Chapter 15 #2
"Keep it that way. For now. Sloane can never see these. We will find another way to force Harrison to admit to the coercion and that he signed that contract under duress. Understood?"
Luca looks torn for a second and I level my eyes on him to make sure he hears what I am saying. “Sloane can never find out her father has a dark secret like this. It would destroy her. We can do what we have to do without ripping her heart out in the process with this.” I hold up the folder.
“We might have to if it comes down to it.”
“Let’s cross the bridge then. Agreed?”
Luca doesn't argue. He reads my face and hopefully understands what I'm doing—building a wall between Sloane and every ugly truth that might destroy her while telling myself I'm protecting her.
“You better put that somewhere where no one can find it then.”
He leaves. I stand alone in the boardroom with the Society 69 folder and the Genesis deadline and the weight of every secret I'm carrying pressing down on my shoulders until the back of my neck aches.
Nine days.
Luca hands me another folder along with the financial forensics he's compiled on the Ferraro shell companies so far. I stack them together, tuck them under my arm, and take the elevator up to the penthouse.
Sloane is on the sofa with her legs tucked under her, reading something on her laptop, her bare face lit by the screen's blue glow. She looks up when I walk in and her blue eyes sweep my face with the quick, instinctive assessment she runs on everyone but never used to run on me.
"Hey." She closes the laptop. "You look like you've been carrying the building on your back all day."
"Long meetings. Give me one second and I’ll be right back.” I turn to my office and drop the files in the bottom drawer before returning to Sloane.
“Now where were we?”
"Mmm." She stands and crosses the room, her bare feet quiet on the hardwood, and stops in front of me. Her knuckles brush against my beard as she pulls the silk free, and the contact is so casual, so domestic, it nearly breaks me. "You're wound tight. I can feel it from across the room."
Her hands move to my shoulders. Her thumbs press into the muscle above my collarbones and I feel the tension in my neck release a fraction under her touch. She reads my body better than anyone I've ever known and right now my body is screaming with everything my mouth refuses to say.
"Let me take care of you." She says it quietly, her blue eyes looking up at me, and the trust in her gaze makes me want to confess everything. The deadline. The Society 69 folder. All of it.
Instead I cup her jaw in my hand and tilt her face up and kiss her with a desperation that has nothing to do with desire and everything to do with terror. She tastes like wine and happiness.
She pulls back. Reads my face again. Whatever she sees there makes her decision for her.
She drops to her knees. “Let me make your day a little bit better.” Her baby blues hold me captive for a couple of heartbeats. Fuck, this woman is everything to me. I silently vow right this second to never let anything bad touch her again. I don’t care what I have to do to protect her.
My breath catches. She's kneeling in front of me on the hardwood floor, her bare knees against the dark wood, her hands reaching for my belt with steady fingers.
She leans forward and brushes her lips over the skin just above my buckle. She’s being a tease and I’m instantly hard.
She unbuckles it, the metal clinking in the quiet penthouse, and unzips me with a deliberate patience that makes my pulse hammer.
She pulls me free and wraps her hand around my thick cock, her fingers warm and firm. I'm already hard from the kiss, from the kneeling, from the sight of this woman on the floor choosing to pleasure me.
"Sloane." Her name comes out rough.
"Shut up." She looks up at me with those blue eyes, her bare face framed by loose blonde hair, her lips parted. "You don't have to be in charge right now. You don't have to fix anything. Just let me make you feel good for once."
She takes me into her mouth. Warm, wet, her tongue sliding along the underside of my cock as she draws me deeper. My hand moves to her hair, my fingers threading through the blonde strands, gripping without pulling because even now, even with my self-control fracturing, I won't hurt her.
She sets the pace. Slow at first, her lips tight around me, her cheeks hollowing with each stroke. Then faster, her hand working the base while her mouth takes everything she can reach. The sounds she makes, wet and deliberate and unashamed, fill the quiet penthouse and press against the windows.
My hips flex forward. She takes it. Her hands grip my thighs for balance, her nails pressing crescents through the fabric of my slacks, and I watch her on her knees with her eyes closed and her mouth full and I feel the orgasm building from the base of my spine with a velocity that tells me I'm not going to last.
"Sloane." I grip her hair tighter. "I'm close."
She pulls back. Looks up at me. Her lips are swollen and wet and her blue eyes are wide and dark. "On me." Her voice is hoarse and certain. "I want to see what I do to you. Show me." She’s baring her desires for me and her open honesty is killing me. My brave tesoro.
She pulls off her shirt. Her breasts sway with the movement, making my cock impossibly harder.
The permission breaks something open in my chest. I stroke myself, fast and hard, my fist tight around my shaft, and when I come it's with a groan that tears from my throat as my release spills on her mouth and the beautiful swell of her breasts, hot and white against her bare skin.
She holds still, her chin tilted up, her eyes on mine, and the sight of her kneeling in front of me marked with my release with the glittering city as our backdrop is an image that will live in my memory for the rest of my life.
My legs tremble. I sink to my knees in front of her, meeting her on the floor, and press my forehead against hers. Our breathing tangles between us, ragged and raw.
"Stay right here." I kiss her forehead. Stand. Walk to the bathroom. Return with a warm, damp cloth and kneel in front of her again.
I clean her skin with slow, careful strokes. Her collarbones. The swell of her breasts. The hollow of her throat where a trace still lingers. She watches my hands move across her body with an expression so tender it makes my heart ache with the knowledge she’s too good for me.
"Better?" she whispers.
"Better." I press my lips against the clean skin above her heart and feel her pulse steady and warm beneath my mouth.
I pull a t-shirt over her head, one of mine, and she tugs it down over her hips and smiles at me with a softness that I don't deserve. Not tonight. Not with nine days hanging over us and a folder full of photographs in my desk drawer.
Later. She falls asleep in my arms on the sofa with her cheek pressed against my chest and the laptop still open on the coffee table.
Nine days left and the clock is ticking toward a deadline I can see and she can't. The wedge coming between us is measured in every lie I'm telling her. But there’s nothing I can do about it and protect her at the same time.