“Don’t. I can’t think when you’re near me.” I chose that moment to look over Zach’s shoulder and across the bar to the big table where my coworkers sat. They all, to a man—even Glen—were watching Zach and me, not bothering to hide their interest. Some merely looked fascinated, but some—most of them female—had expressions ranging from shock to disgust to hatred. These last few were also whispering and pointing and not seeming to care who saw.
They thought I was a whore. They thought that I was Zach’s mistress, or call girl, or hooker, for heaven’s sake, and that he was trying to pass me off as gainfully employed within his company.
I felt sick. The worst part of all was that, if he had allowed it, they would all be absolutely right.
“I have to go.” I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t say anything else. I made my way to the entrance and out as quickly as I could.
Tears threatened to fall as I walked—nearly ran—down the street. I’d walked to work that morning, thinking that the motel where I was staying was closer to the office building than it was.
My throat felt thick with unshed tears, but more than hysterics, I felt sick with mortification.
I’d never been anything but the good girl, the prim and proper princess, and I simply didn’t know how to handle this.
The days that I had spent in Cambria had reawakened my addiction to the sound of the ocean, and so with a split-second decision I veered off course and turned in the direction of Aquatic Park.
Halfway there, a dark, fancy town car pulled up beside me. It followed me for a few steps as I began to walk faster and then faster still.
What kind of city had I moved to?
While my heart was in my throat, the door opened, and someone grasping my elbows in strong hands lifted me clear off of my feet.
“Don’t you ever do that again.” I didn’t give him the satisfaction of my struggling, instead staring at him with defiance that I didn’t feel, my body tensed at his touch. I was mad, oh yes indeed, but something about him still made me feel . . . safe. The panic was beaten completely into submission in his presence, and it was a strange, yet welcome, sensation.
“Put me down.” I emphasized each word, my eyes shooting daggers. He did not look pleased, and held me just long enough to make his point. The second that my heels touched concrete, I pushed off, stomping now, determined not to let this overbearing ape of a man ruin my evening walk on the beach.
Even if he was an awfully sexy ape of a man.
He was right with me, a shadow that I couldn’t detach.
“You can’t go for a walk alone at night in the city.” He had a valid point, but right at that moment I didn’t care.
“Watch me.” The words had barely left my lips when he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder. He actually did, as if he were a caveman and I was the woman he had just hit over the head with a rock.
I shrieked with indignation and kicked at his torso. The street was deserted except for a male couple holding hands as they walked their tiny dog. They watched avidly, clearly entertained, but didn’t offer assistance.
What the hell kind of city was this?
“Put me down.” I tried emphasizing all of my words again, slow and loud. Zach didn’t appear to notice, his hands tightening where they pressed against my flesh, flat against my back, and splayed over the globe of my behind.
“Put me down!”
“Happy to.” Back at the fancy black town car, he slid me down his body slowly, deliberately, making sure that I felt every bit of him.
That happened to include a massive, rock-hard erection. He was aroused by this?
A strangled sound of frustration bubbled up from my throat as I shoved away from him. He was such a bastard.
Never mind that having just been pressed up so tightly against him had made me wet.
Zach cocked his head as he took in my stance, my hands fisted on my hips, my teeth grinding together.
“You’re angry with me.” One corner of his mouth turned up in the beginning of a smile. “Nobody gets angry with me. Especially not women.”
“That’s what you think!” Beyond frustrated now, in every meaning of the word, I placed my hands on his chest and tried to push him away. Instead of giving me space, he caught my wrists in his fingers, a strong grip that I couldn’t break out of.
We stared at each other for a long moment, me still grinding my teeth together, and him looking at me as I were the most wonderfully fascinating thing that he’d ever seen. And then, before I could catch my breath, his mouth was on mine and I was pressed back against the car. The cool, unyielding metal I could feel through the back of my blouse was a strange contrast to the undulating heat searing my breasts, my torso, my belly.
I felt as if I were being branded, and I didn’t mind at all. When his tongue traced the seam of my lips, demanding entrance, I parted my lips and let him sweep his tongue inside. My hands slid up to clench onto the solid muscles of his upper arms, and his hands fisted in my hair, tugging as they had the last time.
We broke away, panting, when the clear, sharp sound of a wolf whistle sliced through the night. Turning as one, we looked across the street to where the two young men walking their dog were grinning at us. One gave us a thumbs-up.
We both laughed a bit, breathless, and it should have broken the tension.
It didn’t.
“Get in.” Without waiting for an answer, Zach picked me up and placed me gently on the long bench seat in the back of the car. He followed, hitting the button that raised the privacy panel between us and the driver.
“Just drive.” He said this at the last possible moment, and then we were alone. While I, given my way, would have instigated a discussion about what this meant, how it couldn’t possibly be a good idea, and how I really didn’t want to be involved with a coworker again, Zach seemed to prefer a more direct approach.
Pulling me onto his lap to straddle him, he eased my pencil skirt up to my hips, forcing my legs wide.
“What are you—” Cutting off my protest with a kiss, he fisted the neck of my blouse and yanked, hard enough to send buttons flying. My simple black bra was revealed, and he pulled it down, the straps stretching to the limit before my breasts bounced up from the cups, now sitting on the fabric like a plate of something tasty for him to devour.
“Fuck,” Zach muttered as he watched them jiggle, the movement caused by the motion of the car. He stared long and hard before lunging close to nuzzle his face into my cleavage. “They’re just as I imagined.”
As he’d imagined? He’d been imagining them? The thought disappeared when he sucked one of the tight nipples into his mouth, suckling so hard that I felt a tug all the way to my cunt.
“Aah!” I squirmed, my hips rocking against his. His response was to begin rolling my other nipple between the fingers of his right hand.
Both of my hands were on his chest, trying to create some distance, some space so I could breathe.
I didn’t want to breathe. I didn’t want this to stop, ever.
“Undo my pants.”
Suddenly embarrassed, I buried my face into Zach’s neck and shook my head. I didn’t think that I could undress him—I wasn’t brave enough.
Tom had always just undressed himself. And while it certainly wasn’t fair to compare the two men—not fair to Tom, at least—my sexual experience was limited enough that I couldn’t seem to help it.
As the flush of my cheeks burned into his neck, Zach removed his touch from my breasts, and I groaned at the loss of pleasure.
“Devon.” His voice was stern enough to make me rock back and look at him in the face. “I give you permission to undo my pants. Unbuckle my belt, undo the fly, and pull out my cock. If I didn’t want you, and you alone, to do this, I wouldn’t tell you to.”
It seemed like his words should be strange, but they were the im
petus that I needed. I did as I was told, and as I did, he pulled a small foil packet from his pocket. Tearing it open with his teeth, he pulled out the ring of latex, waiting for me to finish my task.
When I finally pulled his cock from the soft material of his dress pants, I felt desire stab through me in a way that it never had, not with Tom, certainly not with anyone else.
I wanted that cock. I wanted to touch it, to lick it, to bury it inside of me.
I wanted it to be mine.
Mixed with that potent desire was a heavy dose of shyness. Wrapping my fist around the thick shaft was all that I had the nerve to do. A strangled cry slipped from Zach’s lips, and in a series of quick motions he had sheathed his length in latex, angled my hips toward him, shoved the crotch of my panties to one side, and seated himself inside of me.
He was not gentle. He was also not small, the length and girth making my eyes widen in appreciation and surprise. It hurt, taking all of him in, but mixed with that hurt was a delirious amount of pleasure, and the sound that escaped from my throat was very nearly a scream.
“I should have warned you.” Zach nipped at my neck and, without giving me even a moment to adjust to the sensation of him inside me, filling, began to thrust up in hard, rough strokes. “I don’t do gentle. Ever.”
“I think I like it.” Even more than the fact that I was drowning in waves of pleasure, I wasn’t feeling much like the meek, mild Devon who would have been shocked to be handled so roughly.
Zach growled, liking my words. Fisting his hands into the length of my hair, which looked nearly white in the stripes of light from the streetlamps as we passed them by, he tugged hard. The sting only added to the deliciousness of the moment, and soon I found myself meeting him thrust for thrust, my fingers curling into his shoulders until I was sure my nails would draw blood.
“Fuck. Fuck!” I had never been one to use profanity, but as the pleasure gathered and stretched like a string being pulled tighter and tighter, there seemed to be no other word. “Fuck!” Zach pressed his thumb against my clit as I climbed, the look on his face wicked as the devil, and an orgasm slammed into me like I’d been struck by lightning. Unable to control any part of myself, I screamed, thrusting down as hard as I could, greedily asking for everything he could give me.
“Devon!” His own words were a shout as he released, the sensation of my climax bringing him over. In me to the hilt, he groaned, long and loud, as he emptied himself inside of me.
We stayed that way for a long moment, curled into each other. Once my mind began to function again, and unsure of the protocol in the situation, I shifted and looked down into his face.
It was unreadable. The walls were up, fully up, and all entrances were locked tight.
“I . . .” There wasn’t anything that I could think of to say. Slowly I peeled myself off of him, though I wanted nothing more than to stay curled on his lap, pressed again him.
He let me go without comment, and it hurt.
Sliding down on the bench so that we were no longer touching, I tucked my breasts back into my bra, smoothed down my skirt, buttoned the two fastenings that hadn’t been ripped off. I shifted uncomfortably, aware that my panties were soaked through and had been stretched so much that they would likely have to be tossed into the trash.
Zach wrapped the condom in a tissue and cleaned himself off with another before redoing his pants. He didn’t look at me, so I stopped looking at him.
He must have signaled the driver somehow, because within minutes—minutes that stretched long with discomfort—we were in front of the hotel where I was staying.
How he knew that, I didn’t know, and was certainly not about to ask.
“Um. Well. Good-bye.” Emotions were rioting through me, and I wanted to scream, to cry, to throw something. I wanted that pleasure back. The driver opened the door for me, and I scrambled out awkwardly.
“Devon.” My heart jumping, I bent and looked back into the car. Zach was looking straight at me, and he looked ferocious. “You are a temptation.”
“Thank you?” I had no idea what to say. I wished for, longed for, a sweet kiss good night, a brush of the hands, something . . . but then, he had warned me, he didn’t do gentle.
I was several steps away, my heels clicking on the pavement with a much more decisive manner than I felt, when he again said my name. I turned, and saw that same fierce man watching me.
“Devon. You have no idea what you started.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Miss Devon Reid.” The words that sliced through the frenetic air of the big room that housed my small desk at Phyrefly Aviation would have been unmistakable, even if they hadn’t been saying my full name. The sounds were female, forced sharply through a well-stuffed nasal cavity.
That distinctive voice, combined with the quirk of addressing a person by her full name, belonged to Bini Gallagher, the administrative manager at Phyrefly—my supervisor.
“Yes, Mrs. Gallagher?” Though she addressed everyone by their full name, there would be hell to pay if one of us girls—and that included my male coworker Tony—dared to use her first name in any context. I smiled brightly, trying to maintain the expression even when the other woman pushed her tortoiseshell spectacles down her nose and peered over them at me with disdain. I tried—as a rule—to be nice to the older woman, because her negativity had struck me as stemming from a deep personal unhappiness.
Besides, I was happy for the distraction. It had been an entire week since I’d seen Zach. A whole week of silence following one of the most intense experiences of my life.
I thought that I might go mad.
That lack of contact had been good for the work side of things, however. With no more sightings of the two of us together—no grist for the rumor mill—people seemed to have moved past the drama quite quickly, and on to the next entertaining thing.
All of this was reason for a big smile, indeed.
My smile, no matter how genuine, didn’t crack Bini’s façade, and I let it slip. I didn’t have the energy to pretend to be cheery today, not when I’d been up half the night, again, thinking about—obsessing over—Zachariah St. Brenton.
You have no idea what you started. “Starting” would imply that whatever was between us wasn’t over.
Then where the hell was he?
Mrs. Gallagher sniffed when she saw that she didn’t have my full attention. With a loud huff of coffee-scented breath, she slapped a small parcel, plainly wrapped in brown paper, onto my desk.
I tucked a stray wisp of hair from my ponytail behind my ear and blinked at the unmarked package. When I looked up at the woman with a questioning expression, she huffed again, and I felt as if, somehow, I should have known what the package contained.
“This was just delivered. It came with instructions. You, and only you, are to deliver this upstairs to Mr. St. Brenton. Make sure that you are the one to deliver it into his hands.”
I barely registered the aggrieved expression on Mrs. Gallagher’s face—why was I being sent into the sacred den of he who ruled the building when she had seniority, after all? But my heart had leapt into my chest when I’d heard the man’s name, and anticipation followed, making my skin prickle with gooseflesh.
I stared at it, willing the brown paper to unwrap before my eyes and give me some hint, some clue, about what I was to face upstairs. All I got was a pencil rapped sharply on the glossy surface of my desk, very near my knuckles.
“Get going, then, Miss Devon Reid. Unless you think you’re too good to play delivery girl.” With murmured words to the negative I stood, took the parcel in hand and scurried toward the elevators.
I could feel the older woman’s stare following me, poking at the chicken wings of my shoulder blades. When I turned back briefly after pressing the elevator button, I was surprised to see that the expression the other woman wore was no longer one of annoyance, b
ut worry.
Why would she be worried about my delivering this package? I was the one who was about to face the unknown.
Why, oh why did that word make something dark and needy twist itself tightly inside me with anticipation?
I quickly forgot about Mrs. Gallagher as the elevator climbed from the third floor of the building, up and up, sliding toward its goal of floor twenty-six. I caught sight of myself in the mirrored walls, and I wasn’t thrilled with what I saw.
My black skirt and sweater were tidy, but plain. My hair was in a ponytail, loose ends flying out every which way, and soft bruises under my eyes caused by several sleepless nights were clearly visible through the thin layer of makeup that didn’t hide much in fluorescent lighting.
It didn’t matter what I looked like, in my heart I knew this. But as I thought of the feeling of Zach inside of me, of his mouth on my breasts, I shivered, my nipples tightening, and I wished—hard—that I had worn something else. Something prettier.
Something sexier.
The woman who sat at a desk as big as a lake, directly in front of the elevator doors that opened in front of me, was clearly younger than me—quite a feat, since I was only twenty-four—and had smooth, icy blond hair and an equally slick smile.
She beamed that smile my way, but I didn’t feel welcome. She didn’t speak, just waited, and I knew that I had been out-bitched in a major way.
“I’m here to deliver this to Mr. St. Brenton.” I raised my chin up a bit and tried to forget that that morning I had noticed a tiny hole in the seam of my skirt. It was at my hip, covered by my sweater, but I was so uncertain in that moment that I was sure the perfect-looking creature knew.
She smiled some more, and I held up the box. She reached for it, and I pulled it tight against my belly.
“I’ll pass that along to Zach—Mr. St. Brenton, as soon as he’s free.” I knew that the name slip wasn’t an accident. The woman was challenging me, and I couldn’t imagine why.
“I need to deliver it to him myself.” I tried to keep my words steady, though I was hugely intimidated. But facing off with this paper-doll princess was, I was quite certain, shades better than what would befall me if I dared to disobey the order that I somehow knew had come directly from the man whom I hadn’t seen in a week.
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