CHAPTER SIX
Will
Three things aren’t sitting right about Teresa’s story.
One, she isn’t being completely truthful with me. And after the lies that just came to light about my youth—coupled with the fact that she might be headline bait—that should make me want to walk away. I don’t put up with lies anymore. Yet here I am, my palms chafing the hem of her skirt up and back along smooth thighs, growling at the way her lips part on uneven breaths. Here I am wanting to get her beneath me in the dark, wrists pinned over her head so I can dominate the full truth out of her.
There’s an instinct growling deep in my belly, reminding me of what clicked into place back in the hallway outside her room. During that kiss I can’t for the life of me stop thinking about. She doesn’t seem to hold any part of herself back when we’re touching. If I drove my cock deep between her legs and threatened to withhold her pleasure unless she revealed herself, would she thrash around and claw me until finally coming clean? Would she pout and moan and try to fuck herself on me from below with little writhes of her sweet ass?
What’s your real last name, baby? Tell me and I’ll bang you so long and hard, you’ll forget the answer. Good girl. Doesn’t that feel so good? Grab the headboard. Good. Now, why are you here? Tell the man who’s got your pussy so full you can’t think straight. I’ll take care of everything. You’ll have nothing to be scared of.
Goddamn. It’s an addictive possibility…and one I’m surprised to be considering. I’m an aggressive man, but this level of intensity is exerted only in the boardroom. I’ve never had a connection with a woman that would make me push this hard if I thought she was lying to me. Especially now, after discovering my upbringing was founded on one massive fabrication, I would cut my losses and walk away from someone I suspected of being deceitful. But my gut is telling me there’s too much to gain here, headline bait or not.
There’s…her. The woman looking back at me like she can’t decide whether she’d like me to fuck her or fuck off. She’s got me by the balls, this one. She had me the second I walked into my room and she flipped her hair back.
Second thing not sitting right about Teresa’s story? She wasn’t lying about her job being stressful. Unsafe. I heard the anxiety in her voice, witnessed the strain. It made me want to fly to her hometown and knock heads together. Whether she’s here to screw me or not, there’s no way she’s going back there. Period. But if she’s really from Los Angeles, how is she connected to my competitors in New York?
Lastly and most troubling, Teresa is going east. Southpaw and I are on our way west. My reaction to this is split. Panic over her slipping away on one side. On the other, I’m hopeful. If she really means to move on in the opposite direction, there’s a chance this meeting is just one sexy coincidence.
“When are you leaving Dallas?” I ask her.
“Tomorrow morning.” Her fingers lazily toy with one of my shirt buttons, as if she didn’t just slap us with a deadline. “So, what’s your story? What are you guys doing in Dallas, besides destroying innocent tennis balls?”
“Exploring.” I take a doggy snack out of my pocket and drop it into Southpaw’s waiting mouth, unable to stop my grin when he licks his snout, begging me with desperate eyes for another. Maybe it’s the dark atmosphere or the fact that Teresa just let herself be vulnerable in front of me a moment ago, but I find myself ripping off a Band-Aid. One I’ve never ripped off in front of another person. “The first few years of his life…I didn’t necessarily take him for granted, but I worked long hours, so he saw more of the dog walker than me. I’m trying to make up for it now.”
She runs assessing eyes over my faded jeans and lack of a shave. “You pay someone to walk your dog?”
“Used to.” I pick up my beer and take a swig, watching her features for any form of recognition. “I pay a lot of people.”
“Do you.” Her fingers travel south to one of my lower buttons. An invitation for my hands to move higher up her thighs? I’m powerless not to take it. Setting my beer back down, I grip her mid-thigh until she gasps, then circle my thumbs on that soft inner flesh and watch her cleavage shudder, her complexion transforming to burnished rose gold. “What d-do you pay them for?”
“Working at my company.”
“Are you being purposely mysterious?”
I lean in and capture her mouth in a hard kiss. “Are you?”
She breathes heavy a moment. “It’s called flirting. And if you don’t want to tell me about your profession, star sign and idea of a perfect date, that’s fine by me. We’re both moving on tomorrow, anyway.”
“You’d just get on a bus and go?” Can’t help it, I hook my hands beneath her knees and yank her to the edge of the seat so I can feel her pussy against me. Have her mouth near mine. “You’d leave, just like that?”
“I’m sorry…” Her voice is a scrap of nothing. “Was there another option?”
Maybe, just maybe, she’s the real deal. My job—hell, my life—has turned me into a paranoid motherfucker who assumes the worst in everyone. It’s possible, isn’t it? With her delicious breath pelting my mouth and her hot cunt pulsing against the fly of my jeans, I want like hell for that to be true. “I’ve got a hedge fund in New York. A large one. I’m usually in a suit and tie. And I hate it.”
That last part wasn’t meant to slip out, but it seems to be the bit that makes her smile. “That’s too bad. I love a well-dressed man.”
Jealousy crackles in my belly. “You love a man dressed exactly like me, baby. And nothing else. How does that sound?”
“Tricky.” She hits me with a guileless look. “What if you decide to wear socks with sandals?”
It’s unbelievable. I go from wanting to pile-drive every man in the place, to having the insane urge to laugh. No one has ever made me feel like I’m swinging from vine to vine before, each better than the last. “You’re something special, woman, you know that?”
The rhetorical question was intended to be a compliment, but it makes the corners of her mouth dip, creates an almost imperceptible distance in her gaze. She stops playing with the buttons of my shirt, opting to mess with her hair instead. I’m about to request she put her hands back on me where they belong, when she asks, “So, we kind of got off the subject.” Her expression warms as she looks down at the dog. “You don’t take Southpaw for granted anymore?”
“No. I don’t.” Sharpness prods my jugular, remembering what led to the change. That one fucked-up day full of life-changing news. “Little over a month ago, I’d just found out something. A family secret that had been kept from me.” Again, I’m surprised that I continue to confess to Teresa, especially when I should have my damn guard up, but I can’t seem to help it when her attention soothes me. “Southpaw had an appointment the same day with the vet. My assistant was scheduled to take him, but I needed to get out of the office and clear my head. So I took him instead.”
I sense Teresa holding her breath, but I can’t seem to recount all the ugly details yet—at least not out loud. But I hold her attention for a long beat and watch moisture pool in her eyes.
“Did you ever have a moment where everything feels bigger than whatever bullshit you’re hung up on?”
She blinks at the ceiling and comes back to me with dry eyes. “No. Sometimes I think I’m chasing that moment, though.” Her soft laugh is halting. “And looking for it in all the wrong places.”
My fingers find her chin, lifting her face to bathe it in the dull bar lights. “You saying I’m one of those wrong places?”
“Maybe I’m a wrong place for you,” she whispers, so low I can barely hear her. “Have you considered that?”
“Yeah. And I can’t quite buy it.”
The bartender appears to our left, throwing his meaty forearms on the bar. “You folks ready for another round?”
Teresa takes her chin away and faces the man, her hands restless at her waist. “Yeah. Sure.” He starts to walk away, but she stops him. “Oh! Any way we could get a bowl of water for the dog?”
Oh, now she’s done it.
This woman isn’t getting away just yet.
Oblivious to the fact that she just sealed her immediate fate, she turns back to me, tucking some stray hair behind one ear. “So the thing that was more important than your bullshit…it was Southpaw?”
I’ve never put into words what I’m doing on this trip, apart from a bare bones explanation on the Instagram account where I’ve been documenting our stops, so I have to think about what I’m going to say. Everything I say to this woman seems to matter. “Forty years from now, I’m not going to remember the best investments I made or my most lucrative short. But I’ll remember this trip. I’m more satisfied watching him chase a squirrel or swim in a lake than I ever was shifting the market.”
The bartender sets down a new beer and I drain half of it.
“This dog…he was trying to be a constant in my life and I was too busy gambling on numbers some analyst pulled out of thin air. Coming home late. Letting someone else walk him.” Resentment sinks into my stomach, remembering why I ever landed behind a desk in the first place. Why I was so driven to be there. “I’m not going to miss the next good thing that comes along. I’m not going to take the good things for granted ever again.”
Christ, am I actually self-conscious? Yeah. I think I am. As I tug my phone out of my pocket and pull up my Instagram account, handing it over to Teresa, I realize I’ve either been recognized on the road by followers or communicated through two-word replies. But I’ve never actually had to show anyone the product of the last month in person. “That’s, uh…turns out, making those memories for him is what’s more important than my bullshit.” I exhale. “He’s sick.”
There’s no more explanation required. I can see she knows what I’m telling her and I’m relieved when she doesn’t ask for details. She wants to. But instead, she simply breathes with me for a few moments, then says, “I’m so sorry.”
Her eyes drop to Southpaw, before dragging back to my cell phone screen, her fingers scrolling and hovering—but not actually tapping on—the pictures. “Good for you, Will. Doing this for him.” Her scratchy voice seems to startle her. She clears it. “Most people don’t realize something like that until it’s too late. You didn’t even have to be visited in the middle of the night by three apparitions.”
I take my offered phone back, the right corner of my mouth twitching. “Are you making fun of me for taking my dog on a vacation?”
Her spine snaps straight, making her tits jiggle and my palms itch to steady them. “No. I’m the furthest thing from making fun of you. I’m envious.” Her mouth opens and shuts, right knee bouncing. “I’m, um…proud of you, too. Isn’t that ridiculous when we just met?”
Something warm and unfamiliar sweeps through me as I stow my phone. High school, college, my career. All of it was done to make my absent father proud of me. To make myself worthy in his eyes, when he didn’t deserve that consideration. And that feeling of worthiness never came, either. Any pride I’d earned from him stopped having meaning, too, when shit hit the fan. So maybe my methods of reaching the top were effective, but I wasn’t at the top of the right place. I’ve never felt more right than I do with Teresa starting up at me—granted, looking a little shell-shocked—and telling me she’s proud. “Nothing about this is ridiculous.”
I lean in and kiss her mouth, long and thorough enough to have her ass scooting closer to me on the seat, her pussy settling in against my junk, but I stop at the sound of her stomach growling. My laughter blends with hers, low and damp.
“Whoops,” she breathes at my lips. “Guess I’m hungry.”
“Guess we both are.” After signaling for menus, I bring our foreheads back together, drag my thumbs up the insides of her spread thighs. “Spend the night with me, woman. Let me feed you dinner. Then I’ll feed you that cock you can’t stop rubbing your pussy on.”
Her head falls back on her shoulders, before she straightens, using my shoulders for balance. “Oh, Will.” She searches my face, her eyelids drooping with lust. “Not a fucking chance.”