3. Delilah
His chest heavedas he sucked in one sharp breath after another, sweat soaking through his shirt. “Desperately, Lily,” he muttered, finally answering my question. “I missed you so fucking much, it felt like I couldn’t breathe from the moment I left until the pilot landed on the roof. Two weeks without you was agony.”
While his words melted me, they only made the growing ache in my heart bigger. “So desperate you only called me twice.”
Another jolt caused his body to shudder, as if I’d physically struck him. Challenging him was not something I did. Ever. But there was too much uncertainty whirling around inside me. Too much doubt about what I meant to him. About our future together.
There would be no escaping him whether we were a couple or not. We were two sides of the same coin when it came to the hotel, forever linked, regardless of our personal feelings for each other. Which made his insistence that we keep this thing between us hidden that much more confusing.
Our grandfathers would have been clinking their highball glasses together in the afterlife if we were to get married. It was what they had always hoped for when they’d started their own families. Part of me suspected that was why Grandpa Howie had been pleased when I was born, why he’d shown me what little affection he was capable of, when everyone else got only his harshness. My father had been hoping for a son, but Howard Royal and Gus Phoenix had supposedly thrown a huge party to celebrate the advent of my birth—but more the fact that I was a girl.
I couldn’t help wondering how pleased the two old men would have been that I was pregnant with the Royal-Phoenix heir.
But the real question was, how would Nash Phoenix react to that news?
A frown tugged at his brows as he carefully pulled out of me. We both sucked in a pained breath at our separation. “Are you upset with me?”
Before I could answer, the phone on his desk rang. Without waiting for my response, Nash stuffed himself back into his slacks and flipped on the speaker with a barked, “What?”
“You have a breakfast meeting with Joseph in thirty minutes,” Heath reminded him.
Rolling my eyes, I slid off the desk. A combination of our fluids was already streaming out of me. It didn’t surprise me that I hadn’t lasted more than five minutes before I’d let him fuck me.
Walking into his private bathroom, I cleaned myself up and righted my clothes. My panties were in shreds, but I stuffed them into my skirt pocket. When I stepped out, it was to find Nash shrugging on his suit jacket. “I need a shower before I have to deal with your father.”
“Have fun with that.” I picked up my phone, to-do list, and access key.
He wrapped his arms around me from behind, his mouth brushing tenderly over my neck. “We could take a nap together when I’m done.”
His offer was surprising but too tempting to pass up. I was so tired. A few hours of sleep wrapped around him sounded like heaven to me. “Your suite or mine?”
Turning me to face him, he dropped a quick kiss on my lips. “I’ll meet you in your bed in an hour.”
Beaming, I hugged him. Maybe it was just pregnancy hormones making me sensitive to the unknowns in our relationship.
And maybe I was desperate for any sign that I meant more to him than a secret fucktoy.
Ugh! I squished the taunting voice back into the shadowed part of my mind where it belonged. All we needed was to talk, which I promised myself we would do after our nap.
“One hour,” I agreed. That would give me time to deal with a few things before I turned the celebrity poker tournament over to another assistant manager. “Don’t be late.”
* * *
He was late.
Two hours after I’d left Nash’s office, he still hadn’t joined me in bed. I tossed back my covers. Getting up too fast was a mistake, but the little black spots around my vision only lasted a few seconds before I was steady on my feet again.
Angrily, I went into my closet and grabbed the first dress I touched. Slipping it on over the bra and panty set I’d changed into after my shower when I’d come back to my rooms, I grabbed my phone and stomped toward my father’s suite.
His was more of a villa-style than mine, which had a sitting room, a small library, my bedroom, a walk-in closet, and a bathroom. Having a kitchen was a waste of space since I typically ate with my family.
Family?
My father was all I had now, and our relationship was…chilly at best. I loved him, but he and I had never been very close. He’d divorced my mother when I was six, and I hadn’t seen her since. Nicole was hard to stomach on a good day, but I tolerated her for my dad’s sake.
Using my key, I let myself into the apartment, going straight for the formal dining room where I expected Joseph Royal to be if he was having a business breakfast with Nash. He’d never been much of a father. So, more often than not, I refered to him by his given name whenever I thought about him.
As I neared, I heard Nicole’s voice, and I slowed my steps.
“I didn’t hear you complaining when I was on my knees for you, Nash.”
I stopped completely, feet away from the dining room entrance. I couldn’t have heard her correctly. There was no way my stepmother had just said she…
“Putting my cock in your mouth was the only way to get you to shut the fuck up.” Nash’s words barely penetrated my mind as a wave of jealousy smacked me in the face. My nails bit into my palms, my eyes clenched shut, a hundred moments running through my mind on repeat.
Nicole watching Nash, an expression I didn’t want to name burning in her blue eyes. Always looking at him when she thought no one would notice. I’d ignored it, refusing to acknowledge that my father’s new wife would drool over another man. Nash was the kind of man that drew attention—and not just from the opposite sex. Men took stock of him the moment he entered any room. It was impossible for them to measure themselves against him, each one instantly knowing they were somehow lacking.
While my father was a handsome man, he lacked the aura of confidence Nash exuded so effortlessly.
Each interaction I’d witnessed between Nash and Nicole replayed in my head, taking on a new point of view. Unlike me, Nash didn’t even pretend to tolerate the woman. That muscle that always ticked in his jaw when he ground his teeth was a constant companion when she was near. Before, I’d figured it was because she annoyed him as much as she did me.
But what if that wasn’t why at all?
What if…
What if it was because he was jealous of her being with my father?
Bile rose in the back of my throat.
Oh God, what if he’d been with her the whole time we had been together?
We’d never discussed if we were exclusive. I’d just assumed…
A lot of things, apparently.
Nicole had come into my father’s life suddenly five months ago. Before then, I’d never met the woman. She wasn’t from Vegas, and she definitely didn’t have other friends in our social group. It was right after Grandpa Howie passed, so Joseph’s short acquaintance with her, followed by the two of them randomly announcing they had gotten married, had taken me by surprise.
But never once did I imagine she and Nash had a past together.
“What do you want, Nicole?” Nash asked, his tone arctic yet oddly bored, almost detached. “Make this quick. I’m already late for an important meeting. Joseph’s continued incompetence has put me behind schedule, as usual.”
Even if I set aside the whole insinuation that Nicole had sucked his cock at some point in the past—it better have been the distant past!—it stung hearing him describe spending time with me as a meeting, something he needed to add to his schedule. As if I was a chore he had to check off his to-do list.
If he was even referring to his promised nap with me.
Stupid girl. Of course he wasn’t actually going to snuggle with you. He knew you were upset with him and was looking for a way to placate you.
Nicole’s laugh was meant to be seductive, a purr of amusement. I’d heard it one too many times while she flirted with my father. To me, it sounded like nails on a chalkboard.
“I think it is I who should be asking you that, Nash. You broke up with me eight months ago because you said you had to marry that stupid girl. Howard Royal insisted. Now, here you are, not married or even engaged.”
My heart lurched, then squeezed hard when Nash remained silent.
“You’re making Joseph anxious,” Nicole snipped, her tone going from coy to hard in the same moment. “The will stipulates if you haven’t married her by her twenty-first birthday, the Royal half of the hotel becomes yours. That will strip her and Joseph of their birthright. How can you be so heartless, Nash? ”
No!
A wave of dizziness had me bracing a hand against the wall, dread and rage and heartbreak a swirl of chaos in my mind.
When my grandfather’s will had been executed, the only two people who had been allowed to sit down with the lawyers were my father and Nash. I’d been too distraught with grief to care. Neither of them ever spoke about the will afterward, but I had felt a rise in the tension between Nash and my father ever since. It hadn’t surprised me, though.
Nash thought my dad was incompetent—which was fair. He definitely did not have what it took to run the hotel smoothly. Grandpa Howie had given him small projects over the years, but they all fell through, and then he would have to be dug out of the mess he’d made. After Howard’s death, however, Nash had to work closer with him. Which had been disastrous at best.
With Nicole’s arrival on the scene, Joseph had been even more distracted. He liked to gamble, but not in the casinos. For him, the stock market was where he kept his focus, and he was fairly good at it. He should have made that his career.
“I see the idiot didn’t keep his mouth shut,” Nash commented in that same bored tone. “He had one rule to follow and couldn’t even get that correct. Do you understand the amount of money he will lose now that I know he shared details of the will with you?”
“Only if you tell the lawyers,” Nicole murmured. “And you’re not going to, are you, Nash baby?”
“That tone didn’t work on me when I was fucking you. It sure as hell won’t help you now. One call to the lawyers and half of the money Howard left to Joseph will be gone. He knew the stipulations, and he still chose to violate them.”
“Are you really going to do this?” Nicole cried. “Joseph will lose everything but our money if you don’t marry Delilah by her twenty-first birthday. That’s only two weeks away!”
“Tragic.”