by Kane, Jessa
And there’s Jack, in a charcoal-gray suit, leaning on the corner of his desk with a phone pressed to his ear. Sexy in a way that halts me in my tracks and whips my temperature higher by several degrees. He was sinfully hot at the Creed estate Friday night, but this is another level of attractive. Whereas his dark hair was kind of damp and tousled last time I saw him, it’s perfectly styled now, his mouth in a sensual smirk, his tongue tucked into the corner of his lips.
Behind him, the jagged city skyline rises and drops on the other side of the floor to ceiling window. Although somehow it’s not as impressive as Jack himself.
Was I really intimate with this young, cocky man-god? Just standing there, he is almost rife with sexuality. Confidence. Power. His glacial blue eyes cut through the room and fixate on me, sweeping me head to toe and immediately bogging me down with yearning.
“I’m late for a meeting,” Jack says into the phone. “Email me the details.”
He hangs up and pushes off the desk. Without looking, he reaches down and hits a switch on the expensive furniture, bringing a shade down over the window, a low mechanical sound filing the room as it darkens, leaving only the lamplight and the illumination of the office behind me. For a moment, we just stare at each other across the office, though I jump when the glass door bumps closed behind me. I expect to find us in total privacy, but I can see through the glass now to the bustling office, where I couldn’t before.
“I can see out,” Jack says in a gruff voice. “They can’t see in.”
“Oh.” God, his voice alone is like warm fingertips stroking down my belly. “What is the purpose of that?”
“If there’s always a chance I’m watching, they’ll work harder.” He winks at me. “But they won’t know if I’m slacking off.” His throat flexes behind the knot of his burgundy tie. “It’s also helpful if I’m meeting with a beautiful girl I don’t want anyone else looking at.”
Unbelievably, jealous threatens. “Does that happen frequently?”
“No. It doesn’t, Maisy. In fact, it never happens.” Jack waits until I acknowledge his answer with a nod, then saunters toward me, a diamond flashing in his tie clip. “That’s quite an outfit.” Slowly, he circles around back of me, his warm breath ghosting over the nape of my neck, his fingertips tracing the hem of my dress, very subtly dragging it up my sensitive thighs. “Did you come to collect your money or try and double it?”
An exhale leaves me in a rush. “I just came to collect.”
“Uh-huh. Is that why you’re trembling?” He slows to a stop in front of me, tips my chin up with a single finger. “You ever come to my office again in a dress this short, I will spend the afternoon spanking that sweet teenager ass right here in front of the whole goddamn city, Maisy. So help me God.”
Heat goes off inside me like a smoke bomb, permeating every corner of my being until I can barely speak. His big hand, marking me, making me sting. Soothing me. Owning me. “Doesn’t matter. I won’t be coming here again.”
Jack’s answering laugh is tight. “Oh, you will.”
Something in his tone brings my eyes up. I wait for him to elaborate.
“Before we talk money…” There’s a flash of vulnerability in his face, but it’s gone so fast, I’m left wondering if I imagined it. “Agree to see me again. Soon. Tonight.” His eyes turn shuttered, unreadable. “Agree…voluntarily.”
Or what?
Doesn’t matter. I might be extremely attracted to Jack, but I can’t forgive what he did. The promise he broke. “No, I don’t agree.”
His jaw flexes. “I know I deserve your punishment, angel. And I meant what I said, I won’t…release. Not until you tell me I can.” He steps closer, placing his open mouth directly over the pulse on my neck. Inhaling, exhaling. “I haven’t come since Friday. You know how hard that’s been now that I know how tight that pussy is? Now that I’ve heard you moan?”
“Jack…” I breathe, powerless to do anything but gravitate toward his mouth. “Stop.”
“Say go, instead.” His erection meets my belly. “I’ll rip off that stupid dress and bang your fucking brains out on my desk.”
Oh lord. Oh God.
Why did I come here again?
I’m quickly losing focus. Can’t think of anything but him moving inside me, all those windows facing us, his tongue in my mouth…
“Money,” I blurt. “Just the money. I d-don’t trust you now, Jack.”
He curses, rolling his forehead around in the curve of my neck. When he pulls away, every muscle in his body is strung tight, his jaw on the verge of shattering. “Right.” He shoves his hand through his hair. “Creed said your cut was two million. Neither he nor the membership contract decides how it’s distributed. Therefore, you’ll receive one hundred thousand dollars a month over the course of twenty months. In order to collect the payment, you’ll come to my house and have dinner with me.”
Indignation gathers inside me like a storm cloud. No, he can’t be serious. He’s not. Is he? “That’s…you can’t d-do that. It’s wrong.”
“I can do that. What I can’t do is hand you two million dollars and let you walk out of this office, no idea if I’ll ever see you again.” His attention slides down my front, lingering on my stomach. “You could be pregnant with my child, Maisy.”
The way he says it…
It’s almost like he hopes that’s the case.
“You’re…you’re…”
“The purest asshole you’ll ever meet?” His features are unreadable now. Cold. “I believe I told you that myself.”
I’ve waited until now to play my hand—and I’m glad.
I might not be the CEO of a major hedge fund, but I listen to books, dammit, and that makes me pretty intuitive when it comes to people and their motivations. Jack Lincoln is more complicated than any fictional character I can remember, plus he’s standing right in front of me, enticing me, making my pulse race. But he’s not the only one with an advantage.
On the ride from my apartment to his office, the loose ends I’ve been trying to tie together finally formed a knot. Finally made sense. Though I still need a lot more clarity.
“How long have you been watching me?” I ask, watching him closely.
Jack goes very still. No movement, except for a subtle eye twitch. “I’m sorry, what?”
I don’t give him time to recover. “I asked how long you’ve been watching me,” I say clearly, trying not to fidget under his penetrating blue stare. My nerves are almost enough to quiet me, but his reaction tells me my theory isn’t crazy. So I trust my gut and keep going. “I couldn’t figure out why you would bid on me remotely. Why you would show up and join that club…all for me. How did you even know I was at Winston Creed’s house that night, unless you were having me followed?”
He tilts his head, regarding me as if my line of questioning is adorable. “I make it my business to know everything happening in my world, Maisy. I might not have belonged to the club, but those men are more or less my contemporaries.”
I shake my head. “No. You make it your business to know what’s happening in my world. And if you lie to me one more time, I’ll leave and you won’t see me again.”
A note of panic dances across his features.
“My mother is your housekeeper,” I say, pressing on. “That is how you know me, isn’t it? How you knew my address?”
Again, he says nothing. I think, because he wants to lie.
But his chest is rising and falling faster now, the skin around his mouth tense.
It’s the final confirmation I need to know I’m right.
Garnering my confidence, I close the distance between me and Jack. Run my hand up his silk tie. “You’re so determined to make me think you’re a bad man. A pure asshole, as you put it. So why are you paying my mother a fortune every week to clean your house? Why did you swoop in and try to save me on Friday night? Bad men don’t do things like that. Only complicated ones.” I mold my palm to his rigid jawline and study his expr
ession. It’s hard, shuttered, but his eyes are another story. They don’t want to look at me, but he can’t seem to help it. He’s waging a battle. Doesn’t want to show me a hint of vulnerability. “The pay increase started six months ago,” I whisper. “Is that how long you’ve been watching me?”
Several beats pass.
“Yes,” he rasps finally, closing his eyes.
“That pay increase was for my benefit?”
He finally leans in to my touch with a gruff noise, then nods stiffly.
I already knew the truth, but it sinks in now, opening up a wound in my chest. “My mother didn’t tell me. She said we were broke. It’s why I didn’t register for classes this fall.”
Rage crackles to life around him like a brush fire. “What?”
Heat presses to the backs of my eyelids. “I don’t know what she’s been doing with the money. Paying rent, yes, but—”
“I’ve been paying the rent,” Jack growls.
My mouth snaps shut, another shovel of hurt and betrayal dropping on top of the pile. “You pay her on Fridays. An automatic payment…and she immediately withdraws the full amount. She must be keeping the cash somewhere.”
“Away from her own daughter,” he bites off. “You. The one it was intended for.”
It feels like there’s an arrow piercing my heart. My own mother has been playing me. It’s no wonder I lash out. “It’s no different than what you’re doing.” I drop my hand from his face and back away. “Playing keep away with money. Manipulating me.”
Jack follows me, his expression tortured. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? You won’t come to me on your own. And you shouldn’t.”
“Because you’re a bad man,” I supply, my back meeting the glass door.
“Yes, goddammit.” His hands slap down on either side of my head, leaning down until only an inch separates our faces. “Why do you think I stayed away for six months when I wanted to kidnap you off the street and rope you to my fucking bed?”
My nipples turn turgid, achy. His mouth is so close, his mint breath caressing my lips and I’m almost dizzy under the sudden slug of heat.
“Now I can’t stay away, angel.” His right hand drops from the door, gripping the flesh between my legs roughly. “Not from this. And not from you.”
“Jack,” I moan, my thighs squeezing around his hold. “Wait…”
“Wait?” He shoves his fingers into my panties, stroking his middle digit through my wet folds, once, twice, before pushing it deep inside me. “If you didn’t want your pussy tickled, you wouldn’t have come here dressed like Daddy’s little girl.”
Those words are like kerosene on a fire. My tummy muscles twist like tree roots, my thigh muscles spasming around his hand. I know he’s trying to end our important conversation about his actions, about why he’s so determined to be the bad guy—and it’s impossible not to let him distract me. But I make one more attempt to reach him while our walls are dropping.
“Jack,” I whisper, right before he can kiss me. “I don’t think you’re a bad man. It’s an excuse to keep people away. Why?”
A line flexes in his cheek. “You refuse to believe I’m an asshole, do you?” His fingers pump in and out of me, twisting and delving. “Even after I came like a bull in this delicious little cunt? Even though I’m playing keep away with your money?”
“Yes,” I whimper. “Because you’re also the man who has been paying my rent without asking for credit. The m-man who would have brought me home on Friday night without l-laying a finger on me, if he’d been given a choice. Am I wrong?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he growls.
“I say it does.”
With my retort still hanging in the air, Jack spins me around to face the door—and there’s the whole office, right in plain view. Men sit at desks no farther than ten feet away, others walking past, so close their jacket sleeves brush the glass.
I can see out. They can’t see in.
That’s what Jack said when I arrived.
It must be true, as well, because Jack has me crowded up against the door, my backside nestled in his lap, his fingers still inside me, milking in and out. And no one has a look of shock on their face. It’s business as usual out there, while inside me, there is a well of lust that has been rising all weekend and now it’s threatening to burble over.
“If you’re having a hard time believing I’m a nasty motherfucker, angel, I’ll happily prove it.” His fingers leave my dampening womanhood, hard palm dragging up the front of my body and unbuttoning my dress with quick flicks of his wrist. I flatten my hands on the glass door and watch my labored breaths make condensation on the glass, more and more excitement flaring to life inside of me with every button Jack undoes…until the entire front of my dress has been completed.
He yanks the garment open, baring me to the office, showing my body off to the hundreds of employees on the main floor in nothing but white panties and red high heels.
And then, with a single finger in my back waistband, he slides my underwear down, down, leaving it around my knees, whipping my pulse into a frenzy.
“You see that switch on the wall, angel?” In my periphery, I notice a black panel with a tiny silver lever. “If I flip it, the whole office will see you. Naked with your little girl panties down.” He smooths a hand down over my bottom, kneading it roughly, his breath directly on my neck. “I’m going to give you two minutes to make yourself come. Or I’ll flip it.”
“What?” I breathe, reeling. “I can’t. I can’t.”
“You better.”
I moan in my throat.
Two minutes? With nothing but the use of my fingers?
My mind is indignant, but my body is alive.
I don’t understand why I love this, why arousal is cascading down, down inside me, snaring me in its inferno, but my fingers gravitate toward the apex of my thighs. A man walks by the glass door, faceless. Another group stops a mere three feet away, their bodies angled toward the office, and the fact that I’m doing something to explicit, so bad, makes my heart pound, makes my flesh slippery and I begin to rub my clit, a mewling sound kindling in my throat.
“I knew it,” Jack breathes in my ear. “I didn’t imagine how hard you rode my cock in front of that crowd on Friday night, you closet exhibitionist.” His mouth suctions to the side of my neck, drawing on me, scraping me with his teeth. “I’m not letting you hide from it, Maisy. From what you need. I’m not that nice. One more minute.”
“No,” I cry softly, my middle and ring finger rubbing my clit in quick, light circles, my breath sawing in and out of my throat. Please. Please. There’s sensation gathering in my middle, but it’s too slow. It’s only the early signals of the storm.
“Christ, I can hear how fucking wet you are,” Jack mutters in my ear, his hands closing around my breasts, massaging them slowly, then chafing my nipples with his palms, making me cry out, propelling me further toward the finish line. Far enough? Fast enough? I don’t know. “Thirty seconds, angel. If your come isn’t dripping onto my carpet by then, this whole office is going to know what a horny brat you are. Strutting in here dressed to make dicks hard, pulling your panties down for their boss. Shame on you.”
The word shame makes my thighs tremble and I stroke myself faster, my bottom lip caught between my teeth, lust and need and excitement electrifying me. “Daddy,” I whine, pressing my forehead to the glass, fingers rubbing, rubbing. “Please!”
What am I begging for? I don’t know. Only that the pleasure is almost too searing, bearing down on me too fast, that I can’t handle it alone. Oh God, oh God.
“Ten seconds.” Jack groans, his fingers moving to hover over the switch. “Maybe you want to be caught fingering your pretty pink pussy.”
“No!” I gasp.
“Five, four…”
I hold my breath and close my eyes, caught between the confusing excitement and fear of the unknown—and the dam breaks. I scream behind my clenched teeth, held in the authority of
an earthquake that won’t let me free. Won’t stop shaking me. My sex draws in tightly, releases and does it over and over and over until I’m about to scream “make it stop.” Moisture slides down my fingers, my inner thighs and I’m blind. I see nothing. Only feel.
When I almost drop to my knees, Jack’s arm bands around my waist and hoists me up, his free hand covering mine and helping to stroke me through the climax, his touch grinding down, prolonging the tempest. “That’s a good little girl, Maisy,” he croons in my ear. “But you’re not done.”
I’m so caught up in the roller coaster of sensations, I barely register Jack spinning me around again until my bare back presses to the cool glass. And he kneels, throwing one of my knees over his shoulder, and rakes the tip of his tongue up and back between my thighs.
“Jack!” I twist my fingers in his hair, no idea whether I should pull him closer or push him away. I’m already too raw, too strung out on pleasure, but he leans into the barriers I start to erect and shoulders past them, his tongue bathing my swollen clit, the thumb of his left hand strumming my nipples firmly, with ownership, his mouth relentless. Relentless.
This time, the orgasm is a knock out blow.
I have no control, no recourse against it and I’m pitched into oblivion, babbling and crying and working my flesh against his hard mouth. Riding it shamelessly. Just trying to survive while Jack groans, laps at me, pins my hips to the glass so he can get closer, closer, until finally I lose power of my legs. My awareness of our surroundings goes blank and when I regain it, I’m being carried in Jack’s arms toward a leather couch on the far end of the office.
He lays my body down there and sits beside me, brushing my hair back to scrutinize me.
All I can do is stare back at the powder keg that is Jack Lincoln.
There’s affection in his gaze, yes, but it’s surrounded by hunger. Intense, male hunger. It seethes out of him. It’s etched in every line of his body, from his heaving chest to the erection spearing up from his lap to the shaking hand he rakes down between my breasts. “I’m not a good man,” he rasps in between breaths. “But I can be very good at giving you what you need. Give me a chance to prove it.”