Chapter 36
Cuddled up with Easton on my couch, listening to his heart rate return to normal, a wave of guilt surges over my satisfied bliss.
What’s wrong with me?
I said I wouldn’t.
And then I did.
Sleeping with him isn’t technically against the rules, but it feels… dishonest. Obviously, it could be perceived as an unfair advantage, and it’s not like I can offer this same access to the other contestants.
This can’t happen again.
Easton runs a hand along my forehead. “What’s brought on the worry lines?”
Surely not the time to bring up my guilt, so I ask the other thing that’s been weighing on my mind. “What happened between you and Cecily?”
There’s a long beat of silence. He brushes my hair, kisses my temple, runs a hand down my thigh. His silence seems to wash away my words as surely as the ocean footprints in the sand.
Finally, he says, “When I told you that I dove into my work after my father’s suicide, I meant that, outside of therapy, my work became a path of healing for me. A way to help my dad even though he was no longer here. I became so obsessed that I only saw people related to charity or fitness, which meant I dated next to no one.”
“Verdad?” Pressed up against a body so fine I can’t imagine him ever having trouble finding a partner, I’m shocked by this news. “So you weren’t sleeping with people?”
He laughs, leans down, and nibbles my lip. I like that he so bite-y.
“Actually, I slept with a lot of people. There was always opportunity, but not so much for relationships.” He sighs deeply, and my head rises and falls with his chest. “I was so obsessed with getting to where I wanted to be, where I wanted the company to be, that I barely acknowledged women beyond sex.” He laughs. “Unless it was to offer them advice on the correct weights to use or the amount of cardio. Not exactly a smooth talker.”
I laugh softly. When he stays quiet a beat too long, I prompt, “But then?”
“But then, Cecily came along and did all the talking for me. She was quick and funny, open and inviting, and she really got me and my vision for FTW. To be fair, parts of her reminded me of…” He pauses for a long moment and stares into my eyes. He doesn’t say it, but I hear the unspoken you at the end of his sentence. “There’s nothing more enticing than someone who sees the potential in you and your ideas.”
He’s right about that. I swallow, remembering photos of Cecily I saw online after the scandal first broke. Tall and beautiful with sleek black hair, almond-shaped brown eyes, and a magazine-worthy figure. A sliver of jealousy nudges into my stomach.
“I fell fast and hard. For a little while, it was great, but, slowly, things changed. She became upset with me, distanced herself, and closed down at the slightest perceived offense.
“I couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. I didn’t have a lot of experience with love, so I tried harder to make her happy.” He snorts bitterly. “I don’t like to quit on anything. Finally, one day, she admitted the reason she was so stressed wasn’t me. It was her company. She worked for an NGO and one of the top men at the company was…” He fists his hands before relaxing them and cupping my hip. “She said the guy was sexually harassing her. Later, I learned that was a lie.”
“Ay. You didn’t know that at the time, so you confronted him?”
He cringes. “I wanted to. I wanted to… well, pound the shit out of him. But she begged me not to. She said what she really needed was a new job. Once she had that, once she was safely away from him, she’d report him to the company.”
It’s difficult for me to believe that anyone could be so cruel to this thoughtful and beautiful man. “You offered her the job.”
“Yep. I went through the board, did everything legally, but when they insisted on reaching out to the other company… I told them that wasn’t an option. She’d told me she feared he might retaliate with some kind of story.
“Later, after she’d been found embezzling from our charity funds, I learned that she’d been doing the same thing at her old company. They’d fired her, but hadn’t reported her because they feared the bad press.”
“She probably expected you and your company to do the same.”
He blows out a breath. “You’re perceptive. Yes, she did. Actually, my board wanted me to cover it up, too, but…”
He lowers his head, and I take the opportunity to kiss him. His lips are heat and wet and a full softness that makes my mouth tingle.
Such a simple thing, a kiss, but it can also be a healing thing. I feel it, and, for now, I won’t deny that relief to either of us. I pull back.
Blue eyes filled with light and desire, he stares at me and slowly runs his tongue along his lower lip.
“But?” I prod.
He blinks. “But she stole money that belonged to my clients and their charities. The decision never belonged to me. If I didn’t hold her accountable for that, if I didn’t stand by my core principles and the company’s, I’d be destroying the trust so many had placed in FTW. It killed me, but I couldn’t compromise what I believed in, what I had worked a decade for, and all the good my company was doing and would continue to do in the future.”
“You went against your board.”
“Yep. And the blowback was as huge as they’d warned me it would be.”
“You said on the beach the other night that I don’t know you, who you are really, but the courage you displayed in going against your board and accepting the public retribution and media fallout is exactly who I know you to be.” He squeezes my hip, draws me closer to his distracting hardness. “Claro, it must’ve been the most awkward breakup scene in the history of breakups.”
He barks out an unexpected laugh. “You could say that. We were engaged. She was living in my house in La Jolla. She refused to leave.”
“Verdad?”
“Seriously. And because of her refusal, the laws in California, and the ever-present threat of more bad press… well, I moved out. I went back to New York and stayed in my dad’s old condo. I never sold it. Not even after…”
“Oh.” I swallow as grief wells up like a geyser in my throat. To be betrayed by someone he loved, lose the reputation he’d worked so hard for, and to go through all of that in the home his father passed in… “That must’ve been so difficult for you.”
“It sucking fucked,” he says, a play with words that makes me smile. “But, thanks to years of therapy, I had a skillset that I could use. I also relied on what you’d taught me. Focusing on what brought me relief. I began planning our European expansion, but then my board asked for a meeting. That’s when they laid down their ultimatum.”
Ay. I’d thought I was having a bad year.
His handsome face is inches from mine, his lips close enough to kiss. So I do. The kiss heats up so quickly that it leaves my head spinning. I arch into him.
My cell beeps again, reminding me there is a world outside of us, outside of this room, and many people who would not understand how this could have happened.
I pull my lips away. “Our session is scheduled for fifteen minutes from now.”
“I can make it quick.”
I hit him in the arm and laugh. “As tempting as that is, we have blackmail to contend with and a need to discuss where we go from here. Now that we’ve…” I exhale deeply. “…slept together. ?Comprendes?”
He lowers his head, kisses my ear. “Yolanda,” he lets out a deep breath. “I really, really like you.”
That feels wonderful. “Considering how close you are to me right now, that’s a good thing.”
“It’s the very best thing.” He kisses me, deep and hot, then thrusts a little, and I forget about time and space and whatever we were talking about—until he says, “Technically, the rules state anyone with a relationship to anyone on the show can’t apply to be on the show. You’re already on the show, so, technically, no rules are being broken. Parker says a lot of people hookup on these shows.”
I groan, wetness slick between my legs.
I slide my hand over the taut swell of his backside. “Technically not against the rules,” I breathe because him rubbing against me is so distracting and nice, “won’t stand up to how people see this relationship, especially your board. Things will get more complicated at the hotel. Plus, it feels… dishonest.”
He stills. Part of his body thrumming against my center, he asks disbelievingly, “You’re saying we need to go back to waiting?”
“We have to,” I breathe, finding this truth as a North Star to my desire. “The blackmail, the online harassment… I can’t manage my feelings, the hotel, and…” I find my voice as I stare into his questioning gaze. “I don’t want to lose you, the joy of what this should be, in the mierda that is this show. I don’t want to sneak around, worrying about what being together means for you and your company. I don’t want to fear what the public or other contestants will think if they discover we’re sleeping together. I don’t want to feel guilty for being with you.”
He looks down at me for a long moment, before he sits up, swinging me around, so I’m sitting up, too. Tension rides his shoulders. “And, I don’t want that for you. As much as I want…” He shakes his head. “You’re right. People will interpret us being together in a bad way. And though I’d risk the company fallout, I won’t let anything happen to you.”
He reaches for his shirt, drapes it over his hard-on.
I bite my lip to keep from laughing.
He smiles over at me. “Stop looking at it. You’ll only encourage it.”
I burst into laughter.
“It’s complicated right now,” he says, rubbing a hand across his face. “But as long as I know there’s a day in the not-too-distant future where things will be simple, where we can be simply us, I can get through all the complicated days. For that future, I can wait.”
“You make me so happy,” I say, then blush because it’s such a stupid thing to say after his eloquent declaration.
“Me and my pop-up tent want to make you so happy that you scream my name again.”
Though I desperately want that, too, I snort and push his arm. My eyes dip to the outline of his rigid cock vibrating against his shirt. He’s thrumming with a need that sets me on fire.
The five-minute warning sounds on my phone, reminding me to focus. I grow serious. “Can you coordinate the new security with me and the security company that works here?”
“Yes.”
“What will we do about the blackmail?”
“For now? Nothing but research. Stone seems to have neutralized the threat. If it comes up again…” He shrugs. “We should have the information we need by then, but if we don’t, we’ll figure something else out.” His hand drifts closer to my thigh, clenches, then retreats. “I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you.”
“It’s forgiven.”
“So that’s it?” he asks, looking over at me disbelievingly. “We get real, have amazing sex, talk things out, and agree to do the right thing for each of our lives like people who actually care about each other?”
“That’s it,” I say, a lump in my throat because I know that’s not how it worked with his last relationship, and because the implied sentiment is so sweet.
He looks at me like he won the lottery. And not just a scratch-off ticket. Like he won the once-in-a-lifetime mega-millions.
“I really, really like you, Easton,” I say.
“You stole my line,” he says, rising from the couch to find his shorts. He kisses me lightly on the lips. “Since we’re going back to body language. Remember, when I’m kicking your ass during practice today, it’s all just pent-up energy that longs to be inside you.”
I laugh. “Bring it, Blake,” I say before I can think better on how that could be taken.
He groans, shakes his head, and dresses.