Beyond Bliss (20 page)

Their fingers entwined for a moment, before his slipped through and pulled the silk between hers. She gasped when she felt it settle on her face over her eyes. His other hand lifted from hers as he tied it behind her head in a knot….?

“Now, Miss Harlow. Do you still not know what urgent development brought you here?”

Her mind felt thick, swamped with everything and nothing as his fingers trailed over her collarbone and then…

Understanding dawned.

A sound escaped her throat, and he laughed – simultaneously diabolical and seductive.

Images flooded her mind of the previous night. Their lovemaking had started out easily enough until she’d whipped out a pair of pink, fuzzy handcuffs Liz had gifted her as a gag present. He’d been surprised, but in the end, he let her have his way.

And then he’d regretted it immediately once her intentions became clear.

First, she teased him as she played with herself in a chair across her bed. His hands had clenched and unclenched compulsively as he’d begged to touch her. When she finally took pity on him, he’d groaned with relief until he realized she intended to keep him on the precipice of orgasm for the entire evening. Just when he was close, she’d slip off and slide down his body, pressing small, soft kisses along his heated skin, whispering all of the dirty things he could do to her.

Like take her whenever and wherever he wanted. In the bedroom, in the car while Harry drove with the divider up…

She’d particularly enjoyed his response as she taunted him about blindfolding her and feeding her his cock while she kneeled before him.

He’d cursed, begged, pleaded, and promised her damn near anything in the world before she laughed, low and seductive, and climbed on top of him, riding him to perfection.

“Fuck,” she whispered.

“Exactly, baby.” She gasped as his fingers trailed over her lips before he pressed one insistently against her mouth. Instinctively, her mouth opened, and he pressed entry into the warm cavern of her mouth. “Who knew the face of an angel could hide a mind stuck in the gutter?”

Protest died on her lips when he withdrew his finger from her mouth, and it followed an agonizing trail … into her blouse and past her bra until it circled the taut peak of her nipple, wetting her hardening flesh with her own saliva.

“Oh God,” she whimpered.

He laughed again. “God can’t help you now, baby.”

Spun silk, the color of deep mahogany, lay carelessly strewn about the stark white pillow. Her breathing was gentle, skin still flushed pink rising and falling in a slow, even cadence.

Simply stunning
.

Even more so when her body rose and crested in the throes of pleasure. Every time he touched her, it was as if she were a siren, her call to his body pulling him under, deeper and deeper, until he was oblivious to the rest of the word.

Every gasp, every moan, every breathless plea for “more” or “harder” until he was fused so deeply inside her, it was impossible to tell where his body separated from hers into a body that belonged to him.

If he was honest with himself, more than his body belonged to her.

He’d demanded nonsensical things from her. He’d pushed her to admit she was his, as much as he was hers. He’d forced words from her as he held her body captive to his.

Words he knew she wasn’t ready to say, but he’d needed to hear them nonetheless.

The pull he felt towards her was more than attraction, more than lust.

Magnetic.

Inexplicable.

She fucking
owned
him and pride be damned, he was fucking happy about it.

But even after all he’d forced from her, it still made him uncomfortable. Even as he’d plied her into submission, and she was on her knees, blind to everything but the suck of her mouth along the sensitive skin of his cock, it felt like she’d wedged herself into a space in his heart that didn’t exist, leaving his chest tight.

And despite it all, despite the crazy need to meld his body into hers and the hole left in his chest when she wasn’t around…

He’d never had anything like this, and he couldn’t imagine ever wanting more or settling for less.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand for the third time since she’d fallen asleep. Whoever was trying to get ahold of her was tenacious. She sighed and snuggled closer to him. He ignored the phone and focused on the perfect curves of her body. His hand reached out automatically to brush her hair from her forehead and his lips dropped to her forehead to press a soft, tender kiss against her damp skin.

Her phone buzzed once more, and despite his vow to ignore it, he couldn’t help but glance. A text message graced the screen of her smart phone.

A text from someone in her phone named Mom.

An uneasy feeling gathered low in his stomach as he scanned the words on the screen.

“Sophie it’s an emergency, and I need to speak with you immediately.”

Guiltily, he stared at the offending object as it started to vibrate once more. It was wrong to answer her phone, but what if something truly awful had happened?

The need to protect the angel slumbering peacefully next to him overpowered his common sense.

He grabbed the phone and slid the indicator on the screen to answer the call.

“Sophie Harlow’s phone.”

And then he immediately regretted it as a blistering shriek rang through the speaker.

“Excuse me? Where is my daughter? Who the hell is this? What have you done with her?”

He froze.

Shit.

“If you don’t answer me and produce my child right away, I’m calling the police, mister. They can track you down using the satellite and her phone. I know what I’m talking about, I watch Dateline!”

He ran a multi-billion corporation, but the terror incited by the woman on the other end of the line ran deep into his bones.

He shivered. “Excuse me, ma’am. This is Lucas Sinclair. Sophie is my legal counsel, and she’s unavailable right now. She can’t come to the phone right now.”

She wasn’t having any of that. “Well then, why the hell are you answering her phone? I don’t care who you are mister, get my daughter online.”

He nearly laughed at her misuse of the word, but caught himself just in time. He opened his mouth to respond, but Sophie stirred restlessly next to him. “Baby, what’s going on?” she asked sleepily, her eyes still closed.

A low scream emanated from the phone and he cringed. “Baby? She’s your legal counsel? Just what kind of counsel are you hiring my daughter for? Answer me!”

Sophie’s eyes flew open, horror written all over her face. “Oh my God,” she whispered.

“Sophie? Sophie, darling, is that you? Are you safe? Should I call the police? Oh Lord save me from the loss of my only child. I’m calling the authorities. Sophie, you just hang on, you hear? Hang on for me, hang on for your mama! Don’t leave me, we’ll find you honey,” Mrs. Harlow wailed in between sobs.

A bright red flush crept up from her chest to her face, the color of a ripe tomato. He stared at her helplessly, and she glared, snatching the phone from him.

“Mom?”

“Oh Sophie, oh my God. Keep talking to me, baby. I’m going to use the land-line to call the police. Just hang on,” her mother cried.

“Mom, I’m okay. I’m okay. O-k-a-y,” she said slowly.

“You sure, honey?” the voice on the phone sniffed.

Jesus Christ, she’d ‘quieted’ down, and he could still hear the high pitch. Lucas shuddered and sent a silent prayer upward that Sophie would be nothing like her crazy mother as she grew older.

“Yes, Mom,” she sighed heavily.

And then the barrage of questions and orders began.

“Who’s Lucas Sinclair?”

“What kind of work are you doing for him?”

“Are you a high-end call girl?”

“Why are you calling him baby?”

He stared, half in fear, the other half in admiration as she calmly fielded her mother’s questions. When her mother threatened to “
run the Google on this Lucas Sinclair to make sure he wasn’t a criminal or up to no good
,” he watched as she turned into an award-winning actress.

“Mom? Mom? I can’t hear you the connection is so terrible. I keep telling you to switch cell phone companies. Mom? Mom?” Sophie paused in between words sufficiently so much so that he even bought it, and he was in bed next to her.

Her mother started talking even more loudly, almost yelling, about a family plan she’d signed up for with her bridge buddies and an iron-clad contract she’d already tried to get out of when Sophie put an end to it.

“Mom?  Mom? I can’t hear what you’re saying and I’m about to run into an important meeting. This could make or break my career. Have a glass of wine and calm down. I’ll call you later tonight. Love you!”

When she pressed the button to end the call, he let out a huge breath he hadn’t known he was holding in and sighed deeply.

His relief was short-lived, however, when Sophie turned a laser-eyed glare on him.

“You answered the phone when my
mother
was calling? Are you insane?” she nearly shrieked.

He shivered from the recent memory of her mother’s own shriek and tried to shake off the comparison.

Sheepishly, he shrugged, and his mouth twisted into something between a pained grimace and an apologetic smile. “Sorry?”

Her soft, pillowy lips parted in disbelief, and his mind immediately turned to dirtier thoughts.

“Oh no, mister, you wipe that look off your face,” she whispered furiously.

Again, the similarities weren’t lost on him. “Um, you sort of sound like your mother right now.”

Big mistake.

He’d needled, prodded, pushed, coerced, and bullied her – each time, she gave back as good as she got (unless they were in bed and she wanted said needling, prodding, pushing, coercing, and bullying), and up until now, he’d never witnessed the sheer rage mottling her pretty face.

Alarms sounded in his mind, but it was too late. In the next second, she flew at him.

He was helpless to fight her off. It might have had something to do with the chunks of his hair she held gripped tightly in each fist as she straddled him.

His uncooperative dick stirred to life. Jesus, even pissed off and crazy, she was fucking hot.

Her eyes grew wide as she felt the evidence of his erection.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. Please let go of my hair,” he pleaded. Fuck, he sounded like a whimpering little girl even to his own ears, but he had no desire to experience premature baldness.

“Sinclair, let’s get something straight. You fuck with me, you fuck me, but you do not, and I repeat—do not
ever
talk to my mother without my permission. As much as I love your dick, it happens again and you won’t have one,” she threatened furiously.

“Jesus Christ, Sophie, she said it was an emergency. I only picked up because if something was really wrong, I knew you would want to know immediately!”

Some of the ire faded from her chocolate brown eyes, and she regarded him thoughtfully.

Thankfully, she released her grip on his hair, and he started to truly breathe easily for the first time in the last ten minutes. Exasperated, she blew at a lock of hair that fell across her forehead into her eyes.

As close as she’d come to nearly unmanning him, he thought it was adorable.

He wisely chose to keep his opinion to himself this time.

“My mother says
everything
is an emergency. She’s like the boy who cried wolf. Don’t pick up my phone again Sinclair,” she warned, before rolling off him and plopping onto her side of the bed. “Hell, first you nearly send me into cardiac arrest, thinking I screwed up on the
merger
, then you
talk
to my
mother,
and she’s ready to call a S.W.A.T. team, and
then you get an erection
,” she muttered incredulously. “What farce has my life dissolved into?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to draw a comparison between her last question and the Bard of Avalon, but he kept that to himself, too.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized awkwardly.

She rolled her head to face him. “No, but seriously Lucas, I almost had a coronary worrying about the deal. Everything’s okay, isn’t it?”

The corner of his mouth tugged upward. “Yes, everything with the deal is perfect. You’ve done an amazing job, and honestly, I didn’t expect that you’d get everything done so quickly. I knew you were good, but you’ve been amazing. The urgent development was the constant state of erection I’ve been in since you so kindly took care of the blue balls I had last night. Which—by the way, was entirely your fault,” he added.

She rolled her eyes at him, and he found the movement absolutely charming.

Whipped. Pussy-whipped.

“You’re going to drive me into an early grave, you know,” he commented offhandedly.