by Katee Robert
She ran her hands up his chest. “Hey.”
“I like the dress.”
Samara smiled. “Good.”
“I’ll like it even better when I’m peeling it off you as I kiss every inch of your body.” He brushed his lips against hers. “Let’s get dinner to go.”
“Ah-ah. No way. You can spend all night sexing me up. Right now, I want to eat food that I’ve been assured is amazing and talk with you.”
Beckett considered kissing her again, but she was right—he wanted to talk to her. They’d already proved they matched up in the bedroom. He wanted to know her. “Tell me another secret.”
She laughed. “New Year’s Day is my favorite holiday.”
“I’m going to need an explanation.” He shifted back and slid his arm around her waist. They walked easily toward the front door.
It wasn’t until they were seated at a table overlooking the beach through a large window that Samara spoke again. “I never drink on New Year’s Eve. It’s a silly superstition, but I think what you bring into the new year becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I get up early on the first and drink my first cup of coffee out on my balcony and try to be mindful about what I want the next year to be. Then I go to my amma’s for breakfast, and around the time I’m finished with dishes, Journey is rolling out of bed, so we spend the rest of the day together.”
“That sounds like a great tradition.” When he’d first met her, he’d assumed Samara was like a pillar—strong as fuck and separated from everyone around her. It comforted Beckett to know that she had a good friend in his cousin. That she had roots as deep as his, if different.
“It is.” She toyed with her water glass. “A secret for a secret?”
He liked this game. It was theirs and theirs alone, another thread linking them together. “What I wanted most in the world when I was in kindergarten was to be a trainer at SeaWorld.”
“Orcas or dolphins?”
He loved that she asked it with a straight face. Beckett answered just as seriously. “Orcas, of course. My mother took me there one weekend and I was convinced that the trainers were magic. It seemed like the most amazing thing in the world for them to work with such massive, majestic creatures.” He made a face. “That was before I grew up enough to realize what a tragedy it is to keep those animals in captivity.”
Samara pressed her lips together. “You donate to PETA, don’t you?”
“I can’t abide by some of their policies.” When she just stared, he huffed out a breath. “I donate to a small group of scientists that are funding research to prove how harmful captivity is for orcas.”
“Oh, Beckett.” She smiled. “You really are a white knight, aren’t you?”
He didn’t know what to do with that look on her face, as if he was someone admirable. “What’s the point of having all this money and influence if I just sit on it and watch it multiply? The oil industry is problematic in a whole different way. I can’t change things all at once, but keeping the status quo is a mistake.” It was something he and his father never quite saw eye to eye on. Nathaniel wasn’t opposed to clean energy, but he only saw the money to be made—he didn’t worry about their planet or what life might be like for future generations if they continued down this path.
If anything, the admiration in her eyes grew. Samara leaned forward, fully engaged in the topic. “What changes? Are you thinking of making the lateral move to clean energy?”
“Eventually. It’s not realistic to get out of oil completely, no matter how shitty I think the downsides are. But it’s a finite resource and eventually the world is going to wise up to that fact. Renewable energy is one of the fastest-growing industries out there, and I want Morningstar to be on the cutting edge of that wave.” He stopped short. “Shit, I’m sorry. I promised we wouldn’t talk business, and that lasted a grand total of five minutes.”
“This isn’t business. This is hopes and dreams.” She lowered her voice. “And secrets.”
He searched her face, but there was nothing but honest curiosity there. “Are you interested in clean energy?”
“Only distantly. I’ve been so focused on doing my job that there’s not much room left for the kind of research you’re talking about.” She shrugged one shoulder. “Beyond that, it’s not my call to make. I don’t head up any departments, and I’m not even part owner in Kingdom Corp. Employees might be the lifeblood of the company, but we don’t have much control about the direction it goes in.”
He started to press her, but stopped. No business tonight.
The waitress appeared at their table. As she went over the specials and wine selections, Beckett’s attention kept drifting back to Samara. The dying sunset painted her in shadows, making her beauty look otherworldly. He wanted to touch her, to bring her back to earth, to keep her with him always.
Slow down. You don’t have a right to ask her that, and if you do, it’ll ruin the night.
Tomorrow they would go back to the viper’s pit that Houston had become. He would track down Walter and put pressure on him in an effort to persuade the man to talk. Lydia would undoubtedly have some nasty surprise waiting for him. He’d doubled security on Morningstar before he left, but there was nothing stopping her from trying to bribe them away as well.
“Sir?”
He’d been staring instead of listening, but asking the waitress to repeat herself would just waste everyone’s time. “I’ll have the special with whatever wine you think would pair best.”
She hesitated but seemed to understand that he didn’t give a fuck what kind of wine she brought. “Sure thing.”
Samara took a sip of her water. “Where did you go this afternoon?”
“I went to see Elliott Bancroft.” It felt good to say it aloud, like he’d just removed a weight that had settled over him from the moment he decided to track down his aunt’s husband. It was a low move, something his father would have been proud of. He told himself that fact didn’t matter, but Beckett wasn’t sure if he believed it.
“What? You’re joking.” She set her glass down and leaned closer. “Oh shit, you’re not joking.”
“I need more information on her—and I’m not going to keep putting you in the middle.”
“News flash, Beckett—you’re putting me in the middle right now.” She picked up her cloth napkin and then set it down again. “Maybe this was a mistake.”
“No. Wait.” He held up a hand. “I’m sorry. That was out of line and I shouldn’t have shared it.”
“Don’t you see? It’s not about sharing or not sharing. You and she are diametrically opposed, and if you ask me to choose sides, you have to know which one I’m going to land on.”
He did. He wished it wasn’t the truth, but he did know. Beckett took her hand. “I’m sorry. Let’s pretend it never happened.”
“Fat chance of that.”
The waitress swooped in with their wine, not a moment too soon. Beckett’s was a bold red with faint spicy undertones. He waited for the woman to leave again before focusing on Samara. “When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?”
She hesitated, but finally relaxed. “I wanted to be a flight attendant.” She took a hasty sip of her white wine. “There was this commercial that played all the time when I was…I don’t know. Six or seven. I can’t even remember what airline it was for, but the flight attendants were pictured visiting these exotic locales and traveling around the world. It seemed like a dream come true for me—to travel and be paid for it.” She made a face. “And then I turned twelve and realized that flight attendants don’t make much money and they spend all their time being harassed by asshole people on the plane, which pretty much killed that dream.”
“That would do it.” He chuckled. Beckett took another drink of his wine and turned the conversation away from anything resembling their current troubles. No business. No Lydia. Nothing too close to what put them on this path to begin with.
It was easy being with Samara.
So fucking easy.
Without their roles as rivals standing between them, he found her humor just as tempting as her intelligence and her drive. They traded embarrassing stories from their formative years. Her sewing her own prom dress and going stag when her date didn’t show. His one and only game on the football team that ended with him getting into a fight with his own team’s quarterback. By the time they’d finished their meal, both were relaxed and he’d actually managed to stop thinking about the shit show waiting for him back home.
After he paid, they made their way to the deck overlooking the ocean. Beckett took Samara’s hand. “Walk with me.”
“I’d like that.”
Chapter Fifteen
The ocean spread before them in an endless dark swath that stretched to the horizon, hiding any number of mysteries. Overhead, the sky had darkened to a deep purple that edged on blue and the first stars winked into existence. With the sand cool beneath her feet and the soothing shush sound of the waves, something deep inside Samara relaxed.
She kept her gaze on the ocean, on the sky, on the beach. Anywhere but at the man beside her. If she looked at Beckett, she might take him up on the promise written across his face. She’d known this thing growing between them wasn’t just the shadow of the inferno of chemistry created by their first night together. It was new and different and all the more dangerous because of it. That knowledge didn’t seem to bother him in the least.
She was still deciding if it bothered her.
Liar. It was everything you could do not to throw yourself into his arms and confess that you never really got over him.
She could chalk her failed relationships up to her devotion to Kingdom Corp. She had done that. Every time she sat through another talk about how it wasn’t working, or she pulled the trigger on ending a dying relationship, there was a niggling little voice in the back of her mind that said there was more to it. That she was waiting for someone.
That she was waiting for Beckett, even if she hadn’t been aware it was him at the time.
None of her exes held a candle to the man holding her hand and seeming on the verge of telling her things she’d convinced herself she never wanted to hear from his lips. The racing of her heart gave lie to that. She wanted to hear it.
It just scared the shit out of her. To want it was to hope, and to hope was to set herself up for heartbreak.
You can’t let yourself think like that. We’ve trusted each other with bigger things than our hearts in the last few days.
Samara moved to him and slipped under his arm. The darkness created a false sense of privacy, and the quiet shushing sound of the waves enclosed them. As long as they didn’t look at the city sprawling out at their backs, they could pretend they were truly alone here. They could have been the last two people in the world.
It would have been a relief to have her choice taken away, for it to be just them and no one—nothing—else to interfere. They could have a life. They could spend years getting to know each other again and filling in the blanks of their pasts. There would be no crisis or anyone depending on them. No stakes in any game.
That wasn’t their reality. It would never be their reality.
She had to either make her peace with that truth, or cut this thing off before it went any further. “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know where we go from here.”
“Why do we have to have a concrete plan?” He set his chin on the top of her head and cuddled her closer. “Life has a funny way of proving that we’re not in control—we never will be. We can fake it, and lie to ourselves and say that we’ve got it all figured out, but then life comes along and flips the table to prove how wrong we were.”
She stared into the night. “Thank you for that rousing pep talk.”
“I wasn’t done.” Beckett chuckled. “My point is that any plan worth having isn’t concrete. It’s adjustable and has alternatives and backups to ensure you don’t get caught with your pants down by the enemy.”
She huffed. “You make it sound like we’re going to war.”
“War is life—at least the life we chose. There’s no such thing as peace in the energy industry—oil or otherwise. There are always fights that require us to step to the line. That won’t change, no matter what else does.”
“Shouldn’t we be striving for peace?” It seemed the question to ask, if only because she was still chewing on his words. Tasting them to see how they jibed with her worldview.
“Samara.” He shifted so he could look down at her. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter. You wouldn’t flourish in a peaceful environment any more than I would. We need the battles, whether it’s in the boardroom or facing down the competition over a bid. We get off on it.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but stopped. She’d never made a habit of lying to herself. She did enjoy those battles. Outmaneuvering problems as they arose and working through a situation to get what she needed. There was nothing else like it. “I’m not ashamed of that.”
“Why would you be?” He traced her bottom lip with his thumb. “Some people were built for peace. They are comfortable in it, and they seek it out at all costs. We’re not those kinds of people, which is a damn good thing because neither of our companies would last long if it was run by people who want to avoid conflict.”
“How do two people who thrive in conflict even try to be together? Wouldn’t it be a total shit show?”
His slow smile had her entire body warming. “Only one way to find out.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She didn’t know. There was too much she didn’t know how to deal with, but the one thing she did know was that this moment with this man felt right.
She turned her face into his chest and let him stroke her hair. It was time to admit that Beckett saw her. He knew her. He wanted and cared for her despite all her dark corners and emotional scars.
Or maybe, just maybe, he wanted and cared for her—at least in part—because of them.
Beckett wanted to bottle that moment and keep it with him always. He and Samara, standing on the beach and just…being. It could be like this all the time if we’d let it. He wouldn’t convince her of that tonight, but she was slowly coming around. They had time. He wasn’t wavering, and he had no problem waiting until she felt comfortable enough to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He shifted her hair off her neck and kissed her there. “Come to bed with me.”
“That’s my line.” She spoke softly, as if already half asleep.
“If you’re tired—”
Samara slid her hands up his chest and pressed herself firmly against him. “I’m tired, Beckett. I’m not dead.”
“That’s reassuring.” He gripped her hips, guiding her motion. They weren’t nearly close enough, but he loved the glazed look that bled into her dark eyes. “Someday, when the smoke has cleared, I want to come back here.”
“Come back.”
“Yeah.” He dipped beneath the hem of her dress and dragged his fingers across the backs of her thighs. “Just us. I want to press you against that window in our room and fuck you as we watch the sun set.” Her little gasp only spurred him on. “And that hot tub? I can’t look at it without seeing you sitting on the edge, the flickering light kisses your skin, your pussy wet and aching for my tongue.”
“Beckett.” Her fingers dug into his arm.
He lowered his head until his lips brushed hers in answer. “Yeah?”
Samara released him and took two large steps back. “The room. Hurry.”
Perversely, that made him dig in his heels. “You like those ideas?”
“What I’d like is for you to put that mouth to better use than talking.”
He laughed. God, even when he was so hot for her he couldn’t see straight, she still made him laugh. It shouldn’t be possible. He could barely think past the need to get her out of her dress and sink between those sweet thighs, but her smart-ass comment warmed him in ways that had nothing to do with desire. I’m falling for you,
Samara. He couldn’t say it now any more than he could say it last time they’d been in bed. She’d either bolt or blame it on sex muddling his head.
There was nothing to do but take his woman to bed.
“Let’s go.” He kept his hand on the small of her back, the curve of her ass, the long line of her spine, as they strode up the beach and into the hotel. Tension radiated from her body, and every look she sent him had Beckett reconsidering his plan to get her back to the room. Surely there was a storage closet around there somewhere…
Samara dragged him inside the elevator as soon as the doors opened. His back hit the wall and she took his mouth in the same move. Her hands were everywhere, running down his back, up his arms, to his shoulders. Beckett responded in kind, grabbing her ass and hauling her even tighter against him. She tasted of wine and decadence, and he felt more than heard the little noises she made as she ground against him.
The elevator dinged.
He walked her backward out the doors, barely registering the wide-eyed couple waiting on their floor. He and Samara weren’t moving fast enough, though, so he swung her into his arms. She kissed his jaw, her hands already unbuttoning his shirt. “Hurry, Beckett.”
He hurried.
Even with her in his arms, he got the door open and kicked it shut behind him as he strode into the hotel room. Beckett paused to lock the door behind them and only then did he set Samara on her feet, sliding her down his body. “You want me to put my mouth to good use.”
“I did say that—just a few minutes ago.” She pulled his shirt up and over his shoulders, and then dropped it on the floor. Just like the last few times they’d been together, she found his scar with her fingers, but this time she followed it with her lips. The kiss was light and almost innocent, but he felt it all the way down to his soul.
As if she recognized that the scars of his past went beyond the skin and she accepted them.
He laced his fingers through her hair and tugged her up until she pressed against him from chest to hips. The fabric of her dress slid against him, but it might as well have been sandpaper. He wanted her skin on his with nothing between them. “You want my mouth? Demand it.”
