by Sheila Grace
“You like that?” he rasped in an amused tone.
He didn’t give me a chance to catch my breath. He reached between my legs and teased my clit as he continued knocking gently against the spot I hadn’t realized existed before I met him. Suddenly I was gasping for air with every movement of him inside me. When his thrusts became just a little bit rougher, I felt my muscles begin to contract.
“Not yet, Cass. Wait for me, lovely,” he demanded. I breathed shallowly as his thrusts slowed and his eyes locked with mine. “You feel so fucking good. I never thought it could be this good. I never thought I could feel this much for another person.”
James hooked my ankles on his shoulders and gripped the backs of my thighs before slamming his hips against my ass, jarring me into a climax so intense I couldn’t breathe, think, or make a sound as I tightened around him.
“Fuck, yes,” he growled. “You are so goddamn sexy.”
His thrusts became shallow and quick before he slammed into me, causing the pleasure to explode. My bones were already liquefied as I felt him thrust one last time, all the way to the hilt. He turned to kiss my ankle as he slowly withdrew. By the time he lowered my legs from his chest, I felt drunk.
“Oh my god,” I moaned as he dragged me up the bed and then collapsed next to me.
He looked over at me.
“Good?” he asked.
I lifted my arm, which was as limp as cooked spaghetti, and gave him a thumbs-up.
“Mission accomplished. That time you definitely fucked me until I couldn’t think.”
“I wasn’t too rough, was I?”
“Hell no. That was amazing. But I do feel like I’ve been through McDevitt’s sex boot camp.” I paused. “Huh. Does that make you a drill sergeant? Should I call you sir?”
He laughed and ran a hand along my side.
“Lunch?”
“Breakfast, sex? Lunch, sex? Dinner, sex? Dessert, sex?” I asked.
“I think that’s a reasonable schedule for boot camp, don’t you?” he responded cheerfully.
“Well, eventually I am going to have to use my brain again.”
I looked down at what I was wearing—crotchless panties, a bra, and fuck-me heels.
“I look like belong at Fantasy Land.”
James’s jaw tightened as he reached out and let his fingers travel across my cheek.
“I don’t want to think of anyone else seeing you this way …”
“You know, plenty of people saw me in a naughty-schoolgirl outfit, right?” I laughed.
James shook his head and pulled his hand away before turning to stare up at the ceiling.
“I knew that first night in San Francisco that you were going to be my destruction.”
I propped myself up on my elbow and frowned at him.
“That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?”
He shook his head.
“No. I changed after I met you.”
“No one changes that fast—that only happens in the movies. One music montage, and done.”
But I knew I was wrong, because my own life had changed from the moment I had looked up and seen James in the club that first night.
“Change isn’t always slow. Sometimes it’s like”—he snapped his fingers—“that. Something, or someone, shifts your perspective on the world.”
“I changed your perspective on the world?”
“Maybe I was ready for a change, and meeting you was the catalyst.”
When his phone went off outside, he got up and disappeared, completely naked. The perks of a private island. He came back a minute later, staring down at his phone and laughing.
“Hold out your hand, lovely.”
When I held up my right hand, palm up, he looked up from the phone and grinned at me.
“Other hand.”
“Oh.”
I held out my left hand, and he took a picture.
“You didn’t take a picture of me in a sheer bra and crotchless panties, did you?”
He laughed and dropped down next to me.
“Just your ring. I’m definitely not sending Bennett a picture of you in that outfit.”
“Who?”
“You know that wine you’re such a fan of?”
“Bennett Cellars? Yeah, that stuff was phenomenal.”
“Ryan Bennett, who now runs the operation, was my roommate freshman year of undergrad. Good guy. Bit of a self-righteous prick.”
I smiled.
“Oh, yeah. He’s the one who called you a lothario, right?”
“Yes, he is. He’s also the one who hooked up with an eighteen-year-old freshman in one of his classes while he was finishing his doctorate at your university.”
I gasped dramatically.
“Scandalous.”
“Particularly for Bennett. When I first met Alex Reed, I asked her how she and Bennett had met, and she told me she had been stripping at a club off the freeway to pay for tuition. She was joking, but when I met you …”
I blinked.
“You thought I was the punch line. Wow.”
“Cass, you are not a punch line. You’re the most important person in my life.”
“But a few weeks ago, I was just some cocktail waitress in a strip club you frequented. How do you know you won’t change your mind? About me.”
“Because I’ve never felt anything close to what I feel for you, and I’m nothing if not a stubborn bastard.”
“But what about the strip clubs, the one-night stands, your no-commitment philosophy? You’re not going to miss that in two weeks? Two months? Two years?”
“Number one, I love you. Number two, there’s no novelty in any of those things. I’m not some jackass who thinks he missed out. I know I didn’t miss out—and after a while, the party gets old. What about you? Don’t you think you’ll wonder if you’re missing out?”
“Well, let’s see. I’m almost twenty-four, not eighteen. I loved getting groped by frat guys at parties. I’m really going to miss getting dry-humped by drunken guys in clubs. And I really want to go out with a bunch of guys I’m not interested in to prove that I didn’t miss out on something.”
His knuckles cracked.
“Cass, stop. Before you make me unnecessarily homicidal toward nonexistent men who may or may not have touched you.”
“Fine. You just have to promise me that if you wake up someday and want to sleep with other people, just divorce me—don’t cheat on me. Wait—holy shit! I didn’t sign a prenuptial contract!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Are you crazy? Oh my god! How much are you worth? Oh my god—how many people have you slept with?”
James laughed.
“Are you done?”
I shook my head.
“Probably not. There’s way too much we haven’t talked about. Kids. Politics. Social justice. Where to live.” I stopped and felt the blood draining from my face. “Hold on. How many people have you slept with?”
“I haven’t counted. I wasn’t trying to reach a legendary number. But that’s what you wanted to know instead of how much money I’m worth?”
I shrugged.
“You own an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, which means you’re richer than I can conceive of, which is weird enough.”
“Weird why?” James asked.
“We just come from different planets. You attended Ivy League schools; I barely got through three years at public school before dropping out. You started a tech conglomerate; I’m a college dropout. You see the disparity?”
“I see you. I love you. You are what matters to me.”
When I started sobbing, James tucked me against his chest and laid back before kissing the top of my head.
“Does this mean we’re skipping lunch?” I sniffled.
“Absolutely not. What would you like?”
Sitting on the beach, I dug my toes into the warm sand while James reapplied my sunscreen.
“I can’t believe you had never even been to your o
wn island before this trip,” I mused.
“I’ve been busy these past two years, and maybe I was waiting for the right person to share it with,” he said before I twisted around and kissed him. “Would you mind going back to the states for a quick trip if I said we could come back here for an entire month?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Can you do that?”
He smiled.
“Of course.”
I frowned and chewed my lip as it occurred to me how sidetracked my life had gotten lately.
“I don’t know if I can, though. I need to register for classes—and I need to fly down to see my mom, talk to her.”
“You could take off another year before finishing school,” James said, pulling me back into his chest and kissing my shoulder.
I shook my head.
“No. I already hate that I’m not going to finish until I’m nearly twenty-five. I need to go back now, or I might never do it. I can’t just live off your money.”
“That’s not entirely accurate, lovely. My money is your money.”
I shook my head again.
“But I can’t do nothing. I mean, we can’t spend all our waking hours having sex.”
“We can’t?” he asked before skimming his lips across my bare shoulders.
“Ha, ha. We’ve managed to fit in eating and assorted activities here and there. I need to do something.”
“Then promise me you’ll do something you want, not what anyone else tells you to do.”
I turned around and faced him.
“Thank you,” I said quietly as I reached up to touch his jaw.
He smiled.
“How would you feel about attending a wedding?”
“Whose wedding?”
“Ryan Thomas Bennett and Alexis Jolene Reed.”
My eyes widened.
“They’re still together? Wow. When’s the wedding?”
“Two weeks from now. I was just telling Bennett that I have a plus-one—and that I beat him to the punch. I think his head might have exploded when he found out I got married.” He smiled and nodded toward the water. “Time to cool off?”
James pulled me up with him, swinging me into his arms and carrying me to the crystalline water a few feet away. I wrapped my arms around him as he walked until he was waist-deep.
“Did you tell your friend Ryan how we met?” I asked.
“No. The only person who knows is Chris, and he signed a nondisclosure agreement. If he says anything, I’ll take him to court.”
“Your father knows, too,” I said quietly.
“He also knows I’ll destroy him if he comes after you.”
James let me slip down until my arms were around his neck and my legs were wrapped around his waist.
“Do you think you would have even noticed me if I hadn’t been wearing a naughty-schoolgirl outfit the first time you saw me?” I asked with a grin.
“You were the first person in my life I truly did notice.”
I felt his fingers deftly untie my bikini top before his hands fell to my hips to undo the strings at the sides of the bottoms.
“That being said,” he smiled, “I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to dress up now and again.”
Chapter 20: James
A few days after we returned to San Francisco from the Maldives, Cass left to spend a few days in Southern California to sort out things with her mother. I had offered to go with her, but I understood why she had wanted to do it alone.
However, I wasn’t stupid. I had sent Blake with her. There was no way I would leave her open to an attack from my father. Dear Old Dad now had ample motivation to stay as far away from Cass as possible, but he was a vindictive son of a bitch.
Then again, so was I.
He had stolen my mother from me, and if he threatened the woman I loved, I would take the only two things that had ever meant anything to my father—power and money. I had listened to every word of his recorded conversation with Cass, words that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
I think these jewels should be the only things you’re wearing when I join you in my suite tonight.
His words had made me capable of murder, and it was ironic that the only reason I hadn’t put a bullet in my own father’s head was Cass. I wouldn’t let a lifetime in prison become my father’s enduring legacy. Nothing was worth missing a single moment with her.
As I did the last interval of my heavy bag training, I imagined my father’s face each time I delivered a crushing blow. After watching one of my workouts, Cass had claimed they scared her.
You look like you’re causing that punching bag physical pain—I can’t watch, she had said with a shiver.
Still, later that night in bed, she had admitted that it turned her on to watch. I could honestly say that everything about her made me hard as stone. Hearing the security system chime, I grabbed a towel.
“Darling, I’m home!” she called before laughing hysterically. “James?”
I wiped my face and jogged toward the stairs. When I found her in the kitchen staring out at the view of the Golden Gate Bridge, I resisted the temptation to pull her into my arms. She turned away from the window, her eyes narrowing when she saw me watching her.
“Seriously?” she laughed. “You send me off to get groomed like a poodle—and you’re here working out. What’s with that? I spend all morning getting ready, and then you’re going to shower, put on a tux, and every woman within a five-mile radius is going to throw her panties at you.”
I cocked my head and raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t remember you throwing your panties at me.”
She leaned one hand on the countertop and reached under her pale-rose lace dress to pull down a matching thong. She lifted one foot and then the other and held up the panties before throwing them to me. I watched her blush as I brought them up to my face and took a deep breath.
“Remind me to tell Bennett that he has you to thank for his college roommate sporting a hard-on during his nuptials—unless you wanted to let me fuck you over this counter right now.”
She shook her head and pointed at my shorts.
“Oh, hell no. I take no responsibility for that insatiable monster. And I’m not letting you undo three excruciating hours of people über-grooming me.”
“Insatiable monster?”
“Get in the shower, McDevitt. I’ll take care of that monster after the wedding. We’re staying over at the winery?”
“That is the plan.”
“Go! I refuse to be the couple that shows up twenty minutes into the ceremony.”
Less than a half hour later, I was ready. As I walked her out to the car, she looked over at me.
“Why the hotel when you had a house in Sea Cliff? And the little house by the university—what was the point?”
I opened the passenger door and held her hand while she stepped in. When I stepped behind the wheel, I looked over at her.
“I was looking for something I didn’t have, but I didn’t know what it was.”
“Okay, but don’t say that something was me—because that would be pure cheese.”
I lifted her hand and kissed it.
“I love you, Cass.”
“I love you more, even if you did try to buy me for the summer.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me to fuck off?” I asked. “The money?”
She looked down.
“At first, it was because I really, really wanted to finish school—I still do. Then I started to see you as a real human being instead of just a really hot, fucked up rich guy. I realized that even if you tried not to, you actually cared, maybe even about me.”
I reached out and touched her hand.
“I care about you more than anything else.”
She looked up at me.
“When did you start to see me as anything more than a cocktail waitress in pigtails and a schoolgirl outfit?”
“I knew you were different the moment you asked me if I fondled the ser
vers at all the clubs I patronized.”
She laughed and shook her head as I started driving.
“I can’t believe I said that.”
“You were quite the saucy schoolgirl.”
“Aren’t you afraid of what people would think if they knew you married a cocktail waitress from a club off the freeway?”
“Cass, have I ever struck you as the sort of man who worries about what anyone thinks?”
She laughed even harder.
“Definitely not. How long does it take to get to the winery?”
“Less than an hour.”
“Is Jasper going to be at the wedding?”
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Mostly because you’ve been having him or someone else shadow my every move since we got back.”
“He’s sending a protection detail he’s already vetted.”
“Do you still think it’s necessary to have people follow me around?” Cass asked cautiously.
“Absolutely. I won’t leave something like your safety to chance.”
She nodded.
“So, you do know that Jasper can lose his accent whenever he wants, right? Like he doesn’t sound British, at all.”
That cagey fucken bastard. My jaw tightened, and Cass laughed.
“You didn’t know? How long have you been friends?”
“We met on the East Coast while I was in law school and he was doing a master’s in criminology—which would make it almost ten years,” I told her. “He’s been doing security for me for two.”
“Wow.”
I drove in silence for several minutes before reaching out and touching her hand.
“You never said much after you got back from the visit with your mother.”
Cass frowned and looked out the window.
“She and Michael are going to counseling. She said she was sorry for cutting me off at the last second, but Michael does all their finances—and he told her they just couldn’t afford to support me another year until I graduated.”