The testiness of our…fight? Was it a fight? It was something, and it was ugly, but it’s all gone now. Poof. Because Scott’s kissing me like I’ve wanted him to for months. Months. His tongue is teasing mine, his lips are softer than I’d imagined, and so much better for it, and his hands are everywhere.
He squeezes my hips first, then my waist, and then—
I gasp into his mouth as his palm covers my breast through the loose fabric of my dress, his thumb finding my nipple with unerring confidence.
He freezes, and that just won’t do. I wind my arms around his neck and push up onto my toes, pressing my flesh into his hand at the same time, and he kisses me again, deeper this time.
Yes, yes, yes please.
His mouth is hot and tastes like chocolate. His tongue slides against mine again, deeper, faster, and with each stroke he lights something dangerous inside me. Something that, once it gets burning, I’m pretty sure is going to be unstoppable.
Light me up, I think. Light me up and let me fly, because I’m so ready for you. I’ve been a good girl for so long. All my friends did this years ago, and do it regularly. But I waited until I was sure I was ready—although maybe nothing could have prepared me for this. But I waited until I knew clearly what losing control was like.
It made me a little mad that Scott thought maybe I didn’t know what the consequences of this would be.
I probably know better than he does, but I don’t need to tell him all the filthy family secrets just to hook-up with him. Since he’s Hailey’s bodyguard, he probably already knows, anyway.
Now that prickly defensiveness is fuel on the fire inside me. He didn’t think I was ready, but now he’s kissing me, and touching me, and oh yes, I’m ready.
Against my belly, I can feel his erection. On my chest, his fingertips have found bare skin, and he’s tugging down my dress.
I’m ready, and he’s—
Stopping.
This time, when he freezes it’s not for a second. He doesn’t kiss me again, no matter how close I press myself against him.
He holds me tight, but his mouth is buried in my hair now, and he’s…I can feel him locking himself down. It starts in his arms, a tightening that moves to his core. All the muscles contracting, until the only part of his body that is still good-to-go is his dick, and he’s proven time and again that he’s willing to disappoint both me and his cock, so I’m not holding out any hope for that part of him to convince the rest to get back in the kissing-and-more game.
“You’re a frustrating woman,” he whispers roughly.
“So you do think of me as a woman,” I sigh. Well, that’s a bittersweet victory.
He huffs at that, then we stand there, hugging for another long moment before he finally says quietly, “Key takeaway is that you’re frustrating.”
“I beg to differ.” I smile, because it’s my birthday, and I got cupcakes and one hell of a kiss. I refuse to see this as a failure. Rome wasn’t built in a day. “I take it you weren’t planning on kissing me?”
“I was trying to explain why we can’t happen, so…yeah. I wasn’t planning on kissing you.”
“But you did.”
“I did.”
“It was…hot.”
His grip tightens around me for a second. “Unbelievably hot. If I were any other man…”
“And I were any other woman?”
“No. You’re perfect just the way you are.” His lips dust lightly over mine, then he deepens the kiss just long enough for his tongue to brush mine. My insides flutter at the angsty hope that we might do more, but he pulls back again.
“Scott?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t. And it’s not because I don’t want you. But I won’t like myself in the morning, and neither will you.”
“I will. How many times do I have to tell you, I’m not asking for more than one night?”
His mouth tightens into a firm line. “I’m done with The Horus Group. This weekend is my last protecting Hailey.” What? I shrink back from him, first inside the circle of his arms, then he lets me go. “I should have told you earlier.”
I can’t look at him. I wouldn’t be able to look at myself, either, so it’s good that there aren’t any mirrors in my line of sight. I’m such a hypocrite. I stare over his shoulder, willing the floor to open up and swallow me whole, because I don’t want him to see me reacting like this. Like anything. I’m fine with that. I push as much indifference into my voice as I can. “Thank you for telling me before…”
He lets me trail that off. We both know what I mean. He nods gruffly. “Now you understand.”
No. I don’t. Because I still want him, still miss his mouth on mine and his arms around me. Even if it would have just been for one night, I wanted to have him.
And now he’s fading out of my life, which is his right. He was never mine to begin with.
“Go back to school, Ali. Find a nice guy who worships the ground you walk on, who will make you feel like a goddess and keep you safe.”
I huff a laugh, because the only man I trust to keep me safe is standing right in front of me. Too bad he doesn’t meet the first two criteria. “Pipe dream.”
“It’s not.” His voice is rougher than sandpaper as he stares at me. “You haven’t given it a try, have you? Have you even dated anyone your own age?”
No. I clench my jaw and stare at him. “I think you made it clear that your sex life wasn’t my business. So…ditto. None of your business, Mr. Mayfair.”
He shoves his hands in his pockets. Tension is vibrating off him. “Why haven’t you?”
“Because I couldn’t!” I yell, startling both of us. He moves closer and I shake my head at him. I don’t need to be comforted. I exhale roughly. “You know how fucked up my family is. I never wanted to be like them. But I am, you know? I don’t want to date some guy from school. So I guess the apple doesn’t—”
“Stop it.” He’s closer again. Push. Pull. Yes. No. We’re the worst kind of perpetual motion machine.
I nod. We definitely need to stop it. He’s been saying it all night. I stumble backwards, moving around a barstool toward my room. “Yeah. Good night.”
“Ali…”
“Don’t.” I shake my head. “Thank you for the cupcakes. And the kiss. The rest of it…I’m going to pretend it didn’t happen, and I trust you will do the same.”
His jaw flexes and his eyes glitter with frustration, but he doesn’t say anything else. He just watches me back into my room.
I close the door with a touch more force than is necessary.
When I wake up in the morning, he’s gone.
—six—
Scott
It’s been four years since I last walked in the front doors of Mayfair Tower, the Manhattan home of Mayfair Enterprises.
I’d hoped to never do it again, but beggars can’t be choosers. Since most of my bank accounts are still frozen by the British government, I’m living pay check to pay check. And I just quit my job.
Jeff’s office is on the far side of two security checkpoints, so I can’t just stroll in and say, “hey, little brother, how about hiring me?”
Instead, I have to give my name to the security guard, pretending I don’t see three ways I could disarm him and take control of the lobby in five seconds flat.
Maybe the job I should be applying for is chief of security.
After talking to someone on the phone, the guard directs me to a waiting room at one end of the lobby. This has been renovated since I was here last.
Business must be good.
I snort. Of course business is good. My brother was on the cover of national newspapers last week. The stories weren’t about Mayfair Enterprises, but there he was in the background of a picture of the President doing a tour of one of our factories.
Our factories.
I’ve never wanted a piece of this company.
“Mr. Mayfair?” I look up at a tall, pretty blonde in a dark blue suit waiting to escort me to
see Jeff.
I’ve never wanted this, but now I need it. And if I’m willing to accept the strings attached, it’ll open up the world for me again.
“Yes,” I say, standing.
She holds out her hand. “I’m Alicia. The other Mr. Mayfair’s executive assistant. Please follow me.”
We shake. Her cool grip is strong and sure. Good for her.
She leads me past security, grabbing me a visitor’s badge on the way. As we walk, she tells me that Jeff’s currently on a conference call, but he’s got lunch in thirty minutes, and would I like a sandwich?
It’s quarter after eight in the morning. “I just had breakfast, but thank you.”
She doesn’t blink. “Mr. Mayfair’s operating on UK time this week.”
“Ah. So a late lunch, then.”
She doesn’t laugh. I swallow a sigh.
When we reach Jeff’s office suite, she directs me to an empty office on the far side of her desk. “You can wait in there.”
“Thanks.” I walk past her, already feeling restless.
“And Mr. Mayfair?”
“Yeah?” I turn back and look at her.
“Your mail is waiting for you in there.”
Jesus. I head in without acknowledging that further. Sure enough, there’s a stack of what looks like annual reports on the desk, and a small pile of envelopes next to them.
Jeff didn’t waste any time in laying the guilt trip.
My phone doesn’t work in here—no surprise there—so I sit down heavily in the leather desk chair and flip through the letters first. Annual statements of accounts I don’t have access to, with red stamps on them confirming that they’re still locked because I’m a bad boy.
Or something like that.
My fucking father.
The start of a headache pinches between my eyes. I breathe deeply, slowly, locking that shit down. I’m not going to get sucked in. I don’t need that money. The zeroes swim in front of my eyes. Shit, nobody needs that much money.
I just need Jeff to intervene on my behalf with the Brits, get my access to my own damn money, and then it can be another however many years before I need to be slammed in the face with the fact that I’m a terrible son.
“What are you doing here?”
I set down the report I’m reading and look up at my brother. Three years younger than me and infinitely smarter. Fewer qualms about the moral gray areas in life, too. “Apparently having lunch with you.”
Jeff laughs. He’s got my dark hair and eyes, but he’s clean-shaven to my few days of scruff and leaner to my bulky mass. Not that he’s not strong. He spent a few years training as an MMA fighter, but his strength in the ring is his speed, not the weight behind his fists. “Alicia explained I’m on London time?”
“What’s that about?” I get right to it.
“We’re building a nanotechnology research lab in Leeds.”
“That’s different.”
He shrugs. “It’s a test run. I’m trying to convince Mother it’s a good direction to take the company.”
“The British government hasn’t given you any problems?”
“Because of you?” He gives me a look of surprise, as if to say, you think you’re that important?
“I’m still having some difficulties with them. Frozen bank accounts, a lot of red tape.”
“The Company didn’t bail you out?”
I laugh. “I wasn’t a CIA operative.”
“Sure. Of course not.”
Not while I’d been in London, anyway. But I had been recruited by the CIA after I left the Navy—after my very short stint here at Mayfair Enterprises had failed miserably—and I’d been trained…Farm-adjacent, let’s call it. “Anyway, no, my former employer hasn’t provided any assistance with restoring my access to my accounts. And I’m still on a travel ban.”
Jeff frowns. “Really?”
“Dude, welcome to the common-man reality. Do you know how much red tape is involved with getting off a no-fly list?”
“That’s what lawyers are for.”
“I can’t afford a lawyer.”
“How poor are you at the moment?”
I’ve got five grand in my West Maryland Credit Union account, and I’m getting another paycheck from The Horus Group. I own my truck outright. But I don’t have the tens of thousands it would cost to hire a lawyer to untangle the mess I left in England. Well, I don’t have access to the funds. They’re all locked up tight in England.
Fuckers.
“I’m not poor, exactly.”
He gives me a confused look, and I resist the urge to punch him for being so privileged he didn’t get it. He sighs. “Do you need a loan?”
“Fuck you. I need a job.”
He points at the desk. “Whenever you want it.”
Sharp, cold self-loathing crawls up my back. Never in a million years. “Not this kind of job. Something in the plant, maybe, or on your security team.”
“Mother would have a coronary.”
“We don’t need to tell her.”
“She’d find out.” He leans against the door frame and rubs his jaw as he gives me an appraising look. “What’s your plan, man?”
I don’t have one. “It was to be a Navy SEAL for twenty-plus years and retire in Boca Raton, but Dad fucked that up for me, didn’t he?”
“He just wanted you to take your rightful place.”
“Your rightful place. And it looks good on you.”
He shrugs. “I like it.”
“You’re living in another fucking time zone this week. You love it.”
He grins. “I love that part. I love the thrill of a new project. But…change might be coming.”
“What kind of change?”
He shakes his head. “Not here.”
How mysterious. But I’m not getting sucked in to his drama. “Taking over the world looks good on you. But it’s not for me.”
“So re-enlist.”
“It’s not that simple.” What I’d done in England meant that I probably wasn’t eligible, anyway.
“You were working with Cole Parker in Washington.”
I give him a hard look. “Keeping tabs on me?”
“Was that a secret?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Neither is that.”
I want to get up and pace. Instead, I lean back in the leather chair and swing my feet onto the desk. “I’m not working with them any longer.”
“Were you fired?”
“What the hell? No, I wasn’t fired.”
He spreads his hands wide. “You don’t want the special treatment. ‘Just a job in a plant.’ I’m not sure you’d pass the job interview, asshole. Get your feet off the COO’s desk.”
I give him my middle finger and shove away from the desk. Pacing will have to do.
“As a matter of fact, I do have a job for you,” he says quietly. “And if you do it, I’ll see what I can do about freeing up your British bank accounts.”
I don’t like the tone he’s shifted to. “Is it legal?”
He winces. “Don’t ask questions you might not like the answers to. Come with me.”
BOOTY CALL
part two
WASHINGTON
—seven—
MARCH
Alison
I’m back in Washington, studying at a little coffee shop just off-campus one night when I see Scott next. It’s late, after eleven, and I’m sitting in the window. This big-ass black SUV pulls up across the street, which of course gets my attention, because this is a quiet residential neighborhood and that kind of car screams, “don’t fuck with me, I’ll drive over you.”
Not really standard fare for Georgetown.
I’m so messed up, that turns me on a little. It’s my dirty little secret. My sister would be horrified. She’s lived through the real-life drama of good guys and bad guys, and doesn’t think anything about it is hot.
Well, except for her bad-ass fiancé. She thinks Cole’s
pretty irresistible. I’ve been in their apartment when they duck into their room for a private “conversation”. It’s embarrassing how much she digs his wickedness.
But I’m not one to judge.
Then Scott climbs out of the driver’s side of the giant SUV I’m ogling.
He’s in a suit, like always. No tie. Just a dark suit and a white shirt, muscles straining to be contained by fabric that’s way too soft for him.
That turns me on, too, even as I start to slow-burn at the memory of how we left things between us.
I squirm in my chair and tug the hood of my sweatshirt up over my head. Why does the one guy that makes me want to give up my V-card have to be my sister’s bodyguard?
Why can’t I fall head-over-tits in lust for a football player or a kinky gamer boy?
You know why, a slimy little voice whispers in my head.
I sit up straight. No more squirming. And I’m making a therapy appointment as soon as I’m done studying.
But I don’t look away from Scott. I watch as he glances around, then heads into the townhouse directly across from where I’m sitting.
I feel a momentary spasm of guilt for spying, but it’s not like I sought him out. I was just sitting here, minding my own business, when whatever weirdness he’s up to just happened right in front of me.
I’m completely legit to just sit here and see things.
Which is why I angle my chair away from the window, turn my computer just so, and turn on the camera so I can keep watching him.
Because I’m totally legit. Yeah, right.
My messenger app beeps at me. My friend Corey from the pre-law group wants to know if I’m up for a breakfast study circle.
A: Sure, what time? Can I bring…
I look at the display counter. They have lots of muffins left, and I bet they’ll give them to me at half-price when they close in half an hour.
A: Muffins?
C: You can bring me muffins any time ;)
A: Ew.
C: Sorry. 9:30? McAllister Lounge?
A: Sure. I gotta be done at eleven, have a family thing.
C: Can’t make a joke here about how it pains me to be quick?
Booty Call Page 4