She's Too Young (4 page)

“Mr. Beckett, I apologize, but your car is waiting out front.” A short pause, punctuated by the interrupter’s discomfort. “You asked me to make sure you weren’t late to the meeting with the China branch. Their plane landed an hour ago.”

My growl is low and frustrated between Veda’s handful-sized tits, because I know I have to leave. The meeting is too important and too long in the making to miss, no matter how badly I’d like to remain in this bed for a week with Veda beneath me. With an immense case of reluctance, I gain my feet and ease a stunned Veda’s legs back together. “There is a phone on your bedside table. Press number one and ask for whatever you want. Any food you’re craving, a bathing suit for the pool, a movie in the theater. Any. Thing.”

Her eyes have gone wide as silver dollars with my list. “When will you be back, Ramsey?”

I
love
her saying my name. “Late, I’m afraid.” I plant a fist on the bed and lean down to give her a long, deep kiss.
So
deep, she gasps around my tongue and sends a vibration coursing down my abdomen, forcing me to adjust my erection. “Ask for whatever you want, angel. I
will
give you everything.”

I stop at the door and look back, finding she’s turned over onto her belly, ankles crossed in the air above her plaid-covered ass. Obviously, she doesn’t expect me to turn and look, because I catch a hint of contempt flitting across her face. I see it plain as day, before she smiles and gives me a little pinky wave. And I wonder if in the process of giving her everything, she’s going to take my soul.

I
’m wide-awake in
bed, the storm outside illuminating my bedroom in violent bursts of white thunder. The meeting with China ran even longer than expected, impatience gnawing at my gut as the clock ticked past midnight and I knew there wouldn’t be another encounter with Veda until morning. Even now, I’m struggling with the urge to travel one floor down, to check on her in the back bedroom. I can picture her in the center of the bed, hair messy, lips open, the lines of her body outlined beneath the white comforter.

There’s been an urgency building in my middle ever since I saw the glint of malice in her beautiful eyes this afternoon. I want to straddle her, force her to look me in the face and spill what put it there. Perhaps I’ve underestimated Veda’s ability to see right through exactly what I’ve done. Bought and paid for her. Sent her father away when I could have given him an equally lucrative job right here in New York. Instead of seeing my actions as helpful—a way to get her family out of debt—she could very well see me as a villain. If I don’t change her perception, there is no chance she’ll stay once the contract expires on her eighteenth birthday.

An image of her jumping and twirling in the sunlight makes its way into my consciousness. Already, I know she would take the light along with her, if she left. And I’ll do anything to keep it. Keep
her.

This afternoon, I let my lust overrun my sense and I can’t let that happen again, no matter how animalistic she makes me feel. If I’m to keep her, make her trust me, I have to earn it somehow.

Veda is so prominent in my mind, when I see her standing in the doorway of my bedroom, I think my imagination put her there. But no. The lightning blasts the bedroom with a white flash and I see her clinging to the doorframe, her face a mask of fear. I sit up so fast, I’m surprised I don’t get whiplash, and go to her at the door. “Angel.”

I try to bring her into the circle of my arms, but she won’t let go of the doorframe. “Storms don’t usually bother me, I just…I think it’s because we’re up so high and the windows…I swear we’re right inside of the lightning.”

My throat is closing up I need to hold her so fucking bad, but I sense I’ll get nowhere until I manage to block out what’s bothering her. Turning on a heel, I cross the bedroom, throwing the heavy curtains over the floor-to-ceiling windows. The room is doused in black, so I flip on the bathroom light, leaving the door slightly ajar and return to Veda in the doorway. “There we go,” I murmur into her hair, prying her fingers one by one off the wood. As soon as they’re all free, she throws herself against my chest and I wrap her in my arms. “Nothing can touch you when you’re with me.”

When she speaks, her mouth moves against the material of my T-shirt. “Can I stay in here? There are no curtains in my room.”

“Yes.”

I know what you’re thinking. My agreement was a little too quick. Yes, I
am
a bastard, but not the brand of bastard that would use a girl’s fear to get her panties off. And coincidentally, her panties are the
only
thing I’d need to take off, because that’s all she’s wearing. If the staff hadn’t gone home hours ago, I would be in a rage over her walking through the house almost completely naked, but as it is, we’re alone. We’re alone and her nipples are in such hard points, I can feel them through my shirt.

“Go get under the covers,” I instruct hoarsely.

Veda looks at me curiously, but does as she’s told, crawling across the mattress without a hint of self-consciousness and settling into the wealth of pillows and sheets, looking so at home my throat hurts. When I climb in beside her, she turns onto her side, tucking her hands beneath her cheek. “How many women have you had in your bed?”

“Veda.”

She purses her lips at my warning and raises a feminine eyebrow. “How many
girls
?”

Beneath the covers, you know I’m hard as a rock but I make sure not to betray the excessive arousal on my face. “One. One girl.”

With a little purr, she rubs her thighs together, eliciting the whisper-soft sound of silk caressing silk. I can no longer tell if she’s knowingly seductive or if she was just born this achingly sensual creature and can’t turn it off. “I thought you would come to my room when you got home.” Genuine curiosity flits into her gaze. “Why didn’t you?”

I picture her lying there in the flashes of white, naked, watching for the door to open and I barely stifle a groan. “You didn’t move in here for the purpose of my…comfort.”

“You mean sex,” she whispers.

“Yes,” I rasp. “I mean sex.”

I can see that I’ve surprised her, but she’s not ready to believe me yet. A fact that is confirmed when she rolls over onto her back and she stretches out like a contented cat, hollowing the valley of her stomach, angling her tits up toward the ceiling, arms flung above her head. “So you’re just going to stay on your side of the bed?”

“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” I growl, my hands fisting in the sheets, a bead of moisture rolling from the tip of my elongated cock, down to the base.

“Maybe a little.” She yawns. “Maybe I think you’ve been given too much power and it’s nice to be given some in return.”

God, she’s a crafty little thing and I know that’s probably part of my fascination. With Veda, there is more than meets the eye. “I haven’t been given power,” I enunciate. “I’ve
taken
it.”

“Like you’ve taken me?”

Thunder booms outside and it leaves a deafening silence in its wake, except for the pounding in my ears. Before I can respond, a mischievous smile transforms her face and she tosses a pillow in my direction. I catch it in mid-air, very aware that this high school student thinks she can play games with me—one of the most powerful men in New York—and it’s not going to happen.

You’re even more handsome in the light…I can’t think straight around you…the more time I spend around you, the less I’m going to care.

I never put much stock in how women react to my appearance, but in Veda’s case, I care. If she’s even a fraction as attracted to me as I am to her, she’s affected. If I have to use that attraction as a means of reminding her I’m not one of the boys who probably beg to do her bidding on a regular basis, so be it.

When I reach out, allowing my hand to hover over her breasts, she visibly braces, her brow wrinkling when I merely pinch the gold locket she’s wearing between my fingers. “Who gave this to you?”

I’m already bracing for another bout of jealousy, but her words calm me. “It belonged to my mother,” she murmurs. “We couldn’t always afford nice things, but we saved up enough to buy this one year for Mother’s Day. She gave it to me before she died.”

The importance of the jewelry is threaded in her voice, so I lay the necklace down again gently, nearly hissing a breath when my knuckle grazes her warm skin. “Are you similar to your mother?”

She doesn’t answer for a long time and when she does, her words almost get swallowed by the storm. “If you mean, were we both kept under lock and key…yes. My father was overprotective over both of us.”

Gratefulness isn’t an emotion I’m familiar with, but just then, I’m feeling it toward Veda’s father. But it’s mixed with restlessness. I don’t like knowing she’s spent any amount of time in discontent. I’ll change that. “His intentions were to keep you safe, were they not?”

“They were,” she concedes with a sigh. “But if you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is freedom, isn’t it?”

I can’t swallow. With those words, she has cut right through the middle of me. Because with the signing of a few documents, I’ve placed her back under lock and key, haven’t I?

All at once, however, she’s back to being playful, this mysterious girl. Once again, she’s throwing temptation my way, arms positioned above her head, hips swaying in my sheets, eyes inviting me to do the devil’s work.

I move into a sitting position and slide closer to Veda very slowly, desire eating me alive as I loom over her a moment. She goes completely still among the pillows, save the pulse jumping at the base of her neck. I take a moment to absorb the blow of her ethereal beauty, before I bend forward over her belly, heating her there with an exhale of breath. Her sleek flesh shudders, an almost inaudible whimper bubbling from above. Instead of moving lower, to the notch between her legs as I’m dying to do, I straighten, taking hold of the back neck of my shirt, whipping it over my head and tossing it onto the floor.

I’m not going to lie, it’s goddamn satisfying when her beautiful mouth falls open and her breath catches at the sight of me naked from the waist up. She
is
affected by me. That, at least, is not a game. And apparently I
am
the kind of bastard that would use a young girl’s attraction to his own advantage, because I’m already bending forward, swirling my tongue in her belly button.

It would be too easy to use my mouth on her pussy, have her clawing at my shoulders for relief within seconds, but I’m not after easy. Veda in my life permanently is what I
need
and that will only come with time and the breaking down of whatever resentment—warranted or not—she’s obviously harboring toward me. I’m under no delusion that I can resist getting physical with her for long. God, no. But giving in right now could drive her further away.

I’m flicking my tongue against Veda’s addictive navel when her fingers begin to twist in my hair, and I hear the sound of a moan being trapped behind her lips. With a pained smile against her belly, I trail my tongue up the center of her flat stomach, between her pink-tipped breasts, lifting my head to let my mouth hang just above hers. “Goodnight, Veda,” I breathe, knowing I’m going to regret teasing her the second I move back to my side of the bed.

Fuck
, do I ever, because my cock feels like it weighs ten pounds, aching against the inside of my thigh. And I especially regret turning her on and stopping when she turns away from me, her body rigid enough to snap.

But twenty minutes later, when a crack of thunder shakes the building and she flies across the bed, I turn and wrap her up in my arms, kissing her forehead and murmuring comfort. She buries her face against my chest, her petite feet conforming to my calves for warmth. All seems forgotten.

For now.

I
f you’re wondering
whether or not I feel like a goddamn lecher walking down the hallway of a high school to meet with the teacher of my live-in sexual obsession, here’s your answer. Yeah. I do. The fact that I’ve rescheduled back to back overseas phone calls in order to fit this parent-teacher conference into my day doesn’t help, either. After holding Veda in my arms through the night, listening to her breathe and murmur nonsense, my thigh wedged firmly between her legs, I didn’t even hesitate before setting aside my professional responsibilities.