Parker (Rich & Single #2) (13 page)

His tongue flicked out against her nipple, and then he pulled back.

“Come on,” he breathed against her skin.

He closed his teeth around a little patch of skin just above her collarbone and bit down hard enough to mark. She made a sound that might have been a scream if it hadn't been muffled by a hand suddenly pressed to her mouth. Her other hand flew to his shoulder, clenching hard over it.

“Wow,” she managed when he pulled back. “Fuck. Parker.”

He bit her again, and she bucked up against him.

“You're hot as fucking hell,” he said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Just every guy I ever met. They—”

Parker pressed down on her clit with his thumb and she moaned. “Don't want to hear that, babe. Just want to hear you make noises for me.”

“How’s ‘fuck you’?” she snapped.

“Think it’s the other way around. Just saying.”

              She probably would have argued again, but he rocked in deep and rubbed fast little circles over her clit. Jennifer’s nails raked down his back, leaving stinging lines in their wake, and Parker leaned down and kissed her. Hard. She came with a cry that was muffled against his mouth.

He didn’t stop. If she hadn’t completely forgotten how to speak by the end of this, he was doing it wrong. Her body shuddered under his, and her nails dug into his skin where she was clutching at him.

“As good as you expected?” he panted, leaning down again to brush his lips against her neck and follow the teasing touch with a bite that wasn't hard enough to hurt.

“Oh my– fuck!” she gasped.

Parker grinned, and ran his fingers up the flat plane of her belly to catch a nipple between them. “Think I finally found a way to get you to stop talking.”

She made a noise that might have been protest but wasn't words, and he kissed her again, silencing even that. Her leg wrapped around his hip, trying to draw him in closer. He smiled against her mouth.

Abruptly, the leg that was wrapped around him pushed against his side, and her hands dragged him over, and suddenly he was on his back looking up at her. It was a view worth the shock of the change in position.

“My turn,” she said, grinning at him like she was going to eat him alive.

He was pretty sure it was going to be an experience he would thoroughly enjoy.

Jennifer's hair had come almost entirely free and curled around her face, casting soft shadows against her features. In the dim light, her eyes were bright and very blue. She looked like something out of another world entirely.

Parker reached up to wrap his hands around her hips, and she laughed and shoved them away, picking up her pace. He groaned.

“Payback?”

She tossed her head, shaking the hair back from her eyes. “Something like that.”

Parker curled one of his arms under his head, tipping it up enough to get a full view of the muscles flexing in her stomach and thighs as she rode him. So much for making her come another two or three times before his own orgasm, because he wasn’t going to last. Not like that.

One of Jennifer’s hands slipped down, and her fingers stroked over her clit. Her spine arched. Parker growled, and reached out to touch. This time she let him, pressing into the fingers that toyed with her nipples. He could feel her getting close again, and rocked up to meet her, pulling moans from both of them. Pleasure coiled at the base of his spine.

Jennifer fell over the edge, with syllables that might have been his name tangled up in her gasps, and Parker followed. The pleasure exploded outward, washing white across his vision and tingling through his nerves.

He sank against the mattress. Jennifer slumped down onto his chest. For a moment they simply lay there, the sound of their breathing loud in the quiet room.

“There’s no way they’re not going to know what just happened,” Jennifer said.

Parker laughed. “No. There isn’t. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them heard you screaming.”

She swatted at his shoulder, too lazy to put any real force behind it. “If they did there are going to be a lot of jealous women out there.”

“Is that so? I thought you didn’t like me.” There was a real question in the teasing words, waiting for her to answer it.

“Like I said. I was having fun.” Jennifer tipped her head back to grin up at him. “This was more fun, though. By a long shot.”

“As good as you thought it would be?”

This time Jennifer laughed. “Better.”

Parker’s hand stroked slowly up the length of her thigh, over the smooth curve of her buttock. “We could do it again,” he suggested. “For science. See if it continues to exceed your expectations.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she shot back.

“Like you wouldn’t.”

“Hmm. True.” She smiled, and leaned in to kiss him. “I think I would like that a lot.”

They didn’t go for round three. Mostly because they’d already been locked in the room for long enough to be really suspicious, and staying any longer was likely to get them kicked out of the party. Parker wouldn’t have minded, but if he got thrown out he would have to kiss ass to get back in next year, and they did need the clients. That, and Jackson would have been disappointed.

Jennifer left first, dress smoothed back on and hair caught back up in its pins. Parker wasn’t sure that would actually fool anyone, but if they didn’t at least pretend to make an effort at it they’d really be in trouble. He sat in the room after she’d gone, waiting until enough time had passed that he wouldn’t be following her out in the eyes of everyone else.

As the afterglow faded, he started to wonder if sleeping with her at one of the client parties had really been the best choice, and decided that it didn’t really matter. What was done was done. He couldn’t go back and change the past. Besides, she was hot, and the sex had been kind of spectacular.

He’d be open to doing it again.

Shirt pulled back on and neatly buttoned—minus one button now hidden behind his jacket—Parker finally stepped out of the bedroom and into the hall, heading back to the main room and the party.

Jackson found him almost immediately.

“You couldn’t have waited two hours?” he hissed, catching Parker by the arm and leaning up enough to whisper the words into his ear. “Seriously?”

“Kind of hard to wait when there’s a smoking hot naked woman standing in front of you begging for it,” Parker whispered back, grinning.

Jackson looked at him like he was contemplating whether or not he would be able to sufficiently hide all the pieces if he had Parker murdered. “I really don’t know why I associate with you sometimes. Go. Mingle. Platonically.” He gave Parker a shove.

Parker laughed and obediently went to make nice with the clientele. Across the room, he caught Jennifer’s eye for an instant as she did the same, and they exchanged secret smiles as they turned away from each other again.

“I guess it’s true what they say about that fine line between love and hate,” Lydia said a while later, stepping around Parker and toward the bar.

Parker followed. “Lust and hate, maybe,” he said.

She snorted. “Yeah. I guess that does make more sense. Was it worth it?”

Parker signaled the bartender. “Not that I should be telling you this, but it was totally worth it.” He took a seat on one of the stools, and she followed suit. “It usually is.”

“You keep telling yourself that,” Lydia said, and gave her order to the bartender as he made his way down to their end of the bar.

“Aren’t I the one who’s supposed to be dispensing life advice?” Parker retorted when he’d ordered his own drink.

“You only get to give life advice if it’s good. ‘Have hate sex with your rival in someone’s else’s bedroom’ isn’t good advice,” Lydia pointed out.

Parker laughed. “Yeah. Okay. Fair enough.”

“So,” she said, turning her head enough to look at him, “what comes next?”

The bartender returned and set their drinks down in front of them.

Parker toyed with the beer bottle, but didn’t lift it to his lips. “We keep moving forward with your training. At the end of the two weeks, you decide if you want to keep going from there, or if you’re done.”

“I meant with Jennifer, actually.” Lydia paused to take a sip of her drink. “Are you two an item now?”

“What, because we had sex we’re automatically going steady?” Parker shook his head. “No. I’m not looking for anything long-term.” He looked down at her, surprised at himself. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. It really goes beyond the client/trainer relationship.”

“Because I’m a good listener,” she said, smiling at him.

“Well, listen to this, then. In two weeks, the contest is over.” Parker leaned his weight on one elbow resting on the wood of the bar. “If you want to be finished after that, then that’s your choice, but if you want to keep working with me, I admit that I want to keep training you. I like watching you get stronger every day. I like knowing that I’m doing something important.”

Lydia chuckled, and shook her head. “You know something, Parker? You might be the first genuinely good CEO I’ve ever heard of. Let alone met.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment.” Parker said.

She grinned. “You should.”

***

They kept moving forward with Lydia’s training.

As the end of the contest got closer, the media coverage started up again, and they were dodging paparazzi to get into the gym. Parker was more than ready for it to be over.

Jennifer hadn’t shown up in his office since the party. Or at any of the diners he frequented. She was busy with her own side of the contest, Parker was sure. With the weeks spinning down into only days left, both of them had more than enough on their plates without adding whatever complicated thing they had started that night. It was better to just leave it.

Besides, like he’d said, he wasn’t looking for the one.

There was a knock on his office door an afternoon after working out with Lydia. Parker looked up, from the plans Jackson had given him for the final video, sighing.

“Come in,” he called toward it.

The man who walked in was wearing aviators, even though he’d have had to walk through the entire gym to get to the office. Parker resisted the urge to roll his eyes. It was obvious from the cut of the guy’s suit that he was rich, and despite what Jackson claimed, Parker was capable of restraining himself for the sake of professional appearance. Besides, the more rich clients they had willing to pay top dollar or donate money, the more people they could help who weren’t able to afford their training without some financial aid. People like Lydia and Michael, who wasn’t progressing quite as fast in his training as she was, but who still deserved a hand up. So Parker smiled at Mr. Tailored Suit.

“What can I do for you?”

“Hey! I’m Sebastian Koy. I’ve heard you’re the best, so I’m here to set up a training program with you.”

He had a trace of a British accent.

“I’d be happy to help you with that about…” Parker glanced at his watch. “Two days from now.”

Sebastian’s eyebrows lifted above his glasses. “I called to make sure you weren’t in an appointment.”

Parker was going have words with the people at the front desk.

“I’m not, but, as you might have heard, I’m in the middle of a publicity stunt and it’s taking up a lot of my time right now.”

“Look,” Sebastian said, leaning a little forward with one ankle crossed over the other knee, and finally taking off the sunglasses to look Parker in the eye. “My schedule is tight on a level that makes yours look open. So if you can’t help me, I’ll go find someone who can. I hear Jennifer Leandra is quite the trainer.”

Parker’s jaw tightened. The guy would bring that up.

“Fine. Happy to help. What kind of program are you looking for?” he asked, setting aside the video description and pulling out his pad and pen.

Sebastian sat back in his seat. “I’m a model, and I’ve just been chosen as the face—or body, rather—of a new highly popular underwear campaign. I need to look perfect for it. No bulking up. No offense, but I don’t want to look like you. I do, however, want muscle.”

Parker jotted the basics of Sebastian’s request down, nodding. “That’s not a problem at all. We work with a lot of clients looking for a leaner look. It’s just a matter of how much you want to do and when.”

“I’d like to start training with you as soon as possible.”

“How does next week sound? This weekend I’m booked solid.”

Sebastian sighed. He obviously wasn’t used to being told to wait. “Next week will have to do, I suppose. I’ll email you my schedule. Likely I won’t be available the same times every day, so we’ll have to find a workable method for slipping training in where I’ve got time. As far as diet, I’m already on a strict one, so I’ll send you the specifics for that as well. If you feel there need to be changes, let me know.”

“Will do,” Parker said. “I’ll try to get to it while I have some spare time in the next day or two, but I can’t guarantee I’ll have it before our first training session.”

Sebastian inhaled a long breath before huffing it out. “That’ll have to do, too, I suppose.”

He stood, and Parker stood as well, offering a hand for him to shake. Sebastian reached out and took it, his grip firm. Then he pulled away and turned to go, only to pause at the door.

“Oh. I’m not looking to work with your other trainers. I want you, specifically, and I’m willing to pay for the privilege. Please keep that in mind.”

Parker opened his mouth, but Sebastian hadn’t waited for an answer. He was already out the door. Finally giving into the temptation to roll his eyes, Parker dropped into his seat and went back to the video plan.