by Romi Hart
Claire’s skin prickled. This was her cue to take over. Her father was giving her a signal and she ran with it. She bent over and laid her hand on Finn’s arm. “You must be tired. Come with me and we can go relax in the parlor.”
He dragged his palm across his forehead and shuddered back to life. “I should go home. Victor will be waiting for me.”
He pushed back his chair and Claire moved in. She glided to his side and took his elbow. “Come with me. You can wait in the parlor for the car to drive you home.”
He didn’t argue. He let her escort him out of the dining room. Just before she crossed the threshold, she glanced back and saw her father scrutinizing her. His glittering blue eyes read the secret thoughts of her heart the way they always did.
The murmur of conversation fell farther behind as she proceeded down the corridor. She guided Finn by the arm and he offered no resistance. She steered him back to the same parlor overlooking the front lawn.
She took him to a couch and he sank down on it. He rested his head in his hands and let out a shaky breath. That indication of the obvious strain under which he suffered drew her to him. His strength, his energy and confidence took a beating today. This might be the most serious beating he ever took.
She sat down next to him and slipped her arm around his back. She moved her face within an inch of his neck and inhaled a deep breath of that animal scent. “Don’t worry about the Omega Battalion. We’ll find them.”
He jolted upright and rounded on her. He reared back, but he failed to pull away completely. “But you’ll keep that information to yourselves, won’t you? You won’t share it with us unless it serves you to do so. You don’t really care about us.”
Now that he confronted her, she melted into his aura more than ever. She was alone with him in this shadowy parlor. Dusky colors bled through the front window and gleamed on his smooth, black irises. “Which us are you talking about? The Prometheus Crest? You can’t think about the Crest. You’re here with us. Let that be enough.”
“How can I do that?” His resolve faltered when she swiveled around to kneel in front of her. The argument died on his lips. “I am a part of the Crest. I’m here for the Crest.”
She knelt between his knees and a volcanic torrent of desire rushed through her. She wanted him and she had no reason whatsoever to hold back. She scratched her fingernails up his thighs toward his crotch. “You’re here for yourself. This has nothing to do with the Crest. Let your instincts take over. You can’t go wrong with that.”
He shook his head, but she saw him caving to her attention. His stomach tensed when she dug her nails into the crease where his legs met his hips. His pants strained over the tightness of his bulging cock. He was hard. Man, he felt so good fighting to control his own passion. She wanted to push him over the edge. She wanted to make him explode in spite of himself. She wanted to make him climax fighting her all the way.
All of a sudden, his hands shot forward and he seized her wrists. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”
“You want me to,” she crooned. “You want me touching you like this. You want me to make you cum, Finn, don’t you?”
“Of course, I do,” he rasped. “You know I do.”
“Let me touch you.” She dropped her voice to a velvet purr. That delicious pleasure and burning agony directed her hands. “Let me please you. We both want it.”
A choking noise rattled in his throat and his fists tightened on her wrists, but he didn’t push her away. “I can’t. I’m supposed to be negotiating with your Crest.”
“You are negotiating with us.” She added the slightest pressure to her arms and he let her bring her hands around to his crotch. He could have stopped her, but he didn’t.
He groaned when she touched his package pulsating with hot blood. She traced the rigid shaft under his fly and it quivered under her hand. His eyes floated half-closed before he dragged them open again.
“It’s good, isn’t it, Finn?” she whispered. “You like it, don’t you?”
He moaned low, but he didn’t stop her from sliding down his zipper. Each metal tooth clicked over his straining cock. He pursed his lips trying to hold himself together. She loved watching him squirm. She wanted more of that.
His grip on her wrists tightened, but she didn’t need her hands to make him struggle. She bowed even farther forward and rested her cheek against that beating mound of flesh. She rubbed her chin and jaw along the veined rod hiding inside.
He let out a pained whimper, but he didn’t run away. He stayed right where he was, right where she wanted him. She nosed her face into his open fly and buried her face in the musky, hot smell of his crotch.
He collapsed back on the couch still clenching her wrists in both hands. He shut his eyes, but a moment later, he opened them again and stared at her nuzzling into his cock.
She held him captive with her eyes. She reveled in the power of making him cave to his own desire for her. She sank her teeth through his briefs into the slab of meat pulsating underneath. She glided her mouth up and down his shaft savoring the heady drunken rapture of his features spasming in agony.
She hummed to herself undulating against his leg in open delight. She wanted her naked body to caress all of him. She wanted to make him erupt for her. She wanted him to dream about her and fantasize about her. That was what she really wanted.
She found the flap of his briefs that gave access to his naked shaft. She poked her tongue through it and left a trail of steamy saliva along his length. She wanted him in her mouth. She wanted to make him understand how hungry he made her.
He twitched all over when that blistering wetness grazed his taut head. He crushed her wrists in a death grip. “Don’t…. the negotiation.”
She straightened up just enough to make herself heard. “It won’t affect the negotiation. Don’t worry. It’s all right.”
She dove back into his fly, but at that moment, the door burst open and her father barged in. Finn shot off the couch so fast he knocked Claire aside. He lunged several yards away and attacked his pants to zip up his fly. “I’m so sorry, Sir. I didn’t mean any….”
Bernard scanned him up and down. Then he cast a sidelong glance at Claire still kneeling by the couch. He couldn’t fail to grasp what she was doing there. “Think nothing of it. Don’t let me interrupt anything.”
Finn froze trying to yank his pants closed. He stared at Bernard, but just then, the car pulled up outside the window. It angled toward the front entrance. Finn’s shoulders slumped and he mumbled getting his zipper the rest of the way up. “I don’t want to contaminate the negotiation between our Crests. I didn’t mean any disrespect.”
Bernard sauntered to a roll-top desk and pulled open the lower drawer. He spoke down into it without looking at Claire or Finn. “You won’t contaminate the negotiation by hooking up with my daughter, Finn. If you both want to enjoy each other’s company, I won’t do anything to stop you.”
Finn gaped at him in blank disbelief. His jaw hung slack and he didn’t blink, not even when Bernard straightened up and turned around to meet his gaze.
With no warning, Finn snapped sideways and dashed for the door. “Thank you for your hospitality, but I better be going. I’m sure Victor will get in touch with you soon. Thank you for everything.”
He bolted from the house. A second later, the car door slammed and the limo slithered down the driveway and out of sight. Bernard cocked his head at Claire. “What did you do to him?”
With Finn gone, cold emptiness closed over Claire’s head. It threatened to tow her down into despair. When did she become so dependent on a man for her happiness?
She stood up and smoothed down her blazer and skirt. “I didn’t do anything to him, Daddy.”
He went back to studying a piece of paper he got out of the desk. “I know you didn’t, sweetheart. Anyway, don’t worry about him. He’ll be back before you know it.”
8
Finn walked into the Ogru-Kuche war room. The very first th
ing he did was to look around for his brother Elliot, but he saw only his father talking to Victor over their usual table loaded with maps. Only then did he allow himself to relax.
Finn strolled up to the table and pointed his chin at Victor. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yeah, man.” Victor slapped him on the shoulder. “I need you to go back to the Sheraton.”
Finn reared back in alarm. “What—again? This is the fourth time. What do they want now?”
Victor rotated all the way around to confront him. “What’s wrong with you? You’re gonna be going back there a fuck of a lot more times, so you better get used to it. Besides, I thought you liked it over there.”
“What makes you think that?”
Victor raised one eyebrow. “Are you telling me you don’t like it? I find that hard to believe.”
“What makes you say that?” Finn countered. “What makes you think I like it?”
Victor dropped his eyes. His gaze crawled down Finn’s body taking in his clothes, his hands, and his shoes.
Finn shifted to his other foot. “What?”
Victor slumped. “Listen, man. We’ve known each other a long time and this is the first time in all those years you’ve bothered to scrape the Quag mud out from under your fingernails. You usually tramp in here crusted with mud. Ever since I sent you over there, you wear clean clothes and you shower at least once a day. Besides…..” He patted Finn’s cheek. “You shaved.”
Finn tried to look away and found himself looking at his father. “That don’t mean nothing.”
“You haven’t used profanity since you came back from there.” Victor spread his arms. “Look, man. I didn’t bring you here to bust your ass. I just need you to go back.”
“What for?” Finn exclaimed. “Why do I have to keep going back?”
“Why, to negotiate with them, of course. I need you to negotiate with them the same way you’ve been negotiating with them all along.”
“I haven’t been negotiating. Socializing is more like it.”
Victor turned his attention to a map on the table in front of him. “Whatever you’re doing, just keep on doing it.”
Finn stiffened for a showdown. “I don’t want to go back. I’m finished with them and I have better things to do than to schmooze with a bunch of toffy-nosed snobs from the other side of town. Send someone else.”
“I can’t do that,” Victor breezed. “They requested you specifically.”
A tingle ran up Finn’s spine. “Who requested me?”
Victor waved at nothing. “The Novaks. Who else?”
“Which Novak?” Finn demanded. “Was it one particular one?”
“How the fuck should I know if it was one or the other? What difference does it make? They want you. They won’t deal with anybody else. You’re going back whether you want to or not. That’s an order.”
Finn floundered in desperation trying to think of something, anything to talk Victor out of sending him back to the Sheraton. He would do anything to avoid that. “This is pointless. What’s the point of talking and talking if it will never get us anywhere?”
“It is getting us somewhere. We’re meeting with them to begin negotiating the alliance.”
Finn’s head shot up and he raised his eyebrows. “We? The alliance? What do you mean—we?”
Victor lowered his eyelids and color swept over his cheeks. “I mean I—I’m meeting with them to negotiate the alliance. They’re coming to the table after all and it’s all thanks to you.”
“Me!” Finn gasped. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You’ve been going back and forth between us and them for days and you did it. You convinced them to come to the table. That’s what we wanted and you should be proud of yourself. We wanted an alliance with them and now we’re going to get one.”
Finn looked away. He compressed his lips to hold back more arguments threatening to break out.
“What’s wrong?” Victor asked. “I thought you’d be happy about this.”
Finn shrugged. He didn’t want to say what was really on his mind. He didn’t want to have this conversation at all. He didn’t want to know the SeamStream Crest or their alliance. He didn’t want to know they existed.
Victor murmured in Finn’s ear from a few inches away so no one could hear, not even Colonel Weeks. “If you have something to say to me about these people, you better tell me now before I drive across town to meet them. Don’t let me go into this negotiation without all the relevant information. Do you understand?”
Finn peered around and discovered Victor’s eyes drilling into him. Much as he would like to paint the Novaks out of his consciousness, he couldn’t hide anything from Victor. Victor deserved to know everything about the Novaks. Finn would have given anything for a scrap of forewarning before he met them for the first time.
“It’s just….” He began and broke off trying to decide what exactly he ought to say. “First of all, they know every living thing about us. They know everything—I mean everything. Don’t for a second think they don’t know every single solitary detail of everything that’s going on in all Anarock and maybe the whole world. I wouldn’t put it past them.”
Victor frowned. “That’s impossible.”
Finn clamped his eyes shut and shook his head, but that didn’t help clear his mind. “I’m telling you, man. Don’t let them take you by surprise knowing things you think they don’t know. They know about you and your pop and Bryce and Alexa and the Omega Battalion. They know everything—everything!”
Victor gaped at him with huge eyes. “Okay, man. I hear you.”
Now it was Finn’s turn to drop his voice to a confidential whisper. “You keep saying it’s because of me they’re coming to the table. I think one of them….” He had to shut his eyes again and pause for a second. He had to gather his resolve even to put these indistinct feelings into words. “One of them is a woman—Bernard’s daughter. I think she might have taken a shine to me.”
“So what?” Victor asked. “That’s right up your alley.”
“You don’t understand, man!” Finn hissed through gritted teeth. “She tried to take advantage of me.”
Victor snorted out loud. “Now I know you’re putting me on. Her—take advantage of you? You’re pulling my leg.”
Finn glared at him and the grin evaporated off Victor’s face. “Laugh all you want. I know what happened. She tried to take advantage of me and I don’t mean physically. She tried to twist the situation around to get me to…..I still can’t figure out what she was trying to do, but she maneuvered me into a corner for her own purpose.”
“What purpose could that be?” Victor asked.
“How the fuck should I know?” Finn whispered those words under his breath, but the profanity sounded strange after so long not using it.
So long? He only first met the Novaks a few days ago and already they changed him. They made him into something he wasn’t before. The fact that he didn’t know what they changed him into unnerved him beyond endurance.
Victor stared at him with his mouth open. “Jesus Christ, man! I’ve never seen you like this.”
Finn raised his eyes to his friend’s face. He never realized until this moment that Victor Griffin was his friend. He always thought Victor was a chump he could steer and guide his own way.
Finn locked Victor in an unwavering stare. “Take a good long look, man, because everything they did to me they’re going to do to you. You’re walking into a minefield with people a thousand times more powerful than you are. They will control every inch of this negotiation. From the minute you walk in the door, they will own you. Don’t for a minute think it will turn out otherwise. You will become their tool. You will become an asset in their arsenal. You will never be the one in control. None of us will.”
Victor swallowed hard. “Is this about the woman? Is this what she did to you?”
Finn shook Claire out of his mind. He didn’t want to think about her, about the mind-bending desire
of having her kneel between his legs with her face in his lap. “This has nothing to do with the woman. It’s all of them. They’re all like that.”
Victor cast a glance over his shoulder at Colonel Weeks, but the Colonel didn’t notice them talking. “All right, man. I’ll bear it in mind.”
He started to turn away, but Finn caught him and pulled him back. “You say they asked for me specifically. How do I know it wasn’t her? How do I know she didn’t get her father to request me?”
Victor’s eyebrows shot up. Then he bit back laughter again. “Are you fucking kidding me? If she’s that hot under the collar for you, why don’t you just go ahead and nail her like you know you want to? When did you ever balk at using a woman to your advantage? So you’ll be doing it for your Crest this time instead of just wetting your dick for your own perverted enjoyment. What could be wrong with that?”
Victor turned back to his business. Finn scowled at him from behind, but he couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He cursed Victor for being right. Finn never thought he’d live to see the day he admitted Victor Griffin was right. Now he’d seen everything.
Why the Christ shouldn’t Finn take advantage of Claire for the Crest’s benefit? Why on Earth should he get all pure about it after all these years? Everyone in the Prometheus Crest knew Finn Weeks used his charm and magnetism to exploit women for his own aims. He made no secret about it. In fact, he cultivated a reputation as a user and a playboy. He prided himself on his ability to twist women any way he wanted.
He couldn’t do that with Claire Novak and he knew it. She was the one using him for her own gain, not the other way around. He wasn’t so naïve that he pretended otherwise. If any member of the Novak clan specifically requested him to attend negotiations—or socializations, or whatever they were—it must have been her.
