Chapter 16
Grayson
Istride into my bedroom, slamming the door behind me, the muscles in my neck feeling as tense as an iron bar, and with my heart pounding in my chest so I can hardly breathe.
I need more air. I claw at my tie, pulling the ends and ripping the delicate silk until I can get it over my head and throwing it aside, before tugging aggressively—too aggressively, it turns out—at the collar of my shirt.
I hear the rip of silk and then the ping of my top button flying off and landing on the tiled marble floor somewhere under my dressing table.
A three-hundred-dollar shirt, destroyed.
Because of her. Well, screw it. I've plenty more.
Damn the woman… but she sure knows how to play dirty.
My skin is on fire, my heart still beating like a war drum. The pounding echoes in my ears as my blood is pumped hard around my body. Yes… if I listen close enough, I can hear a command in that heartbeat.
It says Take her. Take her. Take her.
I don't know how the hell I managed to pull myself away without grabbing her.
Seeing her practically naked in that jacuzzi, her eyes glittering with desire, with dare.
Then when she'd started touching herself, daring me to kiss that smug look off her lips and show her she's mine.
The sounds she made, fuck, the pleading, the moaning. ..
I had damn near broken the door frame just from clinging onto it. My palms still sting from the pressure, but I don't care; I hardly notice.
Somehow, I had made it out of the doorway and fled from that dreadful yet wonderful temptation.
Take her. Take her. Take her.
I need to stop thinking like this. She's not mine. This thing between us isn't real. We're just business partners, that's all. It's a deal. A business contract, like any other. One that comes with a "three feet apart at all times" rule.
"Business partners, yeah." I laugh out loud. "Who the hell am I kidding? Business partners? Yes, okay. But business partners who also happen to want to fuck each other's brains out.
I wonder what it is about her that drives me so insane.
Sure, she's beautiful, but I've always had access to as much beauty as any man can possibly desire.
Extreme wealth and—though I say so myself—an amazingly athletic physique, coupled with natural good looks and acres of self-confidence tends o do that for a man.
I've tangled with far more beautiful women, and none of them had rendered me half this crazed.
Is it her ambition? Her strength? Why is my hand shaking like a crack addict at the mere thought of her?
She's not special. I force the idea into my head until it sinks in. She's just a woman that I'm entertaining for the time. Nothing about her is special. She's only my business partner.
I say it again and again. I force my hands into fists against the wall, bracing myself.
I am not going to go back down there and kiss her.
I am not going to fuck her.
I'm not even going to jack off right now to the thought of her, even though my cock is so hard it's painful.
Instead, I'm going to calm myself and go about my night like nothing happened.
Even if it kills me.
The next few minutes are torture.
I have to shower, feeling the water sluice down my body, recalling her body, glistening in the water, the way her breasts moved, the look in her eyes as she brought herself to a peak… and I can't do a single thing about it.
I get into bed, pretending it's just like any other night. Like I'm not dying inside. I close my eyes, telling myself not to think about her. Think about something else. Anything else. Football. Politics. Alien abductions. Anything at all, just not her.
I fail. Badly.
After much tossing and turning, I finally drift to sleep, only to wake early, foreheads sweating, tired as fuck, my bedsheets in a knot, and not remembering what I've dreamed, though somehow knowing it was all about her.
I recall some vague images of soft skin and tangled sheets.
I know there was moaning, kissing, and biting, and a sweet, hot vice around my cock, ripping a groan from my chest.
I look down, and for the first time since I was a teenager, my pajama pants are wet and sticking to my skin.
She's going to be the death of me.
"Have you always been like this?" Jenna asks during breakfast. It's the first words she speaks to me that morning.
Previously, the only person she'd deigned to talk to was my chef as she arranged the breakfast spread for us.
With her, Jenna had been all smiles, chatting away about the weather, and fashion week coming up, and children's birthday gifts.
She'd been extremely complimentary of the food too, and Ella had left the room smiling.
With me, however, she'd barely glanced my direction, and when she had, it had been with a coolness that bordered on rude.
The moment Ella went back into the kitchen, Jenna whipped out her iPad, propping it up on the breakfast table and working as she ate. The fact that I regularly do exactly the same thing doesn't seem to make it any less annoying now she's doing it.
I won't deny it's hypocritical, but it feels deliberate. A statement. A message, written in large capital letters, that even a fool like me can read. The message states "Back off"… or words to that effect.
I decide to say nothing. If I mention it, she'll think I'm bothered by it, which of course is precisely the reaction she wants.
I'm not bothered. Of course I'm not. I don't care if she doesn't talk to me.
After all, I'm used to silent breakfasts by myself, so I remain silent too, right up until she asks her question.
"Been like what?" I answer, as I go through the text messages on my phone, ignoring the faint thrum of excitement her words illicit.
"Spartan," she says. "I mean, I've never seen someone so dedicated to having a lack of color in my life."
She finally looks up from her screen as she says, "Were you allergic to color as a kid?"
I smirk as I respond, "What about you? Are you always so whimsical?"
"I know you mean that as a jab, but I take it as a compliment, and the answer is yes. I've always been pretty whimsical. I was almost a fashion designer, you know."
"Really?"
"Yes. That was my plan A. My plan B was to be a model."
"What happened?"
"I got realistic," she says. "I'm barely 5'7", midwest pretty, but not stunning, and I don't have any contacts in the fashion world, so the modelling was pretty much a pipe dream.
Then, after spending a year or two in clothes design, I stumbled into set design, and I quickly found that I preferred designing sets and experiences to designing clothes.
Bigger stages, more to interest me. So here I am, and now you know. "
"Hmm," I say. "I could imagine you as a fashion designer, but as a model? No way."
Her eyes flash as she narrows them at me, menacingly. "What's that supposed to mean?"
I chuckle. "Don't take it the wrong way.
But I find most of the models I've met aren't as opinionated and hot-tempered as you.
They can't afford to be, given their line of work, unless they've been in the game for years and built enough of a reputation to push back.
Most of the ones I've met are painfully insecure about their looks, and especially their weight.
One thought her collarbones were too straight, and the other felt like her arms weren't long enough.
They both looked fine to me, but they wanted surgery to fix it. "
"You can't really blame them for their insecurity," she says. "Given that their entire livelihood comes from their appearance."
"True, but they were truly beautiful women. The last thing they needed to do was screw it all up with cosmetic alterations."
"It's difficult when you're in that kind of industry.
I mean, I only consume fashion recreationally, and even I get influenced to see things a certain way.
When it's all you've known, sometimes you start to believe things you didn't believe before.
You start to buy the hype. I can't tell you how many purchases I made and regretted later, after I realized that I didn't even actually want the damned thing, I just thought I did at the time. "
"Oh? Tell me."
"Well, okay. I bought a Dior saddle bag.
Cost me a small fortune, and it was possibly the ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life.
I thought it was ugly the first time I saw one, and then I saw it again and again, and suddenly, before I knew it, I was convinced I needed one.
Not because I actually wanted it, but because of the way it was sold to me.
I thought I had to have it, or I'd be somehow left out.
Now it sits in the back of my closet, gathering dust. I've been trying to sell it for months now, but no one is buying them for anything even close to the original price. "
I chuckle. "I never thought you would be the type to buy into the hype of something like that."
"Yes, Grayson, but that's the thing. Neither did I.
But we all are. Good marketing is insidious.
It's hard to fight, especially when you don't even know it's happening.
" I shrug. "Instead of being mad about it, I decided to incorporate the lesson I'd learned from the whole experience into my business.
After all, that's what a lot of my clients' events are: Marketing.
It's usually companies that want to look good and relatable to their customers, and not the cold corporate soul suckers they really are, or it's wealthy elites who are trying to look good in front of their so-called friends, who in reality, of course, are their bitterest rivals, all trying to get one up on each other. "
My oh my, what a cynic. She's dead right, though, I have to agree. Very neatly, I realize, she's diverted us back to the symposium issue. Clever.