Chapter Twenty-Three
Lula
I was staring blankly at my screen, unable to focus as my mind reeled with possibility.
I had my money back.
Minus a few thousand dollars. Which was chump change in the grand scheme of things. Nothing I was going to stress myself out about.
I expected to feel a giant weight off my shoulders, but what I was overwhelmed with was planning—what I needed to do next, how I could pull off this plan without screwing anything up, without financially strapping myself.
I probably should have taken myself back to the motel to do my thinking.
Especially since my work was done until the end of this shift to give me new numbers to play with.
But I was on-salary. And the walls in my motel room felt filled to the brim with thoughts of Raff.
Better to stay at work where I could at least distract myself.
But my door opened.
And almost as if I’d manifested him, there he was.
He looked a little rougher than usual—his hair messy, his shirt wrinkled, his stubble darkening his cheeks and chin, his eyes looking a little red.
But, God, he was still the best thing I’d ever seen.
“How’d you get back here?” I asked when my mouth remembered how to move.
“Casey isn’t exactly the best security in the world,” he said, moving inside, closing the door, then leaning back against it, crossing his arms like he was perfectly at ease. Even as my blood raced, my heart hammered, my stomach did somersaults.
“How… how are you back here so quickly?”
“Work was easy. And I did a fifteen-hour leg.”
“That sounds miserable.”
“It wasn’t the best time I’ve spent on the road. So, congratulations.”
“Thank you. I’m still almost a little afraid it’s not real. I keep checking my bank account and, sure enough, it’s still there.”
“How’s it feel?”
“Honestly? It’s a little overwhelming.”
“Because now you have to figure out how to invest the money to make it work for you, compound, then allow you to keep going and going.”
“Exactly.”
“Well. You start with one house, right? Then focus on the next. And the next. And you might have been working with a conman, but you did get legit plans written up, permits, supplies ordered…”
He was right.
I wasn’t starting from scratch.
I had a plan.
I just needed to set it in motion again.
“Or…”
“Or?” I asked.
“Or you don’t do the work.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you don’t have to be a real estate developer, right? You could be a land developer. You have all the approvals and permits. You can sell the buildable plots instead of doing all the work yourself.”
“But I ordered materials.”
“Yeah. Use ‘em for your house. You have twenty acres, right?”
“Right.”
“Even if you subdivided with one-acre lots, that’s twenty plots you can sell. It’s not your concern if or when someone builds on them. But you get, what, a hundred grand each plot? Maybe a little more, seeing as the developers are sniffing around here. That’s more than enough to build your house.”
“That’s an idea…”
“I know it’s not the grand original plan to build a developer empire. But you could lean into your other strengths if you want that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there are a lot of people in this town who need to wash their money, right? You’ve got the skills to do that. And the potential business plan that will let you easily layer in millions of dollars.”
“You want me to ask the Murphys if they want to get into a development business with me?”
“The Murphys, the Novikoffs, Czar, Erion, Slash… you’ve got a lot of options. Just something to consider before you make any moves. They have the liquid cash to allow you to build that empire you want.”
He wasn’t wrong. It was actually one of the easiest ways to wash money. There were so many different expenses in building. It was easy to hide hundreds of thousands, if not millions if the project was big enough, so that it could never be found even in a forensic audit.
“I know it takes on more financial work for you. But it opens you up to a major empire. Millions in your retirement fund.”
He wasn’t wrong. It might mean a few years of a lot of work for me, but it would lead to an easy life for the next fifty: to private schools for my kids, trust funds, Ivy League universities. Amazing vacations. Money enough to invest back in my community, in charities I cared about.
It was a lofty dream.
But now that it was presented to me, I couldn’t help but start building it, brick by brick.
“That would require proposals and financial models, and—”
“And I’m sure you’re more than capable of getting that done if that’s how you want to go about it.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I’ll have to think about it.” But with how strongly my mind latched onto it, I knew it was something I was going to seriously look into. “Thanks for the idea.”
To that, he nodded.
“How’s it feel being home?” he asked.
“Well, the motel isn’t really home.”
“But you can start looking into getting that fixed now.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
I was surprised, though, how I wasn’t already looking at apartment listings.
“You don’t seem eager.”
“I think I’m just… processing.”
Raff nodded as he pushed off the door and moved toward the desk, placing his hands flat on my new desk.
“Processing the business possibilities again?” he asked. “Or more personal things?”
I couldn’t help but have my gaze sweep away, pretending to look at something on my laptop. Because I wasn’t sure I could lie to his face.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Raff pressed my laptop lid closed, making my gaze shoot up automatically.
“Yeah, Lula, you do.”
I swallowed hard and tried to force some indifference into my voice even as my pulse sped.
“Really?” I asked. “You, of all people, are going to read into a casual hookup?”
He was silent for a second, the only sign that he was affected by my words at all being the muscle that ticked in his jaw.
“A casual hookup,” he repeated. “You’re right; I’ve known more than my fair share of those. Which is why I’m as close as you can get to an expert on what those are. This,” he said, waving between us, “is not that.”
“This… isn’t anything,” I clarified. “It was just… a road trip fling.”
“Yeah? That why your eyes look swollen, like you’ve been crying?” he asked. His hand reached out, tracing the line of my bracelet. “Or why you’re wearing this?”
“It’s just a bracelet.”
“And you have dozens of others you could have worn. But you wore this one.”
“It doesn’t mean—” I started, but the lie died on my tongue.
“You can’t lie to me, huh?” he asked as he moved around my desk. “But are you lying to yourself?”
He grabbed the arms of my chair and turned me to face him.
“Admit it, you haven’t been able to get me off your mind since you walked away from me at that airstrip.”
“I…”
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I couldn’t think of anything at all except how close he was to me, how much I missed that coconut-lime-rum scent of him, how much I missed him.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” he told me. His hands slid down the arms of my chair, over my thighs, down my calves, then back up. “About how you gasp when my cock slides inside you.”
Just the mention of it had my body reacting—my sex clenched hard as fire surged through my veins.
“About how you writhe beneath me and beg for more…”
His fingers teased the hem of my skirt, then slipped under, following my thighs to the juncture, then pressing between.
“Yeah,” he said as a whimper escaped me and my legs fell open to invite more. “You’ve been thinking about me.” His fingers moved beneath my panties, tracing my cleft without the barrier. “Or you wouldn’t be so wet for me already.”
Two of his fingers surged inside me.
Everything else dissolved but him, his touch, the pulsing need in the air between us.
My hips rocked as his fingers thrust, but it wasn’t enough, wasn’t what we both knew I wanted.
“Rafe…”
Heat flared in his eyes.
Then his hand was sliding out of my panties.
His control had completely snapped.
One second I was in my chair; the next, he had me out of it and on my desk, my skirt hiked up, my panties sliding off my ankles.
“Say it,” he demanded as he pulled the condom out of his wallet. “Say you’ve been thinking of me,” he clarified. My gaze followed his hand as it went to his jeans, working the button and zipper down, then reaching inside.
“I’ve been thinking of you,” I whispered.
“Yeah, you have,” he agreed, fisting his cock and stroking it as his other hand teased my clit, making my chest go tight. “Now tell me what you want.”
I lost his hand then as he made quick work of the condom.
“No,” he demanded when I squeezed my thighs shut. “Keep your legs spread for me.”
A soft whimper escaped me as I let my legs fall back open.
“I could ease the ache,” he said, hands sliding up and down my thighs. “Just tell me what you want.”
“You.”
That had a rumble moving through his chest as his gaze went soft.
“Close,” he said. “But that’s not all the words. What do you want?”
“I want you to fuck me.”
I barely had time to draw in a breath before he surged deep inside me in one long stroke.
Any restraint remaining in either of us snapped.
It was all heat and movement and feral sounds as he fucked me—hard and fast—driving me relentlessly toward that edge before sending me mercilessly over.
I barely got a chance to feel the pulsations of pleasure ease before he was sliding away, grabbing, then turning me, bending me over the desk and surging back inside me.
I didn’t even recognize the sound that escaped me then—something low and animalistic.
Raff’s hands went to my hips, using them to slam me back into him as he thrust forward. I had to grab the edge of my desk to keep from flying over it with each movement.
The room filled with sound—my moans, his groans, the sounds of our bodies slamming together.
“No,” he demanded when I pressed my lips into my arm, trying to muffle my sounds. “I want to hear you when you moan for me.”
I shattered apart at that, the orgasm stealing my breath, my voice, and the edges of my vision as it shot through me.
I thought he was done with me then, but when I came back down, I found him still hard inside me.
His hands moved out, grabbing me under each arm and pulling me up until my back was against his front.
One arm went around my upper chest, the other my belly, and his lips pressed in at my neck.
Only then did he start to move again.
But everything had tipped, changed. There was none of the desperation from a moment before.
When he dropped his hips, he gently rocked back into me, making me achingly aware of each inch as something seemed to break open in my chest, allowing it to fill with him.
“Harder,” I demanded. Not out of real desire, but in response to the flayed feeling in my chest, and the need to think of anything but how right this felt.
“No, baby,” he said, lips pressing kisses up my neck. “Slow. Sweet.”
My hips wiggled, writhed, tried to silently convince him otherwise. But he was committed to the softness, to the intimacy that was impossible to ignore.
The tension still coiled low in my stomach, desire still bled into every moment. But it was something more than that, something deeper, an emotional reaction that had my eyes going glassy and my heart feeling too big for my chest.
“Tell me you want me,” he demanded, his lips gliding up the shell of my ear.
“I want you.”
“And you’ve been thinking of me.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re scared of how much.”
I leaned back against him, my voice whisper-soft. “Yes.”
“You could choose me,” he said, his arms squeezing me tighter. “And I would spend my life showing you why that was the right decision.”
His hips thrust and rolled.
And the orgasm rolled through me like thunder, deep and bone-shaking.
Raff groaned, his forehead pressing into my temple as his hips bucked, as his body tensed, as he came with me.
I was suspended in the trembling aftermath, my body too overwhelmed for my mind to form a single thought for what felt like an eternity.
But when my brain cleared, it was panic that overtook me, making me jerk away from Raff, to move around the desk, to put it between us.
Raff’s chest expanded as he took a deep, disappointed breath, seeming to sense the change in me.
“I can’t—”
“You can,” he objected, yanking his pants back into place. “You can if you let yourself.”
He was right.
I could.
I could choose him.
I could let him love me.
I could express the love I felt toward him in return.
I could do that.
And yet the fear was what overtook me.
“I… I can’t do this right now.”
I turned, grabbed my bag, and fled from the room, from the building, from the future Raff was offering, one I knew I could accept, I could live happily in… even if it wasn’t what I’d planned, even if he wasn’t who I’d pictured myself with.
Because I knew, I knew that if I let myself really think it through—without any of my preconceived ideas—I would come to one conclusion only. That Raff might not be who I thought I wanted… but he was exactly who I needed.
That was too much to confront when I was feeling so raw, so vulnerable, so unlike myself.
So I did the only thing I could.
I ran from it.
From him.
From the building, then half of the town.
All the way back to the motel.
Back to my room.
I didn’t know the mistake I made until it was too late.
“You stupid fucking bitch,” Drake said as he moved to block the door.