, and she kept pointing things out to me. Seeing Tampa through her eyes warmed me to the place in a way I hadn’t been before.
“Yeah, it actually kind of is.” I agreed. I never really understood why Dad chose Tampa but being here with Aston caused it to begin to make sense to me for the first time. There was a serenity here I hadn’t felt before.
“How are you feeling?” She tore her eyes away from our surroundings to look at me. I glanced at her and saw she was wearing a concerned frown, fiddling with her fingers.
“I’m okay. I hope my dad’s doing better. They expected him to have woken up by now.” It was worrying me that he wasn’t awake yet, but when I spoke to the doctor yesterday, he assured me everything was fine. My dad simply wasn’t ready to wake up yet.
“I hope so, too,” Aston said. “But the doctors say it could happen any time, right?”
“Right.” They kept telling us we just had to be patient. Patience wasn’t my strong suit though, I was a man of action. I liked to be able to do things or make them happen instead of sitting around waiting.
When we got to the hospital, Aston took my hand. I wrapped my fingers around hers and led her to my father’s room. She was quiet on our way up, as if she knew I was trying to gather my thoughts.
We got to the room, but before I opened the door and pulled the curtain back, Aston squeezed my hand and brushed a kiss on my lips. “Whatever happens in there, I’m here for you.”
My heart clenched. “I know, thank you.”
Inhaling a deep breath, I went inside first. I could feel Aston following me, but as soon as I stepped into the room, the world stopped spinning. I lost sense of everything except the scene playing out in front of me.
Dad was awake, gaunt and frail, but sitting up in his hospital bed. My mother was in the same chair she’d been in all week, but she had scooted up so she was almost sitting on the bed. They were holding hands, staring lovingly into each other’s eyes.
“Dad?”
My father looked up, smiling when he saw me. “Blake, thank you for coming.”
“Of course,” I said, seeing my father’s gaze drift to Aston behind me. I turned to her. I wanted her here when I spoke to my mother, but I hadn’t anticipated my father being awake.
As much as I was okay talking with Aston around, I knew my father valued his privacy. He wouldn’t be comfortable talking in front of her.
Thankfully, I knew she would understand. She had expressed her concern over having a conversation like the one I had to have with my mother in the presence of a stranger again before we came to the hospital.
Before I could ask her if we could have a minute, she smiled. “I’m going to go grab some coffee.”
She was out of the room a second later. My father stared after her curiously but didn’t ask anything about her. I was assuming he knew there were more pressing things to talk about. I moved to the side of his bed. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay.” He told me. His eyes were a little red and he looked tired, but he did look okay. “It’ll be a while before I’m back on my feet, but the doctors tell me that it’s normal for recovery to take time.”
“I wanted to start looking into recovery facilities for you, but the doctors advised us to hold off until you regained consciousness.” I had intended on doing preliminary research into facilities in the area anyway, but I never got around to it.
My dad waved his hand from side to side. “I’m not going to a recovery center.”
He glanced at my mom before continuing. “I’ll be going home once they discharge me. We’ll be fine there.”
We? My jaw hardened. My gaze followed my father’s to my mom’s face. “Speaking of which, do you mind telling me what she is doing here?”
My father reached for my mom’s other hand, so he was holding both of hers in one of his. “I understand you were shocked to see her here. She told me you came by.”
Came by? I stayed with him before she even knew what was going on, but it wasn’t a competition. I had asked him a question and I wanted to know the answer. “Nothing she said made much sense to me.”
Dad released a heavy breath. “I understand, perhaps I can shed some light on what happened.”
“Please do.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall, bracing myself for information that was undoubtedly going to shake me to the very core. Again.
“Last week before I had the stroke, I was thinking about the future of the company. It made me think of my past.” He glanced at my mother, a soft smile spreading on his lips. “Your mother was, of course, an important part of my past. Thinking back, I realized how much I lost in my life for the company. The best and most important thing I lost was your mother.”
“What?” He didn’t lose her, she walked. Or was there some truth in the story she spun to me the other day? Had my dad known he was placing the company’s needs above hers and ignored it?
“It’s true,” he nodded. “I lost her because of the company. I gave up so many things in my pursuit of success, but your mom was something I could never replace. No matter how hard I tried.”
A quiet sob shook my mother’s shoulders. She placed her pointer fingers beneath her eyes and wiped the first tears away. As if I was looking at her through a prism, my view started to change.
Her actions had by no means been justified or validated, but my father’s side of the story corresponded with hers. She still tore my heart out and irrevocably changed our lives forever, but if Dad was willing to give her a second chance, maybe all the blame didn’t belong at her feet.
“What does this mean?”
They stared into each other’s eyes for a few quiet beats, then my dad spoke up. “We’re going to try again. Your mother will be coming home with me when I leave here. She’ll stay by my side for my recovery and we’ll take it from there.”
“You’re serious?”
He nodded. “As a heart attack. Or a stroke—apparently.”
My mom gasped. Dad gave an amused chuckle. “Too soon?”
“Way too soon.” I told him, but I couldn’t help the slow spread of the grin forming on my lips. If Dad’s sense of humor was intact, surely he really was going to be okay. “But as long as you’re sure about this Dad, I’m behind you.”
It would take a long time before all the wounds left behind by my mom’s departure would heal. There were probably some that would never heal, but that was my problem. Not Dad’s. His recovery was the most important thing now.
If he thought Mom could help with his recovery, I wasn’t going to stand in their way. My father smiled. “Thank you. I knew I could count on you, Blake. Now that all of that is out of the way, catch me up on what’s been going on at the company.”
“We’ve kept your illness under wraps,” I started, knowing he would want to know how much the public knew.
His smile turned grateful. “Thank God. The last thing I need is to be surrounded by the press when I leave here or plagued by rumors that my brain can’t keep up anymore.”
I cringed. “There may be rumors like that out there already. Danny started making the cuts as soon as he took the reins. A couple of people have commented that it’s nothing like you. They’re speculating about the cause.”
“Shit.” Dad shook his head. “One of the things I was thinking about last week was the line of succession. I was hoping to speak to you two about it and have the papers drawn up before it ever became necessary for either of you to have to call any shots.”
“What are you talking about?” The line of succession was decided purely by the order of our birth. The plan had always been that Danny would take over from Dad. I had no problem with it.
It was just the way things were. I knew it would mean I was probably going to be at loggerheads with my brother for the rest of our natural lives, but I would keep fighting to keep him on the straight and narrow for Dad’s plans for the company.
Dad glanced at Mom, who gave him a small nod. “I guess it’s better for me to tell you first and to speak to Danny about it separately. I’m not leaving the company in your brother’s hands. I have the papers in my office, they’re all signed. I just hadn’t gotten time to send them to the lawyers.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“That depends. If you think I’m saying that I want you to take over for me, then yes, I’m saying what you think I’m saying. You’ve always been stronger than Danny. You’ve given the company everything you’ve got without any fanfare or publicity antics.”
“But Danny—”
“Will stay with the company,” my father said. “Truth be told, this is always the way it was going to be, I just didn’t want to push the company on you. I still won’t. If you don’t want it, I’ll have to go to the board. But Danny isn’t suited to run the company. He’s a soldier, and a damn good one. He’s not a leader, not for this company.”
“Even when you were children,” my mother intervened, smiling at me. “You were always the leader. We were expecting it to be the other way around because you’re younger, but you were always the one he looked up to. Danny would come up with ideas, but you would be the one to figure out how to make them happen. When things went wrong, you were always the one to fix them. Even then I knew you would be the one who would take the reins from your father one day.”
“He’s not going to take it lying down,” I said, warning them. A part of me was relieved about this development. It meant no more traveling to make cuts and focusing on the company we had instead of all these random side tangents Danny was hell bent on going off on.
But I knew it was going to be tough on him. He was going to be pissed off beyond anything he’d ever been before. It was okay, though. I’d been braced for a fight with my brother for weeks now. It would simply be over my taking over the company now, instead of him taking over and steering the company in a direction I didn’t agree with.
Same fight, we’d just swapped sides.
I sighed, running my hands through my hair. Dad shook his head. “It will come as a shock to him, but I don’t think it’s a possibility he’s never considered. He’ll get used to it.”
“Okay.” I was ready for this. It felt like I’d been ready all my life. In a way, I guess I had been.
“Okay then,” Dad said, then canted in the bed to peer behind me. “Now, who’s the young lady you had with you earlier. Bring her in, I’d love to meet her.”
Chapter 43
Aston
Blake stuck his head out the door and motioned for me to come back into the room. I nodded but took a deep breath before I stood up. I’d been drinking my coffee in the waiting area while Blake had a conversation with his parents.
It had been awhile, and my nerves were frayed. I had no idea what was going on inside that room, I only hoped it was good.
Blake deserved an explanation from his parents, I just hoped he’d gotten one he could live with. He looked okay, though. He was smiling as he waited for me to make my way to him. “My parents want to meet you.”
Blood started pounding in my ears, my nerves sparking at their frayed edges. Not only was I about to meet one of my heroes, but I was also going to meet the parents. Meeting the parents was a big step in any relationship, but in ours it was even bigger since his dad was also my boss.
“Okay,” I swallowed past a lump in my throat. People said never to meet your heroes. If mine disappointed me, it would be a double whammy. It would not only be my hero letting me down, but also my sort-of boyfriend’s father.
Blake took my hand and led me inside. My knees felt like jelly, but I managed to put one foot in front of the other without collapsing.
Wayne McAllen was lying in his hospital bed, a shadow of the man I knew him to be. He’d lost some weight since the last pictures I saw of him and he was gray and pale.
