Chapter 17
April
I followed that sinfully hot—er—evil man down the hallway, through the suite and toward the back patio, which was at the top of one of the towers.
He turned to me, his face split into a heart-arresting smile. His cheeks were rough from the lack of shaving, and I wondered if he was going for some kind of hipster look for his speech. My cheeks burned and I looked away. If it were possible for him to be any more fucking gorgeous than he already was, he’d added scruff to the equation. Scruff was like my catnip. It made me weak-kneed. Oh lordy. I had to keep my thoughts clean and focused on how much I hated him, but the scruff wasn’t helping.
It was making my hated but hot boss, who was the most amazing lover I’d ever had, even hotter. I blinked. It had been thirty-six hours since I’d discovered the identity of Falco the sex god of Comic-Con, and I’d been reliving that night ever since. But when I thought about sitting across his hard thighs, my own legs open to him, his hands squeezing my hips, I now saw Jordan’s handsome face instead of Falco’s helmeted head.
And when I thought about how he’d laid me on the bed then pressed down on top of me with his hard, solid body, I remembered the smell of him as Jordan’s smell. And when I thought about Falco’s sizable cock moving inside me—
“Let’s order some dinner.” Jordan stopped by the phone where the room service menu was propped up on display.
Oh yeah, dinner. That’d be good.
He handed me the menu and I picked out what I wanted—a Chinese chicken salad. Jordan ordered a steak and potato. So predictable I almost yawned.
While we waited for the food to show up, I opened the sliding glass door and walked out onto a shiny marble patio, where there was a private pool and Jacuzzi, a sauna and an outdoor fireplace. I glanced up at the sky, gray with darkened clouds. The forecast called for rain, unsurprisingly enough. The Pacific Northwest was known for its profuse greenery for a reason. Fortunately, it was September, so the weather wasn’t too cold yet. A soak in the Jacuzzi might be fun, provided I didn’t freeze my ass off during the run indoors.
After a few minutes, Jordan trailed after me, standing a little distance away, hands stuffed inside his pockets. I tried not to notice how that made his jeans hug his hard ass. Ugh. I had to stop looking at him and most definitely had to stop lusting after him.
I was probably a blip on his radar now. The man bedded women left and right—actresses, models, socialites. I, on the other hand, had been told that I was boring in bed. And Jordan hardly seemed affected by my presence.
Sure, he’d kissed me at his house and had done some other naughty things at the martini bar. But I figured it was because he was bored, and he damn well hadn’t tried anything since.
I took a breath and spoke to break the awkward silence. I was still pissed, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to be civil to the bastard. “So have you been practicing your speech? Are you ready for your eighteen minutes of fame?”
He shrugged a big shoulder. “I’ve been ready. I’ve recited the goddamn thing to myself in my sleep for the past three weeks.”
“So you don’t need to rehearse again?” I looked out over the view. Vancouver really was a lovely city, situated on a wide bay—all lights and ocean and dark green patches of lush forest.
“I need to go over the slides before the rehearsal tomorrow. But not tonight. I’m too tired.”
Our dinner arrived soon after and we sat down at the dining room table. We ate in silence for a while, facing each other across the table. The only sound was the clanking of his silverware as he cut into his steak and me crunching the greenery of my salad.
Jordan eyed my salad suspiciously. “You aren’t very hungry?”
“I’m fine. I’ve never been the best flyer. Makes me a little queasy.”
“Hmm. Maybe you can order something later if you’re hungrier then.”
“The salad’s good. It’s not your grandpa’s Shepherd’s Pie, but it’s good.”
Jordan smiled at the reference. “That’s my favorite thing he makes. My grandma is the one who made it all the time, and he started doing it after she passed away.”
My mouth thinned and I looked down. “He’s such a kind man. Hopefully, you won’t hold what happened at his house against him too long.”
He shifted in his seat, appearing uneasy that I’d brought it up. He opened his mouth to reply, but his phone dinged and he picked it up. A smile crept across his sexy lips and he typed a message back before setting it down. He glanced up at me, noting that I was watching him.
“What?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. Just wondering if that was more supermodel sexting. Maybe a photo this time? If you get lonely tonight, you’ll have some new material to wank off to.”
He shot me a dirty look. “It was my baby sister wishing me good luck with my talk and saying she was going to tune in and watch it on the Internet as soon as it’s posted.”
I grimaced. “Oh.” I cleared my throat and then chewed a few more bites of lettuce and tangy tangerine slices coated with ginger dressing. “She really is a sweetheart. You’re lucky.”
“You don’t have a sister?”
I took a deep breath and let it go. “I do. A half sister, anyway. My dad’s daughter with his second wife. They have a son, too. Like I said, the perfect family unit. Even the two-point-five children. I’m the ‘point five.’”
“They’re a lot younger than you?”
“My brother, Daniel, is six, and my sister, Sarah, is nine.”
He frowned and then cut into his steak, appearing deep in thought.
“What?” I asked.
“Just wondering…so your dad moved on and got remarried after your parents divorced. What about your mom?”
I tried not to make a face at the reminder of her existence. I’d been trying to erase it for the past month. She’d been texting and calling and sending emails and messages on social media practically every day. I’d refused to acknowledge any of them. I had nothing to say to her and her new hubby.
I frowned, picking at my lettuce leaves about as carefully as I was picking my words. The silence stretched and then grew awkward.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to pry,” he said.
I took a deep breath. “My parents got married on a whim and they were completely wrong for each other. He was already successful, and she was young and pretty. The marriage was a disaster from day one. She screwed around on him while he worked all the time. I was so young when they divorced that I don’t ever remember them being together, actually.”
“Ah, so your mom’s not the marrying kind.”
I laughed. “Oh, she’s the marrying kind, all right. She’s just not the stay-married kind. She’s on husband number four at the moment.”
“So who did you grow up with?”
I grimaced at him. “What is this, the ‘fifty questions about April’ hour? If you want answers out of me, you should cough up some of your own.”
He stopped chewing for a moment and watched me with those studious eyes. They looked more brown than green at the moment.
“Hmm. Okay. Ask me something then.”
I continued picking at my lettuce leaves. I knew exactly what I wanted to ask him, but I couldn’t blurt it out like I’d been wanting to do in the weeks that followed our Santa Barbara trip. I had to at least make it appear like I was searching for something to ask him.
“It’s about that comment you made about your dad…that he’s angry at you because you lied to him. What did you lie about?”
He rolled his eyes. “It’s a long-ass story.”
“Well, if you want any more answers out of me, you’re going to have to pony up the long-ass story.”
His eyes narrowed. I could tell he was deciding what to say and how to say it. He took a deep breath and let it go. “Grant Fawkes is obsessed with his legacy and passing on his vast amounts of wisdom and knowledge to future generations. And he was very careful about shaping his offspring…”
I nursed my water and watched him over the rim of my glass. This was getting interesting. Jordan and his daddy issues. I’d wanted a piece of this ever since that whacked-out family reunion.
He continued, “We were homeschooled. I finished high school at sixteen, started college before I turned seventeen—”
“Wow. I knew you were a brainiac, but that’s over the top.”
He pushed his plate aside and shrugged. “Not all it’s cracked up to be. I was way too young to be starting college. And he should have known that.”
I nodded, completely understanding what it felt like to be wiser than my own parent. Knowing how it felt to be at their mercy when they should have been watching out for you. A brief memory flitted through my mind of my mom’s second husband, Cliff, backhanding me across the face when I’d accidently broken his prized golf trophy. I was eight years old and went to live with my dad full-time for years after that. My mom hadn’t said a thing—hadn’t wanted to disrupt her cozy living situation or the promise of future alimony.
Yes, I understood what it was like for a parent to look out for their own best interests over that of their child’s.
“He probably did know that,” I finally said. “But his goals were more important to him.”
He tilted his head, looking at me as if trying to size me up from a different angle. “Yeah…he had me earmarked to become an environmental engineer, like him. As far as he saw it, it was my entire purpose in life.”
“That’s a lot of pressure at a very young age.”
He clenched his jaw and then released it. “That’s why I went to Caltech to study. He footed the bill for my tuition and it wasn’t cheap. He had to sacrifice a lot, even with my partial scholarship. I was too young and scared to tell him I didn’t want his vision for my future. So eventually… I changed my major without telling him.”
I traced a finger along the edge of my drinking glass, afraid to look up because it might break the spell and he’d stop talking.
He fiddled with his plate as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. “As you can imagine, he was pissed when I announced a week before graduation that I’d be walking the stage with the Business and Economics Management department instead of the Engineering class.”
I let out a long breath. “That must have been a hell of an explosion.”
“My dad’s non-confrontational and passive-aggressive. He holds grudges. It’s a slow burn.”
“So he’s held this grudge since you graduated? You’re twenty-five now… how long ago did you graduate?”
“It’s been five years.”
Ah yes, Jordan and Adam, the Draco wunderkinder who achieved so much at such young ages. Their bios and impossibly gorgeous faces were about to be spread across the covers of every business magazine now that the IPO was almost a reality. They were young, hot, brilliant, and soon to be even more incredibly rich than they were now. The world was their oyster.
“That’s a long time to hold a grudge…”
“Yep. There’s other stuff too, though.” He seemed about to say more and then shrugged. “We haven’t seen eye to eye for a long time.”
Sounded like something straight out of a Steinbeck novel to me…
He reached for his glass and swirled the liquid within. “Jesus, this water just isn’t cutting it…”
“Still teetotalling?”
“Yeah, you?”
“Hell, yes. I lose all functioning brain cells when I’m drunk.”
Something about that seemed to trouble him. But he looked away and then back to me. “So about you…”
I raised a brow. “What do you want to know?”
“Your parents. If they split when you were a baby, where were you growing up?”
“My parents had fifty-fifty custody for a while, so I bounced back and forth between them. Then my mom found another sugar daddy and couldn’t be bothered with having me around. After that, I lived with my dad and a nanny, and sometimes my grandma.”
“But you said you and your dad aren’t close… yet you spent most of your time with him growing up?”
“Well…there was my stepmom.” I sipped more water.
Understanding dawned on his features—probably the wrong understanding. It’s not like I was some fairytale princess with the requisite evil stepmother. Nope, no Cinderella here.
“It’s not what you think. My stepmom is generally a nice lady, but I was a preteen when she married my dad and she’s only fourteen years older than me. I wasn’t the easiest person to get along with. By that time, my mom was back in the picture because she wanted someone to shop with and go get mani-pedis. I was more interesting to her then, especially since she was between men.
“Rebekah, my stepmom, was ready to start her own family with my dad and was at a loss for what to do with me. Plus, she’s pretty religious and I wasn’t interested in any of that. She tried, though, but the Gentile ways bred too strongly in me, or something like that. So that’s about the time I went away to school.”
“Damn, and here I thought you really were Snow White, evil stepmother and all.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What?”
His grin widened. “You have to promise not to tell him, but when Adam didn’t know your name, he called you Snow White.”
My brows knit. “And why would he do that?”
Jordan looked at me like I was an idiot. “Uh, because you look like her?”
“Do not.”
“Do too.”
Then I remembered that comment Adam had made about calling on the woodland creatures for help, and it all became clear. “Jeez, is that what everyone calls me?”
He laughed. “No, just him.”
I raised my brows. “Not you?”
The smirk immediately dropped off his sexy lips, and he suddenly became very focused on his nearly empty plate. I watched him while sipping on my water again.
He sat back with a sigh and rubbed at his scruffy jaw. The whiskers really did complement his already over-the-top sex appeal, providing a deep gold dusting along his strongly defined jaw. My eyelids drooped for a moment as I imagined what it would feel like to have that scruff graze my cheeks and my neck as he kissed me. His mouth moving lower on my body, the feel of that rough sandpaper on my chest, my stomach, my—
I gulped. My panties were starting to feel damp. I had to stop fantasizing about him like this. I was still supposed to be pissed at him! Why was he making it so hard to stay angry?
He’d stopped shifting in his chair and was now watching me. Actually, he was looking at my cleavage, his eyes slowly climbing up my neck, narrowing as my throat bobbed where I swallowed. Either the temperature or the sexual tension meter had been dialed up a few too many notches for my comfort level.
I stood. “I, uh…I have a bit of planning for your schedule tomorrow and some other work to get done. You have your meeting with the speaking coach, then the director and the dress rehearsal, too.”
He didn’t get up.
“It’s nine p.m. Don’t tell me you go to bed this early.”
I cleared my throat. The dangers of sleeping under the same roof as him had not occurred to me until that moment, and I blushed when I realized it.
I gave a nonchalant toss of my head to cover for it. “I’m not going to stay up ‘til midnight. Apparently, I’m Snow White, not Cinderella.”
He stood and threw his napkin aside. “Come on, Weiss, live a little. We have a Jacuzzi.”
Oh no…no. Him and me in a Jacuzzi together, wearing nothing more than bathing suits? And with those abs of his? No, just no. I could not be trusted. I’d start guzzling booze and licking him as my dessert in ten seconds flat.
“Or this nice, cozy fireplace.” He walked over to the wall and flicked a switch. The entire far wall lit up within a giant freestanding frame of wood, gas fire appearing over painted rocks. It was spectacular.
I gasped. “This is awesome.”
He beamed a smile at me. “Sit down…make yourself comfortable. Stay a while.”
I twisted my mouth, making a face. “I’ve got my own place. The butler’s pantry.”
He plopped down on the couch and looked at me expectantly. With a sigh, I settled into a chair near the couch. I leaned back into it and turned to stare at the flames. It was better than watching the flames dance in his beautiful eyes. I started to think naughty thoughts when I dwelled on those too long.
“Now, I want you to admit the real reason you want to go back to your room so badly,” he said in a low voice.
Against my better judgment, I turned and looked at him. “Oh, and what is that?” I couldn’t wait to hear the ego-fest spew about to come out of his mouth—about how I found him so irresistibly sexy that the mere thought of kissing that scruffy mouth made the floor underneath me buckle. Made my throat dry. Made me shift uneasily in my seat due to the funny feeling down in my lady parts.
“You’re hooked on the game, aren’t you?”
“What?”
“I logged in to check on that key code I gave you. You have a nineteenth-level character already.”
I took a deep breath, relief washing over me. “Yeah, I guess you caught me. That game is damn addictive. Now I know why you boys are so filthy rich.”
He grinned. “And it seems you aren’t the only one who’s been named after a character in a fairy tale.”
Heat washed over me and I looked away. Shit. He’d figured out that I’d modeled the Beast after him. And I knew for a fact he’d overheard me refer to him as “Beast” at least once.
“Well, you’re beastly most of the time.”
He sank back, stretched his muscular arms across the back of the sofa beside him and, with a grin dancing on his lips, gazed into the fire. “I’ve been called worse.”
“Did you deserve it?”
He smirked, still staring into the fire. “Yeah, a good part of the time.” His eyes wandered back to me. They were the color of molten amber in the firelight. “Like I’ve said before, nice guys finish last. I learned the hard way, being a reformed nice guy and all.”
I watched him as I rubbed a hand over my arm. “Hmm. So there truly is no kind heart buried under the beastly exterior?”
His eyes narrowed at the fire. “I had that organ removed years ago.”
Now here was a story. At least it seemed so. Or maybe I hoped that he was more than just a brilliant kid who made a lot of money and exploited both his wealth and good looks to live a rock star’s life, a different woman in his bed every week. And it occurred to me, as it had been about a month now since our anonymous tryst at Comic-Con…had he been dating his bevy of models and actresses in the meantime? And sleeping with them?
I already knew they sent him sexy texts at all hours of the day. The thought of them—whoever they were—made my blood boil, even as I reminded myself that I had no claim to him. We’d hooked up once, and it had been out of this world amazing but likely he regretted it.
Well, that made two of us. I regretted it too. Sometimes.
“Is that why you don’t date women for very long?”
Those eyes shifted to me. “What’s this, more true confession time?”
“I think you owe me a few answers for all the ones I gave you.”
“I’m not talking about my social life.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to.”
I raised my brows. This was only making me more determined to pursue the subject.
“Okay, then I have another burning question,” I said.
“Shoot.”
“Did you know who I was at Comic-Con that night we went back to my room?”
His mouth set and he didn’t look at me. The silence almost rang in the air between us, thickening it with that same tension as before. After a few minutes, it became clear he wasn’t going to answer me, nor even acknowledge that I’d ever asked the question.
And that, quite frankly, pissed me off. I popped out of my seat and his laser intense eyes found mine. With a shrug, I moved past him toward my servant’s quarters. “Well, if you don’t have the balls to answer me…I’ll be going.”
I turned and walked down the hall, aware of the fact that he’d gotten up from the couch and followed me. Before grabbing the doorknob, I turned to him. His face was inches away, eyes blazing into mine.
And I couldn’t breathe. He took another step forward until I was backed against my door and his hot breath was searing my cheeks. Those eyes burned with white-hot emotion—anger, passion, even hunger. I couldn’t force myself to tear my gaze away from his. I was like a cornered animal, staring my predator down, the adrenaline coursing through me.
Jordan placed a hand on the wall on either side of my head. That smell…suede and sage. He leaned in close and my chest tightened. My heart pounded a thready beat in my throat.
“Yes,” he finally said.
I raised my brows, both unsurprised by the answer—I’d suspected it the moment he refused to answer me—and angry at yet another betrayal.
“I knew it was you,” he continued. “And I knew you were going to be my intern assistant.”
Fury stiffened every muscle. “Well. That’s just wonderful. This gets better and better.”
I had to fight which way my emotions were swaying, noting peripherally that there was little difference between anger and desire. They were both strong emotions that took hold of you, threatening to command your every thought and action—and not necessarily in your own best interests.
“It was poor judgment. I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry you had sex with me?”
He shook his head, his eyes trailing to my lips.
“I’m not sorry about the sex. I am sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner that it was me.”
I swallowed, trying to decide how to take this information, unable to think of anything to say or even determine how I felt about it.
“I still don’t regret it, though. I make it a habit of never regretting hot sex.”
“You thought it was hot?” Here I went again, desperately seeking validation. Had my past left me that much of a wreck?
He seemed shocked by the question. “Of course.”
My gaze dropped to his mouth and I licked my lips. Something flared in his eyes. The seconds stretched and he didn’t move. I tilted my head, bringing my mouth closer to his. God, I wanted to feel that scruff grazing across my skin. “Well, you already know how I feel about it...”
His eyelids drooped. I reached up and slipped my fingers through his hair like I’d been aching to do for days now. With the pad of my thumb, I traced the outline of his ear. His eyes snapped shut and he took in a shaky breath.
“I should…probably go…” he whispered.
The following few seconds were a little blurry. I couldn’t, for the life of me, say who leaned in first, but next thing I knew my arms were hooked around his neck and his lips were pressed to mine, devouring me. His fingers wound through my hair, which he used to pull me flush against him. His tongue darted frantically in and out of my mouth, and my hands moved to his hard chest, grasping at his shirtfront.
Beneath the shirt, his body felt like granite. God, he felt so good, smelled amazing, tasted delectable. I wanted to start peeling my own clothes off for him. His sharp whiskers grazed my skin as he kissed me—across my face, my earlobes, my neck. His mouth travelled lower, settling in my cleavage.
“You are so goddamn beautiful,” he muttered, and a surge of something rose inside me that I couldn’t quite explain—power? Joy? I couldn’t catch my next breath. My fingers threaded through his hair so that it stood up in a messily attractive way. Was there anything about this man that wasn’t smoking hot? I bet he woke up looking disgustingly sexy first thing in the morning. A burst of heat surged between my legs at the thought of waking up beside him, our bodies clothed only in the bed sheets, the memory of those whiskers scraping across my skin.
“Jordan,” I whispered.
His hand went to the back of my neck, gathering my hair at the nape. I felt his fingers close into a fist and then he pulled my hair tight. The slight jolt of pain made me suck in my breath, even as my desire surged. With a tug, my head tipped back, exposing more of my neck to his delicious sandpaper kisses. The feel of his rough cheeks against my skin was driving me mad.
“I can’t get that night out of my mind,” he ground out as he kissed his way all over my neck and exposed chest. “I think about it all the time.” His fist tightened again in my hair as if with renewed frustration. “How hot it was to fuck you. All I can think about is how much I want to do it again.”
My lips found his earlobe and sucked it inside my mouth, grazing it with my teeth. He let out a tight breath. His hand dipped under my shirt, smoothing over my stomach, painting a swath of fire in its wake. His mouth dropped to my chest and immediately clamped over my nipple through my shirt. My back muscles tightened and I arched, pushing against him, hot desire zinging through me, burning hotter than that gas fire in the living room.
Every nerve ending on every square inch of my skin was alive and aching for his touch. But I couldn’t—we couldn’t.
His mouth was now at the base of my neck, biting and sucking, and his hands were underneath my shirt, holding me against him. Mine were pressed against his hard chest, and the feel of his taut muscles made my eyes roll back into my head. I was delirious with desire for him. And yet—
“Jordan…”
He continued to slide that spellbinding mouth across my collarbone. Over my bra, his thumbs rubbed my nipples, bringing them to pebbled, aching points.
“What?” he finally answered.
“We need to stop.”
He pressed his large erection against the scorching heat between my legs. “Your body doesn’t agree with that statement.”
I moaned as the pressure of his touch on my nipples intensified. “No, it doesn’t,” I breathed. “It definitely wants you to fuck me again.” He groaned in response to that heated admission. “But I’m still pissed off at you.”
He stiffened against me then pulled his hands out from under my shirt. We remained pressed up against one other, breathing hard but not able to meet each other’s gaze. My eyes fluttered closed. I wanted him so badly it literally ached.
He stepped back, pulling away. The look on his face could most easily be described as…confusion. With each second, I saw a new emotion swirling in the mix—desire, reluctance, ambivalence.
“You’re right. We can’t do this.” He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself, not me. He began to rub his jaw with the palm of his hand, appearing deep in thought.
I drew in a long breath and let it go, proud that I’d spoken up for myself despite being so turned on. But all at once, those old insecurities surfaced in my thoughts, and I could practically still hear the backlash whenever I’d spoken up in the past. To be honest, it’s no big deal to me. The sex was never very exciting, Gunnar had said, months before hopping into bed with my mother.
My breath caught. April, you should make sure you get a man while you’re young and still on your dad’s bankroll. I always had my looks to get by on, but you’re lucky—you don’t have to worry about that.
My mom and her smarmy, condescending advice on how to catch and keep a man. As always, she seemed to harbor resentment toward me for still having access to my dad’s money when she didn’t.
All those other gremlins in my head—even Cari at Comic-Con. You’re just a goody-goody, April. You’d never take a big chance and be adventurous.
Suddenly, I was feeling sick to my stomach.
And Jordan watched it all. He frowned and brought a hand up to caress my cheek. I turned my face away from his touch, closing my eyes, not wanting to see the pity.
“Hey. What kind of head game are you playing in there?”
I shook my head and laughed at myself, blinking to prevent tears of humiliation. “No more than the usual.” I turned to go into my room. He stopped me, grabbing my arm.
“I’m sorry I started that. And I’m sorry you’re still angry with me. But you did the right thing. I got carried away. I just don’t want to take advantage—any more than I already have.”
In spite of myself, a smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “I’m a big girl. I can judge when I’m being taken advantage of.”
He rubbed at the back of his neck, looking away. “Good night, April.”
We avoided each other’s gaze and tried to ignore the heavy tension in the air between us that, if it were a blanket, would have smothered us both.
I cleared my throat and spoke again. “So, uh, remember you’ve got the orientation, a one-on-one meeting with the speaking coach in the morning and then the dress rehearsal. I’ll be with you at that one.” I was proud of the way I’d managed to make my voice switch to business mode without even the slightest tremble. I’d heard my dad affect that tone enough to easily be able to imitate it.
Retreating into my room, I quickly shut the door and hustled through my bedtime routine. I tried to ignore the fact that my body was still on fire from his kisses, the firm, sure touch of his hands, and the scrape of those whiskers across my skin.
His sorcery had drawn me in without effort, and under his charm, I was hopelessly captivated.
I had to get my act together quickly or I’d be as entrapped as Rapunzel in the tower, unable to ever escape.