That’s what I’m doing with Henry’s affection. Making pictures that aren’t there. Elaborate diagrams of him wanting me. But it feels so real.
He holds the lapels of the jacket snugly shut, his breath gusting warm on my forehead. “I’m so glad you could see this.”
His tender gaze sizzles over my skin. Like he’s really looking at me. And then he smiles.
His eyes sparkle. Uneven dimples appear. It’s his Henry smile. The real Henry smile.
I reach my hands out from my coat cocoon and grab his soft, warm shirtfront, pulling him to me.
I kiss him.
Boom. He deepens the kiss. My kiss was soft, but his is rough and wild. With his other hand, he cradles my cheek, fingertips trembling with energy where they touch my skin.
“Vicky,” he rumbles. He walks me backward into a massive concrete pillar.
My hard hat falls down over my eyes.
“No, no, no,” he rasps, yanking it clear off my head and tossing it over his shoulder.
Because he wants to see me.
Somewhere behind us there’s a splock, and a softer splock as the hard hat comes to rest. I can barely hear it over the hurricane of my pulse whooshing in my ears.
And I want him so bad, I’m shaking.
He fists my ponytail. My breath hitches as he slides the backs of his fingers up my throat, up to the tender underside of my chin. His touch sears me.
“Henry,” I say, trembling down to my toes.
“I love watching my name on your lips.” His voice is ragged.
Silently, I mouth his name: Henry. And then again, Hen—
He doesn’t let me finish; my lips are still open when he kisses me, a desperate, open-mouthed kiss with the fury of a thousand senselessly whirling stars.
He shoves his hand into my hair, cradling the back of my head, pressing me back against the cool concrete post.
I can feel the shape of him against my belly, huge and hard. I want to wrap myself around him, to dissolve around him. To obliterate myself on him.
His breath is ragged as he bends to get our lips level. I reach behind him, fitting hungry hands around his warm, solid back, digging in with my fingers a little.
He makes a growly sound as he rains kisses over my cheek, my neck, before taking my lips once again.
The cool breeze caresses my exposed legs, but underneath my clothes, sweat trickles down my spine.
The entire building seems to sway in time with my thundering pulse, in time with Henry, pressing himself to me.
Somewhere down on the street, trucks and cars rumble by and honking horns are answered by other honking horns.
He’s still wearing his own hard hat. It’s sexy.
His breath turns erratic as he runs his hands over the sides of my hips, up and down. “You and your skirts,” he says, like my skirts are a point of awesomeness.
Without warning, he grips my ass—clenches it hard—fingers like steely vise grips. He jerks me against his rock-hard erection and I gasp to feel the size of him through our clothes. “You feel that?” he snarls, notching himself to me, pulsing against me. “That’s how you have me every day. Damn! You already feel good.”
“Oh my god, yes,” I breathe. He presses me harder. His weight feels amazing. I gasp as he kisses my cheek, my neck. Every time he moves, the pressure between my legs changes and my ache builds.
I’m pulling up his shirt, freeing it from his pants and belt. Finally I get to his warm abs. I press my hands there. I’m a thief now, taking what’s not mine. Consuming his belly, rough smattering of hair over muscle.
I don’t care if it’s not real anymore. It’s real enough.
“I’ve imagined this for so long,” he says, pulling away, panting.
I shiver as he skims his fingertips over my sweater-clad breasts “These fuzzy sweaters.”
“Take it off me,” I say. “Let me watch you unbutton it. Like before. How you started to before.”
“Have you been thinking about it?” he asks. “You been beating off to it?”
“Yes,” I breathe.
His fingers tremble as he unbuttons the pearl buttons of the sweater. I love that he’s trembling.
“Pull up your skirt, then,” he says.
I hunch over and pull it up, turning it inside out, gathering it up.
He pushes a hard-cut thigh between my legs. “Ride it. Move. I’m gonna need you good and wet.”
“I don’t know how much more wet I can…”
“Ride it,” he growls. He gyrates his hips, getting up the rhythm. I match his movement, moving while he undoes me. It’s a little embarrassing, but it feels so good.
“Harder,” he whispers in my ear. “If you want me to undo these dainty buttons, you gotta do your part.” He nudges my legs wider. “Ride.”
I do it. Satisfied, he returns his attention to the buttons.
“I look at these buttons sometimes…damn,” he pants. Like he’s lost his ability to make sense. He kisses my forehead. “You watching me down there?” His fingers are soft spiders at my midriff, undoing the third-to-last button. The second-to-last button. “Unwrapping you. You watching?”
“I’m watching,” I say.
“Is this what I’m doing when you beat off? Don’t bother trying to tell me you don’t.” He knows it is. He flicks the last button. My sweater falls open.
His thigh between my legs is blunt waves of pleasure. He fists the center of my cami, uses it to pull me into a faster rhythm. “I love how you move on me.” He skims his palms up the front of me, sliding over the white fabric, calluses catching and snagging. “Like this?” he says. “Is this what I do to you next?”
“Next,” I pant, “you do whatever you want to me.”
His chuckle is a rumble in my ear. He curls his fingers around the tops of the bra cups and jerks down. I gasp at the violence of the movement. My breasts pop free with a jiggle.
“Jesus, you’re hot,” he says. He throws off his hard hat and kisses me roughly, then pulls away, panting.
“Watch my hands, kitten, watch what I do to you.” He presses his hands over my breasts, rough and warm. “So hot. My cum would look so good right here. All over these pretty tits. You look so prim and proper, it makes me want to corrupt you. It makes me want to unravel you. There are so many layers to you, and I’m going to fuck them all.”
The layers comment sends momentary alarm through me, but then he plucks my nipple, and the zing of it flares bright white inside me.
“So entitled.” My breath speeds. The city spreads out below us like another world, another time, dizzying and slightly unreal.
“Why aren’t you riding?”
“I need something else there now,” I say. “But isn’t this a little bit exposed up here?”
“Nobody sees you but me,” he says.
I think it might be true on a level he doesn’t mean. I don’t know how to feel about that. He slides the pads of his fingers over my lips. Lust runs thick between us.
“Open.”
I gaze up at him, knuckles grazing his steely abs.
“Wetness is not going to be a problem,” I say.
“Baby.” The word feathers my cheek. “You’re not the only one beating off to things these hands might do.” He slides a thumb over my bottom lip, pulling it down. “Open.”
I open and he slips two fingers between my lips, into my mouth. “Suck. Get them nice and wet. These are the fingers that are going to fuck your pussy.”
Heat rushes through me as I palm his bulge, as I suck his fingers, as I run my tongue over them. He slides them in and out, watching me.
“This is how you’re going to suck my cock when the time comes. Except you’re going to squeeze the root and give me a little teeth on the bottom. Try it.”
It’s so Henry to give me a tutorial on sucking his cock. I wrap my hand around his fingers and give him a little graze with my bottom teeth.
“Oh yeah. Perfect.”
He pulls out his fingers an
d anoints my nipples. They pebble in the cool breeze coming off the water.
“Only I see you.”
He pulls aside my panties with rough efficiency and curses, low and rumbly, when he finds me waxed and wet.
“Fuuuck,” he groans. “What have you been hiding under these librarian skirts?”
“Not books,” I say.
His fingertips brush my sensitive clit, sending a jolt of pleasure through me, making me gasp.
A dimple appears on his cheek and I kiss it. It goes away, but then it appears again and I kiss it.
“What are you doing?”
“Being so into you I can barely think,” I say.
He pulls away, panting, eyes wild, beard stubble sparkling. “Oh, yeah?”
Suddenly I feel bare to him. Not just physically, but soul-deep bare. As if his fingers are everywhere inside me. “Yeah.”
He slips rough, thick fingers deeper between the folds of my sex. My head tips backwards onto the hard pillar, eyes drifting closed.
“Oh, yeah,” I say as he slides them against my clit with the perfect motion. He changes his angle, and this new sensation swirls through me, making me senseless and lightheaded.
“Do the nipple pluck thing,” I whisper.
He breathes out a shaky fuuuuck. “You are so…everything.” He does the nipple pluck thing and I cry out. It’s rougher than I expected. Better than I expected.
He exhales a shaky breath and kisses my cheek and then my ear. His teeth graze my earlobe, sending wicked lightning all through me. He plucks my nipple again, softer this time.
It’s like he’s learning me. Exposing my secrets. Stripping me bare for the first time.
His fingers send rippling heat up through my core.
His strokes go long and strong. He slides two fingers in. I suck in a short, sharp breath.
“I gotcha, baby.”
I crash over the edge. White-hot pleasure. Naked and alive.
“I gotcha, baby.” He pins me to a pillar high above the city, raining kisses over my face. I’m lost. I’m found. I clutch his arms, kissing him back.
“Damn,” he says again. As though the whole thing surprised him.
I feel shaky all over. And fresh and new.
I don’t care what’s real or not.
I’m all-in.
I drop to my knees, gazing up at him. I fit my hand over his bulge and give it a small squeeze.
“Jesus.” He tunnels both hands into my hair, half ripping it out of the ponytail holder.
With shaking hands I undo his belt. He takes over, quickly undoing it. “Leave it to the professionals,” he says.
And then he touches my chin. I think he’s about to explode, but he touches my chin. Like he kind of can’t believe I’m in front of him.
I love his eyes on me. I love the sunshine of his gaze. I usually prefer the shadows, but Henry’s breaking all the rules.
I pull him out; he’s big, broad, and club-like, pink at the tip. Soft as silk.
Watching him from underneath my lashes, I give him a lick.
He stutters out a breath. “Do you know how hot that is?”
So I do it again. I really will give him anything.
I turn my attention to his cock in earnest. I take him into my mouth, squeezing him at the root. A pained sound escapes him. Fingers close over my head. He starts to thrust gently into me, guiding my head but not forcing it.
A triangle of his belly is exposed and it pulses in and out, like he’s breathing double time.
I squeeze the warm, velvety base of him. I take him deep.
His fingertips pulse and curl at my scalp with every thrust, like his excruciating pleasure is coming out his fingers. I sneak a look at him standing over me, broken and beautiful.
And then I give him a little teeth, just a graze at the bottom. “Holy shit,” he says.
He clamps his hand onto my head and takes over the motion, fucking my face, coming with a strangled cry.
After he pulls out, he kneels in front of me. “Holy shit,” he whispers.
“Yeah,” I say.
He traces my lips with his finger. “It was more. How you were was more than I imagined. You’re always more.”
I put my camisole’s bra cups back over my breasts. He starts buttoning up my buttons. Clumsily.
“The professionals,” I say, taking over.
He stands, tucking in his shirt. “Gotta get you cleaned up.” We get ourselves together and drift over to the elevator.
Chapter Nineteen
Vicky
I stab the makeshift button, feeling dazed. Stab stab.
“Hey,” he says.
A grinding sound comes from below. Like the elevator didn’t get the message.
Stab stab stab.
“Don’t do that,” he catches my wrist. “You’ll burn out the winch starter.”
“Somebody is quite the micromanager,” I say.
He kisses my fingers.
The little cage arrives with a strange whirring sound and I get in, and then he gets in and hits the down button. The elevator lurches and begins to lower. It sounds funny. Different than before.
Just then, a motor below makes a grinding, screeching sound.
“Shit,” he says.
“What is that?” I ask.
“We’re okay,” he says, but the cage we’re in grinds to a stop. The motor falls silent. The light flickers out.
We’re in the darkness. Deep in a well.
“No!” I whisper, turning and clutching the cage side. “No…”
“We’re okay. There’re safety cables all up and down this.” A light flashes on—Henry’s phone. He’s talking to somebody, trying to work out what floor we’re near.
I slide to the cold, corrugated floor, arms around my legs, back against the chain-link cage. I’m in that well again, that well where I spent three lonely, terrified days.
Breathe. Breathe.
You’re not there.
“Vicky?”
Breathe. Breathe.
He squats next to me. Gently, he settles his hardhat onto my head.
“Okay, that just makes me think we’re going to crash headfirst,” I say. “Or something is going to crash on top of us.”
“None of the above,” he says, adjusting it to fit my head. “I’m only putting it on you because I know I’d lose points off the manliness portion of the New York’s Most Eligible Bastard competition if people knew I was hogging the only hardhat in a situation like this.”
I nod.
“Here’s my thinking.” He settles in next to me. “We know I can win the swimsuit part of the Most Eligible Bastard competition. And I have the name memorization bit nailed. But as you can imagine, the manliness portion is extremely important to me.”
Hammers and voices ring up from below.
“You can smell me if you want.”
“I’m so not smelling you.”
He checks his phone, then puts it down in a way that lights the area in front of us. That helps, too. “My guys are down there working on the machinery. It’s a simple winch starter issue…”
“A winch starter issue,” I say. “Like what? Tell me.”
“You want to hear about the winch issue?”
“Did I burn it out like you said I would? Wait, don’t answer that. Just tell me about winches.” I hate how tiny and scared my voice is. I really just need him to be talking. “Start at the beginning. The history of winches.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
I press my fingers to my forehead, feeling so messed up and hating the silence. “I’m being sarcastic, but also I want you to.”
He seems thoughtful in the silence. He takes my hand, warm and cozy in his. “I have something better to tell. My secret.”
“You have a secret?”
“How I do the names.”
I look up at the outline of his head in the dark. “How?”
“I took a class in memorization techniques. You can’t say anythin
g. I don’t ever want our employees to feel like a number.”
“You took a class? That’s commitment.”
“It means a lot to people, and as the company grew, it got harder and harder. So I took the class. I know it sounds a little intense, but people…they see me in a certain way, and I don’t like to let them down.”
“Wow,” I say. “You make it look so easy. You make it look so easy to be you.”
He huffs out a quiet little laugh. Shifts my hand in his. “Anyway, everybody gets a special visualization location. If somebody is named Mike, I imagine him on a stage singing with a microphone. Clarence is in an orchestra playing a clarinet. Dirk is in dirt.”
“What about Fernando?”
“Are you serious? ABBA.”
“Like it’s so obvious.”
“Isn’t it?”
“What did you use for me?”
“I’m not telling.” I hear the smile in his voice.
I widen my eyes. “Come on.”
“Nope. Sorry.”
Playfully, I shove at his shoulder. I kiss his cheek. I nip his earlobe. “Please,” I beg.
“Nope.”
“Hmmph. Well I’ve got one for you, Henry. For the name Henry. And you won’t like it.”
He says nothing.
“You won’t like it. Not. At. All,” I add. Then it hits me. “There are thousands of employees! You remember all their names?”
“Only the local ones.”
“That’s more than a thousand,” I say. “That’s…intense.”
“Once I started it, I felt like I had to keep it up.” A thread of weariness winds through his words. He makes it look easy to be him. Doesn’t mean it is.
More hammering from below. “How long until we’re out?”
“I don’t know. Between ten minutes and an hour.”
“Uh.” I pull into myself more tightly, my limbs finding the old familiar grooves with each other. I feel like I’m falling, falling, back into that well.
“Are you claustrophobic?”
I pull my legs tighter. I should answer, but I want him to talk, not me.
“You seemed okay in the many elevators we’ve been traveling,” he says.
“It’s because this shaft feels like a well. The unfinished sides, the light above.”
“Oh.” A beat, then, “Do you have…history with a well?”
Girl Meets Billionaire Page 68
