by Carter Blake
As we wander up the stairs, Naomi leans into me.
“Your Mom is lovely. I guess I didn’t expect her to be so…nice.”
“Why, what have you heard?” I joke. “Have the people in the office been calling her a dragon?”
“No… no,” she stammers uncomfortably, her face going bright red as if she’s embarrassed. “I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I meant actually. I think I’m still a bit dizzy.”
“Well, you can have a rest in my room,” I tell her, gripping onto her side. “I know this must all be a bit much for you, so hopefully you’ll feel better.”
As we walk through the door and into my room, she gasps loudly in shock. “This is amazing. I mean, the room I have here is nice, but this is something else. I see you keep the best room for you.”
“I have to, don’t I?” I laugh, enjoying her over the top reaction. “If I gave it to one of my staff members, I would be accused of favoritism.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure that’s your only reason,” as she teases me, my heart flutters all over again. I love that she can joke with me now, it makes me feel really special. I guess I’ve just never had that sort of relationship with anyone before. “I’m sure it’s not just because it’s the biggest room ever.”
“Okay, maybe a little.” I move closer to her, before wrapping my arms around her and placing a small kiss on her lips. “Now how are you really feeling? Was it just the party, or are you too ill to get into the hot tub?”
“How could I be too sick for that?” she smiles brightly. “It looks amazing. Plus that view. Now that is something else.”
As I flick the bubbles on and I strip down into my underwear, I give her a little look wondering what she’s going to do. For a second, she stands frozen in shock, but then she slowly tugs her dress up over her head, revealing a totally naked body underneath.
It turns me on so much that she not only will consider going to a party with nothing on under her dress, but that she has enough confidence to just do that without even caring.
All of a sudden, I sense this night going a different way that I originally intended.
“Come here,” I growl, allowing my passion to shine through. “I have so many things that I need to do to you.”
She smiles sweetly, completely counteracting the way that she looks like a sexy goddess, which turns me on even more.
But she doesn’t kiss me, like I expected her to, she simply sways past me and slides into the bubbles, leaving me hanging.
Chapter 15
Naomi
I’m in too deep…I’m definitely in too deep…But even knowing this isn’t enough to stop me. I simply want to continue having fun with Wesley, knowing how dangerous he is.
“How’s the water?” he asks me, smilingly, eyes dark as they skim over my body.
“Why don’t you get in and feel it for yourself?”
There’s just something about this man that makes me feel so sexy, so confident, and that’s an addictive feeling that I don’t want to end.
It’s the way that he looks at me, the desire in his eyes, the way his body seems to be magnetized to me. It’s deeper than anything I’ve ever experienced and I just need one last taste. If this is all going to end in the explosive way that I suspect it will, then I want at least one more day of pretending that it’s all real, and that it could actually go somewhere.
He stares at me for a split second, before joining me in being naked, revealing a very impressive erection to me that he slides into the water.
The second his butt hits the seat, I move up next to him and I throw my arms around him to kiss him with everything that he’s feeling inside.
Fireworks explode within me, the way they always do when his mouth is pressed up against mine, and a dizzy lust fills my mind.
“Oh God,” I groan loudly. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
With him, in here, and the bubbles popping around us, I feel like I might be going a little crazy, experiencing all kinds of emotions, but I just don’t care. All I want to do is throw caution to the wind and to have a whole lot of fun.
That statement seems to be enough to spur Wesley on, and he angles his body to me, pressing his thick, throbbing erection up against my leg, and I have to grip tightly onto his shoulders, digging my nails in, just to stop me from losing where I am. I feel like he might just be the only thing centering me to the Earth at the moment, and I can’t let him go because of that.
“You’re incredible,” he pants breathlessly. “I… I…”
But I don’t allow him to finish that sentence because I’m afraid of where it might lead, so I kiss him hard and fast, swinging my body over his until I’m straddling him. I press my body up against his strong muscular chest and I lose myself in his mouth. His tongue snakes between my lips and it takes all that I have not to lose my freaking mind.
He’s teasing my entrance and I grind against him, sending the both of us insane, and soon I can’t control myself anymore, so I slide down onto him, allowing him to fill me up.
I gasp loudly, groan intensely, as I thrust harder and harder, forgetting everything around us. I forget our issues, our differences, the battle that’s going on underneath the surface, we become just a girl and a guy in the early stages of a relationship, and that feels incredible.
“Oh my God, Naomi, I…”
Every time I get the impression that he’s going to express his feelings to me, I have to kiss him all over again to stop those words from leaving his mouth. This might be a fantasy, we might be just playing, but that is real, and I can’t hear that. I can’t hear that he likes me, or even loves me, because it’ll make my feelings come to the surface too, and I’m doing my best not to accept that right now.
The pressure starts to build inside of me, so I change my angle slightly to ensure that he’s hitting my clit every time we move and soon the intense blissful waves are crashing over my body, consuming me entirely.
The orgasm that he’s giving me is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before, and as it starts to subside, and my breathing returns to normal, I feel a little saddened. Why can’t things be the way that we both so clearly want them to be? Why do things have to be so damn complicated?
Luckily for me, I don’t have too much time to be upset, because Wesley is already slipping out of me and leading me towards the bed. He kisses me lightly and throws me back onto the sheets, before leaning over and grabbing a condom from his wallet. While he protects himself, I allow my eyes to flicker all over his body, drinking in the muscles, the abs, the sculpted muscles that he must have worked really hard for.
“You’re so gorgeous,” I hear myself whispering to him, saying far too much. “It’s just… you’re hard to look at sometimes.”
“I cannot believe you’ve said that to me,” he chuckles lightly, looking down at me with something that looks suspiciously like love in his eyes. “You’re so beautiful that I can hardly believe that you’re with me right now.”
He hovers over me and rests his forehead against mine, staring deeply into my eyes for a few moments, and with that my heart pounds like crazy. I almost want to scream with frustration that this is all a temporary thing, when I’ve never made a connection so intensely before. It is unfair that Wesley could be the one for me and there’s nothing I can do about it. Our paths were already crafted before we were even born, and there isn’t a damn thing that we can do to change that.
Then he begins running kisses over my neck and collarbone, almost as if he wants his mouth to touch every inch of my body, and I find myself fisting the sheets below me, gripping onto them for dear life. He makes me feel incredible, absolutely amazing, and I never want to let him go.
He slides into me, sending bolts of lust rushing through me all over again, and he thrusts against me wild and fast finally giving into the passion.
All the romance, all the sweetness has gone, and all that’s left is pure desire.
This time we crumble together, the bliss sprea
ding through us at the same time, and we end up collapsed breathlessly against one another, just enjoying the moment of post coital bliss.
“Stay with me tonight,” he says, too sweetly for me to resist. “I just want to spend the night holding you.”
I give a small nod, knowing I shouldn’t, but unable to say no.
If I remain here, then we’re becoming too coupley, which leaves my heart in the one place that I’ve been doing my best to avoid – exposed.
But he’s so damn kind, he’s so freaking sexy, that I don’t know how to resist.
As Wesley drifts off to a nice, peaceful sleep next to me, my mind wanders into the story that Madeline told me down stairs at the party. Her version of events was very different from the brief way that my Dad explained it to me, and I don’t know what I think about that.
I got the impression that Dad and this woman – who I didn’t understand was Wesley’s Mom – were together, and that John did all that he could to steal her, and that forcing Dad out of the business was all a part of his plan. To learn that it was something else entirely is honestly a little bewildering.
“Once Michael saw what he’d created with the first drug, I think greed gripped him, and he wanted to charge too much for it.”
I never heard anything about that before either, but why would Madeline lie about it? She doesn’t know who I am, so she has nothing to gain. But then again, why would Dad lie either? He knows that I adore him and that I always have, so what would he gain from trying to make himself look better?
It just makes no sense.
A big part of me wants to call him, to confront him about it all, but I know that I’ll never be able to get away with that now. I don’t want Wesley to catch me on the phone to him because that’ll fuck up everything.
No matter what decision I end up making, and that’s the last thing I want.
“I had feelings for both of them too, and I just couldn’t decide. I suppose in a way I was leaning more towards Michael.”
It’s weird to think that if Wesley’s Mom and my Dad had ended up together, if there was no fight, no forcing out of the business, we would not exist. Madeline and my Dad would have been together, John would have met someone else, and maybe my Mom might still be alive.
Urgh, it’s so strange to think of that, it makes everything even more confusing. I mean, Madeline is nice enough and I’m sure that she would have made my Dad very happy, but the chain of events that wouldn’t have happened, is just so crazy.
I slide out of the bed for a moment, trying not to disturb Wesley, and I make my way into the very luxurious bathroom. There I stare at myself in the mirror, looking at the wild eyed, but extremely satisfied expression on my face. I no longer look like myself, I can barely recognize the person that I’ve become, and I don’t know how I feel about that. It seems like the shift in my focus, the change of my attention, has softened my expression too. It’s strange.
I can’t help but wonder what I’ll look like when all of this is over, when I’m moving on to the next phase of my life. Urgh, no I can’t even think about that right now. I can’t even begin to picture a future when there is so much craziness going on in my presence. I really still don’t know what I’m going to do when it comes down to the wire, and that’s terrifying. There are just so many people whose future depends on what I decide and that’s really hard to come to terms with. When this was a plan, solely in my mind, it felt easy. I thought I would come in, sort things out, do what I needed to do to sort things out for my father, and then leave. I had no idea that things were going to get so involved, so twisted, so complex.
I had no idea that Wesley was going to have such an impact on me.
How am I going to live without him? How am I going to move on with my life now? How am I going to carry on knowing that I’ve hurt him?
Tears start to roll down my cheeks as I feel sickened by what’s about to happen next.
The worst thing is this is all my fault.
My Dad was happy to leave it all, to continue on with his life as a teacher. I was the one who pushed him into this, who convinced him that it was a good idea, I initiated everything.
And now I’m going to have to live with the consequences of that.
Why didn’t I just focus on creating a life for myself? Why did I do this rather than building a real career and creating proper relationships?
What the hell is wrong with me?
Now, I have no real job prospects, no love in my life, no real friends.
I only have this one goal that I’m no longer sure of, and a love that can never go anywhere, and there’s no one else to blame but myself.
How sad is that?
Chapter 16
Wesley
“Yeah, okay, that sounds good to me,” I reply to Chris as he discusses some changes in budget for the launch of my new drug, the one that the company has been working on for a lot longer than anyone really realizes. It was something that I inherited from my Dad, and the rumors around the office from the people who have been working there for years are that it’s one of the earliest formulas started, but then other things took priority for whatever reason.
“Are you headed back to work today, or are we getting the rest of the day off?” he asks a little cautiously, probably voicing the one question on everyone’s minds.
Considering they are all quite hungover, I don’t see the point in trying to get anything else done today. I think that tomorrow is much more likely to be a productive day.
“No, go home, come back tomorrow. I still have some stuff to organize anyway, so I might as well stay here in the quiet and do it now.” I have a lot of phone calls to make to ensure that things were going to run smoothly anyway. I didn’t need any distractions for that.
“Okay… well thanks, see you tomorrow.”
As everyone filters from the building, and I have a quite subtle goodbye with Naomi, one that I hope wouldn’t make it obvious to everyone that we’d spent the night together. But of course, I wasn’t about to get so lucky.
“Hi Wesley, how are you feeling today? You took off pretty early last night.” Of course, my Mom. I should have guessed that she would still be here. And that she would have been much more aware of my whereabouts than anyone else.
“Oh yeah, I…” I can feel the blush spreading through my cheeks already. “I wanted to get away.”
“With Naomi?” I can tell that there’s something a little serious about her expression now, which has me worried. I thought she liked Naomi, they seemed to get on well enough, so what seems to be her problem now?
“Yeah. You like Naomi, right?”
Okay, that’s far too much silence. Something is definitely going on now. I eye her curiously, but all she does is indicate for me to sit down with her, which I do because I’m not quite sure what else I can do.
“I think you need to know something about Naomi, something that… you might not have realized beforehand.”
My heart starts racing, my ears begin buzzing with fear, everything twists up in knots inside of me. What is Mom about to say? How the hell does she know Naomi? Is she married or something? Is our relationship about to be halted before it even begins?
“She’s the daughter of Michael Norton.”
“Michael Norton?” My mind races, but I can’t quite figure out what the issue is here. Who the hell is Michael Norton, and why does he matter? That wouldn’t be a secret anyway because we haven’t exactly discussed our family history with one another.
“As in Michael Norton… the man who started the company with your father.”
I stare at her blankly.
“No, she can’t be,” I shake my head. Obviously my Mom’s mistaken. “Her surname is Hayes.”
“I think the woman he had a baby with, shortly after he left Future Pharmaceuticals, was called something Hayes… Faith, maybe?”
“But…” this makes no sense. If Naomi knew about this, then she would have told me. If there’s one thing we have discusse
d it’s the starting point of this business. It would have come up. “That’s not possible. She would have told me.”
“Son, I would recognize that dark hair, those eyes, and that face shape anywhere. She looks exactly like her father, I would have been able to pick her out with ease. But just in case, I asked a friend of mine to check up on her. That is Michael Norton’s daughter, there’s no denying it.”
“Maybe she doesn’t know.” There has to be some explanation somewhere along the line. This doesn’t make sense otherwise. “Maybe her Mom never told her.”
“Her Mom died in childbirth. Michael raised her. She knows exactly who she is and I cannot help but worry that she’s here for the wrong reasons.” She holds onto my hands and stares into my eyes. “I just don’t want to have what you and your father have worked so hard for, destroyed by her.”
My heart beats quickly as all of this sinks into my brain.
This is insane.
However, even if Naomi is Michael’s daughter, that doesn’t have to mean anything. She has worked for the business for a while, and nothing has happened. Maybe she did start off with revenge plans in mind, or maybe she just inherited her father’s love of the business. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about at any rate.
“Okay, I understand your concerns,” I pat my mom’s hand. “Thank you for bringing it to my attention, but I’m sure everything is fine. She hasn’t shown me any signs of betraying me…”
“Just because she has seduced you, it doesn’t make her trustworthy.”
“It’s more than that. We’re more than just physical. There’s something there between us. It’s real.”
Mom gives me a look that isn’t quite convinced, so I quickly realize that I need to shut this down before she continues.
“I need to get back to the office.” With all of this going on, I’ll get more work done there anyway. “Plus, I need to see Naomi. Figure out what’s really going on.”
We hug and I go on my way, with Mom’s words circulating through my brain all the time. It’s obvious that there is some stuff there that Naomi maybe hasn’t shared with me, but I don’t think that it’s enough to be worried about. Even if she is this man’s daughter, that’s our parent’s feud, not ours, I don’t think that affects anything to do with us…
