19. Imogen
Imogen
The whole cab ride I make myself think about packing, because the second I stop, I’m going to cry.
The duffel goes on the bed, the tote next to it, the toothbrush out of the bathroom glass, the charger out of the wall, the three cardigans folded the same as the night I moved in. I run the list start to finish, then run it again, because the list is quiet and my father’s voice in my head isn’t.
I tip the driver too much so I don’t have to wait for change, then let myself into the house, and start packing for real.
I’m on the cardigans when the car comes.
A car pulls up under the window. There’s a key in the lock, then steps coming down the hall fast, and then he’s in my doorway in the same charcoal suit from dinner, no Luke, watching me fold a cardigan into a bag.
He stands in the doorway without a word, jaw set, hands hanging at his sides like he doesn’t trust what they’ll do if he lets them.
“You can stand down,” I tell him, not looking up. “I’ve got the leaving handled. It’s a solo event.”
“Imogen.”
“Toothbrush.” I drop it in the tote. “Charger. You’d be amazed how fast I move when I’m motivated. Turns out getting humiliated does wonders for the focus.”
“Stop. Please.”
The please stops me, because it isn’t a word he uses often. I straighten up and he’s still in the doorway, not stepping over the line of it, like the floor of my room is somewhere he’s no longer allowed.
“You knew the whole time,” I say. “Every night. You had your hands in my hair and you knew exactly whose daughter I was, and you said nothing.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?” I zip the duffel to give my hands a job. “Before you fucked me or after, huh? Or were you waiting for the IPO to go through?”
He doesn’t fire back, which is just another confirmation about how bad this is.
“I’m going back to the city,” I tell him.
“Tonight if there’s a cab willing to come get me, tomorrow if they don’t want to drive over night.
But I’m not leaving Luke, so don’t start writing terms in your head.
I’ll tutor him, I’ll come to the penthouse, I’ll do the lessons, and I’ll be everything to that kid I’ve been the whole time, because none of this is his fault and I’m not going to teach him that someone can love him and then vanish. He’s already got one parent for that.”
He opens his mouth, but I continue talking, not wanting to hear a word he has to say.
“That’s our new deal, though. I teach your son with boundaries and a commute, and you and I go back to being the two strangers we were supposed to be. The boss and the help, exactly what every face at that table already had us pegged as. Minus the fucking, of course.”
“That’s not what I want.”
“In case you don’t know yet, life’s cruel and we can’t always get what we want.” My voice cracks and he steps off the doorframe like it’s an invitation. “Don’t. Stay right there.”
He stops, but he’s in the room now, and it’s a small enough room that his presence wakes every nerve in my body.
“You want boundaries, I’ll give them to you,” he says. “All of them. The commute, the strangers, whatever you want.” He takes a step. “But I’m not here to argue the boundaries.”
“Then why are you in my room at midnight? Because from here it looks a lot like arguing the boundaries.”
“It’s my house.”
“It’s your house, but it’s my room.” I hold his eyes. “There’s a numbered section on the difference. You wrote it yourself.”
His lips lift in a small smile at that, and before I can tell him to wipe it off his stupid face, he crosses the last of the floor and takes my hand off the tote strap. His thumb works over my knuckles until they let go one at a time without my permission and his voice comes out scraped raw.
“Please stay.”
My body answers before my brain gets a vote, and that’s the whole disaster of it.
I know this fixes nothing and that I’ll hate myself by sunrise because a woman with any spine doesn’t drop the bag and walks straight into his arms, but that’s what I do, and when his hand comes up to my jaw I turn into it instead of away, which is the dumbest move I’ve made since I signed his contract.
“This changes nothing,” I tell him, but I need to feel him one last time. A closure of sorts. And he said please.
“I know.”
“I’m still gone in the morning.”
“I know.” He says it into my mouth, and then he’s kissing me. He kisses me like he drove the whole coast sure he’d open the door to an empty room, one hand fisting my hair at the root, the other dragging my hips into his so I feel exactly how hard he already is through the suit.
I get one clear thought about stopping, but then he catches my bottom lip in his teeth, and the thought’s gone.
“I don’t want to use you, so if you tell me to leave, I’ll leave,” he says against my throat, his mouth working down it. “One word and I’m out of here. I’ll sleep in the car.”
“Now’s not the time to be noble.” I’ve got both fists in his shirt, yanking it out of his waistband. “What I really want right now is for you to shut up and fuck me, Ashton.”
He turns me. One hand on my hip, and he has my back to his chest and my front to the wall, his cock against my ass through all the layers still between us, his mouth at the side of my neck.
He finds the zip and takes it down one notch at a time, slow, his knuckles riding the line of my spine the whole way open.
The dress drops off my shoulders and he goes down with it, onto his knees behind me, his mouth following the fabric, lips at the base of my spine, the curve of me, the back of my thigh. I put both hands flat on the wall, because my knees aren’t to be trusted.
He drags my underwear down, and his hand comes up between my legs from behind, confirming just how wet I am. The sound he makes against my lower back is low, filthy, and far too pleased with itself.
He works me like that, bent over my own hands against the wall, his fingers sliding through me and his thumb at my clit until I’m pushing back into his hand without any shame left, and the second my hips start chasing it he takes the hand away.
He stands and gets the rest of his clothes off, and I get my hand around his cock before he can take charge of the whole thing, stroking him slow just to watch his jaw clench and his breath catch.
He lets me run him three more strokes, his cock twitching in my fist, before he’s done being patient, and walks me back to the half-stripped mattress, then follows me down. I line up his cock against my pussy, and he sinks into me in one long slow push until there’s nowhere left to go.
Whatever sound I make, he takes it off my mouth with a kiss.
He moves slowly as if he’s trying to savor and remember it, going almost all the way out and back to the root. His forehead’s on mine, his fingers lace through mine as he pins my hand by my head, then fucks me like he’s trying to convince me to stay.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he says against my mouth, and it lands less like an order than a thing he’s begging to be true.
“Watch me.” But my hips are already rising to meet him and my heels at the backs of his thighs hauling him deeper.
He gets an arm under the small of my back and lifts, changing the angle so the next thrust pulls a gasp straight out of me. He does it again, slower, watching my face, making me grip his shoulders.
Then he eases out, and I nearly curse him, but he’s turning me onto my side, stretching out behind me, lifting my top leg over his thigh and pushing back in from behind.
It’s deep and slow and unfair, his chest against my back, one arm wrapped all the way around to hold me in against him, his palm spread flat on my stomach.
“Better,” he says into the back of my neck. His other hand comes up under my jaw, turning my face so he can take my mouth over my shoulder.
“You talk too much.”
“I’m taking my time.” He slowly grinds into me and his hand slides down off my stomach to my clit. “If you’re really leaving in the morning, I’m not about to hurry.”
I reach back and fist his hair, and he works me with his fingers while he fucks me on his side, his breath hot at my ear, telling me how wet I am, how good, how he’s been hard since I started arguing with him because he knew exactly where it would lead.
The orgasm builds low and enormous, but right as I’m at the edge he slows, eases out, and this time I do swear at him out loud.
“Up here,” he says, sitting back against the headboard, pulling me with him. “Come on.”
I climb over him and take him in slow, sinking down until my own weight’s driving him deep, and the stretch from this angle drags a groan out of both of us.
His hands close on my hips. I plant my palms on his chest and start to move.
For once I set the pace, slow grinds that take him all the way, and I get to watch the man who runs every room he stands in fall apart underneath me.
Seeing him at my mercy makes me grind down harder and faster, his cock hitting deep on every drop. He sits up to meet me, wraps both arms around my back, and gets his mouth on my throat. The orgasm comes up through me slow and then everywhere at once, my whole body clamping down on him.
He goes right after me, both arms crushing me down onto him, his hips driving up twice more before he spills into me with a sound torn out of him rough and helpless, his face buried in my hair, holding me flush like the half-inch of space is more than he can stand.
Afterward, neither of us moves. I’m folded against his chest with his heart going hard under my cheek, his arms still locked at my back, the half-packed bag sitting on the floor where I let it fall.
“You could stay,” he says, into my hair. Not a plea this time, just a fact he’s putting out there.
“I know I could.”
“That’s not the same as saying you won’t.”
“No,” I admit. “It’s not.”
He doesn’t say anything else. His hand moves through my hair, and I lie there and listen to his heart come down from wherever it went, and I don’t make any promises either of us would have to keep in the morning.
This changes nothing, and I told him so. I’ll prove it in the morning when I’m out the door.
But right now, I get to pretend to have this for one last night.