She's Too Young (2 page)

“Boy.”

I feel like a predator, here. I really fucking do. So if you’re judging me, we’re on the same page. But if you were in my position, standing in front of the only thing to make your blood move in what felt like a century—have I been a vampire all this time?—you would be throwing rules out with the fucking bath water, too. I’ve gone too long without someone saying
no
to me or telling me I can’t
do
or
have
something. I recognize that as part of the problem, even as I’m moving closer, getting ready to ruin her for the little boys she’s allowed into her orbit. I’m hungry and
lonely
and she’s got life radiating behind those eyes; from her ripe, too-young body and I want it for myself.

I
will
have her for myself.

When my lips touch down, she whimpers, like I’ve scared her, and that’s the last thing I want. I rule my company with fear and look where it’s gotten me. Alone. Disconnected. Resented. No, I want her to feel the same need I’m experiencing. I need her to fucking
require
me, and have that feeling
not
scare her, but make her feel secure, instead. I have no idea how to accomplish that, nor do I understand why this girl—this
girl
—is making me feel like this.

But I have no time to question it, because when I meet her gaze, I swear she heard everything I just told you. The blue of her eyes loses its fear, even if the nerves remain. And then she presses her tight curves against my body—testing, testing—and her breath teases my lips, and I’m fucked.
Forever.

I go in with a groan that trails off into stunned nothing, because there’s no description of her taste. Not in the entire English language. To say that her mouth tasted like wine and bubble gum would never be sufficient, because there was an additional succulence there that I would do a disservice to by attempting to name. I actually have to open my eyes to make sure she’s not a wet dream, that I’m not thrusting against my mattress downtown, starved for something that isn’t real.

She’s
real
, though, and her tongue is like silk soaked in melted sugar, letting mine tangle with it, just as my hands are doing in the blonde strands of her hair. They drop down, desperate for her ass, and I heft her up against me, growling into her mouth so she knows I want her legs around my waist.

“Legs up, angel. Lock your ankles.
Good.
Good girl.” I let her feel my cock, the plumping, growing flesh, and she sucks in a breath, her eyelids fluttering. “How long do we have before your daddy comes looking?”

“I-I don’t know.” Her swallow is audible. “Not long. I said I was going to the bathroom.”

My hands slide up her thighs—they are so goddamn smooth, I almost come—and encounter her backside, which is bare. Totally bare. Not a thong or cotton panties to speak of. “We’ll be dealing with this lack of undergarment later, angel.” I squeeze her flesh and yank her close, grinding her on my cock. “Said you were going to the bathroom, but you came out here, instead. Why?”

Her head tips forward on a heaved breath. “I followed you, okay? I-I…you looked so miserable and alone watching everyone from the darkness…and you never came back to the party. So I followed, because I was worried. Which is crazy, because I don’t even
know
you.” After a small hesitation, her hands slide through my hair, screwing it up the way no one else would
dare
, little sobs breaking past her lips. All the while, I’m dying a slow death. She followed me. She saw me and gave a shit. “I didn’t know I would find you on the l-ledge, so I thought maybe if I danced, you would have a reason to laugh—”

My mouth throws a roadblock down in front of wherever she was going because I can’t take it. I can’t. I’m going to rip my skin off because she’s saying those words when I haven’t secured her as mine yet. I’m a businessman and logistics are discussed
before
promises are made or everything can get blown to hell. So I murder her mouth with mine and she molds herself to me like warm clay, rubbing and rocking against me in all the right places.

“I’ve never kissed with my feet dangling in the air,” she murmurs haltingly, when we break for air.

I press our heads together, struggling to regain some control. “Get used to doing things you’ve never done before.”

She nods slowly, her breath catching when my finger slides just inside the valley of her bare backside.

“What is your name?”

“Alaveda Rose. Veda for short.” I pronounce the word in my head over and over.
Vay-da.
I have a sudden wish to see her name on the building, instead of mine. “What’s yours?” She asks, her fingers playing with the ends of my hair.

“You don’t know the name of your father’s boss?”

Veda sighs, as if already exasperated by my arrogance, and I fall a little deeper into the hole she has dug for me. “I know the name of his boss. And
that
boss’s boss.” Her ankles cinch tighter at my back and I groan, even though she clearly isn’t trying to be seductive, but simply hanging on. “I know he works for Beckett Limited, but I still don’t know
your
name.”

“Ramsey.” It seems so grandiose compared to the lightness of Veda. “Ramsey Beckett.”

She tilts her head to the side and looks right into my soul. “Why are you so sad, Ramsey Beckett of Beckett Limited?”

I open my mouth with no idea of what I’m going to say. Something I’ve never done in my life. I always have a strategy.
Plan, execute, cut them off at the knees.
Those lessons were ingrained in me. Looking at Veda, I’m beginning to wonder what kind of life exists
outside
of those harsh lessons…and if maybe it’s not too late for me to find out. But before I can spill whatever unknowns are lurking in my head, a voice joins us on the roof.

“V?”

Everything inside me rebels against the interruption, especially because she gasps, her legs unhooking and dropping, her hands pushing at my chest. It’s a battle not to yank her back close, tip up her chin and remind her we aren’t finished. The fact that it’s a man—her father or not—that has come looking for her is like a hot knife in my gut. I don’t have time to examine if that reaction is irrational, although, it probably isn’t. Nothing about me has been sane since she danced out onto the roof.

Veda examines her dress, hands shaking as she pats and smoothes the material back into place. “I’m here, dad.”

I close my eyes and breathe through my nose, attempting to rein in the possessiveness and focus. After all, I’m about to come face to face with a man, while my dick is still hard for his little girl. Something that definitely doesn’t happen every day,
especially
not to me.

When Veda floats past me, she trails her fingers over the sleeve of my tuxedo jacket and the storm inside me calms. Settles right down. I can breathe again. And if I wasn’t sure already she would be mine, that would have done it. She’s indispensable.

“I thought you were going to the bathroom,” her father says to my left, his voice wary in a way that makes it clear he sees me standing there. So I turn and watch Veda approach her father, accepting his arm as it settles across her shoulders.

“I just needed some air.” She turns and sends me a secret smile, appeasing me. I get the sense she
likes
appeasing me and goddamn, it goes both ways. I’d love the chance to appease her and I will have it. “Dad, this is Ramsey Beckett.”

“I know who he is.” A polite, but stilted nod. “Mr. Beckett.”

“Mr. Rose.”

He’s visibly startled that I’ve been talking to Veda long enough to learn his last name. If I had room to feel sympathy around everything Veda has woken up inside me, I would have felt it for the other man in that moment, because the situation is about to get much more difficult for him.

“I’d like to meet with you in the morning, Mr. Rose.” I stride toward the building entrance, a knot tightening in my throat when I pass Veda and she peeks up at me from beneath her eyelashes. “
First
thing in the morning, please.”

I close the door before he can give me an answer—and there’s no need.

The only answer in my world is yes.

W
hen Mr. Rose—or,
Jack, rather, as I’ve discovered is his name in the employee database—walks into my office the following morning, he’s twice as suspicious as the prior evening. It’s there in the set of his jaw, the dilation of his pupils. He already hates me and that’s just as well, since it’ll save time. I can tell he’s trying to read me, to get some clue about why I’ve called the meeting, but he’ll get nothing. I’m expressionless as usual, although it took an extra hour of sweating on my rowing machine this morning to arrive at this level of calm.

I was shaken up last night. I’m still shaken up.

I want the girl
now
.
Need
to have her or this unsettled bullshit wrecking my stomach and mind will continue to get worse. All I can think about—yes, even while looking her father right in the eye—is the tight swell of her ass in my hands. The way she was so unimpressed with my arrogance, my company title. How she followed me and got upset on my behalf. Veda is out there somewhere right now and I require her
with me.
In fairness, she’s not just
somewhere
. She arrived safely at her all-girls school in Brooklyn Heights this morning, because it was reported to me in real time. Still, I’m not an acknowledged part of her life or her daily schedule yet, and that fact is unacceptable.

I stand up and shake Jack’s hand, both of us taking our seats once again. “Good morning, Mr. Rose.”

“Good morning,” he echoes, adjusting his collar and taking in the size of my office, the panoramic view of Lower Manhattan, the East River and beyond. “I bet you never get tired of looking at that.”

He’s wrong. I stopped appreciating it a long time ago. When I look out the window now, all I see is a means to an end. A place my father used to stand and look just as miserable, while dismantling companies and selling their parts to the highest bidder. No, the skyline holds no pleasure for me, but now…I’m wondering if Veda might enjoy it. How the gentle curves of her body would look outlined by the lights at night. “Mr. Rose, I’ve read through your last three employee evaluations.” I pick up the file of medium thickness and let it drop. “I’m of the opinion that you’re being underutilized.”

“Really.” He nods, his face a mask of caution, as if waiting for the other shoe to drop. We’re both impatient, but for entirely different reasons. He wants answers. I want his daughter. “I can’t pretend I didn’t already feel that way, but I’m curious, Mr. Beckett, why the company CEO is looking through the file of someone he probably shouldn’t even be aware exists.”

After reviewing his records, I expected Jack to be a shrewd man. Especially after the way he reacted to seeing me on the roof last night with Veda. So I’m not going to play games and do us both a disservice. “I think we both know why I’ve taken an interest in you.”

His throat works with a slow swallow. “Yes. We do.” He swipes a hand down his face, but not before I see a flash of anger in his eyes. Anger that—surprisingly—doesn’t come across in his tone. “Mr. Beckett. My daughter, Veda…she fascinates people. Men. Always has. It’s a problem I’ve had a hard time dealing with since her mother died.”

If I’m not careful, the sudden bouts of jealousy are going to give me a stroke. I don’t want to hear about other people looking or thinking about Veda. End of story. “I’m very sorry about your wife.” I hold his attention a moment and realize, for once, I’m not faking my sincerity, although, my sympathy is more for Veda than anyone else. I know what it’s like to lose a mother. Even though mine is still alive, she forgot my name a long time ago. A small mercy, considering her son turned out to be more ruthless in the boardroom than her estranged husband, and that coldness always drove her away.

Despite my empathy for Jack and Veda’s loss, however, I only operate one way and it’s a far cry from nice. Especially this time, when I’m going out of my mind for the feel of Veda again. Already, the life she infused me with is dimming and I need her to replenish me.

“Your wife was sick for quite a while,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “I’m sure that was difficult.”

Jack inclines his head. “It was.”

The weight in those two words is something I recognize, even if I don’t comprehend the pain behind them. I only understand that Veda lies on the other side of this meeting and I would bulldoze half of Manhattan to reach her. She’s worth any cost. Even playing the villain to the grief-stricken man across from me. A task, I realize with some surprise, I don’t relish. But the irresistible reward of Veda propels me forward. “And while the company’s employee health plan is one of the best, it still didn’t cover all the medical bills. Your debt is…severe.”

He doesn’t look up from his hands, now folded on his lap. To get this information, I had to invade his privacy, but that fact seems like a foregone conclusion to Jack. “That problem I mentioned earlier about people becoming overly interested in Veda…I’ve had no choice but to send her to an all-girls private school. And the dance classes.” His shoulders lift and fall. “I should have made changes a long time ago, but I’ve been holding out, thinking I’d move into a management position.”