27. Ashton
Ashton
There are two of them. The first is the parking lot off Hudson, Imogen’s hand in mine down at our sides, my head turned toward her. The second is grainier, shot from farther off, the two of us coming out the clinic doors with her bag pressed to her stomach.
The headline does the work the pictures can’t. BILLIONAIRE’S BABY BUMP IN THE BUDGET? Under it, a few lines someone got paid to write.
“It’s everywhere by lunch,” Lola says. “Three outlets have already run with it. The chair’s office called twice before eight.”
“Of course they did.” I turn the phone face down. “What do they want?”
“A statement that puts distance between you and her. Or your resignation before the vote, so the story doesn’t ride the offering into the market.
” She doesn’t soften it, which is the only reason she’s still standing in front of me when I want to put my fist through a wall.
“They’re calling it shareholder confidence.
What they mean is they’ve wanted you gone since the divorce, and now they’ve got the picture to do it with. ”
“And Harrison?”
Her mouth goes tight, and then the phone on the desk lights up, his name burning through the back of the glass.
“Speak of the devil,” I mutter, and take it at the window. The river’s gray and dead flat forty floors down, the same water that was at our backs yesterday, before some bastard with a long lens turned it into a weapon.
“I thought we had an agreement,” Harrison says, his voice cold.
“Harrison, I can explain.”
“We’re way past that, Ashton.” He’s pacing, I can hear his breath move with it, the old habit when he’s stopped listening to anybody but himself.
“You knew exactly who she was, and you put her on your payroll, in your bed, and now in a gossip column with my grandchild in her belly for the whole city to leer at.” His breath drags hard down the line.
“I’m done waiting on you to do the decent thing, because you don’t have it in you.
I’m putting out my own statement today, my own words, and when I’m finished there won’t be a board on earth that lets you keep your chair.
You want to know what I can do when I stop protecting you? You’re about to find out.”
“If you put out a statement, you confirm every word of it. If you say her name out loud, you’ll make her real in a story she never agreed to be in, in front of the whole city.”
“She’s my daughter,” he forces through gritted teeth. “You put her in this situation.”
“She’s a grown woman. You want to protect her, then ask her what she needs, ask her what she actually wants instead of deciding it for her.
” I keep going before he can cut in. “You keep making her choices, you’re going to lose her for good.
She already took her mother’s name to get out from under you. What do you think she’ll do next?”
He hangs up without giving me one word about what he means to do.
I grab my keys and drive to Bex’s myself. I don’t call ahead, don’t tell her I’m coming, and when Imogen opens the door her jaw is already set, her phone in her fist, the headline glowing up off it.
“I’ve seen it,” she says.
“I know. That’s why I came in person.” I stay at the doorway until she steps back to let me in. “I’m not here to fix it for you. I came to tell you everything, and then, if you want, help you decide what to do with it.”
The apartment’s small and warm, Bex’s terrible lamp in the corner, a stack of Imogen’s notes on the table.
She fills the kettle without asking, drops a spoon of instant coffee into a mug, and sets it down in front of me on the only clear corner of the table.
It’s the first thing she’s given me since the parking lot.
“Talk,” she says.
I sit down and wrap a hand around the mug.
“The board wants me gone. Or they want me to feed you to the press to save the IPO. Put out a statement, call you a mistake, say the photos are exactly what they look like and I’ve handled it.
” I turn the mug a quarter turn on the table.
“They don’t care which one I pick, as long as the story’s dead before the market opens. ”
“And if you give them neither?”
“Then they force a vote. And Sophia’s emergency custody motion is still out there. We’re waiting on the court to set a hearing date. It could come down any day now. Her people pulled a file on you when she filed it, and I’d guess they’re still digging, looking for anything they can use.”
Imogen sits down across from me, both hands around her own mug. “I never asked for this.”
“I know.”
“All I wanted was to work,” she continues. “Teach kids. Help them grow and find their independence. That’s all I ever wanted. Not this.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say though I know it’s too late for that. “I should’ve known better. This is all my fault.”
“And my father?” she asks, ignoring my apology.
“On the warpath.” I look down, shake my head. “I don’t know what he’ll do.”
She sighs. “And you? What will you do?”
“Whatever keeps you and Luke safe.” I raise my head to meet her eyes.
“The rest of it I can live without. I’ve got enough money to bury three generations in comfort.
If Harrison wants the company, he can have it.
If the board wants me gone, I won’t fight them into a war that takes four hundred people’s jobs down with it. ”
“You’d lose everything,” she says.
“Then I lose it. That part’s already decided, and it was decided by me, not you.
” I hold her eyes so she hears it. “I’m not handing you a choice where you have to weigh my company against your own life.
The company’s gone either way, whatever you pick.
What’s yours to decide is what happens to you in this.
You want out of the story, I make you disappear from it by morning.
You want to fight, I’ll burn what’s left to the ground before I let any of them near you.
But you don’t carry what it costs me. That’s mine. ”
“You’re actually letting me decide,” she says. “Like for real.”
“Yes. Whatever you choose, I’ll make it happen.”
She shoves her mug aside, closes the space across the table, takes a fistful of my shirt, and drags my mouth down to hers.
It isn’t soft. She kisses me like she’s been holding it back through the clinic and the parking lot and every careful inch she put between us, teeth on my bottom lip, her tongue in my mouth before I’ve caught up.
There’s a headline branding her name onto the city and she’s done being careful about any of it, and I feel that the second she climbs out of her chair and into my lap, knees either side of my thighs, the heat of her cunt coming down right over my cock through two layers of fabric.
“Fuck,” I get out against her mouth. I get both hands full of her ass and drag her down harder, grinding her against the length of me until she’s the one gasping.
She’s already soaking through to me, I can feel it, the wet warmth of her bleeding through her leggings onto the front of my slacks, and my cock kicks against her hard enough that she breaks the kiss to swear.
“Bex,” I manage, dragging my mouth down her throat.
“Out for hours.” She fists a hand in my hair and yanks my head back up to hers. “Stop saying other women’s names and take me to bed before I change my mind.”
I get us into the spare room and kick the door shut behind us. The bed’s a single shoved against the wall, half the size of anything we ever wrecked at the coast, and when I lay her back on it my knee runs out of mattress before my hands run out of her.
“This bed’s a crime,” I tell her, dragging her shirt up over her head.
“I’m sure you’ll make it work.” She gets a fist in my hair and pulls. “You’re resourceful. Figure it out.”
I get my mouth on her throat, down over her collarbone, lower, until I’ve got her nipple between my teeth and I’m working it with my tongue until she arches clean up off the narrow mattress with both hands knotted in my hair.
There’s nowhere to put my elbows that isn’t her or the wall, so I plant one hand flat on the cheap of pillows above her head and use the other to strip her jeans down her legs, her underwear going with them, both kicked off the end of the bed onto Bex’s floor.
I drop down between her thighs, which is a tight fit on a bed this small, my shoulders forcing her legs wide because there’s no other way to fit, and I put my mouth on her cunt because I’ve been half out of my mind for the taste of her since the coast. She’s already soaked, slick on my tongue the second I lick into her, and she grabs the back of my head and grinds her pussy up against my mouth with no shame left in her at all.
“There’s no room,” she gasps, her heel finding the wall for leverage, the headboard knocking against it. “Ashton, the bed’s too small for your whole.”
“Then hold still.” I press her hips down into the mattress with my forearm, work two fingers into her tight cunt and curl them, and whatever she meant to say next breaks apart into a moan she muffles against the back of her own hand.
“Ashton.” My name breaks in the middle. “Don’t stop. Don’t you dare stop.”
I don’t. I keep my mouth working her clit and my fingers buried deep, curling into the spot that makes her hips jerk, and I feel her wind tighter on every drag of my tongue.
When she finally breaks she clamps down around my fingers so hard I can’t move them, her thighs locking against my ears, her back arching off the narrow bed while she rides it out on my hand, soaking my chin, my name coming apart in her mouth.
I’m out of my own clothes before she’s stopped shaking, shirt and slacks shoved off onto Bex’s floor with the rest of it.
There’s no graceful way onto a bed this size with a woman already sprawled across it, so I just brace a knee against the wall and cover her, my cock dragging through the wet mess I made of her, and she shudders all over again at the contact.
“Inside me,” she gets out, both hands clutching at my back. “Now, I’m not waiting.”
I line up and push in slow, feeding it to her inch by inch, and she’s so tight and slick around me that I have to stop halfway just to breathe, my forehead dropping to hers, both of us panting into the same scrap of air. The headboard’s already knocking the wall and I’m barely moving.
“All of it,” she pants, her nails dragging down to my ass, trying to pull me the rest of the way. “Give me all of it.”
I bury the rest of it in her on one slow push until my hips are flush to hers and she’s taken all of me, and the sound that comes out of her goes straight through my chest. Then I move, long deep strokes that pull a fresh moan out of her every time I bottom out, drawing nearly all the way back before I drive in again so she feels the drag of every inch.
Her heels hook behind my thighs and haul me deeper, her nails scoring lines down my back I’ll find in the shower tomorrow.
The bed’s too small to do this right, so I get an arm under the small of her back and pin her to me, no space left between us anywhere, my chest dragging over her nipples on every thrust, the headboard slamming the wall in time with my hips.
She’s soaking me, the slick of her running down my cock and onto my balls, her cunt gripping me so tight on the backstroke that I have to grit my teeth to keep from finishing too soon.
It’s the best it’s ever been between us. No contract, no rulebook, no lie sitting underneath it, just her wet pussy clenching around my cock and her open mouth panting into mine and the truth finally out in the room with us.
“Harder,” she breathes against my lips, grinding up to meet every drive. “I’m not made of glass, Fraser.”
So I give it to her harder, the bed knocking the wall, her tits bouncing with every thrust, both of us past anything quiet now.
“This doesn’t fix it,” she breathes, grinding up to meet every thrust.
“I know.” I get a hand under her hips and tip them, change the angle so the next stroke drags right over the spot that makes her clench, and the rest of her sentence dissolves into a moan. “I’m not asking it to.”
I work her there, hitting it on every thrust, until her nails bite into my shoulders and her pussy starts fluttering around my cock.
I get my thumb on her clit, rub it in tight circles in time with my hips, and that’s what takes her.
She breaks apart under me with a cry she doesn’t try to muffle, her whole body locking, her pussy clamping down around my cock so hard I can’t hold back another second.
I go straight over with her, her name in my mouth, pumping into her in thick spurts while she’s still pulsing around me, my hips driving twice more, wringing it out, before I still and drop my weight onto her on the too-small bed.
After, neither of us moves, mostly because there’s nowhere to move to.
The bed’s too small for two people to lie side by side, so she ends up sprawled on top of me, her chest to mine, her legs tangled with mine and my softening cock still pressed between her thighs, the wet heat of her pussy resting against me.
I keep a hand spread over the small of her back and let her stay there.
Her breath slows against my skin, then her hand drifts down off my chest to rest flat on her own belly.
“This is real,” she says. “Whatever else is or isn’t between us, this part is real.”
“It is.”
My phone goes off against the hardwood. I reach down for it, because a man in my position can’t not, and Lola’s name lights the screen.
The board has called an emergency vote for tomorrow at 9 a.m. There is a motion on the table to remove you as CEO.