Sugar Daddy (33 page)

CEO Radaman-Slaughter

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*laughs* Me naked gonna make you feel better?

No. You spreading your legs and opening yourself, pretending my fingers are fucking your lush pussy will. Clothes off, sit down, legs over the armrest. Touch your pretty tits for me. Now.

You following directions for me, darlin?

Reardon Boone

CEO Radaman-Slaughter

Sent from my iPhone

Yes! Ohhhthisnfjdkhf!.?!!

Damn. Calling you now.

Reardon Boone

CEO Radaman-Slaughter

Sent from my iPhone

When AT&T said reach out touch someone, they weren’t fucking kidding.

* * * *

Palmer took me to dinner at the incredibly swank downtown restaurant, Circa 1886, to be followed by a night in the even more expensive adjoining inn.

It was so completely unlike him–not to mention the entire outing would probably blow close to a mortgage payment–I had to bite my tongue, remembering the old adage about the gift horse and the big mouth.

Looking at him while he sat on one of the oval-backed chairs with a full dinner service laid in front of him, I suffered the grief of losing him, the regret of how I’d gone about it. Cleanly shaved, his jaw and cheeks were sharp and pink. His hair shone in a long flaxen ponytail. Catching my eye, he fiddled with the wine list and shrugged self-deprecatingly.

The sommelier decanted the wine for his approval and he wrinkled his nose and sniffed suspiciously before downing it in one with a slight nod to the server.

Left alone, I touched his knuckles. “You can order a beer, you know.”

“Yeah, but they’re all foreign made.”

I laughed, until my giggles petered out, and we were left with a four-course dinner to survive. Silence filled the gaps between the wait staff coming and going bearing unpronounceable dishes arranged in some sort of minimal artsy-fartsy manner.

“This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have brought you here.” He focused on his napkin, the crisp clean linen too pretty to use.

“No, it’s lovely. Don’t apologize, Palmer, let’s just enjoy our meal.”

He attempted to make conversation. “How’s the job going?”

I swallowed with difficulty. “Good, yeah. I do a lot of...filing.”

Constance peeped from under the tablecloth,
having a fling, you mean.

I gave her a good, swift kick.

“Agrees with you, this workin’ thing.” Palmer smiled quizzically at me.

“It’s okay.”

“Your dress is attractive.” A faint blush colored his cheeks. “Yeah, you look good.”

Oh, Palmer.

I reached over, softly patting his hand. “Thank you.”

We relaxed enough to finish dinner without the usual tension, even sharing a few jokes and laughs, as though we were old acquaintances trading small talk. But up in the B&B–in our room filled with chintz and antiques and ruffles–the bed taunted rather than tempted.

We hadn’t slept in the same bed in over a month and, horribly, the idea of doing so made me feel like I was cheating on Reardon.

Turning to the bathroom, Palmer meant to hide his drooping mouth. The sloop in his shoulders all but shouted he was giving up when he cast back, “I’ll take the couch.”

I wanted to tell him to take me home, but I couldn’t. We spent the night like we spent our days. We inhabited the same room but were so far apart, our hearts in such disrepair they could never realign.

Palmer had lost sight of me, and Reardon was only beginning to discover me.

The disparity was stark and troubling.

* * * *

“Dress down,” Reardon said when he called to arrange our reunion after his trip abroad.

“No skirts?”

“No.”

“What about…” I whispered, “my underthings?”

“Go without.”

Typical.
But highly unlikely.

“Tall spiky heels?”

He growled. “Shay, much as I like you in a pair of nice heels and nothing else, I had planned on doing more than simply taking you to bed.”
Bummer.
“So stop toying with me, and do what I ask.”

Oooh, the return of Mr. Bossy Boone.

“Well, you know what they say about best laid plans.” I was giddy by the time our call ended.

I met him at Walterboro Motorsports, parking beside a humongous pickup truck decked out with wheels that topped my chest and massive fog lights strapped to the Oh Shit bar on top.

I barely got out of the Honda before his arms surrounded me, and Reardon swept me off my feet. “I missed you.” He sunk his face to my neck, spinning me around.

I grinned, swelling with pride at this man who couldn’t keep his hands off me. “You look good, baby.”

“You want to tell me why I couldn’t get in touch with you the other night?” Holding my chin, he searched my eyes.

Hell no, I didn’t want to tell him, but he wouldn’t let me squirrel away. I figured I should come clean with someone in my life. “Palmer took me out to dinner.”

The easy confidence he had in any setting from boardroom to bedroom to big-time soiree drained away. Jaw tight, lips hardly moving, eyes on the ground, he asked, “Anything else?”

“He sprang for a night at Wentworth Mansion.”

He turned his back.

Pushing myself in front of him, I grabbed his hands. “Nothing happened, baby. We haven’t had sex of any kind in over a year, and we certainly didn’t end the drought that night. It was uncomfortable, and this whole damn thing I gotta deal with is...it’s unfortunate. It is heartbreaking for me and Palmer. And it’s over. He took the sofa, I had the bed. We checked out as soon as the sun rose.”

Eager for truth, he searched my face. “It’s just–”

“I know.” My kisses were buoyant, down his cheek to his jaw, along to his strong chin.

He dipped his knees and dipped his head and let me lavish his lips until the weight that began our kiss became light enough to part us with smiles.

“You gonna tell me what we’re doing here?” The motor-cross track beckoned with the wail of dirt bikes and shouts of mud-crusted riders.

Strapping a helmet on my head, he gave my rear a quick squeeze, then motioned to two four-wheelers Junior drove off a trailer. “Which one do you want?”

Bubbles of laughter erupted from me. “Why? You gonna drive the pink one if I choose differently?”

He shrugged, his shoulders lifting to his ears.

“When did you get it all girlied-up?” I pointed to the pale pink and gray camo ATV.

“Had it for a while.”

“Uh huh. How long of a while?”

“Junior picked it up from detailing yesterday.” He didn’t look a damn bit chagrined.

“I love it.”

“You do?”

“’Course. C’mon. You gotta know by now the way to every girl’s heart is a custom camouflaged four-wheeler.”

Lowering himself into the leather saddle of his ride, he pulled me across for a kiss exactly when I pushed against his chest. “You know, I’m still not letting you off about that bonus stuff.”

He was one hundred percent pure wicked, sitting there with legs spread as if over a pommel. His hand braced on the throttle, gunning the motor and shredding the swamp as if to deafen my hassling. An old light blue tee over jeans sat low on his hips, he hadn’t shaved in a day or two, and his perfectly overripe lips made my legs quake.

Biceps punching up, his forearms burdened under lean muscles. “What you gonna do about it?”

“Haven’t decided yet,” I said tartly.

He gave me the Boone brow.

“Maybe I’ll give it to Junior.”

“You accept one dime from Shay, and I’ll fire you!” He hollered to Junior.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would,” Reardon dared me.

“Then I’d give him all my paychecks.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“And you are insufferable.” I crawled onto his lap, pulling his bottom lip between mine and stuffing my hands into his hair. His groan melded with my moan. Letting go, I suckled his kiss-swollen lips from one corner to the other. “And sexy, and crazy hot stuff.”

Reardon brought it on with a swat to my bottom. “Why don’t we settle this over a race?”

Enveloped by the lingering musk of his cologne de man–the scent of cedar and seashores–I mounted my four-wheeler, taking off in a cascade of dirt and my own challenge, “Think you can keep up?”

We dodged through pine and saw palm, weaving under glossy green leaves dappled with sunlight and thorny bracken seeking to waylay us. More than a handful of squirrels lifted onto hind legs at our approach before skedaddling into the underbrush, tails bushy, weasel eyes wide.

Reardon was hell bent on overtaking me as we crested a small hill, but I gunned the engine and hunkered low so clumps of mud spun behind me. “Eat my dust!”

Glimpsing back, I caught his grin and wink, then the defiant determination of his expression. Around the far edge of a brackish swamp, he made his move, cutting across the water, skirting cypress knees, a field of lily pads parting before him.

Gearing down, he idled ahead, waiting. “Any further and we’re gonna end up in the Ashepoo River.”

“Well, I’m filthy as sin, but I don’t much feel like a swim right now.”

He reached across and dabbed a smear of crud on my cheek. “You’re good at off-roading.”

“Compliments will get you everywhere.”

“Rematch?”

“You want me to kick your ass for you this time?”

His laugh lit his eyes and put the cute dimples in his cheeks, and his smile lasted the entire ride back to the main arena, even though I wiped the floor with him.

He left his ATV running and loped to me. In a hurry, he unbuckled my helmet, tossed it aside. He bent me over backward, his mouth thoroughly finding mine, tongue swirling inside, roughly massaging mine.

As he straightened, he lifted me off the seat.

Twirling my fingers through his hair, I murmured, “Off-roadin’ get you hot, baby?”

“You do, mud and all.” He tugged my earlobe between his teeth, scraping me across his thick erection. “Besides, it’s been a damn long three weeks, Shay. Can’t wait to get you naked.”

“Mmm, I do believe I offered already.”

He and Junior hosed down the vehicles while I lounged against the tailgate with a cold beer after commandeering the hose for a quick rinse-off. A popular place to ride, the obstacle course and tracks were overrun by families and couples and friends out for an afternoon of trail blazing.

The excellent sight of Reardon and half a dozen other men getting all wet, cleaning off four-wheelers and dirt bikes, was deeply engrossing.

Hmm, now that’s what I called a wet t-shirt contest.

A pair of strong arms encompassed me from behind, a cool, damp chest pressing against me. My yelp turned into a whimper as Reardon made his way up my neck to my earlobe with his tongue. “Enjoying the view, are you?”

Swiveling my bottom into his hips, I sighed. “People watchin’.”

“That what it’s called now?”

No, it was called perving on the pretty boys, but I wasn’t about to admit that.

Setting off down the other side of my neck, his open-mouthed kisses made my eyes shut and my lips part. “You like a dirty guy, then?”

I nodded.

“In that case, I got something to show you.”