Sam inhaled slowly, still looking out the window. “She was the only person I ever loved. The only one who ever loved me.” He chuckled bitterly. “So yeah, if I were the Blooms, I’d have taken the deal. I’d have taken every last penny of it and fucking torched the place myself if there was even the sliver of a chance of those two kids getting to keep their mom.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I said nothing. I moved across the floor and enveloped him in a hug. He hugged me back, the bristles of his beard scratching against my skin.
He still felt so strong, despite everything. I wanted him to hold me forever. I’d spent so much time trying to push these arms away, but why? Because I was afraid of dating another man like Troy? How many times would Sam show that he was a different person, a better man? Troy never would have talked down an irate friend — he would have been to the side, taking bets on the fight. He would never have apologized for any action, only doubled down on how he was right and you were wrong. And he definitely never would have cared about the lives of two children he didn’t know. Or, hell, even those he did know. When he sat crying on the kitchen floor, he didn’t care about the man he’d hit. All he cared about was himself and if he was going to get away with it.
So that was what went through my mind when I pulled away from the hug and stretched up on my toes to kiss Sam firmly on the lips. His eyes widened in surprise as I pulled away.
“I thought…” he started. “This is inappropriate,” he said with no real agency.
“I don’t really care,” I said. “Do you?”
A corner of his mouth lifted. He pulled me closer into his arms and bent down to kiss me, strong and deep. He pulled away long enough to say, “Not in the damn slightest.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sam
Did I just lose my last hope at keeping my position in the company? Did I just split my head open getting hit by a car less than an hour ago?
Don’t know, don’t fucking care. All that mattered to me in that moment was seeing how much of my tongue I could get into Beck’s mouth. After days of tension, after watching that perfect body, those delicious curves, pass me by every day, after denying myself the pleasure of even thinking about my unbelievably sexy assistant, now I was going to make every single one of those repressed fantasies come true.
My hands reached down gripping her hips, feeling her ass through her jeans as I dominated her mouth. She moaned and pushed closer against me until her body was molded to mine.
“Jesus, Sam,” she breathed against me. I didn’t respond, just kissed her harder, deeper, entwining her tongue with mine until we were both craving more. I could practically feel her heat against my crotch as I ground my progressively lengthening dick against her thigh.
“Pants. Off.” I panted, breaking the kiss to pull my shirt over my head. My abs were tight and straining, just like my cock trapped in my jeans. It wanted to get out and go wild, but I knew if I went in now, after this past week of secret want, I wouldn’t last half as long as I’d like to. And right now I wanted this to go on for hours.
So instead, I pulled Beck, stripped in seconds, closer toward me and enveloped her mouth again with mine before pushing her back against my bed.
My bed. In my apartment. There was a reason we’d gone to another location last time. I never brought hookups home and since I hadn’t had a serious girlfriend in years, that meant this was a pure and untouched location in my life. Sleeping with Beck here meant more than just having sex with her. It was welcoming her into my life. Was I ready for this? With so much already on my plate?
Yes, without a doubt.
She fell onto the comforter and I came down on top of her kissing her cheek, her neck, hands massaging her breasts through her bra, slipping under to find that stiffened peak and rubbing it hard with the pad of my thumb. She groaned and her hips bucked into mine, but we were far from that point. Right now, all I wanted was the answer to a question I regretted not finding out last time: what did Beck Harris taste like?
I moved further south, kissing, licking, biting in all the places that made her squeal and moan until I reached that source of pulsing heat between her legs. I ran my tongue up the length until I landed on her clit. She twitched and grabbed my hair at the first teasing touch of my tongue. I played with it gently, only making contact with the tip of my tongue and the heat of my breath, only giving a hint of what she wanted, an erotic promise of what was to come. I was waiting. I wanted to hear her beg for it.
“Sam, please,” she finally gasped, her voice thick with lust.
That was the shot that opened the gates. I dived down, enclosing her clit in my mouth and sucking, pulling with the suction of my mouth against her skin. She gasped and I ground my tongue against the spot before leaving one nipple behind to bring my hand lower until my long fingers traced her folds and one digit wormed its way into her hot, tight center. I attacked her clit while searching with my finger, stroking her walls until I found that place that made her squeeze her legs together around my head.
Practically the moment I found it, she jerked and shuddered, coming hard against my hand as I mouthed her clit, tonguing it until she relaxed back against the bed, spent. For now.
“Sam,” she panted.
“What?” I asked, muffled between her legs.
“I need you inside me,” she said. “Now.”
With my question answered, I was happy to oblige. I pulled myself back up to her mouth, leaning down and kissing her again before rolling off to pull my jeans all the way off along with my underwear. Then I got back into position, positioned my cock at her entrance, and plunged into her silky depths.
Beck inhaled sharply at the penetration. “Is it too much?” I asked.
“Not at all,” she whispered in my ear as I eased more and more inside her. “I just realized how much I missed it.”
That was all it took. I couldn’t go slow any longer. I pushed myself entirely inside and then began to pump in and out, trying to angle myself to hit that spot I’d found with my fingers just moments ago. I watched Beck’s face, helplessly erotic as her eyes squeezed closed and her hands gripped my back so hard I was sure they’d leave marks behind.
Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. She was too perfect and I had never been happier to take the plunge. I pressed her back against the bed and kissed her long and deep while using my hand to grind against her clit. She gasped and came again against me. I pressed all the way inside and came hard, grunting and gasping in my release.
When we were both finished, I pulled out of her and rolled over on my back beside her.
“That probably wasn’t good for my head,” I muttered.
She gave a breathless chuckle. “Worth it though?”
“Completely.”
“Ready to go again?”
I grinned up at the ceiling. “Give me thirty seconds.”
“Thirty… Twenty-nine… Twenty-eight…”
* * *
My windows were tinted to darkness when I woke, but I knew instinctively that I should have been in the office a long time ago. Oh well. It wasn’t like I’d have a job there too much longer. Tom was going to find out soon that I couldn’t secure the Starling, if he didn’t know already, and he’d quickly make the case before the board that I couldn’t be trusted to head the company any longer. He wasn’t right, but I found that I didn’t really care. Or maybe I did and the inevitability of it was just pushing aside the emotion I felt at losing my career.
I glanced at Beck, still sleeping beside me. She had one slender hand stretched across my chest, the other hidden beneath the sheets. Her angelic face was peaceful and content. I traced the curve of her jawline with my eyes and longed to leave a trail of kisses along its length. But that would have to wait until she woke up. For now, I’d let her sleep.
Maybe retirement wouldn’t be so bad after all. I’d spent so much of my life working, all of my teens and twenties in the relentless pursuit of success. I seemed to have missed out on a lot
of things that mattered just as much. Maybe I’d give this love thing a shot after all. It didn’t seem to be going too badly so far.
I used my free hand to tap the remote by my bed that lifted the shades enough to let some light flood into the room. Beck stirred beside me. Oops. She opened one eye and smiled when it found me.
“Sorry,” I whispered. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“That’s okay,” she said, yawning and stretching against me. “I needed to get up. What time is it?”
“Well past work hours,” I said. “I hope they don’t wonder why we’re both missing at the same time.”
“Let ‘em talk,” she said and leaned up kissing me on the cheek. I turned into it, placing my mouth on hers and kissing her deeply.
She pulled away first, just to lean back and examine me.
“What?” I asked, unable to help the smile that crept onto my face.
“Nothing,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just I pegged you for such a hard ass when I first met you. Well, when I met you the second time. You’re actually a bit of a sweetheart.”
“I have my moments,” I said, propping myself up on one arm and grinning down at her. Her blonde hair lay around her like a halo, her skin gleaming in the morning light coming through the windows.
Suddenly, her face dropped, twisted, as if at a bad memory.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
She nodded slowly. “I appreciated you telling me what you did last night,” she said. “You know, about your mom.”
“You’re the first person I’ve ever shared that with.”
“Can I tell you why I left Kentucky?” she asked. “It’s a bit of a story.”
I smiled. “I have all the time in the world,” I said.
She nodded again and was silent for a while. I waited, giving her the chance to gather her thoughts. Then she launched into her story.
“I started dating Troy in high school. We’d known each other forever, of course. That’s Gainesville — you know all your neighbors, especially the son of Jason Cade. His father was rich, owned a bunch of farms and most of the stores in town. Troy wasn’t the best boyfriend in the world, but he was handsome and cocky and always had enough money to do whatever he wanted. While my friends and their boyfriends had to work, we’d go out all night to parties across the county or to the city just to drive and blast music on the way there and back. It was just a lot of fun.
“But then we graduated and I wanted to go to college and he wanted to keep having fun. That was fine. Neither of us wanted to break up, but I was going — I didn’t want to spend my entire life in Gainesville — and I think we both knew long distance was never going to work. So I left and spent two years at State. We’d hang out when I was home, go to parties with the old crowd, reminisce. But my breaks would always come to an end and I’d always leave.
“Then my dad got sick. Pancreatic cancer. It’s a fast killer and Dad and I both knew he wouldn’t last long. But Dad was a fighter. He fought through the summer, past the estimate the doctors gave him. But as hard as he fought, it was getting worse and I hated myself for thinking it, but the longer Dad held on, the further behind I was slipping in college. He knew it too, begged me to leave him and go back. But I couldn’t do that. He was my dad. Mom left when I was a toddler and he was the only family I had left. Given the same choice, I’d make it again.
“He died in January, too late to sign up for winter classes. I told myself I’d go back in the spring, make up for lost time with spring and summer courses. But suddenly I was stuck in Gainesville with nothing to do for four month with the memory of my dad’s final days fresh in my mind.
“At first I only went to him because there was nothing better to do. The sex and the drinking passed the time. But then we became more serious. He had all these plans for his dad’s businesses, if only the old man would give him a shot. He didn’t like to think about the fact that he’d actually never worked a day in his life. His dad offered to show him the ropes, but Troy always thought he knew what was best. And his dad let him keep on thinking that. But at the time, I believed him. I thought he’d be a success and then maybe we’d move to the city and I’d get to leave Gainesville by his side.
“So when spring semester came, I put it off. And the same to the summer. I said I’d go back in the fall, but that never happened. Instead those parties full of old high school friends had turned into my Saturday nights. And Troy still hadn’t gotten a job with his Dad. But he had gotten me a ring, paid for with the money that had always just been there. The days started to blend into one. I was bored all the time because he wouldn’t let me work if he wasn’t working also. We drove his truck around and went to parties with his friends and watched television. It was honestly terrible after a while, but I had a hard time finding a reason to leave. Because wasn’t this what I should want? A guy to take care of me? Who could provide?
“But that wasn’t what I wanted and wasn’t even what I had. I was being taken care of by Troy’s father, not by Troy. And really what I wanted was to break off the engagement and go back to college, but two years had disappeared in the blink of an eye and I didn’t know how to find the strength to start again. Or the strength to leave.
“Because just as I started to admit to myself that Troy’s talk was just that, talk, so did Troy. He started to realize that he didn’t know how to do anything, but instead of admitting that, he started getting worse. We stopped spending time together because he was out with his friends doing drugs and binge drinking. He’d come home drunk and argumentative. He’d blame me for getting him stuck here even though it was the other way around. And he was starting to get in trouble. First it was a public drunkenness ticket. Then it was a DUI. Then it was another DUI. There were probably others too, ones he never told me about. All the charges his dad made go away. He was friends with the sheriff and I think he felt that he had failed his useless, good-for-nothing son. Unfortunately, that just meant that Troy didn’t learn a single lesson from getting caught. If he learned anything at all, it was that he didn’t have to be careful. He had a get-out-of-jail-free card and because he was rich, the rules didn’t apply to him.”
Beck’s breath hitched and she looked down. A pair of tears dropped from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. I reached for her hand and held it tightly in mine. “You don’t have to tell me,” I said.
“No,” she said, “it’s okay.” She took a deep breath. “The weekend before I met you, I woke up to Troy running into the house. He never bothered to be quiet coming home, but I knew something was different. He was panting, hyperventilating. I thought he was hurt. I ran out of the bedroom and found him on the floor of the kitchen, white as a ghost, drunk, high. And he was crying. That’s how I knew he’d fucked up bad. Troy never cried. But he was sobbing then. Big tears running down his face and he looked up at me with startlingly clear eyes and said, ‘I hit him.’ And then he kept repeating it, ‘I hit him. I hit him. I hit him,’ each time getting louder and louder and more and more scared. And I sat on the floor and held him and told him everything was going to be all right, even though I knew it was a lie. Because it was serious this time and if he killed someone, there was no getting out of it. I lied to make him feel better and to ease my own guilt because, like with my dad, I couldn’t help but feel that selfish thought — that once he was gone, I’d be free.
“He wouldn’t call the police at first, and when he finally did, he did it anonymously which I thought was stupid because there was no way they didn’t find out it was him. His truck was busted up from where he ran the guy down — the windshield broken and hood dented to shit. And the next day, the cops were asking around about who put Cory Johnstone in the hospital with a broken back, maybe paralyzed, too early too tell.
“I waited by the door for the next few days, waiting for the bell to ring while Troy hid in the bedroom watching TV and drinking whiskey from the bottle. But when the knock came, it wasn’t the police at all, but his father. He went into t
he bedroom and talked to Troy with the door closed. When he came out, he left without saying another word and without looking me in the eye. He couldn’t bare to see the accusation in my eyes. Because we both knew that it was only a matter of time before he did it again.
“But Troy? I don’t think Troy had the brains cells left to think like that, if he ever did. Troy was over the moon. He was saved. Someway, somehow, his dad had gotten him out of this mess too and he was free. Free to go back to doing whatever the hell he wanted.”
Beck looked me in the eye and said, “He went out to share the news with his friends. I packed my stuff and called a cab to take me to the airport. I had money saved from selling Dad’s house, enough to buy a ticket, enough to tide me over somewhere new. I was done. Troy could ruin all the lives he wanted, but he couldn’t have mine. Not anymore.”
She finished her story, eyes staring off into the distance. I didn’t know what to say, so instead I just pulled her closer to me and kissed her on the top of the head. We sat like that for a long time until my phone rang.
I picked it up. It was my vice president, Cordon.
“Hey,” I said.
“Where the hell are you?” Cordon asked.
“Home,” I said, running a hand through Beck’s blonde hair. “What’s the matter?”
“Ed Bloom’s daughter called. She’s going to sell you the building.”
I furrowed my brow. “Really?” I asked. “That’s fantastic, but did she say why?”
“Nope, just that she’s selling. So you need to get your ass in here now to write this up before Tom finds out it took you this long to get it.”
The Boss (Billionaires of Club Tempest #1) Page 14
