Make Me Desperate

MAKE ME PART 1
: MAKE ME FORGET

MAKE ME
PART 2: MAKE ME TREMBLE

MAKE ME PART 3: MAKE M
E SAY IT

MAKE ME PAR
T 4: MAKE ME DESPERATE

WICKED BURN

DARING T
IME

SWEET RESTRAINT

PARADISE RULES

RELEA
SE

EXPLOSIVE

THE AFF
AIR (ALSO AVAILABLE I
N SERIAL FORMAT)

GLIM
MER

GLOW

Because You Are Mine Series

BECAUSE YOU ARE
MINE (ALSO AVAILABLE
IN SERIAL FORMAT)

WH
EN I’M WITH YOU (ALSO
AVAILABLE IN SERIAL
FORMAT)

BECAUSE WE B
ELONG

SINCE I SAW YO
U

One Night of Passion Series

ADDICTED TO YOU (W
RITING AS BETHANY KA
NE)

EXPOSED TO YOU

ON
LY FOR YOU

One Night of Passion Specials

BOUND TO
YOU

CAPTURED BY YOU

Make Me

Part 4

Make Me Desperate

Beth Kery

InterMix Books, New York

A
N IMPRINT OF
P
ENGUIN
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ANDOM
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LLC

375
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MAKE ME PART 4: MAKE ME DESPERATE

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2016 by Beth Kery.

Excerpt from
Because You Are Mine
copyright © 2013 by Beth Kery.

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.

eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-98824-4

PUBLISHING HISTORY

InterMix eBook edition / April 2016

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Present Day

Three days after she’d awakened in Jacob’s bed from a nightmare, Harper glanced up from her computer when she heard a tap on her office door.

“I’m almost finished, Burt,” she mumbled distractedly, paging down to the last paragraph of the story she was editing. Burt Chavis was dressed in board shorts, a Swell T-shirt, and flip-flops. His sun-bleached dreadlocks were pulled back in a thick ponytail. He was twenty-eight years old and wore a perennial grin. He was a crappy dresser, but he possessed a surprisingly incising brain for a summertime beach bum and wintertime snowboarder. Harper had decided early on he was the best of the two reporters she had working for her. His easygoing, friendly manner made people open up to him during interviews. Sangar had told her in private that Burt had some issues with backing up his claims for stories with credible sources, but Harper was keeping an open mind. She wasn’t that much older than Burt, and they’d been comfortable with each other from their first meeting.

Besides, it was her job as Burt’s editor to make sure his stories
were
credible.

“What’s this I hear from Ruth about you being invited to the Latimer compound the other night?” Burt asked.

“It was nothing. A cocktail party,” Harper said without removing her gaze from Burt’s story.

“Ruth said it had something to do with Cyril Atwater wanting to make a movie out of a story you wrote,” Burt said, his lazy stance as he leaned against the wall just inside the door belying the sharp intelligence in his pale blue eyes.

“That’s right.”

“Ruth thinks it’d make a good feature for her column. But what about me?”

Harper looked at him blandly. “What about you?”

“I have the crime beat. I want a story.”

Harper blinked at his boldness. All traces of the easygoing beach bum had vanished.

“Going to a cocktail party warrants a crime story?”

“Latimer warrants it. Something new and revealing could be my ticket to a big San Francisco paper.”

Harper turned back to her computer. “You don’t really want that, do you Burt?” she asked mildly. “They’ll make you put on a tie and wear shoes with laces on them to work every day.”

“I want it,” Burt said simply. “Any chance you’re going to be invited to the Latimer compound again in association with this movie thing?”

Harper sighed, recognizing she wasn’t going to shake him easily. “Ellie, the girl I wrote the story about, has agreed to allow film production to go forward, as long as I’m involved. I spoke to Atwater yesterday and he’s having a lawyer work up contracts for us. Latimer hasn’t been involved, though. Not in the slightest,” she said, hiding a frown as she stared at her computer screen.

“He will be, eventually. He produces Atwater’s films. The next time you’re invited to the Latimer compound, maybe I could go as your assistant.”

Harper hit save and print on Burt’s story before she turned to face him. “That’s not going to happen. Find some other career-making story.” Her printer came to a stop and she pointed at the printed papers it’d just chugged out. “
That’s
not the one, by the way. I made some notes on it. Get it back to me in twenty minutes?”

Burt picked up his copy from the printer. “Latimer is a big fish. A story we worked up together would be key for your career, too.”

She gave him a sharp, assessing look. “If you want to do a story on Latimer, what’s your angle?”

He shrugged. “I’m looking for one. That’s why I’m asking for your help.”

“I’m not stopping you from being a reporter. I’m not quashing anything newsworthy, if it’s credible and you have solid sources to back it up.
Do
you have something substantial that you’re working on?”

“Nothing but a shitload of rumors.”

“Then forget it. And leave me out of the whole thing,” Harper said. “I’ve already had my share of career-makers.”

Burt laughed and shook his head. “That’s shit, and you know it. I can’t get to Latimer. No one can . . . except maybe you. You’re really going to sit on your awards and your movie deals and keep Latimer from the rest of us?”

She met his gaze squarely and leaned forward, hands on her desk. “I’ve got nothing for you when it comes to Jacob Latimer. Nothing. That’s because I don’t know any more than you do. Do you understand?” She waited until Burt nodded resentfully. “Twenty minutes,” she repeated with a smile, nodding at the story he clutched in his hand before she turned away.

* * *

She hadn’t been lying. She’d given her word to Jacob that she had no plans to use any information she learned from their affair for the purpose of an article or exposé on him or his business activities. But more importantly, she truly didn’t possess anything newsworthy when it came to Jacob.

That’s a lie.

She grimaced at the snide inner voice in her head, busying herself with her layouts. He was a fascinating, complex . . . and very secretive man.

Her brain flashed back to their parting on that early morning three days ago, to the last time she’d been in his arms. He’d halted her before she reached for his bedroom door and drew her back into his embrace. She’d stared up at him, enraptured, when he cradled her jaw in his hands and lifted her mouth. Then he’d kissed her, and it’d been like the first time, as if he were claiming her all over again. She was leaving him after a night of challenge and passion. She should have been sated, her brain already ticking off the goals and details of her workday. Instead, he’d shrouded her in his spell all over again.

He lifted his head a hazy, delicious moment later, and Harper’s toes slowly started to uncurl.

“Have dinner with me tonight?” he’d asked, his low, fluid voice washing over her.

“Yes,” she’d replied without thought.

Later that afternoon, she’d received an unexpected call from Elizabeth. The call had come when she was packing up at the end of her workday, flushed with excitement and anticipation at the idea of dinner with Jacob . . . at the prospect of returning to his bedroom and whatever new decadent sexual challenge he’d propose.

“I’m glad I caught you,” Elizabeth said. “Jacob asked me to reach you. He sends his apologies, but he’s been called away unexpectedly. He won’t be able to have dinner tonight.”

“Oh . . . I see. I hope everything is all right?” She’d thought she’d heard a slight edge of anxiety to Elizabeth’s tone.

“Of course. Something required his direct attention, a minor emergency at his estate in Napa. It happens sometimes. Often, in truth. That he’s called away. He has so many different business concerns. So many interests.”

Harper blinked. Was it her imagination, or was Elizabeth trying to coyly pass on a message:
You might have his attention for a short span of time, but don’t kid yourself into thinking it’s anything permanent. You’re one of a million things Jacob Latimer has to deal with every day. He has his concerns . . .

. . . and his
interests.

Harper was one of his current interests. So might be any other number of women.

She cleared her throat. “I’m glad to hear it isn’t anything dire. Thank you for calling and delivering the message.”

Thank you for calling and breaking his date for him
, Harper thought irritably three days later.

Forget it. Forget him
.

He’d never called after Elizabeth had, so she had no idea when—or if—she was going to see him again. It pissed her off, that she cared one way or another. He’d set something alight inside her, awakened her body and her brain, until she was having trouble sleeping and concentrating. She kept reliving those moments on the yacht. She kept experiencing those minutes that she was held at his mercy by the positioner, when she’d been at the center of his fierce focus and demanding hunger. He’d set her on fire, and then left her to burn out of control.

Bastard.

Her phone rang, cutting off her bitter, frustrated train of thought.

“Harper McFadden,” she said into the receiver distractedly, lunging to grab a folder that was about to spill off her desk.

“Go to the ladies’ room.”

She froze in the action of leaning across the desk, the folder clutched in her hand.

“Jacob?” Her voice vibrated with shock.

“Yes.”

“
What
did you say?”

“Go to the ladies’ room. The one in the south hallway. Now.”

“But—”

“You told me you masturbated in here.”

Harper’s mouth fell open. Her skin roughened. Did that he mean
he
was in there? In the
Gazette
’s bathroom? Right at this very moment? It wasn’t just him saying something so illicit so unexpectedly in that fluid, hypnotizing voice of his that left her speechless. It was the way his bald statement immediately clicked her brain out of the mundane, everyday concerns of life and into a dizzying, dark, sexual reality. His voice—just his voice—took her to a different world.

“If you masturbated in here, that must mean you’re confident of relative privacy and that there’s no surveillance,” his voice continued quietly through the receiver.

“Jacob . . . are you
here
? In the newsroom?”

“Yes.”

“You should go. What if someone sees you?”
Like Ruth, or Burt, or Sangar . . . or
anyone
who might recognize their local celebrity billionaire lurking around the newsroom.
How was she going to continue to insist to others that Jacob Latimer meant nothing to her if he pulled stunts like this?

“No one’s going to see me, and I’m not leaving. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you masturbating in here. Sweet, good girl Harper McFadden, bringing herself off at work.” He said it softly, but there was an edge to his tone. She pictured him snarling slightly as he spoke. Excitement prickled through her.

“Come here, Harper.”

The line went dead.

She hung up her phone, staring blankly into space. Of course she wouldn’t go. Out on the main floor of the newsroom, a young female reporter laughed shrilly at something their ad exec said. In the distance, she saw Sangar talking heatedly on his phone through his open office door.

Jacob was out of his mind—not to mention ridiculously cocky—to suggest she go and meet him for a sexual tryst in a bathroom at her workplace.

Nevertheless, she found herself walking out of her office, her feet feeling numb in her pumps and her heart starting a sluggish roll in her ears.
I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you.
Was he lying just to get what he wanted?

Did she care, when she craved the same thing?

The south hallway was deserted, still and dim. The bathrooms down here were private ones, unlike the larger bathroom in the north wing. That was good, but also risky. The private bathrooms were more popular than the common ones.

She came to a halt outside a wood door, her heart now a rapid drumbeat in her ears. She held her breath and reached for the knob. Before she could grab it, it twisted and the door opened several inches. She heard running water, and had a brief impression of Jacob’s towering form. He was wearing a dark blue suit, white shirt, and silver tie, and his face looked set and grim. That was all she saw of him, because he grasped her wrist and pulled her into the bathroom. The next thing she knew, her hands were behind her back and he was pressing her against the hard wood of the closed bathroom door. Her heart knocked against her breastbone.
What the hell?

She heard the click of the lock.

Air hissed out of her lungs when he flattened the front of his body to the back of hers, sandwiching her against himself and the door.

“Jacob, what are you
doing
?” she asked in a strangled voice.

He lifted her hair from her neck, clutching it in his hand. She gasped at the sensation of his lips moving along her skin. He scraped his teeth gently along a cord of muscle, making her shudder. “I’m going to have you, Harper,” he said very quietly next to her ear.

“No,” she muttered weakly. His mouth opened over her ear, his kiss causing a suction that made her shiver uncontrollably. She struggled against his solid, hard weight, but that was a mistake. He pressed closer, and she felt his erection. It wasn’t a partial one, as if he’d just begun to get aroused when they came into contact. He was fully, flagrantly erect. How long had he been waiting, planning to pounce on her here? His long fingers slid beneath her jaw. “Jacob, you can’t just come here and—”

He pushed on her face, forcing her to turn her chin over her shoulder. He tilted his head. His mouth covered hers.
Oh, Jesus.
Sensation rushed through her. She tasted him, that increasingly familiar, addictive flavor. But it was more than that. She tasted his hunger. It was like mainlining an intoxicant straight into her blood. He penetrated her mouth with his tongue, stroking her boldly. Lewdly. Harper felt herself rising like a freed helium balloon, her lust rapidly mounting to match his. He pressed tighter against her from the back, the column of his cock grinding against the top of her buttocks and her lower back. He crushed against her hard. His kiss was harsh. It hurt a little, given the awkward angle and his forcefulness. It also enflamed her.

She tangled her tongue with his, moaning into his aggressive kiss. Maybe he considered that desperate moan a surrender—and maybe it was—because when he released her from his punishing kiss, she didn’t protest any further. She just panted, looking over her shoulder, trying to see what he was doing. She couldn’t see his face, but she felt it when his hands moved quickly. He was slipping a strap around her wrists. It tightened. She inhaled sharply in anxious excitement. He’d just bound her wrists behind her back.

He actually had brought a wrist restraint into her work bathroom. His daring left her speechless. For a few seconds, her breath stuck painfully in her lungs.

“Don’t be afraid,” she heard him murmur from behind her. “I’m not going to hurt you. If I did, all you’d have to do is scream. Okay?”

She nodded once.

“Come here.”

He backed her across the bathroom, guiding her with his hands on her upper arms. His touch was gentle, despite the outrageousness of what he was doing. He urged her downward. Harper sat, hitting the closed toilet seat with a muted thump.