by Deena Patel
I stripped and stepped under the scalding spray. The water soaked my body and washed away the grime from the day. Once my skin began to turn prunish, I quickly finished my shower and dried off. If Thomas wasn’t back from the auction preparations before I went to bed, I’d call him and tell him to wake me as soon as he got home. I needed touch to calm this turmoil.
We’d come so far. I still feared what would happen in the future, but he’d shown me over and over what I meant to him. He’d stood up for me and protected me, as no one else had before. Most of all, he believed me when I’d told him about the money missing from the foundation and wanted to help me prove my innocence.
I had to let Thomas know that he was what I wanted, that I chose him.
I wrapped a towel around my head and another around my body and stepped into the bedroom.
“You took a long enough shower.”
I came to an abrupt halt and glanced at the bed. Thomas sat on the end, wearing only his lounge pants. His hair was damp, and a few stray drops of water sprinkled his shoulders. A hoof-sized bruise marred the left side his beautiful corded abs, and the scent of his shampoo lingered in the air around him.
“I didn’t know you were waiting for me,” I said.
“Come here.”
I narrowed my eyes at his command, but I moved toward him. I had so much to tell him, and all I could think about was jumping his delicious body.
“Please. I need you tonight.”
The plea in his voice sent a shiver down my spine and kindled a throbbing between my legs.
I came to stand between his thighs and rested one hand on his bare shoulder as the other gripped my towel. He peered up at me and smiled, making my pulse jump.
Not saying a word, he slipped his arm around my waist and tugged me forward.
“Oh,” I exclaimed, dropping the towel.
A second later, Thomas’s lips covered a nipple. I threw my head back and arched against him. He bit and laved the straining bud, sending exquisite pleasure tingling throughout my body. A deep need for more ignited. He shifted to the other breast as his hand kneaded my ass.
He lifted me, and I found myself straddling his cotton-covered erection. He cupped my face as I gripped his shoulders, and he stared into my eyes.
What I saw in his made my heart contract. Love, worry, anger. We shared the same uncertainty. For the first time in my life, I had someone who was mine to lean on.
God, I love you.
His eyes seared into mine, and his hold on me tightened for a brief second, making me realize I’d said the words out loud.
“Tonight it’s only us, no fighting for control. Just two people in love.”
My lips trembled and I nodded my head. I could give him this. I could give myself this.
He sealed my answer with a kiss, teasing my lips at first, then devouring moments later. We savored each other’s tastes as a low purr escaped from my throat. The tingle inside my core flared into a raging fire, making me rub my pelvis against his cock for relief. One of his hands slid down the cleft of my ass to my soaked pussy.
I was desperate for him. I needed to feel all of him.
“Please,” I murmured against his lips.
Thomas shifted our positions by turning and pinning me beneath him on the bed. He gazed down at me with a wicked smile.
“I like tossing you around like my personal rag doll.”
“No one’s ever thought of me like that.”
He growled. “And no one else ever will. You’re mine. Say it.”
“Yours,” I said, threading my fingers through his hair and drawing him to me. “Only yours. You’re all I want.”
He bit my lower lip and then sucked it into his mouth. I lost track of anything but the feel of Thomas against my body. He slowly pulled back and then kissed down my neck, between my breasts, over my stomach. He settled between my spread knees and blew on my swollen labia. I bowed up from the cool sensation on my burning flesh.
“I love how your pussy glistens for me, hungry for my cock.” He took a swipe down the center with his tongue and then blew again. “And I especially love your honey taste.”
My skin prickled, craving more of his touch.
With slow licks, he began an unhurried feast of my pussy. He positioned my legs on top of his shoulders as my fingers dug into his scalp. My body shook as everything inside me tightened. I jerked upward, crying out.
“That’s it, mi cielito. Let go.”
“Thomas,” I screamed as my body flooded with ecstasy. I arched my head back, squeezing my eyes and my pussy tight. I rode the crest of my orgasm until I couldn’t focus on anything but the beautiful pleasure running through every part of my body.
He slid back up as the last of the tremors contracted inside me, and took my mouth again. My essence exploded on my tongue, mixed with the mint of his toothpaste.
He deserved some of the same pleasure he’d just given me. I tucked my feet under his thighs and flipped him onto his back, repositioning myself on top of him.
I leaned over and gave him the same wicked grin he’d given me. “My turn.”
He lifted his arms and tucked them behind his head. “Who am I to argue?” He tilted his pelvis up, making his cotton-covered cock rub against my aching, soaked pussy. My core instinctively contracted, wanting more.
“Tsk-tsk. I’m not going to let you distract me with your magic cock,” I jokingly admonished as I slid down Thomas’s body. I cupped his rock-hard erection. “Besides, would you want to deter me from my mission?”
He shook his head and closed his eyes as I pulled out his cock and licked the throbbing vein running along the base of his beautiful pulsing shaft. I glided and squeezed my hand along his length, and then, when he wasn’t expecting it, I engulfed his weeping head in my mouth.
“Oh Dios,” he called, pushing up further into my mouth.
I grabbed the base, making sure I wouldn’t gag. I hollowed my mouth as I bobbed up and down, enjoying his freshly showered scent and the salty-sweet taste of his precum.
His fingers slipped into my hair as his hips jerked upward to meet the need I’d stirred in his body. I swallowed seconds before he reached the back of my throat, causing him to throw his head back at the tight squeeze of my mouth.
“Carm, stop. When I come, I want it to be in you.”
I released him with a pop, sliding up his body. Before I reached the top, he flipped me onto my back once again and sealed our lips together. He consumed me like a man starved. I cradled Thomas’s body against mine as our kiss went on.
Thomas pulled back with a sharp bite to my lower lip. He spread my legs further apart and lifted up to get a proper angle. As his cock probed my slick waiting sex, he asked, “Who do you belong to?”
I stared at him through a desire-clad haze. I wanted to laugh if my pussy wasn’t screaming for him. No matter what he said, the Dom in him was always lying under the surface. I reached up to trace his jaw.
“You.” I lifted my hips, trying to draw him to me, but he held still.
“Do you believe this is real? That what we share will last.”
His gaze continued to hold mine, and I knew I had to tell him the truth. This was it. There was no turning back.
“It’s real, Thomas. It will last. I…I want it all, a family, more children, marriage, everything.”
“About time you caught up.” He thrust deep, and I cried out at the invasion.
I wrapped my legs around him, tugging him close, bringing him deeper into my swollen, aching core. “More,” I called. “Harder. Faster.”
His control seemed to evaporate, and he started pummeling my pussy. I gripped his shoulders as my sex gripped his thick cock.
“Almost there, please,” I begged.
Thomas’s hand slid between our bodies, slipping into my folds and pinching my clit. “Come now, mi cielito.”
I called out his name as my orgasm washed over me. I couldn’t think of anything but the glorious free fall Thomas had th
rown me into. My fingers dug into his skin, and my back bowed. This was the best orgasm I’d ever experienced. I was with the man I loved. The one I planned to spend the rest of my life with.
Thomas continued to pound my pussy, not letting me come down.
“One more time.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but before I could respond, I was going over again, only this time, Thomas followed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Around three in the morning, I gave up trying to sleep and settled down with a cup of tea in the palatial living room of the ranch house. I should have been exhausted from the number of times Thomas and I made love, but no matter how hard I tried, I was restless.
We’d held each other, never speaking of the worry that was plaguing both of us. Every time I’d opened my mouth, I lost my nerve to talk about what we were going to do about Christof. I was scared to ruin the intimacy of what we’d shared. The same seemed to be true for Thomas. In all the times we’d made love or played, it never felt as desperate as it had last night. As if it would be the last time we’d be together.
God, I hope that isn’t true.
The only time Thomas mentioned anything about his worries was after he’d woken me to make love again.
“You will take care of yourself. I know you, Carmen. Don’t take any unnecessary risks. Promise me?”
He’d held me on the cusp of orgasm until I agreed. A promise I wasn’t sure I could keep.
I sipped my tea and thumbed my necklace. It was a cross, a replica of the one on the wall across from me. I’d gone to bed with only my engagement ring on and woke wearing the necklace. A smile touched my lips. Thomas must have slipped it on me while I slept.
He thought he was slick by placing a tracker on me.
I still felt like I should put some distance between the kids and me by leaving the ranch. Eventually, Christof was going to find out where we were. It didn’t matter that Milla and Arya had changed planes and routes three times before taking a three-hour drive to get to the ranch.
I set my mug on the coffee table, tucked my feet under me, and reached for a blanket. After I got comfortable, I picked up my notepad. Christof had said something that didn’t sit well with me. There’s always a paper trail. Initially, I thought it had to do with how Arya had erased all traces of embezzlement from the foundation accounts and replaced the transactions with those from her personal foundation.
When I told her I was worried about someone linking her to the changes, she blew it off, telling me what she’d done was untraceable, and she was the current expert on this type of programming.
All of a sudden it hit me. Christof kept looking into the files from the time of the indictment because something in there led to him, and whoever hid his information hid the money.
I pulled out my phone. It was time to call in reinforcements, but before I could send my text, Arya came into the living room, carrying her computer and a bunch of other equipment.
“I’m glad I’m not the only one who can’t sleep.” Arya dropped a bag in my lap.
“What’s this?”
“A secure laptop. Thomas has it linked to his encrypted network. I want you to go through the files I marked from your dad’s time at the company. Something in there links Christof to this whole thing.”
I gaped at her, turned over my notepad, and showed her the line I’d written on it. “I guess great minds think alike.”
A few minutes later, as I finished signing into MCD’s system, Milla came down with her laptop and sat next to me without saying a word.
“Let’s get to work. I know you bitches are thinking about the same thing. I’m not letting that monster win.”
I glanced at Arya over the top of my screen, and she shrugged. We worked for the next hour looking for traces of anything that linked Dad to Christof.
“Ari, the only files left are the ones containing Dad’s e-mails, and the feds scoured them. This is hopeless.” I ran a frustrated hand over my face.
“Look through them again; maybe they missed something since they didn’t know him personally,” Milla suggested.
“Mil, I didn’t know the man who raised me. The man I knew died with my mother.”
“Look anyway.”
I sighed and opened the files with the thousands of e-mails Dad had written during the time leading to and after his indictment. Where was I supposed to start? I decided to go through the draft folder since it was the smallest.
I scanned through the subject lines and stopped at the one addressed to me and titled Max and Carmen’s party. In all the years since Mom’s death, he’d never planned a party for me. This was for our twenty-first birthday. The e-mail contained information on vendors and guests to invite to the party with their phone numbers. Everyone on the guest list were the people who’d turned their backs on me and Max and couldn’t get far enough away from us after the embezzlement news became public.
“Come look at this. It’s a party list for my twenty-first birthday. But we never had this party.”
Milla scooted next to me, and Arya sat down on the other side.
“Holy shit, Carm. Those aren’t phone numbers. Those are account numbers.” Milla pulled the laptop from my hands. She scrolled to the bottom of the e-mail and my heart sunk.
There was a message to me.
Hey, butterfly,
If I don’t get to it, make sure you send out the invites in time for the party. I have to go out of town for a few days and will be back in time for the party. Sorry, your old man tends to get carried away and allows work to overtake his life sometimes. I promise to make it up to you and Max. Be good and don’t open your gift until I get back.
Love you,
Dad
Tears streamed down my face. This was two weeks before the news broke. Before my world turned upside down.
Why hadn’t he sent this? All I ever wanted was a glimpse of the dad I’d lost. He’d written the letter in the exact way he’d talked to me when I was younger.
I might not have hated him so much if I’d gotten the e-mail. He’d loved me after all.
“He called me butterfly.” I hiccupped. “He hadn’t called me that since before Mom’s funeral. He’d nicknamed me that when I was four and kept asking to wear my mom’s butterfly pin.”
“Carm, I know this is a lot of news to take in one sitting, but we need to look at what’s actually in the e-mail.” Milla put my laptop next to hers on the table. She pulled up the file containing all the hidden accounts.
“Holy shit,” I exclaimed as I read over Milla’s shoulder. “You’re right. The numbers next to the names match part of the account numbers on the list.”
I couldn’t believe I was looking at a list of potential people involved in the scandal. Every name and “phone number” had an account with the same digits in it.
Dad was leaving clues. He wanted me to know who was part of the scheme.
I glanced up with tears clouding my eyes. “Do you think Dad was innocent? That he took the blame for others?”
Arya shook her head. “No, Carm. He was involved up to his eyeballs. I researched everything I could when we discovered the hidden accounts. He signed a confession. It was obvious others were involved, but all the evidence pointed to your dad. Why he didn’t name them, we’ll never know.”
I wiped the wetness from my face with the back of my hand. I couldn’t accept this. He could have made his life easier if he’d named people. He could have made our lives easier.
“There has to be a reason for what he did. He wouldn’t have just ruined our family legacy. We have to keep digging.” I closed the e-mail and searched the rest in the folder. “This one is to Max. It’s dated a few days later and has the subject ‘your hiding place.’”
I opened the e-mail, but the only thing in it was a picture of a house. I examined the image. Where had I seen this before?
“Let me see that.” Arya took the computer to get a closer look. “That’s the back of the Hamptons house b
efore the renovations.”
I scrunched my brows. “How would you know that?”
“I see that painting every day when I walk down the stairs of my house. It’s Max’s favorite picture. He says it reminds him of his childhood and all the secret passageways hidden inside the mansion.”
“Oh my God, Dad was leaving a paper trail. Max was the only one who lived at the estate at the time. He’d come home for the summer after clerking in a state judge’s office. I don’t understand why Dad never sent the e-mails and they were buried under a hundred drafts of other e-mails, but I know he wanted us to find them.”
I had to go back to Boston, to the estate. Something was behind that painting. My gut said it would answer every question I had about Dad.
“Carm. I think you need to hold on a minute. You could be jumping the gun.”
I stood up and paced. “I’m not. I know it. Deep down I know it. I’ve spent so many years trying to understand why he would steal all that money when we had plenty of our own. I hated him for what he did to our family. I have to find out the truth.”
“What if you find out you’re wrong? That he is, in fact, the bad guy in all this?” Arya stepped in front of me, grasping my shoulders. “I’m worried about you. There’s only so much a person can take, and I think you’ve reached your limit.”
“Ari. This is about Max, too. Our children will always have this cloud over them. You saved me from adding to the same fate, and I can never thank you enough, but I have to do this. All of us deserve to know the truth. Whether I’m wrong or right, I need to end the questions.”
“What about Thomas? He’s not going to let you leave half-cocked on the off chance you find out anything about your dad. Especially with the video Christof sent.”
