by Amelia Wilde
I want to give her anything she asks for. I want to give her everything.
As soon as the thought comes to my mind, there’s a part of me that recoils from it. An alarm blares in the back of my mind. I can’t get in this deep with her. I can’t get in this deep with anyone. My dad knows what the hell he’s talking about. I can’t throw myself in front of the same train.
I scramble for a compromise, a way to delay, but there’s nothing. I know what she’s asking for. I could force her to say the words, but I don’t have to. I can see what she wants in her eyes.
The worst thing? I want it too.
I’ve been spooling this out for as long as I can, and it’s been a single week. I met Isabella for the first time two weeks ago. It feels like a year. It feels like ten. She’s clearly at the breaking point, and I was there with her up until a moment ago. Now I’m skidding to a stop at the edge of the cliff.
Why? What could be so fucking bad about this?
Everything.
Nothing.
I have to do something.
“Get up.” It’s a command, and she responds, scrambling to her feet. I offer her my hand. She takes it.
Then we’re moving quickly through the penthouse, Isabella half a step behind me. I take her to the right, this time—the hallway that leads to the den, the guest suite....the master suite. My bedroom.
The master suite is at the end of the hall, taking up one full side of the building, and I push the door open just in time to keep from running into it. Isabella breathes in deep as we cross the threshold, and I throw the door shut behind me. There’s nobody else in the penthouse aside from the chef, and he’s on the opposite side.
My bed is on one end of the room. A fireplace in the center, sunken low so that it doesn’t block the view, anchors a small sitting area. A pared-down version of my office is on the opposite side, just next to the hallway that leads to the bathroom. I scan each of the options in turn, images of Isabella in each scene flashing into my mind and back out again.
“Bend over the chair.”
Isabella doesn’t hesitate for an instant. She moves toward the chair in the sitting area. It’s another wingback, with sturdy arms, and she positions herself in front of it, hands on the arms. She bends so gracefully that I want to take a picture. It’s only then that I move toward her.
“No. This won’t do.” She turns her head, eyes on mine, forehead wrinkled. “Stand up.”
She stands, and I go for her zipper. The dress falls to the floor a moment later.
Underneath, Isabella is only wearing a bra.
“Shoes.”
She steps out of her shoes, never taking her eyes off mine.
“Fuck.” I can’t keep the word in my mouth, because Isabella’s naked body is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Miles of creamy skin, all of it flawless. Breasts pert and firm. I step close, cupping one of them in my hand and rubbing around one of her nipples, already hard, with the pad of my thumb. She moans, softly, like how good it feels should stay a secret.
It’s too much.
“Chair.”
She turns away from me and bends, feet planted on the floor, legs spread. The folds between her legs are already glistening. “Please...” One final whisper.
I step to her side, pressing one hand firmly onto her lower back. “It’s not part of the arrangement—” I keep my voice low, with a hint of sharpness. “—that you call all the shots.”
She tenses. “I—”
“Quiet.” I put my other palm against her ass. “All this is supposed to be at my discretion. Under my control. And I think you need a reminder.”
“Are you going to—”
“Quiet.” I lean down one more time, speaking directly into her ear. “This is your chance.”
She gives me the tiniest nod.
I wait.
Another nod.
“I’m going to remind you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” A whisper so soft I barely hear it.
She braces herself against the chair, and I rub idly at her bottom for another few moments. “Stay in position. Ten strokes.”
I pull my hand back and deliver the first one with a crack. Isabella cries out, cutting herself off in the middle. I’m not going to make her count. I just bring my hand down in a relentless rhythm, Isabella trembling beneath each one, her ass going pink, then red.
When it’s over, the trembling doesn’t stop. At first, I think she might be crying—but she’s not. She’s gasping, trying to get enough breath to speak.
Her juices, gathered between her legs, trickle down the inside of her thigh.
I kneel behind her, burying my mouth in her sweet folds, and lick—one, two, three times. When I thrust my tongue into her opening, she comes so hard she screams.
Chapter 23
Isabella
The cab rattles over a pothole, and I grit my teeth. I don’t give a shit about the potholes. Let the car shake. At least that feels appropriate for the situation.
I’ve never been so angry in my entire life.
It took the rest of the day and the rest of the night to set in, but by the time I woke up this morning—with one message from my mom on my phone asking me when I’d be ready for brunch—I was incandescent with it.
He didn’t sleep with me.
He spanked me, and he made me come with his mouth—twice.
And then?
And then?
He picked up my dress from the floor, helped me maneuver it over my head, zipped up the back, and sent me on my way.
He’s not getting away with this. This is my last straw with Jasper Pace. There aren’t words to describe...
There aren’t words to describe how pissed off I am, and there aren’t words to describe how unbelievably sexy, how unbelievably good, I felt when I stepped out of his penthouse. Yes, it hurt like hell to have him bring his hand down against my ass again and again. I’ve never felt anything like it—a pain so intensely pleasurable that it almost pushed me over the edge into orgasm while he was still doing it.
Unreal.
Absolutely unreal.
He didn’t hold back. For the first time since that moment in his office, I felt like we were there together, stripped down, laid bare. And I loved it.
It felt so right that it blinded me to the fact that he’d totally screwed me over. By not screwing me.
I let out a bitter laugh when the pieces connected on the walk back from the gym. With every moment I sweated it out in my Lift & Burn class, my mood had darkened, which set me on edge. Going to the gym almost always has the opposite effect.
I’d stopped dead in the middle of the block when it hit me.
Oh my god. He sent me packing like...like I don’t know what. He probably would have slept with a prostitute.
I spent the rest of the evening biting back my own rage and trying to breathe it out of my chest.
This is all a game, I reminded myself again and again. You’re fucking with him, he’s fucking with you—it’s all just some twisted way to see how far you’ll both go. You know that. You’ve known that from the very first day.
The same thoughts were roiling in my mind when I woke up this morning. I didn’t even make it to nine-thirty before I called him.
“Isabella?” His voice on the other end of the line was tense with worry.
“I need to see you.” I couldn’t keep the acid out of my voice.
He’d hesitated, then let out a strange laugh. “Is everything alright?”
“It will be. Are you busy?”
I could practically picture him shaking his head. “No.”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
I rushed through a shower—I’m not about to confront anyone in last night’s bedhead—and hailed the first yellow cab to pass by, giving the driver Jasper’s address, the words clipped and terse.
So here I am, my anger bursting at the seams.
The cab stops in front of Jasper’s building, and I force myself
to move deliberately while I pay the fare and tip the driver. I force myself to walk in measured steps toward the private elevator. I step in, swiping my phone against the scanner. Jasper installed an app on my phone that lets me access the penthouse without having to be buzzed up. The car glides upward without a sound.
He’s standing in the living room when the doors open, and my heart goes crazy.
Shit.
All of the words I was going to say die on my tongue.
Jasper looks rumpled, like he might have been lying in bed. He’s wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt.
“I interrupted you.” About the farthest thing possible from what I was planning to say, but the sight of him makes all my plans go out the damn window. I stop at the edge of the sunken living room.
“Nope.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “You wanted to see me?”
“I can’t—” I start and his eyebrows go up, a new interest flashing in his blue eyes. “I need to ask you for something.”
“For something.” Jasper repeats the words carefully.
“Yes. For something.”
He holds a hand out to the leather sofa and moves toward it himself, sitting down on one edge. I step down into the living room and sit in the center, not touching him. If I touch him—
I can’t.
My phone buzzes in my purse and I pull it out to silence it. A message from my mom is on the screen. It starts out You coming for brunch? I’m just so scared...
My mind snaps into focus. This is what I’m here to do—get something out of this damn arrangement before she drives me crazy. Before I drive myself crazy waiting for something that might never happen, if Jasper has his way about it.
I look back into his eyes. His performance of being comfortable should earn him an Oscar, one arm perched along the back of the sofa. “At the very beginning of all this, you said you wouldn’t force my mom out of her apartment.”
“I did.”
“I need more than that.” There’s no point in dragging this out. I bite my lip, running through all the things I could say next. I want to tell him that he’s driving me slowly insane, and it might be because I’m falling for him, but I can’t say that. I won’t say that. “I need a loan.”
Jasper nods solemnly. “For what? And in what amount?”
I take a deep breath, a wave of heat rising to my face. It would be one thing if I didn’t need the money. It would be one thing if I had managed to work it out by now, but all I can do is rush through the store openings, and that’s a recipe for disaster. And with every day that goes by, my mom loses a little bit more of her security. “I need you to loan me the money to buy my mother’s building. From you. And I need it now.”
Chapter 24
Jasper
If this is one more way for Isabella to throw me off, then there’s no way she can get any more devious, any more cunning.
What the hell am I going to say?
If I say yes, she’s won. And if I say no, I’ve lost...because the moment the request is out of her mouth, I want to give it to her. I feel compelled to give it to her. There’s no other way forward but to give it to her.
It’s one building. In the long run, it will mean nothing to me and everything to her.
It also has the potential to end this, and end this right now.
If she doesn’t need the building from me, what would she need?
And does it matter? Because the truth keeps coming in a series of blows. I can’t give this to her...because I need this. There’s something in what we have together that makes me feel sharp and alive and part of the city and the damn planet. It’s entirely new, and I don’t want to give it up.
Yet...
My mind swings between the two choices like a metronome. Isabella’s face is bright red, her green eyes glistening. Her lips are pressed together, the corners turned down into a little frown.
I would do anything to turn that into a smile.
It doesn’t help that all the blood in my body is rushing to my cock.
She just looks so damn vulnerable. She looks, for the first time, like she needs me—she needs something only I can give to her. Her mother needs this building, and she has one way to get it. Can I really deny her that?
No. My heart beats the word over and over. No, no, no.
“Isabella...”
She swallows hard and blinks, a few times in rapid succession, but she doesn’t break my gaze. Isabella is without a doubt the only woman who has ever been able to look me in the eye like this.
Need surges through every inch of me, from the top of my head down to my toes, a rush so powerful it sweeps me under before I can catch my breath.
I’m lunging toward her before I realize what’s happening, my hands sliding around her waist, pulling her into me. She throws her arms around my neck, clinging tight and burying her face in my shoulder. I push her backward, onto the couch, and as we make contact again she arches up toward me.
“I have to have you,” I growl into her ear. “I have to have you now.”
If she answers, her words are drowned out by the pounding of my heart. I kiss the side of her neck, dragging my lips down toward her collarbone, and then I go to work on her clothes. Her tank top, the exercise capris she’s wearing, her delicate bra and panties fall to the floor, and then I strip my own shirt over my head.
Isabella stretches out underneath me on the couch, her back pressed against the leather, and raises her arms above her head like she needs to brace herself against the arm. The effect sends a bolt of sexual lightning racing down my spine. Her nipples are already hard, and I lower my head to each one in turn, licking it in slow circles. Isabella closes her eyes, little moans escaping her with every breath.
For once, she doesn’t have to beg.
When I’m finished with her nipples I work my way down the flat expanse of her stomach, swirling my tongue into her belly button and then working lower until I’m lapping at her clit. She spreads wide on the couch to give me access and threads her hands through my hair, guiding my head lower, urging me deeper.
A sound of pure frustration tears from her throat, and it calls to something inside me. I’m out of time, and Christ, it’s never felt so good.
I move over her, wiping my lips against my arm, and cover her mouth with mine. Her lips instantly part, letting my tongue in to battle with hers, and I lose myself in it. I let the sensation of her body against mine take me over completely.
Isabella reaches down between my legs without breaking the kiss. She gives it a squeeze before she guides the head along her slick folds, coating it with her own juices before she lines it up against her opening. I push inside a fraction of an inch, and she opens her legs wider, panting into my mouth.
Then she pulls back, breathing hard, and looks into my eyes. This is her. This is all her. Nothing else. No games. No pretenses. No witty remarks. This is just Isabella at the bare heart of her.
I don’t need any words to read the plea in her eyes. I’m bracing against the couch, holding myself above her, and she puts her hands on my shoulders, running them up to my jaw and back down again.
We’re both still for one last heartbeat.
And then I thrust forward, filling her with one stroke.
She cries out, back arching, the sound pure, unadulterated pleasure. It makes my cock pulse inside of her, and her muscles tense around me as I pull back out, thrusting in again with a powerful movement.
It’s like she was made for me.
Isabella is tight, but she’s so wet that there’s no resistance going in. She envelops me in her dark wetness, giving a little, stretching a little to accommodate me, and I grit my teeth, willing myself not to come. Not yet. Not yet.
An animal growl tears from her throat, and I have to answer it. I take her in my arms and move us both to the floor, where we have all the space we need.
Isabella curls to the side, and then she’s up on hands and knees, her ass swaying from side to side as she backs up, trying to l
ine us up so that I can keep fucking her.
I’m happy to oblige.
When I’m all the way in, the head of my cock banging against the last barrier inside of her, she grips the carpet, her fingers sinking in. “Fuck me.” Her voice is husky and breathless. “Oh, please, fuck me.”
I take her hips in my hands and pull her back against me so she can’t move as I fill her again and again. “I am fucking you.” I’m on the verge of losing control. “Know why?”
“Why?” The word slips out through parted lips.
“Because you’re all mine, Isabella. And I love it.” I pick up the pace, letting go of the last of my control. “How long are you going to be mine?” I’m pounding her with everything I have. “How long?”
“Always,” she cries, and then she’s coming hard on my cock, so hard I’m sure the earth is shaking, the universe must be rattled by this, and I have no choice but to give in to pleasure so intense my vision goes white at the edges.
I’m lost and found, all at once, and all I know—all I know—is that this is the place I never want to leave. Ever.
Ever.
Chapter 25
Isabella
Jasper’s bedroom.
We’re here, but I’m not sure how we got here, or when. I’m not sure when he picked me up from the carpet in the living room—he must have, because I don’t remember walking—and brought me here, my clothes still in a rumpled pile next to the couch. I wouldn’t have wasted time on walking, anyway. I would have taken the hallway at a run.
The memory of being in the hallway at all is lost in a haze of pleasure.
Jasper is relentless. Just when I think there’s no way I could possibly come again, he hooks his fingers inside of me, getting just the right angle for that hidden place, and my body trembles and shakes with yet another release. How many times have I forced his name through gritted teeth? I’ve lost count.
Satisfaction blooms in my chest, the heat there expanding and consuming me, then starting over from an ember when Jasper puts his hand between my legs again. Or his mouth. Or his cock.