But she didn’t do it.
She almost did. Her mouth was right there, so close he could feel her lips on him sometimes. Could feel as she tongued spit onto him, using her hands to slide it over him. She moved her hands, wet, stroking, heating him up. He was moaning, groaning with the pleasure of it.
The girl had really good hands.
He gave up hope of having her mouth on him when she sat up. She moved to put one knee between his thighs as she kept up the magic of her hands. He slit his eyes open to watch, to look at those gorgeous lips, glistening wet now. At the dusky color of her areolas he could see through the silk of that incredible bra. At her nipples, hard enough now to push a divot into that seam that crossed right there.
At her mouth, when she brought up her left hand and slid her middle finger into it, wetting it. At those spectacular brown eyes as she took that finger and shoved it up—
Fuck!
She reamed his ass and worked his cock with her other hand, and his head just about exploded. His cock did, in fact, blasting out hot spurts of cum like she’d lit the fuse of a cannon. Up his belly, up to his chest—he was lucky he didn’t splat his own face.
He dug his feet into the bed, shoving up so her pussy rode his thigh, and growled as he came. Spurt after spurt, a wild, consuming, completely out of control orgasm.
“Ahh! Ahh!” Tim tore at the bindings, but they weren’t as inconsequential as he’d thought. They held, and the helpless, vulnerable sensation added to the heat. He continued letting out those rough breaths—and, maybe, possibly, a little squeal when she took her finger out of his ass—as the last wave of his orgasm shuddered through him.
Collapsed onto the bed, he looked up at her. “Jesus,” he said. And it was a fucking understatement.
She smiled and lifted off him. Gracefully, like she had far more control of her body than he could claim over his, she went off the bed. She broke eye contact, but he kept his gaze on her as she walked to the bathroom.
Coming out a few minutes later, she slid back into her dress. He’d have offered to help with the zipper, but his hands were…tied, and he was finally, much too late, getting a bad feeling.
She came back to the side of the bed and, given the change in her height, he judged she wiggled one foot and then the other into her heels. Her brown eyes, tinged with a little mischievous light, stayed put on him.
“Darlin’,” he tried, though he was pretty sure it wasn’t going to work. “You’re not leaving me here, are you?”
She didn’t answer. She just slid two fingers into her clutch and pulled out one more tie.
It really was a fucking tie. A fucking Harvard tie, all crimson red, silver stripes, and official crest.
For no reason he could fathom, she tied it around his right ankle before she walked out the door.
* * * *
“Where the hell did Tim get off to?”
Ryan Flaherty had waited until the song ended and Vinnie had finished feeling up the blonde he was dancing with before waving him over. The girl had gotten a little sloppy drunk and clung to Vin’s arm as he came along, probably the only thing that kept her from listing off to portside.
Vin shrugged, obviously not much bothered by Ryan’s concern. Maybe he hadn’t finished feeling up the blonde. She wasn’t very subtle, the way she toyed with the lowest button where Vin’s shirt tucked into his pants, but Ryan figured she’d be out the moment she went horizontal. He didn’t see a lot of hope for Vin in that direction, but there were plenty other women to choose from. The Randalls threw a hell of a party.
Ryan lifted a brow when Vin’s wandering attention found its way back.
Shrugging again, Vin nodded off toward the bar. “I saw him head that way. I got the idea he was in need of a real drink.”
Ryan supposed he should have guessed. Mrs. Randall had been giving Tim the stink eye whenever he made the mistake of coming into her line of sight. That woman was a stone-cold bitch who couldn’t seem to appreciate that her son Timothy was a truly decent man, a good friend, and a hell of an architect.
He nodded. “I’ll go get eyes on,” he said, though he was talking to Vin’s back by that time. Which gave him a good view of how the blonde was fondling Vinnie’s ass.
Ryan meant to check in with Tim—he really did. But he got to the bar, shot a good measure of a really fine tequila, then spotted the woman out on the deck. She had spectacular curves poured into a gorgeous, summery dress. Spikey red heels had her just exactly his height.
He knew that because she turned to face him when he walked up to her, and there were those brown eyes. Just there.
She put out her hand. “Give me your room key and five minutes.”
“Four-twelve.”
Chapter Two
“The company is called Tone,” Vincent Rossi told his buddies. He was in the front seat with Ryan, who was driving. Ry liked to drive and, even in Manhattan, he made pretty good sport of it. Tim was in the back seat of the pickup, so Vincent was turned halfway to face him, too. “It’s a kind of high-end women’s gym and spa deal. Pretty successful in just a ten-year history. The CEO is a woman named Kai Morrison. She’s got this location Upper East and another in Tribeca. Plus, she has satellites in LA, Atlanta, Dallas, and Boston. Maybe more underway, I don’t know.”
He hadn’t met the CEO yet, a fact that kind of rankled, but they were fixing that today. So far, he’d met only with the woman’s AA. That one was a pretty, very nicely put together, bright, and competent young woman, but she wasn’t the boss. Vin was CEO of ReBuild, the company that he and Tim and Ryan had formed a few years after college—once Vin had his MBA and Tim had finished his training in architecture.
ReBuild had its own pool of high-end clientele. The three partners specialized in rehabbing and repurposing old buildings. They converted warehouses to shops and lofts, old brownstone houses to chic offices and boutiques, failing retail space to hip restaurants and nightclubs. It gave them all work they loved. Vin ran the business end and chose the jobs they bid for, Tim masterminded the re-designs, and Ryan was project manager—and carpenter, whenever he could get hands on. They weren’t crusaders, but they all liked the effect their work had of keeping downtown areas vital. They’d done a lot of good work in New York, and they’d developed a distinctive reputation that was now bringing them jobs in Boston, Philly, and DC.
A bit like Tone, and on about the same timeline, he thought.
Ms. Morrison had found a new location for her Upper East Side setup. She wanted to expand her space and also establish a spot for her administrative offices. It was to be her flagship site, and she wanted a bid for the work from ReBuild.
As far as Vin had been able to suss out, theirs was the only bid she was seeking.
“She wants to meet with all three of us, give us her personal vision of what she wants, then have us fast-track a design and bid.”
“Sounds hinky to me,” Tim said. “Why does she need to see all of us instead of just you, and why would we fast-track her job over others we already have in the pipeline?”
Vin waggled his head. He didn’t disagree, but—“She could be a valuable client. Remember I said Boston, LA, Dallas…”
“My guess is she’s an annoying, nitpicking, micromanaging old battle-axe. You’d better do the talking, Vin.”
Vinnie grinned, but Ryan was right. In business school, Vin had learned something about customer relations, and he could schmooze with the best of them. Tim, not so much, and Ryan not at all. Tim tended to think, usually correctly, that he was smarter than everyone else, and he didn’t make any effort to hide that assessment. Ryan couldn’t be bothered to dissemble—he thought everyone should just be decent, like he was.
“I’m ready for her,” he said. “You can just look pretty, Ry, and Tim”—he looked to the back seat again—“—you try not to glower.”
Like he was famous for, Ryan did the impossible, finding a parking space on the street within a half block of the Upper East Side Tone. It was a
five-floor stucco, likely over brick, two windows wide, as Vin knew Tim would say. The front bayed out and each window was prettied up with well-tended container gardens trailing green and pink-flowered stuff down the pale yellow stucco. The classic, well-preserved old trim was neatly painted white.
“Nice look to it,” Ryan said. Tim, being Tim, grunted.
Inside, a receptionist greeted them immediately. She was at a sort of feminine desk in an entry room that took up the whole width of the building. The space was welcoming and cool, and Vin was sure it would be welcoming and warm in the winter, when the fireplace would have a real fire in it rather than a big floral display.
The receptionist introduced herself as Mattie and took them right to a single elevator. Vin would have rather taken the stairs—he could see them through the windows that finished the half wall separating reception from the back of the building. Beyond the wall, the space was all lush greenery with a couple water features and cushioned teak loungers. Some of those were occupied with women wrapped in white robes. Part of the spa area, he guessed.
The stairway was open and wrought iron. He would have loved to wander up a floor at a time and take in the scenery. He meant that from an architectural, builder point of view, of course.
He would describe Mattie the same way he had the AA he’d met—pretty and well put together. But he studied her as she took them to the fourth floor, and Vin realized the emphasis should be on the “well put together.” That gave him a little jolt of insight—that a woman’s attractiveness came largely not from her basic looks, but from the way she dressed and how she presented herself. Like in the AA’s case, Mattie carried herself with confidence. She made eye contact and was direct and friendly.
Not the least flirtatious, but still, very appealing.
The elevator ride wasn’t that long, though, so he’d have to think about that later.
They exited into a nice, open office floor plan. Like all the space they’d seen so far, it was expertly done. Warm, friendly, and essentially feminine. As the three men followed Mattie, Vin got a smile and nod from the AA, who sat in small office demarcated by half walls.
Only the CEO office was behind a closed door.
Mattie knocked there, opened the door a bit, and said, “ReBuild is here.”
She must have gotten some kind of wave in, because she opened the door fully and led them in. The office was small for a CEO, but not untypical for the pricey real estate they were in. There was a grouping of four upholstered armchairs around a circular coffee table, and Mattie led them there. “Have a seat,” she said, motioning to the chairs. “Ms. Morrison is just finishing up a call. She’ll be with you in one minute. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Cold drink?”
Vin and his friends declined drinks. Tim and Ryan had their attention on the woman at the bay window, just like Vin did.
From the back, she was a vision, a sense likely exacerbated by the halo effect of the light that surrounded her. A brunette, her hair was up in a twist, more on the soft, sexy side than the severe, business side. She wore what some might call a business suit, but he wouldn’t. The jacket was pink, fitting close until it flared out over her hips. The skirt was black, pencil-thin, following curves. There were two sexy-hot black polka-dotted bows—one at the back of her waist, the other at the top of the slit in the skirt.
Neither one looked like it had been sat on, and the whole picture—which ended, he noted, in strappy, soft pink heels—had his dick thinking it had hit the jackpot.
Vin briefly made eye contact with his partners and knew his dick wasn’t alone.
They waited through one half of a conversation in which the woman sounded more like an encouraging big sister than a CEO. “You have to decide, Kamia,” she said. “Which do you want more? Which is better for you and your daughter?” She was quiet for a moment—open, Vin thought, rather than impatient. “Yes, of course,” she went on. “You can do that. The cab allowance is only meant to make it easy for you to get here. It’s yours. It was from the moment we gave it to you. Yes. I know you can. I believe you, Kamia. Okay. See you then.”
The conversation, the tone of it, had Vin re-evaluating his assumptions about Ms. Morrison, CEO.
Then she turned, and the sight of her had him about plotzing in his pants. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ry’s electronic notepad totally flip out of his hands and hit the floor. And Tim shot to his feet so abruptly that his chair scooted back a foot.
As Vin slowly stood and Ryan retrieved his notepad clumsily and found his feet, too, the woman moved toward them and put out her hand.
The hand he’d last seen wrapping a Harvard tie around his right ankle.
“I’m Kai,” she said, pretty much like she’d never seen him—naked—before.
Slowly he put out his hand and took hers. “Vincent Rossi.”
Tim seemed to be quietly steaming and was even slower to extend his hand when she turned to him. “Tim Randall.”
Ryan was ready when she got there, bursting out his name like someone had just Heimliched him. “Ryan Flaherty.”
“Please sit.” She gestured to their seats, acting like she didn’t notice the middle one was off-kilter. She took her chair, back erect and legs crossed, which made that skirt ride up. Which explained how those bows had remained so…perky. “I’m happy all three of you could come.”
Vin would have sworn there was a little pause before that last word. A micro-pause. She paused and she used that word, when half a dozen others would have worked. He could think of at least…one.
He looked at his partners and didn’t think he was being overly paranoid to be thinking what he was thinking. He was pretty sure they were thinking it, too, which meant…something he didn’t want to think about.
There were three packets on the table and, like this was business as normal, she passed them around.
“These are the specs for the space you have to work with and a broad outline of my vison for it.”
“That we have to work with?” Tim asked, a distinct edge to his voice. “Is this a competitive bidding situation or no?”
“No,” Kai said without hesitation. “I’d like ReBuild to do the work.”
“Why?” Vin asked. The MBA would never have asked that, so he had to wonder who was in charge of his mouth.
“I’ve researched it,” she answered quietly. “You’re the best. Aren’t you?”
Ryan seemed the most recovered. “Yes,” he said. “Your research was good. We are the best for the type of work you want. We’ll be happy to look over your ideas here, and it would help if we can get a look at the site, too.”
“Thank you. Yes, we can arrange that.” The smile she gave Ry was warm, and Vin found himself wanting one, too.
“What’s this space?” Tim asked. Apparently, he’d actually taken a look at the packet she’d given him. He held it open, kind of thrusting it at her. “I get the rest of it,” Tim went on brusquely. “Spa, gym, consult rooms. This area here doesn’t fit. I don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to get it.” That was Ms. Morrison, CEO, talking. “You just have to build it.”
Tim was about to explain his objection to that, but Vin waylaid him. “We’ll take a look at your concept. I’m sure we won’t have any trouble putting together a design that works for you.”
The CEO lifted a brow. “I don’t want it just to ‘work.’ I want it to shine.”
Vin nodded. “We can do that.”
But she wasn’t looking at him. She was in a staring contest with the architect. Vin kicked Tim’s ankle, not bothering to be subtle about it.
“We can do that,” Tim said, sounding very confident but not very friendly.
“Good.” Like it hadn’t been a pissing match at all, she turned to Vin. “Thank you. I’ll have my AA contact yours about a visit on-site.”
She stood, and their meeting was over. Like magic, Mattie opened the door and, with a gentle smile, herded them out as the boss went to her desk. Mattie took them to th
e elevator and, when the doors opened, a young woman coming down from the fifth floor made room for them.
“Hi, Amaryllis,” Mattie said. “You’re looking great. You, too, Michaela.”
Amaryllis did look good, Vin thought. She was a young black woman, dressed much like he’d expect of a college business student out for an interview. But she didn’t quite have “it”—that quality of confidence and poise that seemed to define the Tone…tone.
Plus, she held a little girl, maybe three years old with cute beads and braids, by the hand. “Hi, Mattie,” little Michaela said.
Not what he’d expect of Kai Morrison’s typical clientele or staff.
Another thing that, like Tim had said, didn’t quite fit.
He led his troops out onto the sidewalk.
“Summit meeting. Now,” he told them.
* * * *
Ryan held back his grin as Vin looked around until he spotted a bar. The man liked his meetings, and he called them pretty often. Tim and Ryan were required to attend all of them, but they were especially required to attend the “summit” variety.
The grin was threatening to let loose. That was one hell of a woman they’d just left back there, Ms. CEO Morrison. He was a little afraid, but he couldn’t wait to see what she dished up next.
It wasn’t quite the end of the work day, so the bar he followed Vin into was close to empty. The boss took them to a corner table, and Ryan looked around as he trailed behind like a good soldier. The rehab hadn’t been theirs, and they could have done it a lot better. But still, there were a couple features worth noting. He liked the high-tech lighting fixtures that hung from the ceiling over the tables. They were below eye level of the seated customers, lighting up the food and drinks, but keeping a dark, intimate ambience around the tables. Problematic—possibly even dangerous—if someone wanted to move tables around, he thought, but he imagined an overhead grid that would solve the issue.
Three Men and a Woman_Kai Page 2
