His for the Summer: 50 Loving States, Florida (16 page)

Donna had already gone home for the night, but Gus lingered at the office. To prepare some notes for next week’s inaugural staff meeting, he told Donna when she stuck her head into his office. But really because he didn’t want to go home.

To the apartment where she no longer lived. To the white bedroom with a closet filled with the clothes she’d left behind. To the thought that she was supposed to have been his for the summer, but they hadn’t even made it to August.

“Hey, bro, did you get the office furniture I sent you?”

Gus slid a disparaging look at the red wing couch and slick guest chairs Max had sent over. He’d say it totally wasn’t his style, but as Max had already pointed out, he didn’t have a style to speak of, so he just said, “Yeah, thanks, Max. So were you able to do what we talked about yesterday?”

“The electrician hasn’t coded the elevator yet, right? You can still just push the button to get up to the executive floor?”

“No, he’s not coming until tomorrow. All you have to do is push a button. Are you here?’

Gus looked out the window to the parking lot below, and sure enough, there was Max’s Jaguar rental. “Does this mean she took the offer?”

“No, she didn’t take the offer. I didn’t even make it, because the offer’s crazy.”

“Fuck, Max.” He gripped the phone, wanting to throw it. “I asked you to do one thing. ONE thing.”

“Yeah, and that one thing was cray-cray. So I sent Pru over to talk to her. They ended up having a long conversation about how crazy you are. And how trying to get her to take your guilt money by processing it through me only made you crazier. And how they’re both in agreement about this not being the way to get you back into her affections.”

Gus spit out a stream of curses before growling at Max, “It wasn’t supposed to be like that.
You
were supposed to give her the space as an apology from our corporation—not from me. Now she probably thinks I’m trying to buy her again.”

And that was the last thing he wanted. He’d been reliving their last conversation over and over, ever since she slammed out of his life four weeks ago. He’d been so desperate to deny everything she’d accused him of that night, but in the cold truth of day, he couldn’t help but see just how badly he’d wronged her. She was right. About all of it. And all he wanted to do now was make it up to her somehow, with absolutely no strings attached.

But thanks to Max’s interference, any hope of helping Cera make her dreams come true had disappeared.

“So no passcard needed. Good to hear,” his brother said.

“Max, do not come up here right now,” Gus snarled into the phone. “Mood I’m in, I will kick your ass as soon as you get off that elevator.”

Max snickered. “Doubt it, bro. Remember the last time we fought? After you tried to make moves on Pru?”

“Yeah, I do remember that,” Gus answered with a sneer. “You sucker punched me. And then Cole told me I’d lose my job if I gave you the beat down you deserved.”

“Oh, you’re going to regret saying that to me,” Max said, with a low laugh.

“Bring it,” Gus answered, welcoming the sound of an elevator dinging in the outer hallway.

The thought that he was being beyond irrational popped up in the back of his head as he threw the phone into his suit pocket and turned to meet the elevator with a balled fist. But he didn’t care. This had been his last chance to make things right with Cera, he thought, and Max had ruined it. And now he was more than ready to release some of the pent up rage he’d been carrying around since New Mexico—

But he stopped short, his fisted hands unclenching when he saw the person now standing in his doorway.

“Cera,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Cera didn’t answer. Just stepped into the office and looked around. Both her eyes and her body carefully avoided coming within six feet of him as he watched her take in the large corner office space.

“More glass walls,” she said with a murmur when her eyes landed on the floor to ceiling windows, “But at least it’s fully furnished.”

Gus’s heart ached with the need to have her look at him. He couldn’t believe how much he wanted her eyes now that she was no longer blindfolded.

“So this is the hotel you came here to build? The reason you came to Miami?” Still carefully avoiding any eye contact whatsoever with him, she moved over to the window behind his desk and took in the view.

The vista beyond was cast in orange by the setting sun, but the sun wasn’t so low that she couldn’t see what he’d been looking at every day since returning to this office.

“Yeah,” he said, answering her questions several beats after they’d been asked. He wasn’t sure why she was asking them, but he was happy enough just to have her here, talking to him. “This one’s going to be way bigger than the Sorley New Orleans. And with more amenities, since we can’t offer gambling here. But we’ve already got a lot of buzz going for the club we’re building on the bottom floor, and a DJ residency line-up that will blow minds. So we’re pretty confident about our chances, even in a competitive market like Miami. And we’re working on a few other projects around the city, so Miami will definitely be my home base for the next few years.”

He was rambling. He knew he was rambling. But he wanted her to know everything now. Everything he’d never told her. What he did for a living. That he wouldn’t be leaving Miami anytime soon.

However, her face didn’t register any reaction to his words. She just kept staring at the white stone structure in the distance. “How did you think that was going to work out when you sent me the link to that estate back in July? You here and me there? If I’d taken you up on your August offer, would you just have kept on coming into work right up the street from me without telling me who you really were?”

He came to stand next to her at the window.

Max’s rental car was gone now, he noticed. His brother’s way of doing things. Like the office furniture, he’d delivered the package. Now it was up to him to decide what to do with her.

But the truth wasn’t pretty. And he had to take a deep breath before admitting, “I had a vague plan brewing. A scholarship in September. Tablets for the whole school in October. Student Emergency Fund in November. I’ve got a whole list going through next year on my computer.”

He turned to face her then, leaning one shoulder against the glass, so he could see her reaction to his confession.

But she just continued to stare out the window, face as neutral as it had been when she walked in.

“So you were just going to keep bribing me,” she said, voice dull. “For how long?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “For as long as it took.”

“Took for what?”

He hesitated, but in the end, he manned up. Took a resigned breath and answered the question as best he could. “For you to love me.”

A bitter shadow clouded her face. “That didn’t take long,” she huffed. “I got so swept up in my little girl fantasies, I think I was halfway in love with you by the end of June.”

“No, not love me like that,” he answered, voice quiet as a prayer. “I wanted you to love me like I love you. Like I’ve always loved you, even when I didn’t want to. Absolutely and without condition.”

She flinched, glancing at him—but only for a second before her eyes returned to the scene outside. “That’s crazy. A crazy plan, and a crazy thing to say to me now.”

“I know it is,” Gus answered, refusing to look away from her despite her shaming words. “But you asked me for the truth and that’s what I’m telling you. I love you. From the first moment I saw you fifteen years ago, I’ve loved you. And I never was able to fall out of love with you, baby. Maybe that makes me crazy, but I’m not going to lie to you anymore. Not about anything. And especially not about how I feel about you.”

Now and only now did she turn to face him, meeting his soft eyes with a furious look. “You wanted me to love you?” she asked, her voice shaking with incredulity. “But you didn’t want me to touch you! Wouldn’t let me see you! Wouldn’t let me know you!”

“Yes, that’s true,” he agreed. “Because I knew how it would go if I did. If you realized who I was. Exactly like what went down in New Mexico, except sooner. And I didn’t want that for us, baby. I wanted us to be together and that was the only way we could.”

“But we weren’t really together, were we?” she pointed out, rolling her neck. “You touched me. You saw me. You knew everything about me. But you barely let me skim the surface of who you really are.”

He inclined his head, really thinking about her words. “You’re right, that wasn’t fair,” he admitted.

Then he took the biggest gamble of his life. “So let’s rectify that now, baby.”

Holding her gaze in his, he took off his jacket and let it drop to the floor. Then he slowly unbuttoned his shirt. The light blue material fell open, revealing his scar under the office’s bright light. He let her get a good look at it, before taking off his shirt, too. Then his pants. Then everything else, until he was standing naked before her.

“Come on, baby,” he whispered. “Come on over here and touch me if that’s what you want.”

24

“Come on over here and touch me if that’s what you want.”

Cera’s heart froze in her chest, the anger that had fueled her every word sputtering out of her for sheer lack of oxygen.

It was hard to be angry. Hard to think of much of anything, with Gus standing naked in front of her.

At five-foot-eight, she considered herself pretty tall, but Gus towered over her. Making it impossible to look away as she took in the miles of bronzed skin stretched tight over rock hard muscles, his rippled abdomen, two large thighs, heavily ridged with muscles, and bulging between them…

A cock so thick and long, she was almost glad for the blindfold. Because she’d definitely still be a virgin if she’d seen that thing before impaling herself on it.

She quickly raised her eyes, concentrating on the only thin thing on his entire body. The scar on his chest.

But then the scar moved closer. Gus was moving toward her, she realized with a gulp. Coming closer in all his naked glory.

“Go on,” his voice said somewhere above the top of her head. “Touch it.”

Touch his scar…he actually wanted her to touch it now. Without any conscious decision on her part, her fingers ran down the slightly puckered line. She touched him there, finding it hard to believe that a part of the brother she’d lost fifteen years ago was now beating inside this man’s chest.

But then she stopped at the bottom. Not knowing where her hand should go now that she’d reached the end of the scar.

“Keep going,” she heard him say quietly.

She stood there, frozen with indecision.

But not for long. His much larger hand covered hers. With breathless fascination, she watched as both their hands slid down his washboard abs until they covered the hard, thick length below.

And God help her, even when Gus’s hand lifted, she could not pull her own away from the thing pulsing beneath her palm.

“You wanted to know me. Now you do,” he said, his Latin-flavored Southern accent harsh with lust. “That’s what you do to me, baby. Just looking at you does that to me. From the first moment I saw you. You own me, baby. And this body is yours now. Do whatever you want with it.”

Something came loose inside of her. The tight anger inside her chest giving away to another kind of tightness below. Her core clenching at the thought of being able to do whatever she wanted…

Her hand wrapped around his long length. It almost seemed to be humming with need, begging her to…

She gave it one exploratory pull, her palm moving under the heavy ridge below. Pre-cum oozed out of the tip. And her mouth watered at the thought of tasting it. Of taking him with her mouth, like he’d done to her on so many occasions, but had stopped her from doing the one time she tried.

But she was the one in control now. He’d said so himself.

She lowered to her knees in front of him. Never taking her eyes off his cock. It oozed more pre-cum, seemingly at just the thought of what she was about to do to it.

Gus let out a hoarse shout when her mouth closed around him. And when she lifted her eyes, she saw that his head was thrown back.

“Fuck…” he said on a sharp exhale. “Baby, that feels so good.”

He looked down, then, and shook his head. “But I can’t handle you looking at me like that with them pretty eyes of yours. This is going to be over in less than a minute if you keep on.”

His declaration stopped her cold. She jerked her head back, letting his cock fall out of her mouth with a wet suck.

“Sit on the couch,” she heard herself growl.

She’d never in her life realized just how lecherous she was until she found herself watching Gus obey her command. Eyes gobbling up the sight of his rock-hard butt as he walked over to the couch and sat down as commanded. His cock stood between his legs like a monument, glistening with her spit and oozing even more pre-cum. Begging her to come visit.

This time he was presenting himself naked for her and she experienced a weird moment of empathy for the man who’d kept her blindfolded all summer.

There was something strangely erotic about having Gus display himself nude like this. It made her want to touch him and mount him at the same time. And she understood for the first time why he’d chosen to massage her as opposed to getting right down to business.

But her ability to empathize with him didn’t mean she could fully forgive.

“Close your eyes,” she said to him, feeling cruel.

A flash of reluctance, but he did as instructed, his heavily lashed eyes falling closed.

Keeping her eyes on him, she went over to his discarded pants. And sure enough, she found exactly what she needed in his wallet.

One condom, wrapped in red foil.

She walked back to the couch and pressed it into his hand. Why was she not surprised when he immediately flew into action? Agile hands nimbly removing the condom from its wrapper.

Even if she hadn’t been turned on before, watching him slip the thin rubber over his thick rod would have had her dripping with need. As it was, she wasn’t surprised when she found her panties already damp when she removed them from her body, along with her bra, grey blouse, and simple black skirt. She watched him the whole time, like he’d watched her before.