by Alexa Davis
I take his hand and rise to my feet. “Yeah, like what happened with the glasses?” I ask. “Did you do the laser surgery thing or is there some kind of medication that’s only made available to the ridiculously wealthy?”
“You have a way of making me forget what I’m talking about, Ellie Michaels,” he says, kissing me on the cheek, then on the lips. He smiles. “It’s a problem.”
I snort with laughter.
“You know,” he says, looking back toward the office door, “my assistant’s already holding my calls.”
“Yeah?” I ask, kissing him.
“Appointments, too,” he says as I loosen his tie. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s already set up the machine gun nest around the office. We have one of those, you know.”
“Yeah,” I tell him, “I’m back to where your rich guy stuff doesn’t impress me so much, Mr. Scipio.” I slide the tie the rest of the way off his neck.
“I like it when you call me that,” he says.
“Really?” I ask as I unbutton his shirt. “I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve said it since we met.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t like it when you call me that,” he says. “What was it again?”
Slipping his suit jacket and shirt off of him together, I whisper in his ear, “Mr. Scipio.”
“Yeah,” he says, giving me a pat on the butt, “that was better the first time.”
I draw back and give him a playful slap to the chest, saying, “Well look who found their confidence after junior high.”
He smirks and says, “I didn’t say we couldn’t work on it.”
Nick reaches his arms around me and pulls me close, kissing me hard. I’m climbing onto the desk so I don’t lose my balance from the intensity of those full lips on mine.
He slips my blouse over my head and drops it off to the side as he kisses my neck. A moment later, I’m letting my bra fall from my shoulders.
My blood on fire, I reach between us and unfasten Nick’s belt. Unbuttoning his pants, I savor the feel of him through the fabric and I want him inside me now.
He steps back a little and I lift my skirt, showing him I’m ready when he is.
Those dark eyes brighten a little and he steps between my legs. I stroke him as he whispers in my ear, “Do you know how long I waited for you?”
“Then don’t,” I tell him and guiding him to my slippery core.
“Not yet,” he says. He kisses his way down my body, and I’m leaning back on this desk that’s at least as big as my queen-sized mattress.
He’s sucking the skin of my inner thighs, each in their turn, and I’m already starting to sweat. Looking down at that gorgeous head of black hair, I’m not looking at him as the CEO, though I’m on his desk in his office. I’m not looking at him as the billionaire slumming it.
I just see a gorgeous man who wants me in his life.
His mouth moves over me and when his tongue glides over my clit, it’s all I can do to keep my arms from shaking out from under me. Nick puts his arms around my legs, bracing me as his deft mouth attends to every part of my core before returning to my swollen bud.
“Any chance these walls are soundproof?” I ask.
Nick turns his head and sputters laughter. He says, “I do yell at a lot of people in here.” His expression softening, he says, “Nobody’s going to hear you.”
He kisses the top of one thigh all the way up to the knee, and I reach over, grabbing his necktie from the side of his desk where I dropped it. Putting the tie around me, I cinch it up a little, letting it dangle between my breasts.
He looks up to see what I’m doing and kissing his way back up my body, he says, “That’s not your tie, you know.”
“Oh, you don’t like it?” I ask, pushing out my bottom lip.
He kisses my neck and sucks my earlobe before answering, “I didn’t say that.”
Nick presses himself into me, one arm around my back, supporting me. Even though Nick says the office is soundproof, I still put the tie between my teeth to muffle the sounds of my pleasure.
There’s something so different in knowing who he is, who he was. That barrier, the one I felt so long between his world and mine, it’s finally gone.
After he told me, I didn’t know whether to tell him I was awake because I didn’t know how to handle what was happening. All my life, I’ve just been the girl with the silly job in the silly town. Come to find out, the man who has everything only wanted me.
That’s a lot of pressure, but as I caress Nick’s cheek as he’s so deep inside me, I’m starting to think I can handle it. No more drunken parties. No more running away.
No more excuses.
My lips vibrate around the tie and I spit it out, letting Nick hear me. With one hand behind my head now, he kisses my cheek and then my lips.
I look away from Nick for a moment to gaze out the corner of one of his office windows. One thing about Nick is that sex with him typically comes with a hell of a view.
Nick kisses my neck, my shoulder, and every motion is building that tension and building that tension until I’m clutching the edge of the desk as hard as I can as he moves with such power I can’t describe it.
Pulling against the desk drives me harder and harder over him, but my arms still shake as all that built up tension releases in an explosion of sweat and shivers and molten lust permeating everything.
I’m not quiet.
Nick pulls himself out of me and I’m expecting him to come, but he pulls me off the desk and turns me around in front of him so I’m laying front down on his desk. He runs a hand down my back as he pushes inside of me again before my climax has even had a chance to pass.
He’s so powerful in so many ways, but with me, even now, it’s not command. It’s not force. It’s a passion, a fervor that has me wondering if I’m still feeling the first orgasm or if I’ve moved on to a whole new one.
Nick’s strong quads smack against my thighs, and I’m reaching for something, anything to hold onto. Papers are falling off the desk, but I don’t care.
I’m groaning, overwhelmed with delight and Nick is so thick and full inside me. My eyes are almost closed when I notice a light on Nick’s phone over where it says intercom.
“Psst,” I whisper and point to the phone, saying, “is that thing on?”
Nick lunges forward, his hand slamming on the intercom button. It’s a strange feeling with him still inside me, but the light’s gone.
He falls back into his chair, laughing.
“Was that really on?” I ask. “Did you know it was?”
“No,” he says, trying to catch his breath. “I swear. I didn’t even notice it until you pointed it out.” He falls into laughter again, and it’s so contagious, I can’t help but join him.
“I don’t know how long it was on, do you?” I ask. “That could have been on the whole time.”
“Well,” Nick says, wiping his brow with the back of his forearm, “I guess that’s one way to announce I’m stepping down.”
“Yeah, I know, right?” I say. Then it clicks. “Wait, what did you say?”
* * *
If anyone heard us through the intercom, they were decent enough not to be outside the office when Nick and I finally came out. Headquarters sex sounded like such a great idea at the time.
It’s funny, back in that hotel room we didn’t leave for a week, the sex was great, but forgettable. I didn’t attach too much significance to it, other than it was something we both wanted.
Things are different now.
Nick’s been home the last few days, though, and it seems like he’s waiting to tell me something, only he hasn’t found the right time. I don’t want to go down that road again.
He’s sitting next to me on the couch, reading a book when I ask, “It’s not that I’m complaining, but aren’t you supposed to be at work trying to save your company?”
“I thought you knew,” he says.
“Knew what?” I ask.
�
��When I went to my office and found you in there, I thought—Nolan didn’t say anything?” he asks.
“After our last phone conversation, Nolan and I don’t talk all that much,” I answer. “What happened?”
“I had to give up the company,” he says. “There was no way around it.”
“That’s it?” she asks. “No last-minute strategy session with the lawyers or anything?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Someone from the board will step in as acting CEO—probably Mason Handler, but if they are going to install someone from the board, they’d do better with Geraldine Peña. She’s the CFO now, but she’s got the instincts. I thought you just didn’t bring it up because I haven’t said anything about it. The truth is, I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. I didn’t know you didn’t know. I’m sorry for that.”
“So what happened, though?” I ask. “Did you quit, did they fire you?”
“It was more of a legal agreement between consenting parties,” he says. “I had to transfer my stock, too, and it’s depreciated quite a bit. Are you going to be all right if I’m just really rich instead of ultra-rich?”
I rub my chin. “Yeah,” I answer. “I think I’ll stick around. You’re kind of a handful, but I’ll keep you for now.”
“Fair enough,” he says.
“You need to do something, though,” I tell him. “Even if it’s not your company anymore, you need to do something so you can live with what’s happening to the company.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” he says.
I have a few thoughts, but none of them are workable. We talk about it until we’re both spouting nonsense ideas just so we can say we’ve thought of everything. It only takes an hour to get there.
The rest of the day, we just sit and enjoy what life is like when there’s nothing to worry about except the dog, the cat, the kleptomaniac-compulsive-liar sister, basically all forms of media, and the general public.
“So,” I say, “when you told me you were going to come join me in Mulholland, were you planning to make it more than temporary?”
His face darkens a little. “I’d hoped to,” he says. “I wanted to get everything squared away at the office and then see how you felt about it first, though.”
“So, I know where I’m going to live,” I tell him. “If my landlord hadn’t brought back that last money order for rent, I wouldn’t have been able to get out here. Thanks for doing that, by the way.”
“No problem,” he says. “If you decide you need your space, I want you to know you can have it. However,” he says, “if you’d like to stay with me, the manager of the Plimpington Hotel talked me into renting out the top half of his place while I wait for the new house to be built. I’m going to recommend that guy to a few people on my way out of town. He could make a killing as a hired negotiator.”
“There’s one thing I don’t understand, though,” she says. “Why would you move the company to Mulholland? You said you knew it would always be my home, and you’re right, but why move the whole business?”
“Just the headquarters,” he says.
“You know very well what I mean,” I tell him.
He kisses me on the forehead, saying, “One of the things you talked about on our walks was how much you wanted to be a teacher. You said you knew it since you were a little kid, but that you’d never get the job because of the way things work in that town. I never understood why you loved it so much.”
“I don’t follow,” I say.
“If you weren’t willing to leave Mulholland, the only way you’d get to do what you want is if there were enough jobs in town, the place could start running as if it’s at least trying to exist in this century. Only, I realized something just now,” he says.
I say, “What if I don’t want to be a teacher anymore, or what if I’m okay with leaving Mulholland, or what if—”
“Yeah,” he interrupts. “That.” He says, “I need to sit down.” He does, and I sit next to him.
“I’ve been avoiding that store even though I own it,” I tell him. “It was never what I wanted to be doing. I thought maybe being the boss a little while would change that, but I want something more engaging than sitting on a stool and hoping someone walks in that day.”
“What about leaving Mulholland?” he asks. “The company’s moving, so the headquarters is just going to sit there until someone decides to buy it or tear it down. After the way the people there turned on you over nothing, I can’t imagine you’d want to stay there.”
He lucked out that I’m so predictable. That’s just part of growing up in a small town, though. You get used to some things, even though they’re not always the most convenient or the most pleasant.
Of course, that was before he actually came into my life. Ever since then, I don’t think I could stand living in that place anymore. I’m just surprised the townsfolk haven’t decided to trash my store again. I really should figure out what I want to do with that.
“How do you feel about irony?” I ask.
Luckily, he got booted as CEO, and thus the Mulholland office isn’t tying us down there. All right, “luckily” probably isn’t the right word there.
We talk for a long time, eventually moving from the kitchen floor of the penthouse to the living room. Some big things come up, but mostly we just try to fill in some of the pieces we’ve missed since we’ve seen each other.
After a while, we’re both tired, but neither one of us is ready to admit defeat and call it a night.
It’s half past eleven when Nick’s phone rings. He answers it, and I’m half asleep on the other end of the couch. I’m fighting a losing battle.
For a while, I kind of drift in and out of hearing Nick’s part of the conversation, but when he says, “I’ll see you soon,” my eyes open.
“Ellie,” Nick says, shaking my leg.
“What?” I groan.
“Wake up,” he says. “Something’s happening.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
No Hard Feelings
Nick
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Ellie asks as she looks over the place settings on my dining room table.
“No,” I answer, “but it should.”
I’ve only been gone from Stingray a week, but just to show there aren’t any hard feelings I decided to invite the entire board over to the beach house on Long Island for a nice dinner. At least that’s what I said when I called Reeves and had him spread the word.
It took a couple of days for all eight to come on board, but they think I’m still trying to recover the company. When I told them I had no intention of working for Stingray in any capacity, though, the last of the holdouts caved.
Yako Inoue is catering dinner tonight, and the house is starting to fill with the mouth-watering aromas of this evening’s menu.
“I’m going to finish getting ready,” Ellie says, and I nod. A lot is riding on how things go tonight. I should probably finish getting ready, myself.
In business, most of the time, it’s not what you want, but how you ask and how much leverage you have when you do. Ask too softly and nobody will take you seriously. Ask too forcefully and people will tell you no just to knock you down a peg.
It’s simple psychology.
I’ve never had much success with the middle of the road, though. In my experience, it’s best to make everything black and white. Then paint what they want to do with every color of nightmare you can put together.
That’s diplomacy.
I get dressed in one of my softer navy blue suits, something that says I certainly dressed for the occasion, but I’m not trying to prove anything. If they’re going to stay long enough to get railroaded, I need to come across nonthreatening. At least until it’s time to drop the hammer, that is.
Cinching up my tie, I head to the bathroom to check up on Ellie.
“How are you doing?” I ask. She’s looking up at the ceiling, dabbing mascara under one eye.
“Almost there,” she says.
She switches to the other eye, and after a few strokes of the brush, she stands up straight. “How do I look?” she asks.
She’s in a sleek, black dress that beautifully hugs, but doesn’t stifle her form. Over her hands, she’s wearing long, black gloves that go up past her elbows. They’re the same fabric as the dress.
“What’s the stone in these earrings?” she asks.
“Red Beryl,” I answer.
Ellie looks in the mirror and takes a deep breath. Blowing it out, she says, “Is everything in place?”
“It should be,” I answer. “Have you seen Marly?”
“No,” she says, “I just came in here to finish my makeup and then the gloves and the earrings. By the way, there’s something I should tell you before dinner starts.”
“Can it wait?” I ask. “I know we have a few minutes, but I want to look everything over—”
She interrupts me, saying, “You know how I said I didn’t know you got fired, but I was so cool about it when you told me?”
“You talked to Nolan,” I state.
She answers, “I talked to Nolan.” Patting me on the shoulder, she says, “After the way he cut me off and forced me to buy a plane ticket instead of make a phone call—which I expect to be reimbursed for, by the way—I thought I’d have a little chat with him while I was waiting for you to get back to your office. He acts all tough on the phone, but you narrow your eyes at the guy and he starts quivering. It was sad, really.”
“Does this have anything to do with tonight? If not, I really would like to get out there,” I tell her.
“Just listen,” she says. “Since you weren’t talking about it with me, I figured you were either trying to handle it emotionally before talking to me—which is stupid—or you really did think I knew about it, but still didn’t say anything—which is also stupid.”
“You’re pretty smug for a trophy girlfriend,” I smirk.
She smacks me on the chest, saying, “You should be nicer to people who do nice things for you, like help put together a dinner party where nothing goes wrong.”
“I take your point,” I tell her. “Please, continue.”
“If I’m honest,” she says, eyeing me like she’s trying to keep me in place, “I thought you were doing some sort of inside baseball or whatever they call it and the whole thing was over my head,” she tells me. “However, I did know you hadn’t been able to find or get ahold of Jacque, so I thought I’d try my hand at it.”