That was encouraging, and my heart felt as full as it had in ten years, but it also led to frustration. All I’d wanted was to put my hand on her thigh, to drag it up the soft flesh and tease her, make her dripping wet for the entire flight. I couldn’t rest easily until she panted my name and begged me for release like she had so many times in the past.
With a deep breath, I got out of my own head and looked around the hotel room. A wry smile found my lips.
Addy’s instincts had been right. The only reason I wanted this conference getaway was to open the door with her.
If I were successful, this hotel room would be the site where we finally threw out the past and moved into the future together.
As if on cue, an impatient knock at the door jolted me out of my thoughts.
It looks like Addy has similar thoughts.
Could it be that easy?
Eager, I strode to the door and pulled it open, a grin already on my face.
The disappointment couldn’t have been greater when Rose stood on the other side of the door.
“Can I come in to discuss an upcoming presentation?” she asked.
I fought to find a reason to decline, but it didn’t matter. She blew past me, walking into the room and wandering over to the desk.
“Make yourself at home,” I said. Could she detect the sarcasm in my voice?
The Financial Planning and Analysis manager was in a blue dress, different from the power clothing she wore to the office daily. If I were being honest, she took care of herself, and although she was a couple of years older than me, she carried it well.
Rose picked up the TV remote but didn’t use it, instead twisting it in her hands as she leaned against the desk.
“What’s the problem?” I asked. “As far as I know, nothing’s changed from the program we’d already discussed back in New York.”
Rose’s lips curved into a smile reminiscent of a lion playing with its prey. “Oh, that’s not the presentation I was talking about. You know, when Thomas was CFO, I used to give him extra reports all the time. They would cover the long and hard problems in the room, and we both found them very helpful.”
As she emphasized the words, Rose ran her hands up her body, cupping her breasts through her dress.
Oh, shit. This isn’t good.
“Thomas always appreciated my presentations, and I’d like to give you the same access I gave him.” This time, Rose sat on the edge of the desk and spread her legs as she spoke, pulling her dress up to reveal a distinct lack of panties underneath. “How do you like the presentation?”
I was at a loss for a few moments. Rose was a direct report and Addy’s boss. If I couldn’t find a way to stop this diplomatically, she could make life hell for me.
“I’m flattered, Rose. That would go against company policy though. It’s only my first week, and I typically make a point not to break the rules so quickly.”
She rolled her eyes. “Landon, no one pays attention to those rules. Didn’t you hear what I said? Thomas used to take advantage of this, and I’m telling you to do likewise.”
Rose hopped off the desk and took long steps that emphasized the roll of her hips as she approached. When she got close, she reached out with her hand and grabbed my cock through my pants.
“I’ve been watching this bulge since you started, and I need to have it.”
That was too far.
I took her wrists in my broad hands and pulled them away forcefully, and Rose gasped, her eyes on mine.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Take me however you want.”
I pulled her along as I backed up. She came easily at first but then resisted as she saw where I was going.
“I can’t in good conscience do anything, Rose. We will maintain a strictly professional relationship, do you understand?”
I didn’t wait for a reply as I opened the door and pushed her through.
The hallway was empty in one direction, but approaching from the other side was Addy. She stopped dead in the middle of the hallway, took one look at me, one at Rose, and back. Then she turned around and walked back the way she came.
Goddamnit!
I couldn’t yell after Addy, not with Rose standing there. And the expression on the older woman’s face was downright ugly.
“Goodnight, Rose,” I said. “I will see you for the first lecture of the conference tomorrow.”
Then I shut the door on her face.
~Adeline~
My feet pounded the pavement, internal aggression boiling forth as I imagined a face under each step. They alternated between Landon and Rose.
I can’t believe I was going to knock on his door last night.
Nothing made me feel more foolish than to finally give in to my desires, only to see Landon ushering my boss out of his room with a guilty look on his face. At least he hadn’t seen how late I’d stayed up with tears in my eyes, unable to fall asleep through the emotional turmoil.
And with her? Fuck, Landon, I thought you said you had standards.
Rose was a parasite who fed off everyone around her to fuel her own sense of accomplishment and advance her career. Everyone and everything was a tool to be used with that woman, and Landon had let himself be dragged right in.
He was supposed to be different.
Was I just blind to it after all the time we’d spent together? I’d never had to see how he dealt with other women. Maybe he’d been a sleaze bag all along and it had been hidden from me.
Landon had tried to sit beside me in the lectures and meals throughout the day, but I avoided him like the plague. Unable to help myself, despite my feigned indifference, I watched him and Rose as assiduously as possible, needing to confirm my suspicions to feel entirely justified in my hate and disappointment.
There had been nothing obvious except for Rose being extra flirty toward Landon. He was a far better actor than she was.
After the final afternoon session, I’d needed something to distract me and help me work through the emotions roiling under my skin, and the run was helping. By the time I got back to the hotel and into the shower, the towering pile of hatred had faded to a dull resentment.
How dare he come after me like he wants me while he’s sleeping with my boss?
It was still early for dinner, and I was exhausted from the lack of sleep. The bed was comfortable enough and my body so desperate for sleep that I was out before I even pulled the cover over myself.
Blackness overcame me, a dreamless state that ended only with a loud ringing that flooded the hotel room.
It took a few swipes at the bedside table before I successfully grabbed the phone and accepted the call. Working for a major corporation, it was second nature to answer phone calls any time of day or night. Accessibility was always impressive to managers.
“Hello?”
“I know that voice. I woke you up from a nap, didn’t I? Were you a little tuckered out from the sessions today?” Landon’s voice was teasing.
My thoughts were scrambled, pulling themselves together out of the oblivion of sleep.
“Um, maybe. What’s going on?”
“You’re late for dinner. The entire team’s out. You’d better get your ass over here.”
My stomach flipped. “What? Really? Shit, okay, I’ll throw some clothes on and be there. Where are you?”
“I’ll text you the location. It’s a short Uber away. Just ask for the Woolven Kleist reservation at the front and you’ll find us.”
Only halfway through getting dressed did I remember that I was supposed to be angry with Landon. The nap had put some distance between it and me, and the immediacy had faded.
I hurried through only the most cursory makeup application and thanked past me for laying out a dress for dinner. It took only five minutes from waking up to calling an Uber.
The restaurant was a swanky place. Fine art and modern wooden and glass dividers split the space into intimate alcoves, and attentive waiters and waitresses were everywhere.
&n
bsp; Nothing like dining out on the company dime.
I would never have dared expensing a dinner at a place like this, but if Landon was the ranking manager, it was his expense account bearing the damage.
The hostess led me to the back of the restaurant, then gestured to a single small table set for two.
“Are you sure this is the Woolven Kleist reservation?” I asked. “There’s supposed to be ten people here.”
The girl nodded. “This is your reservation, ma’am.”
“Okay.” Not wanting to make the girl wait, I sat down.
As soon as she was out of sight, I pulled out my phone and called Greg, an analyst in my group.
“Hey, Adeline.”
“Greg. Where is everyone?”
“Terry and I are having a couple of drinks at the hotel bar. Not sure exactly where everyone else is right now. We saw you rush out a while ago, but you didn’t hear us call after you. What are you up to?”
Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention.
Landon strode toward me. He was a vision, dressed in a fitted pinstripe suit and carrying a few long-stemmed roses.
“Nevermind,” I muttered into the phone and hung up. I stood and frowned at Landon. “What the hell are you doing?”
He pressed the flowers toward me, and I took them automatically.
“Please, Addy, sit down.”
“I—”
He cut me off. “Quiet, Princess. It’s my turn to speak.”
That name, again.
Somehow, it had lost none of its potency over the years. It made me want to obey him, to serve him. It turned me on like a switch had been flipped.
It wasn’t fair.
Fair or not, I sank back down to the seat.
Landon sat across from me. “I’ve never been the same since we had to stop seeing each other ten years ago. No matter how I lied to myself, no matter how I tried to convince myself that the hole in my heart was temporary, that it was getting better, I knew deep inside it was all bullshit. When I saw you at Woolven Kleist, it became clear. I’ve been a fool this entire time. I never should have put anything ahead of you, Addy.”
The raw emotion in his voice broke my heart, and I fought back the tears that filled my eyes. The final remnants of the layer of ice I’d cast around my heart to protect it from him melted away—there was nothing I could do about it in the face of his relentless warmth.
“But you did,” I said. “You put your career in front of me, and you would do it again. It’s more important to you than I could ever be.”
If I let myself be drawn back in by Landon, it was only a matter of time before the relationship imploded just like it did the last time.
Landon shook his head. “I’m different, and you’re different, Addy. I couldn’t be sure back then that what we had would last. I was just starting my career, and you were only eighteen, for fuck’s sake. I know you weren’t a typical teenager, but if I’d blown my entire life up for you and then you changed your mind, that would be more my fault than yours.”
His words made sense, and I’d had those thoughts myself, but it didn’t change the way he’d refused to talk to me at all. It didn’t change what I saw the night before.
“If I’m so important to you, then why did you have Rose in your room last night?” I asked. “I won’t be led around like an ignorant child, Landon.”
I surged to my feet. If I didn’t run away from this now, it would become impossible. No matter how much uncertainty and anger I held toward Landon, he could sway me like no one else could.
Cutting off his rebuttal, I threw the roses back into his face and fled, finding my way through the maze of a restaurant. It was difficult to navigate through the tears, but I made it out to the street before Landon caught up.
His hand on my arm was rough as he pulled me to a stop and forced me to turn around to look at him.
“I didn’t do anything with Rose,” he said, his voice intense. “She forced her way into my room, and you saw as I was pushing her back out, Addy. How could I ever even think about being with her when my entire soul yearns for you?”
I looked away, unsure what to think, thoughts tumbling through my mind in a chaotic swirl. The only constant was the anchor of his deep voice. I wanted to be persuaded. Why couldn’t I allow him to do it?
“Addy, it’s impossible to resist you, but if you walk away from me one more time, I will let you go. I’m not a monster who can’t take no, but I won’t sit around and be kept on the hook forever. It’s now or never. What’s it going to be?”
There it was. An ultimatum. Landon had put the ball in my court, and it was entirely up to me what I wanted.
If I turned away from him, would I spend the rest of my life regretting it? Was it worth maintaining my indignation over his choosing his career instead of chancing the whims of an eighteen-year-old girl?
Was there any reason to continue to deprive us of what we needed?
I looked Landon in his eyes. They were full of fire, and his hand still on my arm was hot. I thought about what that hand could do to my body when his eyes looked like that. It crumbled the last of my stubborn resolve.
“Please, sir,” I said. “Take me.”
He growled as he pulled me to him and crushed my lips with his in a glorious, passionate kiss.
Chapter 11
~Landon~
The journey back to the hotel room had been lost in a haze of passion and the bare semblance of restraint. I hadn’t seen any of our team members on the way, but if they’d seen the way we looked and touched each other, there was no hope of explaining it away as anything other than what it was.
When we stumbled through the hotel room door, it was on.
I kicked it closed and wrapped my arms as far around Addy as they would go as our lips found each other and we crashed into the wall. I pinned her there, hands exploring her body, rediscovering the territory as I hungrily devoured her.
The throaty moans she offered as I took what I needed from her drove me crazy, reawakening hundreds of memories that overlaid reality. When I buried my hand in her hair and tilted her head to the side so I could latch onto her neck with my open mouth, she gasped loudly and clutched at my shoulders.
Pressing my thigh in between her legs, I moved lower, flirting with her upper chest as I gave her something to grind against.
Addy’s hands weren’t idle, slipping inside my jacket and forcing it off my shoulders, then working the buttons of my shirt, stripping me from the waist up so that she could run her fingertips against my abs and dig her nails into the exposed flesh of my shoulders as I grasped her ass and pulled her body against mine.
“God, yes, Landon,” Addy breathed in my ear as our bodies pressed together. Her hands found my hardened cock through my pants. “I needed this so badly, sir.”
“You’ll get everything you’ve been waiting for, Princess,” I replied. With deft hands, I unzipped her dress and tugged it down her incredible curves. “Over and over again.”
She wore simple black panties and a bra underneath, but on her, it could have been thousand-dollar lingerie. The bra lasted less than a second under my questing fingers, and then I knelt in front of her as I pulled her panties to her ankles.
I kissed her thigh right next to her exposed lips.
“As beautiful as I remember,” I said, keeping my voice low and seductive. “I’ve been dying to taste you again ever since I saw you in that meeting room on my first day.”
Addy’s hands fell to my head, running through my hair as I teased her flesh and licked up her inner thighs.
“What a coincidence,” she said. “I’ve been dreaming about your tongue for ten years.”
I growled and lifted her right leg to wrap it around my shoulder, leaving her standing on one leg while leaning back against the wall as I knelt before her. The position opened her up for me, and she looked too delicious to resist any longer.
“Fuck, sir,” Addy moaned as I split her lips with my tongue an
d took a lazy lick up through the center. “That feels incredible.”
I took my time, swirling my tongue through her folds as I kissed, exploring her and reacquainting myself with her likes and needs. Every time she gasped, I noted the location and motion, cataloging and charting the exact methods it took to drive her crazy.
If I’d wanted to, I could have brought her to a shuddering climax within the first two minutes of licking her, but I took my time. Instead of a headlong crash, I built Addy’s pleasures and tensions up slowly, varying the pressure and speed of the stimulation to send rolling waves of sensation through her body. The fingers in my hair grasped and squeezed as she guided my head, her eyes closed to focus on the way I played with her pussy.
Eventually, Addy rode on the edge, so close to teetering over and into ecstasy that her hips bucked against my tongue and she forced my head into her harder, desperate for the extra shred of pressure she needed to lose herself.
I obliged and ended the teasing, sucking gently on her clit as my tongue caressed it. Addy shuddered and cried out, her leg around my back tightening to pull my body closer, slight tremors in her thigh showing how close she was to losing her balance.
Tightening my arm around her waist to keep her upright, I continued my assault, and Addy’s cries turned silent as the height of her climax rolled through her. Shudders wracked her body, and her full weight fell on my shoulders as her left leg buckled.
“Jesus Christ!” Addy’s breath returned in big, trembling gasps. “I haven’t come that hard in…”
I looked up at her and grinned. “Ten years?”
She closed her eyes and nodded with a small smile. “Something like that.”
While she recovered from the swell of sensation, I ran my hands along her legs and torso, unable to stop myself from extending contact with her as much as I could. She felt as good under my hands as I remembered, her skin soft but firm, her curves as delectably perfect as ever.
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