Dirty Tycoons: King of Code-Prince Charming-White Knight

by Reiss, CD

  We kissed as though we couldn’t let go, like adolescents, afraid that if we broke for a second to speak or touch we would break some kind of spell and shame or realization of the consequences would flood us and we would have to make some kind of adult choice. We kissed as though any bond between us was between our mouths. Fighting to keep our tongues together as he ran his hands over me, I wished for more. Everything. I wanted to leave him there, spent, to take every drop from him.

  His hands got under my shirt, down my waistband, and still we kissed. We kissed as he reached down so far he had to bend his knees. I lifted myself onto my toes to help him get under my underwear, his finger reaching toward where my desire had collected.

  I gasped so hard when he touched me that I almost stopped kissing him. That was not allowed. The kiss must be maintained. That was the rule. He knew it. He held my head to his with one hand and his fingers dug deeper, but the other reached into me.

  When he broke the kiss, my first reaction was not disappointment but the fear that he was stopping, that he was breaking his bond.

  He kept his mouth close to mine and said, “I want you. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you.”

  He kissed me again and touched my swollen nub, stroking it just a bit. My back arched like a cat’s and he had to work harder to reach me. As we bent together, angling until we were kneeling before each other, kissing, his fingers flicked me as if he could read me like a book.

  “Come for me, Catherine. Give it to me.”

  I was confused for a moment about who was giving what to whom, but I didn’t have time to sort it out, because I was giving him what he wanted and I was taking what I wanted, exploding in his hand, breaking the kiss with my cries, letting it flood me so slowly, so powerfully, that I laid my entire weight on him, flying back, reaching through his jacket to scratch through his shirt.

  He finished me, letting me come down gently, and pulled his hand out of my pants.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “I’m supposed to be thanking you.”

  “When we were kids, all I wanted to do was taste you.” He held up his fingers. They were shiny and slick, and I was a little embarrassed by my body. He put his finger on his tongue and licked it off. I was shocked and turned on at the same time. “You’ve fulfilled an adolescent dream. It’s as sweet as I imagined.” He stuck his middle finger in his mouth and sucked it clean. I hoped this wasn’t finished, because the way his lips curved around his finger made me want to experience that mouth so much more. “Thank you.”

  He reveled in my shame and embarrassment, and it was exactly those things that made me want him even more. He wanted me to give him everything, and I wanted him to have it.

  I was seized with fear. He would take everything from me. He would leave me a husk, a molted skin in the sun, and go away with my heart. My mother had been right—he was dangerous. Not to my standing in society, not to my finances, he was dangerous for my soul. I didn’t want to be a husk. I didn’t want to be left with a shell of a life.

  I stood up hurriedly as if I had an appointment. I didn’t know how else to act. I couldn’t tell him my fear because my fear didn’t have words. My fear came through my mouth, and he had already proven he owned my mouth.

  A rustle came from behind the trees. The laugher of adolescents. Through the branches and trunks, flashlights bounced. Cigarette smoke stung my nostrils.

  “We’re about to be invaded,” I said.

  “We were here first.” He straightened my shirt.

  “Tell them that.” I jumped off the play structure, landing well.

  “I’ll walk you.” He jumped down with me as four teens broke the tree line.

  I recognized Zack and Lily. The other two were in darkness. They all fell into silence. I waved. Zack waved back.

  “Come on.” Chris put his hand on my back and we left in the other direction, leaving the playground to the children.

  Chapter 32

  CHRIS

  I could feel her arousal drying in the creases of my fingers as she sat next to me on the way-too-short drive to her house.

  I knew how to seduce women. I knew I could have her on her back if not tonight, then by tomorrow. I knew that as spooked as she was, she was also turned on. My dick stretched against my pants and my balls ached for her. She might’ve been a little freaked out when I sucked her off my fingers, but tasting her made me want her even more.

  “It looks like you need the roof redone,” I said as we pulled down the long drive.

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  It had been clear from the beginning that she didn’t want anything from me. I wanted to give her everything, but I also wanted to take everything.

  “If you need a loan…” I shut myself up as quickly as I could, but what was said was said.

  “Have I mentioned that you can go to hell?” She said it with a fine layer of the sweetest saccharin. A shell of a joke over a core of gravity.

  I pulled up in front and shut the car. “You have mentioned that. But the offer stands.”

  I wasn’t willing to hear her tell me to go to hell again, so I got out of the car and let her out. She stood near enough to me that I could smell her. The roses. I could’ve kissed her. I couldn’t tell if she wanted me to, but I could tell that she was daring me to. And if I wanted a woman and she dared me to take action on wanting her, I usually took her up on it. There had never been a reason not to take what was given freely.

  Instead, I walked toward the door, and she fell astride me. She glanced at the top floor.

  “Do you think Harper’s waiting for her sandwich?” I asked.

  “She never asks for one, but she always eats it.”

  Two moths banged around the porch light, slapping their bodies against the hot glass. Now was the time for good night kisses and final gropes.

  “How long are you staying?” she asked, looking at my car.

  “As long as it takes.” I took her by the chin and turned her face toward me. “As long as it takes.” I stepped back and opened the screen door for her.

  She didn’t get out her keys but turned the knob and opened the front door. “Good night, Chris.”

  “Good night, Catherine. And thank you.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but she closed it and nodded instead. She gently closed the door and I was left on the porch, watching the screen door slap shut.

  I sat in the car in her driveway for too long. I couldn’t move. A woman like that? A woman like that would stay beside you through lawsuits. A woman like that would wait for you while you were in jail, and she’d send letters every day. A woman like that would stand behind a man who was fucked up, using all the strength in her body to hold him straight. A woman like that forgave a sinner.

  You could take everything from a woman like that. You could steal her heart, take her money, give her a life of sincerely-made broken promises.

  A man could love a woman like that to death.

  A man could love a woman like that forever.

  A man could stand by a woman like that and watch her bloom.

  Water her.

  Tend her gently.

  Respect the thorns. Love the rose.

  A man could walk beside a woman like that the rest of his life.

  I’d been at a crossroads in her front yard before. I’d made choices based on adolescent priorities, and now I felt that crossroad again. There was no tomorrow. There was no later, no taking it slow. I had now. I’d waited long enough.

  The tennis ball I’d collected at the club was on the floor of the car, the yellow reduced to deep mustard in the shadows.

  I grabbed it, got out of the car, and looked up at her room.

  Her lights were on.

  Chapter 33

  CATHERINE

  The crumb-dusted plate by the sink told me Harper didn’t need a sandwich. I shut the light and went upstairs, dragging dissatisfaction behind me.

  What did I want? More Chris, but
how? Did I want him now or wish for the past? Did I want the broken man or the beautiful boy? Did I want him now? Later? Or never? Would the reality of him break the world I’d built for myself?

  I walked right by the master suite. I didn’t want to sleep under Reggie’s mural. Didn’t want to see it or feel its weight over me. I went to the front bedroom and flicked on the light. The bed was still made, and next to it sat the boxes of unread letters. The mattress creaked when I sat on it, and the cardboard flaps coughed dust when I pulled them up.

  A parallel universe sat in a crumbling pile. A universe where I’d gotten the messages and bent my life around Chris Carmichael. A universe where I was a different woman, maybe happy, maybe miserable, maybe some shade in between. But in every iteration, I was different.

  I picked up the top letter and opened the flap. The glue had hardened long ago, and the letter inside was brown at the fold.

  I didn’t want to be different. If I’d found the first letter or the last, I would have been a different Catherine. I liked who I was. I hadn’t thought about it until I closed the envelope flap, but I’d done much with little. That alone was worth the price of every other possible outcome.

  Pock.

  I dropped the envelope, freezing at the memory of that sound.

  Pock. Pock.

  I threw open the sash and leaned out the window. Chris was in the front yard, tossing the tennis ball and catching it in one hand. The beautiful boy was purely a man, and though I was different, I was not immune to him.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said, tossing the ball up at the window.

  I surprised myself and caught it. “Wait for me.” I slapped the window closed before he had a chance to answer.

  When I got out the front door, he was waiting. I took his hand, put my fingers to my lips, and jerked my thumb upward, toward Harper’s room. I pulled him to the backyard, and he put his arm around me.

  He pulled me closer as we walked. Strong. Secure. As real as the day we met, the thrill of his presence and his touch vibrated throughout my body. I was glad he was there because I could barely walk, but he was the reason I felt as though the earth was dissolving under my feet.

  I’d intended to bring him behind the headstone where he’d left me, but the stone, and all the others around it, was covered in burned-out branches. I couldn’t recreate the moment for him or myself. I stopped at the white fence. “I…”

  I couldn’t finish, because the realization hit me like a cyclone that started in my heart and twisted through my mind. The scene of my past was blocked by the fires of my present.

  “What is it, Catherine?”

  “It’s not the same.”

  He nodded, and I knew he wasn’t stalling. He nodded because he understood me. Maybe I never knew if he was having exactly the same thought.

  I tore my eyes away from the web of bushes and looked the man in the face. “We’re different. Things that happened, we’ve done things. And they changed us. We can’t go back. We don’t get a redo.”

  “But we have now.”

  “What if I don’t love you now?”

  “Are you saying you don’t?”

  “I’m saying I don’t know.”

  “I think you will.”

  “You filled a space for me. What if I don’t have that space anymore? What if it’s all filled up already?”

  He touched my face with a tenderness that melted the skin underneath it. I wanted him, but I didn’t need him.

  “Chris—” My voice broke. “What if now isn’t enough?”

  “My now wants your now. Come forward with me. All you’ve done in this world has made you the woman that would have been too much for the Chris you knew. Back then, I needed simple answers, and you gave me one. That answer, money, it isn’t the answer anymore.”

  I put my hand on his chest and bit my lip against giving him an easy response. We both deserved better.

  “It’s not simple anymore, is it? Back then, you gave me reason to be my own woman, and when you left, I became that woman. I don’t have any simple answers now.” I felt his heart beating through his jacket. Felt the life in him fighting to get out. I wanted to see that life. “I don’t know if I love you, but I want to know the man you are and I want to see the man you’ll become.” My tears got cold in my eyes, and I blinked them away. They weren’t tears of disappointment, despair, or tension. They were tears of relief. “That’s not the same as it was, is it?”

  He wiped a tear away with his thumb. “It’s not the same. We won’t know until we try. I’m not going to ask if you still want me. You can’t still want that kid. But do you want me now? Because the man I am now wants the woman that you are now.”

  I barely had a voice to answer, so I whispered, “Yes.”

  His kiss was as tender as his touch, gently greeting my lips. The greeting turned into something warmer, then hotter, as his tongue broke past my teeth, touching mine, connecting us at the mouth in a way our hands could not. I clutched his jacket, his hair, wanting to know his body as well as I knew my own.

  He pushed against me, hip to hip, hitching me against him until my legs were wrapped around his waist. He carried me up the back porch. Still kissing, I reached for the doorknob and opened it. We were locked together through the house, up the stairs, and I directed him to the room at the end of the hall. The room with the made bed and the boxes of old letters. Groping him, kissing whatever piece of skin I could find, I tasted the present and the unknown future.

  When he closed the door, the hall light cut off. Moonlight streamed through the windows. We undressed each other like animals getting past our prey’s skin, reaching for the vital organs.

  I’d never felt this before. I’d wound my entire emotional life into despair and unworthiness, and suddenly they were coins flipped to passion and desire. His body was firm and powerful and my body was melting into liquid fire, bubbling at the edge of the pot, lid tapping and rattling.

  Laying me on the bed, he said, “You are more beautiful than I ever imagined.”

  He dropped his pants, and his erection was a singular perfection. Finally, I’d have it again. He crawled on the bed and drew his hand down my body, between my breasts, over my belly. I felt as though I’d never been touched before. Not by him. Not by this man. My body answered his hand by arching, my blood answered by closing the gap between us.

  I gasped for him, saying, “Yes. Now,” without making the words.

  “I want you right now,” he whispered with a voice as thick as the darkness. “And I’m going to have you, but I’m not rushing. We both waited too long.”

  “I have all night.”

  “Good,” he sighed into my breast, kissing around the base, working his way to the peak.

  He sucked until it was hard. I squirmed, but he took his time, doing the same to the opposite side. His lips worshipped my belly and hips, my thighs and my knees. He pulled them apart and ran his tongue along the inside of one, then the other. My fingers were woven through his hair, gripping tight when he got close to my center.

  He paused with his mouth so close to my core I felt his breath on my wet skin. I held my own breath until my lungs hurt. My exhale was a whimper. His voice was the rustle of the grass in the wind. My name was a prayer.

  His lips were reverent, soft, slow. His tongue ran slowly along my seam, not just offering pleasure but tasting me, as if the pleasure wasn’t mine but his. When it reached my clit, the darkness behind my eyelids lit up with lightning and my ears rushed with my own cries. The pot bubbled over, hissing against hot metal.

  And still, he was slow and deliberate. My legs opened wide for him, and my body bent and thrust with an orgasm that rushed hard and fast after thirteen years of waiting. Lifting my hips off the bed, I twisted, and he grabbed me by the thighs so he could keep his face between my legs as I flipped.

  “You have to stop,” I lied, pushing myself onto his face and coming again. I fell back, away from him. “Oh, my. My God.”

  Re
sting his weight on one elbow, he smiled at me with a slicked face. “I wouldn’t have known how to do that when I was sixteen.”

  I climbed on top of him, straddling his shaft as it lay against the length of my seam. “I can’t wait to find out what else you know.”

  “This.” He shifted my hips forward then back, sliding against me.

  I followed his rhythm, aroused all over again. I bent and kissed him. “Can you come like this?”

  “I want to fuck you.”

  Sitting straight, I rode him, taking control of the pace. “You’re thinking about protection.”

  “Yes.”

  “I just finished my period.”

  “Kismet.”

  I whispered in his ear. “I also got a condom from Harper.”

  We laughed, and I reached into the nightstand drawer. We put it on.

  Lifting myself a little, I gave him room to guide himself to my entrance. I placed my weight down slowly, letting him into me, feeling my body react to his presence.

  We were joined again, but this time it was without fear, without sneaking. We weren’t two romantic kids against the world, but two people. No more. No less.

  He pushed his body against mine, letting me set the rhythm and wrapping himself around me when I leaned into him. My lips, his lips. My heart. His heart. One breath. One moment inside of a life.

  My orgasm blossomed like a rose, opening from a tight bud into a splay of petals and pleasure. I cried into his neck, and he thrust hard into me twice, then sucked in a breath, knotting his brows and arching his neck to look me in the face as he filled me.

  This was what he sounded like when he came.

  This was what he looked like now.

  It was beautiful.

  Chapter 34

  CHRIS

  When I woke, the sky was just turning chambray on the eastern horizon. Catherine was wrapped in my arms, her body rising and falling. A long strand of light brown hair lay across her cheek and over her eyes. I pulled it away and tucked it back with the rest of her curls so that I could see her face in the sunrise.