CHAPTER FIVE
Clarke
I wake up confused because it’s light out and I never sleep past five a.m. The light is what reminds me of Emery. Although, reminds is a weak term for what happens when I remember I’m the happiest man alive now. Bliss rushes through my veins at breakneck pace and I start to turn to her side of the bed—as it will henceforth be known—already planning on canceling my morning meetings so I can spoil the hell out of her.
Guilt makes me freeze before I can face her. God, I was so rough with her last night. She came to me so sweet and trusting—and I turned into an uncontrollable beast. I might have been able to wrestle back some self-control, but her thighs could not have been more welcoming, her moans couldn’t have been louder or more encouraging. I somehow stumbled across the horniest virgin alive and I’ll cut my tongue out before complaining. My cock is already engorged beneath the sheets, searching for her pussy again. Craving it. Decades from now, I’ll still be waking up this way. I know it in my gut. Hot for Emery. My angel.
My little girl.
I swallow a groan and fist my dick, giving in and stroking myself a few times, envisioning Emery’s snug, drenched pussy, how she whines the word Daddy.
Pull yourself together. After she gave herself to me last night so trustingly, I owe her an amazing day. First, I’ll have one of my employees bring her a selection of the finest clothes to choose from. Toiletries. After that, we’ll start with a bath. The hot water should help with the soreness I caused. Breakfast will happen after that—and I’m going to make it for her. I want to watch her perfect lips chewing food I made. Her Daddy will sustain her in every way.
Fuck it, I’m going to cancel my entire day.
If we leave by noon, I can have us in London in time for dinner. The flight will give me a chance to learn every single thing about her—which reminds me, I’m going to have my investigator give me a full report on her history. Not because I don’t trust Emery to tell me everything there is to know about herself, but because I need every piece of ammunition to protect her. If there’s a person in her past that could prove a threat in the future, I will know about it and guard her against it. No one is going to touch my angel.
No one but me—and I’m desperate to get my arms around her.
Why aren’t they around her now?
Finally, I turn to face Emery’s side fully, anticipation gathering in my stomach—
And she’s not there.
Panic shoots into my throat, my hand reaching out to run over the mussed sheets. Cold.
“She’s probably just in the bathroom,” I mutter thickly, lunging out of bed and gaining my feet. Trying to collect my scattering thoughts, I pull on my discarded boxers and beeline for the bathroom. “Emery!”
Empty.
I jog to the kitchen next, but there’s a voice whispering in my ear that she’s gone. It’s an intuition that I can’t explain…there’s something else odd, though. Something I must have been too absorbed in my angel to notice last night.
Her magnolia scent lingers.
And it’s the same scent I’ve smelled in this apartment for years.
Jesus, what the hell is going on?
Did I imagine the presence into existence? Did I become so desperate to find that elusive other half of me that was always out of my grasp that I…dreamed Emery?
“No. She’s real. I know she’s real.” I plow my fingers through my hair and shout at the top of my lungs. “Emery!”
Dreaded silence greets me. Why would she leave?
Christ, what if I hurt her worse than either of us realized last night? What if she left in pain and needing to get away from me? Is she out there hurt? The very idea makes me crazed. I have to find her now. I need her.
I find my cell phone and dial the head of human resources at Carroway-Silver. “This is Clarke Carroway. I need—” I bash a fist into the kitchen cabinets. “Yes, that Clarke Carroway. Your boss. I need information on one of our employees. Emery Lake. She works in the records room. A file clerk. I need her file emailed to me immediately. And I need to know if she showed up for work this morning. Her new station is in my office, but she might have gone back to the file room. Check in both places. Now.”
My footsteps pound in time with my heart as I make my way to the second-floor home office, which I rarely use, because I never leave Carroway-Silver. I will now. Now that I have a reason. Her. I just need to find her and bring her back here. Why did she leave? Why can I smell her in my home office? I suck down the incredible scent, wondering how it can be so familiar and fresh all at once. Need her. I need her back here so I can inhale it off her skin.
The file is in my inbox when I open my email. The only words in the body are, “Ms. Lake is not scheduled for work today. She’s a part-time employee and I’ve double-checked that she has not come in.” Swallowing hard, I open the attached file and scan the contents with desperate eyes. “Her address is…” Am I seeing this right? “She put down my address?”
Even as I rejoice in seeing her name above my address, apartment number and all, I’m filled with even more panic. I damn well know she doesn’t live here. Yet. So where the hell does she really live? I can’t find her without that information.
I call the phone number listed on the application, but somehow I know it’s disconnected before the dreaded beeping even starts in my ear.
“FUCK!”
I rip the computer out of the wall and throw it across the room, watching it spark and go still. How the hell did I fall in love with this woman and not secure a method of reaching her? Common sense is begging me to consider the possibility she just went out for bagels, but I know—I know—she didn’t. I’m missing something here. Something big, and whatever it is, it’s standing between me being with my angel.
Forcing myself to breathe, I call my private investigator. He answers on the second ring.
I give him all the information I have, but an hour later, he still has nothing. My Emery Lake doesn’t exist on social media. She’s not turning up in any law enforcement database and her coworkers know virtually zero about her personal life.
“Keep looking,” I croak into the phone, returning to the bedroom to dress myself. Again, my nose is treated to the hints of magnolia in the air and I almost can’t bear the sweetness of it.
Where are you, angel?
If I have to search every street of New York, that’s what I’ll do. I put on a pair of jeans, throw on a T-shirt and shove my feet into boots. On the way out the door, I call the police commissioner and remind him of the donation I make every year, like clockwork. After giving them her description and being assured that every man in a badge will be on the lookout, I descend to the lobby in the elevator, anxious to start looking while simultaneously terrified that I’m never going to see her again.
I stride past the doorman, unwilling to wait for him to open the door for me, but his voice halts me before I can leave. “Mr. Carroway!”
Impatient, I stop and turn, my skull throbbing. “Yes?”
“That girl you came in here with last night…”
My pulse kicks. “What about her?”
His gray eyebrows furrow together. “Well, she looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place her until now. Never seen her all fancied up like that.”
“You’ve seen Emery before?”
“Sure. Every time she’s cleaned your apartment for the last five years.”
Emery
I’m never getting out of this bed.
My body won’t work, except to cry. I’ve cried all morning and afternoon, and Karen is hovering around me like a mother hen, trying to feed me tea and toast, as if I’ll ever eat again. I know I did the right thing walking out of Clarke’s life, before he had to throw me out, but I didn’t expect this wrenching, horrible emptiness.
I curl up in the fetal position and wail into my pillow, scalding hot tears catching on the scratchy cotton material. Every time I open my eyes and I see one of the images of Clarke taped to my wall, my misery blooms anew, but I can’t bring myself to take them down. I’m never taking them down, especially now that I see them in a whole new light. Before he was just my dark, imaginary lover, and now I see the caring side of him. The passionate CEO who felt stuck in his mission to save the planet, despite his ample power. I see all of him.
There’s a loud crash downstairs in the orphanage and I jackknife in bed, trading a startled glance with Karen.
“Emery!”
“Oh my God,” I breathe. “It’s Clarke. It’s him.” My heart wings around the room like a deliriously happy bird, but utter horror takes the place of my euphoria within seconds. Eyes wide, I look around the room, my veritable shrine to Clarke Carroway. “Karen. Please. He can’t come in here. Stop him.”
Karen is already halfway out the door and I hear her muffled voice in the hallway outside my room, but her efforts are futile. Clarke bursts into the room looking haunted, his hair standing in every direction, sweat dampening the front of his T-shirt. “Angel, I found you. The cleaning agency had the address. I’m getting you out of this place. My Emery in an orphanage? Cleaning houses?” He moves toward me, so clearly ready to scoop me up and carry me off to a fairy tale, but the pictures on the wall cause a hitch in his stride. He turns in a circle, his expression giving nothing away, although he must be sick to his stomach. How could he not be? His stalker spent the night in his bed. “What is all this?”
I cram my knuckles up against my mouth and release a sob. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
His attention returns to me and still, I can read nothing on his gorgeous face. “Explain,” he commands, almost curiously.
A calmness settles over me. Okay, this is it. This is the last time I’ll ever be this close to the man I love. At least he’s giving me the chance to tell him how he’s affected me. The chance to tell him I love him. It’s more than I deserve and I won’t lose this opportunity to say the words written on my soul.
“My mother died when I was thirteen and my father…he was in too much debt to keep me. He wasn’t prepared to be a parent, especially alone. So he brought me here when I was fourteen.” In my periphery, I notice Karen slip from the room and close the door behind her. And there I sit, in the middle of my shrine, face stained from tears, facing the object of my not-so-innocent obsession. “I saw you in the paper that same year. At first, I just looked for you on television and sometimes on the internet when I could make it to the public library computers. There was just something about you. I can’t explain it. I know it was my imagination, but I swear…you were looking right at me.
“I wanted to go to school and become the kind of woman who could h-have you. But I needed money to do that and I…” I press my hands to my flaming cheeks. “I needed to be near you. In any way I could. It was like…if I didn’t get close to you somehow, my heart was going to burst.” My head drops forward because I don’t want to see his reactions to the rest. I can’t witness his disgust. “Karen told me one day that her friend cleans houses for a living and it gave me an idea. I waited outside your building and found out the company you use when they arrived to clean. I l-lied about my age on the application. I told them I worked at the orphanage, not that I lived here. I made some fake references and…they’d just lost some staff and were desperate, so they hired me. I couldn’t believe it. I was cleaning your house.” My voice drops to a whisper. “And touching your things. And lying in your bed and a lot of other things that I’m ashamed of.”
Still I don’t look up, terrified of what I’ll see.
“After a while, it wasn’t enough. I know it sounds crazy, but I…thought you were waiting for me. You were never pictured with dates anymore and I just wanted that to be true so bad.” I sniff and wipe at my eyes. “And I know it’s impossible when you’d never even met me. I know that, but my heart wouldn’t rest. It wouldn’t let me stay away. I stalked you.”
“Emery.”
“And now I know the real you and…you’re even more incredible than I could have imagined. You’re real. You’re a man with frustrations and hopes…and you mean even more to me now because of it.” I crush my threadbare quilt between my fingers. “I’m so sorry. If you’re going to have me arrested, please don’t get Karen in trouble. She told me I needed to stop so many times—”
“Have you arrested?” Clarke ducks down into my line of vision, tilting up my chin with a finger so I can see the incredulity on his face. “I came here to take you home, angel, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.” He points at the door. “That was Karen? The one who gave you a place to live and made you dress down so you’d be safer from men?”
Confused, I nod.
“Then don’t worry about her. I’m going to make her a very wealthy woman.”
“What is happening?” I say slowly. “Why are you still standing here?”
“I was waiting for you, Emery,” he grits out, rapping a fist to his chest. “These last five years, I’ve known you were there. Just out of my reach. It nearly drove me insane. I could smell you. I could feel where you’d been in my apartment. But I couldn’t see you. No one else even compared to the energy you left behind. That energy belonged to the woman I love and I fucking knew it in my soul.” He looks around the room, before his attention zips back to me. “Do you think I’m not going to have our home covered in pictures of you? My desk, my phone, our jet, my wallet. It’s going to be full of every expression you’ve ever made. You think you’re obsessed with me, angel? You haven’t seen anything yet.”
Is this really happening. “B-but…you’re not angry? Or—”
“I’m only angry that you didn’t show yourself sooner, Emery. We could have been together for years,” he rasps. “Years.”
“I’ve only been legal for one.”
“I would have waited forever.” He reaches out, dragging his thumb across my lower lip, his eyes darkening with undisguised hunger. “At the very least, I would have tried my damnedest to wait. Fourteen, huh?”
Relief and desire are making me dizzy. Clarke loves me. He was waiting for me. All this time, it wasn’t my imagination. “It’s complicated.”
His hand leaves my face and I hear him unzipping his pants. Wetness rushes between my thighs on command, but I manage to form my thoughts into words. “At first, I looked up to you. Like a father figure. You would take care of me. You would come save me and be a better father than my own. But…” My breathing harshens. “Something changed after a while, I started to…to think of you when I touched myself. And then you were my father figure and…more. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop. Those two roles got wrapped up together.”
Clarke’s fingers spear into my hair and massage my scalp. “And I became your Daddy.”
I nod, my neck losing power at the utterance of that word.
He holds it up. “You’re obsessed with your Daddy.”
My thighs clench together and a shudder passes through me. “Yes.”
Clarke growls. “He’s just as obsessed with his little girl.”
I’m suddenly starved for the taste of him. The taste of his pleasure. I’m craving it like nothing else, so I rise to my knees on the edge of the bed and reach into the opening of Clarke’s unzipped pants, taking his thickening flesh in my hands. As I stroke him, Clarke brings our mouths together and guides me through a slow, cherishing kiss, his hips rolling toward my grip in time with his seeking tongue. “Can I suck you here, Daddy?”
His head tips back on a groan. “How long have you been imagining yourself doing that to me?”
“A very long time.”
I whisper the age to him and a rope of come shoots across my lips. “That will be our little secret,” he says, gruffly, guiding himself to my lips with shaky hands. “Get my cock wet with your innocent mouth, angel. Show me what you dreamed about doing to Daddy, even when it would have gotten me arrested.”
The moment his thick staff slides between my lips, I’m overcome with his taste. It’s the most incredible texture and essence I’ve ever encountered. It causes a change to come over me, much like last night when Clarke tasted me. Suddenly I can’t get enough. I’m moaning around his stiffness, massaging him in both hands and trying to take him as deep as possible. The head of his sex caresses the back of my throat and I whimper loudly, my thighs flexing involuntarily on the bed. Need need need.
The door to my room opens and still I can’t stop bobbing my head, cramming my mouth and throat full of Clarke. I hear him shout, “Leave us, Karen,” and maybe I should be embarrassed that I’ve been caught in this intimate act by my friend…but I’m not. The click of the closing door means nothing to me. My eyes are tearing and moisture is leaving my mouth to drip down my chin and still I suck as hard as I can, hollowing my cheeks and listening to Clarke’s harsh pants, his seed trickling down the back of my throat in tasty little rivers.
“Stand,” Clarke orders, his voice choppy, his powerful hands fisted in my hair. “I can’t take any more.”
He doesn’t understand. I can’t stop. His pleasure is my addiction now. I whine as Clarke eases my head away and yanks me to my feet, whirling me around to face the wall.
“Which picture is your favorite?”
“Th-the one of you reading the paper. On the balcony in Italy.”
I’m propelled toward that section of the wall, Clarke crowding me from behind. “Would you stand in front of this picture and play with your little clit, Emery?”
“Yes,” I whisper. “All the time.”
His open mouth drags up the side of my neck. “Do it now while I fill you full of come.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
As he lifts the hem of my sleep shirt over my head, I sense his pause. “Is this my shirt?”
Without looking at him, I nod.
“I’m glad you stole it,” he says in my ear, licking my lobe, snagging it with his teeth. “I like knowing a piece of me was wrapped around you. Now get those fingers on your clit.”
My legs are like rubber, but I do what I’m told, looking at the picture I’ve mooned over a million times, only wonder of wonders, the man of my dreams is standing behind me now. I slide my middle finger between the folds of my womanhood and gasp as I make contact with the hardened nub. I bite down hard on my lower lip as I start to harass it with quick circles. I’ve only been stroking myself for a matter of seconds, before I feel Clark’s huge member tuck into my entrance. My breath suspends itself in my lungs, but I keep touching myself. How can I stop when his inhales and exhales are rasping in and out at the back of my neck?
His right hand cups my mouth, the other wrapping around my waist to lift me higher against his lap—and then he drives his rock-hard inches deep inside me, trapping my scream with his hand. “Daddy has needed you for so long,” he grates. “And you were right here, fingering your little cunt to pictures of him while he suffered uptown.”
“I’m sorry,” I gasp into his palm, trying to balance on my tiptoes.
“Do you know what I was thinking in that picture while I read the paper?”
I shake my head, my thighs beginning to tremble. “Keep touching your pussy and I’ll tell you.” My fingers blur back into motion and he resumes speaking. “I was wondering how the hell I can be in love with someone I can’t see. I thought I was losing my fucking mind. I almost cut that business trip to Italy short so I could get back to you—the scent and feel of you.”
His hips begin to slap deliberately, slowly against my bottom and my eyes roll back in my head at the delicious friction. My being is already beginning that delicious descent into a climax, my pulse walloping, lower body melting.
“I’ve found you now, Emery, and I’m never letting you out of my sight again.” His hand slides down from my mouth to the front of my throat, squeezing firmly. “If you ever leave me again, I’ll go fucking insane. I’ll take a wrecking ball to everything I own. You are what I need to survive, and if you think you’re obsessed, angel, just watch. My own obsession already far surpasses yours.” He stoops down and drives back up into me, bringing my feet off the floor and there I am, dangling in his arms as he pumps inside me, one hand around my throat, the opposite arm wrapped around my waist. Slap slap slap. He fills me over and over, his pace quickly becoming frantic and furious. “It’s going to take me decades to recover from this morning,” he growls. “Finding out you’ve been cleaning houses when you should have been spoiled rotten in your Daddy’s care. I can’t stand it.”
I throw my head back onto his shoulder, my back arches, thighs writhing. I can’t get any leverage to achieve my orgasm and all I have to do is whine “Daddy” and I’m thrown face down onto the bed, Clarke pressing me into the thin mattress. He holds open my thighs in a punishing grip and shoves his thick rail of flesh into my hole without cease, groaning his pleasure into my tiny room. The ancient, rusted bed creaks loudly, bumping into the wall with every thrust of his hips and I once again hear the door to my room open, probably Karen being worried about me with all the noise.
I’m beyond caring about the interruption, though. I need relief. My fingers sneak down between my thighs and I press down on my clit, tweaking my hips side to side, grinding down—and Clarke’s manhood finds that spot deep, deep inside me and I pop. I scream into my pillow as a rush of satisfaction courses through me.
“That’s a good little girl,” Clarke pants into my neck. “Now hold still while Daddy gets rid of the pain you caused. Feel how much my cock needs that fuck-tight pussy. All day and all night.”
“Sorry, Daddy,” I gasp. “I don’t mean to make you hurt.”
“Don’t be sorry, angel. Just stay sweet for me. Just like this. Keep letting me do these bad things to my little girl’s body.”
Instinct makes me tighten the walls of my femininity and I almost have another orgasm when Clarke jerks on top of me, cursing as his drives start going faster, turning desperate—and finally he finishes with a shout, sweat from his forehead dripping onto my back, his teeth sinking into my shoulder blade.
“Mine,” Clarke says, breathing heavily. Then louder, “Mine.”
I stare up at the pictures above my bed, a secret smile curving my lips as my obsession—the man I love to the point of madness—gathers back his control on top of me. As if I’ll ever let that happen. My whisper is barely audible in the dim room. “Finally.”