I nod. “The whole top floor.”
“You have condoms there?” he asks.
I nod again. “Lots.” I feel a need to clarify. “I take them with me when I go out, just in case. No one has ever been to my penthouse. It’s my sanctuary away from everything else.”
He smiles. “Thanks for that. Good to know.” He glances as the floor display slowly climbs. “Longest elevator ride ever.”
“Soon,” I whisper.
“Not soon enough.”
“Soon,” I whisper again, and this time, I wriggle my hand between our bodies and find his zipper. I slide it open, and release the button to find him waiting thick and silky soft and hot. The floors beep—twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three…twenty-nine, thirty…thirty-one. Ding. “We’re here.”
The doors open into my apartment. My bed is waiting, a California King wreathed in white silk and a down comforter, a glass ceiling above revealing the sky. Floor-to-ceiling windows—tinted privacy glass—show the Manhattan skyline in all its glory.
Will throws me onto the bed, not at all gently. “Now.”
He sheds his jeans; climbs over me while I fumble at my bedside table for the condoms, find a string and toss them at him. He leaves them where they lay and begins peeling away my skirt, unbuttoning the blazer to bare my breasts. He tugs my skirt off, and I’m naked with him, and his beautiful erection bobs and sways with each motion, and I reach for him, stroke him.
“Now, Will.”
He sheathes himself in the condom. “God, Brooklyn.”
I catch his wrist, halting him. “One thing first.” I sit up, bring us together in a warm skin-to-skin embrace, and press my lips to his ear. “I’m in love with you,” I whisper. “I love you.” It scares me senseless to say it. “You should hear it before this happens again.”
His hands clasp my cheeks, and he pulls me in for a rough, wild kiss. “Doesn’t seem like enough, does it?” he mutters through the kiss. “To say, ‘I love you.’ Should be something stronger.”
I guide him to me. “There is.”
He arches an eyebrow, demanding the answer.
I slide him into me. “This.”
15
It is four in the morning. How long have Will and I been here, in my room, in this bed? It was the middle of the day when he showed up at my office, and we’ve spent every moment since arriving at my penthouse in this bed—so, more than twelve hours, at least. We fuck, sleep, fuck, sleep. I peed a few times here and there, and brought us water to rehydrate ourselves, but that’s about it.
Will is asleep, finally, his arm tossed across his handsome face, the silk sheet slung low over his hips, only just barely covering the glorious organ which has pleasured me so thoroughly over the last several hours.
God, the things the man can do with that thing…simply sinful. Delightfully wicked. I’d like to say I’m sated, that I’ve had all the sex I can handle, but that would be a dirty lie. I’m nowhere near done with him.
I never will be. I can admit that much, now.
I still have no idea how a relationship with him will work, even just logistically. He lives in Colorado and cannot leave often—he can’t just abandon his duties at the ranch, and I’d never ask him to. No more than I can up and move to Colorado and leave my business here—I’m just getting started on the road to CEO of Bellanger Industries. Which means being in New York…a lot.
Point is, there’s a lot to figure out. Right now we’re both sorting through the raging hormones of a wild, monstrous physical, sexual connection of entirely epic proportions, but there’s more to this. Far, far more, and we both know it. I need sex with Will like I need my next breath—desperately, intrinsically. But I’m connected to him on a deeper level, heart to heart, soul to soul, in a way I can’t even begin to fathom. I don’t understand it and I don’t know what to do with it.
I can’t sleep for thinking about it, though I’m exhausted and need rest so I’ll be ready for the next round that Will is going to demand. But I can’t sleep, can’t shut off my brain, and can’t quiet the whirling maelstrom of thoughts and feelings inside me.
How am I supposed to go about loving a man? What do I do? Make him sandwiches and play little wifey? That’s not me and never will be, and I don’t think that’s what he’d want from me anyway—at least not now. I know there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a woman enjoying the role of wife and mother, but that’s not where I am in life at this point.
So what is love, what is a committed relationship, what is marriage? In my own life all I saw was Dad working sixteen- and eighteen-hour days, seven days a week. He missed birthdays, dance recitals, softball games, graduations…thinking he could make up for it with diamond earrings and the newest gadgets and cars worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. As I grew older, he began to realize that what I needed from a father was him, but it was too little too late in many ways, especially after Mom left—which means all those recitals and games and graduations there was no one to cheer me on and support me and hug me but my driver/bodyguard, Al, who retired when I started college.
I will not enter a relationship only to watch it crumble like Dad and Mom’s. Will not, cannot. But I don’t have any other point of reference.
I lay quietly in bed, trying to still my mind and just shut down. I succeed for a few minutes until I sit bolt upright.
Shit, I have to do something about the elevator footage—I can’t risk that getting out.
I go into the kitchen and use the house phone and call Bernie, the head of Bellanger personal security. He’s a night owl, and he likes to work the third shift, so I know he’s up and in his office.
It rings twice, and he picks up in his deceptively kind and eerily quiet voice. “It’s Bernie. Go.”
“Hi, Bern, it’s Brooklyn.”
“Hey. What’s up? Everything OK?”
“Yeah, um…sort of. There’s some footage from the elevator camera which I’d like to have disappear.” I hesitate. “Yesterday afternoon, my office’s private elevator—”
“Three nineteen p.m. through three twenty-three p.m.” He’s not just head of personal, physical security, but he’s also the head of technological security, meaning, he’s a techie and hacker by trade, with all the personal skills to go with that. “Already done. Encrypted and then deleted, so even if someone were to go to the trouble of trying to rebuild the files, they couldn’t.”
“Thank you, Bernie.”
“You got it, Miss B. Anything else?”
“No, that’s it.”
“All right. Talk to you later.”
“Wait!” I say. “I need a top-level clearance ID card made.”
“I can get him second tier, but Mr. B will have to clear him for top tier.”
“The only real difference is top tier includes entry into Dad’s office and private rooms, right?”
“Correct.”
“Fine, do the second tier for now. I just need him to get in and out of the building and my offices, as well as my personal penthouse.”
“William Henry Auden, got it. Will, or William?”
“Will,” I say, amazed once again by Bernie’s professionalism and thoroughness.
“I’ll need a photo for the ID tag—wait, I’ve got a still of him from an office camera. I can clean it up and use that.”
“You scare me, Bern.”
“You have no idea. The things that go bump in the night have nightmares about me.” He’s not kidding, either. “Okay, I’ll have a courier send this over.”
“You’re the best, Bernie.”
“Anything for you, kiddo.” Keys clack, and I hear his voice go as soft as his voice can get. “You know, I gotta say, I’m glad to see you finding something besides work. I was worried for a while you’d take after your old man a little too much, you know? I mean, your pops is a genius, but he paid a hell of a price for what he’s got. Money can only get you so much, you know?”
“I’m learning that, I think.”
“Good
. Learn it young, girlie.” He hesitates, which isn’t like him. “You know, part of my job, which you may or may not know, is to vet everyone who enters Mr. B’s personal sphere.”
I sigh. “Yes, I know.” I can’t help but wonder what he’s found out about Will. “Meaning, you’ve dug into Will’s past.”
“Yes.”
“All I need to know is if there’s anything nefarious. Drugs, murder, rape, assault.”
“Nope. Clean as a whistle in that regard.”
“Then if there is anything else, please keep it to yourself.”
“He’s been a busy boy, that’s all I was gonna say. Guard your heart.”
“I’ve been a busy girl, Bern, and you know it, so you could very well say the same to him.”
“A fair point, I suppose.” He sighs. “All right, well, bye.”
“Bye.”
I hang up the receiver, and then my stomach growls, reminding me of the calories we’ve burned, and that I haven’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and I imagine it’s been longer for Will. Another perk of being a Bellanger is having a personal chef on call twenty-four hours a day, in house. I’m not sure what kind of food Will eats, but I can probably guess, so I grab the phone again and make another call.
“Rachel,” I say, addressing the night chef when she answers. “I need food. A lot of it—a ridiculous, truly nonsensical amount of comfort food. Nothing healthy, just delicious, filling, thirteen hours in bed kind of food.”
Rachel, a young woman about my own age, just laughs. “I got you, Miss Brooklyn. Coming up. I’ll send up snacks to start you off while I get the main courses going.”
“You rock.”
“Yes, I do.” I hear the grin on her face. “I just got back from a week off, and I may or may not have spent three days in my boyfriend’s apartment, doing what I imagine is something very similar to what you’ve got going on.”
“Endless rounds of truly epic sex?”
She laughs. “I’m still walking sort of bowlegged.”
“I will be for days,” I say with a giggle. “Okay, snacks. Stat!”
I get back to the bedroom just as Will stirs, mumbling nonsense before blinking awake to peer at me blearily. “Who’re you talking to? What time’zit?”
“It’s four sixteen in the morning, and I was talking to Rachel, my night chef.”
“Your what, now?” He’s groggy, and comically grumpy.
“Night chef.”
“Whazzat?” He sits up, rubbing his eyes. “Sometimes, you use English words in ways I don’t understand.”
“A night chef,” I say, laughing. “Pretty self-explanatory. She’s a chef who works the night shift.”
He just blinks at me. “You’re telling me you guys pay someone to sit around in a kitchen somewhere in this building, just waiting in case you get hungry at four in the morning?”
I laugh even harder. “Yes, that’s it exactly.”
“How much do you pay the poor girl?”
I shrug. “I dunno. A lot. Dad pays her, not me, for one thing. She’s a student at the Institute of Culinary Education, and this job is paying her tuition. If I had to guess, I’d say she probably makes thirty, forty grand a year to sit in that kitchen three nights a week. I rarely use her services, and neither do any of the others who rate her services in this building, so basically she gets paid to study.”
He rubs his eyes again. “Oh.” He eyes me. “Why’re you awake?”
I lift a shoulder again. “Can’t sleep. Too much on my mind, too hungry.”
My doorbell rings, then, and I rouse myself out of bed, grab my robe from the hook on my bathroom door, and tie it around me. “Put something on, Will,” I say. “Food’s here.”
Grumbling under his breath about having to put on pants to eat food, Will shoves a leg into his jeans, but he’s still too groggy to function—the jeans are inside out, and he topples backward onto the bed, and finally hurls them across the room. “Stupid fuckin’ pants.”
“Ohmygod, Will,” I snort. “Sit down before you hurt yourself. I’ll get you a towel.”
I toss him a bath sheet, and he snags it in the air before heading into the bathroom. I make for the door and open it, and to my surprise, Rachel is here herself, pushing a service cart.
“Delivering it yourself?” I ask. “Don’t we have people for that? Who’s cooking my food?”
She grins at me. “Burgers are on the grill, fries are in the fryer, and José is watching them.” She winks at me. “I wanted to catch a glimpse of the man who has you locked in here. He must be pretty special to catch your attention.” Will emerges from the bedroom, then, still wrapping the towel around his waist—affording Rachel a brief glimpse of his V-cut before he gets the towel fastened. “Holy hell,” Rachel whispers. “He’s an actual god among men.”
I put a hand to my privates, wincing dramatically. “You have no fucking clue, Rach,” I whisper back.
“Get it, girl!” she murmurs. “Will he be around a little longer? Or is this a temporary thing?”
Will hears this, turning his gaze on her. “I’ll be around. A lot.”
She blinks at the fierceness in his blue gaze and in his voice. “Okay, wow. He’s for real.”
I nod at her. “He’s very much for real.”
Rachel clears her throat. “So. Snacks. A cheese and meat tray with stone ground mustard and organic honey, a bowl of fresh berries, a couple bottles of sparkling mineral water, water crackers, popcorn, and imported dark chocolate Swiss truffles.” She arranges the trays and bowls on my coffee table with professional flair.
Will stares at the food. “Nice. Thank you.”
Rachel blushes then turns for the door. “I’ve got more coming—bacon cheeseburgers, steak fries, chicken wings, onion rings. Should be up in ten minutes or so.”
When she’s gone, Will heaves a sigh as we sit on the couch. “Night chefs. City people, man.”
I laugh as he wraps a slice of salami around a piece of Dublin cheddar. “Don’t hear you complaining.”
“I’m not. It’s just all shit I could’ve whipped up myself in five minutes,” he says following the meat and cheese with a handful of popcorn.
I follow suit, digging into the spread. “So could I, and I usually do things for myself.” I grin at him. “But this is a special occasion and I’m feeling lazy. Plus, I’m kind of rolling out the red-carpet treatment for my country bumpkin ranch hand boyfriend.”
“Ranch hand?” he growls.
I laugh. “I’m teasing.”
“I noticed,” he grumbles, and then smirks, finally. “I’m grumpy when I’m sleepy.”
“You’re grumpy all the time.”
He frowns, but doesn’t deny it. “Boyfriend, huh?”
I redden, shrugging and nodding. “Trying it on. Never really had a boyfriend.”
“I’ll take it.” He plucks a de-stemmed strawberry from the bowl and feeds it to me. “First guy in your condo, first boyfriend.”
“You’re the first of a lot of things.” I indicate my bedroom. “First guy I’ve ever been in bed with for anything but sex. First time I’ve ever crossed the boundaries of personal and professional. First person I’ve said I love you to. First guy I’ve ever slept with who’s met my father.”
“That’s a lot of firsts,” Will says. “Same for you, though.”
We’re demolishing the food while we talk; I eat a truffle, and speak around the mouthful of chocolate. “What all am I your first for?”
He sighs, thinking. “First girl who’s ever met my parents or Theo—shoot, first to meet Clint or any of the guys. First to ride with me. First to cross business and personal for me, too. First person I’ve said I love you to, or to say it to me. First girl I’ve ever slept with, meaning actually sleep. Definitely the first person to ever call me boyfriend.” He pauses. “Well, that’s only sort of true. Holly Buell was trotting around the county calling me her boyfriend, but I set her straight on that real fast.”
I laugh. “Sound
s a bit like the one time I made the mistake of sleeping with someone from Dad’s office. He was a new intern, whom I knew was going to be fired fairly quickly due to overall ineptitude, and an ego far bigger than his abilities. But he was cute, and I was in the middle of a two-week dry spell, so I let his looks overrule my better sense.”
“Same reason I ever went within a country mile of Holly,” he says.
“Right, so you get it.” I laugh with a sigh. “He immediately bragged to half the office how he ‘drilled me’.” I use air quotes to emphasize the fact that that was his phrase. “And how he had me, and I quote, ‘begging for the D.”
Will’s eyebrow arches. “Lies, I’m guessing.”
“Complete horseshit. He lasted about four minutes, had zero foreplay game, and his attempts at dirty talk made me laugh so hard I had to stop.”
Will shakes his head. “Only losers brag about sex.” He snorts. “So, what happened with him?”
“I cornered him in the break room and verbally humiliated him—by telling the truth as I just told it to you—and then had him fired and blacklisted at every company in the city he could’ve possibly gotten a job with.”
Will winces. “Yikes. So don’t piss you off.”
I laugh. “Typically not a good idea, no. You may have noticed, but I kind of have a bit of a temper.” I roll a shoulder. “Last I heard of Bryce, he was temping as a janitor in St. Louis.”
Will smirks at me. “He still got to see you naked, so at least he’ll always have that.”
I bite my lip. “Actually, not entirely.”
He frowns. “What do you mean?”
I shrug, dragging my finger through the honey and then popping it into my mouth. “I have a policy of making a guy earn getting me totally naked. One orgasm per article of clothing. He only got my shirt and underwear off, so I was still dressed in a skirt and bra, because, as I said, he had no game. Wouldn’t know how to make a woman come even if he was given step by step instructions, with pictures. Totally clueless. Kind of guy who thinks because he’s got a nice face, decent abs, and an average cock, that all he has to do is show up and pump, and I’ll take care of the rest. Didn’t understand that he had to work for it.”
Cowboy in Colorado (Fifty States of Love) Page 21