Wet Ride (Toys-4-Us) (6 page)

“Mornin’,” he drawled and filled his own mug.

“Good morning. I’m afraid it’s cereal today. I have an early morning meeting I have to run to.” She hated leaving and hated not having a nicer breakfast ready for him. Jesus, one weekend as a submissive and she’d turned into June Cleaver!

“Cereal is fine by me.” Leaning against the counter, he gave her a smoldering look over the rim of his coffee. “You fed me in the best possible way already.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “You’re easy to please.” She tried to turn away and ended up slammed against his body. God, the man moved fast.

“No, ma’am, I’m pretty picky. You don’t appreciate yourself enough. I should punish you for that.”

Her clit thrummed at the notion. She melted into his embrace. Thoughts of calling in sick entered her mind. “How would you do it?” she asked in a breathless voice.

Before Kevin could answer, the doorbell rang. With a frown, she pulled away from the heated embrace and went to answer it. Who would call at such an hour? Sue, maybe, to see how the work was going. She opened the door and her breath caught in her throat at seeing who was there. “Vaughn!”

“Surprise!” Grinning broadly, her ex-boyfriend swept her up into a hug.

Stunned, Emily allowed her unexpected guest to hold her in a tight squeeze. This male body was well known to her, although she hadn’t expected to feel it wrapped around her again. Vaughn had made it clear he wasn’t going to follow her to Texas or anywhere. He considered his career more important than hers. Even though he could have asked to be transferred to his firm’s Houston office so they could stay close, he had elected not to. What the hell was he doing in San Antonio, holding her as if she were the lost treasure of the Sierra Madre?

She took a deep breath to say – something and was immediately enveloped in the familiar smell of his aftershave. For a second she was transported back to her old life in Boston and the easy comfort that had been her romance with Vaughan. It took some effort to gently push him back. “What are you doing here?” she asked. She wasn’t as composed as she would have liked. It had taken effort to close this door on her life and now it had popped open again.

Vaughan still smiled at her, his pretty face full of delight. As always, he was perfectly groomed in a sharp suit and natty tie. If he had been up all night on a plane, it didn’t show. “It was an impulse,” he admitted and shook his head. “I missed you so much and suddenly I realized I had to see you.” His gaze shifted past her and his grin faded. “I’m sorry, you have company.”

“Oh.” Emily’s stomach did a flip flop as she remembered that Kevin was still there. Turning to look over her shoulder, she saw he’d come out of the kitchen and was standing near the hallway entrance with his mug of coffee in his hand. He eyed Vaughan with a wary and knowing look. As the seconds ticked by, she knew she had to say something.

“Um, this is Kevin Brandt, my, ah, contractor.” She winced inwardly at her choice of words. What could she say really, my master? Even as she made the introductions, she understood she was making a decision to hide what she had done all weekend and with whom. She could see in his eyes that Kevin realized her decision, too.

He looked at her for a beat or two, before raising his mug. “Thanks for the coffee, Ms. Driscoll. I’ll get to work now. I’ll be finished by the end of the week.”

“Thank you,” she replied in a small voice. What a coward she was being. When Kevin said he’d be finished, he meant they were finished as well. “I appreciate all your hard work.” God, it had to be the most pathetic double entendre in the history of the world.

“My pleasure, ma’am.” He shot her one last smoldering look before disappearing down the hall.

Emily and Vaughan watched his retreating back before turning to each other. “I don’t understand, Vaughan. I thought we’d agreed to make a clean break.”

He sighed heavily before stepping up and taking both her hands in his. “I know and that was my fault. I was an idiot, Emily. I regret the decision I made about all of this. I miss you terribly.”

Emily’s heart did a slow roll in her chest, but she wasn’t sure if it did it out of happiness or apprehension. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I’m saying I want you back.”

Emily watched as Horstmann and Travis entered the elevator. The lawyer gave his client a quick pat on the shoulder in a silent gesture of sympathy. Most people in Horstmann’s position would be happy to have so many millions in the bank now that the sale of his business was over and done with. She knew otherwise. For the sake of her company, she had driven a hard and heartless bargain. A centuries old family business was one no more. Within weeks, she would strip out the good parts and jettison the bad. Her company would make a fortune; it always did, and she would receive a fat bonus come December as her reward. She was tired and felt a little sad over what she had done. It was all legal and even moral given that Horstmann would have filed for bankruptcy within a year but for the sale. Still, it left a bad taste in her mouth.

About the only good thing about her long days and nights working to close the deal with lightening speed was that she had had little time for socializing. She had even managed to leave early enough each morning to miss him, although she suspected he made a point of avoiding her. And why not? She had treated him horribly, hiding him under the rug as if he were a dirty secret. It was cowardly of her and plain stupid. One weekend of surrender to his masterful hands had outshined every other sexual experience she had ever had. Her body dined on the memory every night as she lay restless in bed.

Vaughn, on the other hand, had left her bored and completely uninterested. She had squeezed in one dinner, and it was all it had taken to convince her not to take him back. She had sat across from him, eating a gourmet meal and sipping fine wine, and felt nothing. No way could she go back to the insipid sex and the constant undercurrent of one-ups-man-ship that had been the core of their relationship. She hadn’t even realized it until she had found herself relating her accomplishments since their split in the face of his not so subtle bragging. The whole experience had left her even more tired and uptight. She missed Kevin. She missed the physical and mental peace she had found with him.

The question was could she make things right with him? Would he forgive her snotty treatment of him on Monday?

Her heart lurched at another thought. Would he even be at her house still? The bathroom was almost finished. He could be gone already. She turned to Bobby who was waiting for the next elevator and stuck out her hand.

“Good work. I’ll call you next week to discuss the corporate clean-up but I have to go now. I have a hot date.” If there was a God.

Grinning, her lawyer took her hand and pumped it hard. “Don’t keep the lucky fella waiting.”

Emily raced to her office to grab her purse and prayed it wasn’t too late.

* * * * *

Kevin stood in the doorway to the bathroom and took one last look around. It was damn fine, one of the best jobs he had ever done. All of his projects were important to him. He always did quality work, but this job had become special to him. He wanted Emily to love her new bathroom and enjoy it. He couldn’t keep the scowl off his face as he pictured the guy she’d be enjoying it with. Pasty-faced Northerner! She deserved better; she deserved him. He shook his head and turned to leave.
“Stop torturing yourself, old son.”

He knew she deserved better. If not him, than another Dom, only one a little more polished. He didn’t fit in her world and figured she might not fit in his, although it was an unfair assessment given that they had shared just the one weekend. They had spent two and half glorious days and nights of sexy fun, the world blocked from sight. God, it had been fantastic. His cock hadn’t stopped being hard all week. He hadn’t trusted himself to see her, either, coming in late and leaving early to avoid her. He had been afraid that if he had seen her, looked into her beautiful eyes, the force of the attraction would have sent him to his knees.

And that was not the place for a Dom.

Ah, fuck it, who was he fooling? For Emily he would damn well beg and plead if it meant getting her, having her again at his mercy. He knew, though, she didn’t want that. She wanted Vaughn, the smarmy prick. He had assessed the ex-boyfriend in a millisecond, and knew the guy didn’t have what it took to keep a woman like Emily happy. Oh, well. Not his problem.

The sound of the front door opening stopped him in his tracks. He stood rooted to the spot, head cocked to one side, listening to the soft footfalls of the lady of the house coming in. His eyes closed as he pictured her dropping her briefcase on the floor and walking down the hall. His heart pounded with anticipation while blood surged into his cock.
“Run,”
a voice inside his head warned.
“Stay and fight for the woman you want,”
ordered the louder, more dominate voice. Opening his eyes, he saw Emily standing in the doorway to the bathroom.

Her lips curved into a seductive smile. “You’re still here, thank God,” she said softly.

He started to speak, his voice caught, and he had to clear his throat to continue. “I intended to be gone before you got home.”

Her smile dimmed and her gaze dropped. “I suspected as much so I hurried as soon as my deal closed.” Her eyes lifted to look at him. “I wanted a chance to speak with you, tell you how sorry I am that I treated you like the hired help Monday morning.”

Kevin jammed his hands in his front pockets, suddenly not sure of what to say. He had a hard time holding her gaze. He felt awkward and that was a new experience for him as an adult. He was usually self-assured but with Emily the stakes were fast becoming too high to screw things up with the wrong word. “Yeah, well, I understand. Jumping into bed with your contractor and spending a wild weekend with him is probably not your usual M.O.” He paused and chose his next sentence carefully. “It was obvious that guy means a lot to you and you didn’t want to scare him away.”

“Meant,” she corrected. Their eyes locked. “He meant something to me.” She shrugged. “At least I thought he did, once. I found out pretty quickly this week that he doesn’t mean anything to me anymore.” Her lips quirked into a smile. “The revelation may have had something to do with finding out how awesome sex can really be with the right guy doing the right things.”

Stepping into the bathroom, she closed the gap between them. She raised a hand tentatively and placed it flat on his chest. The simple touch was electrifying. “I’m sorry, please forgive me.”

With his heart beating wildly, he strained for calm, to resist the urge to grab her, kiss her, ravish her right there on the bathroom floor. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he answered in a gruff voice.

Her fingers curled against his chest and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “I’ve been a bad girl, Master. I need to be punished.” There was a wicked glint in her eyes. She held his gaze for a few seconds more before dropping to her knees.

Emily’s hands trembled, with nerves or need or both, as she worked Kevin’s fly open. No, if they were going to play, she needed to think of him as her master. If she was serious about being a submissive, she had to do it right. She prayed he wouldn’t stop her and stomp out of her house in disgust and anger. He was entitled to do just that after the way she had treated him, but he didn’t seem to mind her change of heart. In fact his erection was making her task all the harder. Tugging gently on his jeans and shorts, she liberated the gorgeous, hard flesh she was intent on having.

His cock sprang free, and she wasted no time pulling it down so that she could slip her lips over the flared head. Her eyes closed as she welcomed as much of the hot rod into her mouth as she could. She reached up to cup his tightened balls with the palm of her other hand. Her head and hand began the familiar rhythm of sucking and tugging the cock while her second hand gently massaged the sack. She groaned with delight. Such a simple act, and so much fun. With her tongue, she laved the sensitive underside of the taut skin below the head. A lower, more masculine groan sounded above and made her smile. She wasn’t the only one enjoying themselves.

A gentle hand on her head held her still. “Stop!”

Breathless as it was, the command was clear, so she did what she had done the previous weekend, she obeyed. The cock plopped out of her mouth as she pulled back and she looked up at her master with a sad frown. “You don’t want me to do this?”

He looked down at her and chuckled. “Seriously? Sweetheart, having a beautiful woman on her knees and sucking me off is just this side of heaven. But,” he added hauling her up by her shoulders. “I have a better idea right now.” He turned them both around so that they were standing side-by-side and facing her grotto. “Take a good look.”