Cozen

by Bethany-Kris

  “That’s why my time is shortened, isn’t it?” Cozen asked quietly. “Not because you are impatient to get the ring back, or you think I am taking too long to get this done, but because she might be running out of time.”

  “I promised her that she would have the ring back.” Fourth shrugged, and his smile faded as he added, “And you will make sure she gets that gift. Two weeks—don’t make me come find you, Cozen.”

  Cozen sucked in a sharp breath as the plane touched down to the tarmac. It was always the freakiest part of flying for her—it didn’t seem to matter how many times she had flown, either. Her heart would still lurch, and her fingers still grasp tightly to the arm rests on the seat to give her a sense of stability. Not that holding onto the seats would help if the goddamn plane crashed.

  It wouldn’t.

  It was another twenty minutes of taxing into New York’s LaGuardia Airport before Cozen was allowed to deplane.

  She was hoping that the fact she had left on a Saturday and returned on a Sunday evening meant Jett wouldn’t have noticed her missing—or at the very least, he wouldn’t have gotten concerned.

  Cozen knew that was a false hope. The man was far too enamored with her not to notice she had taken off for a couple of days. Jesus, he even had her schedule for the restaurant faxed to him every week, so he knew when her hours were.

  It hinted away from him being simply enamored with her, and more towards obsession, really. It was certainly concerning, but Cozen was far too close to finishing this job once and for all to back out now.

  She could handle Jett.

  Surely …

  She worked on what story she would tell Jett as she came down the escalator at the arrivals gate. She was almost entirely lost to her thoughts when a waiting form at the bottom of the escalator caught her eye, and made her freeze like a deer in the headlights.

  He smiled.

  Cozen relaxed.

  Sargon.

  As she stepped off the escalator, he reached for her bag. Taking the item from her shoulder, he easily slung it around his own before his arm snaked around her waist and pulled her closer. To anyone one else, it would have looked like a couple greeting each other in a modest way.

  It took nothing more than his touch—his hand fitting tightly against her trim waist—to ground her again. Being close to Sargon was dangerous for Cozen’s heart, and her mind. He made it hard for her to keep up the mask she had to wear.

  He made her pretense fall.

  He didn’t even care.

  Cozen’s gaze scanned the crowd. “Did Jett send you?”

  Did he know she had come back from Miami?

  Did he know why she had gone there?

  “He has no idea you’re back, actually,” Sargon replied.

  Cozen glanced up at him. “How do you know?”

  “You are not that hard to trace, Cozen. All it took was a couple of phone calls to find information on where you went—or the general area. I think you should remember that when you want to take off for the weekend to have meetings with a family that Jett Griffin considers to be his enemy. Just a word of advice—take it or don’t.”

  She swallowed hard.

  Sargon kept his arm tight around her waist, and didn’t let her move even the slightest inch away from him. “He wanted me to track you while you were gone. In case you’re curious, he knew you left the city almost the second you did.”

  Cozen scowled—just as she suspected. “Chase?”

  “Is he the guy who runs the restaurant?”

  “Yes.”

  Sargon nodded. “Yes, that’s who called to fill Jett in on the fact you called in for a couple of days due to a family emergency.”

  “And he wanted you to follow me.”

  “Getting uncomfortable yet?” Sargon asked.

  Cozen let out a slow breath. “Listen—”

  Without a word, Sargon’s hand grabbed tight to Cozen’s wrist, and he pulled her down a long corridor in the airport that was used for old gates that were currently not in use. He ripped down the caution tape keeping people from going too far, and continued dragging her along with him until he felt they had gone far enough.

  Swinging her around to face him, Cozen found genuine fear staring back at her. “He wanted me to follow you. Don’t you get that?”

  Sure.

  “And clearly you did,” she said.

  “Not technically. I made some calls,” Sargon replied.

  His expression remained aloof and calm, but his words were delivered with a sharp coldness that burned on impact. She could hear his worry, but there was nothing she could do for him right now. He didn’t need to be focusing on her—he didn’t need to be getting too wrapped up in her.

  It was dangerous.

  She was dangerous.

  “And you found out I was visiting with the Astor family,” she said. “I hear his dead wife was an Astor before she gave up the family namesake to be with Jett.”

  Sargon’s gaze flashed with a dark warning. “I know better than to deliver that kind of information to Jett, but he will expect something. He will want to know where you were, and he will need to believe that I followed you there. That’s what he wanted.”

  As he spoke, his hold on her became tighter and tighter to the point it was almost painful. He moved closer and closer until his nose grazed hers, and all she could see were his dark, russet eyes boring into hers.

  His smell soaked into her lungs.

  His presence wrapped around her.

  His heat warmed her.

  “And will you do that for me?” she dared to ask.

  The corner edge of Sargon’s mouth curled upward. “Why do you even ask? You know I will.”

  “Because you want to protect me. Because you care.”

  “Too much,” he returned. “Clearly.”

  “It’s never too much. Sometimes it’s just enough, Sargon.”

  “He was crazy, Cozen. Out of his mind when he learned you left. Raging mad, and he probably still is. It’s gone way beyond a little infatuation with him. He’s out for something with you, now. Do you get that?”

  “Crazy is good—crazy means he’ll do just about whatever I want to get what he wants.”

  His fingers dug into her arms again.

  Cozen stayed still.

  Jett was not all that different from Sargon, in some ways. Both men were tangled up with her in dangerous games that might not end well for them. She was all too aware of just how easy it would be to ruin both of these men.

  And yet, she didn’t want to hurt Sargon. If anything, she might want to keep him forever.

  Those feelings fucked with her head. They kept her off her game when she had to be laser focused.

  Sargon’s lips grazed hers with a whisper of a kiss, but nothing more. She couldn’t deny the way her blood sang all the same. She couldn’t even try to pretend like she didn’t want to immediately bring him closer for a better kiss.

  And so she did just that.

  Pulled him closer.

  Kissed him harder.

  Wished for different things.

  When she opened her eyes, reality was still there. Sargon was still staring at her, and he was still being a giant fucking complication.

  “You make me feel like I can’t trust you, Zen.”

  “You shouldn’t, Sargon.”

  No one should.

  Cozen was a thief. Her name was most appropriate. She took; she stole; she kept by means of trickery or deceit. She did not, however, give in return.

  She had not been taught to give—only to take.

  Sargon sucked in a hard breath before saying, “Enough of this. It’s enough.”

  “I have two weeks,” she returned.

  Sargon’s lips flattened into a grim line. “For what?”

  She was grateful he went that route.

  Grateful he gave her another chance.

  “To finish my business here. You can let me have those two weeks, can’t you?”

&nbs
p; “I don’t think I have a choice. You’ve backed me into a corner here, too. I wonder, is that purposeful? Do you use me like you use him? A part of your plans—whatever they are. Am I something disposable, and easily replaced, Cozen?”

  She didn’t even have to lie.

  That’s probably what scared her the most.

  “You are not either of those things,” she whispered.

  “Are you sure?”

  Cozen pushed up on her tiptoes, and kissed him again. A soft, ghost of a kiss that still managed to tilt the world around them. “This is how it has to be. This is how I have to be.”

  “And what comes after, Zen?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Lies.

  She knew.

  Didn’t he?

  “I have tonight, then,” he told her.

  Cozen met his gaze. “Tonight for what?”

  “To have you before you’ll technically be back in the city—or that’s what I told him, anyway. And then you go back to …”

  “Him and the job,” she finished for him.

  Sargon smirked, and shook his head. “You’ve never been his. You can’t be when you’re mine.”

  Cozen drifted around the hotel room with a keen eye. She moved from thing to thing and touched anything she could find. The suit jacket he’d discarded on a chair a couple of days before. A glass half-filled with water. Even the edge of the bedspread that he hadn’t made before leaving.

  “So this is where you’ve been staying?” she asked quietly.

  “Seems so, Cozen.”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder, and smiled. Despite the sweetness in the camber of her lips, he could still see a warring heat blazing in her gaze. Every single time he found her looking at him, he saw that same heat.

  “You don’t want an apartment, or what? Do you just enjoy shelling out large amounts of money every day for a decent hotel room in New York City?”

  “There’s no point in me getting an apartment.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t stay long enough in one place to need one,” he replied honestly. “I get bored with whatever I’m doing, and move on. Or something comes up, and I have to leave. Like almost everything else in my life, New York isn’t permanent. It’ll never be. It’s pointless to make the effort to settle in to a place where I have no intention of staying.”

  “Seems like a waste, Sargon.”

  Her gaze met his again.

  He grinned back.

  “So be it,” he murmured. “I only put roots down where my heart is. Where it goes, I go. The rest is all details.”

  “Details,” she echoed.

  It came out like a whisper.

  “Yes, details.”

  Sargon passed by Cozen to grab two things—a silk robe hanging off the back of the chair, and the landline connected to the desk downstairs. He offered the robe to her, saying, “Make yourself comfortable. You’re all mine tonight.”

  Cozen’s gaze lingered on the robe, but she didn’t take it. “If you want to fuck, just say so. You don’t have to make some show about it.”

  “Actually, I want to eat. Then, I want to use the hot tub. Maybe watch a movie. Who fucking knows? Whether or not we fuck depends on your attitude up until then.”

  Her sharp little gasp made him grin.

  “You’re such an—”

  “Asshole?” Sargon shrugged. “Get a new insult. That one’s been used on me too many damn times, sweetheart.”

  Cozen yanked the robe away from him, and gave one of her glares before she headed for the attached bathroom. “Don’t worry. I will figure out a new insult for you. One you won’t like, Sargon. Oh, what about Sarg?”

  Fuck that noise.

  “Call me that name in bed, and I’ll shove my dick right up your a—”

  She slammed the bathroom door, but not before giving him a sexy wink over her shoulder before she did so.

  Behind the door, he heard her shout, “Maybe that’s what I want!”

  Minx.

  Cozen had her own kind of foreplay. That’s what Sargon had come to learn about the woman. It wasn’t just a hard, dirty fuck that she liked. No, she also liked the chase—the game. She got off on playing games.

  Sargon didn’t mind playing along.

  Mostly.

  “Try this one now,” Sargon said.

  Offering the forkful of raspberry cheesecake to Cozen, he couldn’t control the way his dick perked to life when her lips encased the fork. Her eyes fluttered closed, and she let out the softest moan before releasing the fork.

  “Good, hmm?”

  “Very good,” she replied.

  “Another?”

  “One more, maybe.”

  “New favorite?” he asked.

  “I’m still pretty partial to the chocolate one,” she said.

  “Do you want that one, then? There’s still some left.”

  Cozen peered up at him from her spot in the hot tub. Beneath the bubbling, steaming water, she was entirely naked. He could only see the tops of her shoulders and an occasional peek of the swells of her breasts when she moved.

  “Are you going to feed it to me, too?” she asked.

  “I will if you want me to.”

  “Why are you spoiling me like this?”

  Isn’t that what men should do for a woman like this?

  For the woman they loved?

  “Because I want to,” he settled on saying.

  “Chocolate, then?”

  Sargon nodded. “Chocolate, Cozen.”

  He left Cozen in the hot tub as he went back inside the hotel room through the sliding glass doors. Quickly discarding the small piece of raspberry cheesecake, he picked up the plate with the small bit of chocolate cheesecake left on it. By the time he got back out on the balcony, Cozen was stepping out of the hot tub.

  Naked.

  Dripping wet.

  Fucking beautiful.

  “Stare much?” she asked.

  Sargon leaned against the sliding glass door. “How could I not stare when you look like that?”

  For a brief second, her gaze drifted downward before coming back up to meet his. “You have a strange way of doing that to me.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Making me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  “You are—the most beautiful in my world,” he returned easily.

  Cozen laughed. “And what’s that world like, huh? Your world, I mean.”

  “Strange and beautiful.”

  “Huh.”

  “Not the answer you were expecting?” he asked.

  “I never know what to expect with you.”

  Sargon stepped out onto the balcony fully with the cake in one hand, and the fork in the other. He pulled a small bite from the cheesecake with the fork, and held it out to a still very naked Cozen. Without question, she took the bite he offered. His dick only grew more painfully hard at the way her pink lips wrapped around the fork again.

  “Before morning, that needs to be my cock your lips are wrapping around like that,” he said.

  Cozen released the fork with a grin. “Give me a good fuck out here where anybody can see, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  Goddamn.

  “You’re a wicked woman,” Sargon said, chuckling.

  “You assume I got this way by myself.”

  “I bet you were always like this—maybe you just needed a little bit of help to showcase it better.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You want more cake?”

  Cozen wet her lips. “No, not particularly.”

  Instantly, Sargon discarded the plate and fork to the tiny table next to the wicker chairs on the balcony. Cozen was reaching for a towel on one of the chairs, but he didn’t let her get that far. She’d asked for something else, after all. He planned to give it to her.

  The towel fell from Cozen’s hand when Sargon grabbed her around the waist with one arm, and pulled her to his body. Her back fit tigh
t to his chest and he swung them around, and pushed her up against the banister.

  Her breathless laughter melted into a surprised gasp when his teeth sunk into her shoulder, and his fingers slipped down over her stomach before finding the heaven lower between her thighs. Jesus. She was already wet—so warm, nice and tight, and damn slick on his fingers when he pumped two into her greedy pussy.

  She didn’t hide her desire, instead opening her legs even wider for him as his kisses rained down on the back of her neck.

  “Did you know your pussy tastes like candy to me?” he asked in her ear. “I can’t fucking get enough of it—it’s addicting, Zen.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  He felt her hand slip down beside his, and one of her fingers joined his two before it was gone from between her thighs once more. She offered her finger—wet with her arousal—over her shoulder to him like it was a gift.

  It was.

  He grabbed her ass hard while he fucked her deeper with his fingers, and sucked her offering into his mouth at the same time. Tart and hot, her flavor coated his tongue, and it instantly made him get down on his knees to find more.

  “Open up—spread for me,” he demanded.

  Two quick snaps of his palms slapped against her thighs. She widened her legs, and spread herself for him with another one of those teasing, sexy laughs. He stopped her laugh really fucking fast when he buried his face into her cunt from behind.

  His tongue tunneled into her pussy while his fingers worked at her clit. Every little drop of her arousal that he could get into his damn mouth, he lapped it up like liquid gold. It was too precious to waste.

  She was too fucking precious.

  “Love it when you eat my pussy,” she said.

  All breathy.

  So high.

  Christ.

  His tongue and fingers worked her faster until he felt the telltale signs of her oncoming orgasm. The shaking in her thighs, and the clenching of her muscles. The way her cries came out louder—loud enough to echo down to the street below them.

  When she did come, he kept his fingers rubbing tight, fast circles against her clit as he stood back up quickly. His pants were already unbuttoned; his fly already unzipped from when he had just yanked them on after jumping out of the hot tub earlier when the food came.