by Joss Wood
He hiked up her shirt so he had access to her creamy skin. Still kissing her, unable to pull away, he placed one arm below her butt and yanked her up and into him. Her legs, as he knew they would, opened and curled around his waist. But that contact was not enough. Still needing more, he pushed her down so that she brushed his erection with her mound. When her kisses turned fiercer and she ground against him, he realized that the passion between them was hotter than before, deeper, all grown up.
Beck walked her over to the kitchen counter and set her down on the cool surface, still standing between her legs and feeling her heat radiating from her core. He cradled her face, tipping her head to change the angle so that he had easy access to every part of her mouth. Cady’s moans of approval sent the last droplets of blood from his brain to points south and he strained the fabric on the front of his pants.
She was sex and heat and sweetness and softness and he needed her. So much more than he should. He couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. This train had left the station but he had to slow it down. He didn’t want to take her on the kitchen counter. After so long, he needed to be in a bed. He wanted to take his time to rediscover her, to explore every inch of her endlessly sexy skin.
Although he didn’t want to, Beck pulled his mouth from hers to rest his chin in her hair. “Cady.”
She muttered something unintelligible as he felt her lips flutter against his skin.
“We need to slow down,” he told her. “Find some more room.”
“Trust me, my bed is not much bigger than this counter,” Cady muttered. “Don’t stop, Beck.”
“I want to take it slow.”
“Next time.”
She’d barely finished her sentence when his mouth captured hers. Her words gave him permission to lose control, the control he was so famous for. With Cady, his brain shut down and biology took over. As her tongue met his swipe for swipe, he lifted her shirt over her head and immediately noticed that she wasn’t wearing a bra. He thumbed her already hard nipple and Cady pushed her breast into his touch, silently demanding more. She ran her fingers across his taut stomach, stopping now and again to make a swirling motion as she let them drift lower before settling them on his erection.
He couldn’t wait much longer. He needed her, needed to be inside her.
Beck wrenched his mouth off hers and attacked the button of her pants, sliding her zipper down. “Lift up,” he ordered her and Cady lifted her butt, allowing him to pull the slacks down her slim thighs. The garment dropped to the floor and he kicked it aside.
He leaned back and sucked in a breath, taking a moment to appreciate her rosy nipples, her endlessly creamy skin, the barrier of pale pink lace over her feminine mound. He lifted his eyes to her flushed face and his voice was low and harsh when he spoke. “Here? Now?”
“Here. Now.”
Beck used one hand to pull his shirt over his head and the other to pull his wallet out of the back pocket of his pants. He tossed it into her lap. “There’s a condom somewhere in there.”
While Cady searched his wallet with trembling fingers, he stepped out of his shoes and hastily undressed, till he stood naked between her warm thighs.
He put on the condom she held out to him, then hooked his hands under the backs of her knees and pulled her to him so that his tip probed her entrance. She felt so good.
He really wanted to take her to bed, or the floor, somewhere where he could really look at her, feel every inch of her as he entered her. “Cady, we are not doing this on the kitchen counter.”
Cady touched her mouth to his before speaking. “If you make me move, I swear I will punch you. I need you, Beck. Make me whole,” she murmured against his lips.
Beck groaned and pushed into her, sighing when her tongue echoed his action and slid into his mouth. An inch, then one more, and another and he was inside her. Cady pushed her heels into his back, asking for more, and within seconds Beck was buried to the hilt.
Yeah, he missed this. He missed her.
“God, Beck, you feel so good,” Cady said, burying her face into his neck. “Take me over the edge, Beck. You know how. You always did.”
Beck surged into her and slid a finger between them, stroking her, and around him he felt Cady tense. He could feel her orgasm hovering, so he rocked into her one more time and she shattered around him.
Then, with a hoarse, relieved cry, he followed her into that fireball.
* * *
Another day, another photo shoot. Another day of trying to work out what, exactly, was bubbling between her and Beck. Since she’d barely spent any time with him since her amazing night with him four days ago, she couldn’t take her cue from Beck. Panty-dissolving sex aside, Cady thought, nothing, essentially, had changed. He was still her boss; she was still pregnant; she had a job to do, a business to save, to grow.
Cady watched Emma, the photographer’s assistant, carry a small ladder out Beck’s door and Beck closed the door to the loft behind her. A dozen people had filled this space an hour before—stylists, makeup artists and creative directors. Now only she and Beck remained. Cady sat on the third step of Beck’s wide spiral staircase, her computer on her knees, looking through the photographs Jose wirelessly transmitted to her device.
Like his siblings had in their photos, Beck wore a designer white dress shirt, collar open and cuffs rolled up his arms. His jeans were faded from years of washing, and the fabric clung to his narrow hips and long legs, and he wore no shoes. She scrolled through the shots, pleased that they conveyed the exact image she was going for in the campaign: the rich, successful, super-sexy Ballantyne siblings at ease in their homes or, in Sage’s case, in her studio.
They looked young and smart, aspirational and accessible. Cady knew that the print ads would make the rich millennials sit up and take notice.
She stopped on a photograph of Beck sitting exactly where she was, his knees apart and holding the fake copy of his mom’s ring between his finger and thumb, looking at the camera, his eyes deep and mysterious. His broody attitude, wide shoulders and the brilliance of the pink-red stone screamed class. And cool.
As with his siblings’ ads, consumers were encouraged to read the story behind the piece of jewelry on the website, and that would link them to Sage’s latest hip and sleek collection. They’d already released Jaeger’s and Sage’s ads, and Linc’s was due to be released tomorrow, Beck’s later in the week. The Ballantyne website had never received so many hits.
Cady felt a flutter of excitement as she marked the photo. She looked up when Beck, holding a cup of coffee, took his seat next to her. “Can I drink this here next to you? Or are you going to bolt for the bathroom?”
Her morning sickness wasn’t a constant presence, just triggered by sights and smells. The smell of chicken sent her running, as did vanilla. Sometimes coffee was her friend, sometimes her foe. Cady took a tentative sniff, waited a little while and when her stomach didn’t react, she smiled. “Today is a good coffee day.”
Beck pressed his shoulder into hers and looked at the screen. “Is that the shot you want to use?”
Cady nodded. “But you can look through the others if you’d like to.”
“Hell, no, I trust you. Damn, this thing is poking a hole in my skin.” Beck leaned back, pulled the copy of his mom’s ring out of the front pocket of his jeans and rested it on his knee. Cady moved her laptop to the floor and picked up the ring, examining it in the fading light of the late afternoon.
“It’s so beautiful, Beck.”
“And it’s only a fake. The real one is deeper, more vibrant, the color more intense.” Beck sipped his coffee. “Her ring is my first memory, that and her smell.”
“Tell me about her.” Cady twisted to face him, her knees against his thigh.
Beck put his hand on her knee and kept his eyes on the ring she held. “I re
member her hand over mine. I was holding a crayon. We’re both left-handed so that’s why I remember the ring. I was so young but I remember being fascinated by the color.”
“American rose,” Cady murmured, allowing the stone to catch the light. “It’s a shade of red, between red and magenta...and it’s called American rose. I wished I could’ve seen the real deal,” Cady murmured.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind seeing the ring, and them, again,” Beck said, his voice threaded with pain. “Unfortunately both are in pieces on that mountain in Vermont.”
Cady changed position so that she could thread her arm through Beck’s and hold his hand. “I’m sorry, Beck. God, you were all so young.”
“Yeah. Ten, eight and six.” Beck’s coffee cup shook as he lifted it to his lips. “I still miss them.”
“I think you always will,” Cady said, keeping her voice low. This was the first time Beck ever talked about his past and his parents, and she didn’t want to break the spell by talking too much or by saying the wrong thing.
Beck stared at his bare feet, pale against the laminated floor. “My siblings missed out on so much. Their parents weren’t at Jaeger’s games, their graduations, Sage’s ballet concerts. My father won’t walk Sage down the aisle. Ty and Shaw won’t go with my dad to find semiprecious gems like we did.” Beck rubbed his jaw and pushed his hand to the back of his neck.
He never once mentioned himself, what he’d like to do with his parents, she noticed. “And what did you miss out on, not having your parents there?”
Silence, hot and heavy, hung between them, and Cady wondered if he would reply to her question. She saw him pull in a deep breath as he turned his eyes to her. They were saturated with pain. “It doesn’t matter what I missed out on. It never did.”
Whoa. What?
Cady frowned, opened her mouth to loudly object to his statement and saw the misery on his face. He hadn’t said that lightly. He meant every cruel and bitter word. After squeezing his hand, she carefully chose her next words. “Beck, why would you think that? You lost your parents, too.”
“But it was my fault they died.”
Cady felt the words slam into her, stopping her breath and paralyzing her vocal cords. When her brain restarted, she noticed that Beck was in the process of rising to his feet, intending to walk away. Oh, hell, no. He was going to sit here and talk this through. He’d been eight, for God’s sake; no eight-year-old was responsible for his parents’ deaths. It was sheer luck that Cady managed to snag a belt loop through his shirt but she did and she pulled him back down. “Sit down.”
Beck shook his head. “I have a report to write, some financials to go through.”
“You need to sit here and talk to me,” Cady hotly replied. Beck sighed and sat and looked mutinous. She stared at his stone-like profile and shook her head. “Why would you think that, Beck?”
“Because that’s what happened. Cady, I don’t want to talk about this.”
She ignored the second part of his statement. “No, that’s not what happened! I know that you were at The Den with your uncle and your siblings so you didn’t do anything to cause their deaths. So what do you mean?” She wished she could reach into him and yank his words out.
Beck cursed and muttered something about him having a big mouth. He raked his hand through his hair and sighed, then eventually, reluctantly, he answered her. “I broke my wrist skateboarding and it wasn’t a straight break. It needed to be pinned and I had to have an operation. I was petrified. I’d watched a horror movie that took place in a hospital and I was convinced that the zombies would get me, and Jaeger was egging on my fears. I asked my folks to come home, to be with me. I was crying on the phone, practically hysterical, and they decided to fly home right away. The weather was bad and my dad took a chance. The weather closed in and he didn’t have enough height to clear that mountain.”
His dad took a chance, she wanted to point out to him, not him. He’d just been a kid asking for his parents. Why would he think he was at fault? “I still don’t understand why you think their crashing is your fault. Your dad gambled and lost.”
“At the reception after the funeral, I heard a conversation between two people I knew. They said it was my fault, that a broken arm is a hell of a price to pay for the deaths of two amazing people.”
“Oh, Beckett.”
“And they also mentioned that my mom was pregnant. We had a sibling on the way so I was responsible for the loss of three lives.”
Swamped with anger for the young boy Beckett had been, Cady moved to stand between his open legs and wrapped her fists in his shirt. She waited until he looked into her eyes and when he did, she took a breath and then another, to get her temper under control. When she spoke she heard her burning fury in her words. “The insensitive bastards! What they said was wrong, Beck! Wrong and ugly!
“Who were they?” she demanded, her anger bubbling in the back of her throat.
“Why?” Beck asked, confused.
“Because I swear I will track them down and strip fifty layers off them. How dare they say that? How dare they!”
Beck pulled on her wrists and she realized that his shirt was tight against his chest and a good portion of it was wrapped around her hands. She released the fabric and placed her hands on Beck’s shoulders.
“Cady, I appreciate your anger on my behalf but it was a long time ago.”
Cady shushed him to keep quiet and closed her eyes in an attempt to harness her anger. It wasn’t often that she lost her temper. It didn’t matter that they were two faceless, nameless people whom he’d last seen almost twenty-five years ago; they’d hurt him to the depths of his soul. Nobody hurt Beck, not like that.
She waited a moment until she thought she could speak again then opened her eyes. Beck was looking at her, looking awed and confused.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“Yeah,” Cady replied. She felt him start to move and she pushed her hands down, trying to keep him in place. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I was going to take my cup to the kitchen and then I was going to do some work, since I lost the afternoon staring into the camera.”
“Oh, hell, no, you’re not.” Cady shook her head. She pushed his legs together and straddled him, taking his rough, stubbled, beautiful face in her hands.
Beck managed a small smile but his eyes reflected only desolation. “Or we can go to bed. I vote for that.”
“That’s not in the cards, either, or at least not right now.” Cady swiped her thumb across his bottom lip. “Right now I am going to talk and you are going to listen.”
Beck narrowed his eyes and she felt him pull away from her. His fingers on her hips pushed into her skin as if to warn her to change the subject. He could glower and glare at her all he liked; he needed to hear what she had to say.
“I can’t force you to listen to me, Beck, but I hope you will.”
Beck muttered a curse and she saw his resentment and under that, his fear. To his credit, and her surprise, he stayed where he was.
“Beck, you are not responsible,” Cady told him, keeping her voice low but allowing her sincerity to be heard. “You were a scared kid and you had every right to ask your parents to come home to be with you. And they, being the parents they were, heard your plea and made their way home. That’s what good parents do.”
“But—”
“Your dad took a chance, and it worked out badly. It wasn’t your fault,” Cady insisted.
“She was pregnant, Cades!”
“And they could’ve died in a car accident and her being pregnant and them dying wouldn’t be your fault either. You were eight. You wanted and needed your parents, and there is no need for you to feel guilty. None, Beck.” Cady’s eyes filled with tears. “Intellectually, you know this.”
“Yeah, but�
��”
“No buts.” Cady felt a tear roll down her cheek and she sniffed. “Please don’t do this to yourself.”
Beck’s hand moved from her hip to her face, tracing her jawline with his fingers, his touch sparking wherever he touched. “My siblings still don’t know that she was pregnant. Should I—”
“Tell them?” Cady finished his sentence for him. “I don’t know, Beck. But maybe it’s a way to start dismantling that suit of armor between you and your siblings, you and the world.”
“I don’t—” Beck started, half laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, I do wear that armor. You always had the ability to find my weak spots and sneak on in. Cades, you...this...”
Cady stopped his fumbling words with her lips on his. She didn’t want him to say more, to make promises he couldn’t keep just because he was feeling emotional. This entire interlude was too intense and she had to pull away now because she couldn’t fall any deeper into whatever was building between her and Beck.
Too much had happened lately; too much was at stake. She was, for the second time, sleeping with a client and although Beck said that he could, and would, separate the two issues, she’d been burned in this situation before. She was pregnant and Beck wasn’t the father and they didn’t have a future.
She wasn’t going to fall in love with Beck again. It didn’t matter that he was the best man she’d ever met, that she thought he was sexy as sin, that she adored him.
This. Was. Not. Going. To. Happen.
She was not going to fall in love with Beck. Not again.
“Let’s go to bed.” Beck’s hot chocolate voice rumbled over her.
She shook her head and stood in front of him.
Beck frowned at her. “Problem?” Beck asked, concern in his voice.
Cady shot steel into her spine and told herself to be sensible. “Having sex after such an intense conversation is not a good idea.”
“Having sex is always a good idea,” Beck argued.