North

by Vanessa Vale

  “Typical. A guy thinks a woman could only feel better if she gets laid. You want to what… soften me up with a few orgasms?”

  Exactly that.

  “The only woman who’d question that is one who doesn’t get laid very much,” I countered.

  A flush rose up from the neckline of her dress and traveled up to her cheeks. She spun away.

  “What do you really want, Jed?” she asked as I admired her perfect ass. “Money? An in with one of my partners? A job?”

  It was my turn to bristle. I wasn’t sure if my down-on-my-luck cover was paying off and she thought I needed something to pay my bills, or she’d been hit up before. “I told you.”

  She spun back and wondered how she didn’t tip over in those heels. Women in Montana didn’t often sport business wear and stilts. The state was casual about everything. But the look did it for me. I wanted to get my hands on her and knock some of that shine off her business veneer.

  “You came to the wake to pay your respects. You saw me, your dick got hard, and you want to do something about it. No guy comes on this strong.”

  “You’re right. I saw you. My dick is definitely hard.” Her gaze dropped to the front of my pants and her eyes flared wide. Yeah, I was big. It pleased me to know she was impressed. “I want you. Want to watch you come screaming my name.”

  She frowned, eyed me as if I’d come from another planet, one where men didn’t only think of themselves. “You want to get me off.”

  It was my turn to narrow my eyes. “Princess, you say that as if no guy’s ever put you first. I’m not sure if I should beat the shit out of them or thank them.”

  “I get off.” She said that, then bit her lip as if the words slipped out. It seemed North didn’t like to give any piece of herself away, even the smallest sliver of truth.

  “With a man?”

  She shrugged a slim shoulder. Sniffed and looked down her nose at me, even though I was inches taller. “Who needs one when batteries and high-grade silicone can do the job?”

  I shook my head, pushed off the door. “Now that’s a crying shame. A princess like you should be riding dick whenever she’s running hot.”

  She wasn’t appalled by my words. She hadn’t smacked me. I’d call it a win… so far.

  “And you’re here to be that dick?”

  “You’re impressed by mine and you’ve only seen it in my jeans.”

  She paused, closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. “This is insane. There are probably two hundred emails in my inbox waiting for a reply. My assistant is around here somewhere, hovering and waiting to update me on all the ways things are falling apart at the office since I’ve barely been in since I got the news about Macon. On top of that, I have a house full of people and a dead body in the other room.”

  Dead body, not dead father.

  I shook my head at her, as if her excuses were petty. I could only imagine the shit she accomplished in a day. In high heels. I stepped close, stroked her cheek. Watched the way her blue eyes went dark. Her skin was like silk beneath my knuckles. My thumb brushed over her lower lip, back and forth. Then, when she didn’t knee me in the balls, I lowered my head and kissed her. Watched her face until the last second when her lids fell closed. For a second she was stiff, then she melted like wax in the hot sun. She tasted like sunshine and sweetness, completely opposite of the image she intentionally offered to the world.

  I didn’t linger even though she kissed like a fucking dream.

  “You’re North Wainright,” I murmured. “You want my dick, you want it now, make it happen. You remember me and by the way your nipples are poking against your dress, you liked what you saw then and what you see now. You don’t need an assistant to pencil this into your planner.”

  She blinked, as if coming out of a trance.

  Then she studied me for a minute, her shrewd, blue-eyed gaze raking over every inch of me once again in my jeans and snap shirt, my Stetson in my hand.

  Turning, she went to the wall of guns, grabbed a shotgun off the lower mounts. I stepped back, raised my hands in front of me.

  Shit, I’d gone about this fucking wrong. I liked my balls attached and it seemed she intended to remove them with a twelve gauge.

  But she didn’t even look my way. She opened it to see if there were shells, then snapped it shut, handling it like she knew what she was doing. Walking past me, she flung open the door and marched out of the room. I followed right on her heels, guests clearing a path for her.

  She went over to her daddy’s casket, raised her arm and knocked the lid down with a resounding crack, then went through the open front doors.

  Standing on the porch, she raised the shotgun like she was a skeet shooting champion and fired into the air. The boom shook the crystal in the chandelier over my head. There were a few screams, many gasps and some panic.

  “Wake’s over,” she called. “Everyone out.”

  People scurried out of her house like rats being caught in a spotlight. No one questioned a woman wielding a shotgun at her daddy’s wake.

  Hell, no one questioned North Wainright.

  She turned and looked over her shoulder, her gaze meeting mine as guests streamed past. “Except you.”

  2

  NORTH

  * * *

  “North, dear. What about the funeral?”

  The minister must have felt good about his soul going to heaven because he didn’t leave with all the other townsfolk. As Jed had pointed out, they’d eaten my food and drank my liquor just to see the inside of the house. No doubt my bold action with my still-warm shotgun would make the rounds in town within the hour.

  No one gave a shit about my father because he hadn’t cared about anyone but himself. Including me. I wasn’t sad he was dead. Far from it. I hated the man.

  Having Jed Barnett here was a reminder of that. Of what Macon had done when I was seventeen. How he’d used me. He’d said he’d wanted to wait to finally put a kid to work for the company until I was eighteen, to bring me into his world, but the moment had been too good to pass up.

  I took a deep breath, hoping the headache at the base of my skull would stop throbbing.

  The minister was waiting for me to respond. He had to be sweating in the all-black outfit and tight white collar. Yet he seemed completely unruffled, as if firing shotguns at a wake happened every day. He was more concerned about getting the deceased buried.

  I wanted my father’s body out of the house and six feet under just as much. Probably more.

  “Three o’clock as planned,” I reassured him. This was one thing on my calendar I wasn’t going to forget.

  I shifted the shotgun to my other arm, the barrel aimed at the floor. My shoulder was a little sore from the kick, but at least I felt it. Felt something.

  Besides exhaustion. Stress. Anger. I’d been bitter for so long, I forgot what sweet felt like. My lips still tingled with it.

  Glancing over his shoulder, the minister gave the closed casket a peek, as if Macon might push the top back up and be angry because his wake had ended early.

  “What the fu—heck was that?” East shouted, coming down the hall from the kitchen at the back of the house. He took one look at the minister and gave a contrite smile. “Sorry, Father.”

  “It was time for the party to end,” I told him.

  East looked out the open doorway to the slow stream of cars going down the drive.

  “I should’ve thought of that,” he grumbled, then shrugged. “Want a sandwich?”

  I shook my head, eyeing the huge sub he had in his hand. There was a table covered with finger foods in the other room. A sandwich was the last thing I wanted. How anyone could eat with a dead body on display was beyond me.

  This was all part of the will. Macon, being the center of attention one last time. I wasn’t sure if the lawyers were going to bother me for cutting it short.

  “You should relax, dear,” the minister advised. “It’s a difficult time. See you at three.”

/>   I gave him a nod and ushered him to the open doors, closing them behind him.

  “Yeah, sis,” East agreed, patting me on the shoulder as he turned and headed back toward the kitchen. “You should relax. Not that you know how.”

  I frowned. I’d been running a billion-dollar company with Macon, not like him grading papers as a university professor. He lived in Bozeman, rarely coming back to the ranch, even when he had his summers free. I didn’t blame him. I wished I was him and had his carefree lifestyle. But I’d been groomed to carry on the name. To run the business.

  He had no idea. No clue as to what I’d had to deal with. What I’d lived through. Agreed to. Survived. I’d sheltered him and my two other brothers, gave them the freedom to be what they wanted. I couldn’t relax, because when I did, I didn’t like what happened.

  I caught Jed’s eye as East disappeared toward the kitchen.

  “Even the minister said to relax,” Jed said finally. “Orgasms sanctioned by God.” He came over to me with that long-legged swagger. “Even you can’t argue with that,” he added.

  I rolled my eyes as I moved around him, leaving him to follow me. Or not.

  He did, of course, back to the library. I’d have thought less of him if he’d given up now. I put the shotgun back on the mounts, then moved to my father’s desk, leaned against it as Jed closed the door behind him.

  God, I was as attracted to him as I was at seventeen. For the first time, I’d felt the stirrings of desire. Sure, I’d kissed his brother Jock, my boyfriend senior year of high school, fooled around a little, but he hadn’t made me come alive as I had just by looking at twenty-seven-year-old Jed.

  He was older now, around forty. His hair was almost black, but as he came closer, I could see threads of silver at the temples. The square jaw I’d thought could sharpen knives was now covered in a trimmed beard.

  Over six feet of perfect body. His jeans molded to his thick thighs. His forearms were corded and tanned, sprinkled with dark hair. He was fit, as if he tossed hay bales or ran marathons. Or both.

  I hated that men got better with age, while women got old. But Jed had, and in his case, I didn’t mind. Maybe it was because I was looking at him through something other than a teenager’s eyes. I saw him now in a completely different way. I wasn’t expecting rainbows and fairy tales or love any longer. Only the emotionless release a hot guy wanted to give me. And he was hot. Then back to my regularly scheduled life.

  The day Jock pointed out his older brother at their family barbecue was one of the last days I’d been naïve. I’d grown up that holiday weekend after learning Macon’s plans to use me as part of a business deal. I started to build that protective wall of aloofness that I’d been adding bricks to ever since. I might lift my skirt, but I wasn’t dropping any of my shields for a man.

  I didn’t know any other way. Macon had been dead for five days. Things hadn’t changed at the office yet, but they would when I returned. I was CEO now and there was nothing my father could do to me any longer. I already had shares in the company and the will had only divided up his portion between his kids, although I’d been given majority interest. South, East, and West wanted nothing to do with it.

  I could finally steer the company the way I wanted, the way my mother had wanted. The way it should have been since it was her family money that had started it.

  Macon had been only the hired hand who’d charmed himself into her panties long enough to make me. Trap her into a loveless marriage where they somehow had sex two more times to make my brothers, one of those fun occasions making twins. Or maybe they weren’t actually his, as I suspected.

  “You’re in your head, princess.”

  Jed stirred me from my thoughts. It was ironic he was the one offering himself. His services. I’d thought of him often when I was alone. Had the picture of the younger version of him in my head. When I had to think of something untouched, untainted by Macon.

  To dream about. And now he was here.

  Back then I’d been too young for him, of course. Why would Jed have wanted a seventeen-year-old girl? Or even notice one who’d been dating his little brother? He hadn’t. In fact, I hadn’t laid eyes on him since then. Until now.

  Now. I sighed as I took in every inch of him. Even though he’d been a grown man all those years ago, he’d filled out since. He was thicker. More muscular. More intense. Focused. The white snap shirt fit him like a glove and God… even his hands were hot.

  I hadn’t been wrong back then about how hot he was, and he was even more so now. And instead of not seeing me like I’d thought all those years ago, he saw me now.

  His whiskey-colored gaze was searching. Roving. Dark. As if life had tossed shit in his way and he’d dealt with it. Survived. I wondered what that might be. What had hurt him. If he’d hurt me. No. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

  This was an exchange. Not an even one, either. I didn’t get on my knees for anyone.

  Why was I doing this? Why was I even considering Jed’s bold offer? Because for the first time… ever, I wasn’t controlled by my father. I didn’t have to consider repercussions or how my actions could be used against me. How he could not only mess with me, but with Jed, too.

  That was why I’d shut the casket, proving that he wasn’t coming out of that thing and soon he’d be beneath six feet of dirt.

  If I wanted to have Jed Barnett get me off, I could.

  No strings. Sure, it was insane and perhaps stupid, but I was allowed to be both right about now.

  He stepped close, so close I could feel his heat. His hand came up and he stroked my cheek again, his eyes following the move. I tried not to step back. Refused to do so. I wouldn’t let him know he made me nervous, that long ago I’d thought about this, hoped for his touch.

  “I’m not sleeping with you,” I said. It was one thing to do this, another to go that far. I just… couldn’t.

  This close I could see the corner of his mouth turn up. I picked up his scent. Wintergreen and pine forests. “Who said anything about sleeping?” he murmured, his voice tipped low as if we were in a bubble where it was only the two of us.

  “I’m not riding your dick,” I clarified.

  “You always make the rules?” His fingers slid through my hair, tucked the strands behind my ear. His touch was gentle. I expected him to turn us around, bend me over my father’s desk and say Who’s your daddy now?

  “Always,” I snapped, lifting my chin.

  “We’re not doing this here,” he said, glancing around.

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Your bedroom would be more private.”

  I wasn’t having memories of Jed Barnett in my room. I’d have to relocate to one of the other nine bedrooms instead of spending the rest of my life remembering what I couldn’t have.

  “No one’s going to bother us in here,” I said, making it a fact. A given for how this was going to go. He stepped back, gave me room. I took a breath. I was rarely flustered, but I’d never been offered sex—no, orgasms—before. A guy had tried to pick me up in a bar a time or two, but that wasn’t this. He’d caught me by surprise, and I didn’t like surprises.

  He nodded. “Your brothers going to be a problem?”

  “You saw East. He’s staying in the guest house with his sandwich. I haven’t seen South and West, but they don’t live here.”

  “Right, only you and your father in this big place.” He stared up at the ceiling as if he could see through it like Superman.

  “This is my house now. I do what I want.”

  His chin tipped down and he eyed me closely. “You fucking me in here to fuck your daddy over?”

  I bristled. “One. We’re not fucking. Two. Macon,” —I didn’t call my father anything but his name and I made that clear now— “is dead. He’s been involved in too much of my life.” I left out the fact that he’d tried to sweeten a deal with my virginity and all the threats he’d made since. “If you can’t keep my father out of what we’re going to do, then it’s no
t happening.”

  He studied me, either thinking I was completely insane or too rational, I wasn’t sure. “Fair enough. Hand over the panties, princess.”

  He raised his hand between us, palm up.

  I arched a brow, gave him a look that usually made men’s balls shrivel. “I’m supposed to listen to you?”

  He sighed. “We can do this with your panties on if you want.”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  He moved his hand now in a circle between us. “You’re under a strange notion that you’re in charge.”

  “I said I made the rules.”

  He took his Stetson off, tossed it on the desk behind me. “You did. The rules are,” —he raised a finger to start ticking them off— “we’re doing this in here.” He raised another finger. “We’re not sleeping together.” And another. “You’re not riding my dick.” And a fourth. “I’m not mentioning Macon Wainright again. Did I get them all?”

  I narrowed my eyes, angry that he’d read me well. Too well, because he had more than a good memory. He was listening. I turned to storm off, but he caught me about the waist and pulled me back against him. I felt every hard inch of his body, including the thick prod of his dick against my ass. His forearm banded beneath my breasts and his mouth was brushing along the side of my neck. “I’ll follow your rules,” he murmured. “But I’m in charge. Yes?”

  He was asking for my consent. To do whatever he said. He’d heard me, met my demands. Could I meet his?

  I nodded, whispered, “Yes.”

  “Good girl. Now you can take off those panties yourself or I’ll rip them off. Your choice. See how nice I am?”

  I shivered as his breath fanned my skin. I hadn’t been held like this in… ever. I wasn’t a virgin, but I didn’t do this. Have random, hot sex. Or hot not-sex. I had a local service on speed dial. Being a billionaire had its perks and I took advantage of a stable of hot men who met me at a hotel. On my schedule. With my rules. We fucked. I paid. They left. No strings.