by Alice Ward
I gritted my teeth, finally at my breaking point. No matter what Ryan said, I couldn’t let this shit go. “Listen, Miss…” She didn’t fill in her name, so I said, “Whoever you are. You’re wrong.”
I looked over her head, at the hall where the elevator was. God, I’d kill to be in my room, in my shower right then. I caught her scent, and my cock pulsed. In the shower with her.
She pulled on her arm, and I reluctantly let her go. “Set me straight then,” she challenged, pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. She was breathing harder now, her face flushed a pretty pink. “I would love to hear it.”
I took a deep breath as her eyes fell to my lips. I couldn’t deny it. This woman — whose nipples were pebbling more and more through her tight t-shirt as she talked to me — had passion. My celibate-for-too-long brain imagined just how passionate she would be with those bare, muscular legs wrapped around my waist.
She could feel it too, I knew it. The raw attraction between us. If her erratic breathing and flush weren’t evidence enough, her nipples gave it away. Beneath the snarling hate was something else. Desire.
With that bit of knowledge, I decided to turn the tables on her and go on the offensive. With any luck, it wouldn’t only get me out of this awkward conversation, but it might lead the way to me fucking her passionate brains out tonight.
I gave her my most charming grin. “We’re here, though. Doesn’t that give us points for anything?”
She scowled at me. “You don’t get points just for showing up, Mr. Watts.”
She jutted the phone closer to me, maybe to capture a view of my nose hairs. What in the total hell? Yes, the passion was admirable. As was her body. Very, very admirable. But I didn’t appreciate her assuming that I was just like my father and grandfather. That all I cared about was money. What gave her the right?
“Money isn’t everything,” I told her. “I also have a big place in my heart for sex.”
She looked up from the viewfinder on her phone, into my eyes, and her pale cheeks pinked. I’d finally caught her off guard and stunned her into silence. The camera was still filming, right in front of me.
It was too easy. I reached out and plucked it from her hands.
“Hey!” Her jaw dropped in indignation.
She swiped for it, but I easily held it above my head and out of her reach, since she was a baby shrimp with feet. When she reached again, I brought it down, slipped it into my pocket and held out a hand.
“Stop.” Now she was shaking, cheeks red, so angry I thought her seams might rip apart and all that heaving passion inside her might come spilling out. “Give that back!”
I held out both hands. “When you’re calm, maybe.”
I could tell it was taking every ounce of her control to not lunge at me. She pressed her hands to her sides, but they shook as she did. “Give. It. Back,” she said under her breath. “And maybe I won’t make you look like a total asshole to my viewers.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What viewers?”
She raised her chin, her eyes narrowing to green and gold slits behind the glasses. “I have a million subscribers on my YouTube channel.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s it called?” Not that I would’ve known it. I wasn’t young or hip enough to do the YouTube-subscribing thing.
She didn’t answer. Instead, her eyes drifted down to my mouth, then my throat before continuing south, not stopping until she got to my pants. I’d have liked to think she was checking out my package, but I knew she was scanning for her phone. Besides, the whole sex thing had gone right past her. Maybe her nipples just got hard whenever she talked about the environment, the fruitloop.
“At least give me a name to call you?” I took a step closer. “It’s only fair since you clearly know mine.”
She eyed me warily. “Atlee. Atlee Young.”
“Okay, Atlee. How about this?” I said, rubbing my hands together. I pulled out my own phone from my other pocket and checked the time. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ve got the roundtable in… thirty minutes. What do you say that afterward, we meet for dinner and talk this out?”
Her eyes widened in what I could only call disgust. “Hell, no.”
I cupped my hand around my ear and leaned toward her. “Is that a yes? I think I heard a yes.”
She winced as if the thought of the idea physically repelled her. “Are you insane? I’d sooner eat dinner with Satan himself.”
So that was where I ranked in the scheme of things? I should’ve found it funny. But instead, it bothered me, how wrong she was. I couldn’t wait until Watts Enterprises cleaned itself up and I could rub it in the face of her and all the haters out there. “All right. No dinner. I’ll just take you back to my room and let you ride my face.”
She stared at me, her expression turning to utter shock.
Was I kidding? Sort of. This fruitloop deserved to be played with. I did still have Ryan’s condom burning a hole in my wallet, but it was only when I saw little Miss Atlee Young here that I had the urge to use it. I was suddenly fucking horny. Little Atlee Young made me fucking horny.
“Don’t thank me. It’s the least I can do for you, considering how I’m destroying the environment and all.”
She opened her mouth to speak, her mouth forming several words before she settled on three. “You are disgusting.”
I shrugged. “What can I say? You make me want to disgust you.”
Her full lips pillowed into a pout. “Well, it’s working.”
No, it wasn’t. Her nipples were the dead giveaway. They were practically offering themselves to me, begging to be sucked on.
Okay, okay. Time to make nice.
“Hey,” I said earnestly, holding my hands up in mock surrender. “I was kidding. But what I’m not kidding about is an official interview. Purely for your viewers. I’ve never conducted an interview with the press before. Give me a chance to tell my side of the story, and then you can go and rip me apart as you wish.”
She sucked in her lip. “And if I say no? Does that mean I don’t get my phone back?”
I could just imagine the headlines: CEO of Watts Enterprises: Rapist of Natural Resources, Thief of iPhones. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the phone, and placed it into her palm. Damn thing was still playing. I could only hope the whole “ride my face” was muffled.
“Nope. But I really do hope you’ll say yes. At Senja, the restaurant right here. Let’s say eight? The roundtable reception should be over by then.”
She just stared at me, then back at her phone. On it, I could see the time. I now only had twenty-five minutes to get showered and dressed for the summit. Something made me want to say fuck it. Maybe it was the heat. I’d heard steamy weather like this could make a person horny, and her full, round tits were right there, nipples bursting forward for me.
She squirmed, and as I watched, her feet came together, and if I wasn’t mistaken, she was pressing her thighs together too. And I knew why she’d need to do that. The thought made my cock pulse again. If I didn’t get away from her soon, I’d be sporting a full-on woody.
“I… um…”
“Come on.” My voice was gently taunting, teasing as I sidestepped around her. “Eight o’clock. I promise to give you something that your viewers will salivate over.”
Before she could say no, I strode to the elevator, feeling her gaze burning into my back as I went. Pushing the up button, the doors opened immediately, and I couldn’t stop from glancing back at Atlee before stepping inside.
Damn, she was cute.
Phone still in her palm, nipples still hard, legs still pressed together.
I shot her a smile, and her eyes narrowed behind the glasses.
Oh, there it was. The hate.
Then she was gone as the doors closed, but the memory of her was seared in my mind as I quickly showered. As the cool water poured over me, I realized I was smiling, although I wasn’t sure exactly why.
I thought that I’d quite possibly never seen
so much outright hatred in one woman’s eyes. Her body may have betrayed her, but her mind was so closed off from me, it might as well have been triple-padlocked.
Ryan’s condom might have been burning a hole in my wallet, but the phrase, Not if you were the last man on earth came to mind.
I’d probably never get through her misconceptions of me. But I could have fun trying.
CHAPTER FIVE
Atlee
Growing up in Oklahoma, my parents didn’t exactly shelter me, but we hadn’t had a huge amount of money to do things just for fun. That meant that travel wasn’t big on our priority list.
So, as I’d gotten ready for the trip in the biggest frenzy NYC had ever seen, I thought I might throw up. I really wasn’t even one-hundred-percent sure where in the world Malaysia was, so for me to drop everything and fly there on a moment’s notice was a pretty big dice-roll. When I packed, I had no idea what kind of clothes to bring, what currency they used, or whether it was even safe to travel there.
Yeah, I hadn’t known a lot of things.
But out of all those unknowns, one thing about this trip turned out to be the biggest mystery of all.
Wyatt. Fucking. Watts.
I was determined to hate him on sight. In fact, it was hate before first sight. The first time I’d even heard his name, I’d thought it sounded pretentious and that he’d be a big stupid rich asshole who probably had his servants burn dollar bills in his big bazillion-dollar mansion to keep him warm.
But then? When I actually saw him in person?
Plain as day. Clear as could be. Raw, sexual desire flooded me, filling me so completely I could hardly string two intelligent words together. All I wanted to do was straddle his naked body and sink onto him, then ride him into the Malaysian sunset.
I’d never, ever felt that way around any man in my life. I’d met men that I hit it off with right away, and men that had disgusted me right away too. But never had I met a man who did both to me at once, creating such unquenchable lust that I practically had to lock my body in place in order to keep it contained.
Finding my way around a foreign city was nothing in comparison.
How could you hate and want someone at the same time? That was the biggest mystery of my trip so far.
God, those Paul Newman eyes — so light blue they were like blocks of ice. Those shouldn’t be legal. That dark shadow of stubble on his chiseled jaw. That presence. He looked like he’d come fresh out of the jungle, all covered in a shiny sheen of sweat, his shirt open halfway, baring a tanned, muscular chest. Despite that Indiana Jones look, he still smelled delicious. How was that even possible?
When I first thrust the camera in his face, all I wanted to do was lick right up the middle of that sexy chest then beg him to return the favor.
That would’ve made for an interesting interview for my viewers.
Really. What the hell was wrong with me?
And then he’d gone and invited me to sit on his face, and all my mind wanted to scream was, Right here? Or would you like to go somewhere more private?
Because, holy lord, that man did something to my insides. If any other guy had said it to me, I would’ve been repulsed. Maybe even kicked him in the balls. But Wyatt Watts? With him, all I wanted to do was climb aboard.
Damn the privileged, gorgeous people of the world. Did he say those things simply because he was used to getting away with it? Because his money would buy him out of any trouble his dirty mouth might get him into? Of course, I’d known dirt-poor men who’d said things as equally disgusting.
But Wyatt wasn’t disgusting.
He was… delicious. And the dimple that had popped up on his right cheek as he said it had been so freaking adorable. I couldn’t see how any woman could say no.
But I needed to say no. I would say no.
After all, I hated absolutely everything about him. So why hadn’t I kicked him in the balls, physically and emotionally? Why hadn’t I skewered his ass with my scathing diatribe on his company’s practices? Manhandled his mental manhood as I told him what I thought of him and his Earth raping ways?
I dropped my face in my hands.
Because I’d been stunned by thoughts of womanhandling his physical manhood.
I was an embarrassment to women everywhere.
To my credit, I’d eventually made it through. And I’d make it through dinner with him later. All I had to do was remind myself, at least a thousand times, what a scum of the earth he was. The only reason why I was breathing so hard was because I was mad, not aroused. And of course, my stomach was in knots because I wanted to put him in his place so badly. I had a lot riding on this.
Which was probably why I’d lied and told him I had a million viewers.
Ugh. Sure. A million, give or take about 994,000.
What did it matter, though, if I lied? He was the biggest liar of them all, sitting up there on the WE throne. Making lives better, one smile at a time? What utter bullshit. I reminded myself that he was probably in his hotel room right then, using WE commercial-brand toothpaste and shampoo that was destroying the world.
He was a world-destroyer.
And I hated him.
I entertained the idea of ditching him, of not showing up for dinner. Okay, no I didn’t. I couldn’t. Something inside me couldn’t wait to see him again. Not for the face-sitting, though. Purely for the good of my YouTube channel, of course, and my six thousand viewers. Right.
I’d show up at dinner tonight, as promised, with a whole lot more questions, incisive questions this time. I’d look right into those gorgeous eyes, and I’d bury the asshole once and for all, make him go running back to New York, crying for his mommy.
Yes. That was the plan.
After I interviewed a few more people attending the roundtable — none as explosively sexy as Wyatt Watts — I got on the scooter I’d rented, which was a lot cheaper than a taxi or renting a car, and tried to find my way to my hotel.
Luckily, it was only a few blocks away. Nowhere near as nice as The Saujana Resort, it was a whitewashed building tightly sandwiched between other buildings in the middle of a shady part of town. But for only sixteen dollars a night, what could I expect? I needed to be thrifty. I pulled up to the front, and ignoring the locals who were eyeing me up and down like a piece of meat, took my carry-on bag out of the back of the scooter, and went inside to get my key.
Okay, the room was a bit of a dive. There was a window AC that took up the only window in the room, making the insides look a little like a dungeon. That wasn’t fair. I turned it on, and it sounded like a plane taking off. Then I turned up the fan as high as I could, but the sweat was still pouring off me. I shoved my face in front of the vent from the AC, but all I got was a warm breeze. Maybe I should have sprung for a more expensive room.
No, I told myself. This wasn’t vacation. I was here to work.
Checking my phone, I saw a text from Emily. It said: Useful Malay phrases for your meeting with WW.
It was a list of swear words. I laughed, then typed in, If I wanted to insult him, I’d probably just say “fuck you” in English.
She came back with: Aw, but kongkek mak kau sounds much cooler.
I had to agree. I scanned the list for that one — fuck your mother. Ouch.
Some of them were kind of bizarre, a little fun to say. I repeated a few of them over and over again, liking the way they sounded. Yes, I flew off the handle easily, but no, I couldn’t actually see Wyatt getting me so angry that I’d insult him or his mother in Malay.
I plugged in my phone to recharge, my mind dwelling too much on how it had been in Wyatt’s pocket, so close to his…
What the hell did that matter?
Shaking my head, I yanked the comforter off the king bed, checking for bedbugs. Clear.
I stripped off my t-shirt and shorts and went inside the bathroom, and my eyes landed on some tiny travel bars of packaged SilkySoap from WE.
Really? My first thought was to throw those nasty bit
s of animal by-product away. But how would that help? Instead, I shoved them aside. Then I reached into my toiletry bag and pulled out my own, RSPO-certified soap, my homemade toothpaste, and my bamboo toothbrush.
Brushing my teeth vigorously, I watched my naked body in the mirror, thinking of Wyatt. He was such a MAN, all capitals, underlined, circled. I wondered how it would feel if he touched me. Hell, his finger had innocently grazed my palm when he’d taken the phone from my hand, and I could still feel the aftershocks, deep inside me. My wrist still tingled from where he’d trapped it in his hand.
I’d probably have an orgasm in a second if I really did sit on his face. Even the thought of sinking down on his waiting tongue made my nipples as hard as rocks.
No. That was just nerves. It’d been one really long, tiring day. I just needed a shower, a little bit of time to relax and recharge.
I turned on the water, nice and cold. Of course, I’d take a shower for tonight, not to impress him, but because it’d been a long flight — I was sweaty and sticky, and I smelled. I was not going to put on airs for Wyatt Watts. I did not give a shit what he thought about me. This was business.
I sighed at the crappy water pressure, but what could I expect for sixteen dollars a night? The water just dribbled out.
When I stepped into the shower, twisting the knobs to get more water spurting out, he was all I could think of. Those cold, ice-blue eyes. I washed my hair, my body, but when I finished, I rubbed my breasts together, thinking of the way he’d looked at me. I also have a big place in my heart for sex.
I’d bet in bed, he was an animal. He had all the makings of a gorgeous body — tall, lean, broad shoulders, an effortless tan. He had eyes that were both cold and sensual, so raw they’d rendered me a little crazy.
My hands trailed lower, between my legs, between my labia, finding my clit. There, liquid heat gathered, and I increased pressure, desperate to relieve the ache that insipid man created inside me. I kept my finger moving in slow, lazy circles over myself. I tried to imagine a nameless face between my legs, looking up at me with desire-heavy eyes. Ice-blue eyes. Startling.
