The algorithms drove me through the roof of my office, to the damn edge of my building, and nearly off to the crowded street below as I worked on them.
I was missing shit.
I knew it, and I couldn’t reformulate it well enough to fix it.
I shoved away from my desk and grabbed my phone, frustrated enough to want to lash out at someone. That usually meant calling some woman I could rage fuck and leave, but after running circles around Aubrey for the past month, I could only picture her.
I dialed her number, wanting to hear her voice and grate on her nerves a little. She didn’t answer though.
Jay popped his head into my office just as I was rolling my chair back to switch gears to look at my stocks. “Hey, you know where Jett is?”
I looked at my calendar. “He’s in a meeting with marketing for another hour. And what the hell are you doing here?”
“Got a few days off and had to run some moves past Jett. Plus, I miss my girl.”
“You’re dating someone here?” I was half listening to him as I read through some of the financial gains we’d made over the past month.
“Only girl I’ve ever had is Brey.”
When he said her name, my body jumped to attention a little too quickly. He knew he’d pushed the wrong button because he was smiling like a son of a bitch when I glared at him. “Fuck you, Jay.”
He laughed.
I shook off the way he was trying to rile me. “You flying to see her after you talk with Jett?”
“Nope.” The word popped out of him like he was excited to answer me. “She needs to get out more. My driver should be bringing her to the building in an hour or two to see Jett.”
“Your driver? What do you mean your fucking driver is …”
He backed out of the office, smiling, and slammed the door before I could finish.
“His driver?” I repeated, muddling through it all again and feeling something a lot like jealousy stirring in my gut.
Why the hell hadn’t she answered and why the fuck was she getting picked up by his driver?
As if on cue, I received a vague text from her.
Peaches: In town to see Jay. Maybe we’ll run into each other.
Maybe? She barely acknowledged that she was in my town, and now she thought that maybe we would run into each other?
“Maybe,” I grunted and shoved back from my desk dramatically.
I undid my suit jacket and whipped it onto the chair. Unfastening my sleeves, I rolled them to my elbows as I made my way to the elevators.
The elevators had been an extreme addition of this tower a few years back. I’d been a year into investing with my father when we remodeled.
My father pushed for conservative, I pushed for innovation, domination, and perfection. He and Jett had given me control of the look and feel of the lobby and elevator, knowing investors wanted something sleek and young.
The waterfall that cascaded around the elevator created an illusion of moving through water. The clear view out of the elevators was only one way as the elevator appeared like a dark bullet flowing through the water faster than most did.
It represented our strategy.
I thought it represented my lifestyle too. I thought I flowed through each of my experiences efficiently, smoothly, fluidly and stealthy. I detected those around me from within those elevator doors. I had access to what I needed–always. My key fob gave me access to floors in this building that not even my father had access to.
I entered the lobby and the crowd near the elevator fell silent. They knew not to continue a private conversation in front of me. Young, driven, and very aware, our staff represented the best in the industry. This hustle and bustle of Stonewood Enterprises, I loved. It always vibrated with ideas and people so determined to implement them, you could almost taste their drive. I should have nodded politely to put them at ease but Aubrey and her “maybes” made me feel every damn thing but polite.
I sat down in the leather chair much too expensive for the lobby and angled my stare toward the door.
I waited for what I was sure was hours and tried to focus on the atmosphere I’d helped create. Here, I wasn’t regarded as a celebrity. Here, I was the boss who made everyone enough money to implement their dreams.
So, witnessing how they all shifted, knowing their boss sat in the lobby waiting for something or someone interested me. Some looked nervous, others amused that they were seeing me as a human rather than their elusive boss who waited for no one.
And I was human enough to admit time dragged and scraped along, almost making me bleed with impatience while I waited for her.
Time screeched to a complete stop when she finally walked through the revolving glass doors. Wearing a white dress that cut close to being revealing at so many different angles, I saw her stop to crane her neck upward as if she was measuring how big Stonewood Enterprises really was.
Sky’s the limit, Whitfield.
I took in every inch of her from afar. Her hair was down in waves. Men and women looked her way. She drew attention in that stark-white dress, especially with the plunging neckline that cut pointedly down her chest, showing off her cleavage. The material was snug over her entire body, accentuating everything I wanted. I was sure men looked, contemplated, hoped they could have a word with her.
Her stilettos clicked across the floor as she made her way toward the elevators but they stopped when I stood. Her eyes widened as she looked at me looking at her.
“White dress today?”
She shrugged, not making an effort to say a thing as she raked her eyes over my collared shirt and slacks.
I placed my hand on the small of her back and felt the tension there, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to see me. It shouldn’t have bothered me so much. I should have accepted she had her issues and I had mine, we were separate people leading separate lives.
Instead, I slid my hand to her upper elbow and steered her to the elevator. When I stepped on with her by my side and turned to see a few of my employees starting to follow, I stepped closer to the door and waved my fob over the light.
Each of them stopped. Eyes shot to one another, they looked away, down, anywhere but toward me.
When the door slid shut to move to the designated floor the fob signaled, Aubrey mumbled in a small voice, “Nice party trick. They all that scared of you?”
“Whitfield, it’s respect, not fear.”
“Hmm.”
“What’s that mean?”
She looked up at the glass ceiling of the elevator and around her until her eyes fell to me. “Back in your work attire, I see.”
I smiled, watching the numbers count floors as quickly as they were supposed to.
When the doors opened, I didn’t turn to enter my penthouse, just backed up as I watched her taking it all in.
She moved her line of sight to the floor-to-ceiling windows and her jaw dropped. Mesmerized by the city skyline and lake, she flowed into my living space. When she reached the window overlooking the city, she sighed like it was a masterpiece.
I came up beside her, smoothed my hand down and up her back to rest right on her neck. I pushed my thumb into one tendon where I knew most of her tension gathered and massaged as her eyes darted from building to building and then to the lake.
She tilted her head to give my hand better access. “Jax, I can’t take my eyes off it.”
“Hypnotic, I know.”
Her neck tensed again because she knew damn well I wasn’t talking about her view, I was talking about mine. My eyes only saw her, alone in my penthouse.
I buried my fingers further into her neck to chase that tension away.
“How do you look away?” Her brow was furrowed like she thought she would be lost in the view forever.
Stepping in behind her, I whispered into her ear, “I put something in front of me that’s better.”
My hands slid over her hips as I pushed up against her ass.
She gasped when she felt how hard I was. “I have to meet Jett at one, Jax.”
“And I finally have you near a bed that’s mine, Whitfield.”
She started to turn to face me but I grabbed her wrists and shoved her hands up above her onto the window.
I bit her ear. “This is nonnegotiable, Sweet Sin.”
Her ass ground into my dick before she whispered, “We don’t have a lot of time and this isn’t us getting over anything or being friends. It shouldn’t be happening.”
I chuckled. “You sounded like you were ready for it to happen the other night on the phone.”
She groaned and wiggled her hips again. “Keep your hands on that glass, Whitfield.”
She nodded and I let go of her wrists to explore her body. “This fucking dress …”
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
“Terrible because every man wants to fuck you in it.”
The slit in the back of the skirt gave me enough access to slide it up just enough that she didn’t have much space to move freely but I could slide my hand between her thighs.
“Why the fuck aren’t you wearing panties?”
“Jax …” she sighed as I rubbed her clit and felt how wet she was for me.
“Answer me, Whitfield.”
I rolled her clit between two fingers and pinched.
“Oh, God,” she moaned.
I smiled, liking how out of control she got right when I touched her, how I could draw her attention to her lack of it. “If you can’t answer the fucking question, I’m happy to stop.”
She panted and blurted out, “Panty lines. The dress is tight and …”
“Too fucking tight,” I ground out and whipped the zipper down her back with the other hand. It loosened enough for me to wrap my arms around her shoulder and slide my hand into her bra.
When I pinched her nipple, she shook like she might combust.
I pulled away.
“Jax!” she yelled and snapped her eyes from the view to me. They were so fucking green in that moment, I could have written a song about the damn vividness of the color.
I almost stopped everything to try to capture that damn look, this woman, with words in a song. That scared me enough to shake me into commanding what I knew would be a moment I’d never forget.
“Take the dress off so I can see what I do to you.”
Her lips rolled between her teeth and her hair slid over her shoulders as she grabbed the sides of the dress and slid it down over her hips. It fell to the floor and she was left with a white lace bra and her black heels.
“Leave the shoes on, lose the bra.”
She didn’t move. “What about you?”
I unbuckled my belt, unzipped my fly and took my dick in my hand to stroke it in front of her. “That’s all you get, Sweet Sin. If I want to take my clothes off, then I will. You, on the other hand, will do what I say.”
She glared at me but I saw her eyes flick to my cock and her nipples pucker. When I glanced down at them and arched a brow, she crossed her arms over her chest. “Is this what you mean by putting something better in front of your view? You bring women here and just command them around like you own everything in this city?”
I smiled and stepped up to her, knowing this was her attempt to throttle the conversation enough to get some control back.
I reached around her and unsnapped her bra.
Before she could say more, I crashed my lips into hers and my hands flew everywhere. I wanted to touch and taste every part of her. I yanked her hair back so I could get better access to her mouth and she arched into me, letting me have the control she’d wanted.
Deep down, we worked in sync like this.
We were two chemicals that bonded perfectly—my control and her surrender.
I yanked myself back, wanting this to last as long as it could. I spun her again to look at the view and placed her hands up on the window again.
This time, she resisted with a tremulous plea, “People can see us, Jax. I’m naked.”
“And you’re mine. You do what I say if you want to come.”
When she whipped her head around like she wanted to accuse me of something, I just glared back and snaked my arm to her front where I slid my hand between her legs again. “You’re so wet. You want to stop just because someone might catch a glance of you out the window?”
She moaned but rolled her hips as I slid one finger into her and wrapped my other arm around her to pinch her nipple just hard enough that it pebbled.
“This is wrong, Jax. We should be in a bed.”
I let my dick slide back and forth between her ass cheeks and then over her wetness. “Does it feel wrong?”
She choked on whatever she was about to say and gasped as I slid two more fingers in. I pumped them against her G-spot while rolling my thumb over her clit.
“Mmm, it sounds like you like wrong.”
Her pussy pulsed as I said it, and I licked her neck.
“Tell me, Whitfield, do you like people seeing you come? You like me finger fucking you here?”
“Jax, please.”
I still loved hearing her beg as much as I used to. So, I kept the same rhythm, knowing she wanted just a bit more. She met my cock with a roll of her hips and arched her back so much, I almost lost what little control I had left.
When she moaned like she’d reached her limit, I bit down on her neck and picked up the pace, rubbing her harder and twisting her nipples close to the point of pain.
Her body convulsed, pushing back into me as she screamed. I let her ride my hand long enough for her to come down off her orgasm and felt her muscles relaxing all around.
When her hands began to slide from the window, I slid my hand from the small of her back all the way to the nape of her neck and leaned in to tell her we weren’t finished yet.
I was starting to realize we would never be.
