He’s setting up an office in Sydney, which will start with a staff of almost four hundred to oversee two of the companies he’s recently acquired there, as well as a winery in New Zealand that he’s bidding on, should he be successful. It’s a huge venture, and it’s the first time I’ve been involved in anything like it.
Challenges like this are another reason I love working for Jack. Really, I was hardly qualified for this kind of job when I started working for him—my background in law and then banking give me excellent corporate insights, and yet this just works. He’s always challenged me. Trusted me. Thrown down gauntlets and stood back to watch me pick them up.
He’s doing it now, isn’t he? Pushing me in ways I could never have imagined. But instead of meeting his challenge I’m acting like a terrified child.
A frown tugs at my lips. Why have I just run away from him? He wants to fuck me and I want that, too.
The car door opens abruptly and I tilt my head upwards, expecting to see Hughes’s face. It’s Jack instead, and he’s visibly pissed off.
Ignoring the way my pulse immediately starts to fire in my veins, I send him a look of barbed curiosity. ‘Yes? Can I help you?’
He doesn’t answer. Instead he leans forward and taps on the glass that separates Hughes from us, then settles back into the seat beside me. The car glides out of its parking space, moving through the underground car park with finesse.
‘Jack?’ I snap, angling in my seat to face him fully.
‘Not now.’
My eyebrows shoot upwards. Even for the dictatorial side of Jack, this is a tad too much. ‘“Not now”?’
‘No.’ He turns to face me, and there’s such a searing...something in his expression that I blink several times, trying to understand him. This—us.
But I get nada.
‘Okay, but I think we need to talk,’ I respond after a moment.
He glares at me and my temper bubbles. ‘I don’t want to talk. I want to fuck.’
My jaw drops. ‘You don’t just get to say that!’
A muscle jerks in his cheek. He turns away from me, sits back in the seat, his body rigid, his face tight.
‘Not another word.’
I’m not afraid of Jack. Not even a bit. Many times I’ve gone up against him, arguing my case until he either sees it my way or at least understands my perspective. I won’t do that now. I’m too fond of Hughes, and the idea of subjecting him to the tirade I’m about to unleash doesn’t appeal to me, so I bite my tongue—literally—curling my fingernails into my palms as I stare out at the City.
It takes me a moment to realise we’re not going towards Hampstead.
‘I want to go home,’ I say coldly.
His look is one of silent impatience, but before he can say anything the car pulls into yet another underground car park and comes to a stop right near the lift.
I can’t describe how lost and confused I feel. I’m a swirling tempest of rage and insecurity, uncertainty and doubt. It’s as though I’m in the middle of a swamp, reeds tangled around my ankles, water rising.
I want to fight with him. I’m angry. But I don’t know what about! Putting into words what I feel seems impossible.
And then he speaks.
‘Come with me.’
Three simple words, but they are enough because there is a plea in their depths.
I nod slowly, and there’s a plea in that, too. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t use me. I haven’t even realised I feel it until this moment, but the idea of becoming to Jack what all those other women are is unpalatable. I weigh that against my need for him, and desire wins. I can only hope I won’t regret it.
He pushes the button for the lift and then swipes a keycard. Soon the elevator is soaring towards the heavens—I’m in another lift, only this time with Jack Grant by my side.
‘Am I allowed to talk now?’
He glares at me, then stares ahead until the lift doors open.
I guess not.
I stand with my hands on my hips, angrily admonishing him with my look. ‘Nuh-uh. I’m not getting out until you tell me what’s going on.’
‘What’s going on?’ His tone shows incredulity.
He turns back into the elevator and lifts me easily, throwing me over his shoulder in a way I have only ever fantasised about. He carries me into an apartment—a palatial space. I gain a brief impression of glass, steel, white leather furniture and a state-of-the-art kitchen before he’s storming down a tiled hallway and turning into a room.
A bedroom.
With an enormous bed in the centre and floor-to-ceiling windows that show a glinting view of London below.
‘You are driving me crazy—that’s what’s going on. And I don’t want to want you like this. I’m sick of waking up about to fucking explode because I’ve been dreaming about you. I’m sick of looking at you and imagining you naked every time we’re in the same damned room.’
He drops me onto the bed but I’m too shocked by his angry confession to care. So he does feel it, too—this burning, all-consuming, unwanted, unwelcome, unasked-for need.
‘So, if it’s all the same to you, I want to fuck you properly—right out of my head—so we can go back to working together like damned adults instead of horny teenagers.’
My breath is burning my lungs, exploding out of me in fierce bursts. ‘You think you can fuck me out of your head?’
‘Yes.’ He stares down at me, flicking his shirt open button by button.
My eyes follow his movement and though I’ve seen him naked before it was never like this. He’s never been naked for me.
‘Why? Why now?’
‘Because I need you now.’
Still, my brain is shouting at me and, having ignored it in the past and had it lead me into disastrous temptation, I push up on my elbows and roll off the other side of the bed.
His eyes stay trained on me even as he continues to undress, and my throat is dry, parched. I feel like I’ve been dropped from a great height; I’m in free fall with nothing to grab. Gravity no longer exists.
‘How dare you? You drag me here, to your...your...lair...’ I spit angrily, only to have Jack burst out laughing.
‘My lair?’ He throws his head back.
He’s so sexy. God, this isn’t fair. I know what I should do. I know what I need to do. But he is laughing at me, and my pride is being thumped with each sound he makes.
I jump back onto the bed, storm across it quickly and step off the other side, surprising him with the force of my body against his, knocking him partway to the floor. He catches his balance, his hands steadying me even as I keep on pushing until we are at the wall.
‘I’m not some nuisance you can get rid of. An itch you can scratch and lose.’ I push a fingernail into his chest and glare up at him, my eyes firing at his.
‘So what are you?’ he demands roughly, his chest moving with each strained breath. ‘Why are you all I can think of lately? Why do you consume my every damned waking thought? What sort of magic is this?’
I have needed to hear these words and they fill me with something I don’t understand. There is awe and confusion, and anger, too—because he is just like Mr Darcy, telling me he loves me against his will.
Only Jack’s not promising love so much as sex, and Mr Darcy would never have made Elizabeth Bennet come pressed hard against a glass window on the forty-second floor of a high-rise in the City of London.
You know what else Lizzy wouldn’t have done...?
I drop to my knees in front of him, and before he can guess what I want, or say anything to stop me, I move my mouth over his length, taking him deep—so deep that I feel him connect with the back of my throat.
‘Holy hell, Gemma,’ he groans, but he doesn’t pull away.
His hands drop to my hair, tangling in its blond lengths. It is still wild around my face from when he almost fucked me in his office. His fingers pull at it and I glide my mouth over his shaft, rolling my tongue across its tip and tast
ing just enough of him to make my insides clench with fevered desire. I squeeze my fingers around his length and then take him deep inside my mouth again, my eyes travelling up his honed body to meet his. I see the swirling depths of emotion in them...I see that he is as lost as I am...and it is all that keeps me going.
If I’m going to feel like I have no clue who I am anymore then he should, too.
I move my mouth faster, rolling my tongue over his sensitive tip each time I am close to pulling away completely, and then his hands on my hair tighten, slowing me down, holding me still. His breath is rough, and I taste more of him spilling into my mouth.
I try to take him deeper but his fingers hold me still, the pressure on my scalp almost painful.
‘This isn’t going to end that quickly,’ he says darkly, pulling me away completely and staring down at me before reaching beneath my arms and lifting me to stand. He stares into my eyes and there is so much triumph in my face that he must see it.
‘Holy hell, Gemma,’ he says again after a moment, and pulls me back towards the bed.
My heart twists achingly in my chest. He pushes me backwards, onto the middle of the mattress, and bends down, grabbing for something off the floor.
A second later I see what it is: his belt. He’s naked—spectacularly so—and so hard and firm. He runs his hands over my arms, catching my wrists and pinning them over my head.
‘Do you trust me?’ he asks—deep, throaty, gravelled.
I shake my head but my lips are twitching. ‘I trust you to make me come. I don’t know if I trust you with anything else right now.’
His laugh is soft as he loops the belt in and out of the bedposts, and then grabs my wrists and incorporates them into it, pinning my arms behind me and above my head. It’s not particularly comfortable.
‘Then let me make you come again and again and again, Gemma.’
Gemma. The way he says my name like that—rich with passion and want—makes my body catch fire. Like it’s not already an inferno!
He pushes at my dress, his hands on my thighs intimate. I still have no underwear on and he smiles to see my nakedness.
‘You are beautiful,’ he grunts, almost as though he’s never noticed me before.
He brings his mouth down against me and I jerk my arms, wanting to touch him.
He laughs. ‘And you’re mine.’
Butterflies ravage me angrily. I am his. For this moment...for this night. Is this how it always is with him? When he makes love to those other women does it feel to them as though they are the only woman in the world?
The idea of being one of them is anathema to me.
‘Remember what I told you in the boardroom?’
He pushes the dress higher, over my breasts, then leaves it bunched under my arms while he turns his attention to the scrap of lace that covers me. He doesn’t bother to unclasp it—just lifts my breasts out of the delicate cups, bringing his mouth close to one of them and breathing warm air over the sensitive, erect nipple.
I arch my back instinctively and he laughs. ‘Do you want this?’ he murmurs, flicking it with his tongue, then circling the darker flesh slowly, teasing me, taunting me.
I nod, incoherent with need. ‘I want everything,’ I say seriously.
‘Everything?’
‘All of this,’ I agree, pulling at my hands again, not caring that I am conceding all that I am to him. ‘Please,’ I add.
‘Do you remember what I said?’
He is insistent. What did he say? ‘Not to wear underpants again?’
He laughs, and then his teeth clamp down on my nipple and I cry out. The pleasure radiates through my body, slick in my abdomen.
‘That, too.’
He rubs his stubble over my nipple and it’s so sensitive from his mouth that I make a soft sound of surprise.
‘I said I am going to fuck you until you can’t remember your own name. Okay?’
I nod. I am lost, and I need him to see that. ‘What’s happening to us?’
His smile is haunted as he slides a condom over himself once more. ‘What’s happening? I think I’ve finally found my cure—that’s what’s happening.’
And he thrusts into me, so deep and hard and fast that the peculiar statement is lost. I am lost. I jerk my wrists so that the belt pulls against my skin, and I cry out in frustration that I can’t touch him like I want to.
He is so big, and his dick reaches places inside me that I didn’t know existed. He moves his mouth to my other breast and lashes his tongue against me as he pounds me hard. My hands jerk above my head. I am his prisoner, but even without the belt at my wrists I would be.
‘Are you on the pill?’ he demands, and I nod.
I am incoherent with pleasure, saying his name over and over again. My body is on fire. He is its master. His hands are rough on my smooth skin. He touches me everywhere as he moves inside me, thrusting deep, and still I want more.
‘Please!’ I cry out, not even sure what I’m begging for now.
But he knows what I need. Somehow he has mastered my body already, even though we are so new to one another. He pushes inside me and rolls his hips. I lift mine to meet him and I’m exploding, falling apart and flying at the same time, dropping through the earth’s core as my body tries to cope with these sensations.
I groan loudly, wrapping my legs around his waist, holding him right where he is. But before the waves of my pleasure have begun to subside he guides my legs over his shoulders, so that I am bent over myself and he is so deep I see stars. Pleasure is tingling through me and he blows through it, rocking me in rhythm with his needs, kissing the sensitive flesh behind my knees before running his fingers lower to cup my arse.
I am shuddering with the strength of what he’s doing to me. Then he pulls out, and I almost sob with the emptiness that threatens to cut me in half.
His laugh is dark. An acknowledgement that he understands.
His hands on my hips are strong; he flips me easily onto my stomach and my arms are crisscrossed, my dress tangled around my breasts and my neck.
I don’t have time to tell him this, or to shift and adjust myself. He spreads my legs wide, puts an arm under my belly and lifts me higher. And then he drives into me from behind. He brushes against new nerves, makes me feel new things, and I gather from the muttered string of dark curses that fill the room that this is different for him, too.
His fingers dig into my hips as he holds me steady, thrusting into me and making me different, somehow. He drops forward, kissing my shoulder, dragging his mouth down my back before biting me on the arse—gently, but enough to make me groan. And then he’s sucking the flesh at the small of my back, and I wonder if I’m going to have a mark there afterwards.
His finger between my arse cheeks surprises me. It is not somewhere I’ve been touched before, but it’s only the lightest suggestion of a touch. A finger lightly pressing against my butt. A curious flash of wonder flies through me. But instinctively I shy away from it and he understands, laughing and moving his hand to my clit.
He strums me as though I am a guitar, and it’s so intense that I almost cannot bear the pleasure. But I don’t dare ask him to stop because perhaps he would and I couldn’t bear that. It is like being prodded by a hot iron, though: I am burning up.
I explode angrily, loudly, my body shaking from head to toe, glistening with sweat.
He holds me tight, waiting for the waves to slow, to recede a little, and then runs his hands over my flat stomach to my neat breasts. He rolls my nipples between his finger and thumb, plucking them in time with his dick as he takes me again and again.
‘It’s not fair...’ I moan, resting my head on the pillow, trying to catch my breath. ‘I want you to feel this.’
He makes a noise. It could be agreement or amusement; I’m not sure. ‘Do you think I’m not enjoying myself?’
No. I know he’s having a good time. But that’s not enough. I don’t want to think I’m like all those other women, just being ‘
had’ by him. I want to rock his goddamned world.
‘Do I get to tie you up?’ My words are as fevered as my sex-stormed soul.
He laughs and shakes his head, his chin gravelly against my back. ‘No.’
‘Why not? What’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander?’
‘Not in this case.’
‘Isn’t that a bit sexist?’
‘You don’t like it?’
My cheeks flame and I’m glad I’m facing away from him.
He brings the flat of his hand down on my arse, just lightly, but enough to spark the fire back into me, to make me forget what I want to do to him momentarily and enjoy what he’s doing to me instead.
I push my arse higher and he massages me with his fingers, digging hard into the muscles there. I moan, low in my throat, and then he pushes inside me. I’m so wet. I drop my head lower and now he reaches up, unclipping the belt and freeing my wrists.
He pulls out of me. ‘Turn around.’
A command. I obey, even though a part of me wants to tell him to stuff it purely as a point of pride.
Flat on my back, I stare up at him, my breath rushed, my lower lip sucked between my teeth.
‘I want you to see what you do to me.’ The admission is hoarse; as though drawn from deep in his throat.
He pushes my legs up again, lifting them over his shoulders as he drops into me, and I welcome him as though he’s been absent for months, not moments. He laces his fingers through mine, pinning my arms either side of me, and he stares down at me as he takes me once more.
I sweep my eyes closed as another wave begins to build, but he drops his mouth to mine and pulls my lower lip between his teeth, pressing into it just enough to startle me into looking at him.
‘I want to see you. And I want you to see me.’
Mesmerised, I can’t look away. I watch as his face contorts with pleasure and he rocks inside me, and my own pleasure rides high with his until we are climaxing together, my body flaming to his, leaping with his, burning like his. It is him and me, and no one else in the world exists or matters.
He explodes inside me—a powerful release that makes him cry out loudly...a guttural sound that rips through the room. And I echo it deep within my soul. I am as overwhelmed as he.
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