Executive Perks (22 page)

“As much as anywhere, I guess you’d say. This here is the Greater New York Home for Troubled Boys. It was my little vacation home after each time some foster parent kicked me out. Right back here.”

“I see. So you—you feel nostalgic or something?”

A snort accompanied her question. “Hardly. I hate the place. I’m going to tear it down. I’d do it with my own hands, brick by fucking brick, if I had the time.”

The vehemence surprised her. She—her family, anyway—had always supported a multitude of good causes, boys’ homes somewhere there among them, she knew. But that just meant giving money. Not time. Not attention. She realized she had no clue as to what it was really like to live in one of them, to need her or someone else’s money.

“So what brings the beautiful Miss Beckett down to my own personal memory lane? Not to mention such a shitty neighborhood at this time of night. You should start being more careful, princess.” He threw the ball into the bleachers where it landed with a thud, and faced her, hands on hips. “What do you want?”

The aggressive stance, the slight sneer, this was more like the Aaron Winston she’d first met a month or so ago. It should have relieved her to have him fit so nicely back into his pre-packaged conception of him.

It didn’t.

“Don’t kids still live here?” she asked.

“Not anymore. I bought the place and kicked them out.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said, realizing she didn’t.

“Why not? Because we’ve become so…
close
.” The sneer wasn’t even slight at this point. He said the word like it was an obscenity. “So now I’m Prince Charming? Wake up, princess. I just wanted to get in that hot wet pussy of yours. Now that I have, I can get back to business.”

“Where are the kids who lived in this place?” she persisted, surprised at how easily she could ignore his deliberate barb.

“How should I know? Back on the streets where they belong, probably. What do I care?”

“If I go back and ask Mrs. Fields, I bet she’ll tell me, won’t she?”

“Tell you what? Listen, babe, I wanted you, I fucked you—quite a few times actually—and got you out of my system. That’s it. That’s all there is.”

They were in the center of the court, and she moved toward him. He turned abruptly away, tossing over his shoulder, “I’m going to hit the showers.”

She caught his arm. “You built them a new home, didn’t you?” She was sure of it. With every fiber of her being, she was sure of it.

“Now why would I do that?”

Square in front of him now, she tugged on his loosened tie, as if to draw him to her, though he didn’t move a muscle. “Because you’re a nice guy.”

“Fuck you, princess,” he spat out, as if she’d just insulted him in the worst way. And maybe in his world, she had. “I’m not nice. I don’t follow rules. I’m not
good
, unless you’re talking about in bed. So don’t try to fit me into that squeaky-clean idyllic world of yours.”

She threw her arms around his neck. “Aaron,” she whispered as he stared down at her, eyes unreadable, but his posture rigid.

“What? Are you slumming again? Scared of something and want a really hot fuck to distract you?”

“I didn’t mean what I said back there.”

He unwrapped her arms. “Of course you did. I couldn’t give a shit anyway. As I said, I got you out of my system, so it worked out well all around. And though normally I’d be disposed to fucking you again, since you were a pretty good lay yourself, and what the hell, I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass this time. You come with a little too much baggage. I think if I stay away from you, the dead bodies and fires and things might slow down.”

“You’re determined to be a prick here, aren’t you?”

“I am a prick. Remember?”

With that and a smile, he sauntered away and disappeared into the locker room.

She flipped out her cell phone and dialed. The cool-voiced secretary didn’t sound surprised to hear from her, and Virginia wasn’t surprised she was still in the office. Or else she’d switched her phone to be forwarded to her home. Virginia asked the woman the question and heard the answer she already really knew. Not in the details of it, but she knew.

“Mr. Winston built an expanded facility in another location, out in the country actually in upstate New York. It has horses and swimming pools and, well, it’s quite an improvement over the previous facility. It can accommodate a lot more children as well, so the administrators can be choosier about what foster homes they place the children in eventually. It’s not some frantic revolving door.”

“I see. Thank you, Mrs. Fields. So that’s why Mr. Winston is tearing this place down? He’s moved the boys to the new facility?”

“Yes, quite a while ago, actually. And whatever made you think Mr. Winston was tearing the old place down? He’s kept it up, empty, for years. I don’t know that he’ll ever tear it down.”

Virginia thanked the woman again, not bothering to ask why she was being so forthcoming. Part of her knew that anyway too. Or at least she and Mrs. Fields knew it, even if Aaron didn’t.

When she entered the dim locker room, she could hear the shower running. If she hadn’t had it just confirmed that the place was empty, she might have not been so bold. Or maybe she would’ve. She hardly knew herself anymore.

She needed him, this man.

Her clothes came off, strewn on the simple wooden bench amid the sea of dented lockers, and she went, naked, toward the sound of the shower and the feel of the steam emitting from the blast. Aaron’s clothes were nowhere in evidence, but he was naked as well all right, eyes closed, head craned back, both hands against the tiled wall in the communal shower. His back was to her and the sound of her approach was masked by the throbbing jets of water.

His body was gorgeous, all hard muscle and slim hips and tight ass. She hadn’t really had the proper amount of time, not to mention light, to appreciate him in the funeral home, but he was there now in all his glory. She slipped her arms around his wet waist from behind.

And he jumped a mile. Jesus, he startled so badly she was afraid he would slip on the wet floor as he scrambled away from her touch.

“What the fuck!”

She laughed awkwardly at first, but the look of horror on his face shocked her. The feeling of what he might have been reliving, might have been afraid of for a second, sickened her. And she would not ask him about it either. He would tell her if he wanted to.

Some day.

“Aaron, it’s me.”

His face cleared and just as quickly his eyes took in her naked body. Now that he was facing her and he was back in the now, the present, his body, anyway, was happy to see her. One part of him certainly perked up to greet her.

His gruff words didn’t follow its lead, though. “What are you doing in here? I thought I told you to get lost.”

She weighed how to approach him. She’d never come on to a guy, not counting in the funeral home with him, and the limo too, she guessed. But she certainly would’ve never contemplated doing so to a guy who told her to get lost. Too
Fatal Attraction
-like, even if she thought the guy didn’t mean his brush off.

But now was different. Now she needed to get through to him, even if he was determined to use words to keep her away.

Enough words. She dropped to her knees in front of him, her hands sliding up his wet thighs and around to his tight ass.

Chapter Seven

When she opened her mouth to take him in, his hands fisted in her hair and he yanked her head back. “No thanks, Miss Beckett. You already proved you’re a star pupil. I don’t usually lose it like that. But go practice on somebody else. I don’t want another blow job from you.”

“You could have fooled me,” she said softly, eyeing his rampant hardness.

He pulled her up by her wet hair, grabbing her arm at the last minute. She barely noticed the sharp tug of pain, steadying herself by placing her palms on his wet, hard pecs. He glanced down at her body for a second, and then his sneer was back in place. “Wow, this is really a day for you to let loose, isn’t it, princess? First you fuck all your childhood trauma away and now this. One blowjob and suddenly you’re a sexpot. Stripping naked and sauntering in here—”

“Stop.” She put two fingers up to his mouth, pressing them against his lips, and he jerked his head away furiously.

“You stop,” he muttered, leaning toward her and then halting a fraction away from a kiss. “You feel so naughty, don’t you, sweetie? Sex in a shower.”

She took a deep breath of the steam wafting all around them.

“Did you read about something like this in Cosmo and now here you are, all brave, acting it out? What’s supposed to happen?” He jerked her hand down to his cock and wrapped it around him, greedily. “Am I supposed to kiss your tits lovingly and
caress
you between your legs? Come on, now that we’re not locked in together, can’t you think of something a little more interesting?”

He flipped her around, quickly, and she jutted her palms out to meet the tile wall as he crowded in on her, his front to her back. His cock was hard against her as he leaned his face to her shoulder and bit lightly. She moaned. His hands slid down around front to linger between her legs. “Pussy’s nice and slick already,” he observed. “Well, that’s nice.”

She widened her stance and tipped her hips back, inviting him in. But his hands slid back around to her butt, caressing for a second and then nudging her cheeks open, just the slightest bit, to wedge his cock against her.

She tensed, shocked, and his mouth moved to her ear. He bit her earlobe lightly and she arched as he whispered, “How about I give you a new lesson? Come on, you’re off the bunny hill, now. Let’s take a plunge. What do you say?” His hand went down and pulled one of her butt cheeks over to wedge more firmly up the crack. “Or does that scare you, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes?”

It did, actually. She had never done that and didn’t think she’d ever want to, especially not with that monster instrument of his.

“You don’t know half of what I could do with this delectable little body of yours, Miss Beckett. I’ve done things I bet you can’t even imagine.”

He was trying to scare her with words again. His body, for all his apparent menace, hadn’t gone any farther than the slight pressure between her cheeks, which felt oddly sensual, though she did not—repeat, did not—want to push that any further. He wouldn’t hurt her. She knew he wouldn’t.

“You can do anything you want with me, Aaron. I trust you.”

“Shut up,” he murmured. “I’m going to fuck you up this cute little ass.”

Well, now, that did give her pause.

“You ready?”

She didn’t answer.

“Or do you want to get the fuck out of here while you still can?”

“I trust you,” she said again.

He kicked her legs farther open and she arched her ass back into him. “Trust me? That’s your mistake then. You ever been fucked up the ass, princess? Silly me, of course you haven’t. Well, I’m afraid it hurts if you’re not prepared for it. If you don’t want it.”

She was very much afraid he wasn’t just talking about here and now. Her heart broke.

“We really should have some lube, but I don’t have any.”

He was still rock hard against her backside, as his hand slid down between her thighs and scooped up some of the moisture there, transferring it, before she knew what he was doing, to in between her cheeks. “This’ll just have to do.”

Unwittingly, she squealed and he laughed, rubbing against that oddly forbidden entrance with his fingertips, massaging her own juices into her. He pushed one finger a little of the way in and she tensed.

“Relax,” he demanded, his lips on her neck, his other hand traveling around to her front, skimming against her breasts, which felt heavy and distended, before moving around to her clit, pressing softly. “Let’s see if you can come with just one of my fingers in your asshole and another one on your clit and then we’ll move to something more challenging.”

For all she had spent practically the whole day in bed with a master—well, on the sofa with him, anyway—she wasn’t under any illusions as to her own sexual prowess. She was a neophyte. She knew, intellectually or from the rare occasions on which she had masturbated with written material to help her along, that there were all these facets to sexuality. Touches, body parts, hungers that could only be appeased with things she didn’t expect sounded that rational the morning after. But she’d never really experienced them until Aaron. Never before wanted to lose control, like she did with him.

She groaned and laid her head back against his shoulder, letting him work his dark magic, plumbing the depths of her. The finger behind her became more forceful, slipping in a little more, and she arched into it. “How sweet,” he whispered in her ear. “She likes it.”

He was moving the length of his cock against her bottom as he worked her and, not knowing what to do with her own hands, she tried to reach back for him, but the angle was too awkward. His fingers dipped into her vagina at that. “Let’s stick with you, Virginia. Don’t worry about me. I’ll get mine yet. I always do. For now, why don’t you use your hands to play with yourself?”

She swallowed hard and then laughed weakly. “I can do that on my own time.” His lips grazed her shoulder.

“I want to see you do it. Or have you never done that before either?”

The mocking way he said it—God, he was still angry with her. His hands busy and stirring her to wordlessness and he was still angry with her.