by Blue Saffire
My birthday is a matter of public record. So is the day of my mother’s death, to anyone who cares to dig for the information. I convinced myself that she knew who I was and figured out the most opportune time to worm her way in. Manipulate me into trusting her. Bring her here instead of to my suite at the Hawthorne.
I accessed my floor safe and took out ten thousand dollars and then I stood over her, watching her sleep, chest feeling like it’d been caved in by a wrecking ball. I was going to wake her up. Throw the money at her and tell her to get out, but I couldn’t seem to make myself move. I wanted to, but I couldn’t because I knew that if I woke her up and demanded an explanation, I’d believe whatever she told me.
Standing there, staring down at her, half in love and so fucking angry I couldn’t see straight, I still wanted her.
God, how I wanted her.
So, I left the money and a note. Fished her bracelet out of the bedsheets and tossed it on the pile before calling Angus to take care of the rest.
Coming home and finding the money I left her torn up and scattered all over my bed, I told myself it was another trick. Another step in her long con to pull me under. Seeing that money destroyed was supposed to be proof that she was different. I was supposed to find her. Beg for forgiveness. Trust her.
Seeing that money torn up and tossed around like confetti didn’t convince me she was different. It showed me who she really was.
At least that’s what I told myself.
And now here she is, staring me in the face, demanding that I explain myself. Expose myself like I owe it to her. “The whole thing could’ve been avoided if you’d just told me who you were instead of—”
“Oh.” She throws up her hands, stepping into me with zero hesitation. “Because you were so goddamned forthcoming with the information, right?”
“Is that why you went through my things?” I don’t mean to say it, but it slips out before I can catch it. “Because you wanted information?”
“Went through…” She shakes her head at me, her neck stiffened by my accusation. “What are you talking about?”
“The pictures.” Saying it out loud, it sounds ridiculous. Everything I did, I did over a pair of photographs stuck in the back of my sock drawer. “The pictures I kept in my top drawer of my brothers and my—” mother. I can’t say it. She died twenty-five years ago and I still can’t talk about her.
“Your mother.” Her face changes, goes soft. “Yes. I saw the pictures of your mother and your brothers.” She sighs, her shoulders suddenly sagging, like someone jerked out her spine. “I was changing and needed something to wear, so I looked in your top drawer for a pair of boxers or something because, despite the fact that I wasn’t wearing any, I’m not accustomed to running around without panties on and I...”
She looks away, casting her gaze over my shoulder like she’s remembering that night. What I said. Did. Trying to find the place she went wrong. Where she misread me. She can’t because she didn’t. She read me perfectly. Finally, she shrugs in defeat. “You said it was okay.”
Help yourself to whatever.
I remember that night with crystal clarity. Everything I did. Said. I gave her permission. Free reign in my private space without even thinking twice. The boxers she was wearing that night were in my drawer, forgotten and never worn, stuffed into the same corner as my pictures.
She sighs again. “I found your pictures and I looked at them. Not because I was on some covert, fact-finding mission but because I was curious and not because I wanted information that I could use to manipulate you, but because I’d just agreed to go home with a complete stranger and I was in his house and I needed something to—”
That’s as far as I let her go before I step into her, pulling her into my arms so fast she doesn’t know what’s happening until it’s already done. Sliding a hand up her back, I weave my fingers through her hair, tilt her head back so I can see her face. “I’m sorry.” The hand in her hair slips lower. My thumb skimming the curve of her jaw.
As soon I say I realize I mean it.
I hurt her and I’m sorry.
27
Silver
I’m sorry.
As soon as he says it, I know I can’t do it. I can’t tell him about Noah. Not yet. Not now. Because, even though I know it’s wrong, I need the way he’s looking at me now.
Like he needs me.
Trusts me.
Believes me.
As soon as I tell him about Noah, it’ll change everything. He’ll assume the worst. That he was right about me all along.
So instead of doing what I should do, I do what I shouldn’t.
I kiss him.
Lifting myself onto my tiptoes, I press my mouth to his, skimming my tongue along the seam of his lips, sighing softly when they part to let me in. He groans, his hand going tight in my hair, the other gripping my hip. Pulling me closer. Pushing me back until I feel the press of cool glass against my spine.
Slanting my head, I deepen the kiss, licking and tangling my tongue with his, hands finding and fumbling with the lapels of his jacket to jerk it off his broad, muscular shoulders, letting out a low, frustrated moan when I can’t get it off.
He grunts out a curse, untangling his hand from my hair and letting go of my hip long enough to slip it off. I’m yanking at his tie before it even hits the floor, my fingers scrambling over buttons. Desperately seeking skin while the hand on my hip finds the tie to my dress. Giving it an impatient jerk, he rips it off completely and my dress parts, allowing his hands to push their way inside, and I hear myself whimper when I feel his fingertips skim across my belly. Lower, teasing at the waistband of my panties.
I turn my head away, suddenly needing to breathe, my hands fisted into the front of his shirt, desperately hanging on. “Tobias…” his name shutters out of my lungs on a breath when those fingers of his slip lower, finding the strip of lace between my legs.
“I’ve missed you,” he says, each word scraping against the back of his throat, low and rough. “Jesus Christ, I‘ve missed you so much.” His mouth skims my jawline, his tongue leaving a trail of fire in its wake as he pushes my panties to the side, his fingertips skimming the wet, hot center of me.
As soon as he touches me, I let out a sharp gasp, already so close to orgasm I’m not sure how much longer I can hang on. “Tobias.” I moan his name, fighting against the tight, hot pressure building, low in my belly. “I can’t—”
“Not yet,” he murmurs my throat. “I want you in my mouth.” His mouth slips lower, lips and tongue skating along the swell of my breast. His fingers stroking and teasing me as his mouth moves over my breast, grazing my nipple with his teeth before moving lower, down my ribcage, across my hip, until he’s on his knees in front of me, fingers hooking into the waistband of my panties to work them off the curve of my hips. Down my thighs, until I’m stepping out of them completely.
His hands slide up the length of my legs, thumbs pushing between them until he’s at their juncture, teasing and stroking me again until I’m shaking and half-blind with need. I feel the press of his mouth against the inside of my thigh while one of his hands shifts, lifting my leg over his shoulder, gripping the outside of my thigh, opening me, pressing into the cradle of my thighs with a low growl that sends a thrill up the length of my spine, has me fisting a hand in his hair to keep from falling.
As soon as I feel his tongue against me, I moan again, my hips flexing against the pressure of his mouth and he groans against my core, licking and sucking my slick, swollen flesh until I’m writhing and bucking against the pressure of his mouth.
Until I’m falling.
For him.
All over again.
28
Tobias
It’s like it never happened. Like I was never without her. We were never apart. What’s been my curse for the past five years—wanting and missing her in spite of everything I believed to be true—now feels like a miracle.
I can see it now. Admit it.
Five years ago, she ruined me.
One night with her and I was done.
I fell and I didn’t even know it.
She comes apart in my mouth and the sweet, salty taste of her, the sound of my name, torn from her throat on a moan, snaps what little control I have left. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m pulling her down to the floor, turning and maneuvering until I’ve got her dress completely off and she’s under me. Until I’m between her still quivering thighs, pressed against the soft center of her, hands braced on either side of her head, hips flexing and grinding against her while her hands work between us, trying to get my pants off.
“Please.” She whimpers it, half demand, half plea. Her desperation pushing me, levering me up off the floor to kneel between her thighs.
“The bedroom,” I say, even as I’m jerking my belt loose and ripping the fly of my pants open, hard and fast enough to rend their stitching before working the cuffs of my shirt loose. “I have—”
“My purse. Where’s my purse?” she says, arching her back off the floor to work on the clasp of her bra. “Delilah put condoms in my purse.”
Spotting her purse a few feet above her head, I reach for it, leaning into her. “Forget what I said about your sister.” I kiss her, pressing my mouth against hers. “She’s a fucking saint,” I say and she laughs, even as her hands push past my open fly and under the waistband of my boxers to shove my pants off my hips as far as she can before wrapping her fingers around me, to give me a long slow stroke.
“Jesus,” I groan, fingers going tight around her purse, my hips flexing and pumping into her grip. Within seconds, I’m so close to coming my ears start to ring.
With another groan, I push myself to dig through her purse until I find what I’m looking for. A strip of condoms.
Tearing one off, I rip it open and push her hands away so I can roll it on. As soon as I do, I angle myself over her again, her knees coming up and opening wide so I can stroke into her, fast and hard, my hips surging and flexing against hers.
Wedging my hand against the small her back, I press and lift, keeping myself inside her while I roll until she’s above me, straddling me.
Hands on her hips, I watch, mesmerized, while Silver lifts and lowers herself along the hard, desperate length of me.
“God, you’re beautiful.” My fingers dig into her hips, thumb skimming up the slick center of her to help her find her release, stroking her clit while she rides me. Her head thrown back, the tips of her hair brushing against my thighs. Lips parted on the sound of my name, shaped around a shuttering sigh. “Just like that,” I murmur, watching her breasts swaying with each deep, rhythmic stroke, until she falls forward, hands braced on my chest, her nails digging in, scoring the skin and muscle underneath, her core gripping and undulating around me. Until I’m following her under. Drowning right alongside her.
29
Silver
“I think I owe you a new one.”
I look up from the dress I’m trying to put back together. Tobias is standing a few feet away from me in front of his open fridge, wearing nothing but the pair of boxer briefs he pulled back on to make the trip to the kitchen. His hair is tousled, strong jaw shadowed with stubble, rubbing at his pec and the light pink marks my nails made on his skin.
He looks so normal. Relaxed. Nothing like the man I met in a nightclub five years ago. He looks like just a guy.
My guy.
The thought comes out of nowhere, rattling me, and I laugh to shake it off. “If you offer to call poor Angus to have him go dress shopping in the middle of the night, I’ll throw my shoe at you.”
He glances up from the fridge and grins at me. “I’m telling you, he’s sitting by the phone, waiting for me to call—he lives for that kind of shit.”
Because looking at him and breathing at the same time has become something I can’t seem to do, I refocus my attention on fixing my dress. “Somehow, I doubt Angus lives for the opportunity to dress shop for and chauffeur your sexual conquests around Manhattan.” Finally giving up on a quick fix, I sigh. “Maybe if I had a safety pin I could—”
“Sexual conquests?”
His tone pulls my gaze up from my ruined dress and I find him looking at me instead of the open refrigerator in front of him. “You think that’s what this was? That I’ve developed a habit of just bringing—”
“No.” I shake my head, even though that’s exactly what I thought. “I just meant—”
“Because I don’t.” He shuts the fridge and crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re still the only woman I’ve ever brought here.”
Still?
Okay. I didn’t know that. Instead of drawing attention to his confession, I let it go. “I just don’t want you to think I expect something from you. That this… means anything.”
That seems to have been the wrong thing to say because instead of putting him at ease, it seems to make him even angrier, his expression going still, his dark blue eyes sharpening. I expect him to start yelling but he doesn’t. Instead, he uncrosses his arms and reaches for me. Before I know what’s happening, he fits his hands around my waist and lifts me like I weigh nothing, setting me on the counter behind me.
“Explain.” Despite the heated look he’s giving me and the way his fingers are digging into my hips, his tone is soft. Almost gentle.
“I—” For some ridiculous reason, tears sting the back of my eyes, applying pressure until I have to hold my breath until they subside. “I don’t know what this is, Tobias—I don’t,” I repeat when he scowls at me. “But I do know that I don’t want you to think I’m here because I want something from you or because I think you can—”
Tell him. Tell him right now.
Before this goes any further.
“Stop.” His hands lift to shape themselves around my face. Instead of continuing to speak, he just looks at me, his gaze roaming over my face like he’s never going to see me again and he’s trying to lock in a memory of what I look like. “I made my first billion at the ripe old age of twenty-five.” He smirks, but it’s not a humorous expression. It looks almost painful. “Before I could even wrap my head around it, women came out of the woodwork—some I knew. Most I’d never even seen before in my life.” He sighs, his hands slipping from my face to find my hands, knotted together in my lap. “All of them claiming I owed them somehow. Made promises. Did things I never did. More than a few claimed I was the father of their children. They were all liars and they made my life a living hell for a really long time.”
As soon as he says it I feel sick, my confession dying on my tongue. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I whisper, my gaze sliding away from his to rest on his cheekbone. “It must’ve been hard.” I’ve watched my mother go through it a few times. Crazy, obsessed fans who deluded themselves into believing they share some sort of bond with her. One even claimed she was his mother. That she gave birth to him and then abandoned him in a hospital in Kansas. The tabloids had a field day. Even once his claim was disproved, they hounded her for years.
“It wasn’t easy.” He laughs at my understatement. “I’ve never been a very trusting person, even before the money, but after everything that happened, I pretty much shut down.” He gives me that sarcastic grin of his, the one that stops my heart, every time I remember it. “I live by a very strict set of rules because of it, and the night I met you, I broke every single one of them.”
30
Tobias
I’m trying my hardest to not think about what I’m telling her. I’m trying even harder not to think about why.
I tell myself it’s because I was an asshole to her, all those years ago, and I owe it to her. An explanation for the way I behaved.
That it’s no big deal, but I’m a liar.
I’m telling her because I want her to know how sorry I am. That if I could go back and change it, I would. That even though we haven’t seen each other in five years and we only had one night together, that I feel something for her t
hat I’ve never felt before.
Holy shit.
I’m in love with her.
I’ve always been in love with her.
The realization almost knocks me on my ass but it’s nothing compared to what she says next.
“That’s why I think it’s best if we… don’t.” She’s chewing on her lower lip, a nervous habit I remember well. Every time she does it, I go hard so fast I can actually feel my brain cells dying of starvation.
“Don’t what?” Whatever she’s about to say, I know I’m not going to like it.
“Don’t do this.”
I laugh. I laugh so hard my abs start to ache. When I finally finish, she’s scowling at me. “I’m completely serious, Tobias. It’s either we stop this before it gets completely out of hand or—”
Jesus, I think she’s serious. The realization irritates me as much as it makes me admire her. “Out of hand?” Admiration or not, she’s crazy if she thinks I’m ending anything.
“Why do you keep repeating everything I say?” she says, her jaw set at a stubborn angle that makes me ache. “Yes—out of hand. We either end this thing now or…” Her gaze drops to the nail marks she raked across my chest when I made her come and her cheeks go pink, her ultimatum fading under the memory of what I did to her. She lets out a shaky breath before squaring her shoulders. “Or you withdraw your offer of partnership.”
We stare at each other for a moment, her cheeks flushed, my cock throbbing while I try to find my bearings. Try to approach this like a rational man instead of what I really am.
“You know I’m right,” she says, her breath soft and thin against my cheek.
