by Christa Wick
At least now, she had clothes that were fitting for her gorgeous body. When the boutique deliveries I’d arranged for her had first come to the penthouse this morning, I’d imagined Pippa pouring all her curves into each sexy outfit.
Then I’d imagined peeling each piece of clothing right off of her.
The crazy thing was, I had been at that boutique with no real plans other than to buy her a bunch of lavish gifts. At my wit’s end over her not believing I was really attracted to her, I’d intended on showing up at her office with one gift a day until she finally took my date requests seriously. But then I’d spoken to the shop owner and found out she was having some major financial and legal trouble thanks to her accountant, Cecil J. Gorman.
The same accountant Pippa used.
That’s when I put two and two together and discovered the serious hot water Pippa was in with the IRS, and everything she’d been trying to resolve—unsuccessfully—on her own.
In a way, if it hadn’t been for Gorman, Pippa wouldn’t be my fiancée right now.
…But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to kick the dickhead’s ass as soon as my P.I. dragged him back into the country.
Seeing Pippa’s face in my attorney’s office when I’d told her my P.I. had found Gorman, hell, I’d felt ten-feet tall. And watching her sass the lawyer while signing that agreement? Let’s just say if that conference room hadn’t had glass walls, I would’ve thrown Michael out and had my wicked way with Pippa right then and there.
Gazing at her now just sitting there in the limo looking beautiful, I couldn’t resist pulling her onto my lap. Lifting her skirt and feeling her perfectly rounded ass and lush hips, I made a mental note to buy out every last skirt in the entire boutique. No more pants for my gorgeous bride-to-be.
Adjusting her sexy curves so she was straddling me, my cock cushioned against her core, I nibbled on her neck and admitted, “You know, I almost hid your panties this morning so you wouldn’t have a pair to wear today.”
Hearing her gasp, making that scandalized blush hit her cheeks was my final undoing. “Love, I need to make you come again before I leave you for the day.”
From there, the next few minutes went by in a blur.
And I damn well earned every new blush and gasp.
“Are you going to make me wait until after the wedding, P.J.?” I rasped against her skin, unsure which one of us I was torturing more with this particular line of questioning.
I’d asked, not because I intended to take her before then. Hell, I’d waited a full year already. I could wait to make our first night as husband and wife that much more special.
But before I could tell her that, she came apart completely in my arms, coming so hard I was left shaking before she was through.
After that, I needed her not to answer me. Because if she told me I could have her now, take her now, I wasn’t sure anything would be able to stop me.
Turned out, stopping was the least of my worries. Because what she did end up telling me next almost decimated me.
“Blake…”
A single tear slid down her cheek as she said the words I’d been dreading since yesterday.
“I don’t think I can keep up this charade. Not when—”
She stopped and I knew she was trying not to tell me how she felt about me.
Maddening woman.
I stared at her, my stubbornly obstinate fiancée, and felt more determined than ever for this crazy plan of mine to work.
“You already signed the contract, love. This wedding, our marriage—it’s going to happen.”
With that, I cuddled her in close and spent the rest of the ride more than ready to get her to come all over again if she felt the need to debate the matter anymore.
-- Three Days Later --
Here we were again.
I was about to spend another night with Pippa beside me in my bed but still a million miles away. At least this time, she’d snuggled into me when she’d fallen asleep. If plum wine and sushi rolls could accomplish that feat, I’d make damn sure we had that every single night from now on.
Tonight had not gone as I’d expected.
When she’d first told me about her talk with Abigail, I could see it would’ve been next to impossible to convince her that she was the woman I’d fallen in love with. So I’d stuck to my plans, answered her questions without revealing all my cards.
She’d been so adorably sleepy when her interrogation had begun winding down. I’d been sorely tempted to drag these damn pants off her and feast on her pussy the way I’d wanted to for the past year every time she’d purred while eating those sushi rolls she loved so much. But I’d managed to restrain myself. Barely.
It’d taken every ounce of control I’d possessed not to do more than lift her up into my arms so I could carry her up and tuck her in for the night.
Entering the bedroom, I didn't want to put Pippa down. Had she been fully alert instead of slightly tipsy, she never would have allowed me to carry her like this. She was always going on that she was too heavy, and that simply wasn’t true. She was beautifully lush, gorgeously curvy.
Whoever had poisoned her to think otherwise should be shot.
Given all her reservations about her body, I knew she thought I was playing some sort of game, making her come apart piece by piece, leaving her wet and wanting more the last two times. But if anyone was getting tortured here, it was me. I can’t even remember the last time I’d taken a shower that wasn’t ice cold.
Laying her down in our bed, I foresaw another cold one in my immediate future.
Because now that she was asleep, taking these atrocious pants off her was a given, with the only feat here being how to get the job done without turning into a total pervert about it.
Considering how long I’d been turned on by the woman, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to get her down to her underwear without coming in my own.
But I was going to give it a try.
I worked her blouse off first and, in an amazing show of prestidigitation, the bra from beneath her camisole without removing the camisole.
I was only so strong.
Placing her on her back gently, I worked the pants off her next, my cock demanding that all the oxygen and blood in my body be made available for its exclusive use with every luscious inch of skin I revealed.
Before I could torture myself any more, I covered her up quickly, kissed her forehead, and practically ran the hell out of the room. Only, the sound of an incoming text message stopped me before I could make it to the shower.
Not wanting Pippa's phone to wake her, I went over to the dresser and picked it up to silence it.
That’s when a new text message flashed on the screen.
A trashy website just posted another disgusting photo of you. He was carrying your trashy ass inside drunk as a skunk! Your father was just beside himself when his boss mentioned it.
Angrier than I’d ever been when I realized it was her mother sending her such a vicious text, I scrolled back to see what else the hateful woman had texted before that.
There was an entire string of unseen texts where she called Pippa every disgusting obscenity a person could call another person, blaming Pippa for her father now having to go to work in shame as the father of a fat, gold-digging whore.
I’d thought it couldn’t get much worse.
But it did.
The follow-up message to the ‘drunk as a skunk’ text had pure rage filling my veins.
The photo looked like the man was carting a pig to the butchers. If only he could carve some of that fat off you!
Bile filled my mouth. I swallowed it down, the taste less vile than the venom flashing across Pippa's cell phone screen.
"Oh, love," I whispered, looking over at my sleeping fiancée in an all new light. "I am so sorry your parents were such despicable assholes."
It explained so much.
How anyone could treat Pippa that way was beyond comprehension. That it was her own paren
ts who’d been beating her down like that was unconscionable.
Her inability to see her own beauty, and even her inability to believe in love, all made so much sense now. After a lifetime of abuse like this, anyone would be as guarded as Pippa was.
Seeing in black and white how her mother spoke to her via text message, I couldn’t even imagine how her childhood had been, what sort of malicious crap she’d shoveled into Pippa’s brain as she’d been growing up.
While my own mother had simply abandoned me, Pippa’s had verbally and emotionally abused her, turned her insecurities into weapons.
At least I’d had my grandmother after my mother left. Eliza Cross had been everything her daughter wasn’t in terms of being a mother figure to me. She’d stepped in to show me love, show me my value.
But Pippa had had no one to do that for her, no one to save her from the continued abuse.
That ended today.
Bringing her phone with me to my computer, I ran a reverse lookup on the number and got a hit.
Madeline Jones – Madison, Wisconsin
A Nathaniel Jones was listed as her spouse.
There was only one LinkedIn page for that name in that city in the right age range to be Pippa’s father. The page showed he was currently employed at the MacArthur Independent School District as a children’s counselor.
The irony.
I called my P.I. to get Nathaniel’s cell phone number. I wanted to have a private chat with the man, away from the unhinged sociopath he was married to.
Minutes later, I had the number and was dialing.
His voice was cautious as he answered. “Hello?”
"Are you Nathaniel Jones, Pippa’s father?" I asked, not beating around the bush.
"Yes, who is this?"
"Her fiancé," I answered curtly. "I’m sure you’ve heard all about me, seeing as how my entrance into your daughter’s life has suddenly affected your professional reputation so much."
Confused silence filled his side of the call.
Just as I thought.
"Your wife Madeline has been texting my fiancée all night. If you’d like, I can bring copies of them to your school and clear up a lot of things for your boss, who, according to your wife, is terribly invested in Pippa’s appearance."
On his end, Nathaniel cleared his throat, gave a little cough before offering a half-ass excuse. "Madeline has always been a little…strict on matters of health."
"What about mental health?" I countered. "Because frankly, I’m deeply concerned about your wife's sanity. As a counselor, I'm surprised that you aren’t."
"Now, listen here—"
"No," I growled. "You listen.”
I then began to recite a few of the texts his wife had sent Pippa, word for disgusting word.
I let each horrific, repugnant word seep into his thick skull before I continued, "If a man said something like that to my beautiful fiancée on the street, I would proceed to break damn near every bone in his body with my own hands. But I don't have that sweet luxury where you and your wife are concerned."
I waited for him to say something. He remained mute.
Good. It bode well for her parents that only one of them was insane.
"Simply put, Mr. Jones, I will have to find a different way to break you and Madeline if either of you ever hurt your daughter like this again. Your profession, your social circle, your finances. I’m not just a ridiculously rich man, I’m a powerful one. If I hear of even one more instance of your cracked wife contacting Pippa, I will end life as you know it for the both of you.” I gave him two seconds to process all that fully. “Tell me you understand, Mr. Jones."
"I-I understand."
My tone grew harder, angrier. "You fucking better. You let Pippa grow up with that toxic venom every single day of her childhood. You should’ve protected her from pain like that, been a half decent father to her. But you weren’t. You still aren’t, based on the way you’re still defending your fucked-up wife. Well, Pippa is mine to love and take care of now. And unlike you, I will protect her."
I hung up, dropped the phone, wrapped my hands around my skull and squeezed to try and get a handle on my rage, my frustration that I hadn’t known something like this was going on for the past year.
When I could finally breathe without seeing a red haze over my vision, I returned the phone back to the dresser, the vile messages forwarded to me for my records, then deleted from her phone forever.
Kissing her gently, I made her a promise only her dream self would hear, “Never again, Pippa. I won’t let them hurt you ever again.”
TWENTY
- Pippa -
-- Today --
“You did all that for me?” I whispered, blinking in disbelief over everything Blake had just explained. “But…why?”
He came over to the bed and gently butted his forehead against mine. “Because I love you, damn it. Every last detail about you. I love how intoxicatingly beautiful you are inside and out. I even love how you manage to be a frustrating blend of smart-as-hell and clueless enough to make a lesser man lose his mind. Do I need to spell it out in flashing neon lights?”
I blushed bright red. “No, no. I get that part now. Finally. Well, I’m still processing, to be honest, but I do believe you. What I meant was why did you do it this way?”
“Would you have said yes to marrying me if I didn’t?”
The man had a point.
“Well, no,” I admitted. “But you can’t blame me for that. We’ve never even been out on a date. A marriage proposal would’ve come out of left field.”
“Pippa, I haven’t even looked at another woman since I first laid eyes on you over a year ago. All the late nights, the phone calls, the long talks over meals. And getting the best nights of sleep in my entire life with you in my arms the few times you fell asleep at my place. Baby, I’ve never done any of that with any woman in my entire life.”
Oh.
“Ask me anything, P.J. Aside from the things you’ve kept from me about your asshole parents, you’ve shared everything important there is to know about you.”
This was true. Despite only having met him a year ago, I could honestly say that Blake knew things about me that even Kevin didn’t, things I’d never told another soul.
“Love, we’ve basically been dating for an entire year now and you’ve just been completely oblivious to that fact.”
I startled. “B-but in all that time, you never once indicated you had feelings for me.”
He sighed. “Yes, I have. Quite a few times, in fact. Way back in the beginning when I kept asking you out and you kept insisting on believing I was joking. Then a couple of months ago, that night we talked until dawn. Remember that? I even kissed you after telling you how beautiful you were…and all you did was laugh it off and tell me I was drunk.”
“You’d had a glass of wine and were being all flirty with me afterward,” I argued. “What else was I supposed to think?”
“That I was attracted to you,” he practically thundered.
Funny, that possibility had never once crossed my mind.
“P.J., each time I’d tell you I was crazy about you, you’d simply pat me on the shoulder like I was your big brother or something, and then scamper away before I could show you I was definitely, definitely not.”
“I swear, Blake. I really had no idea.”
“Oh, believe me, I know. If you had, I think your guard would’ve been up far more during all those late nights we had.”
He tilted his head toward me and sat beside me on the bed, pulling me into his arms. “Woman, you’ve fallen asleep in my home half a dozen times from working too hard. And though you never knew, I held you until morning every time.” Kissing me on my temple, he added with a smile, “The only thing that would’ve made those nights any better would’ve been—"
“Sex?” I broke in, candidly. Because that would’ve certainly made those nights less frustrating for me. Just as I hadn’t known he’d held me those nig
hts, he had no clue I’d been having lusty sex dreams about him the entire time.
He chuckled. “That, too. But I was going to say if you’d been even remotely aware.”
Staring into my eyes, he continued to say more words I never ever thought I’d hear him direct at me. “Baby, before you came along, I’d never even thought about living with a woman. Then came that first night I fell asleep with you curled up against me on my couch a few months after you started working for me. After that, I haven’t been able to go a single day without being pissed as hell we weren’t falling asleep together every damn night. If I hadn’t thought you’d spook and possibly even fire me as a client, I would’ve asked you to move out of your crap apartment and live at my place months ago.”
At this point, I was well past shocked. Now, I was just trying to make sense of every startling new piece of information.
“So…your proposing marriage to me was your way of asking me to…move in with you?”
Laughing, he shook his head. “No, by that point, I wasn’t going to settle for us just dating and moving in together. The proposal may have come to me in the heat of the moment after I saw Kevin kissing your cheek, but as soon as the idea materialized in my head, I knew there was nothing I wanted more than to have you become my wife. And since I couldn’t even convince you that I’d been falling in love with you, I knew I had to take drastic measures if I had any hope of making it all a reality.”
He tugged me onto his lap so I was straddling him as he put all the remaining puzzle pieces together for me. “That day in your office when I suggested this arrangement, I’d actually just come from a long morning meeting with my lawyers discussing all the bullshit Anna was trying to stir up. In retrospect, I should’ve fucking fired the woman after she first came on to me a few years ago. But I’d thought the matter was resolved after I told her to cut that shit out and she stopped immediately. Little did I know that she’d become such a vengeful virus. She started by sleeping her way through my company, causing all sorts of unnecessary drama in her wake, before eventually graduating to extorting a junior exec under her who comes from old money by threatening to tell his wife about the affair. When all this came to light, I demanded her resignation. Though I’d been well within my rights to do so, she brought an EO complaint accusing me of allowing male executives to cavort with female juniors, but firing her for the same action.”
