Chapter 8
Noah’s concentration was shot to hell, and he wasn’t even pissed off about it anymore. He’d passed pissed off at around ten this morning when one of his directors had fucked up a business deal and Ashley had left the tenth message for him to call her.
It was now gone midday, and he hadn’t heard from Leia. Obviously his instruction for her to call early hadn’t been explicit enough.
Or maybe she relished goading him to the point where he lost control like he had last night. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from giving her the punishment they both craved. And fuck, she had come apart like a firecracker. The detonation still reverberated through him.
God .
His breath shuddered out as the scene replayed in his mind like a damned stuck record.
The noises she’d made as he’d taken his belt to her, the power and satisfaction that’d surged through him as he welted her ass good.
As he dropped to his knees and worshiped her pussy, the sheer fucking sweetness of her.
That look of helpless surrender and ballsy defiance in her eyes when they were done.
Images crowded his brain, leaching away any hope of concentration he had left.
He could’ve fucked her hard and fast, right there and then on the hood of his car, and she would’ve let him.
So why the hell hadn’t he? His cock certainly didn’t understand that insufferable decision one little bit—not when he’d been erasing the security tapes of them in Red’s office, nor breathing in her incredible scent during the tense ride home.
He’d been rock hard for hours afterward. Rubbing one out hadn’t helped. Thinking of Leia just made him harder. He’d eventually taken an ice pack to his groin for a full hour before his erection had abated.
Hell, he’d delayed shaving until the last possible moment this morning because he hadn’t wanted to wash the scent of her pussy off his face.
Even now, licking his lips, the memory of her taste lingered.
One hand stroked his chin and played over his lips as the other passed over his re-energized hard-on.
He groaned out loud as another shudder rammed him.
Foolishly, he pressed his flesh. Stars exploded behind his eyelids.
He was halfway to unzipping his trousers and stroking himself back to sanity when his private phone rang.
For several seconds, he stared blankly at the phone. Then he shook his head.
Jesus, he was losing his mind.
“Yes!”
“Whoa. Down boy. Who the hell pissed in your porridge?”
“I’ll give you one guess.” There were two but he wasn’t about to admit it to his best friend.
Gabriel cursed. “What the hell did Ashley want?”
Noah was about to tell him, but he hesitated. When he’d woken this morning, the first thing he’d felt was raw anger fused with anguish when he thought of Leia. The second emotion had been much more surprising.
Forced to think about having a child of his own, he hadn’t been able to stem the mixture of elation and despair.
As much as he hated Ashley, she carried a part of him inside of her.
She was a bitch through and through, but she was a bitch carrying his child.
There were no adequate words to relay that information to his friend.
“Christ, if you can’t talk about it, then it must be worse than I thought. She hasn’t framed you for murder, has she? Or did she give you a disease before you bailed out of NYC two years ago? Either way, I’ll have your back if you want to send a hit squad after her?—”
“You back in town?” Noah interrupted him.
“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Got back late last night. Minus my possibly-soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend, I might add. And hell no, I don’t want to talk about it. Drinks on Wednesday night at The Sphere? I’ll round up the guys.”
A refusal dangled on the tip of his tongue, then Noah mentally shrugged. He had to tell them soon enough. If not, his friends would snoop and harass until they found out what was going on. “Sure. Usual time.”
“So you going to tell me what Ashley wanted?” his friend pressed.
“It can wait till we meet.” Noah eyed the clock on his computer, a burning need to find out where the hell Leia was suddenly clawing through him. “I have to go.”
He hung up and dialed La Carezza Inc. When he was informed that Miss Michaels was unavailable, his temperature spiked higher. He couldn’t reach her by cellphone because hers was sitting on his desk.
Slamming down the phone, he called another number .
“Do you have eyes on her?”
“She left her office twenty minutes ago. Looks like she’s having one of those powwow lunches with a bunch of suits at a posh restaurant.”
Noah stopped himself from asking for the name of the restaurant. The way he was feeling, he needed to not be in a public place when he confronted Leia Michaels.
“Have a message delivered to her from me… Yeah, I know it’s not part of our deal, but do it anyway. Sure, charge me. Yeah, I’ll wait for you to find a pen.” He stifled a curse, waited, then rattled off the message and ended the call.
Moderately satisfied and his world slightly saner, he pressed the intercom. “Maddie, I’d like to review my schedule for the week. And bring the real estate file from Hartford with you, please?”
He closed two major deals and was in the middle of shortlisting the condos Hartford had sent when Maddie buzzed him again at 2p.m. on the dot.
“If that’s Miss Michaels, tell her to come straight in. And hold my calls for the next half hour.”
“Er… Yes, Mr. King.”
The door to his office swung open.
Leia entered and kicked the door shut. Noah realized he’d been holding his breath and released it.
Holy hell, she was so fucking beautiful. The memory of her grinding her sweet cunt into his face plastered itself across his vision. His body revved up, forcing him to remain seated.
Let her come to him.
His gaze swept greedily over her, then conducted a slower journey.
Her skirt suit would’ve been boring had it not been for its short length and the two-inch panels of leather running down both sides.
Underneath her leather-trimmed jacket, she wore another one of those semi see-through tops.
His fingers itched to undress her, spread her on the floor and pound his frustration into her.
Chunky jewelry draped her neck. On closer examination, he noticed faint finger marks on her throat.
He’d done that. Left his imprint on her skin.
The guilt he’d expected to feel never materialized as satisfaction tipped his lips.
He may be as pissed as hell with her, but the idea of Snyder seeing those marks on her filled him with childish glee.
She slammed the piece of paper in her hand on his desk.
“‘Be in my office at 2p.m. sharp or what I did to you with my mouth last night will feel like a Disney sing-along compared to what I’ll do to you this time?’ Do you have any idea how I felt having this delivered to me during my lunch meeting? ”
“I wanted to make sure you didn’t mistake my intentions. I take it you read it out loud to your lunch companions?”
She gasped. “Are you insane? Of course I didn’t!”
“Then I fail to see what you have to be embarrassed about.”
“That’s not the point. I was in a public place. Your note could’ve fallen into anyone’s hands. Hell, the waiter smirked as he gave it to me so he most likely read it. And who was that guy who delivered the note? He wore a disgusting smirk too, by the way.”
“A friend of mine.”
Her fingers closed over the note and scrunched it into an angry ball before tossing it back onto his desk. “Oh, and he just happened to be in the neighborhood where I was having lunch?”
“Sure, let’s go with that,” he answered.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re having me followed, aren’t you? That’s how you knew where I was last night.”
“Let’s go with that too. ”
“I want it to stop.”
“No fucking chance in hell.”
“The deadline for delivering the blackmail money isn’t till the end of the week. I hardly think Stephen’s going to do anything stupid before then to jeopardize things.”
Noah laughed. “Are you seriously trying to rationalize how a psychotic rapist’s mind works? What do you think he’s going to do when the deadline comes and goes and he doesn’t get his money?”
A trace of apprehension slid over her face. “I can protect myself.”
“Wake up and face reality, Leia. He’s been in prison.
And people like him, they don’t get rehabilitated.
He proved that by coming after you the second he was free.
Finding that bastard asap and putting him back behind bars is the only option here.
Until he is, I won’t be telling my man to stand down. End of subject.”
She looked ready to argue the point. He short-circuited it by picking up her phone and holding it out to her. “You left that on my bedroom floor, apparently.”
“Apparently?” Her hand brushed his, and a tiny gasp escaped her as electricity zapped at the point of contact.
“Maddie found it when she was packing up my stuff.”
Dark grey eyes met his for a second before they skated over him to the view beyond his window. “You never did tell me where you’re staying.”
He relaxed in his seat. “Upstairs, for now. I had some of the offices converted into a corporate suite when I leased the place.”
Her gaze snapped upward and stayed there, as if she had X-ray vision that could see his current sleeping quarters.
He suppressed a smile. “You have something for me?”
Nodding reluctantly, she reached into her large handbag and passed out the neatly folded T-shirt. Her movements were slow when she handed it over. “What’s so special about this T-shirt anyway?”
He took it and tossed it onto his desk. “You forfeited the right to know about 11a.m. on Saturday morning. Did your board meeting go okay this morning?”
“As well as can be expected,” she said vaguely, her gaze sliding from him to flit around the room.
Irritation snapped through him. He got up, rounded his desk and perched on the edge. “Focus, Leia. What’s going on?”
She looked at him and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you haven’t looked at me for longer than two seconds since you walked into my office.”
She cleared her throat and fidgeted some more. “What we did last night?—”
He chuckled. “You mean, me turning your ass red and eating your pussy, and you loving every second of it?”
Her face flamed bright red.
Noah barely stopped a smile from splitting his face. Good to know some things hadn’t changed. He tucked a stray hair behind her ear and had the satisfaction of feeling her shiver.
“What about it, baby?”
“I don’t want it to happen again.”
His almost-smile evaporated, and he grabbed her arm. “Come again?”
A cute grimace crawled over her face. “That’s the problem. I don’t want to. Not with you.”
He straightened. “Then who the hell with?”
“No, I didn’t mean that,” she said in a rush, then shook her head. “You… This… It’s messing with my head. I don’t want to see you again, not if…”
“Not if what?” he grated .
“Not if we can’t be friends.”
Blind anger surged high. “Are you fucking kidding me? You break up with me less than three days ago and you want to be friends?”
She flinched. “You don’t want to be friends, but you have people watching me and you think you can summon me to your office whenever you please?”
“I never claimed to be a rational human being.”
“God, how can you not see how fucked up all this is?”
He shrugged. “I know how we can make everything sane again.” And it didn’t involve him being fucking friend-zoned.
She stared at him with a mixture of sadness and determination. “I’m not changing my mind about us, N…” She pressed her lips together to stop his name spilling out.
“I’m not going to beg you to come back if that’s what you think. I was going to suggest a straight-up fuck.”
She choked. “Excuse me?”
“You. Bent over the back of my couch. Me. Pounding into you. One time only offer. No muss. No fuss. We never really got a chance for a proper goodbye.”