Chapter 17
Theo
“If I’m yours, then prove it.”
White hot need courses through my body, and I don’t waste any more time before crashing my lips to Whitney’s and proving to her that I mean every word I say.
My hands grip her waist, pulling at the fabric of her blouse until it’s released from the high waistband of her pencil skirt. My fingers travel underneath her shirt until I find the smooth skin of her hips and belly.
Her skin breaks out in goosebumps as my hands explore the sides of her abdomen.
She’s trim, and my hands look large against her waist. I can’t help the appreciative rumble that emanates deep in my chest, and I press her even further back against the wall and slide my knee between her legs.
I nearly groan when I find her center already wet for me.
Whitney whimpers against the pressure between her legs, and she undulates her hips, gasping in pleasure when she finds just the right rhythm and angle to rub her steadily swelling clit against my thigh.
I lean down and capture her mouth, breaking through the seam of her lips and kissing her deeply.
My hands grip her waist, and I guide her in the rhythm that I want her to move.
Whitney’s gasps and mewls with every upstroke have me thickening in my pants, and I can’t wait to be buried deep inside of her.
Pulling away from her mouth, I waste no time before trailing kisses along her jaw, down her neck, and into the divot of her collarbone.
She shivers against me, and I suspect she’s seconds away from losing complete control.
Her fingers bury themselves in my hair, and she tugs at the strands, still grinding herself against the firm muscle of my thigh.
By the desperate way she’s moving and the noises she’s making, I know she’s about to come.
I move her up and down my leg harder, encouraging her to tilt her pelvis a certain way so she’s hitting all the right spots. “That’s it, baby.”
Her head falls back against the wall, and her swollen lips open with a gasp.
I release one side of her hip, only to trail it under her shirt, up the middle of her torso, and over one breast. My fingers dip into the cup of her bra, and I find her nipple, strumming it at a steady pace and watching the way it drives her wild.
“Theo,” she moans, squeezing her eyes shut.
“Eyes open, baby,” I mutter as I lean forward and press my lips right next to her ear. “Look at me when you come all over my leg.”
More goosebumps erupt across her arms as if the sound of my voice is just what she needs to push her all the way. Whitney convulses in my arms, but I don’t stop. I continue to guide her hips with one hand and tweak her nipple with the other. She shatters around me with a strangled cry.
I groan appreciatively in my throat at the sight of her falling apart against me. She sighs at the sound of my voice. I wrap my arms around her, under her arms, and haul her up against me, capturing her lips again.
I need to be inside of her. Right. Fucking. Now.
As if reading my mind, Whitney wraps her legs around my waist, holding onto me tightly. I walk us out of my home office, down the hall, and into my bedroom. I kick the door closed behind us.
Thankfully, Chase finally found an apartment of his own and moved out over the weekend while we were at the gala. Even still, I like the idea of the door being closed while I do unspeakable things to my beautiful girl.
Shuffling across the floor, I let Whitney down just a few feet from my bed. I take a step back from her and gaze over her body appreciatively. She’s wearing far too much clothing, but she still looks stunning.
“Take your clothes off,” I instruct her.
Whitney holds my eyes boldly as she reaches behind her back and unzips her skirt. It falls around her hips, pooling around her ankles. She steps out of the material and then kicks off her shoes before reaching for the hem of her blouse and tugging it over her head.
I lick my lips, desperate for a taste of her as she’s standing in front of me in only her underwear. She doesn’t hesitate before reaching behind her back again and unclipping her bra. The undergarment slides off her arms, and she flings it to the floor before shimmying out of her underwear.
Her breasts are swollen and heavy, aching for me to taste and suck on those perky nipples. I become impossibly hard as I reach for her. She walks seductively over where I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. Her nipples are at exactly the right height where I can dart my tongue out and taste them.
So I do.
Whitney throws her head back and sighs blissfully as my tongue wreaks havoc on her pretty little nipples. She maneuvers her hips against me, searching for more friction.
My hand slides up the side of her thigh and to the apex of her legs. Whitney spreads her legs open for me, giving me access to her wet center. I play with her expertly, running my fingers along her slit before delving deeper inside of her, paying close attention to the way she responds to my touch.
It doesn’t take long before she’s coming on my fingers, soaking them with her arousal and clenching around me so tightly.
While she’s still in the throes of her pleasure, I grab her hips and maneuver her onto the bed.
She’s pliable, completely blissed out from her orgasm.
While she’s staring up at me with dazed eyes, I remove the rest of my clothes, tossing them to the side to be worried about later.
I seat myself between her legs and slide home, groaning in relief from the feel of her tight heat around me. Whitney wraps her legs around my back, holding me tightly to her as I move deep inside her body.
This is heaven.
My thrusts gradually grow more and more rapid, and I feel the familiar tingle in the base of my spine, telling me I’m close to finishing. When Whitney’s pussy clenches rhythmically around me, I know I’m done for.
With a guttural groan, I thrust in one last time and seat myself as deeply as I can as I come hard.
Whitney’s legs fall from around my waist and land limply on the bed.
When I finally pull from her, she whimpers but then kisses me passionately on the lips before scurrying off to the bathroom to clean up.
I twist and fall back on the mattress, draping my arm over my eyes as I try to catch my breath. Whitney pads out of the bathroom a while later and snuggles into my side, resting her head against my chest.
We lay together for a little while, basking in the afterglow of our sex. Finally, my stomach rumbles, and Whitney’s head pops up, a wry grin twisting on her face.
“Hungry?” She teases me.
“Famished, actually,” I say back with a smile of my own.
We decided to go out for dinner to a small restaurant at the corner of my block. Whitney dresses back into her clothes from the day, and I find myself some dark-wash jeans and a button-down.
Luckily, the restaurant isn’t too busy, and we’re seated right away. The waiter comes by to take our drink orders and then our food orders shortly after.
While we wait, Whitney chatters on about the events of the day and how there had never been a kind of emergency like that before.
I nod my head, listening to her tell me more about her time working under Peterson.
Somehow, the conversation morphs into something more light-hearted once our food comes, but that doesn’t slow her down.
I find myself watching her with rapt attention, loving this chatty side of her that I only get to witness when we’re outside of the workplace—when we’re just us, Theo and Whitney.
“So then,” Whitney enunciates as she sets her fork down on the table and steels me with a steady gaze.
I really shouldn’t be this invested in hearing about her worst dating experiences, but here we are, on one of our first official dates together following a series of mind-blowing orgasms, and she’s regaling all of the worst possible scenarios.
“He looked at me, said he had a great time, and then gave me a high five before walking away and leaving me right in front of the restaurant.”
I laugh as I run my finger over the cool rim of my wine glass. “You’re kidding.”
Whitney leans back and gives me a solemn shake of her head. “I swear, I’m not.”
“Where do you find these guys?” I ask, curious as to how such a beautiful woman like her could possibly attract such losers as she’s describing.
“I don’t know, anywhere? That one I met at the grocery store.”
“Well, there’s your first problem,” I mutter. “Let me guess, you found him in the frozen vegetable aisle?”
“Worse,” she says, her voice tinged with amusement. “Gluten-free.”
I glance down at the now-empty plate that once held a heaping serving of spaghetti. If Whitney is anything, it’s definitely not gluten-free. “What were you doing in that aisle?”
“I was trying to make a recipe I found online, and it called for almond flour. But instead of picking up the almond flour, I picked up this guy instead.”
“Was it an even trade?” I question, raising an eyebrow.
She laughs and shakes her head. “No, definitely not.”
I can’t help but chuckle at her as my eyes take her in. She looks so happy this evening. Her skin is still glowing from the pleasure I gave her earlier, her cheeks maintaining the rosy remnants of a blush. Her slate blue eyes are twinkling at me as she takes me in, too.
My chest aches as I realize just how lucky I am that I found her.
To date, I’ve not been with one woman where I feel so content to sit and listen to her talk about anything and everything.
Sitting there gazing at her, I realize that I never want these moments to end.
I want to have evenings like this with her every night.
I want to have a nice dinner out, knowing that I get to take her home to my bed afterward, and then I want to wake up with her being the first thing I see every morning.
Then, the intensity of my thoughts takes me a bit by surprise, though they’re not unwelcome. I continue to ponder these thoughts, still actively engaging with her in conversation. I pay the tab, and then we go back home to my penthouse.
As if she’s lived here all her life, the minute Whitney crosses the threshold of my bedroom, she starts undressing, dropping her clothes all over the floor, and then crawling up on my mattress. She turns to face me, giving me a hooded stare that makes my cock thicken in my pants.
I follow her lead, and then the next thing I know, we’re repeating the events from earlier this evening.
And there’s no better way I’d rather spend the rest of the night than buried deep in the woman that I’m slowly starting to fall for.
“Hey, Whitney,” the familiar sound of my brother’s voice echoes from out by my girlfriend’s desk a few days following the incident with the sixth-floor fire. “Theo in?”
Whitney’s delicate voice confirms his question. I look up just in time to see Chase crossing the threshold of my office. He swings around and closes the door behind him, effectively shutting everyone else out. Frowning at him, I sit up straighter. “What’s going on?”
My brother exhales sharply and digs his fingers through his hair. “You know how you told me there was something about these financial statements that just wasn’t sitting right with you?”
“Yeah,” I draw out the word, hoping he’ll get to his point sooner rather than later.
Chase takes a few steps forward and drops a stack of papers on my desk. He falls into one of the chairs and then glowers at me. “I think I finally figured it out.”
My fingers hesitantly grab hold of the papers he dropped for me, and I begin to thumb through them, unsure what I’m looking at. I catch sight of many different strategic marketing evaluations and other invoices from sales and leases.
“What is all of this?”
Chase shakes his head. “He was sneaky about it. But that mother fucker was pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars every year.”
I nearly drop the stack of papers as my hands go numb. “You’re kidding.”
“No. It took me ages to figure it out,” he says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “But I finally found a trend.”
I brace myself to continue going through the stack he’s delivered, gearing up for the worst. Chase watches me as I try to put two and two together. My brows furrow when I come to one specific property—a lakefront view, tons of space, and fully renovated.
“You’re telling me this is the cost that this went for?”
My brother’s lips pull into an unamused smirk. “According to our books and everywhere else? Yes. But in actuality, it went for about two hundred thousand more than that.”
“How’d you discover this?”
“By doing exactly what you’re doing. I picked a date and went through every single high-dollar property we did contracts for.
On paper, everything looks like it was a seamless transaction, and the buyer got a good deal.
But then once I started digging deeper—going down to the lower level and speaking to actual buyers and sellers—I found the truth. ”
“He was reporting less than what it was purchased for?”
Chase nods his head slowly and dramatically. “And then pocketing the rest.”
I fall back in my chair and give my brother a dumbfounded look. “How?”
“He buried them among other similarly priced properties so it wouldn’t stand out in the reports. If it weren’t for you having a gut feeling something was off, I don’t think even I would’ve found them. He must have been one sly mother fucker.”
I stare down at the damning evidence that my brother had found about the previous CEO.
I was not surprised, rather, I was feeling validated by my inexperienced eyes noticing something was amiss right from the start.
But still, even with this validation, A sour, sick feeling settles in my gut.
If Peterson had been embezzling money and getting away with it, who knows what other skeletons we’d uncover if we dug deeper.
I tap my pen on my desk, considering all that my brother has brought to me today.
He’s watching me expectantly, as if waiting to see what my next move is going to be.
I have a lot to consider. Obviously, there’s one clear path here, but I know moving forward with it is going to leave a whirlwind of damage in its wake.
Even though I was suspicious from the get-go that there was shady business going on with this office’s predecessor, the woman sitting out front did not.
Whitney adored Peterson. He had been the father figure she yearned for in her life, and now I was going to have to be the one to tell her that he wasn’t all that he said he was.
I knew this was something I had to do; she deserved to know the truth, but that didn’t mean I was going to be happy about it.
And that fact, knowing that I’d purposefully make her unhappy, is like a knife to the gut. But I know I have to do the right thing. I have to tell her.