Chapter 12
THEODORE
“The signatures aren’t the problem,” Curtis says, scrolling through the updated agreement on his tablet. “The problem is Olajuwon's counsel wanting one more pass before closing.”
It’s Saturday morning in Lagos, and Curtis is in my suite at six-fifteen eating pineapple out of a bowl he didn’t order, telling me we need three more days in here.
He’s wrong about the three days and is too comfortable with my breakfast.
"Olajuwon's counsel got his pass last night. He can kiss my ass.”
“He called it informal.”
“He can call the shit whatever he wants. The document is complete.”
Curtis looks up at me from the sofa, chewing like this isn’t already my second conversation of the morning and I haven’t slept enough to enjoy either one. “You’re rushing.”
“I’m finishing.”
“You’re rushing because you want to get home.”
“I want to get home because we’re finished.”
“That is a very convenient order of facts.”
I button my cuff and ignore him because some men only speak to hear themselves talk.
Curtis is useful, smart, and irritating enough to make me consider firing his ass every six months purely for the sport of it.
He also knows when I’m done with a place, I’m done.
Geneva took more time than it should have.
Lagos gave us more resistance than I wanted.
But the resistance moved. The money’s right.
The signatures are close. I can be back in Scottsdale sooner than Desiree expects if nobody decides to become special before noon.
I haven’t told her, and don’t plan to.
Desiree likes to pretend surprises annoy her. That’s not really the truth. Bad surprises annoy her. Sloppy ones. Careless ones. Me walking back into our house before she expects me? That one would send her beautiful ass over the moon.
My phone lights up on the desk.
Desiree.
Curtis is still talking about counsel, signatures, and one more meeting I already plan to cut in half. I stop hearing him.
“That her?”
“Get out.”
He looks from me to the phone, then back to me. “Yep, that’s her. Look, we have seven minutes before the call.”
“Now you have seven minutes in your own suite.”
“Theo.”
I pick up the phone. “Curtis.”
He stands with the bowl still in his hand. “You’re impossible when you miss that woman.”
He takes one more piece of pineapple because he lacks fear in very specific areas. “Seven minutes.”
“Take fifteen.”
He leaves, and the door clicks behind him.
I open her message to a video.
At first, all I see is our bed and her thighs.
The sheer emerald green robe, feathers at the wrists and hem, hangs open around her hips, brushing her brown skin while her hand moves exactly where mine should be.
She keeps her face out of frame on purpose, making me wait because she knows what that does to me.
And when she tilts the phone up, my woman is in our bed looking into the camera like she already knows I cleared the room before I ever pressed play.
With her fingers moving, she lets me see what she’s doing to herself.
Then her voice teases me, “Honey misses her Alpha.”
I don’t move after the video ends.
I play it again.
Then again.
One more time just for kicks.
Desiree sending me a filthy video isn’t unusual. But Desiree sending me a filthy video with that look on her face and those words in her mouth? That’s something else entirely. The robe, the open legs, the fingers, all of that is want. I know want. And I know hers better than she knows it herself.
Picking up the tablet from the desk, I FaceTime her because my phone’s staying in my hand.
If she’s going to send me that kind of video from Arizona while I’m in Lagos, she already knows I’m not showing up to the call with only one way to handle her.
Answering with the camera already on, lying back against our pillows, her ass knew I was going to call.
The lamp on the nightstand puts warm light across her skin, and that emerald robe is still open around her body, feathers brushing the sheets, one knee bent while the other leg stretches out like she has no respect for my schedule, my patience, or the fact that I am standing in Lagos with a meeting waiting outside my door.
“Good morning, Alpha,” she says.
I set the tablet on the desk and angle it so she can see me clearly. “You sent that while Curtis was in my room.”
Her smile comes slow. “That sounds like his problem.”
“It became his problem when I told him to get out.”
“You kicked that man out over a video?”
“Over knowing my woman sent me a video at ten o’clock at night, her time, and that could only be one thing.”
Her eyes lower, pleased with herself even though she tries to play it off. “I do miss you.”
“You in our bed with your legs open talking about you miss me, I can see that.”
“Can you?”
I sit on the edge of the bed and rest my forearm on my thigh. “Angle your screen lower.”
“Theodore.”
“Repeating myself isn’t optional, Honey.”
She gives me that look that says she wants to argue just long enough to make obedience feel like her idea. Then she adjusts the screen so I can get more of her.
Her hand’s resting too close to the part of her I want my mouth on, but not touching yet. Even from this far away, she knows better.
“You started without me.”
“I sent you a preview.”
“Who the fuck told you to touch my pussy?”
Her fingers trail along the inside of her thigh, disrespectfully slow. “You’re so far away, Alpha.”
“And you’re supposed to wait for me.”
Her eyebrows lift. “I miss you.”
“Put on the vibrating panties.”
“Baby, no.”
I give her a look she knows better than to test. “Now, Honey.”
She leans over and pulls out the black lace panties I bought for her a while back.
Distance does not remove every kind of control.
She knows that. She loves that. Those panties are one of the few things I can still use from another country, and from the way her eyes shift toward the drawer, she remembers exactly why I bought them. She slides back in front of the screen.
“Don’t hold them up for me. Put them on and keep them thick ass legs open.”
She exhales hard through her nose, positions herself, and does as she’s told.
“Good girl, Honey. Good girl.” I start to undo my belt, then my button, followed by my zipper.
“Since you want to do what you want to do, so will I.”
Her head tips back, but her eyes come to me again because she knows I want them there.
“Tell me what you said in that video.” I pull myself free so she can see exactly what she started.
“Honey misses her Alpha,” she says.
“Again.” I stroke myself in front of her, dick thick and hard as shit in my hand.
“Alpha, Honey misses you.”
“I know she does.”
Her fingers slide down her stomach. Over the soft weight of her belly.
Between her thighs. She touches herself exactly where I would have touched her first, and that needy little sound has my fist working faster.
My thumb opens the Lovense app without me looking away from her.
One level higher, and her thighs try to close. “Open.”
She does.
“I don’t recall giving you permission to touch that pussy while I’m gone.”
Her mouth barely moves. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”
I raise the intensity again.
Her hips lift off the pillows. “Alpha.”
I groan as I roll my palm over the head of my dick, slow enough for her to see every inch of my erection. “Run that mouth again.”
She doesn’t.
“That’s what I thought.” I keep the phone in one hand and myself in the other, letting the app answer her attitude the way my mouth should be there doing. “Keep your fucking legs open, Honey. I’m going to make you cum with me all the way from Lagos.”
Her lips separate from each other, but whatever she planned to say turns into a broken little sound when I push the intensity higher.
“That’s it.” My hand rotates from my base to my tip back down as she fights to keep her legs open. “Now you remember how this works.”
The sheet twists in her fist. “Theodore.”
“Try again.”
She brings those eyes back to mine through the screen, “Alpha, baby.”
“Good girl. Don’t touch. Now, let Alpha do it.”
She makes the kind of sound that belongs against my mouth, not through a screen. I give her more vibration and watch her try to take every bit of it.
“Too much,” she says.
“Not for you, it’s not.”
“You’re not the one wearing them.”
“And you’re not the one controlling them.”
Her laugh breaks halfway into a moan, and I stroke myself harder, watching the feathers at her wrists drag across the sheets as her hands search for somewhere to put all that tension.
“Keep them open,” I say.
She does, but barely.
“Wider.”
“Alpha.”
“Wider, Honey.”
She spreads for me, and the sight of her like that in our bed, taking what I’m giving her from another country, almost makes me forget I have to leave for a meeting in a few minutes.
“You wanted me there,” I say. “This is me right there, Honey.”
Her eyes tell me how much she hates the miles between us. “I do want you here.”
“I know.”
I push the intensity up one more level. Her hands grab her titties, spilling her nipples between her fingers while the vibration pulls another sound out of her.
“Don’t you dare close those legs.”
“Alph—”
“Cum with Alpha, Honey. Show me you can do that,” I tell her, beating my dick until cum begins oozing from my tip, groaning while it falls over the back of my hand.
I watch her pussy saturate our black silk sheets, her back lifting off the bed, her eyebrows pulling together all while my name falls from her lips.
I stay where I am, my release covering my hand and Desiree still open on the screen, both of us trying to calm the rush we just endured.
Usually, she gives me something after though. A smile. A smart-ass little comment. Some kind of satisfied look that tells me she got exactly what she wanted.
But I see her face.
She didn’t send that video just because she missed me. Something’s off.
For a few seconds, we only look at each other.
Then Curtis knocks on the suite door.
I don’t look away from her. “Give me a minute.”
“We have a call,” he says from the other side.
“I said give me a minute.”
I reach for the towel, clean my hand, and keep my eyes on her through the tablet. “I’m here.”
“Don’t go into that meeting yet.”
“I’m not rushing to leave you, Honey. You know better than that.”
She looks away from the screen, then back at me. “I need to tell you something.”
I sit back down on the edge of the bed. “Okay, let’s hear it.”
“So you know this past Wednesday night, I met Lizzie’s Fredrick.”
“The man she’s been seeing for the past few months, yeah.”
The way her mouth presses together, I can already see I’m not going to like whatever comes next.
“Well, Lizzie’s Fredrick is Bryce.”
Curtis knocks again.
“One minute,” I call toward the door.
I squint my eyes, push my head toward the screen and tilt it a bit. “I’m sorry. Say what now?”
“Her Fredrick is our Bryce.”
I breathe through my nose in an attempt to keep my damn composure because what in the entire fuck.
She keeps going. “Yeah, that was my reaction too. And when I tell you, his ass didn’t flinch at all when she introduced us. Just stood there with this little smirk on his face that let you know his devious ass was up to no good.”
“Why the fuck would he be with Lizzie, especially with what we have going on? I’m sure he has a life outside of our bedroom but I know he knows that’s too close for comfort.”
“Same thing I said. On top of that, this motherfucker had the nerve to say he needed to see me somehow since he couldn’t get the private consultation he attempted to book.”
“So he was B. Kinsley, and he said all this shit in front of Lizzie?”
“Hell no. She stepped away to take a call from Mrs. Jolene leaving me and him at the table.”
“What else?”
“The rest doesn’t matter, Theodore.”
“Desiree. What else fucking happened?”
“We can deal with everything else when you come home. I just didn't want to hold that in until you got here. And when are you coming back anyway?”
“What the fuck is everything else?”
“Yo, Theo. Car’s here. We gotta go.” Curtis knocks and calls from the outside of my suite.
“We are not done with this conversation, Desiree. You already know when I’m coming home. I know when I’m out of this next meeting, you’ll be drooling on our silk pillowcases, so I’ll call you later this evening, which should get you a full night’s rest there.”
“I know. But hold up. Did you just say I drool?”
“Out of everything I just said, that’s all you heard?”
“I heard everything. That just stuck out.”
I look toward the door, then back at her. “I have to go close this deal.”
“That’s what you do best, baby. Go show them who’s king in this business.”
One thing this woman knows how to do is affirm me. A woman who knows how to pour into you before you walk into any room has her own way of making you feel like a king. “I love you, Honey, I gotta go. Just know I’ll handle Bryce.”
“And I love you more.”
I end the call before I tell her too much without being able to back it up.
In the bathroom, I wash my hands, fix my clothes, and take ten seconds to try and calm the rage building behind my eyes.
I open the door to let Curtis in, then grab my briefcase before we head to the elevator down to the car waiting for us in front of the hotel.
Curtis can see something sitting on my shoulder. He keeps looking back and forth in my direction. “Aye, man, everything alright?”
“It will be as soon as this meeting is over and I prepare to head back to the States.”
“Damn, Theo. You know I need you here for a few more days. We still have follow-up, counsel review, signatures, transition language—”
“All of which can be handled from Scottsdale. You know just as well as I do everything will be in order and we’ll have pulled off another acquisition for the books.”
Curtis keeps pace beside me as he rubs a hand over his face. “Alright, man. If you really think we can pull it all off today, let’s do it.”
I button my jacket and keep walking.
There’s no way in hell I’m staying in Africa another night.
Not because I don’t trust Desiree. I do.
That’s not the question and never has been.
But I’m going home to deal with this Bryce shit because I know the intention behind whatever he’s attempting is part of something bigger.
He thinks he can weasel his way in with Desiree if I’m not around.
So since he wants to go low, I’m going to show him, I can go to hell.