by Naima Simone
The names on that list comprised the life support for the place she loved. The place that was the heartbeat of its neighborhood.
“It’s your choice,” her father continued, arrogance and a sickening self-satisfaction reeking from him like a pungent cologne. “Either do this small favor for me and save your family’s company and future. Or stand by and watch me dismantle the center dollar by dollar.”
She’d asked herself before who her father had become? Now she had the answer.
He was no longer her mother’s husband.
He was a cruel stranger who had passed down his DNA.
Without another word to him, she pivoted and exited the study. Escaped him.
But there was no avoiding the sordid choice he’d left her with.
Either she destroyed lives by eliminating employment, classes, services and a haven for children and seniors.
Or she betrayed a man who despised her family and didn’t trust her in the first place.
A breath shuddered out of her, and a vise constricted her chest, her ribs and lungs.
By the time this was over, Cain would hate her even more.
Fourteen
“We have the updated plans and numbers on the North Station project. I’ve emailed them to you. For those dinosaurs who insist on paper copies, I have those, too.”
Laughter filled the room as Karina Douglas, Farrell International’s chief financial officer, stood at the head of the conference room table and waved toward the pile of manila folders. “I’ve also forwarded the latest proposals and bids and a projection for the next three years required to finish the construction and leasing.”
Cain tapped his inbox on his tablet and located the email. He opened the attachment and in seconds, numbers filled the screen. This project would mean a very healthy profit for not just Farrell but its investors and stockholders. But the information might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. Nothing made sense or snagged his attention for very long.
Not exactly the truth.
There was one person who monopolized his thoughts and attention. Had thoroughly hijacked his focus so not even work offered an escape. Which was unprecedented. No person or thing had ever interfered with work before. He hadn’t allowed it. But since Saturday night—since he’d dropped Devon off at her house with both of them still smelling of sex—he didn’t have a choice.
Devon Cole had become his own personal ghost. And she haunted him when he was awake and during the few hours of sleep he managed to snatch.
His fingers tightened around the stylus, and it pressed into his skin. Nearly forty-eight hours had passed since he’d last seen her, and he could still hear her moans in his ears. Still feel the impatient, demanding twist of her body under his. Still smell the perfume of her need. Still taste that perfume on his tongue.
But even more, her sharp gasp as he coldly called her a fool for trusting him rattled in his ears like phantom chains. Her contained expression and shuttered emerald eyes floated across his mind.
Goddamn, he needed an exorcist if he were going to focus or sleep again.
“Cain.”
He jerked up his head from his blind study of the report to find the men and women around the table staring at him, including Karina, Achilles and Kenan. He avoided the two men’s scrutiny, not just uncomfortable with what he might see in their identical gazes, but with what he might inadvertently reveal to them.
“I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I was studying the numbers.”
Karina nodded. “I suggested each of us review the proposals and bids then reconvene next week with the top five. And we can narrow it down to three from there.”
“Sounds good.” Cain tapped the screen and closed the email out. “Is there anything else?” A murmur of noes filled the room, and moments later, the meeting ended, and everyone filed out.
Sighing, Cain followed minutes later. As he headed toward his office, his thoughts again reverted to Devon. What was he going to do? Saturday night, he’d had big intentions of maintaining a safe distance, never crossing that line again. But the past two days had rendered those objectives laughable—and impossible.
He wanted her.
All of the reasons why he should uphold the boundaries he’d placed on this “relationship” remained valid. Now more than ever, since they’d thrown sex into the mix. But that logic took a suicidal leap out the window when up against his memories of that night, the smile of pure joy that had lit her face when she’d seen her family. Or when the brand of her sweet, selfless embrace taunted him with a bone-deep longing he refused to name—was too terrified to name.
No, he couldn’t go on much longer like this, he decided, sweeping a glance over his executive assistant’s empty chair and desk. He had to make a choice. Either he stick to the facade of a loving fiancé in public and preserve a careful and polite distance in private... Or he surrender to his dark, carnal urges and fuck Devon out of his system.
Pulling open his closed office door, he strode inside, jaw clenched. Only one of those options didn’t spell disaster. Only one made sense—
Devon rose from the couch in his sitting area, her emerald eyes slamming into his.
“Cain,” she said, her sultry tone soothing the agitation crackling under his skin—and hardening his body to the point of pain. “I’m sorry to show up uninvited, but there was something I needed to speak with you about. Your assistant said I could come in and wait for you...”
She continued speaking, but a dull roar had exploded in his head. And it pounded in his chest, his gut...his cock. Seeing her in the flesh as if she’d been conjured straight out of his dirty fantasies, wearing a black turtleneck dress that clung to every lush curve, all that gorgeous brown-and-gold hair tumbling around her shoulders and playing hide-and-seek with her beautiful breasts...
His will caved, and he buckled under the weight of his lust.
Dropping his files and tablet to the floor, he stalked across the office. With each step, every warning shed from him like dirt knocked off a boot. By the time he stood in front of her, her green eyes were wide with surprise and simmering with heat.
He was not the CEO of Farrell International. Or a member of one of the oldest, wealthiest families in Boston. He wasn’t a son, a brother, not even a bought fiancé.
He was just a man condensed to the basest, most primal parts of himself.
Hunger. Need.
Survival.
Because if he didn’t get inside Devon, he would damn sure cease to exist.
Lifting his hands, he cupped her face, tilted it back. His thumbs swept over her high, rounded cheekbones, skimming the tender skin under her amazing eyes.
“Cain,” she whispered, her fingers circling his wrists. But she didn’t tug him away. Just held on.
His answer was to take. Her mouth. Her gasp. Her breath.
Her.
He molded his lips to hers, dragging his teeth along the soft, damp skin. Smoothing any sting he might’ve caused with his tongue, then plunging inside her. God, it had been only two days since he’d last savored her, but it might as well have been two weeks, two centuries.
She tasted like sunlight and darkness. Purity and sin.
His salvation, his damnation.
With a growl, he licked and sucked. Thrusted and retreated. Teased and taunted. Worshipped and consumed. He couldn’t get enough of her. Of the wet tangle and slide of their tongues. Of her breathy moans and whimpers. Of the restless tightening and loosening of her hands on him.
“What are you willing to give me, Devon?” he asked against her mouth, repeating the same question he’d posed Saturday night.
Her lashes lifted, revealing her passion-glazed eyes. Her damp lips, already swollen from his kiss, trembled. And the sign of her vulnerability squeezed both his heart and his dick. He pressed a soft kiss to her mouth,
nipping lightly, and her ragged inhale rippled over his skin.
“What do you want?” she finally said.
“Everything,” he murmured. “I’m a greedy bastard. I want everything.”
Her eyes closed, and once more, the sweetness of her breath bathed his mouth, and he tasted her kiss. With a sigh that was part surrender, part need, she loosened her grip on him and slowly sank to her knees.
Shock and a desperate, tearing hunger ripped through him, leaving him in aching, conflicted shreds. Aching, because her hands fumbled with the band on his suit pants, releasing the tab and lowering the zipper. His flesh throbbed, damn near begging to be freed and touched, stroked...swallowed.
Conflicted, because he didn’t expect this intimacy from her. Didn’t want her to feel pressured to give it to him.
Even though, goddamn, he craved it. Had dreamed about just this.
“Devon, sweetheart.” He laid one hand over her hand at his zipper and cradled her cheek with the other. “You don’t have to do this.” He swept his thumb over her bottom lip, already seeing his cock weighing it down in his mind. Shaking his head, he briefly squeezed his eyes closed, his grip on her hands inadvertently tightening. “Let me—”
“I don’t have to do anything,” she said, sliding her hand out from under his...and gripping him through his boxer briefs. Stroking. A shiver worked its way through his body, his hips bucking into her grasp. He might come from that alone, that delicate little hand on him. “I want to. Are you going to let me, Cain?”
Sometimes, Devon appeared so damn innocent. And then there were other times, like now, when she transformed into a siren capable of luring him to crash against her. To come apart for her.
“Yes, I’m going to let you put your pretty mouth on me,” he said, slipping both hands into her hair, tunneling through the thick strands of heavy silk. “Undo me, Devon.”
She dipped her hand inside his underwear and cradled his hot, thick flesh. He hissed, his body locking up, going rigid. Pleasure pierced him like a scorching knife, cutting through him, laying him open to her eager touch and the excited glitter in those green eyes. With a low hum that he didn’t even think she was aware of releasing, she jerked his boxer briefs lower on his hips, fully exposing him to her hands, gaze and damn, her mouth.
That beautiful, sinful tease of a mouth parted, slid over him, taking him inside. So wet. So warm. So good. She fisted the lower half of him, pumping while she tormented the top half with her lips and tongue.
“Sweetheart,” he rasped, his voice the consistency of freshly churned gravel. “Open wider for me. Please.” Yes, he was begging and couldn’t care.
She did as he asked, and using his grasp on her head, he held her still and drove into her mouth, his hips rocking forward almost of their own accord. Reaching for the back of her throat on the smooth runway of her tongue. A familiar, but totally new sizzle zipped up his spine, then ran back down as his tip nudged that narrow channel. He groaned, gritting his teeth as she became a lightning rod for the pleasure rippling through him like an electrical current.
“No,” he growled to himself, jerking free of her. “Inside.” Cupping her under her arms, he yanked her to her feet, trying to be gentle, but undoubtedly failing. “I want to come inside you.”
In seconds, he had them on the couch, her panties in his back pocket, her straddled over his thighs and a condom rolled down his erection. Air powered out of his lungs in deep, serrated rasps, and he silently ordered himself to slow down, to not hold her so forcefully. To not bruise her with his barely tempered strength and lust.
Maybe it made him a caveman throwback, but he would take pride in marking her soft, golden skin with their passion. So when she looked at her body the next morning, she would know that for these few stolen moments, she belonged to him. Yeah, he wouldn’t mind that. But he didn’t want to hurt her. He’d rather cut off his hands first.
She shivered above him, her fingernails biting into him through his suit jacket. This might be the hottest encounter he’d experienced since he’d been introduced to screwing at sixteen. Both of them were still fully clothed, only her glistening sex, thick, gorgeous thighs and his dick were exposed. The redolent musk of their passion perfumed the air, their breath punctuating the silence.
“Are you going to take me in?” he murmured, the strain rippling through his muscles.
Please take me in, Devon.
The plea scraped at the back of his throat, but pride locked it away. Pride and fear of saying too much. Revealing too much.
With their gazes locked, she slowly lowered onto him, her flesh parting, quivering, adjusting...accepting.
Only when she was fully seated on him, squeezing him like a gloved fist, did she lean forward, press her lips to his and whisper, “Yes, Cain. I’ll take you in.”
A swell of murky emotion—light and dark, joy and pain, need and fear—coalesced in his chest, spinning out until it nearly swallowed him along with the teeth-clenching pleasure. Deliberately, he shoved everything down—everything but the pleasure. He let it bend him, consume him, as she slid up his dick, those tiny feminine muscles fluttering around him. He didn’t move, handing over full control, but his fingers dented her hips with the effort of not slamming her back down. And goddamn, did she reward him for holding off. She gifted him with an equally slow and torturous glide back down, dragging a long groan—hell, a stone’s throw from a whimper—out of him.
“Again, sweetheart,” he grunted. “I need more.” God, did she give him more.
She rode him.
Fucked him.
Broke him.
Her breathless cries and dirty moans stroked his flesh. But with each roll of her hips, each pulse around him and over him, she shoved him closer and closer to release. He held on like a man hanging on to a crumbling cliff by his fingernails.
“Touch me,” Devon croaked against his neck. “Please touch me.”
He understood her pained request even as her channel spasmed around him. Reaching between them, he rubbed his thumb once, twice, three times over the stiff button of nerves at the top of her sex. Her body clamped down on him, seizing him in a strangling embrace.
As she came undone, quivering and sucking him impossibly deeper, he gripped her tight, held her aloft and pounded inside her, chasing the perfection that loomed so close. Pleasure arced through him in fire-hot, blazing strikes. They struck his spine, his lower back, the soles of his feet, his dick.
Devon took his thrusts, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her teeth sinking into the base of his throat. And it was that bite, the erotic sting of it, her marking of him, that sent him cracking wide down the middle. Thank God for the soundproofing of his office, because his hoarse shout rebounded off the walls, echoing in his head.
And even as he let go of his passion, his control, he held on to her.
Fifteen
Devon hovered on the bottom step of the grand staircase that spiraled far above her. The light purple and gray of the day’s dying light streamed into the equally grand foyer of the Beacon Hill mansion. Part of her wanted nothing more than to jog back up the steps, head back down the hall to the room she’d just exited and climb back into the big bed with the tangled covers and sheets.
Cain’s bed. Cain’s sheets.
But they were both responsible for tangling them.
A shaky breath escaped her, and she pressed her palm to her fluttering stomach. Silly, considering all that she’d been doing with him since they left Farrell International hours ago. Heat crawled up her throat and poured into her face when she recalled how she’d fallen to her knees for him, let him fill her mouth and then her body in his office.
Again, silly she should be embarrassed given what she’d been allowing him to do to her since—and what she’d done to him in return. But when it came to Cain Farrell, nothing made sense. Not her decisions. Not her logic. N
ot her lack of control. Not this magnetic, almost desperate pull toward him.
She’d gone to Farrell to broach the subject of his real estate deal. Shame slithered through her. Yes, she’d had every intention of lobbying on her father’s behalf. And when Cain’s assistant had allowed her to wait in his empty office, she’d stared at his desk, so close to skirting around it and searching the massive piece of furniture and his computer for anything regarding the project. Ultimately though, she couldn’t sink quite that low.
But when Cain stalked into the cavernous room, all thoughts about real estate and her father bolted from her head. Not two nights earlier, she’d vowed not to be vulnerable with Cain again. But it’d been the glimmer of confusion and need in his blue-gray gaze—the same emotions so rife inside her—that had spurred her surrender to him, his kiss, his touch. Even knowing it would lead to only more problems, more mistakes.
And here she stood, in Cain’s house, tumbling deeper and deeper into the quagmire that was their “relationship.”
“What are you doing down here?” Cain appeared before her, his powerful chest bare, wearing only a black pair of lounging pants that clung to his narrow hips like a jealous lover. “I was going to bring food up to you.” His gaze surveyed her from the unruly, freshly sexed hair, over his white dress shirt that she’d slipped on and down to her painted toes. She fidgeted, aware that she’d become that woman—the one who wore her man’s clothes just to be closer to him, to be surrounded by his scent.
Only Cain wasn’t her man. Not truly.
“Are you hungry?”
The simmer of heat brightening his eyes kindled the same embers of desire in her. Beneath the fine cotton, her nipples beaded and the flesh between her legs softened, swelled. She opened her mouth, about to tell him “not for food,” when her stomach growled. Loudly.
