by Elise Faber
His lips—the soft, skilled set she’d feasted on the night before—quirked and he moved, faster than she could blink, plucking the marriage certificate out of her grip and turning away.
The sight of his delicious ass rotted her brain.
That was the only conceivable reason for her just standing there like an imbecile as Clay strode to the bathroom and paused, a mischievous light in his mocha eyes.
“Oh no, Heather,” he said, carefully folding the paper into thirds. “You’re not getting off that easily.”
Then he closed the bathroom door.
It locked with a click.
Four
Clay
* * *
Clay braced his hands on the marble counter and dropped his chin to his chest.
This was a mess and a half, and he had the marriage certificate to prove it.
An annulment was the right call, the easiest solution to resolve the shitty consequences of his idiotic tour of All Things Not to Do in Vegas, but then Heather had gone and declared it all but done in that imperious tone of hers. With his brain throbbing and his body aching—because though the memories weren’t there in his mind, his body clearly remembered how much fun they’d had together—and he’d just . . . he’d wanted to make her mad.
The paper that was as dangerous as a nuke crinkled in his grip, and Clay blew out a sigh.
An annulment it was.
It had to be.
So why then was something inside him revolting at the thought?
“Fuck,” he muttered, leaving the license on the counter and turning to crank on the shower. The first thing he needed to do was scrub away the remnants of his drunken night from his skin.
Well, the first thing he needed to do was to brush his teeth, because hello, dragon breath.
Anyway. The point was he’d accomplish the simple things—e.g. general human cleanliness—and then deal with the giant mess he’d made of his life.
He groaned and picked up a toothbrush and tube of toothpaste on the counter. Both were open and clearly used, but considering he’d probably spent half the night with his tongue on or in Heather, he figured he’d risk the germs in favor of clean, minty-flavored breath.
After, he set the shower to scorching and by the time he stepped out and toweled off, felt well on his way to his normal self.
Of course, that was before he realized he had no idea where his clothes were.
Or his cell.
Or his wallet.
Clay sighed and tilted his head back, staring up at the fluorescent lights.
Naked walk of shame down the Strip. Yeah, that would be just about perfect on this day.
He shivered despite the scalding shower he’d just taken, the memories doing what they always did. Freezing him from the inside out, the cold seeping into his extremities, raising goose bumps on his skin. No matter how many layers he put on, he was still always cold.
Frost on the windows.
His breath coming in rapid clouds of white.
Fingers going numb.
And blood. So much blood.
Clay wrenched open the door and stumbled into the room. The empty room. His clothes had been folded and sat neatly on the end of the bed, alongside his wallet and phone.
Why did that feel like it was less an act of kindness and more of a parting shot?
Not that it mattered.
He needed to get dressed and get to the airport. He had meetings in London and Berlin then a sit-down with a prospective client in Amsterdam. Then he needed to fly to San Francisco and finalize some contracts before heading back out to New York to check in with his CFO.
So no, his life didn’t need any hiccups, and it definitely didn’t need one Heather O’Keith throwing another wrench into it.
The hesitation he’d felt before his shower was gone, chalked up to his blurred, fuzzy, hungover mind. He’d taken the license from her because that was his way. He liked to be in charge, and he didn’t trust anyone, least of all the woman who’d been so adversarial over the last months. Clay would give the contract to his lawyer and demand an annulment as quickly as possible.
Heather was just going to have to deal.
He was handling this his way, and that was the end of it.
“Exactly,” he grumbled, agreeing with his internal dialogue as he tugged up his slacks. “She’s not always in charge.”
He shrugged into his shirt and as he did up the buttons, a memory sparked. Heather had undone them the night before, kissing along the path of skin she’d revealed, smirking up at him as her fingers had drifted toward the waistband of his pants.
He’d been rock-hard and aching, and that smirk had snapped something in him. Clay had reached for her, grabbing her around the waist and tossing her onto the bed. Buttons had flown, her blouse torn open. Except . . . his fingers went to the pocket of his shirt and he found the little white sphere he’d tucked there for safekeeping.
It was a tiny thing, a fussy piece of femininity designed to frustrate clunky masculine fingers.
He should have tossed it in the trash or maybe made a mental note to save it to return to Heather, but Clay found himself tucking it safely into the pocket of his slacks, shoving it deep down, so it wouldn’t fall out. Then he walked to the bedside phone and located the name of the hotel he was in.
Ten seconds later he’d texted his driver and received an ETA.
Since it was only a few minutes away—his hotel was only two resorts over—he decided to head down to the lobby.
He was nearly out of the room when he remembered the marriage license.
“You’re an idiot, Clay,” he said and turned back for the bathroom.
The used toothbrush was there, next to the open tube of toothpaste. But where thirty minutes earlier, the certificate had been neatly folded, placed carefully out of the splash zone of the sink, now the counter was empty.
He knew.
He fucking knew, but he checked the floor to make sure it hadn’t fallen off anyway.
“Heather,” he growled, his blood boiling in a way that only she ever managed to create. With everyone else, he was calm and collected. With her, he lost his goddamned mind.
The note he found perched atop the trash can confirmed that.
Later, porn star.
P.S. Look forward to hearing from my lawyer.
He’d locked the door. Clay had locked the fucking door.
So why was some part of him not surprised that Heather O’Keith could pick a lock?
“Okay, baby,” he said, shoving the note into his pocket. “Now, it’s on.”
Five
Heather
* * *
“Why. Do. I. Do. These. Things. To. Myself?” Heather asked, punctuating each word with a thunk of her head on her pillow.
She was somewhere over the Atlantic and was supposed to be sleeping in order to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for her meeting with the board of Colin’s company in Scotland. She was taking over communications of the robotic arm of their partnership while he and CeCe were on their honeymoon. After that, Heather had brief stops in London and Berlin before meeting with a prospective client in Amsterdam.
It was going to be seventy-two straight hours of meetings, frantically reviewing client notes and finalizing PowerPoint slides, paired with clothing changes on the go, snatching bits of sleep on the plane, and eating whatever crap food she managed to cram into her mouth in her free minutes . . . no free seconds.
So she should be sleeping, not holding a crinkled piece of paper that had the potential to ruin her.
“Get it together, Heather,” she said, tossing the license onto the nightstand and forcing her eyes closed. A couple of deep breaths would settle her, would help her sleep. They always did.
Except where normally she could drift off in the blink of an eye, her blinks only brought her images of Clay.
Of Clay over her.
Of Clay inside her.
Of Clay’s mouth and hands and fuck, his mouth.
>
She’d never lost control like that before. Not with her own hands—or devices, rather—and certainly not with a partner.
And yes, she did say partner in a non-gender specific way. She had always intimidated men, and so she’d experimented with women during her college years. Not just in a fling sense or a stolen kiss here or there, but in a full-fledged exploration of that part of her sexuality. She’d had real relationships with real feelings.
There just had been a piece missing inside of her that those relationships had never been able to fill.
That missing piece came in the form of a penis.
She snorted, rolling her eyes at her idiocy. It wasn’t just a penis—it was the hard to her soft, that spicy smell, the arms, the abs, the bristles of hair on a chest. Hell, she might have been still fighting it, trying to prove to herself and the world that she didn’t conform to quote-unquote normal heterosexual rules, if not for the combined power of Bec and her college on-again, off-again, Lexy.
“I’m not saying you’re not attracted to women, Heather,” Bec had said. “Obviously there’s a piece of you who is. But I also do think that some part of you wants to stick it to your mom’s image of the perfect daughter who gets married to the man she chooses and has two point two kids and a picket fence.”
Lexy had chimed in. “And then there’s the fact that you’re not really into me.”
Heather had frowned. “You’re beautiful, Lexy. You—”
“You don’t want me.” Pale blue eyes had locked onto hers. “Not really. Trust me, I can tell.”
Heather hadn’t liked that. She didn’t like being wrong about anything, but most especially about herself. But she couldn’t deny what Bec had said, nor Lexy, if she was being entirely honest with herself.
So, she’d stopped trying to turn her mother’s hair gray and had focused on her father. He thought men were better at business? Well, fuck him, she’d prove him wrong. He thought only men could have one-night stands and relationships where they don’t let emotion get involved? Double fuck him, she’d sleep with so many men that . . . she’d started to hate that part of herself.
And so . . . therapy.
Her dirtiest, darkest secret was that she’d started therapy about five years before.
No more empty sex. No more trying to be something she wasn’t. No more trying to stick it to her parents.
She was her own person. She worked because she enjoyed her job and the challenges it created.
She was sane and stable and the person people went to for advice. She wasn’t crazy Heather who slept with anything with a pulse or even sad, torn up Heather trying to find her own place in the world.
She was content.
And so what if content meant a little bit lonely . . . or that her lady bits felt shriveled with disuse.
At least she had her friends and her work.
But now, Clay fucking Steele.
Goddamn it.
What the hell had she been thinking?
She hadn’t been. That was the problem. He’d touched her, and five years of celibacy had gone up in flames. She’d wanted so, so badly.
And he’d given. So, so good-ly.
Heather snorted again and flopped an arm over her eyes. God, had he given it “good-ly.” Probably the best ever, if she was being completely honest, and since she was alone and didn’t need to hide anything from anyone, she could freely admit that Clay had skills. Even drunk, he’d used every single one to play her body like she was his personal instrument, celibacy be damned.
But marriage? Commitment?
Down that path led ruination.
Yes, she was well aware that she was sounding like a bad gothic novel, but Heather wasn’t like CeCe or Abby. She wasn’t built for commitment. She was her parents’ daughter and didn’t have the capacity to care for another person in that way.
She was broken deep inside, and no amount of therapy could fix that part of her.
Friends she could do.
Love? Breaking down every single barrier between herself and another person? Being open and sharing all the intimacies that came with building a solid relationship?
No.
That ability was just not in her.
And so she grabbed her phone, sent an email to Bec asking her to schedule her some time when she got back to San Francisco to discuss a few “legal matters”—ha!—then set her cell onto the nightstand and closed her eyes.
One breath. Another.
Sleep stole her under.
Six
Clay
* * *
The plane touched down with a jolt, and Clay attempted to shove Heather from his mind.
Not that it was easy.
The woman had wormed her way deep inside his psyche from the moment he’d met her, six months before.
Blonde hair the color of sunshine peeking through clouds, blue eyes that mimicked the indigo of the early morning sky. A body that should have sonnets written in its honor—curvy and soft and with an ass that he wanted to . . .
“Mr. Steele? Is everything all right?” Julian, the flight attendant, asked.
Clay blinked, shooting out of his seat and tucking his briefcase under one arm. His cheeks felt hot—from embarrassment or desire, he didn’t know. Okay, so maybe he didn’t want to examine too closely that he’d been caught daydreaming like a horny teenager.
“Yes,” he said, after clearing his throat. “Thank you.”
He nodded to Julian and disembarked the plane, heading toward the car that was waiting at the bottom of the jet’s staircase.
“The office, Mr. Steele?” his driver asked.
“Yes, thank you, Frank,” he said as he sank into the plush leather and turned on his cell.
It began to vibrate almost immediately, texts and emails pouring through. WiFi on the plane made it so he hadn’t gone a solid twelve hours without communication, but he’d turned even that off for the final two hours of the flight and had forced himself to sleep.
A snort. So much for that.
He’d spent the entire one hundred and twenty minutes picking through his fractured memories of the previous night, trying to remember every detail.
Except that hadn’t really helped his scrambled brain, his memories still in bits and pieces.
Smooth porcelain skin. Those sparkly red nails. Dusky pink lips. Breasts that had pillowed against his chest.
“Dammit,” he muttered as his cock hardened for what felt like the hundredth time in the last few hours.
It somehow remembered, but his fucking mind was useless.
“Everything okay, sir?” Frank asked as he drove them out of the airport, reminding Clay that he needed to lock this shit up tight and focus on the deals ahead. There was a reason no one ever asked him how he was.
And that reason was because he was always fine.
Or at least he was good at projecting “fine” and faking it until he was actually fine in truth.
But now two people in the last ten minutes had shown concern.
Clearly, he was losing his touch.
“Fine, Frank. Thanks,” he clipped, annoyed at himself for the lack of discipline. If his father could see him now . . . he’d be extremely disappointed.
Steeles are steel, son. Emotionless. Strong under pressure. We don’t break. We don’t bend. We endure.
Except they hadn’t endured.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath. This trip was happening at the wrong time, too close to the anniversary of—
“I can get you to the office in just under an hour.”
Work. He needed to focus on work. On the deal, on making Steele Technologies more successful than his dad had ever dreamed.
And his dad could dream.
“An hour’s fine,” Clay said after a beat. Endure, he reminded himself. Strength under pressure. “Thanks, Frank. In the meantime, I need to make a phone call.”
“Absolutely, sir.” The divider between them rose almost before Frank had finished the sentence
.
The call was a lie—well, at least having to make a pressing one. Yes, there were always people he needed to touch base with, but at that moment there wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait. Except sitting in the silence created by the divider snicking closed was a mistake. The quiet, the isolation made his devil come out.
His mother had always said he could be a holy terror when he put his mind to it and, well, Clay always put his mind to it.
Always.
Smirking, he sent a text to his assistant and got a response in less than two minutes.
Which was why Sebastian got paid the big bucks.
His lips tugging up, he keyed in the number.
It rang once. Again. A third time. And just when Clay was composing the message he was going to leave, a breathless female answered.
“O’Keith,” Heather panted into the phone.
There was noise in the background, a rapid pat-pat-pat that reminded him of something he couldn’t quite place, but Clay forced that out of his brain and focused on the way Heather’s voice had softened on answering.
It would harden as soon as he spoke, he knew that, and he wanted to hold on to that softness, before his voice raised her hackles, turned her tone into an icy blade.
He wanted to hear her as she’d been that night. And his instincts told him that she’d been sweet, almost gentle.
A concept he would have laughed at months ago, but one he knew today was—
“Hell-o?” she said, less breathless, more sharp, and already those rounded off edges were being honed into precise points.
“My dear Heather O’Keith, are you taking a shower?” he asked, finally cluing into what the pat-pat-pat in the background was.
There was a long pause.
“Clay.” Another beat. Then a sigh and, “How did you get my number?”
“Husbands should know where their wives are, don’t you think?”
He could hear her teeth grinding. It made him grin.
“Clay, I’m naked and dripping, what the hell do you want?”