by Amelia Wilde
Let’s eat in. Be at my place tomorrow at 8:30.
It’s almost as if he’s making things easy on me, and I have to fight off another wave of paranoia. There is no way in hell that Jett Brandon is trying to set me up. I’m a nobody.
A nobody he needs more of.
When I answer him again, my words are honest and true.
I wouldn’t miss it for anything.
Chapter Twelve
Jett
Angelica sits across from me at a table for two I’ve set up in the middle of my expansive living room, cheeks flushed from the wine we’ve been drinking all through dinner, head thrown back in laughter.
I want to kiss her. The distance between us is setting my teeth on edge.
“Turns out, you can’t fuck your way to popularity.”
We’ve been trading innuendoes for more than an hour, carefully dipping our toes into conversations about school days. I don’t give her much of anything—not about myself, anyway—but my friends and I got up to some amusing shit at Exeter, and it’s the perfect fodder to be a little raunchy, to keep coming back to sex again and again.
It doesn’t hurt that Angelica is enjoying the fuck out of this dinner. She gushes over every dish that arrives at the table and it seems genuine—she’s not trying to be amazed just to impress me.
The uniformed waiter I’ve hired for the evening comes to clear away the main course in preparation for dessert. Angelica thanks him, then flicks her eyes back to me, letting them travel down over my body. I’ve unbuttoned the top two buttons of my dress shirt and rolled up the sleeves, which is as casual as she’s ever seen me dress apart from the hours we spent naked in the bedroom.
That’s where I want to be. But Angelica’s eyes are shining, which makes me hesitate to end this early.
That thought brings me up short.
I shouldn’t care at all that Angelica is loving the experience that I’ve created for her. She’s here for one purpose and one purpose only—and that’s to fuck me like there’s no tomorrow.
But I care just enough, a flicker in my closed-off, locked-down heart. If my heart wasn’t racing with excitement at the idea of locking the door behind us and having my way with her, I’d be able to shut it down completely.
I should do exactly what I want, which is to take her into my bedroom and fuck her senseless, silly, until she’s so satisfied that she can’t help but fall asleep.
And then I should consider myself one step closer to ending things with her and moving on.
She claps her hands together when the waiter reappears with dessert, which is miniature dark chocolate cheesecakes dusted with edible gold.
“Wow,” she breathes when he steps away. Then she looks at me, suddenly sheepish. “Do you mind if I take a picture of this? It’s incredible.”
“Do you mind if I take a picture of you? You should see your face in the candlelight.”
She laughs again, and the sound makes a strange longing bloom to life in my chest.
A longing for what, I don’t know.
“I’ll go first,” I say, then pull my phone out of my pocket. I take two photos—one of her smiling directly at the camera, and then one just afterward, when she’s looked back down at dessert. Then she reaches into her purse and takes out her phone.
But instead of snapping a photo of the dessert, she looks at something on the screen. Her face falls.
“Angelica?”
She looks up at me, flustered, then sets her phone to the side.
“Is everything all right?” It’s clearly not, but she’s silent, and despite the fact that it’s best for both of us if I keep her at arm’s length, I have to know what has upset her.
“It’s…my apartment.” She bites her lips, picks up her dessert fork. Two days ago she was spread out on my bed, begging for me to fuck her, but now she seems unsure of herself.
“What happened?”
“That was my landlord. The apartment above me flooded, and it came through the ceiling.”
Her voice is tight, strained, but it seems like an overreaction. I try to keep things light. This is the last thing I want to derail the entire evening, have her leave before the main event. “The building didn’t come down, did it?”
She gives me a little smile, rolling her eyes. “No, but a pretty substantial part of the bathroom is going to have to be repaired. It shouldn’t be a big deal.”
I’m not convinced. “Shouldn’t be?”
“They’re putting us up at the Sheraton in Tribeca.”
“And that triples your commute.” She’d mentioned working in the Garment District at the Swan.
“Yeah.” She sighs a little, then brightens. “You’re right, though—the building could have come down.”
Still, the furrow in her brow gives her away. Exchanging the details of days at the office wasn’t a high priority on Thursday, but I gather her boss is demanding and hours can run long.
Maybe it’s because I can’t stand the thought of having her walk out of here. I don’t know. No matter what the reason, I can’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth.
“You have another option.”
Angelica grins, then teases. “What, stay with you?” She’s doing her very best to make it seem like a joke
I look into her eyes—blue and wide and tinged with hope. “At least for tonight. I’ll have clothes brought up for you. You don’t need to go back for anything until the repairs are finished if you don’t want to.” By the time I’m finished speaking, I’m already soaked in adrenaline. Having her body at my disposal for the next few weeks—that would be a goddamn treasure. I can have my fill of her and then we can go back to our lives.
She narrows her eyes, puts her fork back down. “Are you sure? I mean—we just met. I’m....” Whatever she’s going to say, she reconsiders. “We don’t know very much about each other. It’s not a problem for me to go to the Sheraton.”
The way she’s looking at me pushes me over the edge. I take my napkin from my lap and drop it onto the tablecloth, then stand up and cross to her side. Offer my hand. Pull her to her feet.
When I kiss her, she melts into me, leaning against me like I’m shelter in a storm. The kiss deepens, gets a little harder, rougher, and when she pulls back we both have to catch our breath.
“Stay with me tonight.” This time, it’s not a question.
She answers me with another kiss.
By the time we end it, the desserts are forgotten in the living room. We’ve moved down the hallway, and she’s tearing my shirt off in the bedroom, I’m bending her over the bed, and there’s no more discussion about stupid shit like going to the Sheraton. There’s only pleasure, and I think that if she stays, it might not ever end.
Chapter Thirteen
Angelica
In the early hours of Sunday morning, I wake up curled under Jett’s luxurious comforter, still a little lightheaded from the events of last night.
He bought my story, hook, line and sinker—and I don’t know how to feel about it.
He’s an arrogant womanizer, there’s no doubt in my mind. He’s the kind of man my mother warned me about. She was probably picturing the manager at the corner store—a guy with a “good job”—not a billionaire with the wealth of the world at his fingertips. But it still applies.
I thought up that story about my apartment on the ride over. Something that would make my life more frustrating, but not necessarily leave me homeless. And he’d hardly hesitated to invite me to stay with him.
For sex.
Of course, it’s just for the sex.
Right?
Why do I keep wondering about that when I’m the one who’s working so damn hard to win him over?
I turn over under the covers and let my eyes trace the automatic shades covering the windows.
To say I’m torn is the understatement of the year.
I want to erase the distance between us, climb onto his gorgeous, naked body, and rock against him until he wakes up.
In another world, we could spend all day in this bed. There would be no reason to leave, and I could sit back and enjoy the ride.
But in this one, I have information to steal, a brother to protect. That’s why I’m here in the first place.
I just didn’t anticipate Jett Brandon making me feel like this. The tips of my fingers ache with the need to touch him, to somehow break down the wall he’s constructed around himself. To know him so deeply, so completely, that understanding him becomes second nature.
That’s a heavy thought, and it blindsides me—but his sleeping face is open, relaxed, and last night I saw glimpses of him, the real him, underneath the bravado and the cocky attitude...and I wanted more.
I still want more.
I just can never have it.
His breathing is so deep and slow, and my mind is so crowded with thoughts, that I only last a couple of minutes before the dissonance gets to me.
With a little sigh, I slide out from under the comforter and cross the room to where a new silk kimono in heather gray rests across the back of one of the armchairs by the fireplace. It feels like heaven against my skin, and it only makes me feel guiltier when I slip the thumb drive from my purse and tuck it into the palm of my hand. The robe is just one of the things Jett had delivered last night. A soft knock at the door interrupted us while we were lying cuddled up against one another on the bed, me waiting for my heart to stop pounding. He’d been lazy about getting up, slowly pulling on his pants. When he came back into the bedroom, his arms were full of women’s clothes.
“Athleisure,” he said, holding up a pair of stretchy capris and a racerback top that I loved instantly. “Lunch.” This time, a coral sundress that made my heart skip a beat. “Unmentionables,” he continued, grinning slyly, and lifted a tie hanger with three lacy silk bra and panty sets. The robe was last.
I pushed myself up on my elbow, pressing my lips together to suppress the giggle that threatened to bubble over. “I thought you weren’t the romantic type.”
“This? This isn’t romance.”
“Inviting a girl to stay at your place and then plying her with expensive clothes isn’t romantic?”
He shrugged, then let his eyes roam over me from head to toe. “I’m not completely heartless, otherwise you’d be on your way to the Sheraton right now.” No argument there. “But you can’t very well walk around naked for the rest of the weekend.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Fine,” he said with a laugh. “You could. And I would like it. But it could get awkward if you ran into any of the staff.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. “How many people does one person need to take care of him?”
“I think of it this way: how many people can one person supply a direct livelihood for?”
“I bet it doesn’t hurt that you’ve got servants to get you whatever you want.”
He went across the room to the seating area where he put the clothes in a neat pile on the armchair, arranging the robe over the backrest. My mouth went dry. Had I crossed some line in the sand?
But Jett came back across the room, undoing the buckle of his belt as he walked, dropping his pants to the floor at the foot of the bed. Then he climbed up, hovering over me, and kissed me deeply, like he was marking me. When he came up for air, he looked me in the eye. “Of course my staff gets me what I want.” His voice was low, commanding. “Sometimes I take it for myself.”
“Like right now?”
“Like right now.”
It was several hours before we went to sleep.
Even now my skin buzzes from his touch.
Don’t get swept away, Angelica, I remind myself for the umpteenth time. Jett Brandon wants me for one thing and one thing only: the passionate and electrifying sex that we’ve been having. And I can never, never forget it. I have no choice but to get him to trust me, to fall in love with me, but I can’t get sloppy. I can’t forget Adam. And when this is over, I need to remember that it’s just sex for him, no matter how much I might want him. Maybe that will soften the blow of never getting to see his face again, of him hating me.
The robe’s belt tied firmly around my waist, I go out into the hallway. Sunday is his staff’s day off, all except for Stuart, his driver, who is “on call.” Still, I keep my back straight, my shoulders back, and walk with purpose.
His office is just how I left it last time, his computer centered on the desk. There is one small blessing in all of this: the new thumb drive from Charlie doesn’t require the damn thing to be on.
Ears open for any sign of movement, I plug it in and wait for the lights on the plastic case of the thumb drive to blink. Approximately one hundred years later, they do.
Mission accomplished...for now, at least.
Chapter Fourteen
Jett
When I wake up on Sunday morning, Angelica curled next to me, sleeping softly, looking like a fucking angel with her sunlight hair spread over the pillow, my stomach twists into a knot.
This is almost too convenient—having the one woman I want to fuck come back to the penthouse every night for a few weeks plays right into my hands.
In one way.
The risks are obvious.
The closer she gets, the more she’ll know about me. The more we’ll know about each other. It’s going to be a fine line to tread, that’s for damn sure.
Because it was more than just common decency that led me to offer staying at my place while hers is under repair, and last night convinced me of that.
The more I have her, the more I want her.
A strange warmth suffuses every one of my limbs. She breathes in and out, her bare shoulders rising above the sheet she has tucked defensively around her, then she stirs.
I should take it back. I should make up some excuse for why she can’t stay here and have Stuart drive her back to the Sheraton before I let this go any farther.
But then she turns toward me, eyelashes fluttering, and the stormy gray-blue of her eyes in the early morning light makes my heart stop, then thunder ahead.
“Hi.” She closes her eyes again, stretching her arms above her head, circling her wrists against the headboard. “Watching something interesting?” The sleepy grin on her face is too much.
“Watching something beautiful.”
A flicker of disappointment crosses her face, but it’s chased away by another playful smile, a yawn. “Sunday.” It’s a thoughtful comment.
“What about it?”
She rolls toward me, tucking her hand under her elbow. “What does a guy like you do on Sunday?”
I raise one shoulder half an inch, then lower it again. “Whatever I damn well please.”
She laughs. “You have to have some idea.”
“Do I?”
Angelica looks to the side, then turns over and hops out of bed. I can’t take my eyes off the full curve of her ass, the lithe, petite legs as she heads for the master bathroom. “There’s a toothbrush in there for me, isn’t there?” she calls out to me over her shoulder.
“You’d better hope so.”
“You’d better hope so,” she says, then closes the door behind her. Water runs for a few minutes, and when Angelica emerges she’s gathered her hair at the nape of her neck in a loose bun. Her hips sway as she walks. Damn, she’s confident, and she should be. Her body is fucking perfect. There is nothing in the world she would ever need to feel embarrassed about.
For a minute, while she crosses the room toward the sofa and armchairs, I’m so transfixed by the movement of her body that I forget all the other shit that’s been bothering me.
Angelica’s next move is to pick up the gray robe that someone—probably Elizabeth, my personal shopper—thought would be a good addition to the weekend wardrobe. In one way, she was right—it fits Angelica perfectly, the hemline of the fabric dropping only a couple of inches below her firm ass, the belt emphasizing her slim waist. In another way, I hate that thing because it’s hiding that luscious skin from me.
“At least it won’t be hard to fix.”
She comes toward the bed and climbs on, kneeling next to me. I sit up and press my lips against her collarbone, and give into the urge to wrap my hands around her waist.
“Wait.”
I pull back and watch while she licks her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Tell me something about yourself first.”
What? “You know everything there is to know about me.” It’s a lie and we both know it.
“I know you’re rich,” she says, sitting back on her heels. “I know you’re sexy as hell. I know you take what you want....” She reaches out and runs her fingers down the muscles of my arm. “But we’ve never talked about anything important.”
The laughter comes unbidden. “We’ve spent two evenings together. Let’s not get too hasty.” I gesture toward the rest of the room. “Isn’t this enough for you?”
She appraises the space around us, then shakes her head. “Listen, Jett, I know this is only...temporary.” Angelica swallows hard. The pause is just long enough for me to disagree with her. I don’t. The very last thing on earth I need to do right now is give her the idea that this is going to go anywhere. It’s not.
Just in time to save herself from excruciating awkwardness, she speaks again. “We’ve spent two evenings together and I really don’t want to triple my commute. It doesn’t give me a lot of wiggle room in the mornings, and my boss....” She trails off. “Anyway, I want to know more about you. Anything about you.”
“I’d rather be fucking you right now.”
Heat rises to her cheeks, and she cuts a glance at my cock. “Aside from that. Where....” Angelica’s breathing is shallow. “Where did you grow up?” She tears her eyes away from my body and returns her gaze back up to my face.
That’s when I see it—the struggle. I have to assume she wants me, too—but her desire to know more seems entirely genuine.
