“I’m going to make you pay for ruining my plans.”
Taking me by the hand, he leads me over to the bed. He sits on the edge and I stand between his legs as he runs his fingers along the edge of the cup of the corset. My nipples are so hard they hurt. “You’re very beautiful in this, but I think you're more beautiful naked.” With a flick of his wrist, he unhooks the corset, and it falls to the floor. Suckling my nipple, he bites and pulls aggressively, and I moan my appreciation.
He hooks his fingers in the sides of my thong and slips it over my hips, then moves me to the bed beside him. His touch never leaves my skin as he gets me on all fours and then stands behind me.
His cock nudges me, finding me slick. “You’re ready,” he says on a groan. “Always ready for me.” And then he’s inside me, pushing my walls apart, opening me, waiting patiently until my body can accommodate his size. My mouth opens on a silent cry. He feels so good inside me.
He swears under his breath, holding himself inside me. “Yes, you’re going to be my wife. But right now I want you to enjoy this.” His hands dig into my hips, fingertips bruising.
That’s the only warning before he slams fully into me again so hard that I let out a shriek of surprise.
He withdraws and then pushes in again, completely focused on his own wild pleasure. He slams into me again and again, rubbing at my special spot inside. The teasing from before, the pain right now, it all blends together in a whirlwind of sensation.
I can’t hold it any longer, and I shatter completely. My orgasm comes suddenly, making my insides bear down, my hips bucking back against him. He shouts as his cock pulses fresh heat into my sex. He draws out his orgasm and mine, pushing his still-firm cock into my slick heat with lazy thrusts, every slide sending a new wave of sparks shooting behind my eyelids.
“Harder,” I whisper, though I’m not sure who I’m saying it for, him or me. I don’t think it matters; we’re the same being when he’s inside me, moving toward one goal.
He pulls back for a brief moment of respite, and then he’s deep inside me once more, his invasion thorough, his cock pulsing in pleasure. I release a pent-up sound of ecstasy, fisting the sheets as my second orgasm rips through me.
Mason speeds up, fucking me with rough intent, every thrust pushing me deeper into the bed, marring my makeup and loosening my hair. My nipples are hard and sensitive from the repeated raking across the sheets. Every sensation inside me is on fire, and I don’t want it to burn out.
It swirls ever higher, tighter, sharper until I’m mindless on the end of his cock. “Please,” I whisper.
“Promise me,” he grunts.
“Anything,” I moan. I’ll promise the moon so long as I reach the pinnacle I’m so desperately searching for.
His voice is harsh, roughened by sex but determined. “Promise you won’t give up on us. You won’t let outside forces drive us apart.”
My mind is drenched with need. It’s hard to think, hard to speak. It feels like I haven’t spoken in a thousand years. My mouth struggles to form words. “I promise.”
With a final push, he comes undone, and we collapse and lie in each other's arms, catching our breath. I finally take a moment to look at the ring. It’s beautiful, with a large center stone and a band of pavé diamonds.
“Do you like it?” he asks.
“It’s absolutely perfect. It’s not too big and ostentatious. I love it.” I stare at my hand and think about our evening. “You know, we’re going to have to come up with another story about how you proposed.”
“No way. I was a fucking porn star. We can tell them everything.”
I look at him quizzically. “Really?”
“Okay, not a chance. We need a G-rated version. Only we’ll know the truth.”
“I love you.”
Ainsley St Claire
Holiday Heartbreakers
Gifted
A Preview
Chapter one
Kate
Forty kids won’t have a Christmas, and it’s all my fault.
Almost two hundred kids from middle schools across the city and county of San Francisco—from some of the most at-risk areas—met the requirements for our contest, and I’m forty donor/mentors short for our upcoming celebration. At two hundred dollars apiece, I don’t know what I’m going to do. How do I break a promise I made to these kids on the first day of school? Go to school for seventy-five days, don’t be absent, don’t be late, and get a passing grade. If you accomplish all that, you’ll get a two-hundred-dollar shopping spree at Bullseye.
Some people think “paying kids to go to school” is a bad thing. But we get paid to come to work, and some people play solitaire on their computers while they sit there. How is that not paying you for showing up? In a lot of low-income areas—in San Francisco and elsewhere—over half of the students that complete middle school never walk into a high school, and less than ten percent of those who do will go on to graduate. Life isn’t easy for these kids, and going to school every day is not easy with so many distractions. But with some incentive, we see improvement.
I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to fund these last few students and find mentors to spend the day with them while they shop. I’ve tapped my network, and it’s pretty dry. But I can’t disappoint these kids; they’ve had enough disappointment in their lives.
I open the app to my bank account: three hundred dollars. I was going to use that money for my rent next month, and, you know, to feed myself. Right now there’s no man in my life to make sure I get at least an occasional dinner. I check the account for my Visa card, and I can squeeze out maybe two thousand dollars to cover ten kids. But that still leaves me with over thirty more, and still no mentors. Crap! What am I going to do?
Tess walks into my office. “Isn’t this great? We’ve never had this many kids, ever! This could mean we have at least a hundred more kids graduate, and fifteen of those will go on to college, and sixty will go on to trade schools. This is amazing. Are we going to be ready?”
I force a smile. “I hope so. We’re short a few donor/mentors.”
“In this town, people spend two hundred dollars on dinner without a second thought. We should be able to find a few that will give to a good cause.”
“I hope so. I’ve reached out to our board members and asked them to check with their network.”
“How many donors are we short?”
“About forty. I can leverage my credit card for ten of those, but I’m not sure how we’re going to be able to make this work.”
“Kate, if anyone will get this figured out, it’s you. Last year we had barely one hundred kids complete this project. This year we have over two hundred. You need to celebrate that.”
“I will when I lock down the rest of the people we need.”
“Well, then don’t be shy. Bug those board members.”
“I will.”
But I’ve asked them, and they’re in the same boat I am. We’ve tapped out our network. Somehow, I need to reach beyond my friends and get into some of the big players.
“What about your new board member?”
“That’s Stephanie Paulson, and she seems pretty well-connected. She must know a few people that can help us.”
I’ve asked her a few times during our meetings, but I need to try again in writing. I don’t think my board members realize how tough it is to compete without grants in this city.
I craft a carefully worded email to remind Stephanie of our remaining need and the looming deadline, trying to sound just the right amount of desperate. We’re only a five-year-old nonprofit, and we’re making a difference. I can feel it in my bones. But if we can’t make this happen for all the kids who earned it, we may not recover.
This is what keeps me up at night.
After just a few minutes, an email pops up.
To: Katherine Monroe
From: Stephanie Paulson
Subject: RE: Brighter Future Christmas Party
I’m sorry
I kept forgetting. Thanks for the email reminder. I’ve forwarded your note to everyone in my contact list with your information. We should be able to come up with more than forty donors. We’re only asking them for $200 and a Saturday morning, for goodness sake! The party on Christmas Eve is a bonus! Let me know if you don’t hear from enough and I’ll rattle the cages, but at the very minimum, I’ll send over a check for $5,000 you can use for holiday decorations.
Keep up the good work.
XOXO
Steph
That lets me breathe a little easier. This guarantees I have the money. But ultimately, it’s more than the financing we need. These kids need mentors, and spending the day with adults who’ve accomplished something means a lot.
The ringing of my phone interrupts my thoughts. “Kate Monroe.”
“Hello, Miss Monroe? This is Jamal Jenkins.”
“Hey, Jamal. How are you?”
“I’m doin’ real good. I just wanted to make sure you saw that my name was on the list again this year.”
“You better believe I saw your name. I’m very proud of you.”
“Jose made it, too. And we have four of our friends who made it this year. Once they learned they could get two hundred dollars of stuff for just going to school, they were joining us.”
“I can’t wait to see you guys on Christmas Eve get all your gifts.”
“Just make sure the Santa you get this year is a little more realistic.”
I laugh. Last year’s Santa was our CPA, and he’s tall and really skinny. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Great. See you at Bullseye next Saturday.”
“I can’t wait.”
This is exactly why I do this. I worked as a teacher for five years, and it’s the hardest job there is. Not only are you responsible for educating the next generation, but many students have so much going on in their personal life that you end up being their mentor, friend, confidant, and sometimes parent as well.
Chapter two
Jim
Sitting behind my desk and doing mundane things like answering emails is my least favorite activity. I’d rather sit in the rain, soaked to the bone for eight hours, than sit behind a desk.
Today I’ve got two hundred and sixty unopened emails. I know some of them are unopened because I don’t feel like looking at them, but others I should manage. But not today.
I need someone else to start managing these emails. Ever since we made the national news for helping with an international crime ring while protecting a client, we’ve had more inquiries than we can handle. I don’t have the bandwidth to keep expanding. My security firm has only been in business for about eight years, and I have more clients than I know what to do with and a team spread throughout the U.S.
Scanning the emails, I delete the junk mail without opening it, but Stephanie Paulson’s email entitled “Help” stops my scrolling.
I click it open. She sits on a nonprofit board that’s looking for forty people to go shopping with a middle schooler next Saturday and cover a two-hundred-dollar shopping spree.
Interesting concept.
Their goal is to keep kids in school. Thinking back to my own childhood, I’m reminded how opportunities came to me. I was more trouble for my mom than she could handle. When I was seventeen, I landed in front of a judge and he gave me two options: jail for two years or join the Marine Corps.
I didn’t expect to be in the Marines long, but once I got there, for the first time I felt like I belonged somewhere, and I loved the structure the service gave me. I ended up giving them two tours. During my last tour, my commanding officer was a Naval Academy grad. While in school he’d developed an app that moved artificial limbs to a new level that made them behave like actual limbs. He created a multi-million-dollar business, and his son was kidnapped by some less-than-savory characters in a local Chinese gang. The police and FBI were overwhelmed, so he reached out to me as an intermediary and some security. We got his son back, and that was the start of my own security firm. After that, additional work fell into my lap, and I’ve always felt incredibly lucky. Sometimes it takes unexpected opportunities to change the path of a child.
There’s literature about the nonprofit attached to the message, and I open the director’s message about her passion for kids and the importance of education. I can’t help but relate.
I peruse their website, looking it over carefully. I do a background check on the director and founder to make sure everything is on the up and up. Katherine Monroe immediately piques my interest. There are some candid pictures of her on the website, and I open up her PeopleMover page to learn more about her.
She has all her privacy settings on high, and that impresses me. Using my super-secret backdoor password, I’m still able to look at her account. She has pictures of travels and friends. Her status says she’s single—I’m not sure why, but that seems important. She has pictures at an Oakland A’s game. She must be a glutton for punishment if she likes the A’s. Also, she’s stunning—chocolate brown hair with deep auburn highlights, green eyes that I get lost in, and curves in all the right places. I find my pants are tighter than they were before I looked at her pictures, and I very much want to help her cause.
I have a very high-end clientele. I’m sure I can help her get her forty donors. I know exactly what these small gestures mean. I want to make sure that some of my clients make this a priority. Usually they are asking for something from me, but now maybe I can ask them for something. I start with one of my bigger clients, SHN. Mason Sullivan is the managing partner of one of the most successful venture capital firms. He has his hands in the pockets of some of Silicon Valley’s best companies.
Before the call even rings, Mason answers. “Hey, Jim. What’s up?”
“Mason, glad I caught you. I just sent you a message and I wanted to make sure you saw it at the top of your list. One of my other clients, Stephanie Paulson, needs some help and it seemed right up your alley.” I walk him through what I know. “I thought maybe it might be something you and Caroline wouldn’t mind getting involved in and maybe pulling in Dillon and Emerson and a couple of the other partners to help out these kids.”
Mason is quiet for a few moments. “I think that‘s something we can definitely pull off. That shouldn’t be an issue at all.”
“That’s great news. You think all four of you would be willing to commit?”
“I will check everyone’s calendars, but there are nine partners and their significant others I should be able to drag along. I’ll commit to twenty donors. It’ll be good for us to do something for the city who hosts us.”
“I like it. Send me over a list of names and I’ll pass it along.”
I hang up and call the man who created my business. Nate Lancaster’s working on his third successful startup and has more zeros in his bank account than Bill Gates.
“My man Jim. How’s it hangin’?” he says as he answers.
“Hey, Nate. What’s going on?”
“You know, living the dream. Every day is a holiday.”
“Yeah, in your case that’s probably true.”
“Hey, man, how did you know you were on my list to call today? Cecilia wants to know if you can stop by for dinner this weekend.”
“I will commit to dinner with you and the family if you’ll consider a favor for me.” I walk him through the nonprofit and their need. “Can you help me out?”
“Of course. So…can I tell Cecilia you will be bringing a date this weekend?”
I don’t have time to date. When I have an itch that needs scratching, I have a few women I can call, but nothing serious. Women aren’t patient with the lifestyle my job creates. I have to be flexible at all times.
“No, it’ll be just me.”
“She wants to fix you up with one of her friends.” In a low voice he adds, “I know who she’s thinking of, and I like her, but don’t even consider it. Marnie is sweet, but high-maintenance doesn’t even describe her adequately.”
&
nbsp; “Well, you also know my work schedule. No woman is in for this lifestyle.”
“The right one will be.”
I need to change the subject. “Well, in your email box is the information. We need another ten people, so if you know of any others, please ask. Send me a note with who can come.”
“You need ten? I can probably come up with at least five—one will be Marnie.”
I groan internally. “You just said she was a train wreck.”
“I still think she’d enjoy this.”
“Great, confirm and let me know.”
I check my email and find a message from Mason. He has twenty-six people from SHN and a few of their clients. Then I see an email from Nate pop up with the five he’s promised. That leaves us short nine, and I know my team will cover the nine and then some.
To: Katherine Monroe
From Jim Adelson
Subject: Donors
Hi, Kate,
Stephanie emailed me about your need for 40 people to take some kids shopping. I’ve come up with a list of 42 just in case some flake out. And I know I can easily talk a few more people into participating, if needed. Let me know if you have any questions.
Jim
Jim Adelson
CEO Clear Security
I attach a sheet of names with emails and phone numbers. I’m actually looking forward to this. Now I just need to hope my Saturday doesn’t blow up and make my time with my award-winning student rushed in any way.
Thank you!
I really hope you enjoyed the final book in the Venture Capitalist series. I appreciate your help in spreading the word, including telling a friend. Before you go, it would mean so much to me if you would take a few minutes to write a review and capture how you feel about what you’ve read so others may find my work. Reviews help readers find books. Please leave a review on your favorite book site.
Fascination: (Billionaire Venture Capitalist #9): A Friends to Lovers Romance Page 28