“And by the way, thanks for taking it on, so I didn’t have to,” Seth said. In the background, he could hear the ocean waves lapping against the boat’s hull. Seth loved the water, preferring to spend his days on the family yacht far, far from family drama.
“You can repay me by winning that next yacht race,” he said, smiling at the thought of Seth out doing what he loved, racing across the ocean, the wind at his back.
“Oh, I plan on it.” Wilder could almost hear his little brother smiling through the phone. Nothing gave the kid more joy than being on the open water. “Anyway, I hear Lucinda is very close to getting other shareholders to sell to her. So just be aware she’s trying for a coup.”
“I’m not surprised.” Everything he worked so hard to build could be taken away from him if Lucinda got her way, which he didn’t plan on letting happen. Not now, not ever. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
Harley paced near him, impatience in every step, not bothering to hide the fact she was listening to every word. He supposed he should make this quick, now that he knew it wasn’t a life or death emergency.
“Look, if the worst did come to pass...” Seth paused “...you could always opt out of the Lange legacy. You don’t need it.”
“I owe it to Dad. You know if Lucinda got control, she’d just liquidate everything. Immediately. All she cares about is money.” He clenched his jaw, as he glanced at Harley who stood studying him, not bothering to hide that she was eavesdropping. That almost made him smile. He glanced beyond her to his father’s books on the shelf. Dad had left him these and the penthouse. He’d left Seth his boat, and the other boys had gotten more cash than they could probably spend in their lifetimes. Lucinda had gotten much less and had spent the last seven years trying to get what she thought was her fair share. At least in death Dad had admitted that Lucinda was...less than deserving.
“Dad’s dead. He can’t care about the company anymore. You could sell. Especially now that you turned the failing company around. Start your own business. You don’t need to be fighting Lucinda all the time.”
Hadn’t he been doing that his whole life? He wasn’t sure he knew how to do anything else. Plus, he was closing in on forty. This was quickly becoming his own legacy. Not just his father’s.
Harley Vega stopped her pacing, crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. He’d wrap this up.
“Trust me, life is better away from her.” Wilder could imagine Seth standing on the decks in the bright sunshine. He was happy for his younger brother, truly happy, but also felt a deep-seated envy. Wilder didn’t know how to let things go. If something needed doing, he did it. Period.
“Say, did you give Harley Vega a call like I suggested?”
“I did.” He glanced over at Harley and she froze. The impatience on her face changing to...curiosity. “I’m trying things out.”
She took her seat once more, gazing out the windows of his study, waiting for him to end the call.
“Good. You deserve a happy ending, too, brother. Pun intended.”
“Ha. Ha. Very funny.” Wilder rolled his eyes.
“Well, if you’re going to be fighting off Lucinda at every turn, then you need to have a way to blow off some steam. I also think if you just got away from that nest of vipers for a little while, come out on the boat, maybe you’d get your mojo back.”
“If I left, Lucinda would have me booted, no doubt, and take over the company now that it’s finally turning a profit.”
“Would that be so bad?”
“Just go sail your boat, little brother.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Seth paused. “Watch your back, Wild,” he said. “And call me if you need anything.”
“Will do.”
Wilder ended the call and stared at his phone for a minute. He couldn’t help but wish Seth was here, the brother closest to his own age, the one who’d watched his back countless times in school and in life. The bond between them ran deep, and after he’d come out to him in high school, the bond had grown deeper. Wilder had been even more protective of Seth. He had helped Seth talk to their father about it, who’d accepted the news without any judgment. Lucinda, however, had been a different story. She’d been raised by conservative parents, and thought being gay was a choice. No matter how often Wilder, Seth or their father would try to explain sexual orientation was something you were born with, she’d never accept that Seth’s attraction to other men was something he couldn’t control. Wilder was glad Seth was happy out there on the wild blue sea. He deserved that happiness. Wilder wondered if he would be happier out there, too. But duty called.
And right now, that duty was Harley Vega.
“Sorry about that,” he said again. “It’s one of my little brothers. He’s abroad and I just wanted to make sure he’s okay.”
“Oh.” She seemed to be considering this a moment. “And is he?”
“Fine,” he said. “Not that he’s really trying to stay out of trouble.” Wilder laughed a little.
“Sounds like my sister,” she said. The two exchanged a glance and for the first time she seemed as if she did not want to kill him. That was progress.
“So.” She cleared her throat as she recalibrated, the warm moment cooling. He was losing her again. He needed to win her over. Needed to try harder. Watching her there, back ramrod straight, legs crossed at the knee, her almost-sensible pumps on, he felt a stirring in his groin. He nearly did a double take, as he glanced down at his lap. He hadn’t felt anything there for months. Hell, more than a year, if he were honest with himself. Could seeing this woman’s bare calves have this kind of effect on him? he wondered. Maybe he got off on therapy. Or maybe...he got off on her.
She studied him now, lacing her fingers together. “So, tell me about what’s concerning you most. About...your issue.”
What was concerning him most was how he was halfway to an erection, a thing he thought had left him for good. He took a deep breath and stared at Harley, who blinked at him, her pink lips full and halfway parted, and felt all of her laser-like attention focused on him. He liked it. Her attention.
“Well, I’d like to be normal.” Hell, he’d just like to get back to his life. That was all. Right now on his phone he had a dozen playful and sexy missives from his crew of friends with benefits, women who were always eager and ready for a good time. Except he wasn’t able to show them one. Not with his current predicament.
“There’s no such thing as normal, really,” she said. “There’s just people and what they like and don’t like. A normal amount of sex to one man is not the same for another.”
“Yes, but I’d just like to have sex. Period.” He felt like such a failure. He hated admitting defeat, and even worse than that, hated asking for help. He never asked for help in his life. Yet, he needed her help, whether he liked it or not.
Except that, right at this moment, he seemed not to have any problem with getting turned on. He shifted, crossing his legs to try to get his own growing hard-on under control, and almost laughed to himself about the irony of hiding his erection when he’d just told her he couldn’t get it up.
“Are you having trouble getting hard...or staying hard?” she asked him.
“Getting,” he admitted, though from the stiffness he felt growing in his lap, he doubted she’d believe him. “And maintaining.” He swallowed, hard, and crossed his legs. That seemed to make things worse so he uncrossed them. Was it the woman’s voice? It seemed every time she spoke, she was like a snake charmer, playing a delicate tune that only his cock seemed to fully appreciate. She was weaving a spell around him even now, her light brown eyes focused on him, her skin looking almost bronze beneath his study lights, her hands gently clasped in her lap. What he wanted to do was lean across the space between them and kiss her, feel for himself whether her lips were as soft as they looked. Hell, what he wanted to do was lie her down on the floor r
ight now and taste all of her. The thought of finding her delicate pink—or would it be more mauve or magenta?—center set off a five-alarm fire in his brain, and his groin responded, growing harder even now. He casually put his hands in his lap, amazed to feel himself coming to life there. Now, you pick the time to work? He cursed his body, cursed the way the thing stubbornly refused to follow his orders.
“How long has this been an issue?”
The fact was, Lange’s mind and his body had been at odds for quite a long time, but it was only in the last year that it had become a crippling problem. He thought back to his last disastrous date with that swimsuit model... Now, he couldn’t remember her name, though she’d graced the covers of any number of magazines. How she’d patted his hand, a look of pity on her face, as she told him, “This happens to men all the time.”
Except that it didn’t happen to Wilder Lange. Not ever.
Except now it did.
“About a year ago, it started. It was on and off for a while, but now it’s...” Every single time he tried to take a gorgeous woman to his bed. “Constant.” He almost spat the word. He hated failure, wouldn’t tolerate it in any other aspect of his life, and yet the one part of his life that was supposed to be easy, fun and uncomplicated—his sex life—he couldn’t make happen.
“Have you tried medication?” she asked him, her voice clinical. So why did it affect him so much?
“I’ve tried them all.” This was the sad truth. He’d had all the prescriptions, and none worked. His last doctor had suggested it was a mental block. He’d seen half a dozen traditional therapists, psychiatrists and psychologists, but none of them had gotten at the root of his problem, either. “I’ve got a complete clean bill of health. No infections. No STIs. No high blood pressure. No weight gain. Nothing physical that would account for the issue.”
“Do you usually wear protection?”
“Always,” he said, not sure what that had to do with anything. “What does that have to do with this condition?”
“Nothing. I’m just trying to figure out how reckless you are.” She quirked an eyebrow.
“So it has nothing to do with my problem?”
“Probably not.” A sly smile tugged at the corner of her lips. Despite her struggle to be professional, she was enjoying this. Just a little bit. Well, he supposed he deserved it.
“And you? Do you?”
She didn’t even raise an eyebrow. She wasn’t easily thrown. “Yes, I do. And get tested every year. It’s the responsible thing to do.”
“I’m glad we’re both responsible, then.” He’d much rather talk about her habits, even if they were clinical, than his. “Do you always keep yourself on such...a tight leash?”
She studied him. “I’m not the one who asked you for sex advice, Mr. Lange.”
He laughed at that. God, the woman was quick. Blunt. To the point. He loved it. Found it unbelievably refreshing. He was surrounded on most days by people who were eager to get so far up his ass they might as well have been giving him a colonoscopy. She wasn’t going to let him get away with anything. That’s exactly what he needed.
“Are you able to pleasure yourself?” she asked, which took him off guard.
He nodded, once. It was the last thing he wanted to talk about. It felt strikingly shameful. He’d been a man who up until a year ago was fighting women off, had his pick of any number of gorgeous, willing partners, except that now he couldn’t fully enjoy them. Hell, he didn’t even want to try. That was the worst part.
“How often?” She stared at him a beat too long and his cock responded. He was on his way to full-blown readiness. He glanced away, focusing on the sprawling cityscape outside, and the big rectangle of green that was Central Park. They were so high above the park it could have been the view from a plane. Yet, he could still see the vague outline of the walking paths, where his mother used to take him almost every Sunday before she died. He felt the intensity of want for Harley slip away in that moment, as his past, a ghost intent on haunting him, made its presence known.
“Not that often.” If he were honest with himself, he hadn’t just lost the ability to get and stay hard, he’d also largely lost interest in sex. Maybe he’d overloaded himself. Running Lange Communications and being the patriarch of the Lange family was no easy task. He’d managed to keep the brothers on task and Lucinda away from the family coffers, but the fact was that he was starting to feel worn out. He’d used sex as his way of relaxing, as his way of taking something for himself, but now that he wasn’t able to do it, he was starting to question everything.
Harley studied him, intently. He expected to see pity there, that horrible look he’d seen in the eyes of so many of the women he’d tried to seduce recently, the pity that slashed at him like a knife to the groin. He hated pity. Pity was for weak people, for pathetic people, and Wilder was many things, but he’d spent his life proving he wasn’t weak. Or pathetic.
But Harley wasn’t pitying him. And she wasn’t studying him like a bug in a petri dish, either, thankfully. She was still a bit angry with him; he could almost feel the heat pulsing in her veins. He knew that was there, brimming just below the surface, and that’s exactly what he needed. Someone who’d call him on his bullshit. And she was the woman to do it.
“Often, people can experience psychological blocks that impede....certain natural behaviors,” she said. “Stress can play a role, for sure, but so can past trauma. Is there anything that might have happened when you were younger that might be surfacing now?”
He looked away from Harley and back out to Central Park. He hadn’t had the easiest childhood, but he was determined to leave the past in the past. There was nothing in his past that could hurt him, and he damn well wasn’t going to rehash any of it here. If ever.
“No,” he said. He was almost convinced it wasn’t a lie.
Harley leaned forward, and he turned his attention to her in time to see the hint of the top of her left breast at the V of her shirt. He desperately wanted to lay his cheek there. “I think what can benefit you the most is simply talking about some of the challenges you are facing—and have faced—in your life, and I think you’ll find that we can get you back to where you’d like to be. But you don’t need me for that. You could get a therapist.”
Disappointment hit him, cold and hard. No, he needed her, not someone else. “I’ve tried therapists. They don’t work. They’re afraid to be blunt with me.”
“You just want abuse, then.”
“Maybe. Something like that. I need someone to shake some sense into me.” Now, he had something else up his sleeve. Some other bit of information he knew about Harley Vega. “And there’s one more thing I need from you.”
“What’s that?” Her brown eyes studied him, wary.
“For the duration of treatment, I’ll need you to live here. With me.”
CHAPTER FOUR
HAD HE JUST invited her to live with him? She’d live with the man who’d fired her? The man she hated?
“No. Absolutely not.” She shook her head. White-hot panic rushed down her spine. It was one thing to treat this intriguing man on a weekly basis. It was another thing to live with him and see him daily. Would she be able to stuff down her attraction for him under those circumstances? She wasn’t even sure she could treat him or if she’d just be playing at being therapist. Also, she hated him. Hated everything about the corporate shark who gutted companies and left hundreds of unemployed in his wake. Maybe he did have an endearing relationship with his brother, but that didn’t change who he was.
“There’s more than enough room,” he said. “You can live in the east wing.”
East wing? Since when did a penthouse have wings? Then again, she guessed, this was no ordinary penthouse. It was, after all, three levels at least. “No. That’s off the table.”
“It’s completely contained, with its own kitchen and other f
acilities. And my servant staff will be at your disposal, should you need them. If you’d rather have your privacy, that’s fine, as well. And, obviously, I wouldn’t burst in on you. We can set rules.” Wilder stood then, too, even as Harley moved away from him to the windows, her mind crowded with a million worries.
“What kind of rules?”
“Any you’d like.”
Would it work? Could she effectively treat someone in his own house? The idea seemed absurd. Since when did a life coach live with a client? And yet...why wasn’t she dismissing it outright? Why was she even considering it for a second? She knew why. It was the damn money. She hated that the money actually meant something. That she might just need it.
“Why live with you? I don’t need to live with you to treat you or coach you, or whatever it is you need from me.”
“I want you to treat me exclusively. I’ll need to have access to you when I need you. And I work long hours and need someone, well, someone at my beck and call.” Of course, he did. Since when were billionaires reasonable? Since when did they respect other people’s schedules and free time?
“You think I’ll drop everything at two in the morning if you need a chat.” She crossed her arms.
“Maybe.” Wilder moved closer to her. Even without looking, she could feel him behind her, less than a foot away.
“It sounds like you want a security blanket. Not a life coach.”
“Also, you living here would solve a second problem, which is that I can’t afford for anyone to know you’re treating me.”
“Having a sex advice columnist under your roof might raise suspicion.” Harley glanced over her shoulder at him, frowning.
“Believe me, women come and go in my penthouse. You won’t raise suspicion.”
“I’m not someone you’re dating,” she said, wondering if she needed to point out the obvious.
“Yet.” His face remained expressionless and she was wondering if he was kidding or not.
The Sex Cure Page 3
