“And the things you said to me during that fight, that was about control, too. You were trying to prove you controlled me, right?”
Cole shook his head this time. “Not you. Me. I was trying to prove I could control myself, that you didn’t have me wrapped around your finger.”
A sad look entered Sunny’s eyes then. “I guess I should congratulate you, then, because I think last week proved I definitely don’t have you wrapped around my finger. You win.”
You win. Two words that he should have felt triumphant to hear from her. But not like this. The look on her face made him feel hollow inside.
“I know I went too far,” he told her.
Sunny nodded. “Yeah, you did.”
“I know, and I...” Cole took a deep breath, deciding to take a chance. He pulled his workout T-shirt off over his head and pushed down his pants, revealing the shameful fact of his straining erection.
Sunny’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?” she asked him carefully.
He came over to stand by the side of the tub. “I’m giving you all the control. Whatever you want me to do right now, I’ll do.”
Sunny shook her head, baffled amusement entering her eyes. “You’re kidding.”
Cole shook his own head. “I’m not.”
“So if I asked you to take the day off of work and take me somewhere like Lake Tahoe—”
He bent down and tapped the Bluetooth device he’d hooked to the waistband of his workout pants. “Call Agnes,” he said, hooking it around his ear.
“Hello, Mr. Benton. What may I do for you?” came Agnes’s efficient voice.
“I’m not coming into the office today.”
“What— I mean certainly, Mr. Benton, but...” He could hear Agnes’s worry through the phone. “You took a half day yesterday, too. Are you okay? Are you sick? Should I send a doctor up?”
Of course he wasn’t sick. He rarely got sick and on the few occasions that he had, he’d still come into work. “I’m fine, Agnes—”
Sunny chose that moment to take him in her mouth, her hand encasing his shaft, as she teased her tongue over the mushroom head of his cock. It came as such a shock. Such a pleasurable shock that he expelled all his breath in a quick rush of air.
“Mr. Benton? Mr. Benton?” Agnes said on the other side of the phone. That was when Sunny began really working, bobbing her head up and down as she sucked him in.
It was so unbelievably hot that Cole’s basic instinct took over, his hand going to her head to stop her. After last night, he wasn’t going to last very long if he let her keep this up. But she knocked his hand away and waggled her finger at him as if to say, “Who’s supposed to be in control?”
This was a bad idea. A very bad idea. He realized that as he told Agnes, “I’m fine, but I need to get off the phone. Just clear my day and make a reservation for two at The Benton Tahoe,” through a strained voice.
He switched off the Bluetooth without waiting for Agnes’s answer, and not a moment too soon. Just a few seconds later, he felt his balls tighten and he unleashed into Sunny’s demanding mouth.
Never in his life had he allowed himself to come first. That was a basic tenet of his sex life, but Sunny was smiling as if she’d won some kind of prize. “Oops, it looks like I made you lose all your control and before I could get mine,” she said in a sly voice.
She tugged him down, so he was forced to climb into the tub—it was either that are fall.
“I can get back there,” Cole vowed, and he went in to kiss Sunny, but she moved her head away from him. “Uh-uh, Cole. You said I was in control. That means I get to maul you, not the other way around.”
Was that what she thought of his kisses? That he was mauling her? Though, now that he thought of it, he didn’t remember a time he’d ever let her kiss him first. He held himself still, waiting to see what she’d do next.
She pushed him backward in the water. “Get yourself ready for me.”
Cole didn’t understand at first. Surely she didn’t want him to please himself while she watched.
Sunny just lifted her eyebrows. “Hey, you caught me doing the dirty solo, let’s see what you got.”
Cole always recovered quickly with Sunny, but having her eyes on him while he took himself in his own hand, working it up and down, it happened at record speed.
Less than a minute later, and he was able to truthfully say, “I’m ready for you.”
Sunny grinned. “Are you sure? Because someone who I never thought would apologize or admit he was wrong, just did. And it’s got me all revved up.” The water sloshed as she moved across the water toward him. “Are you sure you can handle it? Because it’s going to be a long, hard ride.”
His cock pulsed at just the thought of Sunny on top of him, her wet breasts dripping with water as she rode him to completion.
But the reality was even better than the dream. She straddled him, biting her lip with a barely suppressed moan as she lowered herself down on his erection. “Oh, Cole, so good.” She began moving her hips up and down. “Always so good, the way you fill me up. I can’t help myself. I’ve just got to...”
She was incoherent after that, bouncing up and down on his erection with wild abandon. The only thing that kept him from exploding at the sight of her like this, her large wet breasts bouncing as she rode him, was the fact that he refused to disappoint her, to let her regret taking his peace offering.
But no matter how long he held on, it didn’t seem to be satisfying her. She ground herself against him, her undulations taking on a desperate tone. “Why can’t I... Oh, Cole, I want to so bad, I...”
“Sunny...” he croaked into her ear. He longed to take back control, to give her what she needed to get there. She was becoming unhinged with need, but underneath that, he could sense her exhaustion. However, he had promised.
But then her head fell against his shoulder. “Cole, baby, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but take back control. Get me there, baby, please get me there. I’m so close.”
Cole didn’t need to be asked twice, he grabbed on to her hips, tilted her forward, so that her clit was right where it needed to be when he began moving her up and down on his shaft.
Then he said, “Come for me, Sunny. Come now!”
She came with a scream, clenching him inside her so hard that she took Cole over the edge with her, his entire body seizing up as he involuntarily unleashed a second load.
Eventually Sunny collapsed against him, breathing hard. “I’ve never— Is it supposed to be like that? So intense? Is that how it always goes down for you?”
“No,” Cole answered honestly. “It’s never been like that for me with any other woman.”
This was a huge statement for Cole, something he wouldn’t have been willing to admit, even to himself, a week ago.
And Sunny seemed to sense that. She leaned back and searched his face. For a moment the only sound in the room was the jets pushing water through the tub. Then she stood up and stepped out of the bath.
It occurred to Cole that she was purposefully keeping her back to him as she went to retrieve the towel hanging on the back of the door.
“What would you say now if you hadn’t given me control for the day?” she asked him.
“Don’t dry off,” he answered immediately. “Then I’d tell you to turn around, so I can look at you.”
He waited for her to defy him as she so often had in the past, but she didn’t.
Her hand dropped in mid-action of bringing the towel to her body and instead she turned around and let him see her in all her glory, completely naked with water dripping down over her large breasts and bare sex.
And that was how Cole ended up getting the top quilt of Sunny’s bed wet with bathwater, when he carried her into the guest room and took her again, both of their
bodies damp and slippery. It wasn’t a decision he could even remember making. One moment he was still in the bath and the next he was thrusting himself into her tight, hot core and releasing an unbelievable third time, shortly after she had.
After that, he went back to bathroom to retrieve the towel she’d dropped, drying her off and then himself, before rearranging her underneath the sheets. He’d expected her to fall asleep right away, but he could feel her eyes watching him as he took the wet quilt off the bed and tossed it outside the door before replacing it with the spare in the closet.
“Are you tucking me in?” she asked him when he brought the new blanket up to her chin.
“You should take a nap before we head out to Tahoe. It’s a long drive.”
“Yeah, but...” She yawned. “I don’t want to sleep without you.”
That was when Cole did something else he had never done. Without another thought, he decided to ditch his workout and take a nap with Sunny.
“I think...I think I might not mind you being in control,” Sunny told him when he settled in behind her. From the tone of her voice, she was surprising herself with this confession, too. “I mean, I think I might actually like it. And I might even—you know, need it. I don’t know the right term for it.”
“Submissive,” Cole answered, his voice quiet.
He felt her go stiff in his arms. “I’m not a doormat.”
“I know you’re not,” Cole answered, his voice dry as a desert. If she had been, this arrangement would have gone a lot more smoothly. “Trust me, you’ve been a challenge from the beginning.”
Sunny rolled over to face him, but kept her eyes lowered. “Then why couldn’t I get there in the tub without your permission? And you were right about the other day at the show. I was goading you. I think I wanted you to handle me. And the way I keep letting you drag me back here, even when I want to run...”
A hard note crept into Cole’s voice. “Look at me, Sunny.”
Her eyes raised to meet his and they were filled with a shame that made Cole’s heart tighten.
“We don’t have to put labels on it,” he told her. “I like to be in control and you like for me to take control. This is Vegas. Anything goes. I say we’ve got a win-win situation here. We win. Not just me. You and me. We win.”
She shook her head. “But last week...”
He stopped her right there. “Last week was bad. I went too far. I know that. It won’t happen again.”
Sunny’s eyes went sad again. “I want to believe you, but—”
“Sunny, believe it. I’m not going to risk our arrangement again.”
Sunny went quiet, and then she asked. “What did Max mean, when he said he was wondering when the real Cole would show up? Why did he act like you punching him was some kind of victory?”
He didn’t want to tell her. Their arrangement was only for a couple more months, long enough for Cole to get Nora kicked off his board. He had no reason to trust Sunny with his deepest secret. No reason at all.
But something in him knew that telling her was necessary for this particular deal. Telling her what she wanted to know was the only way to bring equilibrium back to their relationship.
“You said you had issues the last time we ah...talked. I have issues, too. Or rather I had them growing up,” he told her. “After my mother died, I had some problems keeping myself in check, and when somebody pissed me off, said the wrong thing to me—boom. I used to get in a lot of fights. Got kicked out of few schools and went through a battalion of kid headshrinkers. That’s the Cole Max knew growing up. Let’s just say yesterday wasn’t the first time I punched him.”
“So are you saying that Max triggered you? On purpose?”
“Maybe. I can’t really tell when it comes to him. Max and I got in a few fights when we were younger, but we actually got along a lot better back then,” he said. “Caused all kinds of mayhem together. But then my grandfather took me under his wing when I was sixteen, started grooming me to take his place. Things changed.”
“Because Max was jealous?”
“Because Max never grew up,” he answered. “He’s like Peter Pan trying to drag everyone back to Neverland with him. He wants the old Cole back and he’s pissed at me for growing up.”
“Or maybe he just wants to be close again,” Sunny said, her voice soft. “Brothers, like you two used to be. But he’s afraid you’ll never see him as anything other than a screwup.”
Cole stiffened. “Did he say that?”
“No, but that’s the sense I got when I had lunch with him,” she answered. “You know the only reason I agreed to go was because he promised he’d give me all the dirt on you.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“Not one real thing,” she answered. “Just a bunch of stories that started with you trying to get him not to do something and him doing it, anyway. He’s either really self-absorbed or more loyal than you think, if he didn’t tell me about your past.”
Cole frowned, thinking about how Max also hadn’t let Sunny know that Nora was still in perfect health. Could he really have been reading his brother wrong all this time?
“There’s more,” he said, deciding then that if he was going tell her anything, he might as well tell her all of it. “My father left my mother for Max’s.”
“Yeah, I remember you telling me that before,” Sunny said. “Is that why you got so angry?”
“No, I got so angry because Max’s mother was my mother’s sister. I didn’t like the idea of reliving that piece of history with my own brother.”
Understanding dawned in Sunny’s eyes, and then suddenly it wasn’t just him holding her anymore. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulled him into a tight hug. “Oh, my gosh, that explains so much. Thank you for telling me. Thank you.”
He guessed he must have been more tired than he thought, because he accepted her comforting hug without a fight.
“The point is I’ve learned the hard way that when I start to get out of control like that, I need to reign myself in,” he said into Sunny’s shoulder. “I turn off my emotions like a switch until I can trust myself again.”
“So that was what happened when we had that argument at my apartment building? When you got hurt and then just stopped,” she said, as though she’d finally solved a mystery that had been bothering her for a while.
“Yes,” he answered. “But last week I turned my emotions off for a bad reason, because I wanted to punish you, and I didn’t trust myself to do it without losing control. The thing is I forgot the second step of rage control. Turn off your emotions and remove yourself from the situation. I didn’t remove myself from the situation. I should have waited until I could talk to you without having to flip my emotion switch. But I didn’t, and for that, I’m sorry.”
For a while, Sunny just hugged him even tighter, as if holding him was somehow helping her process all the information he’d just given her.
But eventually she leaned back and said, “You like to be in control. I kind of like when you’re in control. But it becomes weird if you’re too in control. So how about this: for the rest of the summer, you can be in control, I’ll do whatever you say. But if I want it back for any reason...”
“It’s yours,” he agreed quickly. “Those are fair business terms.”
That must have been the right answer, because she smiled at him, her large eyes full of tenderness, and he smiled back.
As angry as he’d been with his grandmother for putting him in such an untenable position, he couldn’t help but feel a little grateful now. His grandmother would get her comeuppance, and he’d get full control of his company, with a Sunny on top—or bottom. Really, Sunny wherever he wanted her. Any way he spun it, this situation with Sunny was going to work out to both of their benefits.
It would all work out just
fine.
Chapter 21
This situation with Sunny was not working out, Cole thought to himself after he got off a call with Jasper Whittaker. The Benton Group’s oldest board member had been one of the last holdouts on voting his grandmother off the board. He was one of the board’s outside directors, which meant he was also outside of Cole’s direct sphere of influence, since he was the president of a holding company that didn’t do business with The Benton Group. Even more annoying, Cole suspected the widower had a crush on his grandmother, and he refused to even think about voting her off the board. Cole had begun to accept that he might have to move forward without Whittaker’s vote, but then he’d remembered his grandfather’s rules about holdouts.
“Holdouts are easy, Cole, my boy. All you have to do is whatever it takes to get them to stop holding out.”
In Jasper’s case, it had taken the detective Cole had hired nearly the whole summer to ferret out a piece of information Cole could use. In this case, a sealed record on his granddaughter for stealing money from Jasper’s company when she’d interned there—one her current company, a prominent Las Vegas brokerage firm, probably didn’t know about.
“Strange decision to go into money services with her history of embezzling. I know, I for one, wouldn’t let anyone with that kind of blemish on her record handle my money.”
“It wasn’t embezzling. She just had a rebellious streak when she was in college,” Jasper answered, sounding irritated but more so worried.
“One that ended in over six figures in losses for your company. Wow, that’s quite a rebellious streak. But hey, I believe you, Jasper. I’m just hope this doesn’t get out. It could cause her all kinds of problems for her.”
Jasper had denied any wrongdoing on his granddaughter’s part six ways to Sunday, but in the end, he must have seen the writing on the wall, because he took Cole’s offer to help him bury the information—in exchange for a yea vote at the upcoming meeting.
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