Chapter 21
JAMIE
As I step out onto the pool deck, Morgan wolf whistles.
“Much better,” she says.
I blush, but I know she’s just messing with me.
She reclines in a chair by the pool, applying sunscreen. I’m kind of surprised she hasn’t hired someone to do it for her.
I take the seat across from her. “Deign to share your sunscreen with a poor?”
Morgan shrugs, and I take that as a yes, starting by running a thick layer over my tattoos. I don’t care how pasty and white it looks, they represent too much money and pain to let the sun ruin them.
“What are the species?” Morgan asks, tilting her chin at my arm.
I startle a little, because it’s actually like a… casual, conversational question.
“Tea tree spring, some willow… evening primrose, lavender, echinacea, belladonna.” I point out circular yellow flowers, soft violet sprigs, bright purple cone-shaped flowers, and indigo bell-shaped ones.
“Isn’t that a poison?”
“The poison’s in the dose,” I say with a shrug. “And they… look cool. Here’s rosemary, chamomile, ginkgo, wolf’s bane, St. John’s wort… I won’t bore you with the rest.”
“You never bore me, Jamie.”
“You’re the first to say that,” I offer wryly, moving on to spread the sunscreen on my other arm.
“And that one?” she says, gesturing at the Pokémon.
“It’s… from a video game. I, uh, I really liked it as a kid. It was my first tattoo.”
“And the bird?”
I lift my arm to show her the black and grey sparrow on my ribcage. “My second. Hurt like hell.”
“Why a bird?”
“I was… coming out of a hard time in my life. Wanted a ‘freedom’ sort of thing. Very cliché, I know.”
“It’s nice,” Morgan says lightly. “I like it.”
I hope my blush doesn’t show as I twist around awkwardly, trying to get most of my back.
“Here,” she sighs. “Turn around. I’m not having you complain of sunburn later.”
I freeze. Then I force my muscles to move one by one as I follow Morgan’s instructions to sit at the end of her chair, facing away from her.
Her hands are soft and warm and strong on my back, and my heart thunders in my chest. She’s slow, deliberate, thorough. She must really get annoyed by complaining. I need to do something to disrupt this moment, to make it feel less significant that I’m imagining it to be.
“Don’t pharma CEOs benefit from me getting skin cancer, though? Sell more drugs that way.”
Morgan chuckles. “Good thing Artemis isn’t in oncology.”
Her thumbs sweep down the sides of my neck, tracing the edge of my trapezius muscle. She blends the sunscreen out to my upper arms, sure to wrap around my limbs.
I’m glad I… took care of things this morning. As it is, I have a semi. If I were still that pent up, this would be a disaster.
She runs her thumbs under the edge of my trunks, and I shiver. Fuck. Maybe a little more than a semi now.
“Sorry, that tickles,” I say, hoping she believes me.
“All set.”
I turn around, but I’m still sitting on her chair. “Do you um need any… help?”
“No,” she says smoothly. “I’m flexible.”
Good god, this woman is going to be the death of me.
“I’m going to check out the pool,” I say, keeping my body angled so she can’t see my crotch as I slip into the blessed light-refracting water.
Morgan leans back to sunbathe.
The view really is incredible.
Defined quads, the planes of her stomach, the muscled thickness of her arms, and the soft layer over top that blends into her breasts, her ass. Morgan is not a three-percent-body-fat kind of person, and fuck, she’s hot.
I suppose the waterfall edge of the infinity pool spilling out over the sheer drop at the edge of the roof, affording a panoramic view of the city beyond, shades of cream and pastel pink and orange blending into rolling green hills beyond, is alright too.
There’s a quiet splash behind me, and Morgan wades over, joining me at the infinity edge.
I play with the cascade of water, savoring the cool, smooth flow over my fingers.
“Not afraid of heights?” Morgan asks, mirth in her tone.
“Uh… height-tolerant, more so. You won’t find me leaning over the edge, that’s for sure. I like a chest-high wall between me and a twenty-story drop. You?”
“I’m not afraid of anything,” she murmurs, looking out over the city. There’s a significance to those words, and I believe that Morgan means them, but I’m not quite sure they’re true.
“Do you ever get lonely?” I ask before I can think better of it.
“Yes,” she says, with a seriousness and a quiet that surprises me.
“Does it bother you?”
“It didn’t.”
Could what’s between-the-lines speak volumes? But no, there are a million factors in Morgan’s life more important than me. Did she lose a friend? God, are her parents okay?
“Lonely can be… comfortable,” I offer.
“The more moving pieces, the more failure points. But that’s not quite what you were thinking, was it?”
“Yeah, I... But I get what you mean.”
She gives me an odd look.
“What?” I say.
“I’m trying to figure how someone like you would be lonely.”
I’m not entirely sure what ‘like me’ constitutes, but I guess she means friendly. Agreeable. Which is good for making acquaintances. Not so great for making and keeping friends.
I shrug. “Just full of surprises, or something.”
That odd look lingers for a moment, then the mask slides back into place.
She leans against the glass wall, a mischievous glint in her violet gaze. “You really don’t worry it’ll crack?”
“I’m sure it’s over-engineered.”
“You’re very trusting.”
A little thrill of fear rings in my chest. “I mean… but isn’t it… there are safety standards here, right?”
There’s laughter in her eyes.
An impulse surges through my muscles, and I splash her. “You’re just messing with me!”
Morgan ducks the light spray and slaps the water, sending a drenching wave over my head. I sputter, knifing the water from my eyes.
“Hey, that’s not fair!” I launch back the biggest splash I can muster.
She throws another right back.
I’m laughing, and she’s laughing, and it’s music and light and life as we have a childish splash battle in an elegant rooftop pool.
I duck my head and muster up the biggest wall of water I can, which means I don’t see Morgan getting closer until the last second—her hands close around my wrists like iron.
The sensation trails up my arms, down my spine, and straight into my cock.
When I meet her gaze, my chest heaves and my heart races.
Her eyes are predatory, full of hunger and need. But the control she has over herself is as iron as her grip, so we just stand there for a moment, breathing heavily.
Finally, she releases my hands.
“You’re feisty today,” she says. “Now my hair is wet, and I have to shower again. That’s a fire-able offense.”
My idiot brain jumps to the conclusion that if she fires me, launching myself at her will no longer be an HR incident, so I snap back, “Then fire me.”
She takes a deep breath, eyes flaring, and her muscles tense with restraint.
Jamie, what the fuck are you doing…
I want those hands around my wrists again, I want her on top of me, I’ll goad her until I get it. There’s a fogginess to the feelings, a distance—but I want them. I want her.
Her scent slams into me like I want her body to, a deep musk lacing through the whiskey and cedar.
Fuck, I need a cold shower. The coldest shower. I need to be frozen into a block of ice until my brain starts functioning again.
“I’ll let you off just this once,” Morgan says, the warning in her tone forcing me back into my body, dragging me down to earth, anchoring me to the cool sensation of the water on my skin.
I can’t help but watch Morgan climb out of the pool, the water glistening across her skin, beading and rolling down in rivulets.
Then the moment is over, and Morgan returns to sunbathing.
I have no choice but to stay in the pool because these shorts are way too tight to hide my erection. Seems like my cock has recovered from this morning.
I stay tense until Morgan answers a phone call and tells me she’ll meet me later as she walks back toward the locker rooms.
I drift through the water for a while until my cock calms down, then claim Morgan’s chair, where she’s left the sunscreen.
I don’t think Morgan does anything by accident. I reapply.
The sun is warm, and I bask for a little while to dry off. But my mind drifts back to Morgan and I quickly towel myself off and wrap the towel around my waist, hiding the effect of those thoughts.
I wander towards the edge of the roof, and sure enough, with the railing only hip high, I have no intention of getting any closer.
It’s not that I don’t trust the railing, it’s that I don’t trust myself to not fall over. I don’t have a history of fainting or anything, just… Morgan is kind of right—I find it easy to trust anything and anyone other than myself.
And I definitely don’t trust myself even with this towel around my waist, so I retreat from the sun and slip into one of the stall showers of the locker room. Apparently, I’ll have to be really proactive in managing my… physiological reactions.
All I have to do is remember the feeling of Morgan’s hands around my wrists, the hunger in her eyes, and I’m hard again.
There’s something perversely ironic about using high-end body wash from the dispenser on the wall to slick my cock, about jacking off as hard and fast as I can in this elegant spa shower.
I shouldn’t be this hot and hard already, not after this morning, but I am, and I’m unraveling, and—
I climax so hard that my cum streaks the black marble of the shower wall. After my heart and breath settle, I cup my hands to collect water from the rainfall showerhead to wipe it away.
I finish off with an ice-cold rinse.
I’m hoping I can work it out of my system. The issue must be that it’s been so long since I really went out and spent time with new people. The sheer impossibility of Morgan wanting anything to do with me is a comfort.
I rinse out my hair and redress. As I step out onto the roof deck for a minute of fresh air before I head back down, the woman with the honey-colored ponytail sees me and tells me to have a great day.
“Thank you again for earlier. I’m sorry about Morgan.”
“It’s fine,” the woman says. “Far from the craziest request I’ve gotten.”
“Well, you made a great selection.”
“I just followed directions. She remembered exactly which rack they were on and everything, which made it easy. But I’m glad you like them. It’s a great color on you.”
“O-oh. Thank you. You have a great day as well.”
I can’t think of anything else to say because my head is spinning. Morgan Hunter, CEO and billionaire, saw something in a luxury spa shop and thought of me.