15. Shiny Little Euphemism
15
Shiny Little Euphemism
GREYSON
When Arthur pulled up to Hart House after work and hopped out to open my door, Jackson was walking Max out, both of them grinning.
It was rather unnerving, like a couple of creepy ass clowns. That sensation intensified when their focus turned on me.
“Evening, Max,” I greeted as he closed the gap with a hand outstretched. Jax retreated into the house behind him.
Grasping forearms, Max said, “Greyson, thanks for having me. It’s been a pleasure working with her.”
“Awfully formal tone for someone I’ve taken shots with. Anything I should be concerned about?”
“Nah, I just…hadn’t ever got to sit with Alice while she did her thing.”
The smile threatening my composure was entirely authentic. “She’s amazing.”
“She is. I knew that part, though.”
“Where you headed?”
“I’ve got a date,” he answered with—at least from what I could tell—an uncharacteristically sheepish grin. “Day trader in the city.”
“What’s his name?”
“Kyle Walbherg. You know him?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“Well. Wish me luck. I’ll have your analysis and action plan back by Monday,” he promised, giving a salute of a wave.
“Appreciate it. You staying in the city?”
“Yeah, I think I’ll give you two your space for the night.”
“Don’t be silly. She adores you. Besides, there’s plenty of room,” I said, arms wide to emphasize the front of the house. Opening the car door, Max turned over his shoulder, that creepy smile back on his face.
With a wink, he said, “You’re gonna need it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mischief . That was what the smirk across Max’s face was. Because smirking in answer to a question wasn’t unsettling as fuck. “Max? What’s that supposed to mean?”
His Uber driver closed the door behind him and, with a vague nod in my direction, circled the hood to get into the driver’s side. Without another answer, they descended the drive, and I was left staring up at my house, wondering what in the hell they’d gotten into today.
I was a trained Navy Seal, for god’s sake. I didn’t get to be scared to go inside my own damn house. Terrifying though she may be, Alice was five-foot-ten, and I was pretty sure I could take her.
With a fortifying breath, I shoved open the front door and found the entire space…quiet. Dark. I wandered to Alice’s room, where she liked to draw or paint as the sun set. Nothing . Easing the door closed behind me, I headed for the kitchen. Nothing . Balcony? Nada .
“Alice?” I called as I wandered into the dark dining room, only to find it empty, and deciding Jax must be hunkered down in the security room. When I finally reached our room, I hesitantly opened my own damn door like an intruder, which is when I heard her… singing . Given the acoustics, she had to be in the ensuite bathroom.
Never in the two years she’d worked for me had I been given any indication the woman could sing. And she could sing. Beautifully. So well that I leaned into the door when it clicked shut behind me. Just to steal another moment. I didn’t know what she was singing—something about finding peace in a place with black sand. But her words lulled me onto the edge of the bed, sitting in silence to soak up the pain buried in her voice as I loosened my tie.
Pain I prayed I hadn’t put there.
Charcoal, paints, music… Alice hid the heart of an artist behind data and strategy.
I was just yanking my second shoe free when her pitch changed, my ears straining for her footsteps and instead hearing the clink of metal as something zoomed through my peripheral. Tracking the flash of gold, I found the cross necklace I’d given her beside me and snapped my head up, turning to watch Alice step into my room wearing nothing but a white bath towel wrapped around her still-damp body. Long tendrils of dark, wet hair hung over her shoulders. Her song, naturally, stopped.
“I told you I didn’t want your money, Greyson.”
She knew. She knew enough . Voice level, I countered, “But there are circumstances where you might need it. Dragging you into this…” I shook my head. “You’re my responsibility in this.”
Like two predators sizing each other up, she prowled into the room, eyes locked on me. Wrapping the necklace around my fist, I brought the cross to my lips, bracing for whatever her reaction would be. Ever since that day in the office last month, this woman had held the ability to break me. There wasn’t a world where I could look at her like collateral, which meant she undoubtedly had the upper hand here.
I might be the face of the company, but Alice would be the one calling the shots.
“Were you ever going to tell me?” she asked softly. To my surprise, when she reached the bed, she nudged my knees apart and stepped between them. Breath flying into my lungs, my hands fell to settle on her hips. Grateful for the feel of her. The soft give of her body beneath the fabric. The heat from her shower.
Of all the reactions to what was contained on that flash drive, I had to admit this was not the one I expected.
“Grey, answer me. Were you ever going to tell me about Thunderstrike ?”
“Why didn’t you ask?” I parried the question with one of her own.
Scowling, she ran her teeth over her bottom lip, and I beat back the desire to do the same. “I did.”
“Why didn’t you ask again ?” I clarified. Smiling when she went pensive, I explained, “We haven’t had the time to confront all of this.”
She blinked before sucking down a breath. “Touché, Hart.”
Pride brimming through, demanding I smile up at her as my hands tightened on her hips, I asked, “So?”
“So?” she echoed back.
“What were you singing?”
Her eyes went wide with surprise, and then she laughed. “Borders, by Kalandra.”
“It was beautiful. Your voice is beautiful.”
“Thank you. But, stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“You know what you’re doing. And Thunderstrike is like Blackwater. Now. What part do you play?” she volleyed back. When I just stared up at her, willing her to vocalize what she suspected, she stated, “You’re hunting predators. On a global scale.”
“No,” I said simply, smiling when her lips twitched. Running my fingers from the soft fabric of her towel, I ventured up and over to bare skin, encouraged when she closed her eyes, sucking down another controlled breath as goosebumps erupted over her arms.
“You’re funding men who hunt predators.” Her fingers twined in my hair, slinking an inch deeper between my legs as my hands ran up and down the length of her.
“Legally speaking, they’re advocates for trafficking victims.”
“Shiny little euphemism, there.”
“One leads to prison time. The other doesn’t.”
She blew out a breath, and my world tilted as she leaned a knee onto the mattress, the promise of her wet heat hovering an inch from where I needed her. “Pragmatic of you. So are the crypto keys. I’m assuming none of that can be traced.” I certainly didn’t need her approval or affirmation, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t loving being on the receiving end of it. “How much is on there, Grey?”
“Enough.” In a world where the government owned our resources and could freeze them at the drop of a hat, where banks bordered on bankruptcy, diversifying our reserves had become necessary. Crypto was one of several—the security and anonymity unmatched. I’d loaded Alice’s necklace with enough to help her vanish, trusting she was clever enough to do it should the need arise.
“ Greyson ,” she scolded.
“Enough to start over.”
“Because this is dangerous—what you’re doing?”
“Yes,” I answered honestly. “Nobody likes someone threatening their supply chain.”
A chill ran down her body, but when I removed my hands, she snatched one, bringing it to her face. Her remarkable, mesmerizing face.
I ran my thumb over her full bottom lip this time. The tiny scar just below it.
Fuck me, this woman was bold when she was authentic. I allowed my other hand to settle at her waist again, mesmerized by the alien warmth in my chest.
Wanted . I couldn’t remember the last time I felt sincerely wanted. Let alone by someone that could give a shit less about my influence or the number of commas in my net worth.
Had I ever known desire like that?
I didn’t think so. Which was why my attention was categorically divided when she kept pressing for information when all I wanted to do was press into her.
“You saw something. Found something when you were over there?” When I just nodded, she huffed a pouty little breath. “You’re not supposed to talk about it?” I shook my head, and she swallowed harder than before. “But it’s why you do this.”
Snatching her hand, I brought it to my face, mirroring how she’d placed mine. She braced her weight on my shoulder and eased the rest of her body onto the mattress, straddling me properly now with her heaving breasts directly below my eyeline. I wrapped my free arm around the small of her back, pinning her against me as the last of my blood headed south. It was impossible to breathe, knowing a towel was the only barrier between me and all of her. The heat of her body robbed all my senses, cock straining against the zipper of my pants.
“Do you go out on these ops?” she asked, though the punch of demand was lost with her breathlessness.
“Not usually,” I admitted. “My back is a liability. Too easy to be rendered useless by the pain—if I move wrong or take a nasty impact, or we’re in the cold.”
She nodded, gaze analytical as she studied my face. No pity. No sympathy. Just facts.
More confidently than I felt, I asked, “Are you in?”
“I’m just beginning to grasp what that entails.”
“But you’re not running for the hills,” I pointed out. She studied me for a long beat before shaking her head once.
“No, Grey. I’m not running,” she said, giving my hair a little tug for emphasis.
God damn, this woman was mine. Maybe she didn’t know it yet. Maybe I couldn’t wrap my head around how the fuck I felt any right to claim her. But she was.
It was that understanding that sent me flipping her onto her back, holding myself over her as I breathed her in. “There is no going back,” I reiterated, no longer just discussing Thunderstrike .
“No,” she agreed. “There’s not.” Her words solidified a bond to Alice Rhodes— Hart , I corrected myself—I never anticipated experiencing.
For the first time in my life, I felt seen . Seen by a woman who wasn’t screaming as she bolted. By a woman who’d been witness to the worst of me for two years straight and was still choosing me now.
We were only just beginning to get to know each other—the real us —but it was enough.
Alice’s fingers finding the buttons of my shirt gave me all the permission I needed. Mouths colliding, hands roaming, I memorized her lines as she worked the buttons free. Her body fit perfectly in my grasp, and fuck, if I didn’t need her skin on mine.
Alice
If I fuck someone, it will mean something to me …
For two years, I shared air with this man. The entire time believing I was some pawn he viewed as below him—easily discarded and easier to forget.
But he’d stated his feelings around sex quite bluntly that first day, which meant that the monster erection pressed against my belly would either be forgotten or very intentionally put to use. A shiver of anticipation worked down my spine, my body shuddering into him.
Now, I was physically below him and absolutely relishing the hard planes of his body ranging over mine. His gorgeous hazel greens ignited, the pupils blown wide, before Greyson dove for my neck. Nothing about the way this man touched or kissed me said I was anything shy of royalty. Neither did his satisfied rumble as I raked my fingers over his shoulders, loathing the suit still between us.
Princess , he’d once called me. I felt like his queen now .
Like the king he was always born to be, Greyson shifted seamlessly from conversing to conquering.
Mouth rough on the tender skin of my neck, he kissed a bruising line up the column.
So much need. So much demand in each forceful suck that rendered me speechless as I arched, dropping my head back to grant him access to every inch of skin.
This wasn’t some casual carnal craving—not by what I knew of him or the way he rocked his hips against mine like I was his for the taking. Not in the way he came up for air, only to chuck off his jacket and loose button-up like a man unleashed.
In the next motion, he gently seized my arms, smoothly guiding them above my head and locking them in one hand as the other roughly scraped over my body like he couldn’t mark enough of me.
No, this was a full-scale possession.
And I hadn’t realized how deeply I needed it. To be owned like this. To be desired and used and pleasured by a man who only took what he wanted.
By a man who wanted me .
Propped up on the forearm still pinning my wrists—as if they weren’t even a hindrance—he pulled back to look at me, wetting his lips as a cocky smile quirked one side of his mouth. I thought he’d kiss me again as he leaned down. Instead, he just hovered, swapping breath as those fiery eyes studied my own.
Sliding his free hand down to where I’d knotted the towel around my chest, Greyson breathed, “I’ve dreamed of doing this since the moment you walked into my office wearing that little black dress and blue blazer.”
That was my first day. The cobalt blazer had been a gift from Elora— a power color . That’s what she said. Apparently, that was an accurate marketing pitch.
“Oh, bullshit,” I breathed. “Save your flattery, Grey.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” he growled, robbing my breath in the next motion as he jerked the towel free. Baring all of me to him. Satisfied in the wake of my silence, his eyes scraped down to my heaving chest, his nostrils flaring and jaw clenching, before he snarled, “ Fuck .”
He almost sounded annoyed . I wanted to say something snarky, to shove against the hold he had on my arms and take back some ounce of control, but Greyson was already moving.
It was the hard, wet pull of his mouth on my breast that permanently silenced me.
Whatever contents my brain once possessed liquefied and spilled free under the hands and mouth of Greyson Hart.
He swirled my nipple in his harsh mouth, a delicious pull of pain and pleasure fanning the inferno of lust, turning my body into a rag doll at this man’s absolute disposal.
The moment he released my wrists, I threw my hands into his hair with a whimper of relief. I needed to feel him. To commit this moment to memory and hold it for rainy days. With that soul-igniting intensity I knew in all other aspects of his life, Greyson’s hands moved to my body, scraping over my ribs and seizing my hips as he lowered himself off the bed and to his knees. With one forceful movement, he parted my thighs, muttering a curse as he revealed my weeping center.
Seriously. All it took was this man’s brute force, expertly distributed over my desperate skin, and my vagina was begging for him to fill me.
“You’re so wet, and I haven’t even started.”
Before I could produce what I’m sure would have been a very witty comeback about the size of the tent in his pants, he dove into my pussy. I thanked every deity that I’d taken El and Hadlee’s advice and kept up a consistent wax schedule. Because he didn’t hesitate to bury his face in my soaked center and lick straight through the middle, sending my spine bowing off the mattress.
“ Grey ,” I whimpered, earning an approving hum before he inhaled deeply. Damn, no pressure.
“Never thought I’d get to taste you,” he breathed, coming up for air with my juices glistening on his stubbled face. I leaned up on an elbow, reaching out my other hand to haul him up to me by his perfectly disheveled hair. The bastard wouldn’t budge. “Not yet,” he breathed. “I need to feel you come on my tongue, baby.”
I’d never come from oral, truth be told. The thought alone made me squirm as he returned to his ministrations. Apparently, I was not, in fact, done squirming for Greyson Hart.
“Grey,” I said again, this time as a protest that earned a gentle nip of his teeth against my clit.
“Is this our house, my clever Belle?”
“Yes,” I breathed, simultaneously confused, so turned on, and terrified my brain was turning into a smoothie of warring hormones and logic.
“Good. And this is our bed?” he asked before leisurely sliding the flat of his tongue right up my center, the subtle scratch of stubble against my skin stinging in a delicious bite. All I could manage this time was a nod. “And aren’t you my wife?”
“Yes,” I panted. Okay, maybe it was more of a whimper as his lips wrapped around my clit and gave a hard pull.
“Then when we play, we do it by my rules.”
“Rules?” I repeated stupidly. Half a question, half an answer. Half a brain cell clinging to life inside my head.
“The first time my wife comes, it will be on my tongue.” If he kept up that steady stroke between sentences, that was going to happen embarrassingly quickly. “So when I take you with my cock, you can taste yourself on my lips.” Another unforgiving drag of his tongue, only this time he slipped a finger inside my throbbing core, pulling a cry from my lungs. “So you know exactly who this pussy belongs to.”
His words combined with an expert curl of his finger against a place hithertountouched and just the right amount of pressure from his lips, and I detonated like a warhead. Stars burst behind my eyelids as two years of pent-up tension exploded through every synapse in my brain. As though he could feel every ripple and wave of pleasure my body kept serving, Grey held his position even as my thighs spasmed around his face.
That wasn’t an orgasm.
That was some kind of magical, spiritual, soul-altering ascension. My very essence departed the human plane for a dimension where every muscle in my body could relax into the bed beneath me—well, every muscle except those in my throat, which were suddenly aching .
Like everything Greyson did, he wrecked me with unmatched efficiency.
Eyes half hooded, I breathlessly watched as he eased his fingers from my channel, then stood, reaching for his belt as his eyes scraped over my now languid body with wolfish satisfaction. But there was something else buried there. A kind of…approbation?
That look of wonder remained in his eyes as he ran a thumb over his lip and popped it into his mouth as though he’d gathered a bit of my pleasure to savor.
Filthy.
Animalistic.
Delicious .
My attention was diverted by a different sight, however. Because his cock was, indeed, pitching an impressive tent in his fancy slacks as he slid a condom from his back pocket. Right up until he freed it in one smooth motion that left him bare and intimidatingly beautiful before he rolled the condom right over the vascular, thick rod he’d been hiding between his legs. My mouth watered as he prowled forward, all thick muscles and a smattering of glorious, dark hair.
Perfect.
If you had asked me to draw my ideal man, he wouldn’t have held a candle to Grey as he lowered over me with some shaken cocktail of adoration and lust in his eyes. “You about made me come just by screaming my name,” he breathed, reverently lining himself up with my entrance.
Had I done that? I mean, that tracked with the raw ache in my throat. I’d evidently carved the letters of his name into my vocal cords. G-r-e-y-s-o-n.
With a devious smirk, he ordered, “Do that again.”
And I did. Because in the next breath, he slid home. There was no warning, no cautious transition. Just a vicious, delicious claiming as he filled me entirely before stilling as he glared skyward.
“God, Grey!” My hands wrapped around his body, clinging to him like a lusty little lemur on its favorite tree. “Oh my god, oh god , oh god.”
“Fuck,” he muttered again, jaw flexing. “Dammit, Alice.”
“What?” I breathed, evidently finding my lost second brain cell. The one that did the wording.
“You were made for me, beautiful. I knew you’d squeeze my cock like you needed to pump it for every last damn drop. Your pretty little cunt is as ruthless as the rest of you.”
Too many compliments. Claimings. Filthy words.
System overload.
Luckily for me, he seemed to regain his impeccable control because he shifted, robbing my breath as he set a pace hellbent on destroying me. Each slide and snap of his hips shoved me closer and closer to that edge again, and I clung onto him. My life vest in a tempest sea. Like he was the only thing between me and the abyss determined to swallow us.
My fingers hesitated when I scraped over the puckered skin of scar tissue down his spine. Inexplicably, tears welled in my eyes, my mouth popping open as I felt the evidence of that pain. The reality was that he very nearly hadn’t survived.
He smiled—a little too stiffly, but still authentically—before whispering, “It’s alright.”
“How?” I breathed, thinking of what he must’ve gone through. Thinking of that agony and hating the man that caused it. Something so simple, so often overlooked, and so unspeakably selfish.
“It brought me here. It brought me to you.”
“Grey,” I breathed for what must’ve been the millionth time.
“God, I love the way you say my name. Don’t stop.”
With that final demand, he returned to that ruthless pace, and I flattened my palms against the warm, broad plains of his back, needing him closer.
Pleasure overwhelmed my nervous system, made more intense as he wrapped a hand around my neck, thumb forcing my chin up so our eyes met. He captured me in the intensity of those dark hazels, like a butterfly in a spider’s web.
My mouth popped open, the pleasure screwing up my face as victory curved his parted lips in an endearing open-mouthed grin.
I’d expected sex, but Greyson was taking more than I’d prepared to give him. In true Hart form, he was seizing what he wanted and doing it without remorse.
My pleasure.
My body.
My sanity.
With every thrust, he carved a part of me out I’d never meant to let go of. Seeming to see or sense the fear tainting this nirvana, he ran his thumb over my jawline, still holding me captive as he panted, “I’ve got you, Alice.”
Nodding was all I could manage because the truth was, I didn’t know how to articulate the war in my body.
He smiled softly, thrusts deepening as he demanded, “So give me what I want, baby. Let go. ”
The next snap of his hips sent me hurdling right over the edge again. Hell, nobody had ever made me come twice . They certainly hadn’t told me I was a good girl or beautiful or to give them more—all kinds of dirty promises pouring from his lips until my pleasure finally claimed his.
His body went rigid a beat before he slid free, straightening abruptly so that he towered over me. Pulling the condom off, he fisted his cock, and my eyes went wide with surprise.
Scrambling, I reached for him, knocking his hand out of the way to replace it with my own.
One, two, three firm pulls were all it took before he painted my belly and chest in thick ropes of cum. Spurt after spurt, he came as hard as I had, body seizing with jerky little movements as he dropped his head back with a guttural groan.
Tears filled my eyes again, but in the next beat, his mouth was on mine, his hands cradling my face like something precious. And I was once again consumed by Greyson Hart.