8. ALEX
8
ALEX
F uck. Me. Sideways.
I’d never met a woman who was more infuriating and more attractive than Charlotte Reynolds.
I headed back toward the car, and Dave, the bodyguard our PR manager had insisted he bring along, opened the door for me.
I slid into the seat next to Ben, who had sunk into his seat, his long legs practically folded double so he could lounge like the teenager he hadn’t been in fourteen years.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Ben asked.
He looked up at me with his hazel eyes, his slim face curious. He had a shock of dark blond hair on his head that was mussed up and tousled like he’d spent the afternoon pushing his fingers into it.
“What was what all about?”
“That woman. You two looked like you were ready to kill each other… or fuck each other.”
Damn it, had it been that obvious?
“She’s an activist.”
“Yeah, I could tell. The gloves gave it away. And her picker scepter she left behind on the beach before she stormed down on you.”
I hadn’t seen that. I’d only noticed her when she’d been close by. Ben had had a nice vantage point from the car, where none of the reporters had been focusing their attention.
We’d been on our way back from a research and development center where the team was working on some new smart technology. Henry O’Connell had emailed the suggestion to Chris, and we’d decided to get on board.
While we were there I’d also raised the question of sustainability. The downside had been when the team had looked at me like I’d started speaking in a different language.
“She was just trying to convince me we’re wrong and they’re right,” I said.
“Did it work?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ben laughed. He was three years older than I was, but he’d been adopted last, when we’d all been teenagers. He’d fallen into our family troubled and giving us all a hard time, and not all of that had subsided yet.
“You looked like you wanted to be on the same side. Or rather… on top of each other.”
I snorted and looked out of the window.
“If you fuck this up, I’m taking over,” Ben said.
I glared at him. “I’m not fucking anything up. And you can back off, asshole.”
Ben held up his hands and laughed. “I’m just saying, I’ve seen what happens when a dame gets involved and that one there is a hell of a firecracker. Doesn’t look like you’re ready for this one.”
I bristled as the car slid through the streets of Newport. I was pissed off at Ben for challenging my position in the company.
He’d always been serious about vying for my job. He was the head of the private jet manufacturing side of things; I handled yachts, but he’d have loved to have both under his control.
Come to think of it, so would I, but that wasn’t the point. We each had a role to play in this company, and Ben had to back off if he wanted things to stay as friendly as they were.
And he had to keep his mouth shut about Charlotte. The more he pushed, the more pissed off I got, and that was a surefire way for him to know that there really was something there. Otherwise, it wouldn’t bother me at all.
Ben’s phone pinged, and his thumbs tapped on the screen as he replied, his focus finally diverted from me. I was grateful for whoever demanded his attention.
My mind drifted immediately back to Charlotte.
Her honey hair and deep eyes were hypnotizing; the way she used her mouth made me want to kiss her. And when she was angry, or flustered—or both—that just made me want to peel her clothes off her and get her under me, naked. I didn’t know what it was about her, but I wanted her.
She had this strange effect on me where she pissed me off completely with one or two sentences and made me lose all sense of self-control at the same time.
That was a problem. I’d been a lot of things in my life, but out of control wasn’t one of them.
Besides, she wasn’t available. Not to me, anyway. She wasn’t just Gabe’s sister, she was the activist directly opposed to what I was doing, and she was…
Stunning.
Fuck.
When I got home, I was riled up. My skin was on fire, my cock a thick ridge in my pants, and I was hot and bothered. I couldn’t get her out of my mind—Charlotte and the night we’d spent together.
Perfect.
Pure poetry, the way our bodies had moved together.
When she’d looked at me, she hadn’t seen the name, the money, the reputation, and the gilded future she could have with me the way everyone else did.
She’d seen me . How many people really saw me?
I sat down on the couch with a tumbler of whiskey and my laptop. Work never stopped, so neither did I. There was always something to do, someone to woo or appease, money to make.
It was hard to focus on work, though. Charlotte was front and center in my mind. The way her lips moved when she talked. The way I could get lost in her eyes or tangle my fingers in her honey-blonde hair.
I groaned and pushed my laptop aside. My body was strung; I was on edge, wired. When I felt like this, I usually went out to find someone to get underneath me so that I could get rid of it.
That wasn’t going to cut it. I didn’t want anyone else.
I wanted Charlotte.
Going to find a place to rest my dick today wouldn’t be remotely satisfying, and it would just come with the added baggage of telling whoever I’d found that no, this wasn’t a long-term arrangement, yes, I was sure, no, I didn’t want a number or a repeat session or a date to see if they could change my mind.
I tugged my zipper down and palmed my thick flesh. I was hot and hard and I would just have to deal with this shit by myself tonight.
My windows were full-length and overlooked the ocean, but they were privacy windows, and even if someone could see all the way up here to the penthouse, no one would see me come undone over a woman who got me hot and feverish even when she wasn’t around.
I stroked myself, thinking about how much I would love to fuck her again.
When I’d seen her on the beach today, got lost in her eyes… she’d been so shy and so vehement at the same time. Two sides of the same coin.
My cock was a beast, pulsing in my hand, and I groaned as I jerked off to the thought of her voice. I wanted her to press her lips against my ear and whisper dirty things to me.
I wanted to have her right here, naked, on top of me right now.
A woman I shouldn’t be thinking about at all.
The only woman I had ever met who could get under my skin.
I could picture her perfectly, hear the sound of her breath hitching in her throat, feel the clench of her pussy around my dick.
I could still taste her, her scent, and her flavor in my nostrils. Her tight heat clenched around me, and the way her breath caught every time I entered her.
She had been everything.
Her breasts had been so perfect, her nipples like ripe berries, and her pussy was so slick and ready for me, and the way her lips looked, parted when she gasped with pleasure…
I stroked faster and groaned as the pressure built, as my balls tightened. I pumped harder and harder, gritting my teeth.
She’d been so wet for me, and she’d wanted me just as much as I wanted her.
I stroked my hard cock with the images of her writhing underneath me, her breasts heaving, her mouth open and moaning my name.
My thumb stroked over the tip, and then I imagined her on her knees, her big brown eyes looking up at me, closing those perfect lips around my shaft and swallowing me down.
It was more than enough.
I came hard, spilling all over my hand and groaning as pleasure crashed over me.
My cock pulsed and twitched in my hand, and I gasped her name into the silence of the room. “Charlotte!”
It felt good, so fucking good, but it didn’t help.
Nothing helped.
She had been everything, but I wasn’t allowed to go near her again. I wouldn’t be able to control myself.
I sat back on the couch, calming down in the aftermath of my only-marginally-satisfying orgasm. My mind drifted to Charlotte—not naked, but the rest of her. Her passion. The way she’d talked to me like she genuinely wanted to know about me. She hadn’t just been making small talk.
She’d wanted to know who I was underneath my mask, underneath my armored plates.
Underneath the image I showed the world.
But what would that do? If she found out who I really was, she’d go running for the hills. There was no way she would still see me as someone interesting when she knew the truth.
When she understood where I came from.
What I wasn’t rather than what I was.
The hum of lust slowly faded, replaced by an uneasy churning in my stomach. I let go of myself and yanked my pants back up.
I scowled, got up—the darkness was threatening to creep in, and I hated it. I hated the memories that came back to me with it. I’d been able to push it all away for so long, pretending it didn’t exist. No one else knew about it, so I could act like it wasn’t real.
That didn’t change the truth.
I walked through the penthouse, switching on every light in every room, trying to drive away the darkness, trying to drive away the agony.
Karma sure had a funny way of screwing me over. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve this—I was pretty sure there was more than just one isolated thing. I’d fucked countless girls and discarded them once I was satisfied, insisting that love wasn’t for me, and this had to be punishment for that.
That the one woman I actually wanted to get to know, the one woman who’d caught my attention, was the one woman I wasn’t allowed to have.
Not just because of who she was and where we stood on the social scale.
But because of who I was underneath this immaculate facade.
Damn it! Fate could be so fucking cruel.
But what was I thinking? That I would find a beautiful woman like Charlotte and settle down? Play happy families like my parents did?
It wasn’t that simple. I’d grown up in a home where the only form of affection I’d ever felt had been in fists raining down on me. I’d seen my real dad beat up my real mom so that she could barely breathe.
I’d felt the sting, nursed the bruises. I still had the scars where there hadn’t been money for stitches.
Love was an illusion. Love was pain, embroidered with empty promises and gifts that never made up for the broken shards underneath it.
Thomas and Eleanor Blackwood—the only people who’d been actual parents to me—had found something special but that wasn’t for everyone. They’d been lucky, and that didn’t happen to the rest of the world.
I wasn’t under any illusions. I wasn’t stupid enough to think just because I’d grown up with a great example it meant that life had other possibilities for me, too.
I wasn’t a dreamer. I was a realist.
And the reality was I was an idiot even thinking about having anything more than a one-night stand with Charlotte.
If anything, I should be happy that she was out of reach so that I didn’t for one second buy into the lie that I could have that kind of happily ever after.
The lights on didn’t help.
I aimed for the bar, planning to drown my sorrows again, but whiskey or bourbon or scotch wasn’t going to fill the cracks inside of me.
They might have taken me away from my abusive parents, might have saved me from the physical pain, but I’d been broken back then, and when you were broken as a kid, those cracks and fissures never healed.
I hid behind tailored suits and fancy cars, big words, and a shit ton of money, but that didn’t change the facts. Behind it all, I was nothing more than the bruised little boy, too fucked up to love, only good enough to act as a punching bag.
The pain that flooded in out of nowhere was almost too much to bear. I struggled to breathe. My skin felt like it was on fire. My clothes scraped against my body, and I walked through the apartment.
I turned the hot water on, stripped, not bothering to hang up my suit. Dry-cleaning could get it for me in the morning.
I stepped under the spray, the hot water like needles on my skin.
The heat, the pain, was the only thing that grounded me, and the panic started to subside.
Fuck.
It had been years since I’d had a panic attack like this. It had been ages since I’d thought about my past, about the kid I used to be. It was easy to forget who I’d been and where I’d come from when there was no one to remind me that I wasn’t enough.
With Charlotte, I was reminded of that. I had all the money in the world, a name, a company that meant everything. People respected me, envied me. Worshipped me, even.
None of them knew who I really was, and that didn’t matter. As long as I could keep them at arm’s length, who the fuck cared?
But Charlotte wasn’t like the others. Keeping her at a distance didn’t work. When I was around her, I wanted to open up.
And if I did… she would see me .
The scars.
The bruises.
The fucked-up person hidden inside.
She would run for the hills. It would be better if she did, too.
I didn’t deserve someone like her.
She was wholesome and pure and determined and she needed someone who could stand tall and proud by her side and support her, let her light shine.
I was a Blackwood, scarred and marred.
And she was a bird who deserved to spread her wings and fly.