by JQ Jones
“Actually, they bored me after three hours. I had heard that this was the place to go to for something new and inventive, but actually all they are doing is sort of a backwoods idea of what haute couture should be.”
For the first time since their meeting, Clint watched a frown spread across and take hold of Nora’s face. She looked at Barbara with the kind of visceral dislike that women can do to one another at first sight.
“At first glance I had thought this was Iona. But she seems to lack even that spark that makes that woman an interesting mess,” Barbara said.
“Initial reactions are interesting, aren’t they? At first glance, I assumed you had manners, but then you spoke and dissuaded me of that illusion,” Nora said. It wasn’t very loud but it was audible, and Mr. Vargas laughed outright. Clint grabbed her by the hand and tightened his grip.
The conversation devolved into a polite, soft-spoken cat fight that David seemed helpless to stop and Clint showed no signs of trying to derail. Clint’s eyes sparkled just a little as he kissed the back of Nora’s hand. “I always wanted to say something like that to her.”
Mr. Vargas whispered something in Nora’s ear that made her shake her head adamantly before she turned to the table of bodyguards to repeat the gesture. The older man shrugged and proceeded to order dinner. He took no request. He had chosen the fish course, then had a soup with an arugula salad followed by filet mignon with garlic potatoes and asparagus. As dinner progressed they spoke of many things, mostly the larger business community and politics. Clint was surprised to find that Nora knew almost as much about Mexican politics as she did American politics.
As the dessert was served, an upscale take on banana pudding, Mr. Vargas ordered a round of brandy served by the superquiet waiters who seemed to specialize on always being there but always being unobtrusive.
“Tell me, my dear, what is this foolish idea of becoming a vegetable farmer? A woman of your talents should be at the top of your craft right now.”
This part of the conversation started in rapid Spanish that Clinton assumed was used so that he couldn’t follow. Nora, however, had absolutely no problem with switching to Spanish.
“Because hydroponics is ideal to meet the food needs of the growing population of this world and it would be a totally above-board business venture. Your grandkids could work this without any trouble at all.”
“Since my grandchildren are slightly older than you are now, I have already seen them well-placed into several different business ventures. While I try not to interfere your future plans, I’m not convinced that I shouldn’t step in to end this new liaison you seemed to have formed,” Mr. Vargas said. He leaned back against the rich leather of the booth and watched with crocodile-like eyes while Nora stared at him without flinching.
“The bottom line of this is that my commercial farming business will be up and running by the end of the year. My personal relationships are just that, personal and mine,” Nora said. Although she was smiling outwardly, you could hear the bite of steel in her voice. Clint felt his heart sink as he watched her poke the dragon in his lair.
“Aye, you were always such a direct woman. Now, you seem to have grown in your confidence. As for your idea of growing food for the poor, there are already too many players in that particular field,” Mr. Vargas said.
“The market right now is geared toward people who are from moderate to high incomes. By that I mean you’re looking at people who frequent a restaurant like this so that they can have the freshest, the best and the most exclusive. What I am talking about is the moderate-to-low income people who will use this method to eat better and sustain their life.”
Clinton watched as Nora brought more excitement and more passion into the idea of what she was proposing and what it could offer to people.
“I’m going to forward you a copy of the prospectus, you need to look it over very carefully before you say no to the idea. I think you’ll like the fact that if we expand this to the needy, it creates a steady income of lucrative legal revenue. Plus it feeds the poor. I think given what your line of work is, you could do with some brownie points in regards to your karma.”
“I’m very much interested in investing in your project if you sell me OMG outright,” Mr. Vargas said. “I think that if my organization takes control of the production of all OMG, it could be one of the biggest sellers in the world.”
“As I’ve said to you many, many times before, the seeds, strain and nutritional needs of OMG are not for sale. It was my father’s product and died with him. I would very much like to offer you the opportunity to invest in my new business, any level that would be non-detrimental to your cash flow. It would bring back a return that would be quite honestly immeasurable as far as goodwill but would probably bring you back so much more money that you could go legit maybe in three or four years.”
“For the amount of money that you’re suggesting, I should get at least fifty percent of the controlling interest. This is so?”
“Not even close. The amount that you are coming in at brings you goodwill and a single digit percentage of ownership. Our projections suggest that this could be a company with annual sales in excess of $150 billion. I’m not suggesting anywhere near the amount of investment that would get you fifty percent of that kind of money.”
“I am a greedy man. After all, I still want you, after you left me when we spent that glorious month at my villa on the coast of Mexico.”
“It was four days and we have far too many differences, besides that you were and are married with grandchildren,” she said with a short laugh.
“All true, but with your horticultural genes and my greed and ruthlessness we could control the entire market. You’d be insanely rich and very, very, young.”
“Or dead before the end of the month. Your wife does not actually approve of me. I’ve heard she is even more ruthless than you are,” Nora said.
“Also true. I do think that—” Mr. Vargas was interrupted by Clint.
“Miss Nora, it’s time to go. I appreciate the dinner and I’m sure Miss Nora will get back to you as soon as she possibly can, but we have more meetings and a flight ahead of us tomorrow,” Clint said.
Nora stood up with Clint and took his hand again. “I expect to start my serious development on this within the next few weeks. This deal will be up and running by the end of this year and I really wish you would get on board, but if you don’t, I ask you quite humbly to not get in the way of either my personal or professional life.”
“We shall see.” Mr. Vargas stood up and kissed her on both cheeks yet again and shook hands with Clint. Nora stopped at the bodyguard table to shake hands with the men.
Once outside and in the heavy Houston weather, Nora fidgeted from one foot to the other, worrying more about getting in the limousine without falling on her face than anything else. The car silently pulled up and Clint practically pushed her in and dove in after her without asking for her opinion.
Nora eased out of her high heels and wiggled her toes. She smiled broadly and looked entirely too pleased with herself in Clint’s eyes.
“I’m so glad that’s over. It went way better than I thought it would. I don’t even know why I was worried about it.” Nora said.
It was as if she had no idea that almost each one of the men that they had met had either overtly or tacitly threatened her with slavery or servitude or death or she didn’t seem to mind.
“Now I can go to Oklahoma, pick up Spot and then go home and start my plantings,” Nora said.
“I think we should spend tomorrow here in Houston. I have to outfit you and Sebastian with the things you’ll need on the ranch. You two are staying with me for a couple of weeks or so. I don’t know if you figured this out yet but you’ve just pissed off three of the most dangerous men I have ever personally met in my life. There is no damned way I am going to let you and a four-year-old boy go to West Virginia by yourselves and expect anything but total carnage to follow you.”
“They’re not that bad.”
“Ruthless killers who take what they want. That’s what they are. Unfortunately you have something that they want and you are very happy to tell them that they can’t have it, so that just seems like it’s an invitation to either die or end up locked in a room for the rest of your life.” Clint sat on the edge of the car seat, watching her closely.
Nora sat silently on her side of the car wiggling her toes and glancing at him every so often to try to understand exactly why he was so angry.
* * * *
Nora walked to the room with her heels clutched firmly in her hands and slightly happy from all the wine that she had had with dinner. The room was meat-locker cold because Clint seemed to like being in a room where you could see your breath.
“Let’s get room service, chill out for the rest of the night, and just not think about this for a while, okay? I’m trying not to argue with you but if you continue to try to tell me how to live my life, I think that’s the way we’re going to end our time together,” Nora said.
Clint bit back what he had planned on saying and followed her suggestions. He let her talk, occasionally answering when he was expected to. While she was in the shower, he quietly called his assistant at Okey and explained what he wanted. He wanted two empty barns renovated and the equipment installed starting now. He used her existing clothes for sizes and gave Tim the go-ahead to call Adriana for Sebastian’s needs. By the time Nora came out of the bathroom in one of his T-shirts, everything was ordered and scheduled for installation over the next two days. They tumbled into the huge, super-king-size platform bed and cuddled into one another as they went to sleep.
Clint dozed for a while, feeling so content and so right that he didn’t realize that he had slept until he opened his eyes and saw that it was full dark outside. A quick glance at the clock told him that it was 12:15 in the morning. Nora lay with her head draped on his chest, her arm around his neck and deeply asleep.
He kissed the top of her head, not meaning to do anything sexual, but as soon as he had intimate contact with her, he knew that he had to bury himself into her wetness.
He fought the urge to do it because he was afraid, seriously afraid, of becoming used to her presence. Clint was a man who had spent most of his forty years alone. When his father publically acknowledged his birth, his mother, and his right to be called a Davis, he and CJ had already had a friendship that had formed the first day Clint arrived at the ranch as a boy of five and had been nurtured by each boy’s neglectful parents. He still didn’t need anybody. Right now he was right on the precipice of needing Nora.
She stirred as if she could tell his mood in her sleep. She stretched up a comforting hand and gently patted him on his cheek. As if she was a mother comforting a sick child.
Clint sighed heavily and pulled her closer to his body. He wasn’t trying to be gentle when he took off the T-shirt that she was wearing, he simply ripped it off of her and threw it across the bed.
He was hard and ready to plunge himself into her but he slowed down, taking the time to simply caress her skin to learn what it was that made her hitch her breath and discover how she liked to be caressed.
Nora hadn’t opened her eyes, but she felt Clint as soon as he had woken up. She was attuned to him, awake or asleep. It was the same way she felt Spot when he was near her, but it was unnerving to feel that same way about someone who had been a total stranger less than a week ago. She had come to need this connection with this man.
“Why are you awake?” Nora said. She snuggled closer to his warm body. They were buried under an avalanche of sheets, blankets and a duvet. She was still cold and she needed his touch, his warmth, to make her feel as if she were complete.
“I was waiting for you to wake up. I started to feel as if I were a dirty old man. You have a happy life, but you’re so innocent as to what people can, will, and do inflict on other people,” Clint said.
He pulled her closer into his body with her head leaning against his shoulders, and stroked her from head to butt, gently rolling back and forth, already knowing what her body liked, already enjoying the feeling of his hard hands on her soft body, already happy just to have her in his arms.
“I’ve been isolated, Clint, I’ve never been naïve,” Nora said. “I grew up watching my dad do business with the people you just met. By the time I was twelve, I knew that what my dad did for a living was wrong for me. I’ve been able to survive the past almost five years with a lot of contact with these same men without you there. But it is cute that you’re worried about me.”
“I give you all of that. You have been wonderful for you and for Sebastian but what you are proposing to these warlords is that you don’t give them what they want. In my experience if you don’t give somebody very powerful what they want, they crush you. All I want to do is make sure that you are okay. I want to make sure that you and Sebastian don’t get into any trouble,” Clint said.
“I respect and appreciate that but I think you’re hiding behind your sense of chivalry because you know I’ve got this. But you wanted this to be the issue, so that we don’t have to talk about the fact that we need to be together,” Nora said.
“I have never been as sexually attracted to somebody as I am to you right now. I give that to you. However, I am not made to be with you forever. I am so very harsh. I mean that as a human being, not as a man, as a human being. I’d never asked anyone to accept my kind of excitement, my kind of joy, my kind of sex for the rest of their lives.”
“Who said it was going to be for the rest of our lives?”
Clint was disappointed and confused by his disappointment. Every indication she gave told him that she wanted him forever but that one little sentence told him that maybe he was wrong, that maybe she could handle what it was that he could offer.
“I know what I want for Spot and I know what I want for me. I don’t know what it would take for you to integrate into our lives. You have been very honest about the fact that you can’t say what it is you want from me, so I have to respect that,” Nora said.
She snuggled closer to him, kissing where she could reach. That was right above his nipple and she worried that very spot with tongue, teeth and lips until he palmed her head just to hold her tight as she nibbled and sucked his left nipple. She was a vocal lover, never hesitating to moan, groan or tell him to him how much she enjoyed what they did together.
Their legs were intertwined. His dick was hard and pressing tightly against her stomach. She wiggled closer to him, clutching his right leg tightly between her thighs. He could feel her wetness as she rode him, making his leg wetter and wetter.
She couldn’t help it. She was too wet, she was too hot, she was too open for her not to position herself so that eventually his dick slowly slid into her wetness. They both gasped, him because she was so wet, tight and pulsing, and her because he was so incredibly hard, thick and throbbing. Only the tip penetrated and she stayed there just as they were, just barely connected riding up and down and up and down as he breached the entrance of her wetness.
He wanted her so badly but he was afraid that if he gave up the control to her, he would instantly turn into that guy who had to beg for what he wanted or needed to take. He fought back his urges to see if he could let her take him in a gentle and kind and loving way.
Nora spent a lot of time just riding the tip of his dick, lunging up and allowing the wetness of his pre-cum to soak into her pussy. She rode him from the outside when he slipped out of her tightness and wiggled on his thickness so that he touched her clit on both the up and down strokes. Clint flipped over onto his back, ready to plunge deeply into her. What impressed him most was that she never cowered or flinched at his brusque moves. He lay motionless as she locked eyes with him as if to acknowledge his presence, his right, his ability to make her come as hard and as fast and as long and as many times as he required. She plunged all the way down to his balls.
She sat silently, neither speaking nor moving. She had her
hands around his neck and could feel the cords of muscle straining to keep him under control. There was no doubt that he was straining so terribly hard not to move that she broke the impasse with a simple sentence.
“Fuck me, baby.”
* * * *
Nora was up with the sun as usual. She showered and ordered room service. She sat on one of the leather chairs, watching the sun play across Clint’s hard, scarred body. As with most people, he looked much younger asleep than he did awake. His long lashes fell like feather crescents against his high cheekbones. The harsh, stern creases of his face relaxed. But it never moved all way to total innocence. Had he ever been totally innocent?
He slept with one of the pillows bunched in his arms, seemingly a substitute for her. She could tell when he crossed from sleep to full wakefulness. His body took on wariness, a sense of caution as he crossed from sleep to wakefulness in seconds.
“I’ve already ordered room service. I didn’t know if you wanted to eat heavily so I just got some bagels and eggs and juice and coffee. Is that okay?” she said.
Clint lay with his eyes closed and without moving. He wanted her back in bed. He wanted to feel her warmth as he woke up. She crawled back into bed and nudged the pillow away from his arms so that she could replace.
“I told him to bring it up around 9:30 so we still have about three hours before you have to get up and dressed.”
“I just want to lay here and snuggle for a while,” he said.
“Consider me your official snuggle bear.”
“More like snuggle fairy, but who am I to complain?”
* * * *
Throughout the day, Clint was either on the phone or his computer, sometimes both, ordering clothes and boots, equipment for her labs, rooms cleared out and decorated, and food stocked in his pantry. He easily accepted her acquiescence to his command that she and Spot stay at his ranch as a pragmatic solution to a sticky problem. Nora knew it to be what it was, her desire to spend more time with the taciturn man who was slowly taking a major space in her heart. She said very little as she watched him command. It was obvious that he did it naturally and well. She could see the pleasure he took when he was able to get people to do what he needed with more will than power, although he liked doing the power thing, too.