by Donya Lynne
When the four of them piled into the limo for the drive home, all she wanted was to kick off her three-inch heels, soak in a hot bubble bath with a glass of chilled wine, and change into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt.
And as she and Harrison trailed several feet behind Mason and Gary in the main hall of the manor once they arrived home, that was exactly what she intended to do. Until . . .
“I’ll be working late tonight,” Harrison said, his voice uncharacteristically quiet but steady, as if he were simply commenting on the weather.
His sons diverged in different directions, leaving her alone with their father.
She lightly bit the inside of her bottom lip and looked up at him. “Oh?”
He kept his gaze forward.
They walked a little farther in silence.
“If you can’t sleep . . .” His steps slowed as they approached the hall leading to his office.
Was he inviting her to join him tonight? In his office? And if he was, what exactly was he asking her for?
“If I can’t sleep . . .?” She prompted him to continue, hardly daring to hope he was asking her for a repeat of the night before.
It was the first time since breakfast that he had directly addressed the few intensely sexual minutes they’d shared less than twenty-four hours ago.
She kept her eyes facing front, and so did he, but there was no missing the contextual implication as he said, “If you can’t sleep, feel free to join me. I might be able to use your help.”
Her heart fluttered. If she took him up on his offer, she knew what would happen. If she didn’t, she knew he would never ask her again.
“What time?” she asked noncommittally.
He made a contemplative noise as they stopped at the mouth of the hallway. His closed office door beyond his squared shoulder seemed to increase in size. “I’ll be working quite late.” His gaze finally dropped to hers. “Midnight maybe. Midnight would be good.”
She nodded slowly, searching his face for any reticence and finding only exhilarated hope and a boyish twinkle in his eyes.
“Okay, if I’m still awake, I’ll come down and lend a hand.”
He looked away as the barest hint of a smile tipped up the corners of his mouth, reminding her of the smile he’d worn in his portrait. “Then maybe I’ll see you later.” He turned and started down the hallway. “Thanks for all your hard work today, Corinne.”
She stared after him for a perplexed moment, then beelined toward the staircase in the rear of the house without looking back, feeling his hopes and anticipation following her. Or maybe those were her hopes and anticipation.
The ball was in her court. He’d opened the door. Would she enter? Should she?
There was a lot to consider before she made her decision, which meant she needed that bubble bath and glass of wine more than ever. Because Harrison Devereaux had just told her, in not so many words, that he wanted to fuck her.
And damn her sexually frustrated libido, she wanted him to.
Chapter Four
It was a quarter to midnight, and Corinne was still wide awake. And who could blame her? No woman would nod off after being invited by Harrison Devereaux to . . . do what? What exactly did Harrison expect would happen in his office? Did it really matter? The insinuation alone was enough to know his expectations.
But Corinne was still torn. Should she, or shouldn’t she?
She had taken her bubble bath, had two glasses of wine, and was still going back and forth about Harrison’s invitation.
She knew what she wanted to do. But what she wanted and what was best weren’t necessarily the same thing.
What if she went to him and they did have sex? And what if—God forbid—it wasn’t as good as she’d hoped? What if they both regretted it in the morning? There went her internship with him over Christmas break, and possibly the reference letter he’d promised to write for her, too, as well as all the referrals he could have made to potential employers.
But if she had sex with him and it was everything she’d hoped for and more? What then? Harrison Devereaux was twice her age. His two oldest sons were older than she was. Not by much, but still, they were older. Did she really think she could have a relationship with him? He was approaching the twilight of his career. She was just starting hers. A relationship between the two of them would cause the kind of scandal that could ruin them both.
The media would portray her as a ruthless gold digger, despite the fact that she came from a wealthy family and didn’t need any of the Devereaux fortune. And they would portray him as a man in the throes of a post-midlife crisis who had sullied the memory of his deceased wife for a young piece of ass. In the worst-case scenario, he would lose his reputation, clients, and maybe even a board position or two. She would lose job offers that could have set her up for life.
Every ounce of logical thought told her to just say no. Don’t go. Don’t do it. Stay in her room and let the moment pass.
But she couldn’t deny how she felt. She’d known Harrison her whole life. Sure, as a child she’d been scared of him, but fear and desire are just two extremes in the same family of emotions. It wasn’t such a stretch to think one could give way to the other.
And now that she was an adult and had seen behind the parental mask that had colored her vision of him her whole life—until last night—she wanted to explore the possibilities. Maybe he was more than twice her age, and maybe he was Susanna’s father, but she couldn’t stop thinking he could be more to her now that she’d seen him as something other than a father figure. She couldn’t explain it, but there was something between them. Something that demanded her to go to him and see where whatever this was could lead.
The risks were great, but the rewards felt like they could be even greater. Still, so much could go wrong. If she went down this path, and it continued beyond tonight—which she was sure it would if she accepted his invitation—she needed to be prepared for the fallout. For starters, Susanna might end their friendship. But as bad as that would be, that was the least of her worries. The public scrutiny would be like shouldering a mountain while trying to evade shrapnel being shot at them from every direction.
Every voice of reason told her this was a bad idea.
And yet, at five minutes until midnight, Corinne left her room and sneaked down the stairs. Her heart was already fully committed to the cause, logic be damned. It wanted him more than her head wanted her to stay away.
When she reached his office, she was relieved to find that the light was still on. And that pretty much said it all, didn’t it? If she’d been disappointed, she would have known she’d made the wrong choice.
Looking over her shoulder to make sure nobody had seen her, she peered inside. He wasn’t on the couch, but she heard the quiet sound of fingers typing on a laptop coming from the direction of his desk.
Straightening, she squared her shoulders and knocked on the door, gently pushing it open.
Harrison sat behind his desk but looked up when she entered. “Corinne . . .” He sounded surprised to see her.
“Still need a hand?”
He closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair. “Maybe.” The word lilted like a question. Or perhaps a challenge.
Awkward silence followed as they stared at each other, then he swung his chair around and stood, motioning to the liquor cabinet against the wall. “Drink?”
She nodded, twisting her fingers together. She could use a shot of something strong to relax her nerves.
Harrison poured a finger’s worth of whiskey into two stout crystal tumblers.
“Make mine a double,” she said.
He stopped screwing the lid back on the bottle, looked at her for a moment, then grinned out one side of his mouth as he took the lid back off. “I think I’ll join you.” He added another ounce to both glasses.
He set the bottle back on the cabinet, then lifted the tumblers by his fingertips and held one out to her.
She took it and immediately swal
lowed a healthy swig. The whiskey burned all the way down.
He smiled knowingly and looked away as he sipped from his own glass. “I, uh . . .” He glanced to the side, then back at her. “I wasn’t sure you would come.”
“I wasn’t either.”
He swirled the tawny liquid in his glass, staring into it. “Why not?”
She shrugged and took another sip. “I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
His eyes lifted and narrowed on her, but he didn’t say anything. He just stood there, silently studying her as if he were weighing his own thoughts . . . as if he knew the chances they were taking simply by being alone together at this late hour, even though he hadn’t even touched her . . . yet.
Her chest rose as she inhaled deeply at the thought. She did want him to touch her. She wanted him to touch her everywhere, in every way, on every inch of her body.
He gestured toward the couch. “Why don’t we sit?”
Nodding briskly, she turned, nearly stumbling over her feet as she came face to face with the leather couch he’d masturbated on the night before.
“Or we could sit in the back,” he added quickly, motioning toward the set of four wing chairs facing one another in the back corner, near the supply closet.
She took the chair next to his, downing another sip of whiskey as he settled into his own chair and crossed his ankle over his knee, resting the base of his glass on his thigh.
“About last night,” he said.
Flames flashed down her spine as she remembered him lying back on the couch, his erection tall and proud as he stroked it.
“Why did you come to my office so late?” he asked.
She released a slightly shaky exhale. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“So, instead of going to the kitchen for a glass of warm milk”—he said it with a splash of sarcasm—“you came down here because . . .?”
“I wanted to work on archiving those files you gave me yesterday.” Thankfully, the alcohol was starting to calm her nerves.
He glanced behind her at the stack of files still sitting on her desk. “You came down here to work.” Not a question.
With as much boldness as she could muster, she said, “I was hoping to impress you.”
His eyebrows popped upward as he chuffed and raised his glass. “You definitely impressed me.”
Her eyes remained on his as he sipped his whiskey, then she daringly lowered them to his crotch. “You impressed me too.”
When she met his gaze again a moment later, it was clear he hadn’t missed her meaning. In typical Harrison Devereaux fashion, he hadn’t missed a thing.
He uncrossed his legs, shifting his glass to the arm of the chair. “Did you like what you saw?”
She thought about the way he’d caught her with her hand down her pants and the hungry look in his eyes before she darted back to her room. “Did you?”
A noticeable bulge that hadn’t been there a couple of minutes ago protruded from his crotch.
She maintained eye contact, holding his gaze, growing more emboldened by the second. Harrison wanted her. She wanted him. Who would make the first move?
With smoldering eyes, he stared back at her, accepting her challenge, as rigid as a statue except for the steady rise and fall of his chest and the mounting excitement between his legs.
After what felt like an eternity, he lifted his glass, poured the contents down his throat, then tossed the empty tumbler into the chair as he pushed abruptly to his feet.
Taking her hand, he practically yanked her out of her chair and pulled her against his body, his mouth claiming hers with a hunger so ferocious it was like he hadn’t been with a woman in years.
Her glass slipped from her fingers, spilling what was left of her whiskey on the area rug, but she didn’t care, and neither did he. All that mattered was the two of them. Him. Her. Tasting each other. Tongues wrestling.
“Seeing you like that,” he said between kisses. “With your hand inside your pants . . .” His teeth tugged at her bottom lip. “Did you come? Did watching me make you come?”
She nodded, needing his lips against hers. “Yes.”
He growled approvingly, his mouth crashing down on hers again as his large hands slid across her back, his strong arms crushing her to him.
He was going to fuck her. Right here. Right now. In his office. He was going to bend her over the back of one these chairs and—
Laughter from outside in the hall made them stop. Harrison tore his mouth from hers, and, still locked in each other’s embrace, their eyes shot toward the partially opened door.
More laughter, closer this time, then hushed voices.
“We can’t do it here.” A woman’s voice.
“Sure we can.” Mason.
“It’s your dad’s office. And the lights are on. What if he’s—?”
“Come on. I’m sure he just forgot to turn them off.”
Harrison grabbed Corinne’s hand, and—placing his index finger over his mouth—dragged her toward the supply closet, getting her inside and pulling the door closed but not latching it just as Mason towed a reluctant but giggling Sarah through the doorway and toward the couch.
Corinne watched through the crack as Mason situated Sarah on his lap and began helping her out of her clothes.
She’d sensed at breakfast that something was up between them, but she’d had no idea she would come face to face with it while in the arms of his father.
“It’s Sarah,” she whispered, looking up at Harrison in the darkness.
They were jammed against each other between stacked boxes of copy paper.
“Sarah?” He sounded confused.
“From the kitchen staff.”
He glanced toward the door as if he were thinking about charging back into his office to demand that Mason take his hands off her. It wasn’t that he cared about social class and expected Mason to marry a woman with a pedigree. But Harrison had always had his hands full with Mason, who had a way with the ladies that hardly ever led to the types of headlines Harrison wanted for his family name. Odds were that Harrison just didn’t want more negative fallout from another failed relationship to land on the front page of every gossip rag in the country. And he probably didn’t want to see Sarah get hurt by his playboy son.
“Don’t,” Corinne whispered, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt before he could do something stupid and expose himself—and her—to even more contemptuous headlines about how he’d been caught in a supply closet with a woman half his age.
He sighed and faced her again in the darkness, smiling apologetically. “I’m sorry. This isn’t how I thought tonight would go.” He huffed with caustic amusement and pinched the bridge of his nose like he was getting a headache. “To be honest, I had no idea what would happen tonight when I invited you to my office.” He let go of his nose and glanced at the door. “But this?” He bobbed his head to the growing chorus of moans coming from his son and Sarah. “This definitely wasn’t on my short list.”
It was a rare glimpse into a less than impervious side of a man she’d always assumed was invulnerable.
Her fingers opened, letting go of his shirt. “I don’t mind.” She slid her hands up to his collar, where she smoothly released the top button.
His shoulders relaxed, and he looked down at her hands as they freed another button. “Is that so?”
She slowly unfastened two more buttons. “I can’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be.” She tugged the tails of his shirt from the waist of his pants and unfastened the final button. Parting the two halves of his shirt, she glided her hands over his firm stomach. “I kind of like where I am. Don’t you?”
He grinned down at her. “It’s starting to grow on me.”
“Starting to?” Her right hand began a slow slide down the center of his abdomen. He weaved backward as her palm flattened over his erection. “I’d say it’s already grown.”
He licked his lips, the scant light coming from his office through the cracked door refle
cting off his glossed-over eyes. “I see your point.”
She slowly rubbed him up and down through his Dockers. “See, this isn’t so bad.”
Moaning quietly, he rocked forward, resting his forehead against hers. “Mm, you’re killing me, Rinn.”
Rinn. Surprisingly, no one had ever called her that. Core, Cory, Corinne, but never Rinn. She liked it.
“Then maybe I’d better give you mouth-to-mouth.”
He chuckled quietly. “Cheesy.”
A soft giggle tumbled from her throat at his playful jab, but as much noise as Mason and Sarah were making, there was no way they’d heard her.
He continued smiling down at her, the tip of his nose bumping hers, then his smile slowly faded, and he placed his hand over hers, stopping her salacious massage. “Take off my belt.”
Her fingers curled around his thick girth, causing the pressure from his touch to intensify. Then she took her hand from beneath his and pulled the tail of his belt through the buckle.
“What were you thinking about last night?” she whispered. “While you were masturbating?”
He exhaled an amused huff as she stretched the belt back to release the prong holding it in place. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.” She slid the belt free of the loops and set it on top of the stack of boxes beside her before going to work on his fly.
“You,” he whispered heavily as she opened his zipper. “I was thinking about you.”
She stopped and lifted her eyes to his. “Me?”
“I know it’s wrong.” He almost looked ashamed.
“Wrong?” That was absurd. “Why would it be wrong?”
“Because I’ve known you since you were a little girl.” He looked away. “I feel like a pervert.”
“Why would you feel like a pervert?”
“Because—”
