TEN
JACE
“What’s Bailon have you working on that’s so secretive?”
The moment I hear the voice on the other line, I grit my teeth because I regret taking time from my work to answer. It’s Andrew, Sonora’s friend, and it takes every bit of professionalism I have—and there’s not much as it is—not to hang up on the prick.
“B’s designs are confidential. All my client’s designs are.” I jerk off my safety glasses and toss them on the table beside my helmet. “Is there something you want?”
“I was curious,” he starts, and his tone makes me want to deck him in the nose. He’s had that effect on me since I met him—he speaks, and I instantly get the desire to hit him. “About what Bailon has you doing … and the woman who came with you to his last party. What is she? Islander or—”
“She’s nothing,” I growl, gripping the edges of the table I’ve spent the day reworking. My need to knock the rich motherfucker on his arse has intensified in a matter of seconds because he’s brought her up. He has a wife. He has Sonora in the palm of his hand. He sure as fuck doesn’t need my employee.
“S said she’s your new marketing person. Didn’t realize you were expanding the brand.”
“I’ll be sure to include that on our next company newsletter,” I say wryly. “We send that out to paying customers, so you might want to place an order if you’d like one.”
He laughs. The pretentious fuck. “So the marketing woman … what’s she like?”
Aggravating—a smart-mouthed, distracting and beautiful woman who bothers me more than I ever imagined. I’ve avoided her all day because I can’t stand the way the buttons of her green blouse tease me. It’s like they’re begging my fingers to undo one or two or the whole row. Shirts like that have no place in my workshop, but neither does Lucy because she’s under my skin now.
I want a taste of her, and following my own rule is fucking with my head.
That Andrew obviously wants a taste of her too—well, it does crazy shit to my mood.
“She’s not into bondage and crops if that’s what you’re asking,” I eventually say. Though I’ve imagined her in both scenarios. Numerous times. “And she won’t be coming back to Bailon’s place.”
“That’s a shame. My assistant will be in touch about that order.”
Sure she will. For all their money, he and his wife are cheap—that’s why they come to B’s parties. So they won’t have to host their own. “Looking forward to it.” Wanker. I shove my phone into my pocket and take one more look at the table. It’s close to being done, but it’s Friday night. I need a drink or four to take my mind off big hazel eyes and that ass that’s invaded my thoughts for the last few weeks.
When I walk by her office on the way to mine, though, I pause.
She’s still at her desk, ogling her laptop like she’s been sent a nude photo of that talentless actor she and Daisy were going on about at lunch the other day. “What are you still doing here?” I demand, swinging her door open. “It’s six-thirty. Shouldn’t you be out?”
Having fun. Meeting somebody new. Letting him touch you in all the ways I’ve wanted to.
Fuck, what am I doing to myself?
“No plans tonight.” She smiles and taps her fingers on the edges of her screen. "How did you get started with all this? With EXtreme?"
I walk around her desk and sit on the edge, resting one hand on the surface for support and using the other to tug at the neck of my white tee. It’s filthy from being in the shop all day, and she fixes her stare on the dirt. Licks her lips.
My cock hates when she does that because it’s almost like an invitation.
"Why do you want to know?" I ask.
"For the website. People like to know the history of the company. Believe it or not, it drives interest through the roof." My brows shoot up, so she turns her laptop until the screen is facing me. While I study the design, she holds her breath in anticipation. I should be holding mine too because of her scent. Smelling like that, she should be bent over this desk—not behind it. "My friend Andi sent me the mock-up earlier. Do you like it?" she asks tentatively.
Her friend’s name is too close to that shithead Andrew’s for comfort, and I can’t stop my scowl from forming.
"If it gets us out there, you could have rows of cocks and pussies in the background, and I wouldn't give a damn.” But I like it. It’s simplistic, stark black and white, and it fits my company to a T. I glance away from the screen to find her glaring at me, poking her tongue in her cheek. That sort of look shouldn’t be so damn tempting, but on her it is. All it brings to mind is sex—sweat and more vicious stares because the nasty things I’d say to her would make her flush from her head to her sweet cunt.
Christ, I need that drink now.
It’s the only way I’ll get her out of my head.
Gently, I push her computer back toward her. "It's perfect. I particularly like that little logo thing at the very top. We’ll have to get that on our business cards."
She beams and releases an uncharacteristic squeal of delight that makes me laugh. In the fifteen or so years I’ve known Lucy Williams, this is the first time she’s abandoned her icy facade. It looks good on her. Like everything else.
"Sorry, I just figured you'd say you loathed it and call me a git." When I snort, she puts on her work face and continues, "The only thing I need is your history because Andi wants to include it on the site. You know, what made you start EXtreme Effects in the first place."
I grin. "Are you sure you can handle the truth?" She sucks in a breath and nods. I can guess what she’s thinking—that she’ll need to bleach her ears after she hears what I have to say, so I decide not to make her blush. Though I want to. I can resist Lucy Williams all I want, but I’ll never get tired of seeing her skin turn that delicious shade of pink beneath my words.
"I dated a webcam girl about eight years ago. She was always looking for new ways to draw in customers, and I was good at making things. I started tinkering around in my uncle's shop and came up with new playthings for her to use on camera."
When I say that word—playthings—her posture changes. Her back straightens, tits push forward, and I can’t resist sliding closer to her. I breathe her in and she swallows hard. "So that was when you started selling your ... work?"
"That's when I decided to go to school. After Leah and I broke up—because she was crazy as fuck and played far too many games—I still made props and toys for her." She wets her full lips with the tip of her tongue, and my mouth quirks at the sight. Does she have any idea how badly I want to throw my own rule out the window every time she does that? "Just because she was a crazy girlfriend doesn't mean she was an awful friend. Since she no longer had anything to be jealous about, she started sending her friends my way for ... merchandise. That’s how I met Sonora."
"And then you started the company?"
"If you don't stop interrupting me, Williams…" I start, but stop myself. She won’t like what I’m thinking—that I have ways to make her shut up, the easiest being her back against the wall and the hardest being her over my knee and my handprint on her ass. Both will lead to a path I shouldn’t take with her. “Like I told you before, I planned on getting a job with my uncle, but then I inherited money."
Bringing up the old memories does wonders for my dick, thank fucking goodness.
"My father croaked. My mum never mentioned the bastard's name—only that he was a bastard—but he knew exactly who I was. He left me close to a million, so I invested it into my education and eventually this place."
“Holy ... wow.” She blinks. "A million dollars."
"Pounds. He was a real estate investor, and from what I've been told he was a big deal across the pond. Can't say I've ever really researched the guy, but a million pounds to him would've been like a hundred dollars to you or me," I say. "I found out from his lovely wife—no sarcasm there either, she really was a lovely person—that he'd been married to her for thirty years when he finally kicked the bucket. He was a real winner.”
A soft sigh falls from Lucy’s pink lips, and I realize she pities me. I hate pity. It’s what I faced when I first came to America to live with Uncle John after Mum died. “Was she … was she angry at you?”
“No, not at me. She was upset to discover her husband’s secret bastard in his will. She was angry that I was conceived while she was on bed rest with my half-brother. She was pissed that my father was too shitty to offer any help while he was alive—even as my mum...”
I can’t finish because thinking of my mother still clenches my chest, even after sixteen years. While my father was living it up with his other family, Mum and I spent the last year of her life in a dingy flat, barely able to get by as she wilted away from the cancer that ate away at her body. My fucker of a father could have left me his entire fortune and that still wouldn’t have made shit right.
Mum loved too hard, crashed from what he did to her even harder, and in the end, she suffered bitterly.
Lucy leans over and lays a soft hand over Mum’s name—Georgina—and the thirty-three short years she’d lived that’s tattooed on my forearm. Her touch is lightning. Potent. Blinding. My fingers clench beneath her fingertips, but I don’t pull away.
Neither does she, but she should.
I’ve never needed anything more than for her to let go because once she starts, I won’t be able to stop myself.
“I was pissed off too,” I say, staring down at her hand on my arm. I swallow. She does the same a moment later, when I move my thumb, skimming her smooth pinkie with my rough fingertip. She’s so soft. So right. It’s dangerous that she feels this good. “Believe it or not, I really do hate to see a woman cry. Especially over a cheating fuck whose lover didn't even know he was married when he knocked her up. In case you’ve not figured it out, love, I loathe cheaters."
Lucy nods in understanding. “Do you ever see your half-brother or your … father’s wife?”
“I have a half-brother and sister,” I correct. They’re both stuck-up, over-privileged, and they want nothing to do with me. “I’ve seen them twice in the last seven years. Both times were awkward.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I have never liked attachments.” I wander my thumb over her knuckles. Her breath disappears, but she still doesn’t ask me to quit. I stroke her skin, refusing to hurry. I want a reaction from her. Want her to tell me to stop and that she doesn’t want this because it would be easier. Better for the both of us. “Christ, you’re fucking soft. It’s easy to forget that…”
“Forget what?”
To forget that I shouldn’t want to be inside of you. Drawing away from her, I exhale. She shivers and moves closer to me—like a moth to a flame. “That I won’t pursue this shit with you. I can’t, though I fucking want to. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to…” Her glossy lips part in surprise. I groan and drag my hand over my face before resting my fingers on my chin. It shouldn’t be so hard to tell myself no. “I like having you around, Williams,” I finish.
Clutching her hands to her chest, over those buttons I’m desperate to pop, she looks away to the blinking green light on the side of her laptop. “Are you still pissed off?” she asks, changing the subject. It’s a safe move for us both. “At your father, I mean.”
She glances at me again. "I'm all right, love," I promise, giving her a faint smile. "I don't hold grudges, remember?"
"That's what you told me, but I—"
Her phone buzzes a few inches from my hand on her desk. She bends over to check it and scowls. Letting out a strangled sound, she angrily swipes the text from the screen before meeting my questioning stare.
“Is everything okay, Lucy?”
"My ex,” she explains, her cheeks turning pink. I love it when she does that, but I fucking hate he’s the one making her do it. She can run off at the mouth all day, and I still can’t imagine what would make a man fuck around on someone like her. “He's still trying to talk me into coming back to San Francisco."
"To what? Get back together with him?” The idea of her going back to Tom Duncan gets to me more than Andrew asking about her. “Please tell me you're not falling for that shit, Williams."
She squeezes the bridge of her small nose. "Of course I won’t. I mean, that's what he's saying he wants but he really just wants me to run his marketing team for pennies while he continues ... screwing someone else." Closing her eyes, she tilts her face up to the ceiling, blinking rapidly. I hope she doesn’t cry. Fuck, I hope she doesn’t cry because I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from pulling her to me and kissing her until she can’t think about that prick. "Don't worry, though, I'm not going to run out on you."
I make a mistake: I cup her cheek. She swallows back a gasp, her lips trembling as I bring her focus back to my narrowed eyes. I’m an idiot for doing this. My brain yells for me to pull away from her because being skin-to-skin with Lucy-Know-It-All-Williams is bound to fuck me over. Touching her means I’ll end the night pumping my hand over my cock since nobody but her will do. Still, my fingers remain on her face, unmoving.
Unwilling to move.
“Jace,” she whispers. “Don’t worry about me leaving.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Then what is it?” she demands.
I stroke the corner of her lips and her chin then fist my hand on her desk. "You already know, love.”
Her long lashes flutter over her hazel eyes and she arches into me like my fingers are still on her face. I wish I hadn’t pulled away so soon. “You’re worried about me?”
“I worry about all my employees,” I say roughly. It’s the truth, but they don’t keep me awake like she does. I don’t over think every fucking move with them because I’m afraid of pushing too hard.
“Of course you do.” She licks her lips. Then she does a full-pivot and changes the subject. "Special plans tonight?"
"Ah, Williams," I murmur and shake my head. "Not at all what you think. I'm showering, meeting Ash for a drink and then going home. I have B's table to work on tomorrow, and he's not a patient man."
"He seemed pleasant enough. When he doesn’t have his ... member exposed."
"You can say it. You're a grown woman, and it's perfectly acceptable to say cock. Or dick, if you'd prefer. B seemed pleasant when he didn't have his cock exposed."
“I swear, you need a lesson on etiquette,” she snaps. As we go back and forth about the pros and cons of openly saying filthy words, she starts to gather her belongings. She’s shrugging into her coat and telling me that she’ll work on the company history this weekend and email it over to me, but then I say something that makes her freeze.
"Come out for a drink with Ash and me."
From the doorway, she looks over her shoulder to where I’m still sitting on her desk. I’ve issued her a challenge I don’t think she’ll accept. And, truth be told, she shouldn't. She should go home, to her mother, and not out with a man who fantasizes about everything she has to offer and more.
When she repeats what I said about not pursuing her, I shrug like the git I am—and I certainly am one for inviting her out.
“Drinking with you isn’t touching you, love. Besides, I’ve always wondered how overachieving Lucy Williams takes her alcohol.”
“Not well.” Her fingers shake as she buttons her coat. “And especially when I’m taking it with you.”
I’m a sucker for punishment. I’ve got to be since hearing her say that makes me want her near me even more. “You’ll never know unless you come.”
She’ll say no. I know she will, and it’s better for us both. But then she surprises me by choosing the path of resistance. "Yeah, sure," she mutters, grinning when my gaze widens. "Just tell me what time and where, and I'll stop by as soon as I grab a bite to eat."