by Amelia Wilde
She wants more.
I’m not going to deny her what she wants.
I want it, too. I need it.
With one movement, I have her on her hands and knees and I’m inside her again, fucking her slowly this time, letting her feel every powerful stroke, making her body shudder underneath me as she waits for me to plow all the way inside. As I pull back, her pussy clenches around my cock, trying to keep me buried deep inside, and it feels so fucking good that the edges of my vision go black.
When we’ve finished this round, she collapses onto her belly on the bed, murmuring something incoherent, the tone sexy and satisfied, and I curl up around her, feeling the little quivering aftershocks as they pulse through her body.
We lay in silence for about twenty minutes, and then she stirs, rolls over, propping up her head on her arm. She looks pink and flushed, the aftereffects from being well-fucked, and there’s a look in her eyes that I can’t quite identify.
“So, Christian Pierce,” she says, idly tracing her fingertips over one of my shoulders and down my arm. “Do you think we should discuss what happened?”
“What is there to discuss?” I say with a grin. We both know this won’t be the only time. A flash of cold fear goes through me. What if this is the only time? The fear is quickly overtaken by the warm buzz I feel from fucking the woman of my dreams.
She rolls her eyes with a smile. “You’re one of my clients,” she says matter-of-factly.
“What’s the problem with that?”
“I could get fired, for one.”
“You won’t get fired.”
“If anyone at HRM finds out about this, I will.”
I lean in and kiss her gently, then suck at her bottom lip. “They won’t find out.”
I feel her sharp intake of breath and I know she’s dying to trust me, but if my hunch is correct, Quinn Campbell isn’t the kind of her girl to take just any asshole at his word.
“They won’t find out if we end this right now.” Her words come out as a whisper, and though she tries to keep her voice neutral, I can hear how much she wants me to disagree with her.
So I do.
“We can’t end this right now,” I say, even though as the words leave my mouth, I know this has to come to an end. It has to.
Does it have to?
“We should.”
“What we should do is…” I let the pause hang in the air while I run the flat of my hand over the curve of her waist. “Shower. And then have dinner together.”
Her eyes sparkling, Quinn’s smile gets even wider. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
I pretend to scoff. “Why do you think I invited you here?”
“For sex, obviously.”
“That, too.”
We both laugh, and then a look of concern crosses her face. “I don’t really have anything with me to wear on a date.”
“Don’t worry,” I say, climbing off the bed and offering her my hand. “I meant dinner in.” She stands up and I give myself several moments to marvel at the utter perfection of her naked body—the slim waist, the full breasts, the way her shoulders curve so delicately to meet her neck. “The bathroom is that way.” I point towards the master bath located off my bedroom. “You hop into the shower, and I’ll have the food sent up.”
Quinn puts a hand on either side of my face and draws me down for a kiss. “Will I be seeing you in the shower?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
Twenty minutes later, she’s sitting at my dining table wearing one of the plush robes from my bathroom. Like my towels, the robe also bears my initials embroidered onto the front pocket. I like the look of it on her. Like I’ve made my mark in more ways than one.
You know this is going to be a disaster.
I know it.
But I’m still on the first date.
And right now it seems like heaven.
Quinn is glowing, her hair wet from the shower and combed away from her face, and she takes evident delight in every single forkful of the dinner I’ve had sent over from a five-star restaurant called Moods.
“This is incredible,” she says, lifting another tender morsel of some kind of extravagantly prepared chicken—I didn’t ask, I just trusted that my celebrity chef friend could handle the menu—between her lips. “I didn’t even know you could get delivery from a place like that.”
I let out a laugh. “You can get takeout from anywhere if you have enough money and send a driver to pick it up. They did deliver this, however. I own part of the restaurant.”
“Of course you do.” Her eyes shine with pleasure, but she doesn’t seem to be intensely focused on my billions.
It’s pretty fucking refreshing, if you ask me.
Once I break out the wine, the conversation really begins to flow.
“What made you move to New York? And stay, after the welcome you got?” I ask several minutes later as Quinn devours chocolate blackout cake.
She shakes her head, the glimpse of sadness first rushing over her face disappearing into a look of resignation. “I wish I could tell you that I just wanted to come here, but I hate when people lie about stupid shit.” Quinn looks me directly in the eye. “My fiancé cheated on me. With my best friend. So I asked for a transfer.”
“Fuck. I’m sorry,” I say, reaching across the table for her hand.
She takes another sip of wine. “It was pretty goddamn unbelievable. After that, I didn’t want to stay in my house. I didn’t want to stay in Colorado. I’m just lucky Carolyn wanted a roommate.”
“I think she misses Jess more than she lets on.”
“I can imagine! That massive apartment must be lonely with only one person rattling around.”
I think of my own penthouse in Midtown, the rooms filled with my things. None of it really matters.
Fuck. I don’t know where this thing with Quinn is going, but I can already tell that it’s going to be hard to end it, and the scene isn’t going to be pretty.
I get lost in thought for a moment too long.
Quinn fills in the silence.
“You didn’t tell me you had a tattoo,” she comments casually, and my heart stops.
I’d almost forgotten about the damn thing.
It almost never comes up, since I usually bring women here in the dead of night, in the dark, and I’m dressed before they’re out of bed. A frigid anxiety twists my gut.
When I look across at Quinn, her eyes are filled with concern. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, too quickly. “Yeah, it’s nothing.” I laugh and the tone of it convinces her. “My mind wandered for a second there.” Then I give her a devilish stare. “Maybe we should go back to bed.”
Quinn’s face slowly relaxes, and then she smiles. “Race you.”
Chapter 19
Quinn
Carolyn is sitting on the couch in the living room when I get back, even though it’s almost midnight. She has several binders spread out on the table in front of her and a pencil tucked behind her ear. When I step through the door, she starts in on me in a panicked voice.
“Quinn!” she cries, then grabs up her phone from the table. “Oh, my God, it’s late.” She gives her head a little shake as if to clear some cobwebs, then gives me a second look. “Wait. Have you been at work?”
“No,” I say, laughing. “But it looks like you have. Is this stuff for the boutique?”
“Yeah,” Carolyn says with a little sigh. “I left some details to finalize after I was done with the other job, but it turns out there’s more to do than I thought.”
“Shit.” I drop down onto the couch next to her. “When are you planning to open?”
“Next Friday.”
“You’ve got time, then,” I say lightly.
“Not much time.” She blows her breath out through her lips. “I mean, the store is mostly set up, but I still have to go through and—” She waves a hand at the binders. “You know.”
I nod sagely, though I wouldn’t know
the first thing about running a boutique. All I know is how to shop in them.
Carolyn laughs. “It’s good to know I have your support.”
“You totally do.”
She narrows her eyes. “If you weren’t at work, where were you? I’m dying to know.” Then she puts a hand over her mouth. “You don’t have to tell me. It’s none of my damn business.”
It’s right at that moment that I feel completely overtaken by the need to share this—at least part of it—with a friend. My former best friend isn’t an option, and I don’t have a sister. Carolyn is the closest person to me.
I can trust her.
“If I tell you, you have to swear not to say a word about it.” I look her straight in the eye.
Her face instantly lights up. Everyone loves gossip, and it’s a pretty safe bet that Carolyn, like anyone else, loves secrets. “I won’t,” she says solemnly.
“I’m serious, Car.”
“I’m serious, too.”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Maybe we should have some wine.” I only had a single glass at Christian’s.
“It’s midnight!”
“It’s the perfect time.” I leap up from the couch and cross into the kitchen while Carolyn tucks some stray papers back into her binders. When I come back with two glasses of white wine, she’s tucked her legs underneath her and is leaned back into the arm of the couch.
“Don’t keep me in suspense, Q. It’s not fair.”
“Okay,” I say, settling in and pulling a blanket over my legs. “I was at Christian Pierce’s apartment.”
Carolyn’s eyes go wide, and the wine glass freezes halfway to her lips. “What?”
“I don’t know—” I break off, searching for a way to make this seem less crazy than it probably is. “The other night when he helped me with my luggage, there was just something…between us, you know? And then we ran into him at the Swan, and then—Car, you’re never going to fucking believe this. He’s my client at HRM.”
“Your client?”
“Literally, he’s my only client. That promotion I told you about?”
Carolyn nods and sips quickly at her wine. It’s like she doesn’t want to have any in her mouth to spit out at my next outrageous statement.
“They assigned me to the Pierce account. And my only project for the foreseeable future is enhancing Christian’s image.”
“Oh, my God,” she says quietly. “How did that end up with you at his apartment?”
“We had our first meeting yesterday. And he kissed me.”
Carolyn laughs out loud, the sound petering out into a giggle in the end. “That guy cannot keep his dick in his pants. Is that why he needs PR services?”
“I’d imagine.” I can’t stop myself from blushing. “He just got promoted at Pierce Industries, so…”
She takes one look at my face, and her mouth drops open. “Why is your face so red? Did you sleep with him?” Her voice is rising in pitch. Before the end of this conversation it’s going to sound like she inhaled the helium from a balloon.
“Yes!” I cry, covering my face with my free hand.
“Quinn!” Carolyn admonishes, then dissolves into laughter. “It was just a one-time fling, right? I mean, he’s hot—I’ll be the first to admit it.”
“I don’t know if it’s a fling or not.”
I look back into her eyes, and her expression gets serious.
“You could lose your job over that, right?”
“Yeah.”
We’re both silent for a moment, deep in thought. Then Carolyn says, “Well, was he any good?”
“Oh, my God,” I groan. “He was so fucking good.”
We both laugh, so hard that tears come to my eyes. I brush one away as the laughter tapers off. “But seriously, Car—there’s just something—we have something that’s—”
She holds up one hand. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me.” Her eyes are glittering with excitement. “I can’t believe the two of you hooked up. Well, I can believe it. The way you two were talking at the Swan…obviously there’s some serious attraction there.”
“I’d say.”
“Just…be careful, Quinn. He tends to be—”
“I know. I’m managing his reputation, remember?”
She nods again, a wistful look on her face
“There was one weird moment at his place, though.”
Carolyn perks back up. “What was it?”
“He had arranged dinner for…after.” My roommate covers her mouth with her hand to stifle another peal of laughter. I smile, shaking my head. “And while we were eating, I mentioned his tattoo.”
There’s a flash of confusion on Carolyn’s face, and then her expression softens into sympathy. “And he got weird about it?”
“Yeah. He totally froze up. Tried to cover up his reaction, but it was obvious I had touched upon a sensitive subject.”
She shifts position on the couch, clearing her throat. “There’s a reason for that.”
“Please share.”
Carolyn considers me thoughtfully. “Did you get a file about his background when you took him on as a client?”
“I haven’t read through all of it yet.”
“This will probably be in there somewhere, so I guess in the end I’m not telling you anything you won’t find out sooner or later.” She swallows. “Christian had a twin brother.”
“Had?”
“Had. Jess and I were best friends with the two of them in boarding school.”
A sinking sense of dread fills the pit of my stomach. “What happened to him?”
“He died. Just after their eighteenth birthday.”
I look down into my wine glass, my heart breaking for Christian. “How?”
“I heard it was a drug overdose, but Chris almost never talks about it.”
“Jesus. Is the tattoo for his brother?”
“No. Eli—his brother—had the same one. They got matching tattoos the same week that he died.”
“Oh, man.”
“Don’t worry about it, Q. If he moved on in the conversation, it’s probably fine.”
I bite at my lip, then nod. “We did go back to bed after that.”
Carolyn rolls her eyes with a gigantic grin. “I’d say it’s more than fine.”
My wine glass emptied, I stand up from the couch, suddenly bone-tired. “Thanks for telling me all that, Car. I’m going to head to bed.”
“Me, too.” She rises from the couch with a yawn and goes to turn out the lights.
I’m almost to my bedroom when she calls after me. “Don’t think you’re off the hook, though. I want updates!”
I go into my bedroom, unable to wipe the stupid smile off my face. “You’ll get them. Don’t you worry.”
Chapter 20
Christian
I have never met a more impressive woman than Quinn Campbell.
At our Wednesday meeting, she sits across her desk from me, cool and collected, as if I didn’t fuck her senseless just last night.
The fact that she can be so professional—friendly, even—in the face of overwhelming sexual tension makes me want to bend her over the desk and take her here and now, even more than I already did.
“This strategy will begin to unfold this week, if you don’t have any issues with the events or the timing,” she says, sliding the printed calendar of scheduled public appearances across the glass surface of her desk toward me. “The first opportunity I’ve arranged is on Friday at the Bowery Mission, helping to serve meals during the dinner shift. I have some press tentatively booked to be there so you can announce the donation you’re making in your mother’s memory.”
I look up into her fiery green eyes and grin. “I’m making a donation in my mother’s memory?”
“Don’t get cute with me, Mr. Pierce,” she shoots back, the corner of her mouth quirked in a smile. It’s the first time during the meeting that the real Quinn—at least, what I assume to be the real Quinn, bas
ed on how raw and passionate she was last night—breaks through in her professional persona. “You’ll make this donation, and you’ll like doing it.”
That’s what I’m talking about. Although, on second glance, she probably has a reputation in the industry for her no-bullshit client-handling skills.
She’s a woman of many talents.
“I don’t disagree,” I answer, laughing. My heart aches a little at the thought of my mother. “Mom would be proud.”
“Yes,” she says, a softer tone in her voice. “Listen, Christian…”
This isn’t the businesslike self that she’s been presenting most of the meeting. I’m sure of it now. I lean toward her even though the door to the office is closed tightly. “What is it?”
“I read through your file this morning to get a more thorough picture of your background,” she says slowly, and at first I have no goddamn idea where this is going. Of course she would have read through the file. What does that have to do with—?
“I read about your brother.”
I never talk about my brother.
I try my best not to think of my brother.
So when Quinn brings him up, I draw a blank. I can’t think of a single fucking thing to say.
“I’m sorry for bringing him up,” she says, straightening her posture, worry filling her eyes. “I just wanted to let you know that…that I had read about him, and if there was anything you wanted to—”
A hot surge of anger spikes through my chest, and one of my hands involuntarily clenches into a fist. “No.”
“I’m—”
I cut her off. “I’m not using him to boost my image.”
Underneath the anger, fear rankles in my gut.
Quinn holds up both hands like I’m a bull about to tear into a matador. “You absolutely don’t have to,” she says smoothly. In spite of myself, I’m soothed by the sound of her voice. “I just wanted to share with you that I’m aware of him, okay? I’m—” She leans in again, dropping her hands to the surface of the desk. “I can’t do this. I need to be honest.”
“Honest about what?” My anger is already dissipating.