“Safe and sound. And you?”
“Bathing, which is why I have to go.”
“No. You don’t. Touch your clit, Elle.”
I freeze, dropping the body wash in the water. “What?”
“You heard me. Touch your clit. Two fingers, slow circles. I want to hear you come again.”
“What if I don’t?”
“I’m looking for reasons to pound that little ass of yours, Elle. Do you really want this to be it?”
I drag my breath in so harshly, it burns my lungs. Swallowing hard, I submerge one hand, clenching it a few centimeters from my center.
“Do it. Stop hovering your fingers over those creamy thighs and do it,” he encourages, and I gasp as soon as my index and middle fingers find the little nub he’d stroked and tweaked to a powerful orgasm just hours ago. “Now, is that so hard?”
“Are you?” I counter, and his laugh is raspy and subdued, vibrating through me, making the tempo of my fingers against my flesh pick up.
“Rock hard,” he admits. “Now, Elle, I want those two fingers in your cunt. No arguing, no bitching, just you fucking yourself.”
“Your phone could be tapped, you know.” But I push my hand farther down, parting my folds to tentatively edge the tips of my fingers inside. I swallow the moan. “Somebody could be listening in on everything we say.”
“Yes, my dick. It’s listening, so keep going.”
“You’re an asshole,” I grind out. And then something hits me. “Are you . . . Graham, are you—”
“If you’re stuttering because you want to ask whether or not I’m going to end this call by blowing my load in a towel, then the answer is yes!”
He’d called me to get off. For some reason, I’m insanely pleased by Graham, Senator Sexy-Ass—Mr. Sexual Control himself—pleasuring himself while he listens to my unsteady breathing. The panting that had resulted from my intense treadmill intervals has nothing on the sounds coming from the back of my throat as I slide my fingers in and out my body.
More water ripples out of the tub, but I don’t care when I do a repeat of what Graham had done this afternoon, curving my fingers just slightly to hit a spot that makes me cry out.
“Fuck!” I half-sob.
“That’s what I want,” Graham breathes, “I want my perfect, sweet Eleanor to say, want, and breathe fuck.”
“Fuck you!”
“And that too. Now shut up, Elle, and touch your clit again.”
When I do, shocking myself at how swollen I am now, I let out a guttural noise and close my eyes. For a moment, it’s not my fingers working against my flesh, but Graham’s. Graham spreading me apart and coaxing me toward the building orgasm. Graham’s thumb taking over, going faster, harder.
Graham’s full lips actually pressed against my ear, taunting me, releasing me, when he orders, “Back inside of you, Elle. Hurry.”
I shatter the second those two fingers glide past my opening, and I’m still shuddering and gasping when, moments later, he breaks. If I weren’t in my own little world right now, I’d have accidentally knocked the phone in the water at the growl that comes with his orgasm.
When he’s done, the voice that speaks to me is back in control. Confident. “Pack a bag.”
I open my eyes lazily, disappointed that I’m back in my tiny bathroom and alone. He’s wickedly turned my body into a trembling disaster, and I wish his hands were on me right now, finishing what he’d started. “What?”
“Pack a bag. That call I promised you? This is it. I’m flying you to New York tomorrow night.”
Chapter Thirteen
Graham
Early Morning, 20-December
“Vivi says there’s a new woman in your life.”
Bennett wastes no time diving into my personal life when he sits next to me at the bar shortly before midnight. On the heel of my conversation with Elle I’d needed a drink to get her the fuck out of my head, and I hadn’t wanted to go at it alone in my condo. She’d gotten to me today—to the point where I’d called her with my cock in my hand, wanting to hear her hesitant little voice question me, even as she let herself drown in the thought of me. Since the popular Manhattan watering hole was one of my first investments years ago, when I was still in college and my father was encouraging me to “make something of myself and be a goddamn Delaney,” it was my first destination.
Somehow, my older brother had found me.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Approximately one year my senior—for people who were disinterested in children, my parents didn’t waste any time—Bennett is the executive vice-president of our father’s company. He’s also a turd that I avoid, favoring our youngest brother instead.
“Your doorman told me you went out, and I figured you were either with a woman or here. Or both.” Bennett signals a bartender, and I make a mental note to have that doorman’s head on a platter first thing in the morning. “I didn’t even know you were in town already until Vivi mentioned it.”
“And let me guess? You pretended to give a shit to impress Vivi?” I snort. “Did you call her, or did you reel her in with promises of love and a reconnection?”
He releases a low whistle. “Whoever she is has gotten under baby brother’s skin.” He tilts my drink, reading the label. Prick. “Who is she? Vivi wouldn’t tell me much, just that you have a brand new girl you’re seeing.”
I should fire Vivienne. I’ve been saying that for too long, but for mentioning Elle to Bennett? Well, that’s ground for dismissal. “Is that the way she worded it? A new girl? Was that before or after you fucked your former wife?” I was nineteen or twenty when Ben and Vivi had gotten married, and they’d lasted less than a year. Over the last decade, my brother has gotten remarried enough times to make Hannah Amherst look like a delicate virgin.
“Politics are making you more hypocritical.” Bennett sneers. “My divorce from Monica is finalized, and Vivienne is an adult, so what does it matter to you?”
“It matters to her. And I don’t marry them.” I give him a hard look that he returns. “What do you want, Ben?”
“To see my brother. Is that too much to ask? Mother’s so proud of you, by the way. All she ever talks about is her son, the U.S. senator, her darling Graham, her brilliant, Harvard-educated spawn.”
And she probably listed these accolades during one of her Vicodin and scotch binges. “What. Do. You. Want?”
“I need your advice. An investment situation. And a woman problem.”
“Is the investment a woman?” I gulp my beer. “And do I look like PlentyofFish to you?”
Bennett sighs like a love-struck fool. “It’s Vivi. She trusts you.”
There’s a foot-wide line between trust and love. Vivi loves me, but she doesn’t trust me as far as he can throw my ass. “Well, in that case, match fucking denied.”
“God, you’re a cold one.” Bennett raps his fingers on the countertop. “And where the hell is that bartender?” he growls.
I tip my drink to my lips, polishing it off. When I motion the bartender over, he starts in our direction. “There. Order your drink.”
My brother looks at my bottle again, orders two, and turns his blue eyes on me. I search for some small piece of myself in him, but nothing’s there. Blond and blue-eyed, he looks like our mother. “So who’s the girl, Graham? Vivi will tell me, you know, with the right amount of persuasion.”
“And I’ll break your arm and shove it down your persuasive throat.” We’ve come to blows over Vivi before. She’s better off without him. Better off with anybody else but a Delaney. The bartender brings the new round of drinks. “The girl is nobody.”
But images of Elle posted against that bathroom wall, whimpering and squirming—her hair falling over her face and her green eyes squeezed together as her body clenched my fingers in a vise grip—creep into my skull. I have work to do while I’m here, and Eleanor Courtney with her sweet little cries and tight body have no place in my New York office.
I’d get to the difficult part—unraveling her—when we’re back in her element.
“You’ve got an admirer.” Bennett’s annoying voice thankfully pushes Elle out of my mind, and I glance disinterestedly at the brunette at the other end of the bar. She’s cute enough, but her hair isn’t black enough, her little top shows everything, and she’s not wearing pearls.
I crave those pearls, just so I can pull them off.
Fucking Eleanor Courtney.
I shrug. “Not my type.”
“Dark hair, giant rack, and a pretty smile have always been your type.”
“My interests change. Look at you, you went from a six-foot tall blonde from Brooklyn to a goddamn hobbit from the Upper East Side.”
“She must really be something.” Bennett exhales and scratches his hand through his blond hair. “I haven’t seen you this caught up in a woman since—”
It’s like a gunshot when he brings her up, and a vein in my neck throbs. “Say her name, and I promise, I really will break your arm.”
“Since she-who-is-now-a-trigger-word,” he finishes, reminding me why I can’t stand him. Hearing him even mention her rips open a ten-year-old wound, reminding why I’d approached Elle, reminding me that she’s my pawn, and my lust for her is nothing but a game.
Elle’s father had played, and won against, someone I cared about.
My plan for Elle seems compassionate in comparison.
Shaking his head, Bennett gets off the bar stool. “Call me when you’re not sulking. In the meantime, I’ll see you at Mother’s function next week?”
I take another drink. “So she can show off her precious Graham? Wouldn’t miss the chance to see her make up for thirty plus years of poor parenting in one night.”
“Get a heart, Graham.” But before he leaves, he leans down and, looking down the bar toward the brunette, softly tells me, “Better yet, I’m sending The Rack over. Maybe it’ll help you forget . . . nobody.”
A few minutes after Bennett leaves, The Rack saunters over, twisting her curvy hips to the rock song about getting down on one’s knees that’s playing. Stretching her arms over her head so that her shirt rides up to give me a peek of the jewel dangling from her bellybutton, she smiles sleepily then plops down on the seat my brother had just vacated. I stiffen when she tosses back hair that reeks of cigarette smoke and not whatever floral bullshit Elle uses.
There she is again. Shoving herself, tights and all, into my head.
“I’m Renée, and you are?” The brunette grabs the beer my brother had left, tilting it to the side and wiggling her nose at it. “Is this good? I’ve never tried it, but it looks good.”
“Leaving. I’m leaving.”
“What? And hey . . . I think I know you from somewhere!? Your friend said you asked him to see if I’m interested.”
Mentally, I strangle my brother for putting me in this position. Sending one of those liabilities I try to avoid to seduce me. Smiling tightly at the brunette, I get up.
“My friend wasted your time when he told you to come over here. But to answer your question, you don’t know me. This particular beer tastes like shit, I don’t have the time or patience to go back and forth exchanging awkward pleasantries all for the sake of waking up in your Marlboro-scented loft, and I’m not interested as it is.”
She blusters. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.” Reaching into my back pocket of my jeans, I signal the bartender and leave enough to cover my drinks and Bennett’s. The Rack is still glaring at me in open-mouthed surprise. “Have a pleasant night.”
As I walk away, she snaps, “With an attitude like that, no wonder you’re going home alone tonight.”
“I’m sure you’ll find someone else.”
Leaving the bar, I look at my watch—a few minutes after midnight.
Less than eighteen hours left.
I dial the most frequently called number on my phone, grinning when Vivienne’s sleepy voice answers. “If you want to keep your job after the shit you told my prick brother, there are things you need to do for me once the sun comes up . . .”
Chapter Fourteen
Elle
20-December
Four years ago when I told my father that I wanted to go into travel journalism, he’d asked me what the hell had inspired me to choose that, of all the possibilities that were available to me—a Virginia “Courtney.” I’d simply said New York. Of course, my father had laughed at me, but going to NYC when I was five, experiencing the sights and sounds and even the smell (that Dad called sewer-ish) was my earliest childhood traveling memory.
So when I step off the private charter that flies me into Teterboro Airport the next day just as nightfall settles over the city, I tell myself that my primary motivation for being here is because New York had initially inspired the wanderlust that I couldn’t exactly indulge in—thanks to my situation. That the fact I hadn’t slept a wink last night was because of my excitement of coming here tonight.
Not because Graham Delaney is the one who beckoned me. Or that I’m completely hot for senator.
A Mercedes Benz SUV waits for me at the airport. I hold my breath as the driver—a tall, round, balding man who introduces himself as AJ, a chauffeur for Delaney International—escorts me to the black vehicle. Is Graham waiting for me behind those tinted windows? My chest rises and falls in anticipation the closer we get, and chaotic sparks of energy flow through my body, making my movements unsteady.
God, who do I think I’m kidding? Graham Delaney is already overwhelming my mind, and I haven’t even seen him yet. I must be a glutton for punishment to have gotten on that plane earlier.
When AJ opens the door for me, revealing the tan leather interior of the Mercedes to be empty, disappointment washes through me and settles in the pit of my stomach. I exhale. “Graham—Senator Delaney—wasn’t able to make it?”
AJ shakes his head. “I apologize, Ms. Sutton, but Vivienne Delaney sent me on behalf of the senator. As long as traffic cooperates, it shouldn’t take us more than half an hour.”
Ms. Sutton? Apparently Graham is taking the confidentiality portion of our verbal agreement seriously, fudging my last name in an effort to throw off everyone who comes in contact with me. It’s a gesture that’s much appreciated. Dipping his head, the driver quickly skims questioning grey eyes over me.
“Is there anything you need before we arrive?”
Running my tongue over my lips, I pray my face isn’t on fire as I slide into the backseat of the SUV. I hold my oversized purse to my chest like a security blanket. “No, thank you.”
AJ smiles, probably to reassure me he doesn’t think I’m not the trust fund call girl his boss has bought off. “No problem, Ms. Sutton.” Then, before he walks around to the back of the vehicle, he holds up a finger. Withdrawing a small white envelope from his jacket pocket, he passes it to me. “This is for you.”
Staring down at the thick, masculine handwriting on the front—just my first name, Eleanor—curiosity eats away at my stomach. Once the Mercedes starts moving, and AJ seems to be more interested on the traffic than what I’m doing in the backseat, I carefully open the letter.
E,
No filter, no clothes, no inhibitions. Leave the pearls on. Go to the room at the end of the hall. No more games because I’m tired of waiting.
-G
I touch the pearl necklace dangling against the square neckline of my black top. Rubbing the heart-shaped clasp between my fingers, I consider taking it off but then I decide against it. I allow the desire to clench my muscles and work tingles through me.
Sliding the card back inside the envelope, I shove it in my purse, startling when I feel my phone vibrate against my hand. Thinking it might be Graham, I answer only to hear a bubbly female voice greet me.
“I’m trying to reach Eleanor Courtney. Is she available?”
I shoot a glance at the front seat of
the SUV, where AJ is holding on to the steering wheel tightly. Not once does he glance into the rearview mirror at me, but there’s no such thing as too much caution. “Yes . . . this is Elle. I’m sorry, who is this?”
“Jana Fitzgerald. You know, the redhead from 202?” How could I forget her? It’s been just two weeks since I worked alongside her, even though with everything that’s happened, it feels like months. When I murmur that I remember her, she continues, “How’ve you been?”
“I’m . . . doing well.” Where exactly is this conversation headed? While she’d been friendly enough, I never expected to speak to her again. Sighing, I break down and ask, “Are you calling because I left something at the restaurant when I was fired?”
She laughs. “No, you grabbed everything, I promise.” Covering her phone, she says something muffled before returning to me. “Look, the reason I’m calling is that I just got a promotion last night. Chad’s put me in charge of all the hiring, and I want you back on my team whenever you have spare time.”
Well, isn’t this a week too late and several thousand dollars short? While I have every intention of keeping my job as Mr. Kyler’s assistant once that starts, Graham had sent me email confirmation this morning that my spring tuition had been paid in full. My sole reason for working at 202 has already been resolved.
“What happened to me not being—” I cast another glance at AJ before whispering “202 material?”
Jana grunts. “Please, you were doing a pretty kickass job, if you ask me. Chad just hates having girls quit on him—says he’d rather be the one who initiates the breakup.”
I freeze. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, don’t you think it was kind of odd Chad fired you right after you accepted that internship with that representative from Delaware? When Senator Delaney put a bug in Chad’s ear, he. . .”
And this is where the entire conversation goes fuzzy, and the only sound I hear is the blood pounding violently in my ears. What does she mean Graham told Chad I was taking an internship with a representative from Delaware? I don’t even know the names of any representatives from Delaware.
Pawn: Volume One Page 8