by Mia Madison
“Let me take you to dinner. I can be there in twenty minutes.”
It was my turn to laugh. “How do you even know where I live?”
“I asked HR. Owning the company does have some perks. Pick you up in twenty?”
“Make it thirty and you’ve got a date.” I held my breath, nervously awaiting some negative reaction to me calling his invitation a date, but one never came.
“I’ll see you then.” The call ended, and I squealed. Leaping up onto my bed, I jumped up and down with the joy and excitement of being taken out on a bonafide date by a handsome man. At only twenty-two, most of my previous dating experience had been with people whose idea of dating usually meant hanging out on the couch with a box of pizza before moving things to the bedroom. Of course, my father had always tried to push well-established men on me, all of them at least ten years my senior, but I’d never been interested. His idea of matchmaking was to maneuver for maximum gain, not whether I enjoyed someone’s company or if we had something in common.
“What do I wear?” I leapt down from the bed and dashed to my closet. It was full of clothes that I’d worn for work, but I didn’t want to bring even the slightest hint of me employee, him boss into our evening out. Whatever I wore needed to be something he’d never seen before.
I pushed through my closet’s offerings and then stopped. “Gotcha,” I said, pulling out a light blue high-necked, thigh-length halter dress. I was dressed in fresh makeup and my hair pulled into a messy up-do just in time to be walking out the door by the time my phone dinged to let me know that Harris was in his car downstairs. By the time I reached the street, he was out of his car and holding the passenger side door of his midnight blue Maybach 62 open for me, making me feel like a princess. As for Harris, he was beyond handsome in a tailored suit sans tie. He looked dashing and casual all at once, and I gave him a chaste kiss at the corner of his mouth before sliding in.
It was an easy, comfortable drive that took us to a small, intimate French bistro where the waiter slipped in and out of our lives, providing for all our needs without ever seeming to interfere with the privacy of our shared moment.
“By the time I was a freshman in high school, I had an investment portfolio of above 2.8 million. Then, by the end of my sophomore year, I’d lost it all and had just enough money in my pocket to take Suzanne Wheeler out for a sundae at the corner shop.”
“Oh no!” I laughed at his tale of woe because he was laughing and because his smile was so beautiful. “Were you devastated?”
“No, not at all. They were just numbers to me at the time. I had no real concept of its value. When I lost it all, my life didn’t actually change any. I just started from scratch again. I was excited, to tell the truth. Starting from scratch was like getting to go on a big adventure all over again.”
“Did your parents figure out what you were up to?” He’d probably had more money than they’d made over their entire lives at that point.
“My mom figured it out when I was a senior. I paid off their house loan and tried to make it look like it was an inheritance from an unnamed source, but it didn’t take her long to put it all together.” He took a sip of his wine. “But enough about me. I want to know about you.”
“Me? I’m boring.” I tried to dismiss his question with the wave of my hand.
“No, I’ll never believe that. Ever.” There was kindness in his eyes, but no mirth.
I played with my napkin a moment, wondering how much of a freak I should risk looking like. Then, taking a deep breath, I decided that if I was going to jump that I was going to jump with both feet and into the deepest section of the swimming pool. No holding back. Looking up, I met the gaze of his smoky, grey eyes. “I joined the mathlete club when I was in 6th grade, but because I wasn’t in high school yet, I had to have parental approval to join the high school club. So, I forged a note with my father’s signature and used all of my study-time period to attend the meeting. I’d walk from the junior high buildings over to the high school buildings and back again after the meeting. By the time I’d actually reached high school, I was president of the club. I won the regional, national and international mathlete competitions for the last three years of high school, and I earned a scholarship to go to MIT. When I didn’t want to attend the colleges my father wanted me to attend or study the subjects he wanted me to study, he refused to pay for any of the expenses, and because of how much they made, student loans weren’t available to me.” I shrugged as my smile grew. “I made it work.”
Harris looked at me with something approaching awe in his eyes. “You’re incredible. And your dad... the man is such a fool.” I had to stifle my startled laugh as I did my best not to choke on a sip of wine. I recovered, and Harris lifted my hand to his lips for a kiss. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve got a surprise.”
Forty-five minutes later found me blindfolded, but there was no bed to be found. Instead, I was stumbling along beside Harris as his firm, supportive arm hugged me closely to him.
“Step up... and again,” his voice rumbled close to my ear. “Now we’re going to be walking downhill... Now it flattens out. Put your arm around my waist.”
I knew that we were in a building, but that’s all I knew. He’d had me blindfolded long before we’d ever reached his secret destination, and I had a horrible suspicion that I was going to be taking off the scarf that had been tied around my eyes to find myself in the middle of a well-meaning flash mob singing and dancing I Got A Feeling.
“Stand right here. Stay close,” Harris murmured, holding me snug in his arms before gently coaxing the blindfold away from my eyes.
I gasped, then looked up, then looked all around us, turning in a circle while Harris was careful to keep me close. We were standing on a small platform in the center of a huge dome on which radiated a hundred thousand points of light. “There! That’s Delphinus!” I pointed at the collection of stars that made up the body of a swimming, celestial dolphin.
Harris had brought me to a planetarium, and there wasn’t another soul in sight.
I turned to him, now my turn to be in awe of him. “How did you do this?”
His lips pulled up at the corners into a smile as he held me close and looked down at me. “I know a guy who knows a guy.” He shrugged. “I figured that if I couldn’t take the girl to the stars, that I’d bring the stars to the girl.”
It was all I needed. I threw my arms around his neck, stretched up onto my tippy-toes and planted a big kiss on his lips. This was the best date of my life.
Chapter Twelve
Harris
Addilyn’s arms slid around my waist as she laid her cheek against my chest and hugged me. “I can’t believe you managed to get this whole place just for us. Is there really no one else here?”
“There’s just you and me, nobody else,” I said, finding myself wishing that what I was saying was true about much more than the planetarium. The longer I was near Addilyn, the harder it was to spend time apart.
I stroked the back of her neck as I cupped her head in my hand and lost myself in the blue of her eyes when she looked up at me. “Did you mean what you said about wanting to work for NASA?”
“Well,” she hedged, “NASA’s more of an idea. It’s more about what I’d like to do than who I’d like to work for. Nowadays, there are a lot of up and coming opportunities in the space race, but...” She turned away, shaking her head as her arms slipped from their hold around me. “There are some engineering programs with collaborative ties to NASA that I would have liked to be a part of, but it’s... It’s not the direction my life is going now.”
If she had punched me in the gut, I wouldn’t have felt the impact of her words any greater. Capturing her beautiful face in my hands, I made her look back up at me. “Don’t do that. Don’t throw your dreams away. You’re so young. You could do anything. Never let anyone—not me, not your dad, not some random jerk on the street—tell you what your life should be. If you want to chase the stars, then do it. D
on’t make that goal about tomorrow. Make it about today.”
Her large, luminous eyes turned hungry. “There’s only one thing that I want today, and I’m looking at him. I want you to make me feel like you did when we were in your office.” She moved close, arching her breasts into me and making it hard for me to breathe. She had a way of taking control over me with just a glance, and the worst part about it was that I didn’t mind. I wanted to be her everything, but that part of me that was grounded in reality knew that I never could. Her getting involved with me would only hold her back, but... we still had tonight.
I lowered my lips to hers in a kiss that grew in hunger and heat as the softness of her yielded under my every touch and stroke until she was mewing her need with little whimpers. Wrapping my arms around her, I picked her up and was rewarded by her wrapping her arms around my waist. It was all the encouragement I needed to take her without hesitation.
The brush of my hands over her thighs and hips collected her dress around her middle before I reached below her to open my trousers. My cock throbbed in my hand as I coaxed it to freedom. Her squeal of surprise as I twisted and jerked my fingers to rip her lace panties away did something to my soul. It made me want her more. It made me want to own her, even though I knew I never could. She was a wild bird that I would never try to cage.
I sank my fingers into her once, twice, as she gasped my name into my mouth. Her liquid heat coated my hand, her glorious twenty-something body ready for me already. I positioned myself against her, then wrapped my arm around her hips and thrust hard as I pulled her down against me. It was with one forceful thrust that I sank my shaft into her hot center, then paused as her body spasmed around me. That was when everything slowed. Her ragged breath, her tiny plaintive cries, and her warm honeysuckle scent encouraged my every stroke as I took her with heavy slaps of my hips as her body shook in my arms. My lips teased at her neck before I nipped her, fighting the urge to bite, to leave some small mark upon her body to let the world know that she was mine. But, that was yet another lie. She wasn’t mine and never would be, not in any way that would be meaningful and lasting. She was a bright, shining star streaking through my evening sky, and I was simply lucky enough to get to bask in the glow of her starlight for a short time.
“Harris... Harris, I’m close!” she panted in a tremulous voice with her cheek pressed to mine. I kept each thrust just as I had been, burying myself inside of her tight channel, over and over, with the same overriding command that I wish I had on her life.
“Come on, baby,” I groaned. “Let me have it. Come on me.” I had to grit my teeth against my need to finish first. My thighs burned, my cock was swelled so hard that it hurt, and my balls ached with the need to send their contents surging into her depths, but I vowed to hold out until she’d found her sweet release.
“Yes, yesssss.” Her entire body shook uncontrollably and her arms became like steel bands around me. She shifted her angle, then her hips, making me almost blind for half a second before her loud cry of ecstasy filled the entire planetarium with her pleasure.
It was all I could take. My hips sped up, the world turned on its axis, and I died, leaving myself and pouring all that I had into her.
My legs had turned to rubber, and I sank to my knees. We still clung to each other and I was still deep inside of her. I buried my face into her hair, breathing her in while allowing myself to remain in the delusion for just a moment more that we never had to part. It was the most I would ever have from her because it was the most that I could ever dare to ask for. I wouldn’t anchor her soaring life to a guy like me, a guy with cement around his feet. My future was set, but hers was still being created. I wouldn’t get in her way, no matter how much I wished I could keep her like this in my arms forever.
Chapter Thirteen
Addilyn
Addilyn scrolled through question after question of NASA’s online application for their space program. With each one, she assessed her strengths weaknesses, and without tapping into a possibly overly healthy ego about her abilities, she believed that what she had to offer made her a very strong candidate. “I could actually do this,” she whispered to herself.
“Addilyn,” Pam said, seeming to materialize out of thin air next to her desk. “Mr. Worthington would like to see you in his office.”
I swallowed, doing my best to stifle my fear from flashing in my eyes. Does she know? Pam was a hardworking and tremendously talented woman. The last thing I wanted was for her to think that I was trying to sleep my way up the corporate ladder. I’d only been here for three months but I’d already gotten a promotion and a salary increase, all while the work that I was taking on of evaluating the company’s earnings reports against departmental raw data was being kept on the hush-hush in order to not tip off anyone of the need to start covering their tracks. But, as I looked up into Pam’s eyes, I was met with only warm confidence. There was no mistrust or animosity there toward me, and that made me breathe a silent sigh of relief.
“Thanks, Pam,” I said with an earnest smile.
Getting up, I headed to Harris’s office, tapping on the door before opening it even though I’d been summonsed. I heard him call out “come” from within before turning the handle and stepping in, and I was sure to close his office door behind me. The urge to flirt with him always seemed to override my better judgment, and I didn’t want to risk my very unprofessional behavior being seen.
His smile crinkled the corners of his eyes as I walked the distance to his desk, melting me completely so that, just as I’d feared I would, I took his face in my hands and planted a big kiss right on his lips as soon as I got close enough to do so. There wasn’t anything shy about me with Harris, and as soon as our kiss broke, I rolled his chair back from his desk a little and planted myself cross-ways on his lap.
“Well hello to you too,” Harris said, his deep voice doing tingly things to my girlie bits. Unable to resist the naughty temptation, I squirmed in his lap until I felt a now-familiar thickness grow.
“There you are,” I purred, giving him another kiss, but this time instead of heat flaring in his eyes, I saw a wariness.
“I’m going to have to fire you if this relationship continues, you know that, right?” His voice was grave, as if he were reading a man his final rites, but my ears had picked up the most important words in what he’d just said, and my brows arched.
“Relationship? Is that what we’re calling this now?” I was teasing him to mask how happy he’d just made me. If I’d thought it wouldn’t hurt us both, I’d stand on top of the building with a bullhorn to yell to all the world that he and I were hooking up while I threw confetti adorned with his and my initials surrounded by a heart. “I’m going to introduce you to my daddy so that you can court me proper.” He winced, but he didn’t pull away from me. Instead, he held me closer.
“Whatever it takes,” he said, his gaze unflinching as he stared into my eyes.
Oh my God! Things were officially getting real, and I wasn’t sure what to do with that. I wanted it—I wanted him—a lot, but that didn’t mean that I knew what to do when I got what I wanted. “What happened with that guy from accounting, the one that’s been embezzling?” I asked hurriedly, opting to change the subject rather than deal with my emotional response to a man who was so much more than any of the boys I’d dated in the past.
There was a pause before Harris answered. “I took your advice and I met with him before calling the police or reporting him to the board.” His body had tensed, and I knew that there was more that he wasn’t yet saying.
“Did you fire him?”
“No... I put him on indefinite medical leave with pay.” I twisted so that I could get a better view of Harris’s face as he spoke. Harris shook his head. “He looked awful. He’s been battling cancer and putting off using his medical leave so that he’d have an income for as long as possible. He was just doing his best to provide for his family for as long as he was able. But, I don’t think he was embezzlin
g. Do you think that the inaccuracies you found could have been from errors rather than by design?”
I didn’t hesitate to nod my head. “I do, I really do. And, I’m so glad you talked to him before, you know, doing all the rest.”
His expression was earnest. “I’m glad I took somebody’s advice to talk to him first,” he said, giving my thigh a pat. “I hate to think about how much worse that man’s life could have been made if I hadn’t talked to him first. Thank you, Addilyn. Your influence—the difference it made—it means a lot to me.”
“You mean a lot to me,” I whispered, leaning forward to rest my forehead on his. I finally felt brave enough to put into words all that I was feeling. “I’m so glad that you came into my life.”
“Right back at you.” He tilted his head up to take my lips in a kiss that had me melting against him, mind, body and soul.
Everything about him felt right to me. Everything about him was what I wanted in my today and tomorrow. Despite his words of encouragement to chase the stars, I was going to stay put, right here with him.
Chapter Fourteen
Harris
I was a fool in love and I knew it, but instead of it making me happy, I was tormented instead. Every day I was faced with seeing a woman who wasn’t really mine. On top of that, she was so young. I was a fling, a curiosity to her, nothing more. When she got tired of me or decided to start taking her romantic life more seriously, she’d drop me like yesterday’s afterthought. She’d go on to find love in another man’s arms, and I would be wrecked having to be so near her every day, all the while knowing that she wasn’t mine and would never be mine again.
These were the thoughts that cut a swath through my brain every time I stepped out of my office and saw Addilyn sitting at her desk, looking as if everything in life was well. It told me one very important thing—she was happy, but her happiness right now wouldn’t do. If she was happy, then there was something wrong. And, it was something I needed to fix.