by Violet Duke
Could’ve fooled him.
“I want an honest answer, which is why I want you to think about what I’m asking without your guard up.” She freed his hard length and dropped to her knees. When her lips were just centi-freaking-meters from his fully engorged erection, she raised her eyes up to meet his. “Okay, let me try a different question. Would you ever allow me to tell you that sex was all I had to offer you?”
A surge of anger burst through his veins at even the mere suggestion, clearing the sexual cobwebs in his brain. “Hell no.” He grabbed her hands and pulled her back up to her full height. “Sunshine, don’t you ever let me hear you say something so insulting and so completely ridiculous again,” he growled, seriously pissed that the statement even passed her lips.
Looking nearly as angry as he felt at the moment, Leila pushed him back against the nearest wall and placed her hands on her hips. “So now you know how I feel when you say it.”
Crap.
Sneaky little thing—she’d maneuvered him into a corner. Literally and figuratively.
“Sweetheart, it’s different where my life is concerned.” At her fierce frown, Jackson felt his cold tin heart thump and flip over a few times. Damn lovable woman. “Please, you have to believe that I’m speaking from experience. And it truly is something I believe.”
Her shoulders fell then, and a touch of sadness dimmed the willful fire in her eyes just a bit. “Let me guess—this has something to do with those deep, dark secrets you’re still keeping from me.”
“Yes.”
“You still aren’t going to tell me what they are?”
Not if he wanted to keep her in his life, no. “I can’t tell you.”
“You can’t, or you won’t?”
He considered the question, and admitted truthfully, “I’m afraid to.”
Concern darkened her sad, amber eyes. “Then you don’t have to,” she replied softly, defeatedly. She broke eye contact and backed away from him.
But he caught her before she could retreat any farther. Cupping her face tenderly in his hands, he tipped her face up to his—he hated when she hid her eyes from him. “Believe me when I tell you that if I could be more for anyone in the world…it’d be you. I’d want to be that man for you. I dream of being that man for you.”
Shaking her head, Leila simply sighed.
He studied her in the silence that followed, trying to decipher all the various emotions running across her face.
If he wasn’t mistaken, the most prevalent one he could identify was sheer, mulish determination. In fact, it was the only expression on her face still remaining.
With a deep breath, and a resolute nod, she gripped his face with both hands and said, “Like I said, I’m going to prove you wrong, Jackson. But since clearly, your brain is full of years of crap I’ll have to exorcise with voodoo magic or something equally powerful, we’ll take it slow.”
Slow was good. Hell, he’d take any speed with her, and go any distance so long as they were traveling the road together.
Where they were headed, he still didn’t know.
But he could hope.
“No sex,” she stated again. “But like I said…” Her teeth sank into that lush lower lip of hers for a few distracting seconds before she finally blurted out, “I want you too much to be able to say no to anything else…as in everything but sex.”
Just like last time, her cheeks pinked at the confession, and he felt the wall he’d built around his heart crack just a little bit more. “We’re in total agreement,” he replied, stroking his thumb over her flushed cheekbone.
Looking encouraged by that, she stepped forward and gave him a sweet, candid smile.
…While tugging the hem of his shirt up his torso.
Honest to God, the woman was temptation incarnate, wreaking absolute havoc on his restraint. A scary thought seeing as how he barely had any self-control when it came to Leila to begin with.
Unwise though it probably was, he wanted to feel those curious hands on his skin again. So he reached back for his collar to yank his shirt off the rest of the way, and nearly swallowed his tongue when he felt her lips trace down his stomach in soft, barely there kisses.
With a quiet murmur of approval, she smoothed her palms up over his abdominal muscles and then retraced her path back down his eight-pack with feather-light fingertips that may as well have been a live electrical wire, tapping directly into the hard line to his hard-on.
Her teeth joined the party soon after, grazing his skin just below his belly button while his erection kept trying to achieve the same evolutionary feat giraffes did by growing an extra impossible inch to reach her mouth. He was pretty sure he could classify the mission a success the moment he felt her lips close around him.
Holy hell.
Harder, thicker, more violently aroused than he’d ever been before, Jackson felt his already labored breathing strain even further with every silken flick of her tongue, every quiet hum of enjoyment that escaped her lips.
Her hands worked him in tandem with her mouth, pumping his aching flesh from base to tip in a devastating combo that was effectively sucking the sanity right out of him.
Every stroke, every hot, wet slide of her mouth along his shaft, was an untamed dare defying him to try to keep from coming down her throat. Jackson was man enough to admit he just didn’t possess the strength to be able to stop himself from doing exactly that. Soon.
Very, very soon at this rate.
“Sweetheart,” he managed to utter in a rough, growling groan he barely recognized as his own voice. “I’m going to come if you keep that up.”
She halted as if stunned, and he froze as well, in suspended erotic animation.
“Promise?” she whispered finally, before licking her lips and resuming the best blowjob of his life, with new, infinitely more intoxicating fervor.
A fresh surge of lust charged through his system, and he was powerless against its effects.
His fingers slid into her hair, gently, despite the need stretching him out on a rack of near painful pleasure. The woman probably didn’t even realize she was burning him alive, scorching his soul with an all-consuming lust unlike any he’d ever known.
And that was all before she swallowed him as deep as she could go.
The resulting orgasm crashing into him seconds later hit him like a wrecking ball and decimated everything he thought he knew about both pleasure and pain.
For one brief, fleeting moment, he entertained the fantasy that maybe she was right.
Maybe his secrets could stay buried in the past.
Maybe he and Leila could work.
For the first time in his adult life, he found it was surprisingly difficult to dismiss the idea as an impossibility.
Chapter 20
Leila couldn’t take her eyes off of him.
Jackson had looked almost drunk with pleasure when he’d finally given in and started thrusting deeper into her mouth. Not to mention volatile. And intensely sexy.
The sounds rumbling out of his throat had been raw, gritty, and unfiltered while his blistering hot gaze had burned into hers, flat out refusing to relinquish its hold on her for even a second the entire time.
At one point, she remembered feeling his fingers sink into her hair and tighten in her scalp as a rough, wordless warning he’d expected her to heed.
She’d ignored it…because truthfully, she’d been too far gone herself to want to stop—had been since the moment her fingers had dipped behind his waistband.
Seeing every muscle in his body cord in response to her touch had been a powerful shot of adrenaline, fueled a thousand times more when her name tumbled from his lips. And watching, feeling him come had been the single most erotic thing she’d ever witnessed in her entire life.
She wanted a repeat performance.
And judging by his still rock-hard shaft, and the hungry, feral look in his eyes, so did he.
She gripped him again in her hand, firmly but gently, and stroked h
im from root to tip. Just once. But then she found herself dragged back up to her feet before she could do anything further.
“Not a chance, sunshine.” Jackson’s rough, post-orgasmic voice sizzled over her senses. “It’s my turn to play.”
He tipped her chin up with his fingers and dropped a hard, quick, and dirty kiss on her lips before he swept a single hot glance over her from head to toe. She felt its effect straight to her core. Her shirt quickly ended up on her floor, along with her jeans, just moments before Jackson gently laid her back on her dining table.
“Need to taste you,” he informed her in a low, coarse voice heavy with lust.
Her bra quickly joined the growing pile of clothes on the ground, but he left her panties in place. “Too much temptation,” he muttered thickly.
He slid her legs wider in slow, mind-melting increments as he began exploring her inner thighs with his lips, teeth, and tongue. For what seemed like a long, albeit hot-as-hell, lifetime.
Soon, Leila was seconds away from threatening ruthless sexual retaliation. But before she could, Jackson pressed a gentle open-mouthed kiss over the now drenched center of her panties that stole every last molecule of oxygen from her lungs.
Instead of the clear next step that the sexual handbook of fair play would undoubtedly list as the removal/total destruction of her panties, however, Jackson slid his hands up to cup her breasts.
So unfair. A needy, restless moan slipped past her lips when she felt his engorged length press against the seam of her panties.
Her fingers swiftly skimmed down to her waistband, determined to eliminate the offensive lace barricade between them. But he stopped her before she even made it halfway.
“If you want to stick to your no-sex rule, I’m afraid those need to stay on, sweetheart.”
Then, as if to make it up to her, he grazed his teeth over first one painfully stiff nipple, and then the other, before he plumped her breasts together and took both nipples in his mouth at once.
Heat exploded in her belly as his actions unintentionally drove his hard length against her panty-covered core. The air left her lungs when he repeated the motion again, this time knowingly, expertly. Evilly.
Meanwhile, his hands and mouth were on their own wicked mission…and her breasts were their more-than-willing targets.
The objective?
A planet-moving orgasm even with her panties on.
Odds of success?
Practically guaranteed.
Every time he pinched and tugged one of her nipples, or sucked on the other until she saw stars, she felt the seismic energy in her core cause definite ground-shaking tremors.
A heartfelt groan rumbled out of Jackson’s chest. “Dammit, sweetheart, you’re so responsive, I’m about a minute from going off like a bottle rocket launching out of second base.”
Lordy, even baseball metaphors sounded unbelievably sexy coming out of his mouth. Leila couldn’t take much more. “I need to come, Jackson.” She arched to rub her overheated core against his thick shaft, hoping to seek some fraction of relief. “Please.”
Apparently, that really was the magic word, because magically, a half-second later, her panties were in a puddle on the floor, and Jackson’s mouth was between her thighs, driving her toward an apocalyptic orgasm at warp speed.
“Strawberries and sunshine,” he murmured with gruff appreciation. “The taste of you drives me freaking insane, sweetheart.”
While she was doing her best to avoid passing out from pleasure, Leila felt as much as saw Jackson’s hot, penetrating gaze slowly explore her body. His eyes first caressed her face affectionately, before migrating down to her breasts to pay homage there for a bit, and then finally journeying back south to visually cup her sex and hold it hostage until his mouth returned. To complete its mission.
And all the while, he kept up the verbal sex as well, in that deep, hypnotic voice of his. From heated observations to steamy promises, the man was a dirty-talking savant. “Pinch your nipples for me, sunshine,” he rasped as he slid two thick fingers inside her.
She did as he asked, too fiercely aroused to be modest or even remotely embarrassed at this point. When she gasped at the feel of her own fingers on her nipples, he rewarded her by latching his mouth over her core and sucking on her to within an inch of her life.
Just when she thought she couldn’t possibly take any more, a tidal wave of pleasure slammed into her, shattering her to pieces.
Mindless, boneless, and euphoric beyond belief, Leila felt him wrap his arms around her and lift her gently from the table. “Go on and sleep, baby. I’ll tuck you into bed.”
Even in her nearly comatose state, something about that quiet statement struck the wrong chord with Leila. She fought hard to clear the brain haze enough to figure out what it was that was unsettling her—it was important, she could tell.
But it was too late.
She was asleep before it came to her.
—
As Leila drifted off to sleep—despite her adorable attempts to stay awake—Jackson stretched out on the bed beside her and attempted to employ every old high school trick in the book to get his mind off sex.
Hot, sweaty, christen-every-viable-surface sex.
Dirty, wicked, brain-altering sex.
He was not successful.
The vivid instant replays of the last hour kept clobbering his thoughts. The last few minutes in particular were the reason why his hard-on was still locked and loaded with no sign of disarming anytime soon.
But who could blame him? Watching Leila come apart for him was the hottest goddamn thing he’d ever seen.
Just the memory of it had him needing to stroke his straining fly with the heel of his palm to dull the ache. Thank God he’d had the sense to grab his jeans as he’d carried Leila over to her bed. Now that he knew how intense her orgasms were, he really would be looking into some titanium underwear.
Lord knew the denim wasn’t cutting it right now.
When Leila’s breathing deepened even more, Jackson slowly began sliding out of bed like he always did.
Tonight, however, he was having a tougher time than usual.
He didn’t want to leave her.
It had snuck up on him. Somehow, through all those nights they’d lain chastely in this very bed with his arms wrapped around her, his heart had gotten all wrapped up in the process as well. Now, with Leila’s warm, trusting body pressed against his from chest to knees, fitting his so perfectly, he felt something deep in his chest melt.
And it kept right on melting as the night went on.
Minutes turned to hours, until soon, his eyes were too blurry to make out the time.
He had to go. Had to.
Before he could restart that mental argument with himself, however, Leila’s eyes slowly fluttered open. Liquid pools of copper, filled to the brim with emotion, stared back at him. “If you leave while I’m sleeping like you usually do, it’s okay,” she whispered, as sleep started sneaking up on her again, making her eyelids droop. “But I really hope you won’t. Even if you don’t believe you have more to offer than just sex, I do. I believe in it the same way that you believe in me. I’ve always believed it, and I always will.”
She snuggled up against him tighter, murmuring sleepily. “I really hope you’ll stay and hold me all night, and then let me make you pancakes tomorrow morning. Because you deserve a great breakfast. You haven’t lived until you’ve tasted my pancak—”
And then she was asleep.
He knew right then in that moment that he’d sooner pull his arms out at the sockets then pull them away from her. The realization overloaded his brain, until it spilled over into his heart.
An altogether unfamiliar feeling that had been happening more and more lately.
As he watched her sleep, he knew without a doubt that Leila had burrowed herself in that dusty old cavern in his chest well and good.
He never wanted to let her go, never wanted to give this up.
Tho
se were the last thoughts on his mind as he drifted off to sleep.
Holding her in his arms until morning.
Chapter 21
“Jackson, if you don’t stop standing there smiling like a lovesick buffoon, I’m going to quit and make you handle the mother of all screw-ups that your brother has managed to make of your company.”
Jackson did a double take and looked up at the old man entering his office carrying an Italian suit he looked ready to tackle Jackson into.
And so it begins.
“So Nate’s been arrested?”
“I’m sorry, but yes, it’s official. We just got word from the DA’s office that his trial is set, and he’s on house arrest until then. Obviously, the board has unanimously voted on your brother’s immediate dismissal from Grayhurst Industries. Which leaves…”
“Me.” Jackson sighed and fell into his office chair, processing the grim words coming from Caleb, one of his oldest confidants, his father’s friend and trusted adviser.
A fellow billionaire.
Deep down, Jackson had always known that he wouldn’t be able to outrun the clutches of his family legacy forever. Regardless of how much he wanted to.
“Has the board reinstated my seat?” asked Jackson.
“Yes.”
“So just like that?”
“I’m afraid so, Jackson. The paperwork is a formality because your father’s wishes were explicitly clear in the event that something happened to Nate, but Grayhurst Industries is yours to run now. You’ll be sliding into the vacant spot as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors, effective immediately. Stand up. Change.”
Jackson stood and slipped off his old tie, exchanging it for the Italian one with its perfectly matching jacket that screamed old money.
“Your press conference is at eight a.m. sharp. Find a way to change your pants before then.”
The two pairs of pants were nearly identical. And yet thousands of dollars apart in price.
Just like his two lives.
Yesterday, he had just been Jackson Gray, senior analyst of DBC Sports Network.
Now today, he was back to being Reginald Jackson Grayhurst II, heir to the Grayhurst Industries fortune, estimated at $36 billion. And counting.
