The Cornerstone (38 page)

God, I wanted to spend the weekend worshipping her. Tell her
everything
. Find my balls and act like a fucking man.

Instead, I snatched the bottle from her hand and crossed the kitchen to where she kept the corkscrew and glasses.

“I’ll handle it. I’ll handle it. No—” She dropped her head back and groaned. “
No.
No, Patrick. I’ll deal with it, end of story. And if you don’t mind, I’m going to hang up now. My patience for your absurd quantity of assistants is exhausting, and if I have to listen to you complain about Roberta for another minute, I’ll find you and beat you with a brick.” She stabbed her phone’s screen repeatedly, and then tossed it to the countertop.

I set the glass beside her and grabbed the cheese tray from the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. There weren’t that many markets in Chestnut Hill, and according to Internet commenters, only one with a highly rated cheese department.

“The minions aren’t behaving?” I asked. I brought my hands to her shoulders, pressing my thumbs into the knotted muscles there. She leaned into my touch, sighing, and I dropped my lips to her neck. She released a slight purr, but before I could go any further, she shifted away.

“I have to go back to my office,” she said, raking her fingers through her hair.

Hands braced on her hips, hair disheveled, and lips twisted in frustration while she tapped her foot on the hardwood, and I’d never been so turned on. I couldn’t explain why I liked this girl fired up, but fuck, I did. I really did.

“And then I need to fire Patrick’s assistant if I don’t kill her first.”

Covering the pans and turning off the heat, I said, “I’ll come with you.”

“Will,” she sighed, swiping her hand across her forehead. “This isn’t a field trip. Just let me deal with this drama alone.”

“No,” I said. I tucked her laptop into her bag and swung it over my good shoulder.

She wrapped her scarf around her neck and reached for her coat. “Simple as that?
No
?”

“Yeah,” I said.

She wanted to argue with me, but crossed her arms over her chest, marched down the stairs to the curb, and walked toward the Derne Street office.

I followed her up and down several flights of stairs while she collected files, shuffled through a small desk outside a door emblazoned with Patrick’s name, and finally settled in a wingback chair in her office while she made a couple of phone calls. This was her kingdom, and right now, she didn’t look like a content queen.

She dropped her head to her hands after telling Roberta that she wouldn’t be required at Walsh Associates any further. She blew out a heavy breath and turned to her computer. “I just need to reset the garage and door codes, and then shut down her email—”

“You don’t have someone to do that for you? Where’s Patrick?” He was the only one I liked. He rarely came up in her rants, and he wasn’t sleeping with my sister. On that basis alone, he was tolerable. “Shouldn’t he be doing this?”

“No,” she said, her hands fisting on her desk. “At least, not right now. I handle this shit. That’s what I do, Will, I handle all the shit because I’m good at it. Patrick is busy doing his job, and this just needs to get done. I’m not calling any of my team in to handle anything when I’m right here.”

Shannon thought I wanted to change her, but that wasn’t accurate. Saving the world was her gig, and I wasn’t about to take that away from her. However, there was a difference between saving the world and cleaning out an assistant’s desk on a Friday night.

I knew her family was everything to her, and I knew she was convinced that tending to their every need was her only purpose in life, and that was where I couldn’t get on board.

While Shannon typed, I explored her office.

I was hungry for information about her, and since our conversations were only gradually moving out of superficial territory, I was forced to draw my intel from environment. I knew she had at least fifteen magazine subscriptions but didn’t seem to read any. I’d first encountered her sin drawer last summer, but I dedicated an afternoon last week to categorizing the firepower and style of her sex toys. She had seven different types of salt in her kitchen—Hawaiian sea, smoked sea, flaky Maldon, fleur de sel, kala namak, black truffle, and kosher—but neither cinnamon nor sugar. She didn’t like talking before dawn and changed out of her work clothes as soon as she got home. There were three different blow dryers and four different curling irons in her bathroom, and she kept a box of her mother’s journals in her closet. I wouldn’t have noticed the box if her pajamas weren’t piled around it.

The office was equally intriguing. I glanced at the glass wall separating her office from the bullpen. From her desk, she could see Tom’s alcove, the small room where her assorted assistants worked, Riley and Matt’s offices, and the stairs. Of course she’d want to preside over it all.

There were photos from the Boston Marathon finish line going back six years, always with her four brothers and Shannon in the middle. Little geodes dotted her bookshelf. I spotted the framed magazine spread hanging near her windows and laughed out loud. It was classic Shannon—perfect red hair, perfect purple dress, perfect girl-boss pose, and the perfect headline. “‘The Hand That Holds it Down’, huh? Who holds you down?”

“That’s pretty rapey, William. Thanks for that.” She continued banging away at her keyboard.

“Not rapey,” I said, frowning. Her body didn’t lie in the night, not when she was unconsciously arching into me and wrapping herself around me. She was strung tight, aching for release, and I wanted her to let me take care of her. “Not even close. But tell me this: how hard would you come for me if I fucked you up against that glass wall? If you had to let go of everything and give it all to me?”

She was tapping her foot again, the heel clacking hard against the wood floor. I could almost see the disdain rolling off her in waves. “Like, how is that an acceptable comment?”

I rounded the desk and leaned in, bracing my hands on either side of her, my short beard scruff rasping against her ear. “When I can see how much you want it.”

Her breath hitched and I knew—I fucking knew it—it was exactly what she needed.

“Finish what you’re doing and then I’m taking you home.” I didn’t need to say another word. I didn’t need to add that she’d be too busy surrendering to worry about anything else.

However, I couldn’t think about that until we were home. It wasn’t like I could stand beside her with my semi and expect anything more than an elbow to the nuts. She wasn’t leaving until she was finished, and it was up to me to reconcile that reality.

I parked myself in a pale purple velvet chair and snatched one of the regional magazines piled on the small conference table. The cover boasted an exclusive peek at one of Sam’s newest builds, and despite my biases about the man, I found it interesting.

“I need to leave a few things for Tom, and then we can go,” Shannon said.

I followed her out, waiting while she marked files with sticky notes and arranged them on his desk. Pointing to a framed photograph, I asked, “Is that Tom?”

Shannon glanced over then went back to her notes. “Yeah, that’s him at Machu Picchu. He likes going places to climb things.”

“He’s been with you a while, right?”

The air was crisp when we reached the ground floor, and wind whipped through the narrow street while Shannon set the alarm. “Six years,” she said.

“You don’t talk about him much.” She yawned, pulled her coat tight to her chest, and leaned into me when I draped my arm over her shoulder. It was late and she was tired, but all I could think about was her skin against mine. I’d settle for another celibate night if we could do it with fewer clothes.

That was a lie. There could be no celibacy with nakedness.

“It’s not easy straddling the line between friend and boss,” she said. “He’s like family—of course he is, he lived with me—but he’s also not, and that adds some layers. We had to suffer through some tense times before we found the right balance.”

“He lived with you?”

“Mmm.” She ducked deeper into her coat to avoid the wind. “His parents were terrible, hateful creatures. They sent him to all sorts of reeducation camps to pray the gay out of him. When that didn’t work, they shipped him off to a boarding school that was basically hard labor and solitary confinement.”

“That’s awful,” I said. It wasn’t lost on me that this was the exact fear Wes lived with. There wasn’t a labor camp in his future, but he was avoiding this reaction. And he wasn’t a kid on his way to homophobic bible study; he was a thirty-four year old Navy SEAL.

“Completely. He tried to fake straight, but they were convinced he—and I quote—had the devil in him. They kicked him out and said he wasn’t their son, and blah blah blah he lived with me for a bit.”

“‘Blah blah blah’?”

“I owed an assistant district attorney a favor, and one night she needed a public defender,” she said. “He’d been arrested for trespassing. He’d been sleeping in a garage. I got the case thrown out and his record scrubbed, and I took him home with me.”

In the elevator, I asked Shannon, “What else do you collect?”

“What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “You’ve got lost causes and dilapidated homes, broken souls, everything purple, and the geodes. And gourmet salt. Oh, and vibrators. And the bracelets! Those fucking annoying little bracelets.”

She tossed her hair over her shoulder as she marched toward her apartment. “Don’t be rude,” she said. “You’re one of my lost causes.”

I leaned against the wall while she unlocked the door, watching the way her fingers moved over the knob. She glanced back at me when she stepped inside, and it was possible she was speaking but the only thing I could hear was my pulse hammering in my veins.

She hung her coat in the closet and kicked her shoes to the corner while I secured the locks. I noticed every one of the quick glimpses she shot in my direction, and I followed her into the bedroom.

She wanted this. She needed this. She needed
me
.

Reaching out, I caught her around the waist and dragged her against my chest. “You’ve been thinking about it, haven’t you?” I asked. My fingers moved over her shoulder and down her chest, loosening her buttons until the shirt hung open. “About me taking you.”

“Your ego continues to get in the way of rational thought, William.”

She was working hard to keep her voice steady, but much like I could feel her body humming under my touch, she couldn’t hide any of it from me. “Mmmm,” I sighed, pressing my face into her hair and pulling in a deep breath as I shucked her shirt. “You don’t need to worry about any more rational thoughts, peanut.”

The skirt’s zipper hissed as I drew it down, and when I released my hold on the fabric, Shannon was left in stockings and a bra. That bra was off and flying across the room before I formed a memory of the beige lace against her skin. My fingers dipped inside the stockings, pausing to press my fingertips into her hips for one sweet moment, and then I yanked them down to her ankles. “Kneel,” I said.

“Your playbook is exceptionally limited,” she said, crossing her arms under her breasts. “Kneeling or against the wall. It’s really time to diversify.”

My hands traveled up her torso, shifting her arms until she gripped either elbow behind her back. I cupped her breasts, groaning as my palms rubbed over her taut nipples. “You’re adorable with your tough girl act,” I said. My lips mapped her shoulders, neck, jaw, and it wasn’t enough. I wanted to consume her, own her until I erased every minute of distance between us. Until she knew she possessed me in every way possible.

I walked Shannon toward the bed and pressed the small of her back until she was bent over, face down on the duvet. I wove the discarded stockings around her arms and shoulders, crossing them between her breasts, and tied them with a square knot. “All good?”

She murmured into the duvet, “This is new.”

“You asked for diversification,” I said. Two quick spanks landed low on her ass, and I panted as her skin bloomed with a bright flush. I wanted a million things right now—everything, all of it, anything to satiate the raw desire inside me—but what I wanted most was to feel her against my tongue again. “Remember that bed in Taos? When I tied your hands to the headboard with my belt?”

I dropped to my knees, and kissed from the backs of her knees to her ass, biting and licking and stamping every inch of this woman on my soul. She was moaning and wiggling, and issued orders to stop dicking around and lick her pussy already, but I made her wait. She was mad as hell and swearing into the blanket, and when my tongue circled her clit, I nearly came in my jeans.

Her legs were shaking within minutes, and when my fingers slipped inside, her words melted into a choked cry. I felt the pulse of her orgasm against my lips and the shockwaves on my fingers. She dug her shoulders into the bed as I licked her through the spasms, and she begged me to
stop
, to
keep going
, to give her
more
and
harder
, and
there
and
no, no, no more
.

“How was that?” I asked. I stroked her thighs while her breathing slowed, kissing my favorite freckle patches and dropping soft spanks on her ass.

Shannon’s shoulders shook as she laughed. “Borderline hallucinogenic.”

“Wait, was that a compliment?” I yanked my shirt over my head and kicked off my jeans, almost tripping myself in the frantic blur of arousal. I pressed myself against her, sighing as her skin triggered a burst of heat and affection into my blood. It was like the thrill of jumping out of an aircraft and tumbling through the sky, but better.

“Such a whore for praise,” Shannon said. I spanked her backside a bit harder, and helped her shift to the center of the bed. Seeing her bound and kneeling…there weren’t words to describe the jolting rush of adoration I felt for this woman.

“You know it,” I said.

With Shannon’s back and bound arms against my chest, I teased myself against her clit. Her hips rolled, quickly finding a rhythm, and I was sliding into her, a little farther with each pass. “Want you,” she gasped.