“That’s okay. I wasn’t asleep.” No, he’d been waiting, breath bated. Hoping, praying, just as he’d done for a year.
“I’m going to work on the computer.”
Fuck. Before she wouldn’t touch him anywhere but in the dark and silence of their bedroom. Now she wouldn’t do it in the bed at all. When were they going to get it right?
He lay there listening to her shuffle down the hall, the closing of her office door like a gunshot breaking the quiet. Anger rumbled through his gut. She’d torn him apart every time she’d turned her back on him these last months, seeking the solace of her office computer. Alone. Without him. He was overreacting, but he’d thought things were changing. To find they weren’t hit so much harder. He punched the pillow. When was this going to end? When would she fucking let him in? He was so goddamn tired of it. Tired of her, yes, fucking tired of her shit. Christmas was less than a week away. Did she think that didn’t bother him, too? Did she think he’d forgotten? Fuck.
Dominic breathed deeply, willing his mind to calm. But he was so goddamn fed up of not being able to do anything right.
He missed Jay, his loss like a hole in his chest where his heart should have been. God, how he missed him—day, night, with every moment, with every breath. Wanting her back, wanting their life back didn’t change how much he missed his boy. It wasn’t disrespecting his memory to want more than what they had.
Was it?
Jesus. He closed his eyes, listening to the dark as if Jay might suddenly speak to him, offer forgiveness, expiation. Daddy, it’s okay. I know you love me no matter what.
But he didn’t hear Jay’s voice. He just felt a swirling, crushing need.
Throwing back the covers, he tugged on his briefs, then went to the closet for his robe. Goddamn if he’d stand before her naked while he begged.
The hall was cold, tendrils of night air sneaking beneath the folds of his robe. He didn’t glance into Jay’s clean and empty room. If he did, he’d never make it down the hall.
He stood at her door a moment. No sound from within. But he would not stop here this time. She could close the fucking door, but she couldn’t shut him out.
Her gaze shot up, eyes wide as he thrust open the door. Then she fumbled with her mouse.
“What do you do in here?” He felt the scratchy ache in his voice. “Nothing,” she answered too quickly and without meeting his eye.
Nothing? That’s all she was going to say? They were married for God’s sake. They weren’t supposed to have big secrets or shut each other out like this. He could feel his blood pressure rising, his heart pounding, and he wanted to smash something. He settled for rounding the desk, but the screen revealed only her vacant computer desktop, whatever she’d been looking at gone. His gut roiled with jealousy. “Are you e-mailing your boyfriend?”
She snorted, all her furtiveness and nervousness suddenly gone. “You’ve been trying to set me up with guys so why would you care if I had a boyfriend?”
He would damn well care. “It’s still us,” he growled at her. “You and me together. I need to watch you, to see your pleasure in a way I can’t when I’m doing it to you.” He wanted the sexiness of watching her skin flush with excitement, her breath quickening with desire, the scent of her arousal perfuming the air around him, the rise of her orgasm, her cries. That’s what it was about, seeing and hearing her.
She gave him a roll of her eyes, a glint of anger flashing in them. “Don’t be an idiot,” she snapped. “I’m not e-mailing anyone. Give me my space and go back to bed.”
Give her space? He’d given her so much fucking space and she still didn’t understand a goddamn thing. He’d thought that any emotion, even anger, was better than the emotionless wasteland they’d been living in. Not that it was truly emotionless, just that everything was buried where they couldn’t touch it, feel it, acknowledge it. But facing it when midnight had passed and all their defenses had crumbled was worse than the stab of pins and needles in awakening limbs.
“Go to bed, Dominic,” she whispered, her tone gentled, almost as if she regretted snapping at him. “Everything’ll be back to normal in the morning.”
Yes, it would be, back to normal where she shut him out. He could no longer abide it.
DOMINIC FOUND HER IN THE STOCKROOM THE NEXT MORNING. HE shoved a piece of paper at her. “Just so you don’t accuse me of keeping secrets from you again.”
Then he walked away.
Erin glanced around. Fred, their stock clerk, was down the far end out of earshot, staging the next two days’ parts kits at the bench.
She’d hurt Dominic last night, but she didn’t know how to change it. She’d lain awake for hours, sick over losing Leon, scared to death about the patent thing. And the camels. She kept seeing those delicately carved camels. When Dominic touched her, she couldn’t, she just could not give him anything, even as she knew he needed it. Then he’d startled her, opening the door of her office like that, and her heart galloped a mile a minute. He’d have been pissed as hell if he’d seen her screen.
So she’d turned him away again. She’d regretted it almost immediately, but she couldn’t call him back. The words he’d said about watching her were actually kind of beautiful, but she’d effectively thrown them back in his face by not even acknowledging them. Dammit, she needed to start giving him something. If only she had it to give.
Why was it that when you met someone, in those first glorious days, weeks, and months, you told each other everything, shared every thought? Then the longer you were together, the more you shut down, shut them out. Until you stopped sharing anything at all.
Her palms were sweaty as she read the letter he’d given her. WEU. A demand for payment. This time they’d named an amount. She gaped when she saw it.
Yvonne and Steve were in the roundhouse when she barreled through, parting them like the Red Sea. In engineering, Atul and Cam worked silently in their shared office, and Dominic had hitched himself up on his stool in front of the lab computer. He’d always favored the lab over his office.
“How can they know how much the royalty should be?”
He didn’t look at her. “Maybe they checked the sales rankings on the distributor sites.”
Though they did have some individual customer accounts, DKG sold most of their product through distributors. Any user could access the sales rankings. It helped buyers figure out what the most popular items were.
But it still made no sense. “There is no way WEU could get this kind of accuracy from those sales rankings.”
He tipped his head, looked at her, waited.
She felt her face flush. “I asked Bree to run the numbers.” There was nothing wrong with that. She might as well tell him everything. “And Leon said WEU’s been stretching out his payments. Obviously they’re having cash flow problems, and that’s why they’re checking into the patents.”
He didn’t say anything for what felt like forever but was probably seconds. “So. You didn’t think I’d handle the issue.”
“It wasn’t that.” All right, yes, but not in a totally dysfunctional way. “I wanted to know the worst-case scenario. So we could be prepared.”
He stood, held out his hand. She laid the letter on his palm, where he promptly folded it into a paper airplane and flew it right into the trash can. “That’s how much it’s worth.” He took a step forward. She moved a step back. “It isn’t even from their patent attorney. It’s not even official.” He leaned down, lowered his voice. “So we’re following the advice of our attorney and ignoring them while he does his job and proves them wrong,” he finished, enunciating the last three words with increasing harshness.
Okay, she’d really pushed a button last night. Maybe she should apologize. “About last night,” she started.
He didn’t let her finish, close and towering over her. “I told you I was in charge, and you agreed to that.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the open door, then lowered her voice. “When I said that, we
were talking about sex, not everything else.”
He skirted her and closed the lab door gently. Too gently. Her pulse actually raced; her skin heated.
“Yeah, well, you didn’t take care of me last night.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I touched you,” he said as if that were enough.
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Okay, I’ll take care of you tonight.” Her body buzzed with a weird kick of desire for his he-man act.
“You’ll take care of me now. I want a blow job.”
She gave a mocking laugh, but she was wet, her nipples suddenly hard. “We don’t have sex at work. Atul or Cam could walk in. Anyone could.”
Back to the door, he reached out and unerringly clicked the lock. “Now they can’t.”
She bit her lip. He had her going. Just like that. Like he’d flipped her light switch. As if she’d been on the hairy edge of desire when she walked in, she wanted to throw herself at him. Odd, crazy, but, yes, she wanted sex right here, right now, with all the anger and emotion emanating from him like a magnetic force. Hell, yes. She fought anyway because that made her even hotter. “You’re trying to control me with sex.”
He smiled like a shark. “Yeah. I miss it, I want it.” He yanked her right up against his hard-on. “And you want it, too.”
“Screw you,” she said, but there wasn’t any anger in it.
“No.” He smiled, all teeth. “You’re going to blow me. Right here, right now.”
He didn’t force her to her knees; she went on her own. Because she wanted it. She didn’t care why it turned her on. She didn’t care that he was treating her like a piece of meat; in a way she couldn’t describe, he wasn’t doing that at all.
“Suck me,” he whispered. “Make me come.”
That’s why she wanted it. For all his dictatorial attitude, he needed it. He needed her. And his desire was her power.
She fumbled at his jeans. He had to pop the top button for her. He bulged against the snowy white briefs. Then a drop of pre-come seeped through, a dark, round spot of desire.
She tipped her head back. His eyes were deep, fathomless, burning right through her. “Beg me,” she demanded.
He speared his fingers through her hair, and with the other hand, shoved the briefs down until his cock sprang free, bobbing, caressing her lips. “I’m not begging for something you can’t wait to give me.”
A sane woman would have walked out on him, leaving him with his cock in his hand. She wasn’t sane. They both wanted to win. They both simply wanted.
“One cock’s the same as another,” she said, the smile on her face closer to a sneer. “And I want cock right now.”
She took him. He groaned. And Erin knew she had him. His salty-sweet flavor burst on her tongue, his flesh hard, filling her mouth. She sucked the tip until his legs trembled. She slid him to the back of her throat until his cock throbbed. Then she grazed him with her teeth all the way out again, ending with the pulse of the thick vein in his cock against her lips. Through his jeans, she squeezed his balls.
“Fuck,” he murmured. “Jesus, fuck. I want you.”
She was wet, her clit hot, on fire. He held her head in his hands, fucking her mouth, fingers massaging her scalp as he moved to her rhythm.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, baby, I need you.”
He was hers. She owned him. The power of it burrowed into her very bones. His body shook, then he grunted and held her to him, filling her mouth. She drank him, like a vampire drinks its victim, draining him, stealing his strength, his power, and she felt herself liquefy in near orgasm right along with him.
For long moments afterward, he held her like that, her face to his crotch. She sucked him gently, his body still twitching for her. And hers twitching for him.
Then he palmed her cheek, pulling free, holding her face to meet his gaze. “That was all I wanted,” he whispered.
What? An orgasm? Or a communion? Last night? Or today? It didn’t matter because he was happy again. She was glad. And it hadn’t cost her a thing.
19
HIS LEGS STILL WOBBLED, HIS MIND WAS STILL FOGGED, BUT HE pulled her to her feet and imprisoned her chin in his hand. “Kiss me,” he ordered.
“But I just—”
“I don’t give a shit. I want it.” His taste on her tongue, her arms around him. He met her lips with a hard kiss, and she took him deep. He reveled in the ache that surrounded his heart, reveled in the emotion as much as the taste of her, the scent of sex and sweet body lotion. He tasted the salt of his own come, but he was almost sure there was something else, the salt of tears, her tears. But when he pulled back, her cheeks were dry.
“What?” she whispered as if he were looking at her with a question in his eyes.
“What were we arguing about?” he asked.
“I can’t remember.”
He stroked a finger down her cheek to the corner of her mouth and her ruined lipstick. “Good.”
“I’m going to remember soon and you’re in for it,” she said mildly.
He would be. Because he remembered despite what he said. She was pushing and pulling at him about the patent, about shoring up his end of things, checking, questioning, as if she’d stopped believing he could handle anything.
The only thing he felt in control of was their sex life—as long as he wasn’t asking for it in bed like a normal husband. Things were so goddamn ass-backward. But she’d sucked him at work, and he’d take it as a victory.
She touched her lips, a slight smile curving them. “You messed up my lipstick. Everyone’s going to know we were doing something dirty.”
“It wasn’t dirty,” he said with so much meaning.
She gave no answer to that. At least not until she’d backed away and stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “The numbers are too close, Dominic.”
Ah, so she hadn’t forgotten the argument either. “What are you thinking?” He knew what she was thinking, same as he was, and with the same kind of horror. Someone had revealed their financial data to WEU. An insider.
They didn’t hide numbers from their employees. Everyone had access to shipping quantities. At month-end, quarter-end, and year-end, they could all go in and judge their shipping performance. All for one and one for all, share and share alike.
“None of them would do that, Erin.” He wanted to believe that, needed to.
“Then how?”
He didn’t have an answer, yet he knew in his gut his people were solid. But it wasn’t just him Erin had stopped trusting and believing in.
“I know you like order and rational explanation,” he said, “and for everything to fall into place. But none of them would give out our proprietary information.”
Her lips thinned. “I don’t need order. I can deal with stuff. But WEU getting that close isn’t rational.”
“I’m not going to outright accuse anyone without proof.”
“I’m not saying we should.” She huffed out a breath, her hand tightening and releasing on the doorknob. “We just need to be careful.”
He didn’t know what the hell careful was. Shut his employees out of the system? Watch their every move?
No. The only thing he could do was figure out how WEU got their numbers without having used one of his people to do it.
ERIN STOOD BEFORE THE LADIES’ ROOM MIRROR, HER LIPSTICK tube an inch from her mouth. They’d never had sex at work. Not that the thought hadn’t occurred, but they hadn’t wanted their personal life to become a subject of office gossip. Now they were screwing at trade shows, and she was blowing Dominic in the lab.
She half expected Yvonne to slam through the door and ask her what the hell was going on.
Her cheeks were flushed. No reason to add blusher now. When she closed her eyes, she could still feel him between her lips and taste him on her tongue. His lingering scent made her dizzy.
It was the only time she felt real now, as if everything else was fantasy and the only real thing was endless, mind-drugging
sex. Maybe she was having a mild nervous breakdown. That might be the reason for all this. Her irrational behavior. And her suspicious nature.
Dominic was correct. She suspected her own people. She wondered if Atul was punishing them because he was pissed off they hadn’t deemed him qualified for Cam’s job, if Matt was screwing up assembly on purpose, if Bree was selling financial numbers to the highest bidder, if Yvonne was trying to sabotage the family unit. All those thoughts had flitted through her mind.
God, that was so wrong. She didn’t want to think that way. It was just that she felt so helpless, like she needed to do something to fix it all.
What she really wanted was the way Dominic made her feel in the lab when he’d kissed her with the taste of him still in her mouth. When he’d made her forget they’d been arguing.
When he’d made her forget everything.
GARLAND BROOKS DIDN’T LOOK LIKE A CEO. SHORT, GAUNT, AND bald, with wire-rimmed glasses, he had the soft features of the mild-mannered man on the beach who had his girlfriend stolen and sand kicked in his face by the body builder who stole her.
That’s how Garland Brooks lulled the gullible before he went for the jugular. He’d started his campaign by letting Dominic wait in his outer office for half an hour. Dominic, however, had not let that stop him. They’d begun suspecting their own people. He couldn’t let that go on. Coming to WEU wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but after this morning’s argument with Erin, he had to do something.
“Well now, Mr. DeKnight,” Brooks said, sitting back in his thousand-dollar leather executive chair, “I can’t comment on any issues our patent department has undertaken. But if you received a letter, I’m sure it’s been researched thoroughly and the patent is on our side.”
Dominic propped his foot on his knee. He wore jeans to this man’s expensive tailored suit and boots to Brooks’s handmade leather shoes. “Garland, your patent won’t stand. I’m giving you the courtesy of letting you know you can’t win.”
Brooks smiled genially, folding his hands across his stomach. “That’s why we have attorneys, Mr. DeKnight. To handle all this for us.”
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