by Trace, Piper
And then she saw it there in his eyes, and she wondered how she’d never seen it before. Loneliness. His gorgeous, jewel-colored eyes hid it well, but there was definitely a dusky sadness there under the surface.
Her resolve softened and she ached to let him touch her. Maybe they did have something in common. She was lonely too. Always had been. Never knowing what she was going to walk into at home had made it impossible to have close friends growing up. It’d just been easier to keep everyone away to avoid embarrassing explanations.
But with Ford she didn’t feel her normal self-protectionism. She felt a reckless and unfamiliar urge to give him anything he wanted to take from her. It was scary as hell, and thrilling.
Though, knowing her, she was just being self-destructive. What could be a better distraction from her trouble than more trouble? Without brushing his fingers off her knee again, she went with it, and ventured a challenge. “No one ever asks you to behave? And that’s never struck you as a problem?” She raised her eyebrows, her pulse quickening with the suddenly-personal exchange.
His eyes flashed and the timbre of his voice dropped low and dangerous as he took hold of her chair and yanked it easily around to face him, making her gasp. “Problem or not, I’m tired of behaving around you. And I think you’re tired of me behaving.” His gorgeous eyes were dark with an intensity that told her he wasn’t playing anymore.
Excitement laced with panic tremored low in her body. She wasn’t going to make it out of the room without carnal knowledge of Ford. She couldn’t decide whether to be thrilled or terrified about that.
“Ford, don’t make me hurt you.” Evie’s voice shook. “The firm would kill me.” There was no conviction behind her words. She bit her lower lip and reached a trembling hand up to her hair, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled it toward him instead. Evie let out a quick “oh” of surprise.
“I saw this before and I wanted to ask you about it,” he said, studying her hand, his voice holding a hint of wonder. Following his eyes she realized with relief that he was referring to her cobalt-varnished fingernails, not her shaking hands. “I’ve never seen a lawyer with a blue manicure.”
“It’s not a manicure. I did it myself. And you know I’m a paralegal, not a lawyer.” She was so aware of her hand in his, her cool skin against his warm. She wanted to straddle him and feel the rest of his skin against hers. Bite the buttons off his shirt.
Ford had all sorts of bulges and ridges she’d only seen in her imagination. She’d love to explore them in person. Instead, she tugged her fingers out of his grip and tucked her hands safely under her thighs.
“Why blue fingernails?”
“I just like them,” Evie mumbled, looking away. The color of her nails was against the firm’s dress code and she’d get in trouble if Ford mentioned it to any of the partners. They’d never notice her nails on their own. The mostly middle-aged men who populated the firm were either too busy to pay attention to her, or too busy paying attention to her ass or tits to notice the finish of her nails.
“You are a non-conformist.” Ford’s voice was accusatory, but his smile was good-natured.
“I am not! I’m just…individualistic.”
She moved to scoot her chair away from him, but her eyes met his and the sudden intensity in them held her still. Tilting his head, he examined her with sharp eyes. “You are a fascinating creature, Evangeline. Different than most women I’m around.”
She pulled her head back, frowning. Maybe she wasn’t as refined and educated as the women he normally socialized with, but she wasn’t sure she liked being called different from them. She touched the skirt she’d bought for their meeting. She didn’t want to be different from those women. For once, she wanted to be the same. She wanted to show him she could be just as comfortable in his world as in hers. Even if she was faking it. Ignoring the worried voice in her head, she leaned toward Ford and set in motion a runaway train she didn’t have the power to stop.
Her sexual self—not work-Evie, but private-Evie—reared up and took over, pushing all her job and ex-boyfriend concerns out of her head. Without any thought to the consequences, Evie licked her lips, leaned forward and said, “Different? It seems to me that you’ve always found me to be…interesting.” She parted her legs a fraction and his eyes flicked to her knees where his hand still lay lightly against her skin.
How many business negotiations had she witnessed him dominate? How many times had she sat in awe as he effortlessly turned the tables on powerful, brilliant people and got exactly what he wanted?
What had she been thinking?
Because without skipping a beat, Ford leaned forward too, his mouth only inches from hers. Then he didn’t just call her bet, but raised it. “Evie, love, you’re right.” He squeezed her knee. “So let’s make things really interesting. Put my cock in your mouth.”
Just like that.
CHAPTER TWO
PUT MY COCK in your mouth.
Ford said it as casually and as comfortably as if he’d merely suggested they go for coffee. Eyes widening, Evie sat back and her mouth popped open. Ford gazed unapologetically back at her. Her lungs felt flattened, like the moments in kung fu class when she had the wind knocked out of her and she lay on her back, praying the air would come.
Goddamn, this man had balls.
She shut her mouth, trying to process. Opening it again, she managed a strangled, “Excuse me?”
She and Ford had flirted before—a lot—but if this was flirting, it was some type of guerilla-warfare flirting.
He shrugged, his posture managing to look like a rugby player’s in spite of his crisp, custom-made shirt and silk tie. “I’m a bit obsessed with your lips and, if we’re being honest, I want to come in your mouth.” He pursed his lips, seeming to gauge her reaction.
She choked on a breath. “We’re not being honest. I’m being flabbergasted and you’re just being rude.”
He raised one eyebrow. God, he could even do that.
“If I’m being rude, you should be offended. Evie, do you find it offensive that I want your lips around my cock?” He leaned forward, and she swore she could feel his heat.
She touched her bottom lip. She’d long ago chewed the gloss off it. Ford wasn’t ruffled. In fact, his eyes danced, his dimples tugging at her heart and other places.
He wants to come in my mouth.
His words should offend her, shouldn’t they? Yet they didn’t. Instead her pussy was throbbing with a warmth that demanded action. From the look on his face, he had all the confidence in the world he could make her do what he asked. Even in the library. Even in the middle of a business meeting.
His voice turned soft, like cashmere. “You want me as much as I want you. I’m certain of that.” He dropped his head and spoke in a tone that was almost self-conscious, something she had never heard from him before. “Besides, I’ve been staring down your shirt at your extraordinary breasts all evening.” He moved his eyes slowly back up to hers, his mouth quirking into a smile. “You were aware of that, I’m sure?”
Evie’s heart skipped in its staccato rhythm. She moved her fingers to the lowest button on her shirt, which she’d undone just before Ford had arrived for their appointment. He caught her hand but didn’t pull it away from her blouse. “Evie, don’t. Please. Your curves are fantastic. You must know what you do to me.”
She couldn’t drag her eyes from his. He twisted his hand over hers so the backs of his fingers brushed against the bare flesh on the swell of her breast. She sucked in a lungful of air. Electricity danced over her skin at the graze of his fingers, instantly tightening her nipples even more.
Her quickening breath caused her breasts to lift against his knuckles and his eyes flicked down to her chest, lingering there. She couldn’t let this happen, not in the law firm library. Reluctantly, she lowered her hand, still enclosed by his, and his hand dropped away. She barely had time to register her pang of disappointment before Ford reached out and abruptly pulled her chair
even closer to his. Wrapping his large hands around her knees, he squeezed his fingers into her bare flesh.
Tensing, she made a noise like a whimper. A spark lit in his eyes at the sound, and heat flooded through her body, pooling between her legs. She could feel her slickness as she grew wet for him.
“Evie, I’ve been hard for half this evening. I’m aching for you.”
A groan escaped her lips before she could bite it back. Ford was hard for her right now. She was drawn to him as if she was magnetized and he was hardened steel. “I can’t.” She whispered so weakly she wasn’t sure he’d heard it.
“You can,” he said firmly, brushing his fingers across her skin, bringing up goose bumps. Alarm rustled in the back of her mind. If he kept being so goddamned insistent, she was going to do anything he wanted.
“Mr. Hawthorne, maybe we can go somewhere? Away from the office?” Her voice held a clear edge of panic now. If they were going to go through with this terrible and thrilling idea, at least away from her office would only be half as dangerous. Right?
“No. Here. We’ve worked together for a while now. I’m sure you’ve noticed my need for control?” His voice dropped an octave. “It doesn’t end with my legal work. I want you the way I choose.” A rush of heat slammed through her, concentrating between her legs. She’d never felt anything like it. “I choose here, and I choose now.”
Evie’s respiration and heartbeat accelerated even higher. In his verdant eyes she saw an unwavering aim to have what he wanted from her, and rather than push him away, she nearly pulled his hands against her crotch and begged him to take it.
Her pussy throbbed now, excitement making it difficult to keep her thoughts straight, and he continued unmercifully. “I think you love this. I think you are wet through your panties for me right now.”
“Don’t,” she breathed. She looked down to see his long fingers caress her inner thighs, her fantasies come to life. He’d rucked up the hem of her short skirt, his fingertips less than four inches from the crotch of her panties. Biting back a groan, she tried in vain to suppress the vibrant thrill that crackled through her at the sight of him touching her so insistently.
Summoning all her remaining strength, she closed her hands over his, but when she looked up to finally put a stop to the out-of-control situation, she watched him wet his lips deliberately, his piercing eyes burning into hers. The sight of his slick tongue made her go weak. She needed that tongue in her mouth, on her nipples, on her clit. She let go of his hands and let hers drop in surrender.
He could have had her in that moment—taken anything he wanted—had he pressed forward. Never had she been so thoroughly seduced. But instead he furrowed his brow and blinked. A pained look reflected briefly in the set of his features before he looked away and took a deep breath. “Not like this,” he murmured as if to himself, running his fingers through his hair in a reflection of her own nervous habit.
His lips curved up, but the emotion didn’t reach his eyes. He looked somehow sad under his weak smile, which confused her. She shifted uncomfortably.
“I want you to know something about me.” His voice was quiet. “You are beautiful, of course, but that’s not why I want you. I can count on one hand the number of people in this world I enjoy being around and you’re one of them.” His eyes held hers steadily. “That might mean nothing to you, but it means a great deal to me. It makes me want you in a way I’ve never experienced.” He pressed his fingertips into the flesh of her legs and smiled when she jumped, the muscles of her core constricting in a twang of pleasure. “Perhaps it’s the way you treat me.”
“I don’t treat you in any special way.”
His eyes lit. “That’s exactly it. People fawn over me. But not you.”
She winced, knowing her bosses wouldn’t think much of that revelation, given he was the firm’s most valuable client and, thus, certainly deserving of fawning. “I’m not really a ‘fawner’.”
He looked down and compressed his lips into a thin line. “You’d think I’d like being treated so special all the time, but I don’t. I despise it.”
Under Ford’s cultivated verve was a controlled and guarded man, so when he lifted his head and Evie caught the honesty on his face, it looked strangely raw on him. His voice matched his expression. “Except when it comes to you.” He paused and inhaled deeply, as if he was choosing his words carefully, or collecting the courage to plow ahead. “With you, I find myself wishing you wanted to please me in every way. I can’t stop thinking about how I might make you want to please me.” He swept his eyes down to her nipples again, which she knew were blatantly beckoning to him against the front of her shirt, betraying her attempts to de-escalate the situation. “I come here more than I need to. I purposely pick times that are inconvenient to John so he’ll let you take the meeting. I pay an exorbitant amount by the hour just to be around you.”
Evie’s mouth dropped open. “Wait…you like me?” Her mind flashed again to the leggy women and refused to believe the possibility.
Ford frowned. “Yes, but I don’t want to mislead you.” He looked her square in the eye as if he needed to get the message across. “I don’t engage in relationships. I’ve tried and they don’t work for me, so I just don’t anymore. I don’t miss them.” His eyes softened. “I don’t want there to be any misconceptions between us. I want you. I want you more than I’ve wanted a woman in a very long time.”
At his admission, desire rocketed back full-tilt in Evie, and he seemed aware of it, feeding off her subtle body-language. He moved his hands again along her skin, up and down, squeezing his thumbs against her inner thighs, causing her to shudder with every stroke upwards toward the heat between her legs. “And I know how to make a woman feel very good. I could make you feel very good.”
Now it all made sense—the ladies in the limos. Never the same woman twice. Now she knew why. Ford didn’t have girlfriends. Ford only had sex.
She’d never had a man come right out and tell her he only wanted to have sex with her, but she wasn’t surprised. She’d known through all of her growing lust that he wasn’t a happily-ever-after kind of guy. And hadn’t she learned her lesson anyway, trying to find that elusive ending?
With a ringing clarity she realized Ford’s prohibition against relationships was perhaps the only way she could be with him. She couldn’t date anyway, not with the situation with John.
God, could she really do this? She hadn’t had an orgasm brought on by the touch of a man in so long.
Ford’s offer to make her feel very good in her sexually-neglected condition was like dangling a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie in front of her after a long week of strict dieting, telling her to “go ahead, put it in your mouth.”
Could they meet just for sex now and then, without John or the firm finding out? She imagined them having sex in Ford’s limo, in a luxury hotel room, lounging next to his pool. Her stomach flip-flopped as her rationalizations began to work, breaking down her walls. As long as they both went into it with clear expectations, she couldn’t get hurt. In fact, it was very honest. Everything was completely clear. And that felt safe to her.
Her aching desire was becoming critical. She swallowed hard. She was going to require some attention soon—either from him, or if she wasn’t going to do this, she was going to need some time alone. Glancing at the lofty shelf of legal volumes behind him, she wished desperately they were anywhere but the firm’s library. She swallowed again, trying to moisten her dry throat. In her fantasies this had gone a lot smoother.
“Now that I’ve laid it out, you can make a decision.” And with that disclaimer, Ford was back. The unusual vulnerability vanishing back into his familiar mischievous confidence. His eyes glinted, lively with power.
Sliding his hands down, he closed his fingers around the backs of her knees and jerked her closer to him so she was now wedged between the muscular spread of his parted legs. She grabbed the sides of her seat, her heart beating a wild drumbeat under her hard-nipp
led breasts.
He moved his hands up her thighs, pressing her legs apart, causing her skirt to ride further up. Leaning in until his face was close to hers—his mouth close to hers—he whispered, “I am successful because I make good choices. You are a good choice.” He caught his fingers just under the already indecently high hem of her skirt and forced it the rest of the way up her legs. “Let me,” he growled.
“I’ll lose my job.”
“Evie…” He breathed out her name as if it were something decadent, his lips close enough to warm hers. Her body quivered as the weight of her need swamped her. It took everything she had not to press her lips to his. “When you picked out this short skirt to wear for our meeting, tell me you didn’t hope I’d do exactly what I’m doing now.” He squeezed his fingertips into her thighs again. “Now move your hands so I can do it.” She hadn’t realized she’d placed her hands over his again, trying to stop his progress.
He was so close to her wet pussy, his fingertips digging into her skin, his mouth nearly on hers, and she suddenly couldn’t remember why she was fighting him. “Okay,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
The moment froze. She was acutely aware of the sound of their breathing, both ragged, both heavy. Then the corners of his mouth rose and his eyes flashed triumph. She knew that smile. She’d seen it before at the negotiation table, always at the point when Ford knew he’d won.
Damn him and his dimples.
“Yes, love,” he breathed and slipped his hands under her skirt, sliding his fingers the rest of the short distance to the crotch of her panties. Every nerve in her body sizzled and she fought the urge to thrust herself against his hand.
Though his lips were so close, he didn’t kiss her, but leaned his face against hers. “Now listen to me Evie.” He nuzzled his nose against her cheek, his breath tickling her earlobe, making her nipples diamond-hard. His voice, the low growl of a stalking lion, coaxed her. “It’s past eight o’clock at night. Everyone’s gone home.” He pulled his head back, his leaf-green eyes meeting her blue ones. “We’re completely alone.”
