“Bisou. A lingerie store. It’s where I bought those panties.”
She lowered her sunglasses and gave him a look up through her eyelashes. “And we’re here…why?”
“To pick out some matching bras.”
Her mouth fell open. “I don’t need bras.”
“Of course you do.” He nudged her inside. She pushed back, but then entered the store. The captivating smell of expensive perfume enveloped them.
He watched her check out the boutique, gazing around at the antique tables piled with goodies, and bras hanging on pink satin hangers that matched the wallpaper. She moved over to one bra and plucked at the tag hanging from it. Her head whipped around to glare at him. “Shut up!” she whispered. “I can’t afford this place!”
“I can. Let’s see…I really like those black-and-white panties…I mean, ivory, they called it…” He perused a rack.
A woman dressed all in black approached them with a smile. “Hello. I’m Claire. Can I help you find something today?”
Hayden opened her mouth, but Beck spoke first. “Yes, we’re looking for some bras.”
“What size? Have you been measured, dear?” Claire asked Hayden.
“Um, thirty-four-C,” she mumbled.
“Excellent.”
“I bought some panties in here a few weeks ago,” Beck added. “Maybe you have some bras that would match? Black with ivory lace? Pink lace?”
“Hmm. Let’s see.” Claire seemed to know her stock, as she glided across the thick red carpet and pulled down a bra. “How’s this?”
“Perfect.”
She handed the bra to Hayden and continued looking while Beck explored too.
“I like this one,” he said, holding up a sheer lace bra for Hayden to see. “We can buy the panties that go with it.”
Jesus, just picturing her in it was giving him a stiffy.
“Oh my God,” Hayden said under breath. “What is happening here?” She glanced from the bra in her hands to the one Beck held up.
“Baby.” He moved closer to her and bumped his hips into hers. He wanted to do more than that—he wanted to grind his growing erection against her sweet pussy—but not in public.
Claire returned with several more options. Beck checked each of them out, rejecting only one—he didn’t care for the wide straps on it.
“Let’s get a fitting room started for you,” Claire said, turning on a sharp heel and walking away from them.
Beck eased Hayden after her.
Claire entered a room and hung the bras on hooks while Hayden stood outside, rubbing her hands together and glancing around. Beck had never been back here—he’d shopped there before, but not with a woman. Subtle lighting designed to flatter illuminated the space. Elegant cream-and-pink wallpaper covered the walls, and plush chairs sat grouped in a corner.
“There you go.” Claire popped out, beaming a smile. “If you need me to get you a different size or style, just press this button here.” She indicated the small button inside the door.
Hayden’s eyelashes fluttered as she entered the dressing room. Beck followed, closing the door behind him.
“What are you doing?” Now her eyes burst wide open. “You can’t come in here!”
“Why not?” He gestured. “They clearly made this room big enough for two. And hey, there’s a place for me to sit.” He lowered himself onto the red velvet chaise.
“But…but I…”
“Relax, baby.” He leaned forward. “Just enjoy the experience.”
She licked her lips. “I’m freaked out.”
“I see that. C’mere.” He reached for her hand and tugged her closer, then down onto his lap. His eager dick twitched against her ass. He slid a hand around the back of her neck and brought her mouth down to meet his. He brushed a soft kiss over her lips, pressed his mouth to hers, then opened his mouth and licked inside. Her lips parted and her tongue stroked his and heat exploded between them as they kissed, over and over.
A moment later, she was trembling and panting. “Sweet Jesus,” she gasped. “We can’t do this here.”
“Sure we can. Claire won’t bother us unless we ring the bell. Just trying to relax you, baby.”
“I’m not relaxing. I’m…I’m getting hot…”
“Mmm. Good.” He kissed her again and as he did so he slid his hands up under her T-shirt. She shivered at his touch on her skin and he slowly lifted the T-shirt higher, over her breasts and over her head. “There you go. Need to get you undressed so I can see you in that pretty underwear.”
She moaned.
He snapped open the back fastener of her bra, a basic beige T-shirt bra. Nothing wrong with that—he knew there was a need for such things at times. But there were also times when something pretty and sexy was better.
She sat topless on his lap, her cheeks flushed a bright pink, her eyes sparkling with desire.
“Gorgeous. Look at you.” He cupped her tits, loving how their soft weight filled his palms, her nipples puckered up into sweet points.
“Oh God, Beck. This is so…outrageous.”
“I know.” He caressed her breasts, watching his hands shape them, rubbing his thumbs over her nipples. Her smile at his words made his heart jump in his chest. He slid his hands down her sides to her waist then lifted her off him. “Okay, baby, try on the bras.”
Still blushing, she reached for one and slipped it on. When she adjusted her breasts in the sheer cups, his dick thickened even more. She bit her lip and turned to the gilt-framed mirror.
“Looks like it fits,” Beck said.
She turned her shoulders one way, then the other, and back to face him. “It’s perfect.”
“And hot.”
She tried the others. With each change of lingerie, he got harder and hornier. “We’ll take them all,” he rasped as she modeled the last one. He unzipped the fly of his jeans. “Get your sexy little ass over here.”
A moan escaped her lips. Her eyelids lowered as she took off the bra and dropped it onto the chaise beside Beck with all the others. He shoved a hand into his front pocket and pulled out the small packet he’d stashed there earlier. He ripped it open to reveal the condom, then pulled out his aching cock and gave it a few hard, fast strokes.
“Beck…” she whispered.
“Take off your shorts.” He kept his voice low. “And come sit on my cock, baby. Look how hard you made me, showing off those gorgeous tits.” He rolled the condom on.
“I wasn’t showing off.” She made no move to divest herself of her shorts.
He reached for her and flicked open the button. “Admit it. They made you feel sexy.”
“No.” The corners of her lips lifted and she drew down the zipper of her shorts. “It wasn’t the lingerie that made me feel sexy. It was you.” With a little shimmy, shorts and panties dropped to the floor. She moved over him, straddling his legs. Blood surged into his dick, throbbing, his balls heavy and aching with the need to come. “The way you watched me,” she whispered near his ear. “Knowing I was making you hard. That made me feel sexy.”
“Damn, baby.” He gripped his cock with one hand and her hip with the other as she lowered herself over him. The tip of his cock nudged her tight entrance and his blood raced hot through his veins.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this.” She laid her hands on his chest. “And I think I’ve said that before with you. How do you make me lose my mind like this?”
“It’s my huge cock. And my incredible charm.”
Her eyes half closed, she smiled, and his heart did another bump against his sternum.
“So damn beautiful, baby. And you feel so good.” He drove his hips up and her inner walls closed around him like a hot, velvet glove. “Not gonna take much…”
“It’s okay. We should be quick…” She moved on him, and the slide of her pussy over his engorged dick had tingles racing down the backs of his thighs.
“You…touch yourself. Make yourself come.”
“It’ll take to
o long.” She bent over and kissed him, slow, with a drag of tongue over his bottom lip. “I don’t need to come.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Fuck yeah, you do.”
She grabbed his face in both hands and gave him a hard, fast kiss. “Don’t make me fake it,” she whispered against his lips.
“Jesus.” Had she ever faked an orgasm? He didn’t think so, but…“We’ll have this conversation later. Right now…I’m gonna come…” He gritted his teeth to fight back the shout that rose in his throat as white hot heat exploded, blazing up his dick, searing up his back, blowing out his mind.
Chapter 20
“In preclinical, in vivo, proof-of-concept studies, our messenger RNA agents induced the production of dozens of effector proteins, and have actually repaired and regenerated damaged tissue to achieve long-term therapeutic effects.” Hayden looked around the boardroom table at the executives from Bäcker Inc., to whom she was pitching. “What’s more, we may be able to cure hundreds of diseases that aren’t treatable today. Current technologies target only secreted protein, but our agents can produce both secreted and intracellular proteins. This means we can develop new medicines to treat diseases that can’t be touched with today’s therapies.” She paused and made eye contact around the room. “Our messenger RNA agents have the potential to usher in a new era of medicine.”
The men at the table nodded.
“Do you have any questions?” Hayden smiled at them.
“I do.” One man lifted a hand with a pen in it.
She handled their questions for the next half hour, until the meeting concluded. When she walked out of the building onto Ash Street, she heaved a big sigh of relief. That had gone perfectly.
She drove to UCSD to teach one of her biochemistry classes, then headed back to her lab to check on progress there. With her lab coat on and hair tucked up under a cap, she entered the lab. “How’s it going, Hamir?”
Hamir sighed and turned to face her. “I’ve been injecting pre-RNA splice-blocking morpholinos into zebra fish embryos. I saw potential phenotypes in the morphants versus the controls at 26hpf, but when I try to confirm whether the morpholinos targeted their specific splice sites by RT-PCR, I’m not getting an additional band.”
“Did you observe a decrease in the band intensity of the morphants in the gel?”
“No.” Hamir shook his head.
“Well, morpholinos aren’t completely reliable, whether splice-blocking or start-site targeted. Maybe try doing a DoseWise injection of the MO between one- and two-cell stage and then verify through RT-PCR. Which stage are you using for your RNA prep?”
“I used 20ss and 26hpf.”
“Try preparing RNA from earlier stages and check for MO knockdown. Different MOs have different half-life in the cell.”
“Okay, yeah.”
She loved helping her staff and students solve problems like that. With a smile, she continued on to check in with others.
Finally, she had a chance to grab something to eat. She sank into the chair behind her desk, with a plastic container of kale salad open in front of her, and started going through emails. She smiled to see one from Beck, saying I want to do this, with a GIF of a couple about to have sex against a wall.
She admired the sexy video clip, then typed back a response. That’s hot.
She watched the short clip a few more times, imagining Beck taking her like that. She shifted in her chair. Ahem. She had work to do.
She cleared a few more emails then noticed the one from NHI. She straightened and blinked. Her heart picked up speed. She clicked open the email and scanned it.
No.
She frowned.
That couldn’t be…she reread it, slower…oh my God, no. They’d been turned down for the grant.
She read it a third time, disbelief tightening her face. Then she slumped into her chair and stared blankly across the office.
Vanguard didn’t get the grant.
She covered her mouth with one hand and closed her eyes at the sting of tears.
Well, shit. Damn. Fuck. Fuck.
Her mind went utterly blank for a moment as she fought back the wave of disappointment that swamped her. A ten-million-dollar wave of disappointment.
What were they going to do?
She’d just pitched to Bäcker today, and she wouldn’t hear back from them for possibly a month. Vanguard had funding to carry them that long, but if that was also a no…they were in trouble.
Goddammit!
Now she leaned forward, shoving her salad aside and resting her head on folded arms on the desk. She wanted to cry. A heaviness spread through her body and her chest ached. She sat like that for a long while, thoughts cycling through her head.
How could this have happened? What went wrong? Was it her fault for not preparing properly? She’d been so sure their project was a good match for this research partnership.
Eventually, she lifted her head and read through the formal notification that was attached to the email. Apparently they weren’t such a good match.
Still, she couldn’t help but blame herself. She was the one in charge here, the one who led the team. She’d let them down. Had she been crazy to get their hopes up that they could actually be awarded such a big grant?
She swallowed through a tight, achy throat and looked around her office. She felt weighed down. Unable to even rise out of her chair. Then she sucked in a long breath and slowly let it out.
She’d experienced failures and disappointments before. She could handle this. It just meant she’d start over, exploring more funding opportunities, working harder than ever. This was a part of the mad mission she was on.
She’d spent the last month screwing around with Beck, having hot sex in crazy places and blowing off her work to go paddleboarding and mountain biking. Doing tequila body shots, for the love of Godiva!
She could not do that anymore. Shit just got real. This was a wake-up call that she needed to focus more on her goals. Not on a tattooed, bearded bad boy who could charm the panties off a nun.
Regret now added to the heaviness in her chest. Her lips pushed out and she squeezed her eyes shut. She had to do this.
She pulled herself together to schedule a quick team meeting in Outlook for that afternoon so she could deliver the bad news and regroup. She managed to maintain her composure through that, updating them on her meeting earlier that day also. And they talked about next steps.
Beck was bringing dinner over tonight. Her belly tightened, thinking about the conversation they needed to have.
—
“This isn’t just about profit,” Danny said.
Beck sat in the office with Marco and Cade, and Danny and Sid. They were finally getting around to talking about their food menu.
“The city requires us to sell at least fifty percent food and fifty percent alcohol,” Danny continued.
Beck nodded. They’d learned that from the days they were applying for the various licenses and permits required to open, but he’d forgotten it.
“So if we don’t sell enough food, we can be shut down,” Danny said.
“Fuck that,” Cade said.
“I know. Okay, I don’t think they’d shut us down immediately. A few months ago, a restaurant did get closed down because they decided to not sell food at all, since they weren’t making much money from it. But we do need to do something to increase food sales.”
“That’s a stupid law.” Beck leaned back in his chair.
“I tend to agree,” Danny said. “But it’s still the law. I personally don’t think it’s necessary.”
“It implies that we can’t responsibly serve alcohol,” Marco said. “And we’re very responsible about that.”
“Yeah,” Beck agreed. “I mean, I get the intent. But it’s a problem for us because our drinks aren’t cheap. It makes the ratio of food to alcohol difficult.”
“That’s true,” Danny agreed. “Rather than base it upon
food sales versus liquor sales in dollars, it should be based upon the amount of alcohol we’re selling. We can lobby for change, but it’s not going to happen overnight.”
“Right.” Beck sighed. “Okay, so we need to sell more food. I had dinner at the Sandbar a while back with Hayden. She was raving about the fresh chips and salsas. They were really good. Not stuff out of a jug.” He looked at Sid. “You up for trying some new things?”
“Sure.” Sid looked wary. “But the chef at that restaurant has won all kinds of awards. I’m not that kind of chef.”
“Yeah, we know.” Beck had his doubts about Sid’s abilities too, but he, Cade, and Marco had talked and agreed they should give him a shot.
“I can come up with some ideas,” Sid said.
“We need to think about what our customers expect,” Danny said. “The food needs to fit with our concept. The same quality, selection, and service that we put into serving drinks should be put into serving bar food.”
“Not Buffalo-style chicken wings,” Cade said dryly.
“But maybe some kind of wings. A little more Mexican.”
Sid made a face. “Chipotle wings?”
“Hey, that’s not bad.” Marco nodded. “Put a little twist on the usual bar food.”
“We can charge more for the food too,” Danny said. “Our clientele knows this isn’t a cheap watering hole. They expect quality tequila and other drinks. So they expect that in the food too.”
“Will we need to add equipment to the kitchen?” Beck asked. He had the money to do whatever they needed to, but he didn’t want to say that. The guys were a little touchy about how much he contributed, since they couldn’t match it.
“I don’t think so,” Sid said. He looked a little terrified. Great. Well, they had to give this a shot.
They spent more time talking about budgets and some different marketing ideas. When they finished up, Beck glanced at his watch.
“Got a date?” Marco asked him.
“It’s not a date. I’m picking up dinner and meeting Hayden at her place.”
Cade smirked. “Yeah, you’ve gone past dating and have settled into domesticity.”
“Fuck that, we have not. We’re just having fun.”
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