“Most men don’t order for their dates these days,” she murmured, taking off the shrimp and setting it aside without comment. “It’s considered a little overbearing.”
“You’re not allergic,” he said with a glance at the cast-off shellfish.
“No,” she said, and offered him no more explanation than that, because she didn’t owe him a damned thing, especially not about the changes she’d made to her life as part of her now-defunct marriage.
Reese stroked a thumb along the sweating edge of his water glass, drawing her attention to his hands. God, how she’d always loved his hands. Strong enough to break her, although he never had…at least never physically.
“Anyway,” he said, “this isn’t a date.”
Corinne arched an eyebrow. “Of course it’s not. I was joking.”
“I guess my sense of humor’s changed since the last time we saw each other,” Reese replied.
At least he was acknowledging there’d been a last time. He’d greeted her the way a stranger would and had seemed surprised when she hugged him. Corinne sipped her wine, relishing the earthy flavor.
“I never thought I’d see you here. I knew the offer was coming from Ebersole Enterprises,” she said after a moment. “I did have a minute where I thought… But then, no. How could it be? What kind of coincidence would that have been?”
He sat back in his chair. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Hard to believe what?” She studied him. “In coincidence?”
“That you’d have even for a second imagined it might have been me.”
The tone of his voice was hard to read. Corinne paused before answering, then said carefully, “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I find it hard to believe you’ve spared a passing thought for me in the past fifteen years, that’s all.” He shrugged and gestured to the passing waitress, who turned at once, all big eyes and bouncy, swinging hair. “Another glass of Cabernet for Mrs. Levy.”
Corinne shook her head. “Actually, no, I’ll take an iced coffee, please. Cream and sugar.”
She waited until the girl had left before she added crisply, “One glass is enough. I have to drive, not to mention I have to head back to the office after this.”
Reese said nothing.
“And it’s Ms. Barton. Not Mrs. Levy. I never took my husband’s name.” She paused again, watching him. When they’d been together, she’d prided herself on being able to know his emotions just by looking at his face. Now she had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. “Should I ask how you even know that?”
“I saw it in the paper when you got married.”
It wasn’t an implausible explanation, but something in the way he cut his gaze from hers told her it wasn’t quite the truth. Corinne frowned, not at his words but at the way her stupid heart had lifted at this casual admission that he’d somehow paid attention to her life. “Anyway, we’re divorced.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded vindicated. Corinne felt her frown threatening to become a scowl, and she deliberately smoothed her features.
“Don’t be sorry. It’s for the best. He’s very happy with his new wife and I—”
“And you’re very happy with your career, I’m sure,” Reese said in a low, angry voice.
It was her turn to sit back and look him over. “Yes. I am, as a matter of fact. Why do you make that sound like some kind of sin?”
Interrupted by the arrival of the waitress with the appetizer of Thai sweet chili spring rolls and Corinne’s iced coffee, they were quiet until the girl left. Then Reese leaned forward to speak across the table.
“You told me once you didn’t believe in the idea of sin.”
“It’s a turn of phrase,” Corinne told him. “And by the looks of things, you’re not exactly an unsuccessful slug yourself, so why are you being so judgmental about my career? Or about anything in my life, for that matter?”
His mouth thinned. “Right. Of course, what you do isn’t any of my business.”
Something occurred to her. She narrowed her eyes. “You knew. Didn’t you? That I worked for Stein and Sons. You knew I’m the CFO, and that you’d be meeting with me.”
“I did,” he told her without so much as a blink or the faintest blush of shame.
A vivid memory of the red imprint of her hand on his cheek reared up inside her head, so fierce and gut-punching that she recoiled. He noticed too. She knew he did. Again, she wanted to slap him, right there across the table in front of everyone, for that single tilting quirk of a smug fucking grin.
Of course she didn’t slap him. Normal people didn’t go around slapping people in public. Or in private, she reminded herself, shoving away the memories again, harder this time. Put those motherfuckers in a box, she thought. And close that goddamned lid.
“This meeting is over.” Corinne stood and shouldered her bag. She tossed her napkin on the table. “Thanks for the wine. I trust you’ll take care of the check.”
Head high, back straight, she headed for the parking lot without looking from side to side. She couldn’t. If any tiny thing distracted her, she was going to burst into huge, ugly sobs.
This was not how she’d imagined seeing him again. In her dreams they ran into each other at a party, both of them dressed in their best. He was with another woman, she another man, but that didn’t matter. The second they caught eyes across the room, he’d move through the crowd toward her. He’d take her hand. Kiss the knuckles. Ask her to dance. He’d pull her close and whisper in her ear that he’d been a fool to ever leave her.
God, she was so stupid.
At her car, Corinne dug for her keys in her overstuffed purse, but they eluded her beneath the drifting tide of receipts and permission slips and used tissues with pieces of gum inside. It was a mom purse, like her shoes and her hair and her entire freaking life, and then shit, she was crying. Silent, painful sobs tore at her throat. She closed her eyes and gripped the roof of her car, hating how something so ridiculous and simple could make her so fucking sad.
He was surprised she’d ever spent a minute thinking about him in all these years? Of course he couldn’t know how sometimes all she felt like she did was pine away for the past, and her boy, and how it had felt to be young and kinky and in love.
Love.
She could admit it now, looking back, though for years after it ended she’d told herself it hadn’t been anything close to that. Corinne had learned the hard way that love could never be assumed or even really understood. You could say the words a million times without making them true; you could deny them for eternity and never make them false.
“Here.”
She looked up through the blur of her tears to see Reese. Corinne swiped at her eyes. He took her bag from her with a gentle tug. Dug through it. Pulled out her keys. He clicked the remote to open the driver’s door, then carefully snapped the carabiner around the strap of her purse exactly as it was meant to be done so that she wouldn’t lose her keys in the first place.
He handed her back her purse along with a paper sack emblazoned with the StockYard Inn logo. “I had them box up your salad. You should take it along.”
“I don’t want it.”
“You’ll be hungry later,” he said. “Then you’ll want it.”
Corinne dabbed at her eyes and gave him a long, hard stare. She did not take the bag from him. “The question is, Reese, what the hell do you want?”
“We have terms to discuss,” Reese told her. “A business meeting. Remember? This isn’t personal, it’s not about you and me.”
Corinne opened her car door and tossed her purse onto the passenger seat. She straightened to look him in the eye. “Oh, no?”
Reese shook his head.
“You’re a liar,” she told him. “And you’re not any better at it than you used to be.”
Then she got in her car and drove away.
Chapter Seven
Before
They a
re lying in her bed when Corinne says to him, “I could own you forever.”
He has already spent hours between her thighs, worshipping her with his tongue and fingers; she has so far denied him access to her pussy with his cock, and he’s throbbing. His balls are tight and hard and full, and a minute or so ago, Reese would’ve said that burying himself inside her heat was what he wanted more than anything else.
At her words, though, the spinning world seems to slow and stop.
“You want to…own me?” He pushes up on his hands to look at her. His mouth is full of her flavor, sweet and tangy. His cock, pressing the softness of the bed, twitches. He has to hold himself back from pumping his hips. It won’t take much to make him spill, and she hasn’t given him permission.
Corinne looks faintly surprised, as though she hadn’t been expecting him to question her. Or maybe it was her own admission that so shocked her, because now she sits up, withdrawing from him. She pulls her knees to her chest.
Reese sits up too, though he is on his knees with his heels pressing into his ass. His cock bobs, tapping his belly, and he watches her look at it. Her smile leaves him light-headed. He wants to take his hardness in his fist and stroke, stroke until he explodes, but that’s his weakness. He needs to be stronger for her. To prove himself. He crosses his hands at the wrists just behind his lower back.
A sigh shudders out of her when he does that. “Fuck, you are so beautiful.”
Her praise sends a rush of crackling, electric heat all through him. He can’t help letting his back arch a little. The motion thrusts his hips forward. It’s not enough to make him come, but it’s enough to tighten his balls and his asshole too.
Corinne reaches to swipe the string of precome off the head of his dick with one fingertip. Keeping eye contact with him, she tucks the finger in her mouth and sucks it clean with a soft moan. Reese’s entire body jerks at the sound. When she slides another finger into her mouth and sucks them both, he swears he can feel that sucking wetness on his cock, which is exactly what she obviously wants him to feel.
“So fucking beautiful.” Corinne trails a fingertip along the underside of his shaft, toying for a second in the small divot beneath his cockhead. “Such a pretty purpley red. Leaking. For me?”
“Yes,” Reese says. “All for you.”
She’s toyed with him plenty. Teasing. Edging him until he’s sure he won’t be able to hold out for one more second, only to ease off and leave his cock twitching with no release. He hates the denial, the persistent fullness in his balls. He hates his frenzy, how everything focuses on his cock, his balls, his ass, how his entire world shrinks until all he can think about is coming.
But he loves it too, because Reese loves her. The games they play turn him on more than anything ever has. More than that. They fulfill him. It’s like Corinne is the key that unlocks a door to rooms he didn’t know existed.
She grips his shaft with a fierceness that makes him gasp. She pulls him toward her, and Reese moves, eager to keep her grasp from hurting him. When she offers her mouth, he kisses her. She strokes him, balls to head. His cry is muffled inside her mouth. Her tongue swipes his. She takes his lower lip in her teeth and bites, not hard enough to draw blood, but still painful.
He’s so hard he’s sure he’s going to break.
“Do you know what it feels like, for me?” She licks the spot she bit and locks her gaze to his. Her stroking hand slows, fingers squeezing just behind the head.
He couldn’t come now if he tried, but Reese knows better than to even make the attempt. No matter how much he yearns to spatter her belly, no matter how much it hurts to hold off, it’s a point of pride. He’s given her the right to command his orgasm, and damn it, he’s going to do his best to please her.
“To look at you, that lovely erect cock so thick and hard and dripping for me. To know how much you want to come. But you won’t, will you? Until I say?” Her other hand cups his throbbing balls. Her thumb strokes the seam behind them.
At the press of her fingers on his asshole, Reese mutters a plea.
Corinne looks at him. There’s nothing teasing in her gaze now, only a fierce and focused intensity. Her grip on his cock loosens. She strokes. She presses her fingertip just inside the tight ring of muscle.
“This hungry little asshole,” she whispers. “Begging for me to fuck it.”
“Yes…” More words spill out of him, a few of them coherent but most an entreating mumble. And then, “Yes, please, Ma’am, please. Fuck me. Own me. I am yours.”
“You are mine.” Corinne yanks him forward again by his cock so she can get at his mouth.
Reese’s hands grip the headboard behind her. She nudges his thighs apart with hers. Her finger slides in deeper. Her other hand strokes, stopping short of palming his cockhead, and oh, thank God, because if she did that he wouldn’t be able to hold back…he can barely hold back now…the finger inside him curls a little, pressing that magic spot that keeps him begging.
“Please, Ma’am, I’m going to come, please…” He shakes, helplessly thrusting into her grip. Grinding onto her finger. “Please. More.”
Another finger pushes inside him. There’s no lube. The stretching hurts, but not enough to stop him from moaning. She’s being gentle enough not to cause any damage, but if anything, she’s holding back too much. He’s too far gone, needs more. All he can think about is the pressure in his balls. She makes circles on his prostate, pressing and releasing. Her stroking hand grips him behind the cockhead again, effectively blocking his orgasm one more time.
It doesn’t stop more precome from leaking out of his slit. Thicker now, turning white. “Oh God, Ma’am, please, please, let me taste you.”
“You’ve already made me come three times,” Corinne whispers against his mouth.
“I want to make you come again, I want to please you—”
She lets go of his cock and slaps his face. For an exhilarating, horrifying second, Reese is sure he’s going to fucking lose it, just jet all over her luscious tits and maybe even her face, oh, shit, oh, no… She slaps his face lightly again, then grips his jaw to bring his face to hers.
“It’s not about what you want to do to please me,” she says, “it’s about what I want you to do to please me. And what pleases me is when you obey.”
If ever Reese had not understood humility before, the fingers in his ass and the sting of her slap have certainly taught it to him now. If he moves, fucking onto her fingers, he’s going to come. If she touches his cock, he’s sure he’s going to come. And if she slaps him again, oh, fuck. If she slaps him, he might just fucking die.
Her next touch is a caress, soothing. Then she drags her palm over the wetness now steadily dripping from his cockhead. Lubed, her hand glides over his shaft. Up. Down.
Looking him in the eyes, Corinne starts up that steady, circular pressure on his prostate again. She strokes him faster. Stops. Then again, all the while slowly and firmly fucking his ass with her fingers.
“I’m going to come,” Reese manages to say, or at least almost say. Some of the words are garbled.
“Oh, yes, baby. Come for me.”
She’s no longer moving either of her hands. He’s taken over all the moving. Thrusting into her curled hand, rocking his hips to grind himself onto the fingers inside him.
His orgasm rushes like a freight train, battering him. He comes so hard that he sees stars. His grip on the headboard hurts his hands, a pain of which he’s aware but can’t be bothered to ease, not while every single nerve is firing with pleasure.
Thick white fluid spurts out of him, too many gushes to count, and even when he stops jetting, the pressure on his prostate sends a few more spasms surging through him. He wants to collapse, but even in the aftermath of that epic climax, Reese manages to keep himself upright. Still shuddering, he opens his eyes. He expects her to be smiling or maybe even laughing the way she sometimes does when she allows him to climax, though he likes to believe it’s with joy and not because sh
e’s mocking him.
Corinne is looking at him, but to his shock and concern, tears glitter in her blue eyes. As he watches, one single droplet escapes her lashes and glides over her cheek. It takes a bit of work to unkink his fingers from the headboard, and they’re stiff and sore when he does.
He takes her in his arms, turning them both so he can cradle her on his lap. They’re both sticky, and this position sends a reminding twinge in his ass, but he stretches out his legs and tucks her against him. Corinne presses her face to his chest.
“What’s wrong, baby?” Reese asks with a kiss to her hair.
“I meant what I said.”
Her voice is muffled against him, and he has to shift a little to get her to look at him so he can ask her to repeat herself.
“I meant what I said,” Corinne says again. “I could own you forever.”
Reese brushes his lips to hers, tasting salt. It kills him that anything could ever make her cry, especially something he’s done. “Don’t you know, Corinne? You already do.”
Chapter Eight
He shouldn’t have let her get to him, damn it.
“Anyway, that’s all there is to this stuff.” Tony closed his laptop lid and then the folder next to it. “You’re really going ahead with pursuing this? I thought you said their CFO walked out of the lunch without even talking about the terms.”
He’d let Tony believe Corinne’s sudden departure was because of the insulting offer, not Reese’s history with her. As far as Tony knew, there was no history with Corinne. “She did. But when you told me about the call from their president asking to reschedule for Monday, I figured they were still interested enough to make this happen.”
Tony shrugged. “Okay. Sure. I needed to get out of the city for a few nights anyway. Breathe the fresh country air. Mmm, smell that air.”
“Wow, nice sarcasm,” Reese told him.
“What can I say, it’s a gift.” Tony grinned, then looked at the desk between them. “So that’s all the paperwork, and I have my notary stuff with me, so if they do decide to sell, we’re all set.”