by Gage Grayson
“Hard to forget if you remind me like that. So you’re, what, going to buy it out of your own pocket and develop it out of your own pocket? Who’s going to manage the whole thing? You won’t have the time with your current—”
“You are.”
“You are—I am?”
Erik stops smiling and holds my gaze steadily.
“Rose, you know this area more than I ever could. You know the people. And on top of that, you know the property business. I can trust you to develop my Verona Falls housing project into something wonderful.”
“Erik, I…I don’t know what to say.”
“Then say yes,” Erik replies immediately, taking my hands in his and watching me with eager eyes as he does so.
This is all so fast…so ridiculous…so out of left field.
Which means there’s only one acceptable response…
“Of course, I’ll fucking do it.”
Erik’s lips are on mine before I can utter another word, his hands pushing me down onto the couch even as I wrap my arms eagerly around his neck and reciprocate the kiss.
When we pull away from each other, Erik laughs and shakes his head incredulously.
“Rose, I fucking love you. Is that stupid? Is that impossible? We barely know each other.”
I smile back at him.
“We know enough. And you know the absolute worst of me. I love you, too, Erik Storm.”
But then I frown. Erik watches me, concerned.
“What’s wrong?”
“Your board of directors. They can’t vote you out, but you know they planned to fuck you over. What’re you gonna do?”
A wicked grin spreads across Erik’s face.
“Fuck them over first. Now they have no grounds to vote me out for no confidence, and they have no leg to stand on. So, I’m going to vote all of them out. I’m going to fire the shit out of them. I can’t wait.”
“That’s brutal. I love it.”
“It’s the least they deserve.”
I glance at the clock on the wall.
“Speaking of business, we better get all of this paperwork written up, Erik.”
He sighs.
“I guess this will have to wait then,” he says, glancing down at his hand unashamedly skimming across my stomach under the waistband of my shorts.
I feel a deep heat flaring up inside me at the motion, but I force myself to ignore it.
“Regrettably, yes. You can watch me get dressed, though. Hopefully, that will tide you over until this evening.”
“I guess I’ll have to take what I can get.”
I smirk.
“For the sake of millions of dollars’ worth of property, as well as the security of your entire company, I think you can handle it.”
Erik grazes his lips against the side of my neck before standing up and pulling me to my feet.
“I think you underestimate how much you drive me crazy, Miss Clark.”
I reach up and kiss the tip of Erik’s nose.
“I think I’m beginning to understand that, which can only mean terrible, awful things for you.”
Erik laughs then pulls me in for one more kiss before I dress more appropriately for going outside.
“I look forward to you continuing to be terrible to me, Rose Clark.”
“I’m beginning to believe you’re somewhat of a masochist, Erik Storm.”
“Only for you.”
Only for me… I think I can get used to that.
19
Erik
It takes longer to draft up the paperwork than originally expected, but I leave Rose to it, while I organize the information she needs for the forms and begin mulling over how to start up a brand-new business which, four hours ago, did not exist.
And then, I get a call from the head of my board of directors, Simon Peters, one of the co-conspirators I caught planning to betray me mere hours ago.
Oh, this should be fun.
“Erik Storm speaking,” I say, knowing I’m doing it to be an arrogant prick.
“Erik—where are you?” Peters asks. “The board meeting started two hours ago.”
“Ah, did it? My apologies. I had some important business to take care of.”
“Erik, this was a vital meeting. We were supposed to set a solid plan for your Verona Falls project today.”
“You mean you planned to stab me in the back and vote me out of my own company, Peters?”
The man is silent. I grin, though only Rose can see it.
“Erik, I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean—”
“Put me on speakerphone, Peters. You’re still with the rest of the board, I assume?”
“I don’t think that’s—”
“That wasn’t a request. Do it.”
There’s a murmuring as the call gets put on speaker, and then the rest of the board members say their hellos.
I let them do it, reveling in the moment.
“Afternoon, everyone,” I say cheerily. “You’re all fired.”
Ah, the silence is so satisfying.
And then—
“Erik, you can’t mean that!”
“What have we done?”
“There was no such conspiracy against you!”
“Who told you something so ludicrous?”
“I heard it with my own ears, you idiotic, treacherous water-cooler gossips. Next time you stage a coup, don’t plan it inside my company building. I expect you all to have vacated the premises by tomorrow afternoon.”
“Erik—Mr. Storm, wait—”
I hang up. I don’t need to hear their groveling.
“Now if that wasn’t the most satisfying phone call you’ve ever had then I don’t know what is,” Rosepurrs as I return to her side.
I run a hand through her smooth, silky hair. I can’t wait to heat things up enough that it returns to its previously wild state.
“Definitely in the top three. Are we almost done?”
Roseglances at her desk and says,
“Five minutes, and then I want to take you somewhere.”
“Well, now I’m curious. Where are we going?”
Rose smirks.
“It’s a surprise.”
The next five minutes positively drag while I wait for Rose to finish up the paperwork. But when I add my signature to the final form, it makes everything worth it.
I’m finally going to be able to realize my dreams.
All because of the woman in front of me.
“If this surprise doesn’t involve me screwing you senseless, then I want a new surprise,” I murmur in Rosa’s ear as we get in her car.
She throws me a look.
“Just wait.”
When we arrive at the beachfront house where the two of us had slept together before everything went wrong, I look over at Rosa.
“This isn’t mine until my money reaches the Hampton Properties bank account, right?”
“Semantics. The surprise is in here.”
I raise an eyebrow.
“You must have prepared this before I showed up at your door. How did you know I’d show up?”
Rose gives me a small smile.
“I didn’t. I—had to run on faith that you’d forgive me. You have no idea how happy I am that you did.”
I pull Rose in for a kiss, deepening it before she can process the action.
“Erik, I swear, you’ll want to see your surprise,” Rose barely manages to murmur against my lips.
“How good can it possibly be that it would be better than fucking you in your car, right now?”
Rose laughs softly, then pulls away from me to open the car door.
“Just follow me, you impatient man.”
And so, I allow Rose to lead me into the house by my hand, all the way over to the terrace doors. When she unlocks them and steps out onto the wooden decking, I can’t help but laugh.
“You got me a hot tub. A hot tub.”
“Well, you liked the one in that other house so much…�
��
“Do I have permission to test it out before the house is officially mine?”
Rose smirks.
“Naturally.”
It feels as if the hot tub is taking ages to fill up. Because it’s recessed into the terrace, nobody filtering along the beach a few dozen meters away will be able to see what Rose and I are doing in it.
Which works just fine for me.
The hot tub has barely filled up before I grab Rose and throw her in, clothes and all, causing her to let out a noise in shock.
I watch as the water soaks into her white shirt, making the material transparent as it sticks to her skin; it allows me to see the line of her bra. Very sexy.
“What was that for?” Rose complains as she unbuttons her shirt.
I do the same with my own bone-dry shirt, wasting no time in stripping myself of the rest of my clothes.
Rose looks up at me, naked and rock-hard.
“You really do cut an intimidating figure,” she says, making no effort to hide the fact that she’s staring at my cock.
“That’s not necessarily a terrible thing.”
“God, no.”
When I finally join Rose in the bubbling, steamy water, she promptly curls her legs around my waist and straddles me as I sit down. She rocks gently up and down against my cock, eliciting a moan from my lips.
“That’s cruel, Rose.”
“Hey, I bought you a hot tub. I can be cruel for a while.”
“Wait, you bought it?”
Rose frowns at me.
“Who else did you think bought it? Hampton Properties?”
“Rose, I—you didn’t have to spend all of this money on me as an apology. This must have cost an awful lot.”
Rose winces, then grins as she somehow slides perfectly onto the tip of my cock.
Jesus Christ, I’m barely inside her, and it feels so good.
“Money is just money,” Rose says as she slowly takes in more and more and more of me. “You can make it up to me in other ways.”
“Oh? Such as?”
“Fucking me in the hot tub.”
I run my hands through Rosa’s hair then, pulling her against my chest and holding her there as I violently kiss her and slam the full length of my cock up inside her.
When she gasps, I use the opportunity to slide my tongue into her mouth.
If she wants me to fuck her in the hot tub, then you can be damn sure that I’ll show her no quarter.
“Erik!” Rose bites out.
I turn around so that Rose is now sitting against the side of the hot tub, and I’m standing in front of her in the water, grabbing onto her hips with vicious desperation as I thrust into her, again and again and again.
God, I missed this. I missed her.
Rose plants kisses up my body, her hands squeezing my ass as she continues to whine and writhe against my cock.
It feels amazing, watching this woman take the whole of me inside her as if she can’t live without it.
It doesn’t take long before I feel a familiar tugging and burning in my groin, informing me that I’m getting close to coming. A glance at Rose’s face confirms that she’s not far off it, either.
I bend down and kiss her, then slide my fingers against her clit as my cock continues to slam into her pussy. The dual action causes Rose to bite my lip as her eyes roll back slightly.
Her fingers tremble as she desperately runs her hands through my hair.
“Erik, I love you,” she says, and, with a cry, she orgasms mere seconds before I do, waves of pleasure rolling over us just as the water in the hot tub does the same against our skin.
We lean against each other, panting heavily and saying nothing for a few minutes.
Then, Rose looks up at me.
“Ready for round two?”
“God, I fucking love you, Rose Clark.”
It is in that moment that I decide for certain that I’m moving to the Hamptons.
For the coffee, for the hot tub, for the people, and for her.
20
Epilogue
Rose
Two and a half months have passed since that sham of a wedding Erik took me along to as his date, and my life could not be more hectic. From assuring property owners that we have no intention of kicking them out of their homes and businesses now that we own the very land their properties are on, to calling for quotes from architects and builders to begin construction of affordable housing, to holding meetings with the locals about what they really need, Erik and I truly have been non-stop.
Of course, I don’t only mean that in the business sense, either.
It isn’t just the bed and the hot tub that have been christened in Erik’s beachfront house; the guest bedrooms, the shower, the sofa, the kitchen countertops and, of course, the floor, have all had their fair share of the action.
I’d definitely go so far as to say this is the busiest, most exhausting, and happiest summer of my life.
And what’s more, my family adore Erik—especially my mother. Even better is that Erik seems to genuinely like my family, too (or at the very least is excellent at pretending to be).
Considering everything that happened with Oberon and the botched property deals—not to mention Erik almost getting voted out of his own company—it’s a wonder that everything has settled down. But I can’t help a tiny voice in the back of my mine saying that I definitely don’t deserve this happiness.
It’s fairly easy to quell, though, especially when I look over at Erik and he grins at me, before pulling me in close to kiss me.
God, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop the butterflies in my stomach that I get whenever he kisses me. I feel like a giddy school girl.
“Stop worrying over the past, you idiot,” Erik scolds me as he pulls away from the kiss.
We’re sharing a rare, quiet Sunday afternoon relaxing on the terrace of his beach-house, content to waste time watching the tiny figures of people enjoying themselves on the beach, our feet dangling in the bubbling water of the hot tub.
It’s bliss.
“You know I can’t help it sometimes,” I reply, gently cuffing Erik’s arm before taking a swig of beer. I moved in with Erik three weeks ago, after finally having to admit that I wasn’t spending any time in my own apartment. It had essentially become a glorified wardrobe.
Erik himself moved permanently to the Hamptons a couple of weeks before I moved in with him, after he finished tying up loose ends in New York. As promised, he fired his entire board and filled their places with people he can actually trust—including me. Though our Hamptons property business is a separate entity, it now operates as a non-profit subsidiary of his original company, which was the simplest way to get things up and running as quickly as possible.
Erik ended up buying Hampton Properties—the real estate company I previously worked for—which my boss Claire was ecstatic about. I swear I find Erik in there more and more often just so Claire can gossip with him, which I find beyond amusing.
Erik yawns as he stretches his arms above his head and lies down on the terrace.
“Things are good, Rose. There’s not some karmic retribution coming your way to punish you for lying to me about Oberon, so stop thinking there will be. And you fixed that anyway, by signing all the property to me, so even if there was such a thing as karma then you’ve already balanced things out.”
I roll my eyes.
“This coming from the man who kept wondering what he could have possibly done to warrant not getting his way the second he decided to buy land in the Hamptons. Your lackadaisical attitude doesn’t fool me, Erik Storm.”
Erik chuckles—he knows I’m right.
“Either way,” he says, “there’s no point dwelling on it. We have plenty to keep ourselves occupied with now, anyway—but not this afternoon. Can we not have just one quiet Sunday?”
“That depends on how quiet you want me to be later.”
Erik raises an eyebrow.
“I take it
back. Today can be as loud as you want.”
Laughing, I lie back on the terrace and nestle against Erik’s side. He’s right, of course—I shouldn’t worry about the past. Neither of us have even heard from Oberon Lawson ever since I threw his shady property deals back in his face. And Erik hasn’t faced any backlash from his previous board of directors…probably because they know they don’t have a proverbial leg to stand on.
I mean, what can you do when the CEO listens into your planned coup-d’état? Nothing, that’s what. You take your defeat and go crawling back from whence you came.
I probably take too much satisfaction from knowing that everyone who planned to overthrow Erik for being a good person have had their careers ruined. That probably just means I’m not as good a person as Erik is—though that’s not news to me either.
But he loves me for who I am, and I couldn’t wish for anything more than that.
“I love you,” Erik suddenly says, as if reading my mind.
I roll on top of him, running my hand through his hair as I smile down at him.
“I love you too.”
Erik pulls me down to kiss me, deep and passionate and lingering, and suddenly all of my worries are forgotten.
“Maybe we should continue this somewhere less…hard,” I murmur, sitting up to straddle Erik.
“I’d rather say you want it to be hard, Rose Marie Clark,” he replies, his tone filthy as he stares pointedly down at his crotch.
“You’re hilarious. I’d rather neither of us had an aching back in the morning though, you know.”
Laughing, Erik sits up too, wrapping his arms around me as if he means to pick me up.
And then my phone rings.
Groaning, I make to reach out for it, but Erik pulls me in for another kiss.
“Just ignore it. No work today, remember?”
But the ringing doesn’t stop. When it reaches voicemail, the caller rings my phone again.
“You know fine well we can’t fuck if someone doesn’t stop calling, Erik.”
Erik sighs as I reach for the phone.
“Who is it?” he asks when I look at the caller I.D.
“I…don’t know. It’s withheld.”
Frowning at my phone, and curious despite myself, I accept the call.
