Chapter 12
Ash
Six Years Ago
The wooden chair creaks as I straighten my spine after being hunched over my laptop for the past…
I check my watch. Four hours. The house is shrouded in darkness and a single lamp casts weak light over the kitchen table.
Papers are scattered across its scuffed surface, obscuring the scars of its past life – a life I’m only able to glimpse through Belle’s eyes.
Belle grew up in this clapperboard, one-story house that’s close enough to the distillery to breathe in the sour tang of mashed and fermenting grain.
It’s a smell I’ve become intimately familiar with in the last few weeks, and it taunts me almost as much as the scent of vanilla and spice that’s ingrained in Belle’s soft and supple skin.
It’s a scent that shares notes with the Simmons’ whiskeys, proof that this place really is in her blood.
If I don’t find a way to turn around her family business, she’s going to lose everything.
After returning home briefly to Chicago, I’d set Hunter and Mace the task of keeping our other business interests ticking over while I’m here.
I’d told them as little as I could about the distillery.
I don’t want anyone knowing about Belle just yet, and I don’t want Hunter carrying out a postmortem on the distillery’s accounts, because I know he’d take one look and declare it dead in the water.
Despite its potential, the business isn’t going to survive without a substantial cash injection, and Griffin Corps simply doesn’t have that kind of money to risk. Not yet.
I close my eyes and listen to the creaks and groans of the rafters above cooling after a long, hot day. The sound is interspersed by the persistent drip of water from the kitchen faucet. That drip has been driving me crazy for days.
Rising to my feet, I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, forcing the need for sleep away.
I pour myself a coffee, drain half the cup, then go in search of a toolbox.
I eventually find what I need at the back of a cupboard, and once I’ve turned off the water supply, I attack the leaky faucet.
Attack being the operative word because the damn joints are corroded.
It takes a couple of whacks with a hammer to loosen one of the nuts before I can use a wrench to unfasten it.
“What on earth are you doing?” Belle asks, her voice scratchy with sleep.
“Fixing the faucet,” I tell her as I remove the offending washer and replace it with a new one.
Belle yawns. “But it’s three in the morning, Ash.”
“Almost done,” I say without looking up as I replace the handle and screw it into place.
I quickly crouch under the sink to turn the water supply back on when a pair of bare legs appear next to me. Belle turns on the faucet.
“Perfect,” she says.
“Perfect,” I repeat, staying on my knees as I slide my hands up the outside of Belle’s thighs and beneath the oversized t-shirt. “If I’d known you were wearing my t-shirt…” My palms cup her bare ass and I groan. “And no panties, I would have come to bed sooner.”
“I wasn’t wearing your t-shirt until someone woke me up with all that hammering,” she grumbles.
Rising slowly to my feet, I continue to explore her body, lifting the t-shirt as I stand. “If you feel more comfortable with it off, let me help you with that.” I pull it over her head, and her hair crackles with static electricity, the same kind that’s zipping up and down my spine.
Belle fumbles with my belt and the zipper of my jeans while I’m pulling off my t-shirt. Who knew I was a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy? My jeans fall to my ankles and I kick them off my bare feet. As Belle pulls down my boxers, she kneels in front of me and stays there.
She’s very much awake as she looks up from beneath her eyelashes.
Her gaze stays on me as she wraps a fist around the base of my already rigid shaft.
A wicked grin smoothes out those beautiful lips, and when she opens her mouth, my cock twitches.
I sweep her blond, sleep-mussed hair from her face as I watch her tongue curl around my crown. My balls contract in anticipation.
“While I suck you off, I want you to tell me what’s keeping you awake,” she commands.
I like that about Belle. She tells me exactly what she wants, and I rise to the challenge. Every. Fucking. Time.
“You are.”
She opens her mouth wider and takes my glistening tip between her plump lips. With one swirl of her tongue, I’m ready to push deeper, but she pulls away. “No, Ash. Tell me what problem you’ve hit that has you taking it out on my kitchen sink.”
“Cash flow,” I whisper as her mouth opens again and she takes me deeper, but still not deep enough. “Seriously, Belle? You want me to go through the accounts while I fuck your mouth?”
Her fist tightens around my shaft and she draws her hand up to the tip.
“I want you,” she begins, licking at the bead of cum on my crown, “to tell me why you’ve been up all night.
” She licks again as her hand moves up and down.
Up and down. “Tell me why you’re obsessing over the distillery as much as I am.
Fighting to save it.” She pumps harder. “Fighting alongside me.” She has a devilish glint in her eye when she adds, “Now talk, Mr. Griffin because I’m going to be otherwise engaged. ”
When Belle flattens her tongue, the last thing on my mind is balance sheets, but I give her everything she’s asking for, starting with my cock down her throat.
Her head bobs up and down my shaft, her cheeks hollowing and her tongue doing things that have my eyes rolling to the back of my head.
And all the while, I outline each stage of the improvement plan that should help contain running costs and double productivity at the same time.
I tell her the capital required for the investment, and the costings for the rebranding she wants.
Fuck, I’m ready to explode, but I hold back as I walk Belle through the challenges of limiting expenditure while we deal with extortionate bank charges for the loans her dad took out. And how we can do all of that without sacrificing the quality of the product.
“We know. There’s an untapped. Market,” I tell her between pants. “We know quality sells.” I grip her hair and she plunges deeper. “Fuck, Belle.” My insides twist as the pressure to release builds and builds. “But we can’t overreach. I can’t… I can’t overreach.”
Spit pools at the corners of Belle’s mouth as she keeps her lips sealed around my cock. She knows I’m close and allows me to take full control of how hard I fuck. But I have no control as I thrust deeper, harder, faster.
“I need a cash injection. I need…” My thrusts are a blur and my cock pulses. “I need to come, and you need to swallow. Right…” My orgasm rocks into me and I see stars as I unload into her mouth. “Fuck! Belle. Oh, sweetheart. Fuck. Damn, it. I love you so fucking much.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Did I just say that?
Belle swallows hard.
I ease in and out of her mouth until I have nothing left to give. She has all of me.
Her eyes are watering as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and I help her to her feet.
“Don’t look so freaked out, Ash,” she says with a wide grin. “I love you too.”
I’m shaking my head as I wrap her in my arms. “How the hell did this happen?”
“I don’t know. But I’m glad it did. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
When she presses her cheek to my chest, I rest my chin on her head. “I haven’t done anything yet. And I can’t lie to you, Belle. I may not be able to save the distillery. I need to find a way to raise some serious cash first.”
She snuggles into me. “You’re here, and you’re trying.
You have no idea how much that alone means to me.
I don’t expect you to work miracles. And I don’t want you to take unnecessary risks either,” she adds.
She shifts so she can look at me. “You and your brothers have been working hard to build your business too. If you’re going to be overreaching, then don’t do it.
While it would break my heart to see the distillery fold, it would crush me if we took your business down with it. ”
I scoop her up into my arms. “It won’t come to that,” I promise.
I force a smile and lighten my tone as if the next part of my plan isn’t a major shift in the trajectory of my life.
“But I might have to go away for a few weeks. I need to work on another project that should give me the cash injection I need.”
She eyes me suspiciously. “You’re trying too hard to sound enthusiastic about it. What aren’t you telling me?”
“I’m trying to cover the fact that I don’t want to leave you,” I insist. Partly true.
What I don’t say is that the project I’m about to commit to is one I’ve refused for the last year.
While I’ve been happy to work with Killian McConkey on his legitimate endeavors, every job I accept from his father pulls me deeper into a world I don’t want to be a part of, especially if it means entangling my brothers in it too.
The first job John McConkey had offered helped cover my stepmom’s medical bills.
It involved adapting various slot machines at his casinos, in favor of the house, naturally.
More jobs followed and each one cost me another piece of my soul, but the reward had been the extra five years we had with Lisa.
It was more money than I could have raised legitimately, and there’s no getting away from the fact that it gave us the initial cash flow to expand.
I owe John a lot, but he hasn’t done too badly out of the deal. This latest job, however, is darker and dirtier. It should earn me enough to save the distillery, but it’s crossing a line I hadn’t been willing to step over until now.
“Ash, are you sure–”
I seal my lips over Belle’s and carry her towards the bedroom. “No more business talk,” I insist. “There’s another balance sheet we need to deal with.”
“And what would that be?”
I lay the woman I love down on the crumpled sheets and spread her legs wide. “I owe you an orgasm.”