Chapter Seventeen
Hudson
I f anyone’s sneaking out of this kind of situation, it would be me. I don’t tend to—I haven’t since I was in college. Since then, I’ve picked wisely and made sure everything is streamlined.
This isn’t.
And Scarlett sneaking out like some fucking thief is not what I expect.
I don’t know what to expect when it comes to her.
She’s a constant surprise.
Especially sex that good.
I knew it would be good—the tension and electricity between us, the kisses too, told me so. But I didn’t know it would be that… I don’t want to use the word phenomenal, but it’s there in my head, anyway.
It’s almost five am, and I need to be up in an hour because I’m not one of those rich guys who ride daddy or mommy’s coattails and wander into work whenever they feel like it. So, I’m not sure why I’m up and half-dressed, and I’m even less sure why I’m trying to stop her leaving when I could have just turned over and gone back to sleep.
Her hand grips the rail tight. In the half-light her knuckles turn white.
Scarlett turns slowly, and she stares at my chest a long time, then raises her gaze to mine. The desire is still there burning, and it makes my dick start to wake.
“Going home. This…you and me…it isn’t a thing.”
“Right. So, you sneak off?”
“It’s not sneaking.” She hesitates, her gaze dipping again, and then she raises her chin. “I’m being sensible.”
Rich girls who work but weren’t bred to being sensible? She’s one bundle of mysterious I’d like to delve into. More than I have. I also don’t know if I believe her.
Because she looks at me like she doesn’t want to go.
She looks at me like she wants to climb back on my cock and ride me.
Yet there she stands, buttoned up and jumpy.
I lean my shoulder against the matte cream wall and slide my hand into the pocket of my half-buttoned jeans that sit low. “Sensible?”
“I need to get home. Get changed, make it look like I didn’t have sex half the night. And not be late. My boss hates people who are late.”
“He also hates liars,” I say softly, and her eyes darken a moment.
It’s a perfectly reasonable excuse she’s giving me. There are no promises or words of love, and she knows I don’t have or give those. But I don’t think that’s why she’s trying to sneak out. And I don’t think it’s because she wasn’t into the sex, not the way her gaze goes to my crotch, and heat streaks up her throat as she licks her lips.
I think she’s lying, but I can’t for the life of me fathom the reason. Even the guy that made me inexplicably jealous seems a likely culprit. She hasn’t mentioned him and there’s nothing about her that’s indicated she lusts or pines for someone else.
“This isn’t part of the contract, Hudson.”
“I’m aware.”
“Don’t you think this complicates it?”
Yes, no. I don’t know. “It makes it all the more authentic. And we wanted it.”
I put a soft emphasis on the we.
She takes in a breath that’s slightly fluttery. “I know, oh, do I know that. But…”
I wait. Wait some more. Scarlett doesn’t finish her sentence. If she wasn’t holding herself so stiffly, I suspect she might be fluttering like a trapped bird right now.
“But?”
“But I don’t want to take advantage of any of this.” She basically swallows air and her shoulders rise as she pushes it out with a storm of words. “You know, the job and the contract? You have such high standards and I’m working hard and I don’t want to sleep my way to the top. Crap, that came out wrong. You know what I mean. No, you don’t. I don’t. I guess I’m trying to say I want to just go and get ready and be on time like everything is normal.”
I take all that in, dissect it. She doesn’t fit any mold I’ve ever seen or known, and no woman, whether a social climber or socialite or someone who wants to bag a billionaire—and I’ve seen and side-stepped all of them—would sleep with me and then try to have everything normal and try to still prove she’s responsible and good at her job. She’d use this.
Maybe that’s cynical, but that’s what I’ve seen. I don’t sleep with my staff—until now. And she’s a different story. In all ways.
But to have her stand here and say perfectly reasonable things and me think she’s lying about…something, is odd.
Because I don’t know what the fuck it is.
I appreciate her playing by my rules and taking after my own standards in that respect.
“What’s the real deal here, Scarlett?”
For a moment she looks like a terrified rabbit, but it vanishes and she narrows her eyes. “That is the real deal, the hot tea. Lukewarm in this case. I have a job to do and my boss really hates me being late.”
She doesn’t move, though.
I find that interesting. Just like I find all the pieces here interesting even if there’s something wrong with them.
Maybe she feels uncomfortable or maybe she’s worried I’ll think she’s angling for more. But everything we have pays her unbelievably sweetly, and it’s all iron clad in my favor.
Nothing about Scarlett since I’ve met her makes sense in light of what I expected. And it’s not my business if there’s something going on, or she’s got an inner battle to forge. I don’t really care, as long as whatever is going on with her doesn’t get in the way of what it is I want.
“Do you want to leave?”
She blinks. “I…what do you mean?”
“I think that’s a pretty straightforward question,” I say with a small smile. “You can go if you want to leave. But do you want to go?”
“I told you about my boss…”
“I have it on good authority he won’t mind if you’re late today. So take that out. Do you want to go or do you want to get back in bed with me?”
For a moment, I think she’s going to turn and leave, but she doesn’t. Scarlett walks towards me. “If this is it, then I’ll take more.”
“Good.”
And I pull her to me and kiss her, her hand sliding down into my pants to wrap about my cock. I take her hand away, and it almost kills me to do it, but I have a few other plans if this is the last time, which it needs to be.
In my bedroom, I seduce her out of her clothes and then I go down on her, and let her do the same to me, stopping short each time of coming. I want to be in her when we both come. I want to prolong that sweet agony.
I tumble her to the bed and slide her up over me, positioning my cock at her opening and then I push into that hot, wet tightness, or she pushes down, and we start fucking, slow and sensuous, with a bite to it that tells me everything’s going to go haywire again.
It’s a good thing I’m the boss because I suspect we’re both going to be late today.
Exceptionally late.
For exceptionally good reasons.
“Take the morning off,” I say to Scarlett as I finish getting ready.
She’s dressed and a part of me is surprised after her quick shower that she didn’t bolt when I was in guest one, taking my own.
Instead, she’s perched on the couch in the bedroom, looking all levels of uncomfortable at the situation, staring at her phone, waiting, it seems, for me.
I’m not exactly sure why I pointed her to my shower as there is a guest one just next door, but I did. And it’s not intimate getting dressed, as the walk-in closet is also a dressing room and that’s what I’ve done, gone in there after my shower and dressed.
It’s not intimate, but there’s something about it, having her there that makes this almost a familial closeness, like we’re a unit.
Something, I tell myself, to add to the authenticity of it all, because there will be questions.
She looks up at me as I walk out, fully dressed in my suit, and there’s an array of interesting expressions flitting over her face that range from desire to embarrassment to doubtfulness, the last complete with a frown.
Her hair is pulled back, which I don’t miss the meaning of. Not that she needs to do that with me. Last night was then and this is real life.
She gets to her feet. “I can’t, you have—”
“Take the morning off.” I put in the last cufflink. “You can work late if you feel the need. But everything’s running smoothly and I’ve got meetings all day.”
She nods then, her professional face on.
Turning, I usher her out of the bedroom and into the hall. Anyone else would have snooped about or been disgruntled by the difference in my behavior. Not Scarlett. If anything, she seems a little relieved it’s business as usual and I’m…I’m not exactly sure how I feel about that.
I probably should go over everything again, the whole that was then and this is now, but before I can decide to, the elevator whooshes open and Ryder is there with to-go coffees and a bag that smells like a heavenly heart attack in butter and pastry.
“You shouldn’t give your door code out to just anyone,” he’s saying. “ I came in…oh Hello .”
He stops, staring at Scarlett who goes red.
Ryder thrusts the coffee and pastries at me and I grab them before they can spill as he cranes his neck to see past me and down into the bedroom and then he runs a practiced eye over Scarlett, as if he has no idea who she is.
“Well aren’t you the dark horse, Hud. Making things official?”
“I need to go,” she says, like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t. “Nice seeing you again—”
“Ryder, the sexier, better brother.” He grins at me, but it fades quickly into something else. “Look, you might want to stay, too.”
I glance at her and she sighs, staying where she is. The pit of my stomach tightens and all the goodness from sex seeps away, taking with it any residual languidness that might be still lingering in my bones.
“Ryder,” I say, handing him the damn pastries and coffee, my voice low and dangerous. “What the fuck are you on about?”
“I wasn’t flirting with your girl, just messing with you.”
“She’s not my girl,” I say at the same time she says, “I’m not anyone’s girl.”
For some reason, that irritates me but I ignore it. Lack of sleep is my issue here, and my brother seemingly dropping in on a workday. For all I know, Ryder drops by every day and I’m gone, but I don’t think so.
And I don’t want her to be my girl and I don’t want her thinking she is for some insane reason. Why he’d say that is beyond me, too.
I shift my brain back to the issue at hand.
My brother.
Here on a mission.
“I’m talking, Ryder, about the other shit. Why you said Scarlett needed to stay.”
“I said might.” He offers a coffee to Scarlett, who takes it, looking completely thrown and there’s that something in her face I don’t quite get, that makes me a little off-center.
Then again, it could be Ryder. But he’s not looking happy, either.
“Okay,” he says, “fine. I put word out, found someone to pay off to get me any information from Jenson’s office about this.”
He doesn’t even have the grace to look embarrassed. He never has when it’s come to him wanting things. What he can’t get through charm and underhanded maneuvers, he’ll do the old-fashioned way: with cold, hard cash.
“What did you find?” I know he went looking for information on the jewels. That’s him all over. The mystery is alive again, realer than it ever was, and of course he’d try and find out all he could.
“Nothing more about the Sinclair jewels.”
“Not surprising, seeing as I saw you last night. And you already told me what you knew.”
Scarlett’s standing there, holding the coffee she clearly doesn’t want, looking how I feel. I catch her gaze and there’s a world of questions there I can’t even begin to answer. But I’ve got a feeling I’m not going to like whatever it is my brother’s going to say next.
“Yeah, but…”
“But?” I wait.
Ryder sighs. “But this isn’t as easy as you thought.”
“What does that mean?” Scarlett’s voice is tight, with panic just beneath the surface. “I need to give a kidney?”
“Worse,” he mutters.
“We need to get married for real?”
I raise an eyebrow at the horror in her voice. “That’s not happening. But it wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
“Really?” Ryder’s looking at me with real interest.
They are both beginning to annoy me. For very different reasons. Scarlett’s intimation it would be a fate worse than death is insulting and Ryder’s expression… But I push that away, and I mutter, “Fake engagement, fake marriage, whatever. It’s a piece of paper and fixable. What’s the issue here?”
“Right, right.” He pulls a croissant out of the bag and takes a bite, chews, and swallows. And I’m ready to throttle him. “There’s going to be a test, Hudson.”
“I figured,” I say.
“For both of you.”
“Again, I kind of figured it wouldn’t be as simple as here’s my fiancé. Give me what’s mine.”
Ryder breathes out slowly and he looks me in the eye. “There’s more to it, Hud. Seems if you don’t pass, it’s not only that you don’t get what you want, it seems that Sinclair, the family flagship, our birthright, it seems that might well be lost, too.”
His mouth thins. “To all of us.”