by Parker, Ali
And what a lot I got. Jeremiah made me come twice using his fingers and tongue before reaching into his nightstand and rolling a condom over his impressive length. His muscles were tight with restraint and quivering by the time he sank into me.
He was as hard as granite and stretched me wide open, but I was so pliant and ready for him my body welcomed him like it was throwing him a parade. He moaned, pressing kisses to my shoulders as he thrust his way home.
Our bodies took no time at all to find their own perfect rhythm. Within minutes, I was ready to combust again. Jeremiah kissed me and brought a hand up to cup my cheek, his voice a ragged whisper. “Let go for me, Steph. I want to feel you come on my cock.”
“Yes!” I gasped. His words were my undoing. The heat that had been building in my body spread through me like an inferno starting at my core and exploding to each one of my extremities. I screamed his name and dug my hands into his firm butt to anchor myself to something. To him.
Intense pleasure overwhelmed me and wracked me, wrecking any hope of ever being satisfied with an orgasm from another source ever again. I was barely aware of him following me over the edge until I heard his curse and felt him tense above me. “Fuck. Steph. God, yes.”
As the waves of my orgasm subsided, I watched him barrel through his. Easily and hands down the hottest, most erotic fucking thing I’d ever seen. His eyes were screwed shut, his teeth gritted as the column of his throat worked and his hips bucked into mine.
Relaxing as he started coming down, he opened his eyes and dropped a kiss on the tip of my nose. “That was fucking incredible.”
“Who would’ve thought you’d be such a generous lover, Jeremiah Williams?” I whispered back, still trying to catch my breath.
“You’d better let them know to hold the presses,” he said joking, nuzzling my neck before pulling his entwined legs free.
When he rolled off, I sat up and wrapped a sheet around me. As jellylike as my legs were, I knew how this worked. I had to leave now. Jeremiah rolled onto his side and caught my wrist. “Where are you going?”
“To get my clothes. I’m not sure where they ended up, but I should probably head home.”
He shook his head firmly and slid his hand into mine. “Come back to bed. Spend the night with me.”
“I shouldn’t, Jeremiah.” I tried scooting to the edge of the bed, but his grip remained firm. “What just happened… I’m your employee.”
He smirked, hooking one muscular arm behind his head and curling his finger in a come-hither motion. “If that’s the only problem you have with staying, we’ll just have to add sleeping over to your list of job duties. Part of your job description. Now, will you stay with me? Because I’m dying to do that all over again.”
Chapter 39
JEREMIAH
"Bets are in, boys." Bart clapped his hands, rubbing them together gleefully. "There's no going back now. Your bad choices are cemented for all of eternity."
Shawn laughed and sipped his beer, leaning back on my couch and propping his feet up on the coffee table. "For all of eternity? Don’t you mean until next Sunday when we make new bets? You're getting dramatic in your old age."
"You're older than I am," Bart said, grabbing my universal remote to stream the e-sports tournament he'd gotten his start in a couple of years ago. "If there's ever been anything to get dramatic about, it's this. Whichever team wins tonight has a shot at the big leagues."
"Oh, you mean like the NFL or the World Series?" Tanner joined in, ambling from the bar to the living area with a bottle of imported beer he preferred hanging between his fingers.
Bart flipped him off and grinned maniacally as he went in for the kill. "Nope, we still make real money in our big leagues."
Tanner gripped his heart, feigning injury as he fell backward onto the couch. "Touché bro, touché."
I poured four shots of tequila and carried them over to where my friends were sitting in front of my TV, shoved Shawn's feet off my coffee table, and put my own there instead. "Some things never change."
"The more things change, the more they stay the same," Shawn said philosophically, nudging a plate of nachos out of the way with his toe to make space for his feet on the table again. "Well, unless you consider we haven't really been sticking to this tradition for the past few months."
I held my hands up in a gesture of surrender, nodding. "I know, I know but you try telling dear old dad that football Sunday is more important than his golf game."
Bart shuddered and shook his head. "Jance and golf on one day. I think that's penance enough for skipping the last eight football and e-sport Sundays."
"I saw what you did there," Shawn said, getting Nacho crumbs all over his shirt as he shoveled them into his mouth between words. "Adding e-sport to football Sunday."
"We've been watching these tournaments before the football game for years. It's only fair it should be included in the name."
Bart and Shawn kept shooting the shit about changing the name of our tradition, which I happened to know none of them gave a shit about—the name, not the tradition. Tanner turned to me, eyeing my golf bag standing at the front door. "So what happened? Why aren't you out there in the sunshine with daddy dearest and Neil?"
"I fucking hate golf," I said, taking a long pull from my beer and slamming back one of the shots of tequila for good measure. "Jance and I got into it this morning. I told him he probably didn't want me at his game today, and he agreed."
Shawn and Bart had tuned into our conversation by now, and each drank of their own shots before Bart went to replenish them. Shawn looked at me sympathetically. While on any other guy I would have punched the look off his face, I let it go with Shawn because he had a similar relationship with his father as I had with mine.
"Unlike those of us who are still rebelling against what the parental units expect, you stepped up when Jack passed. What's his problem now?"
"I took my secretary to a fundraiser on Friday, and he found out. Let's just say he wasn't happy about it." I didn't feel like rehashing the argument we had, and luckily, my friends knew me well enough to leave it at that.
Tanner's eyes narrowed as he thought, then widened again when he snapped his fingers. "The hot secretary? The one you hired a couple of weeks ago. You're going out with her now?"
I shook my head. "Not unless by going out you mean I took her to the fundraiser first and then brought her back here later."
"You fucked her, didn't you?" Shawn asked matter-of-factly, chuckling as he took a sip of his beer. "Old habits die hard, I guess."
Bart nodded, a teasing grin pulling at the corners of his lips. "Once a player, always a player."
I glared at both of my obnoxious friends. "It wasn't like that."
"You didn't fuck her then?" Tanner asked disbelievingly and chucked a nacho at me. "That's sad, bro."
Scrubbing my hands over my face, the burn from my stubble that had grown in overnight reminded me of the slight redness on Stephanie's thighs yesterday morning. Everything I did seemed to remind me of her in one way or another. One night with her was never going to be enough.
"No, I did. I just… It's not like that with her. She's different."
They looked as surprised by my confession as I was by having made it. I got their full attention, and though the atmosphere in my living room was still relaxed, they dropped the teasing.
"My dad is being such a fucking ass to her. Makes me feel like shit even though I'm not in control of what he says," I said, figuring I might as well come clean now that I'd started talking. We’d all been friends for long enough that they would never let it go now if I didn’t.
"He really doesn't like her. I don't even want to know how many of the secretaries at the company he's slept with over the years. But then he fired Jannie on the spot for coming on to me, and now he keeps insinuating stuff about Stephanie."
"Your dad has always been an ass," Tanner said. He knew he was one of the few people who could say something like that to me
and get away with it. In fact, the only people who could were the ones in this room, and Neil. "If this Stephanie really is different and you actually care for her, you need to stand up for her."
"Especially if she’s as good a woman as you said she was the last time you told us about her, you can't let it go. Not even coming from him. She doesn't deserve that kind of disrespect," Shawn said.
Bart nodded his agreement before adding, "Frankly, you don't deserve it either. If you like her and she makes you happy, you should hang onto her with both hands. Fuck what your dad says. We all know that shit doesn't come around every day."
"You're right," I said. And I knew all the way down to my little toe that they were. They'd always been my biggest support system, and I was grateful for them, even if I was also done talking about this. "Are we really going to keep gossiping like little girls, or are we going to watch the tournament?"
A chorus of grumbled answers rang out. "Tournament."
We settled in to watch the up-and-comers in Bart's game—urg, sport—who might be competing against him next year and talked smack about the athletes we didn't like while supporting the ones we did.
The guys I bet on at the beginning didn't win, but that was okay. I was just enjoying spending the day with my friends instead of listening to my father's abusive ramblings on the golf course.
I considered the advice they gave me earlier as the afternoon wore on and went to grill some steaks out on the balcony before the game started. They really were right about it all.
Stephanie was a good woman who did make me happy. She made me laugh, made me feel cared for and want to care for her in return. She knew when to push and when to joke. What I found with her, I hadn't found in ages, if ever.
It made me feel like a total pussy to admit it even to myself, but I also wasn't stupid and knew it was true: she allowed me to be myself. A better version of myself, even.
I'd become so used to dating girls who were after my money, my family's hint of fame or both. It felt weird trying to wrap my head around the fact that neither of those things seem to be part of the appeal for Stephanie.
When she was with me, it felt like she was there for me. Plain and simple.
My father could think whatever the hell he wanted to about her, or about us, but if he continued to mistreat her, I was going to have to say something. And there was no doubt in my mind that he wouldn't like what I had to say.
Chapter 40
STEPHANIE
Tiana and I skipped down the stairs energetically on Sunday night, both of us looking forward to our early evening dance class. My head had been in the clouds all weekend about my night with Jeremiah. I was still sore in all the best ways possible.
"Earth to Steph." Tiana laughed, clicking her fingers right in front of my eyes as we hit the bottom landing. "I asked if you wanted to go grab some dinner after the class. I heard about a Thai place not far from Mickey's Studio I want to try."
"Sorry," I said. Not in the least bit sorry. "I was just thinking."
She rolled her eyes and pushed the heavy door of the staircase open, leading me into the lobby. "You're not sorry. And you also weren't thinking. You were fantasizing about your hot night with the hot billionaire."
I didn't need to answer for the blush that crept onto my cheeks. I shrugged unapologetically. "So what if I was?"
“Hold your horses, Miss Defensive. You know I’m not judging. Jealous as hell, yes. But there’s no judgment from this side.” She laughed, the soles of her sneakers squeaking against the floor. “If I’d spent the night with a man that hot who was that good in bed, I’d probably still be in mine dreaming about it.”
When I told Tiana about my night with Jeremiah, I managed to maintain that very fine line between keeping private details private and adhering to the sacred girl code that called for sharing with your best friend.
She had, however, since taken the liberty of asking probing questions and filling in the blanks for herself when I refused to answer. Most of what she’d filled in for herself so far was wrong. Jeremiah had been better than what she thought.
A pleasurable shiver ran down my spine, the kind that brought with it memories of what had to be the best sex I’d ever had. The night occupied numbers one to five on my list. Five freaking times... Because as it turned out, Jeremiah was pretty much insatiable—in addition to being generous and just the right amount of controlling. I didn’t know much about the average recharge time men needed, but his was impressive.
As was everything else about him. As if she could read my mind, Tiana gave me a knowing look. “Seriously, I’m super jealous. I would give anything for a night of mind-blowing sex at this point. My last few romps between the sheets were mind-numbing instead of mind-blowing. It’s so unfair that he looks like an angel and fucks like a devil. Could he not have had just one tiny little flaw?”
“He can be an arrogant asshole when he wants to be,” I said helpfully. I was trying to keep myself on track about him as well as pointing out to Tiana that just like everyone else, he was flawed. “A real cocky bastard.”
“With the emphasis on ‘cock’y’?” She laughed, wiping two small tears from the corners of her eyes. “Are you sure you saw right? Maybe it was really minuscule, and the lights just caught it right.”
“Nope,” I said, feeling a tingle between my legs just thinking about him naked. “If you want to focus on a flaw, you’re going to have to settle for those parts of his personality I mentioned. Physically, the man is perfection.”
Truer words had never been spoken. Even the nicks and few scars he had from accidents when he was younger only served to add to his perfection. They made him imperfect enough to be human, to have his body tell stories about who he was when he wasn’t wearing his corporate armor. And that was what made him so much more perfect.
I sighed, catching Tiana in what I assumed was a daydream of her own and nudging her playfully with my elbow. “Stop trying to picture him naked. Find your own man.”
“Trust me, I’ve tried,” she lamented. “I just haven’t found one like that yet. He doesn’t have any hot, single friends does he?”
“I think he does, actually.” I thought about the guys who called every now and then and asked me to schedule in drinks after work on his calendar. “But it’s way too soon to be asking him about that.”
It was way too soon for anything. I didn’t even know if Friday night was a one-off or if he wanted something more. He dropped some hints about next time, but we didn’t have any plans, and he sure hadn’t said anything about something more.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t want it to be more, to have meant something to him other than a “hit it and quit it” situation. No matter what happened though, I wouldn’t be like Jannie. If we both decided we felt something for each other, like I already knew I did, it would be one thing. But I wouldn’t pursue him like a parasite if it had only been a one-night-only deal for him.
He didn’t owe me anything, hadn’t made any promises or led me on. I was the one who asked to go to his apartment, and when he asked to kiss me, I was the one who leaned into it. I was a big enough girl to know I was an equal party in what happened, and I didn’t harbor any illusions about it necessarily meaning something.
We had an itch, we scratched it. Whatever happened next, if anything happened next, would be the same: a joint decision made on equal footing.
Tiana spun round when we reached the door of our building, turning in the direction of the mail room just off the lobby. “I signed us up for coupons from Mickey’s Studio. I totally forgot, but if they’ve arrived, we could get a discount on this class.”
“Sign me up for a discount anytime.” I walked with her to check the mail. I hadn’t checked mine since last weekend anyway, so I was probably due to make sure there wasn’t anything in there that needed my attention. Hopefully, not any bills yet though.
“I hope they’ve arrived. If you’re going to be keeping up with that man and I have to prepare f
or one of my own, we need to get in shape.” She winked at me over her shoulder. “Can’t have you cramping up in the middle of learning the karma sutra from a sex god.”
“Your mind has to be a really filthy place,” I said joking. I held open the wooden paneled door that led to the mail room. “There was no karma sutra.”
Though there were plenty of other interesting positions. Jeremiah was creative, to say the least. “You might have a point about cramping up though. We’d better hurry if we don’t want to miss the class.”
“I’m hurrying.” She dashed through the door I held open and rummaged in her gym bag for her key. As she was sorting through the different keys on her ring searching for the right one, I noticed a large envelope crammed into my mailbox.
Curious, I walked ahead of Tiana and pulled it out. It was heavy and as big as a sheet of paper. It had been stuffed face down into my mailbox, but because of its size and probably my not having emptied the box for a while, it hadn’t fallen in.
I turned it over and felt the blood drain from my face when I saw the red letters scrawled across the front of it. “Whore.”
A chill ran through me from where I was holding the envelope, a sense of foreboding growing in my gut. Tiana finally found her key and was in the process of making another joke when she saw the expression on my face. “What’s wrong? What is that?”
I held the envelope up to her so she could read the word printed on the front, working on opening the flap as I watched her eyes go wide. “What the fuck?”
“I don’t know.” Jannie’s name started rolling like ticker tape through my head. I pulled the mouth of the envelope open and turned it over to catch a series of photographs that came tumbling out.
My stomach turned when I set the envelope on top of the row of mailboxes and started going through the photos. “Oh my god. They’re all of me and Jeremiah in the last couple of weeks.”