She looked at him uncertainly.
“Like, for instance, taking a gorgeous girl who’s falling all over me home with me and not getting laid.”
She scowled. “Poor you.”
“But anyway, you look like you’re back in regular form now. So how about it, do you want to fit a quickie in before I get back to my tennis game? We could take up where we left off before you fell off that bar stool at my place.”
She had forgotten about that too, she realized in a rush. Aaron had spread her legs out as she perched on the stool, licking her, kissing her in that wildly exciting way. Maybe she really had been drugged. It had felt so amazing.
And then of course she had fallen off her chair. Par for the course for her romantically, she supposed.
“Hand me a towel and then turn around.”
“Why would I do that?” He leaned closer toward her and then his thumb moved to caress the underside of her chin. Abruptly, he closed the distance between them and kissed her. He did it so fast she hadn’t time to avoid it.
Really.
Despite herself, she felt one aching surge of excitement, his tongue deep and sexual in her mouth. Gathering her senses about her and acting against every impulse that was crying out in her body, she pulled her lips free of his kiss, panting, but he began to kiss her neck. She moaned involuntarily, but then said quickly, “You have some nerve coming in here.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “And you have some nerve teasing me all the time when you know how good we could be together.” He put his arms around her wet body, not caring about Brendan’s clothes anymore apparently, and yanked her toward him as he leaned over the tub until he was half off the stool and her naked, wet breasts were pressed against his shirt.
“Virginia,” he murmured, “do you really want me to let you go?”
He led one of her hands down to the crotch of his pants, putting his hand over hers to make her cup the huge, jutting penis that jumped when she touched it, even through the fabric. She didn’t need much encouragement to caress him, almost mesmerized by the sharp intake of breath he took as she did, his excitement some kind of bizarre aphrodisiac to her.
“God, Virginia. Feel how hard I am. My balls are aching. I’m dying.”
She pursed her lips at his dramatic pronouncement and saw a corner of his mouth go up as he forced her to cup him harder. “Really, I’m going to embarrass myself if you don’t take pity on me.”
“That’d only be fair considering how embarrassed I am about last night,” she muttered.
“Nothing to be embarrassed about. But now, you can make it up to me.”
He scooped up a handful of the silky bubbles and rubbed them against one of her breasts.
Her hand fell away from where she’d been fondling him as she registered a stab of desire so powerful that she felt drunk again. He slid his hand around to her wet bottom under the water, and squeezed. He mumbled, “Oh, I am going to fuck you so hard. I swear to God I am.” He was kissing her throat now, his lips near her ear, his voice low and breathy as his hands traced a wild, wet path over her body.
“And these beautiful tits.” His wet mouth closed over one nipple, licking and kissing the now rigid nub. “You didn’t let me near these tits…”
She arched up into him. Her breasts were very sensitive. No wonder even in her drunkenness he had apparently not gotten far there. She must have known at some level that it would all be over then.
But hell, face it, hadn’t she wanted it to be over?
He nipped her bare nipple and it was as if there was a direct connection to her vagina, which she could feel was wet in a much different way than the rest of her. Didn’t she want it to be over now? Didn’t she want him to bury that heavy hard penis in between her legs and put them both out of their misery?
Why? some little voice in her head still asked. So they could both get back to fighting over her company?
He was a powerful drugging force in itself and she wanted nothing more than to give in to his magic. But as incredibly pleasurable as it would be to let him take her where he assumed they were heading (and she had to admit now, if just to herself, that it would be to die for), it wasn’t a good idea for them. Period. End of story. She knew that. They were adversaries and she needed for them to stay that. Whatever had gotten into her to destroy all her inhibitions last night, it was gone now and she was able to get a hold of herself. Just barely, but still able.
A little sorry for him, and very sorry for herself, she pushed at his shoulders. “No, don’t, Aaron. I’m sorry. We’ve got to stop.”
He didn’t seem to hear her at first and she winced at the continued pleasure he was giving her, his long fingers now pinching one of her nipples as he sucked the other one.
Oh God. He was awfully good. “Aaron, I want you to stop,” she said distinctly enough for him to hear, trying to insert some of her usual cool demeanor back into her voice, and he pulled away from her a fraction.
“Obviously, there’s an attraction between us. But that’s beside the point given the situation we find ourselves in.”
“What fucking situation?” he muttered. “My cock so hard I could pound nails with it and you so wet between your thighs,” he reached down to demonstrate and she jumped at the intimate touch along her slit, “that it’s seeping out into the bath water?”
Again, beside the point. He let her push him away and she sank back into the bath water, covering her chest with her arms again.
“Honestly, Aaron, I’m asking you to get out of here and stop pursuing this…this whatever between us. I’m grateful you didn’t take advantage of me last night. I am. And grateful you told me your suspicions, even though I can’t believe there could be any truth in them. Maybe what happened to me had something to do with the knock on my head in the car accident. I don’t know. But whatever, I’m thinking clearly now and I know this isn’t a good idea for us. There’s too much baggage between us. My company—”
“Fuck your company.”
“I’m not going to sleep with you.”
At her calm, final tone, he stood up, all his humor apparently vanishing.
“Is this how you get turned on or some kind of power trip? Is frustrating me some kind of master plan with you? You pull me to you and then push me away? Kiss me back and open your legs so I can feel how wet you are and moan that sweet little moan and then you just switch it off and tell me to stop?”
“You’re the one who pushed your way into my bathroom.” Modesty be damned. She was going to get her robe. She stood up quickly, arms still crossed over her chest, the sound of the water dripping off her audible, and stepped out of the tub, intending to get to the hook on the back of the bathroom door fast and then show him the door as expeditiously as possible.
She never made it. He hauled her up against him, his hands wrapping around her slippery waist, and though her palms came up to his shoulders, it was mostly to keep her balance. Push him away? God, it was becoming a herculean effort not to attack him again.
And she wasn’t even drunk this time.
Virginia had a powerful respect for chemistry—although she hadn’t experienced much of it in her life personally. Her parents had had it. Allie and Pat had it. But they were in love. This was different.
Clearly, the key was not to let him within ten feet of her.
And she kept failing abysmally at that effort.
When he kissed her this time, her hands came up around his neck, sifting her fingers through the silky hair against his nape. He insinuated his erection in some subtle way against her bare thighs so that she almost felt as if he was inside her, shoving his leg between hers and rubbing his thigh along her wet slit.
She was going to get the “no” out. She was. Any second. They both knew it, which might have been why he quickly unzipped his pants and freed himself, taking his bare cock in hand to rub it against her belly, skin to skin. She remembered this from last night. The feel of him, huge and hard. When he led her hand to him, as he had b
efore, she could feel the burning heat of him as he wrapped her hand around his throbbing cock. God, it was so hot.
And so big, she could barely encircle it. But she tried, squeezing lightly, getting a gasp out of him.
“Go on. Jerk me off,” he muttered, making her stroke him harder, and she felt a drop of pre-cum along the head of him.
No meant no. He knew it and she knew it.
So she didn’t say it. She tugged the rigid, hot length of his cock harder, looking at his face, flushed, watching her handle him. His hands fell away, leaving her in charge. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine him thrusting right up into her.
“Kiss me,” he demanded through his teeth, squeezing her shoulders. At her hesitation, he said, “Just a kiss.”
And the hand job, it went without saying.
But at his low, excited tone, she considered it. “I’m still not going to sleep with you,” she murmured, closing the distance between their lips. She ran her tongue along his full lower lip.
“Yeah, I got that part.”
He waited for her to come to him and when she did, pumping him still, she played with his tongue and pulled his head closer with the hand that wasn’t tending to him.
The groan he emitted into her mouth was a fraction of a second before she felt the warm gush of liquid in her hand.
Wow. For the first time, as he shuddered, she felt as if she had the upper hand with Winston.
But quickly, he pulled away from her, turning his back and adjusting. “Good. Thanks. Now we’ve got some closure and we’re even. You came once. I came once. Fine.”
She washed her hands before she grabbed her robe.
* * * * *
Brendan glanced around the empty foyer of Bransport. There were a hell of a lot of cars still outside, but where was everybody? He recognized Missy’s little sports coup and a few of the junkers were most likely her friends’, but who belonged to that fine green Jaguar?
He flipped his keys on one of the side tables and headed upstairs. He hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before for a lot of reasons, some good, some bad. The sex with Linda was the good part. Her constant chattering was the bad. By the time he’d managed to get her out of his apartment and into a cab this morning, his ears had been ringing.
Taking the stairs two at a time, he heard somebody out on the courts. Excellent. He could use a little exercise—that didn’t involve his cock, that is. Virginia’s bedroom door opened. Funny, he hadn’t seen her car.
He started to laugh as he saw a figure coming out of her room. Jesus, did Virginia have a guy up here?
Would wonders never cease?
At the recognition of who it was, though, Brendan stopped dead.
What the hell was Winston doing here?
Virginia held the flaps of her robe together, standing at the bedroom door, her mouth a tight line, not making eye contact with Winston. Her hair looked damp and the front of Winston’s clothes was wet. “I think you’d better just leave. We shouldn’t have anything to do with each other.”
“Fine with me, but don’t forget I still own a chunk of your little company. If you thought I was hard to deal with before, just watch. “
“I knew I could always count on you to take the high road,” she muttered.
Winston swept past her into the hall and said casually, “Fuck your high road, lady. You aren’t on it anyway. I’ve never met such a deliberate cock-tease.”
Brendan heard what Winston called his sister and the scene all made some kind of crazy sense.
The fucking bastard. He’d kill him.
Winston glanced up and saw him, looking surprised and then actually gratified. “What is this?” he taunted. “A family affair? Some kind of a brother and sister act? Virginia teases the fuck out of me and then I get the pleasure of beating you to a pulp? But do you think maybe we could get the other sister up here afterwards for me to fuck? I bet at least she really puts out. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, isn’t that one a twin? It’s been a long time since I had twins.”
His fist hit Winston smack in the jaw, a trickle of blood running down from the jerk’s lip and staining the collar of the white polo shirt. Winston laughed, as if that had amused him, although it clearly must have hurt, and then charged, punching him viciously first in the stomach and then, as he crumpled over, in the face.
Virginia rushed over. “Stop it!” she cried, looking up at Winston, who was bloody, but smiling. “Get out of this house!” she screamed at him.
Winston cradled his punching fist in his other hand, kneading it. “I was just leaving. See you at the stockholders’ meeting, guys.” As he headed down the stairs, he passed Missy, who gasped at the blood on his face and shirt, and informed her airily, “Tell pretty-boy up there that I’ll be sure to have these clothes cleaned and sent back to him.” And then he was out the door without a backward glance.
Missy rushed up the stairs. “What’s going on here?” she demanded, as she followed them. “What happened with Aaron?”
“That bastard,” Brendan got out between his bloodied teeth, as he moved into the gleaming metallic bathroom of his suite, Virginia and now Missy hovering behind him. He turned on the hot water and began to splash his face.
“Brendan!” Missy squealed impatiently. “What happened?”
“I defended your honor, that’s what!” Brendan shouted at her, a little ironically, and Virginia smiled slightly.
“My honor!” Missy exclaimed. “Don’t be ridiculous! He didn’t lay a finger on me!”
“I don’t think Virginia can say the same thing,” Brendan muttered from behind the towel he had grabbed to wipe off the blood, directing Missy’s attention to Virginia’s rumpled state, her robe knotted hastily at the waist. “Besides, Winston had a few choice things to say about you, too.”
Surveying Virginia with concern, Missy asked hesitantly, “What? Winston attacked you or something?”
Virginia’s cheeks went red and she was very conscious of them waiting for her answer, especially Brendan, who had heard what Winston had called her. She guessed she owed her siblings the truth. “I got drunk and made a pass at him last night and out of some weird chivalrous impulse he just took me home. He showed up here today expecting a reward for his good behavior.”
“What an arrogant bastard!” Brendan muttered.
“I don’t know,” Missy said. “I think it was kind of sweet of him.”
“Not when he attacks Virginia for saying no!”
“He didn’t attack me, Brendan.” She left it at that. No need to mention the bath or the hand job or the rest of this mixed up, crazy tableau.
“Why don’t you just go out with him?” There was that logical streak in Missy again.
“Maybe because he said he wants to take over our company.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that, Missy. I don’t know what got into me last night. I think the pressure has been a little too intense lately.” She didn’t even want to think about what Winston had suggested. She knew it wasn’t someone in her family, but could there possibly be anyone else out there who hated her enough to do something like that to her?
Besides Winston, of course.
“Who are you dating?” Missy asked.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Just like I thought. Nobody.”
“Never mind that. But I hope that in view of what’s happened, you’ve reconsidered any plans you might have had to start seeing Winston?” She waited anxiously for Missy’s response, fearing that her sister could go in the opposite direction, finding this all somehow romantic and thinking of herself as a star-crossed lover and Winston as the dashing man her family had forbidden her from seeing. Because from what Winston had said, it was clear he would sleep with Missy if given the chance, probably even more so now in light of the day’s events.
To Virginia’s relief, Missy cast a dubious eye on her brother and said, “Well, I can’t have Brendan going around gett
ing beaten up defending my honor, now, can I?”
Virginia laughed, hugging her little sister, and Brendan insisted grumpily, “Hey, he got as good as he gave, believe me.”
“Besides,” Missy went on. “I wouldn’t stoop to going after a guy who had a thing for my sister.”
Chapter Five
Aaron stormed out the front door and headed to his car, pissed as hell. The force with which he slammed the Jaguar door after he slid into the front seat tested the sturdiness of the luxury car’s engineering. He fumbled in his pants pocket for the keys, pulled them out and jammed the appropriate one into the ignition. Before turning it, though, he rested his head on the steering wheel. Just for a minute. He needed just a minute. Then he’d get the hell away from Virginia Beckett and her whole damn blue-blooded family.
His fist was aching and he was dripping blood from his nose onto the polished teak wood of the steering wheel. What a fucking joke.
If he was honest with himself, Virginia Beckett wasn’t the only one he was mad at. He wasn’t too crazy about his own role in this whole fiasco. Face it. Despite all his success, he had somehow just reverted to the insecure street-fighting foster child. And he didn’t like that feeling. Christ, he’d practically begged her for a hand job, something he hadn’t done since…well, probably had never done, and then he’d punched out her brother. How juvenile was that?
But when she refused to sleep with him, yet again, even though he knew she was attracted to him, he’d felt just like that kid with his nose pressed against the window again, wanting something—whether it was family or wealth or status—that he could never have.
He wasn’t good enough.
Christ, maybe he should see a shrink, which was an even more depressing thought.
The smell of smoke prompted him to lift his head. He took a deep breath. There it was again. And his window wasn’t even open. They were probably having some kind of idyllic autumn bonfire. He looked around for the source of the smell and saw it. That was no bonfire.
Executive Perks Page 11
