I tip the waiter an extra chunk of change and give him a look to go away. He glances at the cash I’ve palmed him, gives me a look, and seems to get the idea. He leaves. “Let’s get out of here,” I say, reaching for Carrie’s hand. “We have plans before we leave.” I lower my voice for her ears only. “I need you naked and on my tongue right now.”
Her cheek flushes pink, and holy hell that little shy moment has me so damn hot and hard I might have to take her to the bathroom. “Reid Maxwell.”
At the sound of my name, I glance up to find a tall, dark-haired man with wild, curly dark hair, and brown hawk eyes. “Eli Matthews,” I say. “I didn’t know you had left your tower in the city.”
“One could say the same of you.” He glances expectantly at Carrie and I grind my teeth and force myself to face facts. Eli could be useful. We aren’t leaving.
“Carrie, this is Eli Matthews, as you already heard. We went to college together and you should care about him because he’s half the asshole I am, filthy rich, and connected.”
“Oh,” Carrie says, laughing. “At least you’re only half the asshole. And rich and connected works for my line of business.”
“Which is what?” Eli asks.
“Sit down,” I order. “The wine we were drinking is expensive, just like you like it. I’ll order another bottle. Unless you’re tied up.”
He glances at Carrie’s mouth and I want to punch the asshole. “I just finished up a meeting,” he says, grabbing a chair. “I’ll stay.”
He’s across from Carrie and next to me. I motion to the waiter, order the wine, and then as the waiter steps away, I lean in close to Eli. “There’s nothing but money at this table for you.”
He eases back to give me a surprised look. “That’s new for you.”
I don’t acknowledge that comment. I ease back into my seat fully, settle my hand on Carrie’s leg and give her my attention. She gives me a curious look, but then her hand covers mine and understanding settles in those beautiful eyes. “Is time an issue? We have to get to your sister’s party. We could let him know the details, and see if he fits later.”
She’s coy. She’s just told him that she’s with me and made him think we have a big opportunity that we might not let him in on. “I know how you are,” I say. “You like to trust people you do deals with. Eli is honorable.”
She hesitates for a few beats and then looks at him. “Then it’s nice to meet you, Eli.”
For the next hour and a half, we talk to Eli about his company, where West Enterprises is headed, and a potential Asian investment, holding back Grayson’s involvement. When I finally draw the line on time, Carrie has charmed Eli, who’s a little too attentive to her as far as I’m concerned, but he’s also pledged to open his wallet, and since he wants to impress her as well, I know we’ll be hearing from him. Carrie is happy and excited by the time we’re in the car and rushing to grab our bags.
Once the driver sets us in motion, I pull her close and whisper in her ear, “Eli wants to fuck you.”
She leans in close, twisting toward me, her hands resting on my chest and my upper thigh, her lips at my ear. “I want to fuck you.”
My cock twitches and she presses her hand over it, stroking the hard line of my now throbbing erection. She’s teasing me because she thinks we don’t have time for this, but she’s wrong. The motherfucking chopper can wait. I cannot. I cup her face and pull her mouth to mine, nip her lips and kiss her. She doesn’t hesitate. She kisses me back, hungry, just as damn hot as I am. She’s in jeans but I don’t let that deter me. We’re behind the driver’s seat, and I mold her close, stroking her breast.
She catches my hand, but when she would pull it away, I slide my hand under her T-shirt and tear down the top of her bra to pinch her nipple. She buries her face in my neck. “Stop.”
But I don’t. I won’t ever stop where this woman is concerned. I stroke the line of her sex through her jeans and squeeze her breast. “Reid,” she hisses and I kiss her, a deep stroke of tongue against tongue, and she arches against my hand on her breast and between her legs.
The car halts at the cottage and I tear my mouth from hers. “We’re here.”
Her teeth scrape her bottom lip. “Thank God,” she whispers, reaching for the door.
I catch her hand, delaying her escape, while I pat the driver’s seat. “We’ll be twenty minutes.”
The driver smartly says nothing. He lifts a hand in compliance and now I scoot Carrie out of the car, shutting the door behind us and folding our elbows; pulling her close to me. “Do you know what happens when you tease me?”
“You get hard and hot and I get all the rewards?”
Well, she’s not wrong on that, but she left something out that she won’t leave out next time. I unlock the front door and pull her inside, and before she can get away, it’s shut again, and she’s facing it, her hands on the door. I step into her, my hands on her hips, my lips at her ear. “You get punished.” I reach around and cup her breast.
“Is this supposed to be punishment?” she asks, all but daring me to go further but I don’t need a dare. She’s my woman now and I feel the edge of telling her about the war between our fathers. I feel the need to ensure that when she walks into that party tonight, she feels owned. She feels like she belongs to me and with me. Fuck. I need to feel like I own her and can’t lose her.
I reach around her and unbutton her jeans, dragging the zipper down. Her pants follow and when I would slide them all the way down, I don’t. I tangle them at her knees, and move to her side, my hand on her naked backside, which is naked because she’s not wearing any panties. I cup her backside and her sex at the same time. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?”
“Punish me,” she says, looking at me. “I know what you’re going to do, but do it naked.”
I smack her backside, just a light smack. “I’m not getting naked. Not now.” I slip my fingers along her clit, flicking it back and forth.
She pants, a sexy, raspy drive-me-out-of-my-fucking-mind sound that has my cock throbbing against my zipper. “I’m going to spank you. For teasing me. For making me watch Eli flirt with you.”
“I don’t want Eli. Not even a little bit.”
“I know that.” I slide fingers inside her. “That doesn’t mean I liked how he looked at you. I’m the only man who gets to fuck you now.”
“You are. You are the only man, so do it. Why aren’t you—”
“It’s not time.” I smack her backside and this time not gently.
“Reid,” she pants out.
I spank her again and my fingers move inside her, my thumb stroking her clit. I pat her backside now, fast but not hard, working that friction against that of my hand stroking her to orgasm. “Oh God,” she whispers. “Reid, I need—”
I spank her again because that’s what she needs. I figured that out the first time I spanked her. She likes it. It’s an escape, a release, the one time she doesn’t have to think. So I give it to her. Harder this time. Not once. Not twice. Three times and she locks up around my fingers, spasming into orgasm, her entire body quaking. I wrap my arm around her waist, twisting her around to face me, my mouth coming down on hers, my fingers easing as I sense she needs them to ease until she collapses into me. I turn her and press against the door, giving her that extra support as I pull up her pants.
“What are you doing?”
“We have a chopper to catch.”
“No, we didn’t—”
I cup her face. “We will, but we’re waiting.”
“I don’t want to wait.” She presses her hand to my erection. “And you don’t want to wait.”
I inhale on the need burning through me and catch her hand. “It’ll be better because we waited. And believe me, I need to be thinking about fucking you when we’re at that party. I’ll need to fuck you when it’s over.”
Her expression softens instantly. “Talk to me. Tell what that means.”
My hands go to the door on eith
er side of her. “It means we’ll fuck and talk afterward.”
“You’ll talk to me.”
“Yes, Carrie. I will talk to you and only you.”
“Reid—”
I tangle fingers in her hair and kiss her. “Whatever you’re going to say, say it when we’re naked and in my bed later tonight. Okay?”
She studies me a moment before her fingers find my jaw. “Yes. Okay.” She presses to her toes, pushes her lips to my lips and kisses me before whispering, “Right after we fuck whatever this is out of your system. And in case you were wondering, I love everything you do to me.”
Holy hell, this woman is trying to make me fuck her right now. No. She’s trying to make me fall in love with her.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Reid
The ride is short and loud, which allows me time to get inside my own head when I’d rather be in Carrie’s. I’m thinking about family, both hers and mine. They’ve brought us together in ways that Carrie doesn’t even know and I’m hoping like hell that I’m right and my siblings will help ensure my father doesn’t tear us apart. Cat and Carrie really are alike in many ways, most especially in how unlike our fathers they are. I need Carrie to know that while my father might be the patriarch of the Maxwell clan, it’s Cat who’s at our core, leading the way to change. Ironically, and not in my favor, it’s Cat who would call me the most like my father, which makes my strategy today a dangerous one.
Once we’re on the ground, I help Carrie out of the chopper, lifting her off the ramp and setting her on the tarmac, but I don’t let her go. I don’t want to let her go. Wind gushes, and her long brown hair blows into her face. I brush it away, barely recognizing the tenderness in the act as within my capacity, but like Cat in different ways, Carrie’s changing me and I’m not sure that’s good for her. My past is still my past. What I learned from that is still what I learned. And yet, I can’t turn back. That means I need to protect Carrie. I will protect her.
“Talk to me,” Carrie says, her hands settling on my face. “What are you thinking right this minute?”
“That you should run away, and yet if you try, I’ll just come after you.”
One of the airport staff chooses that moment to step to our side. “We have paperwork for you to fill out, sir, just inside.”
I kiss Carrie and lace the fingers of one hand with hers. “More later,” I promise, both dreading and looking forward to the moment I clear the air with her to every extent possible.
Once we’re inside the terminal, I release Carrie to sign the necessary paperwork. I’m just turning to reach for her when she grabs my hand, and the intimacy and comfort level this action suggests in her and between us, washes over me as unfamiliar but not unwelcome. I want her to be comfortable with me. I want her to be in this with me. “Everything okay?” she asks, and the concern in her eyes says that she’s not talking about the document or the airport attendant.
“You’re going to be in my bed tonight,” I say. “So yes, everything’s fucking fabulous.” I kiss her hand and start to walk, but she tugs against me and steps in front of me.
“Is there something I need to know right now?”
“Everything is fucking fabulous,” I repeat, avoiding a direct answer, or a lie, to slide my arm around her and set us back in motion. And I am fucking fabulous and I’ll stay that way as long as she doesn’t turn the war between our fathers into a war between us. I sense her desire to push me for more, but she already knows me well enough to know now isn’t the time to push. I’ve never let anyone close enough to read me that well, to know me that well. But then, she doesn’t know everything about me. She doesn’t know how easily she really can hate me and I don’t want her to know.
Exactly why when we settle into a hired car, I pull her close where I plan to keep her the rest of the night, my hand on her knee, our legs aligned. The car begins to move and I’m relieved when Carrie and I fall into a comfortable silence, both of us deep in our own thoughts; hers most likely trying to figure me out, while mine are all about what she knows, needs to know, and cannot know, at least through me.
We’re nearly to my sister’s place when the growling of her stomach erupts into the silence. “I didn’t come close to eating all of my food.” She laughs, a soft, sexy and yet somehow sweet sound that drags me out of the hell of my thoughts and into the moment with her. “I’m starving,” she announces. “In case you didn’t notice.”
“I did, in fact, notice,” I say, and remarkably, just this easily, I’m laughing as well. “They’ll be food at the party, but we can order food at my place where I want you right now.” My fingers flex on her knee and the driver manages to stop at our destination at that very moment. “But that will have to wait. We’re here.” I tap the driver’s seat. “I’ll text you before we come down.”
“Yes sir,” the man replies, and I open my door, exit, and help Carrie out as well.
“I’ve been to the bar inside this building,” she says, surveying our location. “It’s a hot legal spot. No wonder your sister, the crime writer, and her attorney husband live here.”
I open the door to the building for her. “Reese chose this location. He was here first.”
“Cat moved in with him then?” she ask as we cross the lobby.
Seeing an opportunity to show the divide between my father and the rest of us, I share with Carrie what I would no one else. “When Cat met Reese she was living in the apartment our mother left her. Reese’s mother moved into Cat’s place a few years back.”
She casts me a sideways look. “How do you feel about that?”
We stop at the elevators and I punch the call button. “According to my mother’s letter, she went there to get away from my father,” I say. “I don’t want any part of a place where she suffered. So how do I feel about Reese’s mother being there? Happy that Cat’s out of there and with someone that isn’t like my father.”
“I love the way she covers his cases when he’s at trial, like now actually. I’ve been reading about his recent murder trial in her column. I think I, like so many others, are looking for the inside scoop.” She meets my stare and asks, “Do you read her column?”
“Yes, but if you tell her that, she won’t believe you.”
The elevator doors open and we enter. I punch in our floor and the doors shut. Carrie steps in front of me, her hand on my chest. “I don’t know why you and Cat are broken, but if that’s why you’re on edge right now, I get it. If had to go to a party with my brother, I’d be just as tense as you are right now.”
“You know how Cat feels, Carrie. Because your brother and I are alike. I’m the ass in this equation.”
“Why?”
“Because it felt like the right thing to do.”
Her brow furrows. “I don’t understand.”
My jaw sets hard. “You don’t need to know that part of me. Ever. Because I’m not driving you toward hate, remember?”
“You’ve mistaken me for someone who wears rose-colored glasses. I know how hard you are. I also know that’s not all you are.”
She’s right. It’s not, but that doesn’t make what’s there good and right either. I turn her toward the door and pull her against me, my lips at her ear. “You’ve mistaken me for someone who deserves you,” I say. “I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not letting you go. That’s the kind of asshole I am. I’m also the asshole who’s going to cuff you to my bed and keep you there this weekend if you go home with me.”
“Cuffs will require negotiation in advance,” she says as the elevator halts and then opens.
“I’ll negotiate with my tongue.”
“While using it to talk,” she retorts without missing a beat and then tries to dart forward.
I hold onto her, but I walk us both into the hallway and pull her to me as we start down the long hall. “You aren’t going to ask what I want to trade for those cuffs?”
“Not until you’re naked and I’m holding the cuffs.”
??
?Those negotiation terms could work for me if you’re naked as well.”
And there it is. Exactly what I have to do to keep this woman: bare it all. She told me just last night she wants no secrets and lies between us, and the problem is that there will always be a secret between us.
If I don’t deal with that, it will destroy us. The hammer will not fall without me in control. I won’t let it.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Reid
We stop at Cat and Reese’s door and right after I ring the bell, Carrie says, “She’ll believe you if you tell her.”
I don’t have to ask what she means. She’s talking about me reading Cat’s column. She’s talking about me pulling the walls down with Cat the way I am with her. She’s pushing me to forget all the reasons I have lived alone and kept everyone, including Cat, at a distance. “It’s complicated, Carrie. Really fucking complicated.”
“And regret is unforgiving.”
Now she’s talking about my mother and the regret I have for not seeing all there was to see with her and my father, but I’m thinking about the regret I already have with her. The door opens and Carrie whirls around as Gabe appears in the doorway. And damn it, he’s paired his black jeans with a black T-shirt that reads Maxwell, Maxwell, and Maxwell, which drives home the connection between us and our father.
I pull Carrie close, holding on, rejecting regret. Gabe looks at me, narrowing his eyes at me, understanding in their depths that his words don’t match. “Holy hell,” he says. “You came.” He glances at Carrie. “And you came.” He winks, acting like the player he pretends to be, his way of keeping everyone at a distance. He’s a loner, just like me, and no one ever knows the real him any more than they know me. Until Carrie.
He backs up and motions us forward. “This way to the party.”
My hand settles at Carrie’s back and I urge her forward, resisting the urge to leave, and reminding myself that the best way for Carrie to see the disconnect between us and my father is to get to know my family, Cat especially. Of course, Cat hating me doesn’t exactly help my case, but I’ll make it work.