by Nikki Sloane
“You okay with the stairs?” Royce asked, hesitating with his hand on the car door as we prepared to duck out into the rain.
Earlier, the long walk from my hospital room to the elevator bank had left me surprisingly winded. He was worried about me, but I gave him a sweet smile. “I’m fine, I promise. But thank you.”
Last time I’d been chauffeured and arrived at this house in the rain, it’d been his graduation party, and I was struck by how much things had changed since then. He’d been the manipulative prince of Cape Hill and I’d been a nobody. Just the weird Northcott sister who’d reluctantly tagged along.
This time when I scurried up the steps in the cold drizzle, Royce put a protective hand on my elbow and hurried alongside me.
The house always felt cavernous, but it was much worse today. The tall ceilings stretched up for miles, and when my gaze landed on the grand staircase, I shivered. I still remembered how the fibers of the red carpeted steps felt against my skin. My stomach twisted with an aftershock of disorientation. I’d been so sure I was going to die there, either from the drugs or a fall.
Royce’s hand crept around mine and squeezed. “Are you hungry? Should I tell Carla to make us something?”
“No, thanks.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the staircase and forced my gaze upward. Something was . . . different. I blinked in confusion as I looked at the landing and the empty wood paneled wall. “Where’s the picture?”
“The family portrait?” He tried to disguise the unease in his voice. “My dad got rid of it.”
Like a cliché, the large painting had been of the Hale family. Alice angled and seated in a formal chair and Macalister behind her, his sons flanking him on either side. It was regal and pompous as hell.
Now it was gone.
I couldn’t shake the feeling Macalister had removed it in a fit of rage. The image of him yanking down the canvas and ripping it apart, tearing Alice from the rest of the family, played in my mind. He couldn’t remove her legally. Divorce was failure, and Macalister didn’t do defeat. So, destroying the portrait and banishing her from his life would be the closest he could come.
“I need to change,” Royce said, glancing down at his suit. He tugged on my hand, pulled me toward the stairs, and kept his tone casual. “Come on.”
When we passed by the library, a coiled circle of black fur on the back of the chair lifted its head and appraised us with apple green eyes. Lucifer was in his favorite spot, and he liked it more than his master, apparently, because even though Royce was now home, the cat looked at us with indifference before putting his head back down and returning to sleep.
He was so fickle, just like his owner.
We’d been together for months, but I’d only been in Royce’s room a handful of times. Was he a naturally tidy person, or was the staff quick to make up his room after he left the house? It always looked perfect, like a set for a glamorous magazine shoot—
Well, there was that one time when it hadn’t.
The night I’d agreed to play his father’s game in the maze, Royce had come back to his room and ransacked the place. Vance had called it a temper tantrum, but there wasn’t any evidence of it now. The white linens on the king-sized bed were crisp. The silver silk curtains which hung over the enormous floor to ceiling windows were flawless. The charcoal gray couch looked brand-new. Maybe it was.
I stood awkwardly in the center of his bedroom as Royce toed off his shoes and shrugged out of his suit coat before tossing it onto one of the pale gray chairs opposite the couch. His gaze locked onto me as his fingers loosened his tie and undid the top button of his collar.
“Have a seat.” Amusement edged into his voice. “Stay awhile.”
“Where?” I asked.
I was out of sorts here in this place that was his and not ours. Should I sit on the couch? The bed? It wasn’t helping that he was currently undressing either. He untucked and unbuttoned his shirt, opening it to reveal a tight white undershirt that clung to his chest and trim waist.
He angled his head and shot me a look like I was being silly. “Wherever you want.”
His cuffs were unbuttoned, one side then the other, then off came the dress shirt. His practiced, methodical movements made me want to bite my lip. He wasn’t even shirtless yet. Why was this doing things to me? Why did my body clench with anticipation? And how in the world did he look even better halfway out of his suit?
“Will this be our room?” I asked. “I mean, when we’re married. Or will we be keeping separate rooms like your father and . . .”
I struggled to say her name, but it was clear I didn’t need to. He paused, and the intensity ratcheted up in his eyes. “It’s whatever you want.”
I pressed my lips together, unsure. I’d always assumed when I was married, I’d share a bed with my spouse, the way most people did. The way my parents did.
Rather than make the decision, I sent it back to him. “What do you want?”
He turned his head and cast his gaze toward the bed, which suddenly seemed both inviting and scary at the same time. Something suspiciously like hope colored his voice. “We should try it.”
“Okay,” I breathed.
Before I could say anything else, he reached behind his back, grabbed a fistful of his t-shirt, and pulled it over his head, revealing the sculpture of his chest and powerful arms. Thoughts vaporized from my brain at the sight. Subtly notched muscles ran down his stomach and disappeared beneath the waistband of his underwear, which rode a half inch higher than his suit pants.
I was irritated with myself. I wasn’t supposed to be one of those girls who fell apart around Royce, but it happened anyway. My gaze traced every inch of him, from the silver watch on one wrist to the pronounced line his collarbones drew across his defined chest.
“I should warn you,” he said as he turned and walked away, wordlessly encouraging me to follow him. “I don’t know how that’s going to go.”
His socked feet carried him into the bathroom and deeper still into his enormous walk-in closet, the suits organized by color on one side, his casual clothes on the other, and the back was a wall of shoes and accessories. I stood at the entryway, leaning against the doorframe as he peeled off his socks and tossed them into a hamper.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
His intense eyes didn’t give me a clue of what was going on behind them. “I’ve never had a girl in my bed.”
Surprise coasted down through me. “Like, for sleeping?”
“For anything.” He worked to unlatch the belt at his waist, but his gaze remained on me. I was captured prey he didn’t want to escape, but that was silly. Didn’t he know I wasn’t going anywhere? His face contorted with an emotion I wasn’t used to seeing from him. Was he . . . shy? “I didn’t bring anyone back to my room. This is supposed to be my space, where I can be me.”
My pulse sped. “You brought me here after we went out the first time.”
A smile hinted in his eyes. “You’d already agreed to be my wife.”
A thrill shot through me. He’d been my first in so many things. I was excited to be his too, at least in some way. I swallowed thickly as his fly was undone and his pants fell around his ankles, leaving him clad only in a pair of underwear. The tight gray trunks hugged him and left little to the imagination.
My thighs tightened. “So, what you’re saying is . . . I’ll get to see this show you’re putting on right now every night.”
My statement caught him off-guard, and Royce’s smile went wide. He stepped out of his pants, leaving them in a heap on the floor, and strode toward me. “Oh, you like this?”
I wanted to be as confident as he was, standing in front of me with barely anything on. I lifted my chin and puffed up my chest. “I do.”
It was shocking to me how much power he held over me even now, when he was nearly naked and I was fully clothed. He threaded a hand through my hair, his goal of getting dressed forgotten. His lips slanted across mine in a scorchi
ng kiss that made my toes curl inside my Stuart Weitzman heels.
I sank into his kiss, both figuratively and literally, because as he deepened it, I was bent backward over his arm. His mouth roved against my mouth, licking and tasting, and my knees softened. God, would I ever get used to the way he possessed me? It all still felt so new and surreal. I’d spent years hating him, not to mention thinking he was going to marry my sister. I couldn’t believe I’d ended up in Royce’s closet, in love with him and letting him kiss the hell out of me.
But his kiss came abruptly to an end, like a thought had just occurred to him. “You’re distracting me. We have shit to talk about.”
“We do.” I skimmed my palms along his back, sliding them over his warm, smooth skin. “Tell me about Ascension.”
He extracted himself from my hold, bent, and retrieved the suit pants from the floor, talking as he hung them up. “Their growth in brokerage and credit accounts is incredible. A shareholder’s wet dream.”
“That’s why you want to buy them?”
“No.”
He let that cryptic answer settle on me as he grabbed a pair of jeans off a shelf and pulled them on, one leg at a time.
“But you’ve been buying stock in Ascension for years. You own almost five percent.”
“Yup.”
Was he purposefully trying to be a vague asshole? “That company’s not as big as HBHC, but they’re a competitor. Why do that? You buy Ascension, and then use them to try to take over HBHC?”
Because Royce on his own didn’t have enough money to buy out the shareholders of his family’s bank. But if he owned Ascension, he could gain interest from others to partner with on a takeover attempt. I only got a flash of his sly look before he tugged on a t-shirt, disappointingly covering his bare chest. His expression said one thing—that I hadn’t guessed right.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “That’s the only reason that makes sense to me.”
“That I’m planning a takeover?”
I nodded.
Royce put his hands on his waist and stared at me with unflinching eyes. “And that’s exactly what I want him to think.”
Maybe the hospital stay had made me slow, because I couldn’t connect the dots. “You . . . don’t want to buy Ascension?”
“No. He needs to do it.”
“Why?” What did he have to gain from his father buying it? In my confusion, I hadn’t noticed his advance, and I let out a squeak of surprise as he scooped me up into his arms. “What are you doing?”
“I want to see what you look like in my bed.”
As he carried me through the bathroom and out into the bedroom, I wondered if this was calculated distraction. Perhaps he didn’t want to tell me his master plan after all, or he wanted to do it in stages.
“You want to have sex? Fine.” I gave him a determined look. “But you’re going to keep talking, Royce.”
He set me down on the bed, but as he backed up, his expression was odd. “That’s not what I meant. We can’t have sex.”
My back went straight as I sat up, tucking my legs beneath me. “What? Why not?”
“I don’t know, Marist.” He tossed up a hand. “Maybe because you just got out of the hospital? Or because you barely made it down the hall to my room without needing to stop for a rest?”
It was true, I wasn’t recovered, but like last time he’d done it, when he took away the option of sex . . . I instantly began to crave it.
“I’m fine,” I said with exasperation. “If it helps, I’ll let you do the majority of the work. I’ll just lay there and take it.”
He chuckled. “Sounds awesome, can’t wait.” He sat beside me on the bed, the mattress dipping and causing me to fall into him. “As much fun as it would be to say I fucked you so hard, it sent you to the hospital, you know that’s the last thing I want, right?” He sobered. “It’s one night. Neither of us is a stranger to waiting.”
Because we’d both waited a year for each other after he’d cornered me in the library and demanded he be my first. But—fuck—we’d gotten engaged months ago, and yet we’d only had sex three times.
Irritation simmered in my core. “I’m tired of waiting. I almost died, and . . .” I knew it was a ridiculous thing to say, but I was greedy and wild. Desperate to reconnect with him in the way that felt honest and true. “I’ve never even given a blowjob.”
He pressed his lips together, and amusement warmed his expression. “Just a heads up, I haven’t either.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Hey, remember when you told me you were going to fuck me non-stop once I had a ring on my finger? When, exactly, is that going to start?”
“Marist.” He sighed softly as he traced a fingertip over my cheek, brushing my hair back. “You think I don’t want to? You have no idea how badly I want you. But what I don’t want is to be the asshole who tries to get inside you five minutes after you’ve come home from the fucking hospital.”
I wasn’t sure I could persuade him with words alone. I’d have to show him I was physically okay, beyond ready. When I smoothed my palm up his thigh, he caught my hand and stopped me before I reached my final destination.
“Please?” I aimed for the sultriest plea I could manage. “Let me go down on you. I promise to stop if it gets to be too much for me.”
His hand tensed on mine, and his voice dipped low. “Jesus. Are you actually begging to suck me off right now?”
I slipped off the bed, dropping to my knees, and as I turned to face him, the electricity between us crackled. He twisted with torment and need. Lust was a beautiful emotion on his face. It made his full lips part and his eyes hood, and all the wicked thoughts I had swelled until I was too tight. The only way to keep myself from bursting was to act on them.
It came from him quiet and with awe. “You’re something else, Medusa.”
My insides quivered with excitement and nervousness as I closed in on another first, raking my fingers up the inseam of his jeans. But while my mouth would be occupied, his wouldn’t be, and I still didn’t understand. “Tell me why you want your father to buy Ascension.”
Royce put his hands on the bed behind him and leaned back on his straightened arms, opening his legs wider to make more room for me.
“On paper,” he said, “they’re a smart buy. It’s only a matter of time before Ascension’s growth in private banking and mortgages starts to rival our numbers.” His heavy gaze was cast down on me, watching as I stroked my fingers over his fly and traced the outline of his thickening cock beneath it. The words were weighted with double meaning. “They’re aggressive. Hungry.”
A smile eked out of me, in spite of the anxiety I felt. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I’d talked him into this blowjob, but what if I were terrible at it?
“Ascension pushes its people to perform,” he continued, distracting me from my worry. “They pit their executives and departments against each other and incentivize deals. I’m told it’s ruthless, and almost as brutal as it can be at HBHC. So, it’s right up my dad’s alley.”
His chest rose with a deep breath as I popped the snap at the top of his jeans and inched down his zipper.
“But if that’s true, why’d you vote against it?”
“Because Ascension looks so good, it’s too good.”
I paused. “What do you mean?”
“Executives get bonuses when they meet or exceed their quarterly numbers. Each year the quota goes up and gets more unrealistic. And yet every year their top performers manage to pull it off.”
Suspicion rolled through me. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“They’re forging signatures and opening dummy accounts to inflate numbers. They’ll tack on additional products without the client’s approval. We’re talking about tens of thousands of accounts, probably more. Corporate looks the other way because the only thing that matters is keeping the stock price up.”
Whoa. What he was saying was serious bank fraud. I sat back on my hee
ls. “You know this? How?”
He blinked. “Tate Isaacs works for them.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed. Tate was the closest thing Royce had to a best friend.
“If my dad took the time to really look at Ascension, there’s a chance he might notice it smells off. But I know him. He won’t. He thinks I want Ascension, so he’s way too focused on taking it away from me. All that matters is winning. On the surface, Ascension looks amazing. He’ll fight to get control, and once the deal’s done, he’ll welcome it under the umbrella of HBHC.”
Everything went still. Time suspended as he looked at me. His smile was cruel and yet undeniably sexy.
“Ascension is a bomb I can activate with one call to the SEC,” he whispered, “and when I do, it’s going to blow up in his face.”
Royce was wrong. Ascension wasn’t a bomb.
It was a Trojan Horse.
FOUR
AFTER A TEN-YEAR SIEGE AGAINST THE CITY OF TROY, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, only to abandon it and set off to sail their army home. The Trojans hauled the horse inside their gates, claiming it as a war trophy, unaware of the danger hidden inside.
That night, after the city was asleep, thirty of Greece’s finest warriors slipped out from inside, including King Menelaus, and opened the gates. The Greek army hadn’t sailed away—they burst out of hiding and stormed the city.
Troy finally fell, and Helen was reunited with her husband.
The most famous of the Greek myths endured. A Trojan Horse was anything your foe invited inside that brought about their own destruction.
Royce’s blue eyes were fixed on me as I knelt between his spread knees, my hands on his thighs and his pants undone.
“Acquiring anything right now when our stock is down is risky enough, but when the board realizes what a terrible deal my father made? I’ll call for a vote of no confidence and strip him of his seat.”
The puzzle pieces snapped into place. “That’s why you voted against it, even though you want the deal to go through.”
A smile curled on his lips. “The board will see me as the smarter, reasonable Hale.”