Chapter 19
19
He took her out to dinner at an Indian restaurant near the Flatiron District after giving in to her pleas for a change of clothes. Post-sweaty-sex escapade, she’d also needed a shower.
After slipping into a simple cream, floaty summer dress that left her shoulders and arms bare, she’d hurriedly caught her hair up in a loose bun and added long silver dangly earrings, which brushed against her neck when she moved. Matching silver looped chains and three-inch wedges completed the look. She’d seen Zach’s very masculine appreciation when she’d returned to the car after her mad dash to get ready.
Now, he fed her fragrant rice with his fingers and didn’t care that he was making a mess.
The journey back from Newark had been as quiet as the journey there, but this time Zach’s profile held a concentration that indicated he was weighing serious issues. She’d wanted to ask if those issues involved them, but she’d been too raw from the charged experience to risk the choppy waters of Zach’s unreasonable demands.
Zachary Savage was used to getting what he wanted. And he’d decided he wanted her love, even after admitting he didn’t deserve it.
She shook her head to clear the jumbled thoughts. Tearing off a piece of peshwari nan, she dipped it in spicy sauce and held it out to him. He opened his mouth and took the offering, then nipped her fingers with his teeth.
His eyes sparkled with mirth, and her heart turned over. Of the many facets of Zach, his playful side rarely shone through, but when it did, she was overwhelmed all over again by how much her heart yearned for him.
They ploughed through several courses, their appetites voracious. Easy banter accompanied the beer and good food, and his husky, deep laugh drew more than a few glances throughout dinner.
Once the waiter had cleared away the warm water, soap and hand towels he’d indulgently brought for them to clean up with, Zach took another swig of his beer and settled the tab.
“You’re coming back to the penthouse with me.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t bother framing it as such.
“Zach.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to spend another night without you.” A trace of tension returned.
She sighed and twisted her napkin in her fingers. “Zach, don’t take this the wrong way, but you wear me out.”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “And you love it.”
“Yes, I do.” There was no point denying it. “But I really want to do a good job on the IL project. To do that I need to pay some solid attention to what I’m doing. I can’t do that with you around.”
“I distract you,” he said slowly after he drained the last of his beer and set the bottle down.
She snorted. “Is that a serious question?”
He frowned and looked genuinely hurt. Well. Go figure .
“You distract me too, but you don’t see me asking for time off. Come back with me. I’ll set you up in the library, and I promise I’ll keep my inappropriate thoughts and hands to myself. I’m sure you can do the same.”
“I don’t have inappropriate thoughts,” she lied brazenly.
“You don’t need to. Your whole fucking tight body is an inappropriate thought.”
“Zach!”
His grin was wide and unashamed, the tension gone. She had no doubt it would return. And soon. For one thing, she couldn’t avoid his heated demands to look at him when they fucked for much longer. She’d learned very early on what it meant to him to look into her eyes when he possessed her. She’d gotten away with it twice. She was almost certain there wouldn’t be a third time.
For another thing, the time was creeping up for her next question. And she had a suspicious feeling he wouldn’t like the question burning at the back of her mind.
He pulled her close beside him in the car and slung an arm over her shoulders. She leaned in and breathed deeply. He smelled of heat, and sandalwood and pure, unadulterated male. She glanced up at him and saw the teeth marks she’d left on his neck earlier. Then she glanced down and saw the faint bruising on his wrists.
“Admiring your handiwork, Peaches?” he teased.
Mortification drenched her. She kissed his neck and traced her fingers over his wrist. “I… Does it hurt?”
“For what I got in return, I’d take this and worse.”
“That would probably please me if I had a pain fetish. But I don’t. So I’m sorry.”
He tilted her face to his, serious eyes studying her. “I don’t want you to apologize for anything we do in bed, or out of it. We’re finding our way and I don’t care how we do it. As long as we do it together. Understand?” He waited until she nodded, then placed a hard kiss on her lips and tucked her head under his chin.
They remained silent for a few minutes. She closed her eyes and just listened to his steady heartbeat.
Then she sighed. “I still want to go back to my place, Zach.”
He stiffened. “Christ, Bethany. Do I need to fuck a yes out of you?” he growled.
She opened her eyes and met his intensely irritated gaze. “You could just try saying yes?” she ventured, trying to appeal to his rapidly diminishing reasonable side. “It would make me happy,” she added.
His eyes darkened, and he sucked in a long, harsh breath. “I ought to take serious issue with you even suggesting you would be happy to be without me for one night.”
“But?”
“I’ll try to be accommodating.”
“Thank you. I also need the final guest list. Have the investigative reports come back yet?”
“The first one, yes.”
She frowned. “How many did you order?”
“Normally? Two. This time… a few more.”
She knew why. “Because of me.”
“I’m not taking risks with you, baby.”
“I can take care of myself, Zach.”
“Sure you can. But I prefer to lend an active hand.”
She wasn’t going to win. So she gave up. “You’ll let me have the list as soon as it’s ready?”
“If it’ll help you finish your work quicker and get back into my bed, yes, dammit. You’ll have it in the next couple of hours.”
Smiling, she leaned up to kiss the corner of his mouth. He turned and took over and didn’t stop until her lips burned with the power of his kiss.
He pressed the intercom and informed Philip of the change of plan, then instructed him to take the most traffic-heavy route.
Bethany rolled her eyes. “Is that your idea of being accommodating?”
He shrugged unapologetically. “The best route takes thirty-five minutes. This way gives us a full hour before we get to your place. Not nearly enough, but it’ll have to do.” He released his seatbelt, pulled her into his lap and started lowering her thin straps.
Then he proceeded to work an all-night-long’s worth of sex into a single hour.
* * *
The moment she closed her apartment door, Bethany wondered whether she’d made the right choice.
She missed Zach like crazy, and it’d only been ten minutes. Her phone buzzing with Sheena requesting an asap Skype call check-in propelled her out of her sorry state and into a semblance of work mode.
Ten minutes after she fired up her laptop, her phone buzzed with a FaceTime request from Zach. Biting her lip, she decided to ignore it. She was hopelessly addicted to the man. She knew it. But she needed a tiny bit of independence from him, or she would become hopelessly lost in him. Turning her phone to silent, she worked steadily for the next hour and a half.
By the time she logged on with Sheena, she had enough to report on to not feel total shame that she’d spent half the day fucking Zach Savage instead of working.
“Where are we on the guest shortlist?” Sheena asked after perusing the report Bethany had emailed her.
“Z… Mr. Savage is sending it shortly.”
Sheena nodded. “Excellent. I see he’s chosen Rome, Kenya and/or Thailand. You’re using our people to arrange entertainment on the ground?”
“Yes. But I’m also sourcing a few contingent ones, in case we need a backup plan.”
“Good thinking. Let me have the guest list as soon as you receive it.”
Vaguely wondering why Sheena had requested a Skype call if this was all she wanted to talk about, Bethany nodded and prepared to sign off.
Her phone vibrated again, and another tingle fluttered through her. Zach had been calling almost incessantly in the last half hour. Irritation rose to mingle with the tingling. Despite missing him like crazy, she would need to have a serious conversation with him about holding up his end of a bargain to give her a little space.
“…so nothing can go wrong—am I boring you, Bethany?” Sheena interrupted sharply.
Bethany refocused and noticed Sheena’s flushed face for the first time. She also toyed with the stem of a half-glass of red wine, which she picked up and swigged from as she waited for Bethany to answer her.
“Umm… no. Of course not. I’m giving this commission my full attention.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you are,” Sheena murmured. The snarkiness in her tone was unmistakable, but there was also a wariness in her eyes that made Bethany frown.
“Is there something going on I should know about?” Bethany asked.
Sheena smirked. “You tell me.” She took another sip and slid a hand through her strawberry blonde hair, tousling it into comical disarray. “You’re the one who’s landed the big fish. Trust me, I’m all for it if it brings Neon other fat commissions. You better not think about jumping ship anytime soon.” The mild threat was delivered after another gulp of her wine.
Bethany frowned. “What are you talking about?” Trepidation started beating an erratic tattoo in her chest.
“Your picture, dear. It’s doing the rounds on social media.”
“My picture?” she screeched.
Sheena nodded. “I don’t blame you, really. Zach Savage is the fucking hottest thing since… God, since the history of the world. All those animalistic vibes he throws around.” She leaned forward, and Bethany could almost smell the wine on her breath. “I have to know. Is he a beast in the sack?”
Bethany froze, her body going from warm to icy within a millisecond. “Excuse me?” It couldn’t be… Zach had assured her the windows on the plane where they’d made love were mirrored. And surely she hadn’t been too far-gone to notice a camera flash, had she? Yes. She had.
Her body grew icier.
Sheena shrugged a bony shoulder. “I get it now why he demanded that we have you on the project. And like I said, I really don’t mind. I’d do it too in your shoes. In less than a heartbeat.” She drank some more, gave a little giggle, then noticed Bethany’s cold silence. “Hey, if you don’t want to share, that’s fine. But you really can’t blame a girl for trying.”
Bethany’s phone buzzed again.
Zach.
There was a photo floating around on the internet. A photo to do with them.
She now understood why he was calling. Her fingers itched to grab her phone, but she stopped herself and returned Sheena’s blatant stare.
Ideally, she didn’t want to lose her job before she’d taken her next Indigo Lounge trip. Most likely, Zach would still take her with him if she were fired. But still, she bit her tongue against the anger roiling through her.
She realized she didn’t mind being fired, if it meant putting this bitch in her place. “Are we done here, Sheena? Because I don’t believe requesting inappropriate details about my sex life is part of my job description,” she enquired frostily.
For the first time since she’d started working at Neon, Bethany witnessed a touch of embarrassment flicker over her boss’s face. Followed closely by a dart of envy.
“Sure… we’re done.” She seemed to realize what had just happened, and the fact that their exchange had been recorded. “Umm… Bethany,” she said, leaning forward.
“See you at work tomorrow, Sheena.” She ended the call and realized she was trembling from head to toe.
She quickly accessed her search engine and exhaled when the mysterious picture popped up.
Except it wasn’t mysterious anymore. It was very current; as in less than six hours old. And the article that went with it was accurate enough.
Her phone buzzed. She leaped for it.
“Zach, I know someone took our photo?—”
“No, it’s not Zach. But I guess that tells me everything I need to know. What the fuck, B?” Keely’s voice held a world of hurt.