Stay The Night

by Parker, Ali

  It felt good, surprisingly good. Being with Aston felt as natural as breathing to me, so when our food was done, I took a chance and hoped she would take it with me. “Do you want to go back up to my room? We could have a drink or something?”

  If I got my way, it would definitely be ‘or something.’ Aston bit her lower lip, thinking before she agreed. “Okay, I could use a drink after the last couple of days.”

  Back in my room, I headed for the minibar. Aston walked to the windows, staring out for a beat before she turned to me. “About what you said earlier, do you really think you know who I am?”

  Her question surprised me. She hadn’t reacted before and I thought talking about all that was behind us. Before I could answer her, she closed the distance between us and pressed herself up against my body. Our eyes locked, then she was pushing up on her toes and sealed her mouth over mine to kiss me like the ship was going down.

  Where the hell did this come from? I didn’t care though. It was exactly what I wanted, so I wound my arms around her waist and let go of everything outside this room. I was done talking for tonight and it looked like she was too.

  Chapter 31

  Aston

  Holy crap! I did it. I actually did it.

  I had no idea where the courage to do it came from, but I had wanted to kiss him all night. Out of nowhere, I saw my opportunity and I took it.

  It felt so brazen, so bold. So freaking terrified and yet so damn turned on. Blake seemed to be drinking it in though, like a dying man who found a spring in the desert, so I kept kissing him.

  The tables turned when he brought his arms around and took what he wanted from me. I loved every second of it.

  His tongue stroked mine possessively, low noises of pleasure coming from the back of his throat as he explored every nook and cranny of my mouth. His hands traveled up my sides, running up my back and into my hair.

  Changing up the pace of his kiss, it turned hungry. Frenzied. We clawed at each other, desperate to get to each other. My fingers fumbled with his shirt, stupidly reaching until I found the hard nubs of his buttons.

  He did the same to me, his hands much surer and defter than mine. Within seconds, my shirt was open and he was pushing it off my shoulders to the floor. Bending down, he pressed kisses to my jawline, my throat, my chest.

  He walked us backward until my knees hit the bed. Lifting me off my feet, he leaned me back onto the bed. His lips hardly broke contact with my heated skin.

  I moaned as he sucked a nipple into his hot, wet mouth. “Blake.”

  “Just relax, babe. Let me take care of you.” He continued licking and kissing a path down my stomach. Heat spread through my body as his kisses lit me up, causing my nerve endings to spark and come alive as he pressed his lips against me. I held nothing back from him.

  I was putty in his very capable hands. I wrapped my arms around his neck and pushed my chest against him. My hands tugged at his hair as he grabbed my ass, lifting me. Reaching for the zipper on my skirt, he tugged down and threw the offending item off the bed along with my panties.

  Sitting back, he finished the job I started and shrugged out of his shirt. When he reached for the button on his pants, my heart nearly stopped. Too slowly, he undid it. His zipper came next. I watched, fascinated with the way his muscles rippled as he moved until he was butt naked in front of me.

  When he crawled back onto the bed, we were skin to skin. It felt incredible. His hands traveled to my thighs and he squeezed them. He positioned himself over me until I felt his impressive erection pressing hot and slick at my entrance.

  His hands were on my hips, his eyes wild as they searched mine. “You sure about this?”

  “Consider it the last part of your apology for leaving so fast,” I moaned. Rolling my hips, I desperately sought out friction. I needed him inside me so badly it hurt.

  Blake groaned loudly and guided himself into me, way too slowly for my liking. But his muscles were tight with restraint, so I knew he was setting the pace for my benefit. “Stop holding back.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” he gritted out, cupping my face and kissing me deeply. I melted against him, winding my legs around his hips to give him better access.

  Fire kindled in my stomach. I rocked against him and he slammed into me, a deep growl ripping from his chest. I cried out as he began to move with sure, steady strokes.

  Each one filled me in the most perfect way. His hips moved in a precise rhythm, never once breaking pace. He groaned against my lips. “You feel so fucking amazing. So wet. So hot. So fucking tight.”

  I met his thrusts with wild abandon until he was steadily pounding my body, like a piston, over and over. He stretched me out in the most delicious way, rubbing every nerve, every sensitive inch of me. Heat spread through my veins, and tiny bursts of white light exploded behind my eyelids.

  “Blake, please.” I was so close, but I needed more. Which was exactly what he gave me. Reaching down between us, he pressed the rough pad of his thumb against my clit. Circling it and adjusting the pressure until it was just right. My body started shaking and I clung to his shoulders, using him to anchor me as pleasure started pouring over me. My pussy tightened and clenched down on him.

  “That’s right baby, come for me,” he groaned, his muscles tight and quivering. I went flying over the edge with his next thrust, soaring on mind blowing pleasure.

  He rode me through my orgasm and stilled above me with a devilish look in his eyes, still hard as a rock inside of me. It was then that I realized I had gone flying over the edge alone.

  Blake claimed my mouth with his and kissed me hungrily and so hard that our teeth gnashed together. We spent the next few hours fulfilling fantasies I didn’t even know I had. I lost myself in him, surrendering to the mind-blowing pleasure that thundered through my body as he moved inside me.

  He was different this time. More dominant it seemed, less reserved. Last time, he let me take some control, but this time the control was all his and I happily let him have it. It was totally worth it. I was pretty sure I heard angels singing a few times.

  By the time we fell back to the mattress, my head and my heart were both racing. Blake tucked me into the crook of his arm, my head resting on his shoulder. My heart raced after what had been the most intense orgasms of my life, though admittedly my experience was limited. My head though, it was racing for a different reason. I’d never felt a connection like this to any man before, but I couldn’t forget who he was. Not completely.

  My naked body might have been pressed to his, but there was still a lot between us. So much I didn’t know. The most pressing of those questions was about the cuts. He didn’t mention the press conference or the cuts at all tonight, but it was never far from my mind.

  Blake kissed my forehead, his thumb stroking my hip. “Stay with me tonight, will you?”

  My eyelids were already heavy, and truth be told, leaving was the last thing I wanted to do. “Yeah. Yes, I’ll stay.”

  I could ask him about the cuts. His guard was sure to be down, and I needed to know. But I also just needed to be with him. I’d waited so long for a moment like this with him that I couldn’t bear to ruin it by bringing up work.

  The question was on the tip of my tongue when I decided to swallow it. I was going to allow myself to simply be in this moment with him with no distractions. We’d both had a rough few days. We deserved a break.

  Tomorrow, I would get my answer. For tonight, I was going to drift off to sleep in the arms of the man I cared about. Period.

  Chapter 32

  Blake

  When I woke up, Aston was still sleeping in my arms. Her hair was splayed out across my chest and shoulders, her one hand resting on my heart.

  Her breasts brushed against my side as her chest rose and fell in a gentle rhythm that told me she was still fast asleep. I relaxed my head back against the pillow. No way was I moving and taking the chance of waking her.

  If I could have, I would have drawn
the blackout curtains to make the night last for the rest of the day. The sun was rising over the ocean, making the water shine like a mirror and illuminating the bright blue sky.

  Unfortunately for me, the new day brought its own problems. I didn’t want my bubble of peace with Aston to burst. I honestly didn’t want the night we had together to end, so I lay completely still, stroking her hair as I tried to figure out what the best way would be to give her the news.

  If the Palo Alto numbers came back the way Danny was convinced they would, I was going to have to tell Aston that we were going ahead with the cuts here. After everything they had done these last weeks to increase their numbers, it would be terrible to have to tell them that the cuts were going ahead anyway.

  The reality was that they technically still had time. The last time we spoke, Dad gave them two weeks before he would reassess whether the cuts would have to be made at this branch. The time wasn’t over yet, but no reassessment done by Danny would be fair.

  If my last conversation with my brother was anything to go by, his mind was already made up. He had no intention of honoring the time Dad gave the branch, or the promise that their performance would be reassessed thereafter.

  To him, it was a done deal. All that was left was that I had to break the news to them. That was why he sent me here after all, to get the cuts over and done with as fast as possible.

  We were facing quite a bit of backlash over the decision to make the cuts following Danny's press conference and I knew he wanted it to be over. As it turns out, he loved attention from the press so long as it was positive. But the way the business analysts on the news and business programs had been saying the cuts would hurt the company in the long-run was annoying him.

  He wanted the dirty work to be done so he could put the negative publicity behind him. Palo Alto cuts or no, I didn’t want the negative publicity behind us just yet. Danny deserved every word that was being written about his press conference.

  It should never have been held. Frankly, the cuts should never have taken place. At least not until Dad was with us again and could weigh in on the decision. I understood that Danny was nervous because we didn’t know when that was going to happen and the expansion plans all needed cash injections now, but my anger toward my brother was growing.

  Aston was still breathing steadily beside me and I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed and hold her all day, but I couldn’t lie still any more. I needed to check my email, to see if Danny had finally fulfilled his promise and sent me the numbers.

  The uncertainty and feeling like I was still holding something back from Aston were killing me. I needed to know.

  As gently as I could, I extricated my limbs from hers and slid off the bed. She let out a few quiet little moans and I froze, waiting for her to go back to sleep.

  A few seconds later, she released a dreamy sigh and wormed her head onto my pillow. When her breathing evened out again, I knew she was still sleeping.

  Silently, I padded over to my laptop to check my emails. There was still nothing from my brother. I had a sneaking suspicion Danny was going to try and sneak the numbers around in such a way that his friend in New York would be able to keep his job.

  The results of the investigation into the New York branch should be available and ought to have been reported by now, along with the new Palo Alto numbers. If the New York numbers proved me right, which they would, Danny wouldn’t come right out and admit it.

  Knowing him, he would believe his friend over the numbers and insist the investigation was wrong, just like he kept insisting I was. For as long as Danny could keep those numbers away from me, Dustin would keep his job.

  Unfortunately for Danny, I wasn’t going ahead with the cuts in Palo Alto until I saw those numbers, so we were at a stalemate. It wasn’t going to make my brother very happy, but I just didn’t give a fuck.

  I sighed, logging out of my email. There was no point in sitting there staring at the screen until the numbers came through. Aston stirred, rolling over to face me with a soft smile on her face.

  “Good morning.”

  I walked over to the bed, sitting on the edge. “Hey sleepyhead. Sleep well?”

  She nodded, then yawned and stretched out. To my greatest regret, she kept the sheet over her sexy body as she extended her arms up to the headboard.

  Covered or not, she was so damn beautiful. Her eyes closed as she stretched, a lazy smile lifting the corners of her lips when she relaxed again. I really didn’t want her to leave. But it was morning.

  Chances were she was going to have to leave, but then a thought I liked popped into my head. “Do you think you would be able to take the day off and spend some time with me?”

  Surprise widened her eyes. She frowned and sat up on the bed, still making sure the sheet covered her. “Really?”

  “Really.” Waiting for that email all day would drive me crazy. As would sitting around waiting on word about Dad. There were a lot of other things I had to get caught up on, but it could wait. I needed a day. “I need to clear my head. It’s been a rough week.”

  She pushed her eyebrows together. “And you want to clear your head with me? Sounds a little counterproductive. Wouldn’t you rather be alone?”

  “I’ve been alone all week, so no. It wouldn’t be counterproductive at all.” Any time spent with her couldn’t be anything but wonderful. Aston was great at taking my mind off things, probably because half the time I was with her we were completely occupied in mind blowing sex.

  “Okay. I need to check on a few things, but I’m willing to take the day with you,” she said, smiling before she added, “I’ll meet you back here in two hours, tops.”

  Exactly two hours later, Aston and I were walking down to the beach together. It was a beautiful day, made even more so by the radiant girl beside me. She was dressed casually in a blue sundress and sandals with shiny little studs on them that caught the light as we walked.

  We didn’t hold hands, but she stuck close enough to my side that I could smell the vanilla scent of her shampoo. She peered up at me, rose gold framed sunglasses covering her eyes. “So, want do you want to do first on your clear-your-head party?”

  I shrugged. “I didn’t really plan for this, but how about we just keep walking for a while?”

  “Sure.” She grabbed my hand and jerked me off the promenade toward the beach. “But if we’re walking, I want the sand between my toes.”

  Chuckling, I followed her. “I can do you one better. How about the waves at your ankles?”

  “I knew there was a reason I liked you,” she said, then flushed. “I didn’t mean—oh, whatever. Yes, let’s go walk along the shore.”

  Aston kicked off her sandals while I rolled up my pants. She took my hand again, her sandals dangling from her fingers in the other. The water was warm, the waves lapping gently at our feet. It was still early, but there were already a few other people scattered along the beach.

  “Have you heard any news about your Dad?” Aston asked, pausing to scoop up a shell. She rinsed it in the water by our feet before straightening up again.

  I sighed and shook my head. “Nothing new. They warned us it could take time though. No one can say exactly when he’ll wake up.”

  “That must be torture,” she said quietly. She wasn’t pushing me to talk, simply showing interest.

  Suddenly, I found myself wanting to talk to her about it. “Those first few days were the worst of my life, hands down. I stayed at the hospital with him, slept in a chair next to his bed. Every time I dozed off and woke up again, I felt the same shock that he was just lying there sleeping.”

  “I can’t even imagine going through something like that.” She paused, then wound her arm around my waist.

  My arm automatically curled around her shoulders before we kept going. “I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I kept expecting him to wake up, to show some kind of sign that he could hear me. But it never came.”

  “If he’s still unconscious, wh
y did you leave?”

  Shit. I didn’t want to lie to her, but I also didn’t want to worry her before I saw the numbers. I also needed to have a serious conversation with my brother about what was going on at the company before I made any more cuts. Eventually, I decided to tell her the truth without going into too much detail.

  Telling her why I decided to leave was the important part of the answer anyway, not what I had to do after I left. “My dad spent his life building this company. There was no way I could let it get damaged in any way while he was stuck lying in that bed. As much as I wanted to stay with him, I couldn’t abandon my job and leave everything up to my brother alone. There wouldn’t have been the same company for my dad to come back to if I had.”

  “No offense, but I think your brother is a douche.”

  I laughed. “You’re not the only one, but he had a point. I couldn’t just hang around the hospital when the company needed me. I might’ve stuck around if the doctor didn’t come by to tell us the test results were looking good.”

  “What did they say?” Concern weighed her voice down and I remembered when we first met that she told me how much she respected my dad. It hadn’t occurred to me that she genuinely might care about his condition, but it did now.

  I squeezed her shoulders. “He’s going to be okay. Like I told you last night, they said he would survive. We just don’t know what to expect when he eventually wakes up, but they said he should make a full recovery with time.”

  “That’s good,” she said. “I hope he wakes up soon. The entire company needs him.”

  Pausing, I took a deep breath and stared at the vastness of the ocean. “I know.”

  Fuck, no one knew better than I did how much the company needed him. There had been a pit in my stomach since I left the hospital that morning. Thinking back to it still made me feel a little sick. A large part of my heart stayed back in that room with Dad and I wouldn’t have it back until he was.