Rose
"If you keep looking at me like that, we'll have to delay the jet and stay until I've had my fill of you."
"I am yours to command, ma'am," he says, matter-of-fact, one hand braced against the tile, the other stroking himself, water running over a body I've spent this whole trip becoming intimately reacquainted with.
We've been in New York for two days, and when we aren't in meetings, we've been locked inside this hotel room, surfacing only to eat, shower and occasionally sleep.
There's a stack of room-service trays by the door and a do-not-disturb sign that has more than earned its keep.
At this point housekeeping probably thinks we're dead.
I imagine the food disappearing periodically is the only thing keeping them from calling for a wellness check.
And he's properly marked up now. Nail tracks run down his chest and back, with bite marks scattered over his thighs and shoulders in deep shades of purple.
He keeps admiring them whenever he catches sight of himself in a mirror, pleased as hell with every one, and he took everything I gave him so beautifully that looking at the evidence makes me want to add to it.
He looks glorious as mine.
We need to be at the airport in a couple of hours, which is the only reason I agreed to let him shower alone. It was a mature, responsible decision made by two adults with a schedule to keep.
It lasted approximately ninety seconds.
"Jackson?"
He looks at me through the glass and waits, water sheeting over his shoulders.
"Make yourself come."
A slow, sexy smile spreads across his face as he works soap over his rapidly hardening cock and starts to stroke, taking his time because he knows perfectly well I'm watching and the man has developed a deep appreciation for performing under supervision.
That was twenty minutes ago.
Since then, I've walked him right to the edge three times and pulled him back from every one, and he's about reached the limit of his patience.
His thighs are taut, his breathing has gone rough, precum leaks from his tip onto his stomach, and that sexy vein in his neck is standing out.
His whole body is one clenched plea, but he hasn't broken a single rule to get there.
Fuck, I love that about him.
"Are you ready to come?"
"Fuck yes. Please."
I raise an eyebrow.
That's all it takes.
Disappointment flashes across his face as he catches himself and immediately reins it back in, pulling in a breath before trying again.
"Yes, ma'am. I'm ready to come."
Much better.
I let him wait another second because I'm not entirely benevolent.
"Good boy. Come for me."
"Fuckkkk. Fuck. Fuck."
It takes two hard, long strokes of his fist before his release hits the glass, his whole body jerking with the force of everything I made him hold.
When he's finally spent, he braces both hands against the tile and leans forward, head hanging between his shoulders while the water runs down the marked-up line of his back and he tries to remember how breathing works.
It takes every ounce of willpower I own not to step in there and start the whole damn thing over again.
But we have a flight, and I've already delayed us once this morning for significantly less noble reasons.
At some point, Sullivan & Associates does require its board members to put on clothes and participate in capitalism.
Tragic, really.
I open the shower door and take his face in my hands, licking the water from his lips before kissing him.
"Finish up, and then we'll get going."
He leans down and rests his forehead against mine, still dripping, still catching his breath. "I can't fucking feel my legs, Rose."
I laugh and give his cheek a light smack. "You'll get used to it."
His eyes narrow. "That's either a promise or a threat."
"Yes."
***
Jackson's been quiet since we left New York.
He was distracted on the flight, checked out somewhere behind his eyes, and now we're en route to the Sullivan building and he's staring out his window, clenching and unclenching his fist against his thigh.
I don't think he even knows he's doing it. He’s been laid open and easy under my hands, and somewhere between New York and Los Angeles, he closed like a door.
As we pull up to the building, the driver opens my door and I move to get out, but Jackson catches my hand.
"I'm going to run to my place first, and then I'll head back to the office. Okay?"
His brows are drawn together, and there's something underneath his voice I can't name, which bothers me more than the quiet did.
"Are you okay, Jackson?" I search his face. "Are we?"
He holds my gaze a beat too long, and my stomach drops straight through the floor of the car.
"There's something I need to do. We will be." His thumb strokes over my knuckles. "Do you trust me?"
"I do. You know I do." I gesture at him, all of him, because that's the best articulation my law degree can produce under pressure. "But I don't like this. Whatever this is, you feel distant."
He glances past me toward the open door. "Dave, shut the door for a sec."
The moment it clicks shut, he pulls me onto his lap like the conversation requires my full body weight against him to continue.
"I don't mean to be distant. There's something I have to handle, and I'll explain everything. I promise you that. But for now, I need you to trust that I'm yours." His hand comes up and brushes a strand of hair from my forehead, so gentle it makes my chest ache. "I've always been yours."
Then he kisses me, deep and slow, saying with his mouth what he won't let his words do yet, and I let him because whatever is sitting behind his eyes, this part is true. I'd stake everything on this part being true.
"I'm keeping you, and I'm not letting you go." He pulls back just enough to smirk at me. "Now get that fine ass of yours to work, and I'll see you later. We’ll talk to Bennet together about this later, okay?"
He smacks my ass as I climb off his lap, and I giggle like a fucking schoolgirl.
Actually giggle.
Disgusting.
What is this man doing to me?
Whatever it is he needs to handle, I trust him.
I'm out of excuses and, honestly, I'm out of the energy it took to keep manufacturing them.
I don't care anymore about the age difference, or that he's Michael's best friend, or any of the other reasons I've spent ten years hiding behind.
So we're doing this. Completely, terrifyingly, probably inadvisably doing this.
I officially belong to Marcus Jackson.
And fuck me, I like it.
I check my calendar as I head toward my office to see what I've got today. The floor is fairly empty for a Friday, so it shouldn't be much, and I catch myself smirking at my own screen because what I'm actually checking is how soon I can get the hell out of here and back to him.
Color me addicted.
"Hi, Claudia. Is everyone already in conference room A?"
"Hi, Ms. Bennett. No, Mr. Sullivan canceled the board meeting this morning. I haven't received a date to reschedule yet."
I slow down. That's odd.
"Thanks. I'll head back and see him."
"Yes, ma'am."
My phone dings as I walk toward Michael's office.
Jackson: I miss you already. I'm staying at your place tonight.
A stupid smile plasters itself across my face.
Jesus.
Nearly forty years of carefully cultivated dignity, and this man has reduced me to grinning at text messages in corporate hallways.
I don't even hate it.
The smile is still there when I reach Michael's office and push open the door.
"Claudia mentioned you canceled the board—"
I stop dead.
"Holy fuck!"
Michael has Blaire Monroe on his desk, her legs open around him and his hand up her skirt, and that is not an image of my brother I ever needed burned into my brain.
He moves fast, putting the corner of the office between us while he adjusts his clothes. Blaire slides off the desk and spins around, smoothing her skirt down, but not quickly enough that I don't catch a full tit that had made a bid for freedom somewhere along the way.
What the hell is he thinking?
"What the hell did I just walk in on?"
I should close the door. I should walk out, scrub my eyes with bleach and pretend Fridays don't exist. But God help me, I can't leave this man unsupervised without him sticking a fork in a light socket.
Goddamnit.
"I'll uh—" Blaire starts, with all the grace of a woman currently tucking herself back into her own blouse. "Yeah. I, uh, I need to make a phone call."
I level a glare at her.
Yeah. You do that, bitch.
I manage to hold onto my composure and some frayed thread of professionalism as she slides past me and out of his office, close enough that I could trip her. The thought crosses my mind with enough sincerity that I shift my foot back just to remove the temptation.
God, this woman ruined him. She and Colt Monroe stood in that poolhouse and broke him into so many pieces that it took years to put him back together, a project I'm still actively completing if we're being honest. She's the reason we left Texas.
The reason he changed his name. The reason I've spent ten years chasing down and cleaning up every mistake he's made while acting out against that boy, making damn sure he never becomes him again.
It doesn't take a shrink to connect those dots, and yet Michael has decided the appropriate response to all that history is to put his hand up her skirt on company property.
How could he be so fucking stupid?
I pinch the bridge of my nose and push the door shut behind her.
"Rose—"
Please don't speak.
"Don't." I hold up one hand. "Give me a minute."
"You're back early."
I'm going to drown him.
Right downstairs in the lobby fountain, in front of the entire staff. Claudia will testify that I was under extreme emotional duress, Jackson will help dispose of any inconvenient security footage, and not one jury in California would convict me once I explained what I just saw.
"One. Minute. Michael."
I take several slow breaths, the kind my therapist would be proud of, although I doubt he envisioned me using the technique to avoid murdering my younger brother after accidentally seeing far too much of his sex life.
I love him. I truly do. I have loved this man through every terrible decision he's made since he was fourteen, and there have been enough of them that I should qualify for some form of government pension.
But God, am I exhausted.
I've been back in this building for all of eleven minutes.
Eleven. I have a man I'm crazy about acting cagey in a town car somewhere, several days of work waiting for me, and now I've seen my brother's hand up Blaire Monroe's skirt, an image I will eventually be paying a licensed professional an obscene hourly rate to remove from my brain.
Fine.
I straighten my spine, ready the big-sister speech I've been delivering in one form or another for most of my adult life, and take the chair across from his desk like I'm about to chair the world's most humiliating board meeting.
Here we fucking go.