Chapter 17
LENA
My head still buzzed with deliciously good sex chemicals courtesy of Weston even as my to-do list started knocking. It was a subtle drum beat at the back of my mind, reminding me that there were a million things left to do today.
I needed to touch base with Nancy again. I needed to follow up with legal regarding the wind farm documents I’d sent last week. And most of all, I needed to track down those preliminary sketches.
As each line of my mental to-do list filled up, the peaceful post-coital bliss ebbed further away until finally the thoughts were too insistent to ignore.
I sat up on my elbows, looking around for the towel I’d dropped when we’d stumbled in here.
My cheeks flamed at the memory of how needy I’d been, how desperately I’d begged for him to touch me.
But judging by the hunger written all over him, he’d wanted it just as badly.
“What are you doing?” Weston mumbled next to me, half asleep.
“Looking for my towel.” My eyes locked on it, thank God.
“Why?”
“Because the last thing I want to do is flash Agnes running down the hall to my room.”
“Why are you going to your room?” he complained as I shifted beneath the blankets. His eyes were closed as his arm locked around my waist.
I turned to look at him, taking in the perfection of his strong jaw, short, dark eyelashes, and prominent cheekbones.
I reached out to brush at the tufts of dark hair that covered his forehead.
“I have that little thing called work. I know the sex was mind-blowing, but maybe you remember what that is?”
He huffed, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth even as his grip tightened. “The sex was pretty good. You’re welcome.”
I scoffed. “I think you should be the one thanking me.”
“I definitely remember putting in most of the effort.” His eyes flickered open, that smile twisting into a cocky smirk.
“That is a lie if I’ve ever heard one.”
He bent down and kissed my shoulder, my collar bone, the curve of my neck. “You’re sure?”
“Mm-hmm.” For a beat, that mental to-do list in my head quieted, my thoughts full of nothing but the feel of Weston’s lips against my skin.
I’d never get sick of the sensation or the flutter in my gut or the way my heart raced.
But then my watch buzzed, and I lifted my wrist, checking the notification.
“Finally,” I muttered.
“What?”
“They sent through the sketches.”
I made to get up, to slide from beneath the covers, but Weston’s lips continued to nibble at my neck.
“I really have to check in with Houston again,” I insisted.
“Do you?”
I laughed, the sound choked off with a gasp as he licked my pulse point. “Yes,” I whispered, getting a hold of myself. “And you should want me to. These are your projects I’m checking on. Projects I know you want to have running on schedule.”
“I do like the occasional bit of spontaneity in my schedule,” he said, letting his hand slip beneath the blankets, his thumb stroking my nipple. It pebbled immediately.
“Spontaneity is for after hours,” I laughed, catching his hand to halt his ministrations. “You wanted to see those sketches, remember?”
“Sketches can wait.”
“Plus, Agnes is going to throttle us. Her lunch is probably stone cold on the table.”
“Might as well make it worthwhile then,” Weston said cheekily, going in for another kiss.
I pulled back, catching him in the chest with my hand. “Weston.”
“Don’t use that tone on me, woman,” he growled playfully, nuzzling the stubble along his jaw against my cheek. “I’m the boss, and I’m giving you permission to faff about for the rest of the afternoon.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “This faffing specifically relates to you?”
“In this bed,” he agreed. “Exactly.” He stroked a lock of hair from my cheek. “The office won’t implode after a few hours without us.”
“It might, in fact,” I argued. “I don’t know if you remember that you’re the CEO of a global energy company?”
He nipped at my skin. “And as CEO, I am conducting very important field research for our next project,” he said, slowly tugging the sheets down my naked body.
My head said to stop, to be responsible, but everything else inside me screamed for his touch, and a wave of goosebumps trailed down my arms and across my stomach. Anticipation had never tasted so sweet. “I don’t think you put in a proposal for this field research.”
“I’m doing it as we speak,” he said, tugging the sheets down farther, exposing my breasts. “And I propose that instead of studying boring legal jargon, we should spend today studying more of each other.”
“Is that so?”
“Mm-hmm,” he mumbled.
I brushed my hand down the side of his face and over his shoulder, catching on a knot just behind his shoulder blade. It was a thick, knobby scar. I frowned. “What happened here?”
“Scraped it badly falling out of a tree.” He smiled even as he said it.
“Lachlan, Alistair, and I got it into our heads to build a fort one summer in one of Grandad’s giant yew trees.
I was climbing down for supplies when I lost my footing.
Skidded all the way down the damn trunk and caught my shoulder on a particularly nasty branch.
Thought the stick was going to go all the way through. ”
I winced. “Ouch.”
He shrugged. “Felt a little like I’d been stabbed.”
“The way you say that so casually has me concerned.”
Laughter escaped him. “I think what I was most pissed about was the fact I was in a sling for the rest of the summer. But at least the scar made for a good story.”
His hand brushed down my abdomen. His thumb trailed along a thin raised line, the horizontal scar running along my bikini area. “I must have missed this before,” he said. “I was a little too occupied with other things.”
I forced a smile.
“Is there a story here?” he asked, letting his fingers drift along the scar over and over again. My heartbeat sped up with every pass.
“Umm…it’s from high school,” I said, trying to fend off the heaviness of the memory. “I was in a car accident with my boyfriend at the time.”
“A bad one?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
I nodded, running my hand through the fine hairs at the nape of his neck.
“I don’t actually remember much of the accident itself.
” It was all a blur of noise that never really resolved into anything that made sense, no matter how many times I played it over in my head.
My first clear memory after all of that was of waking up in the hospital, with my sobbing parents beside my bed.
“I was in recovery for weeks after it happened. I even missed graduation.”
“That sounds…” Weston grimaced. “Quite miserable actually.”
“It was. While I was in the hospital, all anyone could talk about was the physical recovery, but no one said anything about the toll it would take on my relationships.”
“You mean with your friends?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, some. After the initial well wishes and visits, a lot of the other people I considered friends sort of fell off. They all had big plans for the summer before college—trips and parties and all of that. There wasn’t any room in their plans for the girl who was recovering from major surgery, and I guess it was just easier to stay away. ”
“So you were dealing with that all on your own?” he asked, his voice soft.
“Not really. I had Tess—she always showed up for me. And my parents were there…but things with them were tricky in other ways.”
“I’m sure they were shocked to hear you were in an accident,” Weston said, running his thumb across my cheek. “They were probably terrified.”
“Oh, they were,” I agreed. “I still remember the first day Tess showed up to take me out shopping. I thought my mom was going to leap out of her skin. They didn’t want me in a car with anyone but them.”
“I suppose that’s understandable.”
I nodded. “Now I can look back and understand their concerns. But at the time I was so frustrated. After the accident, they went overboard babying me, and in a lot of ways it made me feel helpless. I didn’t want to be sheltered away from the world; I just wanted to be a normal teenager.”
He hummed.
“And to top it all off, my boyfriend, Derek…” He’d actually been the one driving.
“The accident…I guess it was a lot for a pair of teenagers to handle. He showed up at my house one day shortly after I’d been discharged and told me he didn’t think dating me was a good idea.
Actually, I think his words were ‘I can’t handle this anymore’. ”
I blinked back a sudden wave of emotion.
I hadn’t thought of the accident in this much detail in a long time, and reliving it all hurt as much as it did back then.
“I still remember the bandages his little sister had put on his hands. Pink polka dots. I realized what was happening and stared at them while he said his piece.” I shook my head. “Silly thing to remember.”
“It’s not silly. You went through something traumatic.” Weston’s grip tightened over my hip. “And instead of rallying around you, like he should have been doing, he dumped you? What kind of asshole leaves his girlfriend while she’s in recovery?”
“The kind that’s still a kid.”
“That’s not an excuse.” His jaw grew tense. I swore I could hear his teeth grinding. “I truly hope Derek, or whatever his name is, is as alone and as miserable as he deserves to be.”
I laughed, the sound hollow, filled with old pain. “He’s happily married with kids, actually.” I tilted my head, staring at the ceiling. “Though he’s stuck working a crappy low-level job from what I hear. Guess we don’t always get everything we want out of life.”
“Oh, yes you do,” Weston insisted, pressing his nose to the side of my face, stroking my cheek until he’d worked a real smile from me. “Because here you are, married to a billionaire. So you can have anything you damn well please.”