CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ford
Fucking prick.
I smash the sledgehammer into the drywall.
Fiancée, my ass.
The thud of it hitting the gypsum does nothing to abate the jealousy that streaked through me when he put his hand on her back.
Chandler Holcomb with his pretentious smile and condescending tone. He probably practices that smug smile in the mirror every morning. Little does he know it makes him look like an asshole.
How can she like him?
How can she want a man who looks at her as less than instead of as an equal?
Because he sure as fuck does. It was in the stupid questions he asked her. In the patronizing comments he made that clearly questioned her and her abilities. In the way he made it known to every person he talked to that she was his.
He made my blood boil.
And the fact that she is with him and looked so miserable being beside him, does even more so.
She deserves so much better.
She deserves . . . me.
I grunt as I lift the hammer up again, trying to work through the anger seeing him here created. Why did she invite him here?
Thunder rumbles outside as the storm moves in. Fitting for my mood. Fitting for an excuse as to why I need to keep going despite everyone already having left the site.
Lift. Smash. Yank.
I create a rhythm of destruction. A soundtrack to accompany my racing thoughts.
The plan is to do this until I collapse from exhaustion. Until I can no longer think. Until I can no longer want.
In theory anyway.
There is contentment in putting in the labor that I never expected. In tearing something down to build it back up. To having my hands dirty and my shirt sweaty.
I know the minute she’s there.
I can faintly smell her perfume, even with the dust suffocating the room, before I hear her footsteps.
But I don’t turn. I don’t look. I keep working.
Lift. Smash. Yank.
Everything is pent-up—desire, rage, confusion, need—and it’s best if I leave it all the fuck alone.
“Are you enjoying the show or are you going to say something?” I snip at her.
Lift.
“We have a problem.”
Smash.
“Of course, we have a problem.” His name is Chandler Holcomb.
Yank.
“The helpers today? The day laborers we were able to get to help?”
“What about them?” I don’t even stop to look at her.
“They, uh . . . they took down the wall of your room.”
“Great. Perfect. Par for the fucking course. I can sleep on the beach for all I care.”
“You do that.”
“Better than being in here with you,” I mutter.
“What’s your fucking problem, Sharpe?” she asks, stepping into my periphery.
Don’t look, Ford. “My problem?” Do. Not. Look. “I don’t have a problem.”
“Could’ve fooled the fuck out of me.”
“Wouldn’t be hard now, would it?” I grunt as I hit the last large piece of drywall still intact.
“Will you stop for a second?” she yells.
“I’ve got to get this done. Got to stay on schedule. Got to—” She yanks on my bicep as my arm is in mid-swing. I drop the sledgehammer with a thud and turn on her, a ball of fury in my gut. “Are you fucking crazy?” I shout.
“Clearly I am for agreeing to do this project with you, a moody, asshole-ish fucker.”
“Sorry if that was meant to be an insult . . . but it wasn’t.”
“I don’t care.” She puts her hands on her hips and huffs.
“Yes, you do.”
She steps into me, her finger hitting my chest with each word. “No. I. Don’t.” I snort and shake my head at her. It seems that’s more than enough to set her off. “You are the most pigheaded, frustrating person I have ever met.”
“Me?” I kick a piece of wood. “Everything has to be your goddamn way. On your time frame. And God forbid I value your opinions and input—”
“What are you—”
“I don’t take orders from anybody, Sinclair, least of all you.”
“Tough shit. You’re stuck with me.”
Therein lies the problem.
“Tough shit?” I counter.
“You heard me. You can take all of your I’m-A-Sharpe-I-Rule-The-World bullshit and shove it where the sun don’t shine.”
I laugh. Head back, body shaking. She’s like a ball of fire in a pixie’s body and God, how I want that body.
So why is she like that with me and not her prick of a fiancé?
“You’re a real piece of work, Elle.”
Her smile drips with sarcasm much like her words do when she speaks. “Yep. Sure am. I’ll gladly take this piece of work and actually work instead of purposefully avoiding you at all costs like you do me.”
“Perfect. Please do. But your feet have to be moving in order to do that so . . . run along.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“You know what? Never mind. I’m going to stay right here just to piss you off. Since you don’t like me—”
“Don’t like you?” I bellow as I drag a hand through my hair and take a few steps away from her.
“Don’t like you? Jesus fucking Christ, Ellery, all I can think about every day, every goddamn moment, is how bad I fucking like you.
” I turn to meet her eyes. “How bad I fucking want you. But I’m trying to respect you.
Respect our partnership. And the fact that you’re engaged to that pretentious prick who was here earlier.
So excuse me for staying the fuck away from you, for avoiding you, but Jesus, a man can only take so much. ”
She stands before me, a disaster of a mess. Hair sticking out of her ponytail, drywall dust on her cheek, a scratch with dried blood on her arm, and just blinks at me like I’m fucking crazy.
Well, it feels that way.
“What did you just say?” she whispers.
“You heard me.” My voice is ten times louder.
“No, actually I didn’t.”
“I called your fiancé a pretentious prick who came to mark his territory for all to see while walking around here like he owns the place when in fact, it’s you who does. Me who does. That’s what I fucking said.”
“He’s not my fiancé.”
My laugh is loud and mocking. “Yeah. Sure. That’s not what the newspaper said at the I’m-an-Asshole-Architect-of-the-Year award ceremony the last week.”
Ellery looks at me with a clarity I haven’t seen before. “He’s not my fiancé. I went with him so he could save face.” To save face? Pretentious and a fucking pathetic excuse for a man. She takes a few steps toward me. “But that’s not what I meant when I asked you what you just said. Say it again.”
“What? That he’s a pretentious prick?”
“No, you stubborn ass. The other part.”
She’s close. Too close. I reach out to pick a piece of drywall from her hair as I rack my brain to remember the word vomit I just spewed.
I squeeze my eyes shut, knowing damn well what I said. Desperate to repeat it. Terrified at the same time. “You mean the part about how bad I fucking want you?”
She nods and swallows forcibly as her eyes dart to my lips. “We’re partners, Ford.”
“I’m aware.”
“It would be a mistake to . . .” Her voice cracks, and I nod.
“It would. But it would also be a travesty not to.”
She runs a hand down my chest. “Is that so?”
“Mm-hmm,” I murmur as I reach out and cup the side of her face with my hand.
She leans in, the warmth of her breath hitting my lips as she whispers, “But I prefer mistakes over travesties any day.”
“Thank fuck for that.” The groan I emit as I drag her against me is accented by the thunder that rumbles outside. My body coils tight as my lips find hers. As my mouth takes, my tongue delves, and my every sensation wants.
Jesus Christ. I was right.
This woman. Her taste. Fucking addictive.
And I can’t get enough.
Drywall dust falls all around us as her hands fist in my hair and our mouths meet over and over and over in what feels like a free-for-all that both of us are lost in. That both of us never want to be found in.
We move backwards as our hands claim and our lips demand.
More.
Now.
I need more.
Of her.
Of this.
Of the moment.
Just fucking her.
“Ford,” she groans as I lace open-mouthed kisses up the exposed line of her neck. “I don’t want to want you, but I’m so tired of trying not to.”
I fist my hand in her hair and pull her head back so I can meet her eyes. “Then stop trying.”
And fuck do her lips tempt me. Do they own me. Do they call for me to have every goddamn ounce of restraint I can muster while shredding it simultaneously.
Then stop trying.
I heed my own advice and delve back in with my tongue and lips and hands as she pulls my shirt over my head, and I fumble with the clasp of her bra beneath hers.
We stumble through doorways as we push down our pants and trip over shoes as we try to toe them off.
I look for somewhere to lay her down. Somewhere that’s not covered in dust or dangerous because time is of the essence, and I simply don’t have the willpower to wait any longer.
As it is, I feel like I’ve been waiting a lifetime.
“Here,” she murmurs as her hand that slides between my boxer briefs and my cock finds purchase.
My groan is guttural, but it’s got nothing on the sensations overwhelming me right now.
The taste of her kiss.
The smell of her skin.
The demand in her touch.
The sound of her pleas.
Fuck this woman is going to drive me mad if I’m not inside her right fucking now.
“Ellery,” I say as we bump against the door she’s opening and push our way into her room.
We’re a mess of fumbling hands and busy mouths as we kick off our pants and kiss each other without coming up for air.
Desperation like I’ve never known eats at me, claws at me, consumes me.
“Wait,” she murmurs as she steps away and heads to the bathroom, giving me a damn fine view of her ass as she swings her hips.
I take the moment, brief as it is, to shake the drywall dust from my hair as best I can, and then stroke my cock as I wait for her.
When her feet pad back into the room, I look up to find Ellery Sinclair, little miss prepared, holding up a condom by her fingertips with a taunting smile on her lips.
“You brought condoms?” I ask as I take it from her and tear the foil with my teeth.
“This was inevitable. I knew. I prepared for it.” She wraps a hand around my dick and squeezes. “And God, how I want it.”
If I weren’t already turned on, I’d be there in an instant with that comment and from her confidence.
She watches me as I roll the condom on, and the minute I’m done, her hands are on my ass, tugging me toward the bed as her lips tell me what she wants.
“I want you to fuck me, Ford. Long. Deep. Hard,” she murmurs against my lips as my hands palm her breasts. Her breath hitches from the sensation. “We’ll have time for foreplay another time, but right now . . . right now, I just want you. I want this.”
She slides her hand over my jacketed cock and all restraint is lost.
“Get on the bed,” I order. She sits her ass down and scoots back, her knees bent and her pussy on display.
Fuck.
That body I saw last week—the one I’ve dreamt of, fantasized over—is even better than I thought as she lies before me naked and wanting.
And fuck if I’m not going to enjoy every goddamn inch of it. The line of her thigh. The curve of her hip. The bow of her back. The hardened peak of her pink breast. The insatiable taste of her tongue.
“You’re . . . stunning,” I whisper as I crawl onto the bed, kiss the inside of one of her knees, and trail my fingertip over the other.
“Gorgeous.” Another kiss to the top of her mound.
I breathe her in. Arousal and Ellery is an addictive combination.
“Sexy.” A kiss on her abdomen before I lick around her nipple and suck on it.
Her back arches and a moaned sigh escapes her mouth—such a fucking turn-on.
“Incredible,” I say against her lips before slipping my tongue between them in a slow, languorous kiss that puts every one of my nerves on high alert.
She scratches her nails down my chest, making my cock jerk in anticipation and digs them into my thighs, begging to have me.
The woman doesn’t have to ask again.
I sit up on my haunches and use my hand to run the tip of my cock up and down her slit. Her arousal glistens in the dim light as I push my way between her pink lips. I inch myself in ever so slowly, Ellery’s moan of “So good” the only encouragement I need.
And when I’m fully seated inside her, after her breath hitches and her neck arches as she acclimates to the fullness, she looks back up and meets my eyes, almost as if to dare me to take her to the brink.
Her heat.
Her tightness.
Her wetness.
Fucking hell, yes, I will.
I begin to move, in soft, slow thrusts so I can pay attention to her every nerve. My hands grip the flesh on her hips as my eyes flicker between the pleasure blanketing her face and the indescribable turn-on of watching myself push into her and then slide all the way back out.
She feels . . . incredible. Like I want to go fast but am trying my hardest to go slow so that I can make this pleasure last. So that I can bring her with me to the edge.
“Ford. Yes,” she whispers as her hands grip the sheets beside her, prompting me to pick up the pace some.
To bring my thumb to the top of her slit and add friction to her clit. Her gasp and panted breaths are all I need to know that I’m giving her what she needs while I take what I want.
I fuck harder and hold tighter to her hips as desperation takes over. The room is filled with the sounds of our bodies connecting. The slick withdrawal and push back into her. Our labored breaths.
Over and over.
In and out.
Yes. Now. Harder. Right there. Oh my God.
I squeeze my eyes shut to hold myself back, to wait my turn, but it’s a fucking brutal struggle as I work her clit, faster, harder.
Her legs tense and her back bows seconds before her cry echoes around the walls of the room.
Her pussy tightens like a vise around me and fuck, I’m a goner. An absolute, fucking goner.
“Elle,” I say when by the look on her—eyes closed, mouth lax, nipples hardened—I know she can’t hear me. She’s swamped in her own pleasure. “Elle.” I draw the word out as every part of me that aches and burns in the best of ways ignites from my lower belly to my cock to my balls.
I jerk my hips, consciousness fading, as I absorb wave after wave of absolute bliss that burns white-hot as it courses through me.
Over and over.
Just like the pulsing of her muscles around me.
I drag a hand down the center of her chest and the goosebumps that chase over her skin.
Christ. This woman.
I knew she’d be incredible, that sex with her would be incredible, I just didn’t know that the minute I had her, I was going to want her again.
I think this might be a problem.
But fuck if it’s not one I’m willing to overcome by fucking her again and again.