by Em Ashcroft
“Yes!” Gasping, she clung to him. “I’ve never had so much fucking in my life before. Never wanted it so much. It’s as if we never did anything at all last night.”
He drove in, the sensation as good as anything he’d known before. He tried to find something to compare it with and failed miserably. Nothing compared to this. Nothing was as good, or as addictive. The sounds of their fucking echoed around the large shower stall, and while warm water poured down on them, he took her higher, watching her face until her pupils expanded to dark, gleaming circles and her eyelids half closed over them, giving her a sultry look.
“You would sell every fashion magazine on the newsstand if you posed for them like this,” he said roughly.
She emitted a little noise as their rhythm steadied, a kind of half-squeak, half-gasp at the end of every stroke, when their bodies collided in the rhythm of love.
He could listen to that forever. “Is that good?” He changed their positions slightly and steadied her then touched her anus. It felt wonderful, a little rosette of heat that beckoned to him.
“CJ!”
“Yes, that’s it. Just keep saying my name. Talk to me, baby. Tell me you like this.” He pushed his finger in a little way.
She flinched but didn’t move away. “Nobody ever—”
“But they will, sweet baby. They will. I want you so much, so hard. I want every part of you, and I want to fuck you with Sam. Mouth, ass, cunt, all of it. You hear me?”
“Yes, I do. I want it, too.”
He pushed in a little farther and wiggled his finger, easing his way. She gasped and cried out, but not in pain. He’d stop the minute she told him to or he felt pain marking their mutual arousal.
“There. I want to be there.” He couldn’t do it here and now, though. That would take plenty of lube and control, so he could make it as wonderful as possible for her. The thought of him and Sam sharing her, really sharing her, drove him to do more, to fuck her harder and faster.
She cried out. “Oh yes, don’t stop, just there, that’s right. It’s like you’re tearing me apart, but in a good way, you know? So fucking amazing. I’m heating. That place is sending heat right over me. I could drown in it, but it’s getting higher and harder every time you do this. Fuck, CJ, I need this. I need you!”
He loved her babbling. Adored it, especially as a running commentary to lovemaking. She swept on, taking him with her, higher and higher until all talk stopped and she screamed his name.
“CJ!” Then she did it again, each time louder until he shot his seed deep inside her.
They flowed over and around and in each other. CJ carefully lowered her to her feet, his cock sliding reluctantly out of her. He withdrew his finger carefully from her back passage and found the soap to wash them both. He wouldn’t let her do anything for herself but rinsed her and made sure she was happy before he took care of the condom and then washed himself.
Relief flooded through him. He could do this, and he’d tell Sam the minute he could, tease his partner with the possibilities like Sam had teased him with promises of her body earlier. He caught her close and kissed her, his heart overflowing.
“You’re amazing, Rachel. Only you, sweetheart.”
She gazed up at him, the moment one of togetherness. “Yes. You, too.” Tugging out of his arms, she reached for a towel. “But I’m still going back to the hotel tonight.”
CJ’s mood plummeted. “You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The cars—”
She stepped out of the shower and wrapped the towel around herself, finding another to dry her hair. “It’s only happening here, isn’t it? No incidents at the hotel?”
He wouldn’t say that, but there was nothing that could connect it to the occurrences at the ranch. He tried to explain. “The Grid is a big deal, Rachel. They hate us and all we stand for. That means anybody associated with us. Even if they’re not going after you, you could be caught in the crossfire.”
She turned to face him, arms akimbo, fired up, her eyes blazing. “I live in New York. We’re not without our own brand of terrorists, you know? People attack us for our race, our religion, any damned thing they can think of. I’ve never run from them, and I don’t intend to start now.”
CJ had never admired her more. He might even be falling hard for her. Like really hard. That thought made him pause, but not Rachel.
“I’m going back to the hotel tonight because Mason needs me. Bianca is a pain in the ass, but she’s talented at what she does. After tomorrow, when they do the shots with Susie, Bianca, and the cowboys together, she’ll be done. He’s used an upcoming job as an excuse to let her go early. Then it’s only Susie. She’s a pain in her own way, but nowhere near the monumental one that Bianca is.”
Reluctantly, CJ saw her point, but all his instincts rose against it. He should try harder to keep her here, but if he did, she’d resent it. Already he knew he didn’t want to let her go, but if a week was all she had, then he’d take it. An idea began to form in his mind. “How determined are you to keep this under wraps?”
She sighed. “I think it’s blown already. Half the crew realizes why you and Sam are hanging after me. It’s not as if you’re fashion icons.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “True enough. But they wanted us to pose with the models. We still have that ordeal to come.” Reluctantly they’d agreed to take part. Although Mason hadn’t explicitly mentioned Rachel, he made it clear it would help her career in some nebulous way.
They’d spent the first day getting acquainted and setting up shoots then the second with Bianca. Tomorrow was his turn. And Sam’s.
Half an hour later, Sam and CJ saw Rachel off with mixed feelings. Sam had called the owners of the hotel, part of the syndicate that ran the whole of the Goldclaw ranch, and they’d promised to keep a special eye on her. If their secret was out, anybody from the Grid would work harder to get to her. Anything they could use, any dirty trick in the book, and they’d grab it and run with it.
At least tonight would give them a chance to scour the ranch and ensure they’d locked everything tightly down. CJ had felt better once the cubs were off the ranch. They’d be safer on the tropical island where they were going. It was owned by a friend and used only by shape-shifters. They weren’t about to let all their secrets into the wild.
* * * *
The guys were right. Everybody knew about Rachel’s fling. Dana didn’t stop talking about it the whole time Rachel sat in the lounge of the suite until the call from Mason came as a relief.
She took her electronic tablet and a bunch of notes to dinner. They ate it in the penthouse suite, and they weren’t alone. They were drafting a new plan for the rest of the week, given Bianca’s behavior. Rachel was so engrossed in getting her notes right she hardly tasted the delectable dishes placed before her.
“The guys are on board for tomorrow,” she said. “If you still need them.”
“Absolutely,” Gary said. “I’ve been watching them. They’re perfect. Rough and ready cowboys with that saunter in their gait. We’ll have them dress normally then maybe get them to take their shirts off.”
“We have some branded cowboy clothes,” Mason said. “I’d rather use them, otherwise we’ll have to credit the manufacturers.”
“Nuh-uh.” Gary seemed determined. “What they usually wear is perfect. No brand-new shit for them.”
Rachel felt obliged to support them. “They do own tuxedoes. They’re not exactly unsophisticated.”
“The sight of the dark one in a tux,” Bianca’s dresser said. “I’d pay for that.”
“We’ll see.” Gary grunted. “It’s not the look I’m going for. I want the city sophisticate in the country. We’re doing town mouse and country mouse in this story.”
“Country tiger,” the dresser said.
Everybody laughed, and then Mason fixed his attention on Rachel. “Can you do it? Get them to shape-shift?”
Shock reverberated through her. She
took a breath. “What do you mean?”
Mason’s mouth flattened. “Don’t deny it. You have an in with them, don’t you? I’m not asking what it is, and it’s not interfering with your work significantly. I’ll even take Bianca off your hands tomorrow night if you do this.”
She’d seen only one partial shift. How would they feel about posing for the cameras? Rachel had no idea. But this being a short visit, and this affair brief, she could risk it. “I’ll ask them.”
“First thing, so we can set it up before the end of the day,” Gary said.
Nobody seemed embarrassed except for Rachel, so she tried to play it cool, leaning back and tapping useless information on her tablet.
They passed to other topics, arranging the next day with military precision. Where the clothes would be, who would wear them, and the timings for each shoot. Time was indeed money these days. Where Chelsea might have dithered, arranging this shot and that, the team now worked with efficiency and meticulousness. No wonder they wanted to get rid of Bianca as soon as possible. She could disrupt this with a lift of her finger or a shake of her head.
Rachel got to her feet. “I’ve got to go. Bianca wanted me to go with her to dinner.”
Two hours later Bianca dismissed her, and Rachel wended her weary way up to her suite. She couldn’t imagine anything more grisly than the ordeal she had just gone through. Bianca criticized her appearance, her choice in men, and her dereliction of duty. Then it got worse. She got girly and confiding. Although she ate hardly anything, Bianca worked her way through her special bottles of wine, low-calorie, she explained. She didn’t share them. Rachel made do with a glass of house white. Rachel listened, agreed, and hated what she heard.
Bianca was a user of the first order, taking what she needed from whomever she met and moving on. She got away with it because she knew how to court the media, although they were getting increasingly restless with her antics. She’d blown off a photographer at Heathrow recently, and the story was still echoing around the airwaves, together with her tantrum at Houston International. Bianca appeared oblivious to all that. She chattered in Italian, her preferred language, and although Rachel could speak the language, due to her Italian-American father, but she found it hard to keep up sometimes. Weariness swept through her.
The last thing she wanted was to see her boss waiting for her at the end of the meal.
“Come up for a quiet word,” he said after he’d flattered Bianca outrageously, enough to keep her happy during the short elevator ride.
Wearily, Rachel went to the penthouse and let herself in with the keycard Mason had slipped her in the elevator cab.
She was sitting on the sofa facing the view when he returned. Empty for once, except for her, she’d left the dim lighting, finding it restful.
“Hi,” Mason said softly. “Do you need anything? A drink?”
“No, I’m fine,” she answered, trying to be perky and failing miserably.
With a grunt, he came to stand behind her, and to her shock, he began to massage her shoulders. He was amazing.
“You’re really good at this,” she said, giving in to temptation.
“You deserve it. You’ve done really well with Bianca. One more day.”
“Did she hit on you?”
“Of course. She collects men like scalps, but she doesn’t really want me. She wants what I can give her. Right now, if I was fucking her every night, I wouldn’t let her near the magazine again.”
Rachel groaned as he touched a tense spot. “Do you think she’s misunderstood?”
“Do you?” His accent flowed over her.
“I think she’s a spoiled brat.”
Mason grunted and concentrated on working the tension out of her muscles. “I’ll probably move you on when we get back,” he said.
All her tension returned. “Haven’t I done well enough?” She’d worked her socks off. What more could she do? Doubts returned to haunt her. Was she good enough for this?
“Relax.” He dug his fingers into her muscles, forcing a groan from her. “You’re too good. You’re the best PA I’ve ever had. But you want to go into the creative side, don’t you? Do you fancy a crack at it?”
Her tension melted away. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.” So why wasn’t she more pleased? She should be dancing in the streets with joy, but she felt only relief that she’d done her job properly and pleasure, instead of euphoria. This was what she’d always wanted, wasn’t it? She loved expressing herself, creating, and writing. To work on layouts and the technical side was pure joy.
“You’ll want me to train a replacement, though.”
“Undoubtedly. Then you can decide which department you want to go into. You’re creative, we know that, but you need to find your special niche. Maybe we need a house photographer.”
She’d love that. Gary, like most of the photographers they used for the big spreads, was a freelance.
“I’ve been thinking that we need to define our style.” He huffed a laugh. “The magazine has lost its way in recent years, concentrating on the glossy instead of what makes Style magazine different. I don’t mind telling you that this is Style’s last chance. Going digital may mean a complete turnaround in the way we operate, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ll probably settle for monetizing the name. Even without Chelsea’s shenanigans, there isn’t much to spare. Circulation is down, although we’ve held on to the high socio-economic profile.”
“You want to take it down-market?”
“What do you think about that idea?”
She knew exactly what she thought. “That would be fatal. It would put the magazine into the pool that’s already there, fighting with the celeb mags. Style is heavily aspirational. We get the fashions out before anyone else, and we set fashions. That’s almost unheard of in a magazine.”
“Exactly. I have ideas.” He stopped rubbing her shoulders and came around the sofa to sit next to her. “You’re bright, Rachel, and you’re smart. You understand what’s needed. But I’d give all that up for one date with you.”
The world stopped. “Say that again,” she said.
“Understand, this has nothing to do with your promotion.” He shook his head. “This is the wrong time and the wrong place, I know that. I just wanted you to know there’s a life for you in New York. You’re not a country girl, Rachel.”
Perhaps she wanted to be. Staying with her men had given her a kind of tranquility she’d never known existed before. Waking up in the early hours to see the dawn breaking over the horizon struck her as one of the things she’d like to keep in her life.
New York no longer had the appeal it had once held. She had set herself on a path she might not be right for. Only now did she realize it. It had taken Mason’s shocking suggestions to force her into a new place.
“Mason, I—”
He touched his fingers to her mouth. “Say nothing now. The job offer stands. The other—that’s something we’ll have to work out. But I never intended to stay at the magazine forever. I want to source a new chief editor for it.” He glanced down at his plain but beautifully tailored suit and shirt. “I’m not a fashion kind of guy.”
“You’re going back to Scotland?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve moved around the world a lot recently, on the various projects we handle. Maybe it’s time to go home. Or to move on. Style isn’t the only publication we own in New York, in any case.” He gave a self-deprecating grin. “I’m the company troubleshooter, but so far I’ve done it alone. Maybe it’s time to change that, too.”
When he took her hand, she didn’t fight him, too stunned by what he said to protest. He was crossing the line, but not too far. Not yet.
“Why are you saying all this?”
He watched her, and she got the strong feeling she was being scrutinized. “I don’t want you out of your depth, Rachel. Getting involved with those cowboys is all very well, but they’re not your kind. Our kind. Have your fling and then come home.”
No
w he’d really shocked her. Did he mean because they were shape-shifters? What other reason was there? She’d never considered that part. The fact that they wanted her and were willing to share, the occasional glimpses she’d had of their other forms, none of it had mattered next to the revival of the way she felt about Sam and CJ. She’d done her best to forget them, and failed miserably.
She wanted them. If only she could work out a way to have it all!
Keeping a smile fixed to her face, she got to her feet. “You’ve given me a lot to think about,” she said. “I need time.”
“Of course you do. I’m a patient man. I’ll wait.” He gave her a sultry grin, leaning back and draping his arm over the back of the sofa in a way that flexed his powerful muscles. “For a while.”
Rachel left the suite and returned to Dana’s chatter, not at all sure what she would do with this new information.
Chapter Nine
After getting very little sleep, Rachel made up her mind. She’d tell the guys, at least the last part of what Mason had said. They’d have more experience with separatists, and they could find out.
They arrived to a scene of confusion, very unusual for the well-ordered ranch. Climbing out of the bus, they saw the previously neat and tidy yard littered with bins and hay. The horses were all in the corral, wandering around restlessly, occasionally trying the door to their stables, which was firmly locked.
The hands were turning out the building, emptying it. CJ and Sam weren’t the only ones who were stripped to the waist, but Rachel’s eyes went straight to them.
Sam came over to where the occupants of the bus were standing uncertainly outside. “Sorry, we had an emergency.”
CJ and Sam nodded to Mason. “If you’ll come inside, we’ll explain. Just give us five to get cleaned up.” They were rather redolent of the stable.
They were asking Mason into the house? As the others went into the lodge for an early break, Mason followed them into the house. Rachel made herself busy making coffee, and the guys, after sultry glances at her, went upstairs to shower.