Taking the Score (15 page)

“Brody, that’s—damn it—I can’t…” Her thighs were shaking, the pleasure they were giving each other too much for her to bear. He took control, holding her in place for the tongue-fuck to end all tongue-fucks, until finally she shuddered her release.

He opened the drawer of his desk where Flynn’s gifts usually ended up and pulled out a condom. Ribbed, XL, strawberry flavored. He rolled it over his stiff cock and with one swift move, pulled her down on him where she belonged to the tune of her heartfelt groan.

Need for her had its claws in him. Her sheath tightened and grabbed hold as she moved up and down slowly, luxuriously, finding her pleasure with every smooth stroke. Her beautiful tits teased, and he latched on to one tight bud. Sucked and sipped at all that sweetness. He fed on the hot silk of her perfect skin, all while telling his balls to behave.

With each pump of his hips, he took her to the crystalline edge of pleasure, flirted with it, then pulled back. Her velvet muscles squeezed, compelling him to lose the race, but he wouldn’t give in. His control was absolute.

Or, so he thought.

She stopped moving, stopped squeezing, just plain stopped time. The stillness wrapped in her heat was a revelation, the gift of her even more so. Those stunning blue eyes sealed his in their tractor beam.

“Just—just let go, Brody. Don’t fight me on this.”

He wasn’t fighting, he was fucking, but something in her eyes relaxed every muscle in his body except the only one that mattered. The one created to give her pleasure.

“Emma.”

Using her first name dropped him out of the boss-assistant fantasy, but he didn’t care. With her, he was stripped of those labels, peeled back to the essence. Just himself.

And she was Emma.
His
Emma.

Her body started to shake as if the mere thought of surrender—his, hers, who the hell knew?—had triggered her release. And that set off his own, a domino explosion that ripped through his cock and emptied inside her. On and on, a series of jerky thrusts until he had nothing left to give. She had taken it all.

They remained connected to each other, okay with being quiet.

“I’ll get right on those reports now, shall I, Mr. Kane?” she whispered against his lips.

He laughed, enjoying that immensely. Enjoying her, and the person he was becoming with her.

Chapter Fifteen

Brody knew he shouldn’t have come into the office. But he’d needed to pick up the latest contracts sitting on his desk, and a visit late on a Thursday night seemed like a safe enough bet. He just hadn’t reckoned on Flynn.

What he saw on his friend’s face as he stood at the door pinned him back. The guy looked like the apocalypse had landed on his head then backed up and rolled over to make sure he was decimated.

“You look like shit.”

“Becca dumped me.”

Hell, no. “You mean you had a fight?”

“Nope, I mean she dumped my sorry ass four months before I was supposed to scoot it down the freakin’ aisle.”

Given his own history, Brody had to ask, though it pained him to do it. “Is there someone else?”

Flynn came in and collapsed in a sprawl on the sofa. “Not me, and she didn’t say. Just that I’m not serious enough for the life she wants to live. Something about not being a big-picture guy. What the fuck does that mean?”

Brody had no idea. He’d given up trying to figure out what women wanted years ago. These days, he had better luck with cats. Flynn did have a man-ho past that might give any woman pause, but since meeting Becca, a doctor finishing up her residency in Houston, he’d settled down.

“This can’t be it, Flynn. Give her time to think about it.”

Flynn stared at the floor awhile, gave a curt nod that seemed to signal a decision had been made, and rose to leave. Good talk.

At the door, he stopped and turned. “So you banged a stripper and got yourself a cat?”

Brody crossed his arms and glared, any sympathy for his pal fading fast.

“Considering you and my sister seem to despise each other, you spend an awful lot of time chitchattin’ like teens at the high school lockers.”

“Did she say that? She despises me?” Strangely, Flynn looked bothered by this.

“You do remember that you teased her mercilessly when she was a kid?”

“Just followin’ your lead. Standard big brother position description.” Flynn pointed accusingly. “And stop tryin’ to change the subject. Your sister is worried that a stripper has gotten her painted toes under the Kane jewel-encrusted table. So I have to ask if this has anything to do with the strip club I steered you toward the other night, because my intention was not to throw you in the path of an exotic dancer, it was to—”

“Hook me up with my assistant?”

Flynn threw up his hands. “Yes, you idiot! Are you tellin’ me that you hit on a stripper while Emma, the woman who has been moonin’ over you for months, was serving drinks? Not even you could be that fuckin’ clueless.”

“Flynn—”

“Oh, I see. Your ethical boundary shit won’t let you cross a line with Emma, but you’re fine with doin’ the nasty with a stripper? When you gave that spiel to Hunter after he hired Tess to be his fiancée, I had no idea you actually believed your own bullshit.”

Self-recrimination boiled in his gut. That was exactly the line he’d given Hunter when their partner paid his actress-nemesis Tess to be his weekend fiancée with the full intention of having sex with her. The money exchange had set off alarm bells in Brody’s brain and he’d let Hunter know. Was smug about it, too. Now what the hell was the difference between that and the advantage he was taking of Emma?

She was flirting with the poverty line, and he was demanding she fuck his face. Good Christ, what kind of asshole did that?

“Emma is my assistant, is all. As for Chardonnay—”

“Her name’s Chardonnay?” Flynn shook his head in wonder. “What’s the cat called? Pinot Freakin’ Noir?”

Because Flynn’s reaction to Emma’s stripper name was bordering on priceless, Brody continued to layer on the crazy. “Chardonnay was visiting last night and her cat, Kevin, was sick so she couldn’t leave him.”

“Kevin? Chardonnay?” Flynn rested his hands on his hips. “What the hell is going on here, dude?”

Brody had no idea. His well-ordered and structured life, which he had largely attributed to Ms. Strickland, had started to unravel. A state of affairs he largely attributed to Emma/Chardonnay. The same woman who, in her multiple guises, had the power to make or break him. It sounded like some weird space-time continuum paradox that the Doctor would have a hard time getting his Time Lord brain around.

Brody knew he should be working on finding her a new place—he was a property baron after all—but he liked the idea of coming home to her.

Liked it a little too much.

He looked skyward, wondering what she was doing right now.

It might be best if he spent some time away from her. His penthouse apartment had always felt like a glass prison, a strange kind of comfort. Emma’s presence, and he hated to say it, but Kevin’s, too, was dangerous. The two of them were turning his prison into a home.

Any normal guy would appreciate that, but Brody wasn’t normal and neither was he looking for it. He’d tried building a white picket fence for Kerry, but she’d taken a big old ax to it.
Chop, chop, say good-bye to that cozy future you dreamed of.

Time to be a good pal—and if it meant he forgot his own problems for a while, even better. “Let’s go get trashed.”

…

Emma had just sat down with a PB&J sandwich and a glass of milk when her phone buzzed with another call from Ray, the fifth since yesterday. He’d left three messages, his thinly veiled threats escalating with each one.

Shaking, she dialed in and listened to his voicemail.

Emma, it’s time you gave me an update on how you’re doing with Kane. Don’t make me wait.
The terminating
click
sounded like the drop of a guillotine.

She’d always enjoyed poetry in school, and one line had stuck with her through the years:
Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.
Surveying the living room, she marveled at how she could be surrounded by all this wealth and it was useless to her.

Brody would help if she asked. He’d already given Ray three thousand for her “time.” For her safety. But even she knew that asking him for a loan or an advance (a $16,000 advance—
sheesh!)
was outside the bounds of the standard boss/employee relationship. Owing him more than she already did would introduce an undeniable sleaziness to their already skating-on-the-edge dynamic. It was bad enough they couldn’t keep their hands off each other; add money to the mix and it took on the color of “kept woman.” It would damn any chance they had.

Hold up there, Strickland.
The sheer ridiculousness of that notion pulled her up short. Chance of what? This was merely a flash fire of lust brought on by proximity and circumstance.

But she made him laugh.

And he made her feel lighter than she had in years. Kevin liked him, too. He hadn’t left a single “gift” in Brody’s closet in days.

The happiness of her cat should not be the yardstick by which she measured her hopes and dreams. Instead of scanning apartment listings she couldn’t afford, she needed to figure out her next move. Could Katerina help? Someone else at Score Property? Her phone buzzed again. This time the message was in video format.

Dread soaking her chest, she pressed play and her stomach gave a slow, sick spin. She should have known there was more than one camera in that room. More fool her for thinking that her special moment with Brody at the club could slip under the radar. She’d been living her whole life under the radar, and the one time she stuck up her head, the one time she faced the sun, it spat on her.

The video picked up about halfway to the finish line. Brody was already inside her, balls-deep in her body, and every pump of his hips on camera was answered by a corresponding pull between her legs in the present.

God, the man was magnificent.

Even through his suit jacket, the muscles of his back stretched taut and his steel ass flexed with the effort of giving her the fuck of the century. And while no one could ever own up to enjoying their sex face, Emma had to admit that having her brains banged out was a damn good look on her. No sound, but her thundering heart and the pulse between her thighs supplied the soundtrack of grunts, groans, sighs, and desperate begging.

The phone rang and she jumped. Fucking Ray. Knowing that she couldn’t bury her face in the plush shag of the penthouse forever, she answered.

“Your week with Kane is almost up. What have you got?”

“Hello to you, too, Ray,” she said, all bravado.

“Don’t get smart.”

She swallowed, hating how he made her feel like dirt. Hating that she let him. “He’s rich, boring, clean as a whistle.”
And I’m a little bit crazy about him.
“Not seeing how I can turn this around, Ray.”

“He’d pay your debt if you asked him to, but that seems like chicken feed compared to what you could get from him. His father is a powerful senator. His sister is about to marry a conservative congressman. I doubt he’d want that video getting out. Would probably pay a fortune to keep it under wraps.”

“It’s not as if
he’s
going into politics. He won’t care that he’s been filmed putting it to a stripper. He’s from Texas. He’d probably get a medal for demonstrating his red-blooded all-Americanness.”

She suspected Brody would care a whole lot, but not because his thrust-and-spill was on camera. No, he would care because it would look like she’d set him up.

“You’d better think of something, Emma. Pin in the condom—that’s what women still do to trap men, right?”

“I’m not getting knocked up,” she gritted out. “Like I said, he’s harmless. Not even that good in the sack. Even with a hole the size of Texas in the condom, his little swimmers probably wouldn’t make it.” Never mind that one look at his chest, and her uterus screamed to be filled now.

Ray’s laugh was all villainy. “Oh, how the high and mighty have fallen. I think you need to consider your position. Broke, homeless—” At her hitched breath, he continued. “Yeah, you didn’t think I knew about that and guess what else I know. You work for him. You’ve already laid the groundwork here to get him to pay a fortune with your damsel in distress routine. I want something I can use on Kane, or I’ll start dealing with him directly and the video goes public. You’ve got two days.”

He hung up. Emma stared at the phone for untold seconds, her mind seesawing with panic. And a plan that could be encapsulated in one word:
run.
Grab Kevin, pick up Daisy, and lie low in a swamp in Louisiana or somewhere. Because even if she had the chutzpah to ask Brody to pay off her debt, it wouldn’t be enough for Ray now. The golden egg was too attractive for that prick to pass up.

Damn your pride, girl.
What in the hell use was it to her this minute? She should have confided in Brody sooner—about Daisy, the debt, how Ray wanted her to work him for profit. She could see how that conversation would go now.

Well, it’s like this, babe. Telling you I was stripping to help out my drug addict sister was just
so
embarrassing. Then I didn’t want it to look like I was selling my body for a roof over my head, yanno? But hey, turns out my loan-shark strip-club boss has a video of us doin’ the deed, so maybe you might want to cover my debt after all and throw in a little bonus to keep him from bringing a world of shame down on you and your family. We take Amex and cashier’s checks!

A loud
thud
dumped her out of that nightmare conversation. Emma froze. What if it was Ray, following up on his videogram in person? She quickly dismissed that thought. Not even Ray could get past the doorman on the first floor.

She crept forward, wishing there were a peephole, but that wasn’t really penthouse-door style.

“Brody, open up,” Olivia called out.

Relief flooded her chest and she pulled open the door. “Hey, Brody’s not here.”

Disappointment clouded Olivia’s pretty features, uncertainty that seemed strange on someone so strikingly confident. “Oh, um…” She turned to leave, then seemed to think better of it and stepped inside. “I was hoping to see him. We were supposed to go to dinner tonight but he bailed and he’s not answering his phone.”

“I think he went out with Flynn, one of his business partners.” Brody had actually texted her to say he’d be late because Flynn needed some guy time. That he had bothered to inform her at all had made her chest glow at the domesticity of it all.

Olivia nodded absently, her vacant gaze sharpening as she arced it over the all-white living room. A couple of colorful throws Emma found in one of the guest rooms made it less “padded cell chic.” With Kevin curled up on the sofa, an open book on corporate restructuring Emma had plucked from the library, and her half-eaten PB&J, the space looked positively lived in.

“The white was doing my head in,” Emma offered into the lengthening silence.

“His ex-fiancée decorated it.”

Oh.

Olivia took a seat near Kevin and gave him a rub. He did his usual
who
the fuck are you
hissing thing, but Olivia seemed not to notice.

“He’s like that with everyone at first. He’s only just started to warm up to Brody.” She swallowed her nerves. “Could I get you anything? A drink? A sandwich?”
A knife in case your stabby eyes of death don’t cut it?

Olivia shook her head but otherwise remained silent. Did Emma have to do everything herself, including opening the awkward conversation on her intentions toward the poor defenseless billionaire?

“How would you like to do this? Is there a standard spiel you give to unsuitable women for your brother or do you vary it up depending on the recipient?”

Brody’s sister’s eyes flashed, and her mouth quirked slightly in admiration. So like Brody.

“How long have you known my brother?”

“Subtext: Am I here to bilk him out of everything he owns?” Damn, Chardonnay likely knew shit about “subtext.”

Her gaffe appeared to go unnoticed. “Honey, you could steal a billion dollars and he’d still have billions to spare. I’m not worried about his money. I’m worried about his heart. He had a rough time last year with his ex. She was a money-grubbing ho and she moved on to the next model who had slightly more billions. It crushed him.”