He sucked my right nipple into his mouth.
I gasped as his rough tongue worked against the stiff little peak, sliding over and around it until I would have screamed, if I’d had the breath. His lips tasted and kissed, I felt the slightest nibble from his teeth on the sensitive tip, and I was so close to coming, I could feel the surge building deep inside me … and then he pulled his mouth away.
I felt the room’s air cooling against my wet nipple. I groaned and growled all at once, making a sound that wasn’t even close to a word – I just needed him, more than I’d ever needed anything or anyone before.
Then he spoke to me, and although I wasn’t in the mood for talking or listening to him talk, I hung on every word he said anyway – in that moment, this frustrating, compelling, every-kind-of-crazy man was the center of my universe.
“Next time, my Ashley, I will conduct a much more thorough exploration of these sweet breasts – but just now, I simply must fuck you until neither of us can breathe. Would that be quite all right?”
I answered him by lifting my knees and spreading my legs wide apart – I didn’t care that it probably made me look like a slut, I just cared about having him inside me, as soon and as hard as possible.
The man didn’t waste one more second. He leaned over the side of the bed to retrieve a condom from the pocket of his abandoned jeans; when I heard the foil wrapper tear as he ripped it open, I thought about telling him I’d been taking the pill like a religious ritual for years – but I decided between heartbeats that being twice as safe sure couldn’t hurt, not to mention that saying anything might delay what was about to happen for a few seconds, and I knew we’d both had all the waiting we could stand.
He pulled the condom over his hungry, lunging cock and then he crouched between my legs, his body a towering shadow in the darkness of the room. He eased through my wet folds, I felt the head of his massive shaft pressing against my opening … and then with a single powerful buck of his hips, Devon Killane was inside me.
How can I describe what it was like to feel him plunging into me, filling me, stretching me until I thought I might burst wide open? The pleasure of it was incredible – his cock surging back and forth within me, the pressure, the friction, all that raw male power forcing its way deeper into me with every thrust – but the physical pleasure was the least of it.
In that moment, we were a single person. In that moment, as our bodies ran slick with sweat and our hearts raced together in the darkness, we shared something I’d never felt before – I couldn’t begin to put a name on it, but it was something that felt true and warm and safe.
Then he reached up and laced his fingers through mine, he stared down at me as he forged deeper into my body, and I knew he felt it too.
There were so many special moments that night – when we first surged to climax together, when we lay spent and shattered afterward, when we fell asleep in each other’s arms, when he woke me up with a teasing hand between my legs before riding my body to an orgasm that lanced through me like lightning, when I tickled him until he begged for mercy, when I buried my face in his shoulder and called him ‘Devon’ for the first time – but none of them meant as much as that moment of perfect understanding that we shared when he first entered me.
In that moment, I knew he would never leave me.
***
Somewhere in the night, as she slept between one moment of love and the next, I eased away from her side and locked myself in her tiny bathroom.
Beneath the single glaring light bulb, I fought off the familiar rising tide of panic. I gripped either side of the sink with shaking hands, I leaned over the gleaming white porcelain, and I fought for control – but it was useless and laughable, just like every other part of my life that didn’t include her.
She was the only corner of my existence that meant anything at all – but with every hammering beat of my heart, I felt our time together slipping away.
A mirror hung on the wall over the sink. I didn’t want to look, but I had no choice. So I lifted my head and I stared at the monster in the mirror.
I stared at the monster who was going to leave her. I stared at the worthless excuse for a man who was going to abandon her in the worst way possible.
I made the decision years before I met her, I planned it all out down to the final detail – but I didn’t plan for her.
How could I still go through with it?
How could I not?
16. Our Summer
I was good for him – everybody agreed on that.
I’d assumed being both employee and girlfriend to the same guy would be awkward as hell, at least in the workplace – but in the hallways of Killane Corporate Holdings, I was golden.
All those whispers and raised eyebrows? Gone. All those half-hidden leers and sneers? History. All the snotty, sexist remarks that set my blood boiling? Nothing but memories.
Instead, my arrival in an elevator or an office or a meeting was met with polite nods, beaming smiles, handshakes and party invitations, questions and compliments, and relief that I’d somehow brought the erratic Killane temper under control.
I heard a lot of anecdotes about that.
“I couldn’t find my report documenting the quarterly earnings figures for our Korean subsidiaries, but he just shrugged and said to bring it to next week’s meeting instead.”
“I had to cancel yesterday’s interviews for the new sysadmin positions because my daughter was sick and he said he hoped she’d be feeling better soon – he even sent flowers.”
“We won’t be able to close the Emerson deal until next week because the hotel in Toronto was double-booked and he just laughed it off, said Montreal or Ottawa would do just as well.”
“He hasn’t fired anybody in weeks.”
Did they know I was sleeping with him now? I sure hadn’t shouted that fact from the rooftops, and while he’d been more than happy to let the world think we were doing it from Day One, my best guess was that no one in the company had bought it, not after my lecture to the executives assembled in his office that first day.
Now it was different. Now, everyone assumed we were intimate – but why? How could they know?
That mystery was solved after I had a little talk with his receptionist, Dana – standing up to her abusive asshole of a boyfriend Danny had made me something of a hero in her eyes, so I figured she’d be good for a straight answer. It took some prodding and persuasion, but she finally advised me with a shy smile that I had in fact been ‘glowing.’
That settled it – there’s no mistaking the happy glow of a satisfied big girl.
While I was busy being all glowy and satisfied, I also settled on a method for handling my double life with Devon Killane.
When other people were around, I addressed him only as ‘Mr. Killane,’ while staying as reserved and professional as my loud personality could manage.
In private, whether at work or on a date or in my four-poster bed – I hadn’t been to his home yet to see his bed, which I assumed had to be about the size of a football field – he was just ‘Devon,’ although he could also be ‘Dev,’ or ‘you asshole’ if he was making me crazy or promising to do weird, perverted things involving my breasts and sushi.
Meanwhile, in between business meetings and trips and conferences, Devon did his game best to figure out how ‘regular guy’ dates worked. He forced himself to buy some casual, non-four-figure suits and go without a tie while wearing them, he learned that street vendors usually can’t break a hundred dollar bill, and he came to accept that if you stand in front of the orangutan exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo and lecture the apes about the illusion of freedom as discussed in the works of Steiner and Sartre, other zoo patrons will indeed stare at you.
Those months meant everything to us – the endless long days between our first date and what came later were our own personal summer, and it lasted until well into the fall.
Me and my weird, complicated, adorable guy walked everywhere, hand in han
d, through neighborhoods ranging from quaint and historic to dodgy and dark. We took each other’s pictures in front of the titanic dinosaur skeletons at the Field Museum. We argued politics over the world’s worst pancakes at an alleged restaurant wedged between a thrift store and a bowling alley. We took turns falling on our asses at roller skating rinks, we rode the ferris wheel at Navy Pier, and we went on boat tours around Lake Michigan. Jazz concerts, food festivals, Cubs games, the Shedd Aquarium – we went everywhere, and did pretty much everything.
Photographers and celebrity-watchers tailed us now and again, but not too often –the world had moved on to other amusements, and most days we got to be just two regular people enjoying each other’s company.
Most nights, we binge-watched Netflix movies in my microscopic apartment. Nestled in Devon’s arms in the dark, I’d yell helpful comments and advice at the screen, throw popcorn at characters who attained new levels of stupidity, and sometimes … sometimes I saw that haunted, distant look steal across his face, the look I’d first seen on the bridge in San Francisco.
It was just for a minute or two, here and there when he thought I wasn’t looking, but there was no mistaking the heartbreaking emptiness in those strange, luminous eyes – and then he’d hug me closer, he’d whisper something disgusting into my ear as his skillful hands cupped my breasts and slipped between my legs, and I could almost convince myself I’d been imagining things … almost.
What came later was the apocalypse, and it began the day I met the other half of the Killane equation and learned what was going on with ‘the special project.’
17. The Apocalypse
Saturday morning meetings sucked, but they were part of life on The Amazing Killane Rollercoaster – I found out about this one at 7:00 goddamn a.m., when my favorite enigmatic bastard called, informed me I was needed in his office no later than now, and then hung up.
I was left half-awake and mildly pissed off about the prospect of emerging from my toasty cubbyhole of an apartment into the cold October morning lurking outside. But duty called, so I showered up, bundled up, and drove downtown, fiddling with the unfamiliar multimedia buttons on the dash of my new car while telling myself that nobody loves a whiny asshole who complains about early hours on a $100,000 babysitting job.
Yeah, about that new car … turns out that after his first ride in my elderly clunker, Devon made the command decision that I needed a new vehicle. He avoided any please-do-not-blow-so-much-money-on-me objections by simply having the Honda towed one night and leaving a new Mercedes-Benz SL 550 Roadster in its space at my apartment building – I just hoped none of the neighbors would get around to keying my sleek new German speed machine or slashing its tires before I moved out.
I arrived on the 103rd floor of corporate headquarters to find suits milling around outside Devon’s office, suits who parted like a river of silk when I stepped off the elevator. They didn’t speak to me, not this time – careful glances, polite nods, and nervous sighs were offered, but not a single word.
I had no idea what was going on, so I pasted a relaxed I-know-exactly-what’s-going-on smile on my face and strolled into the outer office where Dana fidgeted at her desk.
“Dana, what’s up? Did we all get sold to China while I was asleep?”
Dana shook her head in all seriousness, as if our lives being outsourced to the Far East was a legitimate possibility.
“No, Ms. Daniels – it’s my understanding this meeting relates to the special project, but I’m sure Mr. Killane will fill you in on the details. Please head right in, he’s waiting for you.”
She nodded at the door to the big guy’s inner sanctum and then returned to gnawing at her lip, examining her fingernails with a singular intensity, and avoiding my eyes.
The moment I set foot inside my guy’s office, I knew something was wrong.
On the surface, everything looked normal, or at least as normal as things ever got when the infamous ‘special project’ was on the agenda.
A gaggle of senior suits stood on the far side of the office, silhouetted against the dim morning light coming in through the floor-to-ceiling window. They whispered to each other, they nodded, they consulted figures and charts displayed on the sleekest new HD tablets, they made notes, and they traded shrugs and comments and did their mysterious business-fu thing: check.
Uncle Sheridan the Jedi stood next to Devon’s desk, sipping from a cup of rich espresso coffee that I could smell from across the room. He wore one of his standard ruinously expensive suits, complete with a pocket watch on a chain for his vest and an orchid in his lapel, because the man was all class. He was as regal and grandfatherly as ever, a Zen island of calm in the midst of potential chaos: check.
And Devon? As I approached his ginormous executive desk of command, I realized that he was the source of the wrongness I sensed. The out-of-kilter, the unexpected, the weird and puzzling sensation of something being very much the hell not right – it all was centered here, at the eye of the storm.
Don’t get me wrong, the man looked great. He wore a dove-grey Fioravanti suit that had to be the king of his closet, the crisp sleeves of his shirt were fastened with gold cufflinks in the shape of the letter ‘K’, and his silk tie sported a clasp with a single gemstone – an amethyst, maybe? – that matched his blue-violet eyes.
That delicious beard stubble I loved to feel against my skin had been shaved off, his thick black hair was trimmed with military precision to just above his perfectly starched collar, and he leaned back in his luxurious and ergonomically ideal leather chair like an emperor relaxing on a throne made from the bones of his enemies.
He was tall, he was tanned, he was groomed and dressed to the nines, and he radiated confidence and power.
I didn’t buy it for a second.
Any other day, any other time, any other meeting, sure – but whenever this precious special project was on the table, my guy was always a tightly controlled bundle of nerves, ready to jump out of his skin at the slightest excuse. So why was he such a tower of strength today, and why did it feel so wrong?
I settled a hand on his shoulder and immediately had part of the answer. At my touch, he hissed in a sharp breath – just for a second, but I caught it – and a single muscle twitched in his jaw.
Yep, he was nervous as hell, just as usual for a special project meeting – but this time he was forcing his anxiety into a tight little box and locking it inside for the duration of whatever was about to happen.
Why? I had no idea. And just what was about to happen? Not a clue.
The boss acknowledged me with a nod that was cool, crisp, and professional. “I apologize for summoning you here so early on such a cold morning, but I think you’ll find today’s proceedings quite entertaining.”
He turned his gaze back to the three laptops sitting in a row along the front edge of his desk. Each one displayed the view from a different live video feed – on the first screen, we were looking at some sort of cargo ship on some ocean somewhere, the second displayed a group of reporters surrounding the entrance to a steel-and-glass skyscraper that I recognized as being only a few blocks away from us, and the third showed nothing more than an empty podium on a stage, with an official-looking seal of some kind displayed on the wall behind the podium.
Then Devon’s phone sounded off with an incoming call. Before he answered it, he nodded for me to come closer.
With my left hand still on his shoulder, I rested my right hand on the corner of his desk and leaned in close. “What can I do to help, Devon?”
Never taking his eyes from the laptops, he whispered, “Stay close, Ashley.”
I nodded, squeezed his shoulder, and took position just to one side of his chair. Not a damn thing in this universe would peel me away from Devon Killane, not until I knew he was safe from whatever the hell was going on.
Meanwhile, the boss issued instructions in a low voice to whoever was on the other end of the phone call.
“You’re to offer a bit of resi
stance before allowing them to come up, just enough to make the whole sham believable. And is that actual shouting I hear? Excellent, just as I anticipated – in any case, make them believe you’re all aflutter and upset over their presence, and that should set those fools up nicely for the little scene I have ready for them up here. Good work, Ferrum.”
He hung up and leaned back in his chair, faking relaxed confidence better than ever.
A guy named Ferrum was head of building security, so that was one question answered. As for shouting, I’d heard someone in the electronic distance hollering like six kinds of aggrieved asshole; Jedi Master Sheridan must have heard them as well, from the way he sighed and shook his head. Devon seemed to be okay with it, but I decided some insurance was in order.
I pulled out my phone and soon was whispering my own instructions to Mr. Ferrum, a stocky ex-Marine who took his duty guarding Devon Killane’s property and employees as seriously as if terrorists might come rappelling down out of the sky at any moment. He plainly was uncomfortable as hell about letting the mysterious loud guys come up to the boss’s office, and agreed in a heartbeat to follow them up in the next elevator, while bringing along for company the head of Devon’s personal security detail and whichever of my bodyguards was closest to hand.
Then I turned to Uncle Sheridan. “Sir, is there anything you can tell me about these shouty types that are on their way up here? I want to help Devon, but it’s tough when I know just exactly zero about what’s going on.”
Uncle Sheridan shook his head.
“Miss Daniels, I’m afraid that explaining this matter would take far more time than we have available – not to mention Devon’s spent years planning out every detail of the special project, and I would hate to spoil this show he’s set his heart on. I will say that I am pleased beyond measure that he has found such a brave and determined woman to stand by his side – your support for him means everything to me.”
Five Minutes Late: A Billionaire Romance Page 19
