by Hannah Ford
I’m already flush from the heat of him, from the burning he makes me feel, but those words of his make me blush in a way that has nothing to do his touch. It’s crazy that I’m not at all shy about grinding down on his dick, but knowing he knows how wet he’s made me suddenly makes me feel timid.
“I’ve made you this wet,” he says, rubbing his fingers across the thin fabric. He pauses to circle my hard nub with the tip of his middle finger. “Didn’t I?”
My eyes are closed to the sound of his voice and the feel of his hands. “Yes,” I say.
“You came storming into my office all self-righteous. Now look at you,” he says, continuing his gentle rubbing. “You’re desperate for me. Your pussy wants me. I did this to you. Tell me I did.”
“Yes. You did this,” I say, wondering what more he wants of me. He’s got me. “Please.”
“Please what?”
What? I don’t know. My head is swimming. All I know is that I want. I’m greedy and I want more and more and more. The words he’s saying are true but no man has ever spoken to me like this and it has me shy and hot at the same time. I like it, but I can’t do it.
“Tell me what you want.”
“You,” I say. I can’t open my eyes. I can’t look at him. “More.” More of his hands. More of his mouth. More of his tongue. I want his dick inside me—suddenly it’s all I can picture, but I certainly did not agree to go out on this one dinner with him to have sex.
I’ve never gone this far on a first date and frankly I can’t remember the last date I went on. In all my spinning thoughts, a tiny part of my brain that isn’t drowning in endorphins reminds me that this is not a date. I don’t know what this is, but my body aches for more and more.
“Be specific, Emily,” Jackson says, teasing me with my name. “Do you want more of me here?” His fingers drift over the roundness of my breasts, grazing my nipple.
“Yes,” I say, because yes it feels so good.
“Or do you want more of me here?” He moves back to my throbbing pussy, making me want to cry.
“Yes!”
“No,” he says. He moves his hands to my hips, no longer touching my skin. They rest there comfortably but suddenly feeling so far away from me. I slowly open my eyes. Won’t he give me anymore?
“Please.” It’s the only word I can manage, and the only word I need to speak.
The way he looks at me is beyond hungry. It’s an animal need. “I told you I always get my way. And I told you I wanted to taste you.”
Before I can react, in one swift motion he has lifted me up by my waist and set me directly on the dinner table. He shoves back the plates and I’m sure the clanking of the china is going to make the staff come busting down the door.
My legs are still spread open, my skirt hiked up to the top of my thighs. I’m panting as I watch Jackson pull up his chair and sit before me, perched up on the table. He runs his hand up my stomach, over the center of my heaving breasts and to my clavicle, where he gently pushes me back.
“Lean back,” he orders. “On your arms.” I go back on my forearms. His hands push up the remaining bit of privacy and he looks at my panties like he’s found the treasure.
“Please,” I beg once again.
“Please what?”
“Please take them off.”
A smirk comes up on his face. With his eyes locked on mine, he lifts my leg from beneath the knee and begins kissing the inside of my thigh, his tongue dancing over my skin as he goes. The higher he gets, the more I squirm, scooting down lower on the table to get myself to him, to his mouth and his tongue and all the pleasure I know is waiting for me.
“Jackson…”
He takes hold of the sides of my panties and rips them down, forcing me to temporarily close my legs so that he can get them off me. Soon he has me back in place, right where he wants me. He pushes my dress up again and stares down at me as he breathes heavily, hungrily. When he moves forward he doesn’t go slowly. His tongue is on me like a bee to the flower, licking up my throbbing walls. He flicks his tongue over my clit several times, making me sure I’m going to lose my mind. He has me panting, gasping for air. He pulls me closer to his mouth his tongue working over me as it throbs and pulses and I know I’m nearing the release. I have to see him.
I look down at Jackson, buried between my thighs, and I can’t believe this is happening. He’s beyond sexy, beyond amazing. It doesn’t even come close—no man has ever come close to making me feel this way.
I reach down for him, my hand brushing back his thick hair, wanting to touch him. He’s doing everything right but I realize I’m pulling him even closer to me, pushing his head more into my pussy, and for a moment I’m afraid he’ll stop and tell me he doesn’t like to be told what to do. Instead, his eyes open and he looks up at me. He slows only for a moment, and then his tongue picks up again, devouring me, working over my clit like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
“God, Jackson,” I moan.
My breaths become shorter, my vision starts to tunnel, and as I watch Jackson take over my pussy, his eyes locked on mine, I explode. My hips buck and he grasps my thighs, keeping his mouth in place as I ride out the orgasm, squeezing my eyes to all other sensations. I somehow manage to stifle the screams and moans that want to escape.
I can hear Jackson moving, but I still need a moment. I think I may have lost consciousness for a moment. I feel Jackson move my knees back together, then cover my legs with soft kisses.
“That was…” I begin.
“…intense,” he finishes. We both manage to laugh.
He helps me off the table and places the strap of my dress back on my shoulder as I tug down the skirt. I can hardly look at him but when I do, for just a quick moment, it feels warm and sweet.
“I just want to say, for the record, that I have never done anything like that in my life,” I tell him, once I’ve gotten myself dressed and back in my chair. I let my hair fall in my face, unable to look at him. “That was just…crazy.”
Jackson reaches over and tucks my hair behind my ear. He lifts my chin so that I’ll look at him. “You’re beautiful,” he says, and something in his eyes and the tone of his voice makes me feel like it’s more than just a line he’s using on me.
But then again, maybe that’s why he’s so seductive—he makes everything seem real, convincing, believable.
Does he mean any of it?
He walks back over to the door. He puts his fingers to his lips. “Shhh…”
I can’t help but grin as he unlocks the door then hustles back to the table like a naughty schoolboy trying not to get caught. Moments later the door opens and Rocco and another waiter arrive to clear away our dishes and present us with dessert. We all act like nothing out of the ordinary happened.
And it was so incredible, so unbelievable, I could almost convince myself that I made it all up, that I blacked out from the wine and had an intense, erotic dream. But then Jackson reaches under the table and clasps my hand and I realize—it’s real. I didn’t even have to dream it.
Jackson
That was not how I intended the night to go.
That was bad.
Well, it was fucking amazing. The hottest sexual experience I’ve ever had in my life. But it’s bad because now I’m hooked on Emily Brown and I don’t like to be addicted to anything.
I need my wits about me now more than ever, and all Emily does is make me lose my mind.
Is it possible that she’s everything you never knew you wanted?
The question hangs in my mind for a brief moment before I shake it off.
No. I can’t allow myself to become weak, thinking that way. My father taught me all too well that emotions make you irrational and easy to beat.
Still. Maybe she is a good candidate to help me get what I want with the business. At first, I was convinced that she would just be an itch to scratch, but now I’m wondering if I can have my cake and eat it too.
Scratch that itch again and again, wh
ile also satisfying the ridiculous stipulation my father inserted in his will. Dad’s final, cruel joke, has forced me and my brothers into yet another competition over what I know is rightfully mine.
But now I have to get my head back in the game because I have some briefs to go over before the video conference call with my brothers tomorrow. They’re doing the exact same thing tonight in New York and Los Angeles, and I can’t let the sexiness of tonight’s dinner slow me down in my preparations for battle.
In fact, I shouldn’t have gone out tonight at all. I should have spent all evening in my study.
I can’t make this mistake again.
The thing is—it’s not just that Emily is sexy, although damn she is. It’s that she hooks into me in a way that no one ever has before. She’s got me second-guessing my watch, for Christ’s sake, which costs more than most people’s cars. It’s a classic.
Still, back at my brownstone I smile as I take it off and toss the watch into the velvet-lined drawer with all my others. I think of her fingers touching my skin, and how she felt when I held her tiny wrist.
How she tasted…like honey, only sweeter.
The way her legs were open, the way she smelled, the shivering of her skin as I touched it. And just like that, I’m rock hard once more.
I look at my phone, her number already secured in it, thanks to Sandra’s quick administrative skills.
Maybe I could call her, find some excuse to see her again. I could send a car to bring her here right now and we could finish what we started in the restaurant.
I shake my head. This is exactly the problem. When I should be working, I’m thinking about how I can get Emily here next to me.
I undress and change into flannel pants and a cotton shirt. In my office on the second floor, I open up my computer and start reviewing the agenda for the meeting and try to suss out what Rex and Miles will each fight me on, because there is always a fight. Our father called it competition but really it’s all-out war.
Dear old Dad loved nothing more than pitting brother against brother, even when it came to dinner. He’d purposely have the cook set out too few pieces of meat or not enough of our favorite sides just so he could watch us fight over it.
When Mother tried to give us some of her food he’d rail against her too.
I know people think I had this job handed to me by good old-fashioned nepotism but my father raised us to believe that if we weren’t competing, we were wasting space. It was nonstop, never ending, but it’s the only way I know.
I’ve never bothered with relationships—I spend time with women, of course, but usually more of a one-night stand variety. I don’t have time for dating bullshit and honestly I don’t want someone who is around all the time. Marriage is a burden of worrying about what someone else wants and needs and expects from me. Pretty much my nightmare. I just want to be left alone to work.
I give it a go for about twenty minutes, pretending to read contracts and proposals and make sure all my documents and points are ready for tomorrow but really, I’m just looking at these things. I’m not absorbing anything. It’s a waste of time so I head to bed with the intent to skip my regular six a.m. workout and get to the office even earlier than usual.
But it’s still no use. I can’t stop thinking about Emily.
I feel like I could replay the dinner in my mind for the rest of my life. Emily took me by complete surprise, which I suppose is why I had to take her.
As I lay in bed, I mentally undress Emily, taking her dress all the way off, seeing her completely naked before me.
I liked teasing her but right before I tasted her I wasn’t trying to tease her. I was thinking that if I went through with it, if I had a taste of her, I might not be able to go back. When my name came whimpering out of her mouth, I was done. She already had so much power over me, and I’d gone further with her than I ever planned. I realize now that the moment I saw her in that dress, her perfect body filling it out and those gorgeous eyes of hers, I was a goner. Nothing could have saved me.
As I finally fall asleep, I vow to myself to get my shit together the second I wake up in the morning.
“So the golden boy didn’t get the job,” my brother Rex says over the video screen. He leans back in his chair in Los Angeles and rests his head back on his hands and laughs. The bastard actually laughs.
“Don’t be a dick,” Miles scolds, but he doesn’t mean it. Miles is enjoying this as much if not more than Rex. “Really. The poor son of a bitch thought he had the job locked down and now he’s just like us.”
“Yeah, we send our condolences to the heir apparent,” Rex says. The contempt can’t be kept from his 25-year-old face. He’s the youngest, and the biggest smartass. “And you’ve treated us our whole lives like we were working for you, like you were higher than us. The arrogance on you is legendary, brother. Now we’re all on the same shit-level playing field. Miles and I have just as good of a chance of taking over Croft International as your sorry ass does.”
“Look, can we just focus on the business at hand?” I say, desperately trying to keep all emotion from my face.
These calls are always bad enough.
When our father passed recently, we had all expected that I would take the reins of this company as president and CEO of all of Croft International, across all operations and platforms. That would have made me the big boss to my little brothers Miles and Rex.
It’s what I’ve been told my entire life—when Father passed, the company would become mine, the eldest.
But Edward Croft was a ruthless man, in business and in life. In his will he changed the rules. He deemed all three of us a disappointment because none of us has settled down and become family men—a key ingredient he felt was necessary to running a corporation.
So in his will he decreed that the first of us to marry will become the true president and CEO.
Father was not a great family man, but he made himself look the part. Around the time he expanded his business from luxury hotels to resort destinations, our mother, always quiet and proper, packed up her monogrammed Louis Vuitton cases and moved to Monaco.
I was ten.
The last time I saw her was for my college graduation. She flew in for the ceremony, but Father insisted we accompany him to a wedding for the daughter of the U.S. senator to Vermont.
He wanted to present me to all the bigwigs at the wedding as if it were my coming out into the family business. Mom and I did our Croft duties all night, shaking hands, being proper, and not having more than two glasses of champagne during the entire seven-hour evening. Mother flew back the next afternoon on a company jet. That was my graduation celebration, and the last time I saw her.
The new terms of his will is just one final middle finger to the three sons—but most of all me.
Nobody sacrificed more than I did for this damn business.
I keep my voice calm, but in reality I’d like to punch through the window of my thirty-second floor office. My brothers’ faces are vivid on the screens before me, and the glee in their eyes is undeniable. My brothers and I are never a team, but when we have these calls we have to pretend to come together for the good of the company.
“Well, that’s enough chit chat,” Miles says, breaking me from my reverie. “Jackson, where are the reports you were supposed to send us?”
For a moment I don’t say anything.
“Hello? The quarterly reports for the Madrid properties?”
“Yeah, I didn’t get them either,” Rex adds.
I fumble through the files on my computer. I did look at it last night. I thought I’d sent it. Or had I meant to look at it one more time early this morning before sending?
“I have it, I just needed to confirm a couple of numbers,” I say.
“Somebody didn’t do his homework,” Rex chides.
“Jackson, I need that report for my meeting with the investors at noon,” Miles says.
“I said I have it,” I snap. I’m frantically clicking through
the files. I don’t get rattled. It’s one of the things Father instilled in us—the ability to roll with the punches (both literal and figurative). He was known to damage our sporting equipment before big matches just to see how we’d handle the sudden crisis.
“Has finance seen it?” Miles asks. “Because you know it has to through them before I can present it here in New York.”
Shit, how could I forget that? I should have sent it last night before I went to dinner with Emily. This is a significant screw up.
“What’s wrong with you, Jackson?” Miles asks. “My meeting is in two hours. What am I supposed to do?”
“Frank is going to be pissed,” Rex unhelpfully adds. “He hates having his time wasted.”
“We all do,” Miles says. “Not to mention it makes me look like I’m slacking on my job. Thanks a lot, Jackson.”
“I said I’d get it to you as soon as I can.”
“You better hope it’s in time for my meeting,” Miles says. “Will I even have time to review it or are you going to send it two seconds before the meeting? It starts at noon.”
“I know what time your meeting starts.”
“Do you?” Miles sits back in his chair, exasperated. “God, you don’t care about anyone but yourself. I’m so glad Father amended his will because you’d run this company into the ground.”
“Watch yourself, Miles,” I say. “You both can say what you want about me but don’t question my abilities in this company.”
“You’re proving him right,” Rex pipes in. “You don’t have the report—basic stuff, Jackson.”
“Your entire life you’ve had this chip on your shoulder,” Miles says. “You don’t just think you’re better than me and Rex, you think you’re better than everyone. And on one of my most important meetings of the quarter you can’t get me what I need.”
“I’ve contributed more to this company than the two of you combined,” I say, the heat flowing up me faster than I can possibly contain it. They have no idea the sacrifices I’ve made for the sake of Croft International. “Do not question my ability and do not question my authority.”