One More Taste (27 page)

“I need to taste your cock,” she murmured in protest.

He almost smiled, but intensity kept his features torqued into a grimace. “First this. I need you too much.”

He sank into her on a muttered curse. And he was right; the acute relief of their bodies locking together felt even more profound than the orgasm. A deep, satisfying shudder rocked her to her bones. She wrapped her legs and arms around him and teased his lips until he covered her mouth with his as he began to move. This, right here, was where she needed to be. Knox Briscoe inside and all around her. Sharing an endless kiss as rippling waves of sensation accompanied each rolling thrust.

When, finally, they collapsed side by side, Emily was tender and glowing from her second release. She snuggled close to Knox, absentmindedly tracing the edge of his pectoral muscle with her finger. This is what it felt like to be lost in time. Free. Sheltered in his arms, she felt softer, somehow. Cherished.

Fuck.

She bolted upright.

Cherished? What the hell does that mean?
She was not that woman.

Knox pushed up onto his elbows. He looked as thoroughly worked over as she felt. “What?”

She didn't recognize either of them for their loss of control. “Who are we right now?”

He flopped back again, pulling her down with him. “I have no idea. Not ourselves, though.” He stroked her back. “But could we wait until later to regret this? Please? I feel like I can breathe for the first time in weeks.”

She raked her nails over his abs, then took his softening erection in her hand. “Then allow me to change that. Assuming you can come more than once.”

He propped a hand behind his head and rewarded her with a rakish grin. “Guess we'll find out.”

It took Emily a second to register the jiggle of the front door lock. Even then, she wasn't quick enough to do more than utter, “Oh, shit!” before the door swung open.

Haylie yelped and put her back to the room, even as she clamped her hands over her eyes. Knox grabbed a pillow and jammed it in front of him. “Haylie? What are you doing here?”

“I didn't see anything,” Haylie said. “Oh my God, I'm so sorry. Emily said I could come over any time I needed to, but I didn't know that she was … that you two were…” She groaned. “I'm leaving now.”

Emily leapt from the bed and grabbed the bathrobe hanging on the wall. Her only concern was for Haylie. She wouldn't have come to Emily's apartment without ample reason. Pulling the robe on, she rushed to Haylie's side. “No. Don't go. Are you all right? What did he do to you?”

Haylie stepped away from Emily and hugged herself. Was she favoring her left arm? Was she in pain? Emily couldn't tell.

“I'm fine. He…” Haylie shook her head, then tipped her face in Knox's direction, though she didn't chance a look. “I thought you'd be at work. I needed a place to—” Another tip of her head toward Knox. “To be.”

Emily whirled to face Knox, wondering what she could say to make him leave. Haylie's need for a safe haven trumped everything else.

Knox was already on his feet, dressed, though his clothes were disheveled and his shirt unbuttoned. His focus shifted from Haylie to Emily, and in his eyes, she saw dawning understanding. “Uh, I was on my way out.”

Emily could have kissed him for that. “Yes, you were. Okay. Good. Haylie, come on in.”

“No, please,” Haylie said. “I'll go. I'm so sorry I interrupted. I was just looking for a place to be alone. It's silly of me, honestly. I don't know what I was thinking.”

Emily all but threw herself in front of the door. “No, Knox is right. Actually, we were both leaving.”

Haylie eyed them both warily. “You're not just saying that?”

“Nope,” Knox and Emily said at the same time. “We've got to get back to the resort. Too much to do,” Knox added.

Haylie inched farther into the room. “If you're sure.”

“Absolutely. Stay as long as you want. All night if you want. I'll be working late. And after work, I might be, um, busy.” With Knox. At his place. Lord, was that even a possibility? Could he want that, too? Her hunger for him wasn't even close to being sated. She put her hand on the doorknob but found Knox's hand already there. “Oops. Okay. We're out of here. Call if you need anything.”

Emily preceded Knox out the door. She didn't realize until she was on the landing halfway down the stairs, that she was only dressed in a semi-sheer bathrobe. “Oh my God, I forgot clothes.”

Just as panic set in, Knox showed her the bundle of fabric in his hands. Her clothes. “I think I grabbed them all.”

“Well, that's about the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me. Thank you.”

“Besides the part where you actually got lucky a few minutes ago, you mean?” He extricated her black thong from the pile and dangled it in front of her face. “Here.”

He made careful work of watching her slip into it. “What's going on with Haylie?”

What could Emily do but shake her head? Anything more would be talking out of turn. From the clothes pile, she pulled her jeans. “I can't tell you that.”

But Knox would not be deterred. “She's the friend you were telling me about, isn't she? The one in the abusive relationship.” His mouth screwed up as though he'd eaten a slice of lemon. “Wendell's hurting her.”

“Knox, come on. It's not my place to say. It's really not.”

Rather than hand her the bra, he held out the straps so she could slip right into it. “I'm already keeping some of your secrets. What's one more? Especially if it helps Haylie.”

He had a point. There had to be a line in which Haylie's safety trumped her privacy. No one had ever crossed that line for Emily. Who knows what might have changed in her life if they had?

She shrugged out of the robe, then slipped her arms into the bra and adjusted the cups as she turned so Knox could latch it closed. That accomplished, she turned to face him again, modulating her voice on the off-chance that Haylie might be listening in on the other side of the door. “You're right. He hurts her. I wasn't sure until yesterday. I've always thought he was emotionally abusive, which is bad enough, but it's so much worse. Haylie's done an ace job of covering it up so her dad won't find out. Carina, too. She's known for a while.

“They're both afraid Ty would kill Wendell if he found out, and they're probably right. Carina and I have been trying to get Haylie out of that situation since his true colors showed themselves right after they eloped, but she's…” Frustration choked out Emily's remaining words.

Knox wrapped his arms around her, offering his strength so she could finish her thought.

“It doesn't take long for a battered woman to stop believing she's strong enough or valuable enough to save herself.” She heard the edge of personal testimony in her voice and knew he heard it, too, but she no longer minded him seeing her at her most vulnerable.

Though she could have managed on her own, Knox helped her into the sweater, then smoothed it down over her. “Thank God I'm getting rid of his worthless ass.”

Such a noble gesture. “I wish that were the answer, but I'm afraid that if you fired him, Haylie would stick by him, even if we all know he'll take his humiliation out on her. If anything, firing him might make the situation worse.”

She dared a look at Knox again. His eyes had turned troubled and distant. When he caught her looking, he gathered her more tightly in his arms and kissed her hair. It was such a relief to be comforted in his sure embrace.

“I might not have a choice about laying him off,” Knox said. “It's already in the works, actually. He and about fifteen other employees who aren't pulling their weight. I don't know if I can justify stopping it.”

“But you're the boss.”

“Yes and no. The minute Ty signed that contract with me at my equity firm, Briscoe Ranch Resort stopped being a family business. Every decision I make, I'm answerable to a group of investors who have committed more than fifty million dollars to this property. Until I buy out their shares, they're the majority shareholders. I work for them, and they're already skittish because of some structural problems my building inspectors found at the resort.”

“Structural problems?”

“A story for another time. The point is, the pressure's on me to turn a profit, and if I can't demonstrate to them that I'm taking action, then they're not going to sell to me and, worst case scenario, they vote to shut down the resort or sell it off, and then Granny June and Carina and all the Briscoes wouldn't have a place to live. And there wouldn't be a five-star restaurant to offer you. I'm not going to let that happen. I can't.”

Well, shit. “I get that you're under a lot of pressure, but be that as it may, you can't go on pretending—” She bit her lip. That line of thought was taking it too far. Stupid, big mouth.

“Pretending what?”

So much for playing it cool. That really wasn't her style, anyway. “Pretending that this is about your father anymore. Pretending you don't care and this is all just business. I know you better than that.” And wasn't that astounding in itself? She knew Knox Briscoe, inside and out. She got him and what made him tick, more than any other man she'd ever been intimate with.

His only response was the rippling of his jaw.

She knew what that meant, too. She'd hit a bullseye with her observation, though he was yet unwilling to admit to his shifting motives.

She melted against the stairwell wall and closed her eyes, suddenly exhausted by life. “I don't know where we go from here. You and me, Haylie, the resort. No idea what should happen next.”

After a stretch of silence, he said. “I do. I'm going to delay the layoffs and find another way to appease the investors until I'm ready to make my buyout offer. And I'm going to offer Haylie a job at my Dallas office. A steady job with good pay might get her confidence up enough to take care of herself. And then, I'm going to invite the partners in my firm to that dinner party next weekend that I mentioned at The Smoking Gun. You're catering it. It'll be the best way to introduce you to them and showcase your skills as the secret weapon of the resort's future.”

She'd been following just fine right up until that last part.
Could he mean … was it possible?
She searched his eyes. In them, she read desperation and tenderness. “What are you saying?”

“I'm saying you were spot-on when you warned me the day we agreed to the challenge that by the end of the month, I'd be begging you to take the restaurant. You were right. You're a genius. I've known since the first meal you cooked for me. Hell, I've known since you overturned that bowl in my lap. Looking back at it, that was the day you wrapped me around your little finger. The restaurant is yours, Emily. Anything you want, it's yours.”

 

Chapter Sixteen

Wednesday was another lucky hat day. And not only because Knox had settled things in his mind with Emily. Their relationship was still up in the air, but now that they were no longer challenging each other over the restaurant, he felt free to pursue her. Which he fully planned to do. But, today's donning of his lucky Stetson had everything to do with business.

Because today was the day Ty and Knox were flying to Dallas for a meeting with the Briscoe Equity Group investors—the day of Ty's reckoning, the day Knox would ask them to vote him in as CEO. The day that Ty Briscoe would officially lose all power. God, Knox wished his dad were there to see it unfold. Hopefully, he would be watching from up on High. Because Knox had no doubt that it was going to be epic.

Since Ty's and Knox's confrontation over the structural engineers' findings, Ty had spent his days stomping around the office, silently fuming and pretending that Knox didn't exist. Which had been fantastic. Without Ty looming over his shoulder, trying to be buddy-buddy with him, Knox was free to run the resort and forward his expansion plans as he saw fit.

When Knox arrived at the office to put in a few hours of work in advance of their midday flight, Ty had already shuttered himself away in his office, the blinds down, the door closed. No surprise there. In fact, the only surprise was the sight of Haylie at her desk, far earlier than she usually rolled in. She was hard at work typing up a memo for the retail division that he'd left on her desk the evening before. The word
overcompensating
sprang to mind. Or perhaps, instead, enthusiastic denial of the professional boundaries they'd inadvertently crossed the Saturday before at Emily's house. Enthusiastic denial was a solid plan, but not one Knox could go along with if he wanted to consider himself a good boss.

He paused at her desk when she didn't acknowledge his arrival, the same as she'd done every day that week. “Bright and early, I see. I appreciate that.”

“There's a lot to do,” she said without tearing her eyes away from the computer screen.

“Right. Too true. But if you would be so kind as to join me in my office, there's a matter we need to discuss.” And there he went again, in full stodgy butler mode. What a ridiculous affectation. “What I'm trying to say is that we need to talk about what happened on Saturday at Emily's house.”

“Oh, that's okay. Really.”

“I know, but I need to. Would it make you more comfortable if we talked cousin-to-cousin instead of boss-to-employee?”

Then she did look at him, her eyebrows pursed. Then she sighed. “Actually, I think boss-to-employee would probably be better in this case.”

He tapped the edge of her desk with his knuckle. “Good. Come on into my office. Shut the door behind you.”

He gestured to the chair across from his desk and waited while she assumed a seat, her back rigid and her expression wary.

“I just want to say right off the bat that I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm sorry you saw what you did, I'm sorry I've put you in an awkward position.”