Dirty Secrets (4 page)

She responded by grazing her teeth lightly over the sensitive skin at his tip. He was glorious up close, and the way he shivered in her mouth made her own body respond with a surge of wet heat. “Like that?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

She took the tip of him again, suckling it with more force than she’d usually use, and he responded with quiet, thick sounds. “What if I tell you,” he murmured, stroking her hair, “That I didn’t bother with anyone else last night? That I went home after you left, and I woke up twice in the night, too hard to sleep, and I imagined fucking you all over again?”

CHAPTER

She slipped her hand into his briefs and stroked his balls lightly with her finger tips, moaning softly at the image of him in the middle of the night, taking himself in hand and stroking his shaft, feeling the velvet over granite texture of his rigid cock. His sac was tight and hard against his body, and Zoey took a quick moment to be impressed that he was this aroused this quickly. “Do you want to?” she asked, giving him what she hoped was an alluring glance between nips and licks at his dick.

His response was to shove things out of the way on his desk, tugging her to her feet. Her skirt was too tight to shimmy up her thighs without splitting a seam. She reached back and unzipped the fabric, letting it tumble to the floor. After the scraps of lace she’d worn last night, her cotton bikini panties felt like granny pants, but it didn’t seem to bother him as he tugged them out of the way. He pressed her back against the edge of the desk, and she scooted up so that she was sitting, and she could wrap her legs around his hips. He reached past her into the top drawer of his desk and grabbed a condom out of a plain box. She gave him an arched eyebrow.

“Do this often?” She asked, her tone wry.

His eyes were still and serious. “No,” he said. “It’s always been a particular fantasy of mine, but—no.”

For a moment, she thought the mood would shatter around them like so much glass, but he grinned at her then, and leaned forward to capture her mouth in a kiss.

The intensity of it shocked her. She’d had her share of kisses, and then some, over the years, but there was a quiet attention in the way Alex’s mouth played over hers. He was artful, intense, but that wasn’t it. Or at least, that wasn’t all of it. He was paying attention to her, responding to her every sigh and shift. The attention was as sexy as the kiss itself. She wrapped her arms around her neck and just dropped into the kiss, forgetting that she was naked, forgetting that he was sheathing himself, forgetting the delightful press of his tip against her cunt as he teased her clit with his thumb. As he pressed forward, with that same delicious slowness, his tongue danced along her lower lip, inviting her to open to him. She did, with mouth and body, wrapping herself around him as thoroughly as he could.

“Oh, Zoey,” he whispered, when he was buried deeply inside of her. And then he started to move.

It was nothing like the slow fucking of last night. He slammed into her from the start, as fast as he could go without hurting her. She clung to him, her mouth buried in his neck to hide her cries of pleasure and delight. His hands wrapped around her waist, tilting her ass to an angle that pleased him, throbbing into her with abandon.

“Sorry,” he whispered, his voice shakier than it had been last night. “Won’t last. I can—for you—after—”

“Just fuck me,” she said, and she bit his neck, just above the collar of his shirt. It wasn’t hard enough to leave a bruise, but he shuddered against her, his ass clenching as he froze, deep inside, pulsing softly. He was silent as he came, his breath panting, his thrusts locked into the deepest parts of her, barely more than thin, slow pulses. His forehead rested on her shoulder for a long moment, and she stroked her fingers down his shoulders, his neck, running them through his close cropped hair. Every few breaths, he’d turn his face to the side and press a light kiss against her neck; every single time, her pulse jumped.

Zoey’s mind was in over drive. What in the world was she doing? Alex Blankenship was a charmer, everyone agreed about that, but he wasn’t the sort of guy who settled down, any more than his father had been. He made her every nerve ending stand up and salute, but what was she going to get from this long term, other than a broken heart? Because she could easily fall for a guy who promised to take care of her after he came, and who gave her delicate little kisses on the pulse of her throat. Meanwhile, she was just another conquest for him. The only reason she saw him again today was because of the interview. Otherwise, he would have just been a happy memory. It would be smart to remember that.

So when he pulled back from her, rolling the condom off and tossing it into the trash, she slipped off the desk and retrieved her panties and skirt. He had tucked himself away and was zipping up his pants, and glanced at her, his hands going still. “I—thought—”

And then Zoey saw the moment where he collected himself and nodded quietly at her. “Of course. I’m sorry. The interview. You came for an interview.”

He was an entirely different person when he was being the CEO. It was shocking to see. She didn’t know many people in their age group who could have managed the transition with that much ease. “It’s not you,” she lied through her teeth, because she needed to say something. “You’ve just been very clear. You do casual. You do poly. That’s awesome. I can manage casual when I don’t know someone, but I—I don’t think casual would last right now, for me, and you don’t do not casual.”

“Ah,” he said. He sat down on the desk, where he’d been just a few moments before. Zoey zipped up her skirt and fished her tablet out of her bag. She tried to the heat out of her cheeks—it was bad enough that she was still flushed from the unresolved arousal—but that was a battle she hadn’t won any time she could remember. “And who is it who says I don’t do casual.”

“You said, last night.” She cleared her throat, trying to push the snippy tone away. It wouldn’t help her get the interview, and that was what she needed to focus on. The interview, and her career, not the way she could still taste him, salty and strong, on the back of her tongue. “I was sorry to hear about the loss of your father,” she said, slipping into her reporter tone without another word.

He crossed his arms and nodded briefly. “Yes, his loss is a great one to my family, to AEGIS, and to the business community at large.”

“Do you think that his loss will change the direction of AEGIS?”

“It’s hard to say at this juncture,” he said. God, he sounded like he was reading from a press release. She was fucking this up so badly. “Whenever any company loses its CEO, the entire company needs to reevaluate its direction as part of the process of moving forward. At this time, however, AEGIS has no plans to change the cornerstones of its business practices.”

“Do you miss him?” It wasn’t one of the questions she’d planned on asking, and the words just slipped out. It was her fault that the CEO was standing in front of her, instead of the kind, sweet lover that she’d met before, and she wanted him back.

“He was my father,” Alex said, his eyes narrowing.

“Yes, but—”

“He was mine,” he said again, emphasizing the last word. His mouth worked as if there was something else he wanted to say, but whatever it was, he held it back.

Zoey pressed forward with the question she’d put together after reading everything she could find online and in print, the question that, as far as she could tell, no one had ever asked point blank. “There’s been some discussion about the wording of the will, and the fact that it merely specifies the children of Philip Blankenship, instead of specifically naming you and your sister. Do you believe that there are other children of Philip Blankenship who may have a claim on your family fortune?”

Alex’s skin was too dark for the heat of his anger to show in his cheeks, but his eyes made up for it by snapping like they’d been connected to a live wire. A muscle in his jaw twitched twice. She wished she could take the question back, and she wished she could launch herself at him, tell him that she’d been wrong, she was soaking wet and her clit was still twitching with electric need, and wouldn’t he please take that ache away for her.

“We’re done here,” he said.

“One final question, Mr. Blankenship?”

“I’d like you to leave.”

“Anyone special in your life right now?”

The anger in his eyes sparked and died, and the misery that was left behind killed her sick joy at twisting the knife. Alex’s eyes fixed on her as she leaned down for her bag, dropped her tablet in, and then turned to go.

CHAPTER

Zoey kicked herself all the way back to her studio. She
’d never behaved that unprofessionally in her life, never. Blowing the man, fucking him on his desk, then turning away, and letting the lust get to her brain and alienate a source. Seriously? It was the kind of trick that one of the girls she’d gone to high school would have pulled to “punish” some guy for not behaving in the way she thought was best. The look on Alex’s face as she’d pulled up her skirt was awful. The anger in his eyes after she’d been so rude about his father left her feeling ashamed.

It wasn’t just that he was a source. That was bad enough, but he’d genuinely left her feeling cared about. Noticed. And that was more than she felt, most nights in her crappy little apartment.

She’d grown up in Ladel, just outside of Covington. Everyone there mostly considered themselves part of Covington, unless someone from Covington implied such a thing, in which case, they were absolutely part of Ladel. Or if someone pronounced the town name as LAY-dle, like the kitchen spoon. You knew to say LAH-del, or you would be mocked forever. The house she’d grown up in had been perfectly nice. New, a bedroom each for herself and her sister, an office for her mother, a kitchen big enough for Daddy to cook when he got excited about some new recipe. But compared to the older homes, with their wrap around porches and their sprawling gardens, or the plantation house that marked where Ladel ended and Covington began? Nothing to talk about.

Mama had always been pleased with what they had, and Daddy kept his envy subtle. It was only when something around the house broke that it came up. Toys that couldn’t be replaced right away, if at all. The stress when the house needed a new roof, and she took peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school for a month. But even then, she’d been very well aware that she was better off than plenty of kids in the county. She wasn’t what the wealthier girls called trash. Sometimes that meant that she was hated by kids on both ends of the spectrum, but more often than not, it meant that she could be invisible, blending in as much as possible and just trying not to make too many waves. Of course, that talent had faded with time.

She changed out of her ridiculous outfit, put her jeans and T-shirt back on, and after a minute, pulled up Helen’s contact information on her phone. Helen answered on the first ring.

“Tell me everything,” Helen said, before Zoey even got a chance to say hello.

“Everything about how I just blew the one chance I had at making my career something other than a lifetime of regurgitating trending news?”

“Well fuck,” Helen said, “Give me a second.”

There was quiet for a moment while Helen wrapped up something, and then she came back on the line. Zoey had collapsed into a corner of the couch, pulling a pillow into her lap and squeezing it tightly.

“I was talking about last night,” Helen said, “but you sound like you’ve got something else on your mind.”

“It’s all a big clusterfuck, sha,” Zoey said, not even caring about her accent. “The guy last night—he was amazing, it was everything I wanted, and he seemed to enjoy himself too, but then this morning.”

“Did you stay there all night? Or go home with him?”

“Neither. I came back to my place. But I got a call from Devin this morning, and he had scheduled an interview with Alexander Blankenship.”

“Wait, from AEGIS.”

“Yes.”

Zoey couldn’t bring herself to say the words. Helen was quick on the update, though, and it only took a moment.

“Holy fuck, Zoey, it wasn’t—”

“It was.”

Helen let out a bit of rhyming slang that Zoey didn’t catch. “How did you handle it?”

“I blew it. I utterly blew it. I—things got out of hand, and then I started talking about his father, and it all went to hell.”

Helen was quiet for a bit, and Zoey waited. Helen had about five years on her, and she’d spent all of them in publishing. She was one of the lead editors for a major national website, and she knew her stuff. “Love, I’m not trying to minimize how wretched that must have been, walking in and seeing him, but for that rag of yours, I’m sorry, but you can make up the quote and no one will care. Am I right?”

“Yeah,” Zoey said. “About the gossip piece for the
Voice
, yes. But there’s something else going on at AEGIS. And I can’t write about it, because of last night. I have no credibility at all.”

“What do you think is going on?”

Zoey laid out what she’d seen conducting the background research for the interview with Alex. Stocks being bought and sold in weird patterns by companies that seemed to only exist on paper. Oddness about the company products, specifically in the weapons division. Production numbers that didn’t seem to match sales. And the strange wording that some people, privy to the information, had reported about Philip Blankenship’s will.

Helen listened to all of it, and Zoey could hear the moment when her friend’s brain crossed over from “listen to friend’s frustrations” to “listen to a writer pitch.” The quality of her
really
and her
shut up
changed. When Zoey had spun herself out, Helen was quiet again, for several minutes. Zoey could hear the clacking of a keyboard, and assumed Helen was checking out a few of the facts Zoey had mentioned on her own.

“I want you to write this, Zoey,” Helen said.

“But—”

“No. It was just the one time, and Marie will ban anyone who ever breathes a word of it. I’ve got a guy on staff here who has connections within some of AEGIS’ competition. If you’re willing to work with him, give him a co-author, I think we can protect you and get the piece written.”

Zoey took a long look around the shitty studio, with its cracked walls, the perpetually leaking faucet, and the windows that didn’t close properly, letting in frigid gusts in winter, and rivers of rain in summer. A serious byline on an investigative piece, sold to Helen Maxwell, or through her contacts—that would be a coup. It wouldn’t give her a step up, not right away, but it would open doors. It would put her name in the minds of editors for something more than the train perv. A co-author byline was still a byline. “Okay,” she said. “That sounds—okay.”

Helen saw through her hesitation. “You were thinking of seeing him again.”

“This morning, yeah, but I blew any chance I had of anything else.”

“What if you hadn’t blown it?”

Zoey sighed, and the exhalation said everything she needed to say.

Helen tut-tutted. “Zoey, love, you’ve heard of NRE, yeah?”

She rolled her eyes, even though her friend couldn’t see her. “I don’t live under a rock. But there’s no relationship here, so no new relationship energy present.”

“Sure, love, whatever you want to tell yourself. Just call me before you start in on the second tub of ice cream.” Zoey blew a raspberry into the phone, and Helen cackled. “Get started on that article, and I’ll hook things up with my guy here.”

When they’d hung up, Zoey pulled out her laptop. This was the good part of working from home, after all. Banging out an article on the couch in her jeans. When the words were hard to come by, she’d been known to reach for her fleecy pajama pants with the little foxes on them, but their magic was precious, and she was careful not to over use them. She twisted her hair up and out of her way, and go to work. It would take about half an hour to get the piece written and sent to the
Voice
, and then she could start outlining the longer piece.

Her belly fluttered just thinking that this might provide her with another excuse to see Alex. Maybe, this time, she could avoid screwing everything up.