Chapter Six
CHAPTER SIX
Zane
T he girls need longer than half an hour to get ready for bed: wiping off makeup, combing out their hair, and brushing their teeth. I do the same, undress, change into pajamas, and their tired giggles float to me down the hall.
I lie in my bedroom and doze. When I rouse myself, the penthouse is quiet, and it’s five in the morning.
Zarah didn’t tell me she was going to ask Stella to spend the night, but I’m glad she did. It gives me a sense of peace she’s under our roof.
I think of how she comforted me on the terrace. I wanted her, but she’s too good to be fucked like that. Maybe she wouldn’t have let me, anyway. I have to remember she’s only Zarah’s age, but she seems older. I need to go slow. She could be a virgin. Her first time shouldn’t be with her back pushed against a cold brick wall.
My cock is hard and throbbing, and I stroke myself, my erection surging beneath my palm. Picturing Stella’s pussy spread open, dripping wet, pushing my fingers into her while she moans my name, I make myself come. I want her, but the timing needs to be right or after what she’s seen, she’ll feel like I’m using her for sex.
I’m always afraid people want to get close to me for money, or power, or privilege, but if I keep using women for short-term gratification, people will start to think of me how I think about myself. An asshole who doesn’t respect women. A worthless idiot who can’t competently run a company after his father’s death.
That’s not me.
Zarah and I may have billions of dollars behind our last name, but I’m lonely like any other human being, and after I clean off my cock and wash my hands, I pull on a pair of clean boxers and silently pad down the hallway to Stella’s room. I overheard them talking—Zarah put her in the guest bedroom next to hers.
Stella left the window curtains open, and the city lights brighten the room. She lays in bed wearing one of my sister’s nightgowns. Her blonde curls are spread across a huge pillow, and her breasts rise and fall with her deep breathing.
Nothing feels better than looking at her, nothing in these past six months has soothed the hurt. I still have a long way to go, maybe my whole life to reconcile my parents’ sudden deaths, but I can’t do it without her.
Her wit and wisdom, her intelligence, she’ll be a rock I can lean on...if she’ll have me.
“Stella,” I whisper.
She cracks her eyes open. “Zane. Are you okay?”
I shake my head. My throat burns. I am so tired.
She throws back the floral comforter and scoots across the bed inviting me in.
I lie next to her, and she covers us. I shiver, but not because I’m cold, and Stella wraps her body around mine, her breasts pushing into my side.
Right then I’m glad I took care of myself before seeking her out. I still want to push her onto her back, slide her panties down her slim thighs. Spread her legs apart and lick at her until she comes, then plunge my dick into her over and over until I explode, but cuddling works, and I wind a strand of her hair around my finger. “Thank you.” She didn’t have to let me do this.
“Can you talk about it?” she whispers. Her voice floats around me, silk ribbons in the air, tying me to her. I feel safe, and a knot of fear loosens. I didn’t realize it until now. How scared I am.
I swallow around a dry lump in my throat, and the words stick in my mouth. Where do I start? “Six months ago, my parents went to a wedding in Paris and they were flying home. The plane went down during a storm. By the time the authorities could begin a search, the plane had sunk, most of it, anyway, and only the pilot’s body was recovered.”
I haven’t spoken about the crash aloud to anyone. Not to Ash. Not to my therapist, whom I skip out on more than talk to. Not to Lucille when she asked for details about what happened. What I know can be accessed online or in an old newspaper. I’ve never needed to say the words. Never wanted to.
“Do they know what caused it?” Stella asks, her lips grazing my skin.
“No. They blamed the storm. Lightning maybe, or the pilot was disoriented because of the clouds, but so many pieces are missing, nothing can be determined.”
“I’m so sorry, Zane.”
Stella shifts, pressing closer, molding her body to mine like she’s trying to protect me from the words I’m speaking.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her close. Pretend she and I are in a cocoon where no one can disturb us. I could be happy here, alone with her forever. Having nothing but her body and...maybe one day I can get her to fall in love with me.
“Stay with me,” I whisper, but I don’t know what I mean. Tonight? Tomorrow? Always?
“Okay,” she says, brushing her lips against my cheek.
I drift, grappling for the sleep that’s eluded me since the day my parents died.
“Ash told me to stay away from you and Zarah.” Her voice is quiet.
I’m almost sleeping, and her words barely penetrate my exhaustion.
She must have taken something Ash said the wrong way. He would never interfere with one of my relationships if he knew it made me happy. I mumble something. I have no idea what I say or what she hears.
I sleep like I did before the crash took my parents’ lives. I need her and I search for her as sunlight streams through the window, but her side of the bed is empty.
She’s gone.
I’ve been skating these past few months. I know it and my employees know it. The company is barely floating, it’s only thanks to my dad’s friends and business partners she’s not at the bottom of the Renegade River.
I’ve leaned on them too heavily, and it stops today.
Stella breathed new life into me, and she’s given me the courage to start doing the right thing.
I’ll need her help, though, and Sunday afternoon, I boot up my company laptop. I haven’t used it in so long my password expired, and I call the IT desk and ask them to reset it. I could have gone downstairs and bothered whoever’s working overtime, but I’m sitting in a pair of basketball shorts, sipping coffee, hard as a rock.
I woke up stiff, my boxers pulled down around my hips, my cock sticky. I hope my first time making love to Stella wasn’t in my sleep.
Telling my dick to calm the fuck down, I open Stella’s employee file.
This Simon Carhart can’t say enough nice things about her, and I wonder for a second if they’re screwing.
I dismiss the idea. Something like that travels through the gossip vines pretty quickly. Maybe not all the way up to me, but no one has noted anything of significance like that in either of their files.
All the clerks under Carhart have only nice things to say. Carhart’s supervisors have only nice things to say. The HR employees who work with him have only nice things to say.
I look at his salary and the number of times he’s been promoted. Carhart’s not making enough. I approve a promotion he was turned down for last year. He was smart enough to hire Stella and he deserves it.
Turning my attention back to her file, I sip my coffee. Lucille raised her eyebrows, me being up before noon on a Sunday, but I saw a bit of relief in her eyes, too. Everyone’s been worried about me.
I peruse Stella’s résumé. Graduated with honors from her community college. She indicated she’s enrolled in online classes at the city’s university to earn her bachelor’s in accounting. I need to ask her if she’s taking advantage of our tuition reimbursement program. I’ll make sure she is, or I’ll pay for her education myself.
With a couple of taps to my keyboard, I promote her to the position of executive assistant. I have one, but I don’t know what she’s been doing these past six months without me in the office. I send an email to HR and ask that she be reassigned.
Everyone’s used to my silence, and these orders will create a shit-ton of confusion tomorrow morning.
Zarah finds me later in our father’s study, going over things that are happening, or should be happening, in the company. Mergers and acquisitions have been postponed. Holdings that should have been sold are languishing, losing money because I haven’t been around to approve anything.
“Did you sleep with Stella last night?” my sister asks, sipping my cold coffee.
I’m honest. “I don’t know. I slept pretty hard.”
Smirking, she says, “I meant sleep with her. I looked for you in your room this morning, but you weren’t there.”
“Yeah. I need her. I just promoted her to be my assistant. Seeing her face at work will help me through some of this mess.” Will help me be there without Dad.
Zarah doesn’t need me to say it, and she hugs me. “I’m so happy you’re feeling better. You’re going to the office tomorrow?”
“Yeah. It’s time. Plus, I haven’t heard an update about the plane crash. I can’t let them stop searching.” I turn in my chair, and she crawls into my lap. “What are you going to do?”
She pauses. Normally, she wouldn’t do anything. Cry in her room. Wander around the penthouse. Hang out in the kitchen with Lucille. After Mom and Dad passed away, she spent her days watching Netflix and not eating.
Six months gone.
Then Stella comes into our lives.
Zarah feels the shift, same as me. She knows lying around all day is no longer acceptable.
She sucks in a breath and then says, “Touring our company, I got a feel for what I want to do, or actually, what I don’t want to do. I don’t want to specialize in anything, like payroll. I want my fingers in everything. When we were at the club, Ash offered me a position at Black Enterprises. He insisted.”
This surprises me. I don’t think of Ash as competition, though our companies overlap in certain areas. Ash isn’t stealing Zarah, exactly, but I always assumed she and I would work together.
“Can I ask doing what?”
“Teaching me the business, being his right-hand man, so to speak. I don’t want to do that here. I’ll be treated differently, and I won’t learn anything.”
She may have a point.
Dad was my entrée into the business. No one would have crossed him. But I’m a man, too, more easily accepted.
“You don’t have to work. Go to school first. Party, have that experience, like I did at Columbia.”
Zarah bites her lip. “Maybe. But I’d like to work with Ash for a bit. He said...”
I prompt her. “What did he say?”
She looks away. “Nothing. He didn’t say anything. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course I don’t.” Ash will treat her well. I trust him with my life.
I guess Zarah and I will both be up bright and early to go to work.
Something Stella mumbled last night tries to wiggle to the top of my brain, but Zarah hugs me and whispers a soft, “Thank you,” into my ear and I lose it. She’ll tell me again if it’s important.
I want to see her tonight, but I’ll wait until morning. I can’t wait to see her face when she finds out we’ll be working together.
Either she’ll be happier than hell or, for pulling strings behind her back, there will be hell to pay.
For once, I’m looking forward to tomorrow.