Even while keeping his pace, his hips began to snap up at the end, hitting a new place deep inside her that had her eyes rolling back, had her shouting to the ceiling, begging to come. She didn’t beg; it wasn’t her thing. Even as she hung from cuffs on a wall for hours upon hours of foreplay, she never once begged. Thirty minutes of missionary sex with Damian, and she begged for him to make her come.
“Wait for me, sweetheart. I want us to go together.” The force of his thrusts increased, and though she could tell he tried to keep the slow, intimate pace he had set, the wild man inside began to emerge, wanting to fuck, to dominate. But he held it in check, stayed with her in the moment, just the two of them. “Goddamn, you feel so fucking good. Like a place I’ve been missing my whole life.”
“Please, Damian. Make me come. Fill me up. Please.”
One last thrust and Damian stilled. Lydia gripped his ass, holding him against her as every tightly wound nerve ending in her body suddenly contracted, then released. She clung to him as the orgasm overwhelmed her senses, held to him like an anchor in a wild sea. And he clung to her as well. Their foreheads pressed together, their lips a fraction of an inch away from each other.
Damian’s hot breath bathed Lydia’s pulsing flesh, spurring her orgasm higher, until slowly their heart rates calmed, coming back to normal. “Jesus, I could do that all day.”
Lydia smiled, nuzzling her face into his neck, almost embarrassed at how she had let herself go. “That would be nice, but I need to eat at some point.”
Damian slid his spent cock from Lydia’s body, making them both groan. “I was so busy enjoying my breakfast, I forgot to make you something.” He winked at her and rolled to the edge of the mattress. “Stay here. I’ll bring it in.”
With a gentle kiss, he climbed from the bed and strode out of the room bare-ass naked. It was truly a vision. Lydia turned onto her side, reaching for her cell phone to check in on her email. It might be Saturday, but that didn’t mean she could just kick back and relax. There were research reports to read over, projections to analyze, and marketing campaigns to critique, all before she stepped foot into the office again on Monday.
Not finding her cell on the bedside table, where she could have sworn she’d left it the night before, she went in search of her purse, thinking it might still be there. But she came up empty-handed. Her search turned up a huge walk-in closet filled with clothes in her size, all bought by Damian of course. But no cell phone. Eventually, the purse materialized in a drawer, next to a number of other purses she knew for a fact were on back order from their designers, but the cell phone wasn’t there either.
Confused, Lydia slid on a pair of fresh panties from the dresser full of La Perla lingerie in the closet, along with a matching negligee. The endorphins from the sexiest wake-up call in her life were gradually leaving her body, leaving her irritated with herself for allowing a man she barely knew so deep beneath her skin. What had she been thinking? Twenty-four hours ago, Damian waltzed into her office demanding she spend two weeks with him in exchange for keeping his mouth shut, and she just fell in line?
The more she stomped around in search of her cell phone, which was vital to her life and her business, the more pissed off she got. He thought he could come in and bully her. And she almost let him.
After searching the bedroom and bathroom once again, she made her way down the hall to an office, which must have been his. A sleek desk sat against a window facing out onto the already buzzing streets below. Three monitors were set up, along with an elaborate keyboard and a wireless mouse. And next to that, her phone. Plugged into the computer. Red covered her vision. Was he hacking her phone?
As she unplugged her phone, her hand brushed up against the mouse, waking the screens up from their hibernation. She could place the spreadsheets open on his desktop anywhere. They were the quarterly earnings reports for the past two years of her company’s existence. On the far right screen sat an email from someone named Brant.
Right, dude, I’m so sure you’re going to give up your life of hopping from bed full of women to bed full of women for one chick. And you’re coming out of retirement to take over her company? What, does this woman have straight-up gold between her pussy lips? We both know no matter what she has between her thighs, you’ll be sick of her and back to Zion in no time. But I suppose you’ll have a couple million to add to your bank account when it is all said and done, and that ain’t bad. You always were a shark.
What the hell? He was going to take over her company? The memory of his eyes taking her in as he hovered above her just moments ago shoved itself unwanted into her mind. Those weren’t the eyes of a man blackmailing a woman or planning to ruin her life and livelihood. That was the gaze of a man in love. But that was impossible. Love didn’t start with secrets and manipulations. Not that she would know. She’d never had a shining example of love in her life.
A revolving door of men had been in and out of her mother’s bedroom. Lydia had never known her father, doubted her mother even knew exactly who he was. Even so, her mom had been good to her. They were friends more than mother and daughter. But her childhood had left her with a low opinion of men in general. It was why she had always kept things on the surface with the opposite sex. She didn’t need them to be happy.
Really, she should be thanking Damian for teaching her a very important lesson. The eyes could lie. He’d been doing it all night.
8
Damian
The night and morning went much better than he had expected. Damian smiled as he cut up fruit and arranged it on a plate with muffins. Two cups of coffee along with dishes of milk and sugar went onto the tray next.
He had discovered a great many things about Lydia while formulating his plan to win her, but he didn’t know the simple things yet. How she took her coffee. How she kept that toned body in such great shape, what side of the bed she preferred, what TV shows she couldn’t miss. He looked forward to discovering those things with her over the course of their lives.
For the first time, he wasn’t thinking just about the next fuck, the next visit to Zion. Instead, forever was on his mind. How they would join their two lives. Would they have children? It really wasn’t something he thought about until Trent and Francie announced the impending arrival of their first baby. Seeing his friend beaming with pride had made something stir inside Damian though. He wanted that with Lydia.
But only when she was ready. She had a career and goals she wanted to achieve, and he wouldn’t get in the way of those. His own career goals had been surpassed years ago, in his late twenties. There was nothing else he wanted to accomplish in life except helping his woman to reach her own goals. Hell, maybe he would even be a stay-at-home dad if the time ever came. The guys would get a kick out of that.
Making his way back down the hall, he tried to school his enthusiasm. Lydia wasn’t quite there yet, he knew that. They had made a lot of progress in the past twenty-four hours, but he had no illusions that she was ready to talk about forever. No, they would eat breakfast in bed, maybe another round of sex, before he showed her the office he had set up for her.
The setup would be perfect for them. What once had been two medium bedrooms he had turned into one large room. A beautiful sliding wall he had imported from Japan split the office and gave her privacy when she felt the need to be alone with her work. But when collaborating on the new app expansion, they could slide the whole wall open to join their two workspaces. He hoped they would leave it open most the time.
He crossed into the bedroom, and the bottom fell out from his pleasant thoughts. Lydia stomped from her closest, a silk negligee barely covering her delicate body. “What were you doing with my phone?”
“What are you talking about?”
“My cell phone.” She held up the device in her hand. “It wasn’t on the bedside table, where I know I left it last night. It was plugged into your computer. Did you hack into that too? Is this all some game to find out my company secrets? Exposing my sex
ual activities isn’t enough for you? You need to take my company too?” She stormed back into the closet, pulling off a sweater and jeans from the rows of clothes he had bought just for her. He’d spent hours poring over designer websites, picking pieces he thought would suit her body and be both beautiful and comfortable. “I should have figured it out earlier. How I ever thought you would actually want to work together on improving my company I don’t know. No, you want to steal it out from under me.”
“Lydia, what the hell happened in the past twenty minutes it took me to put together breakfast that you think I would do any of this?” How had this happened? Everything had been so wonderful only minutes ago. He knew he would still have to pace himself, but he thought they were on the way to being of the same mind. “I had your phone plugged into my computer because I designed an app that charges phones ten times faster than the manufacturers’ chargers, and it was almost dead. And I do want to help your company succeed. I explained my plan for the app yesterday.”
“Yeah, right before you bribed me into being your sex slave for the next two weeks in exchange for not telling the press about my membership to Zion. That doesn’t put your business intentions in the best of light, now does it?” Lydia stepped into the jeans and pulled them up over her ass. Even with the confusion and panic flooding Damian’s system, he still had to hold back a groan as he got a glimpse of her delectable ass in a thong he had picked out just for her.
“I never had any intention of telling anyone about what you do or don’t do in Zion. I never said I would tell if you didn’t come home with me. I just let you believe it to get my foot in the door. And sex slave, really? Did I force you to make yourself come on top of me last night? No, that was you using my hands. Did I force you to come harder than you ever have before this morning? No. I would have stopped the second you made any indication you weren’t one hundred percent down for what I was doing.” Damian’s chest huffed with the effort of forcing the words out through his racing heart. This couldn’t be happening. Six months of planning to get the woman he knew was meant to be in his life for the rest of his life couldn’t be falling apart over a stupid phone. “What do you think I am, some kind of monster?”
Lydia’s hair floated around her face as she shoved her head through the neck of the sweater. Her face flamed red with anger, and her jaw was set in a stubborn line. “No. I don’t think you’re a monster. I think you’re a shark.”
Grabbing her purse from the drawer beside him, she avoided even brushing his arm as she practically ran from the closet and toward the door.
Shark? What the hell did that mean?
Realization came crashing down around him in a landslide of dread. Fucking Brant and his fucking email. He’d read it just before going to the kitchen that morning. His computer must not have fully gone to sleep when he went to make breakfast. And if she grabbed her phone from the desk, it was more than likely she saw the email. Brant was always an asshole who couldn’t keep his mouth shut, and he definitely didn’t understand the need to have one woman. Hell, neither had Damian before he met Lydia.
Racing down the hall after Lydia, he made it to the elevators just as the doors slid shut, closing her off from him. “Fuck!”
As fast as he could, Damian ran back to his closet, pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt before stepping out onto the fire escape and making his way down the side of the building fast enough that he began to worry that the old metal contraption might not hold up. He’d picked an older building on purpose, liked the idea of improving the history of the neighborhood. But he had concentrated on renovating the apartments inside and hadn’t gotten around to replacing the old relic. It passed inspection, so he hadn’t thought about it too much. That would be changing. Soon.
The last section of ladder clattered against the concrete as he hurried down in his bare feet. Scrapes and sores were already making themselves apparent after abusing them against the rusted escape, but he didn’t have time to think about that, or remember when the last time he had a tetanus shot was, because just down the street, Lydia was pushing her way out of the apartment building, joining the throng of weekend tourists and neighborhood dwellers. Fuck, was Damian ever second-guessing his decision to buy a building in Battery Park.
Just as he was about to give up, the crowd on the street seemed to part, and there was his girl, the tail of her negligee hanging out from between the waist of her jeans and the hem of her sweater, her hair a mess from both her quick change and the morning of orgasms.
The sidewalk light changed and she began moving once again, but he had gained enough ground to come even with her, pulling her arm to spin her around into his chest. “That email was not what you think, sweetheart. Come back to the apartment and let me explain.”
“Fuck you, Damian. I’m not listening to shit.” Lydia turned, attempting to rip her arm from Damian’s grasp, but he was having none of it. Determined to make the stubborn woman see reason, he held her tight against his frame. “What do you want me to listen to, Damian?” His name spat from her lips like something toxic. “More manipulations? More lies? Every word you’ve said to me has been carefully maneuvered to get me into your bed. You must think I’m some kind of idiot that I fell for it all.”
“I think you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met in my entire life. I am not letting you go.”
“You underestimate me.”
Shaking his head in confusion, he realized too late what she meant. With a growl, Lydia stomped her heel into his foot, making him wince and bend at the waist in agony. His grip on her loosened, and she took the opportunity to swing her arm up and away from his hands, then back down, punching him right in the gut.
All air rushed from his lungs, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. She’d been right, he underestimated her. Not in the boardroom, not in the bedroom, and not in any intellectual manner. But he’d never even considered that the feisty little blonde would pack quite the wallop.
As he struggled to catch his breath, Lydia leaned into his ear, whispering just for him. “Be glad I didn’t kick you in the nuts. I wouldn’t want to disappoint all those women in and out of your bed.” The words were barely out of her mouth before she turned and stomped off down the street.
Fucking Brant was going to pay for that email.
Lydia had been in his bed for only one night, but somehow in the days following her departure, Damian felt something missing every time he turned around. He’d tried everything he could to get into her office, but the woman was stubborn as hell, and he’d been denied at every turn. Every favor he still had hanging out there among his business contacts was called in, but she always managed to escape his grasp.
If only she would talk to him, he knew he could make her see reason. Convince her that while Brant was an idiot and Damian was now seriously reconsidering their friendship, the email was nothing more than male bravado and poor jokes.
“Dude, you look like shit.” Trent walked into the restaurant, his four-month-old daughter strapped to his chest in a carrier that looked complicated enough that Damian wasn’t sure he’d be able to hook the thing up if he were to trade spots with his best friend.
“Yeah, well, at least I’m not stalking the woman and crashing her dates like you did when you thought Francie might be getting away.”
Trent laughed, kissing his baby on her bald head. “Don’t knock it. I ended up with the girl, didn’t I?”
True. The rest of the guys filed into their usual meeting spot for their quarterly get-togethers. They worked together on different projects off and on throughout the year, but they had begun these scheduled dinners years ago when their lives began taking them in different directions. Hardy had moved west after the five men disbanded their first startup company and now owned his own special effects studio in Burbank. Smith got out of the tech game altogether and sunk his millions into starting up an NFL team in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. Brant, like Trent, stayed in Pittsburgh. He’d created a wildly popular dating a
pp and was still riding the millions from that venture.
Despite their busy lives and their millions sitting in bank accounts, they never wanted to forget that at one point they had been five scholarship kids who lived on the same floor at Princeton University. They never fit in at the prestigious school and banded together to make their way through. It was Trent’s idea to revolutionize the software used in 911 call centers, but they all did their part in making the program work and selling it across the country. Now Trent was the sole owner of FiveStar Emergency Communications, but even he had given up much of the control to his employees, preferring to be home with his new wife and child. He’d been the first to settle down and insisted the rest wouldn’t be far behind. At the time, they all laughed, but Damian knew better. Now, four times a year they made a point to get together in Pittsburgh, where they had based their company.
“Razor, my man, got any good stories for us today?” Brant slapped Damian on the back, guffawing at his own lame joke. At one point Damian had been all too happy to regale the guys with tales of his wild sexcapades. But it had long ago got old, to everyone but Brant.
“I told you, asshole, I’m done with Razor. I’m shedding the whole persona, strictly going by Damian now.” The nickname had been given to him in college because he preferred the little scooters as his means of transportation around school. His class schedule was so jam-packed he needed the wheels to make classes on time, and they were light and compact. His friends ribbed him for the damn scooter all the time, but he welcomed the name. Flipped it on its head and made it his own. He’d created a whole persona around that damn nickname. Became a sexually adventurous asshole who lived life on the edge. But he was no longer that man. Hadn’t been for a very long time.
Seduction in a Suit: An Office Romance Collection Page 22
