Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Josie

I’m trying really hard to focus on organizing my class schedule, but gifts keep arriving.

It has been a week since my first time with Gunner. Since then, we’ve been meeting at the suite every night at nine o’clock…and I’ve never been so happy. So cherished and safe and excited to wake up in the morning. My body is sated and sore. My heart is blooming with new love and appreciation for the man who is now my sugar daddy.

The man I want to be so much more.

Soon.

Every time we’re together, we become closer.

It’s not just about the raw, filthy sex. Or the fact that we’re addicting to giving and receiving pleasure from one another. No, it’s also about the quiet moments afterwards when he holds me and we talk. About silly things and important ones. Problems that arose during our day apart. Our favorite foods and places in the city and movies.

We are twenty-seven years apart and have different personalities. He’s quiet, stern and I’m outgoing, bubbly. He has a ten-year plan and I barely have a ten-minute plan. But we also have a lot in common. We both love classic seventies rock and even play songs while lying in bed together occasionally. Our favorite place to visit is Barcelona, though we’ve never been there together. And we both have secretly sensitive sides that we keep to ourselves. We share them with each other, though. Gunner doesn’t hide from me and I don’t hide from him.

Well.

Except for a couple of major secrets I’m keeping. But I don’t plan to keep them much longer. Just a little while more. Just until I’m confident he won’t freak out when I tell him I want to be with him. Forever. Without being paid. Without him sending me gift after gift.

Speaking of…

I push back from the desk in my bedroom and flit across the cushy white rug. Sunlight glints off the Olympic-sized swimming pool in the backyard and pours into my room, warming me in my belted robe as I make my way out into the hallway and down the stairs, so I can answer the front door. As recently as a year ago, one of the maids would have answered and informed me of the guest, but they’ve all been released because my father can no longer afford to pay them. I can’t have Paul or any of my friends over—they would notice the lack of help immediately. But compared to our staff losing their income, it’s not a serious hardship, so I don’t complain about not being able to entertain. Besides, if I wasn’t home alone right now, there would be a lot of questions regarding the suited messenger on my front porch holding a shopping bag from Cartier.

“Thank you,” I say, shaking my head while accepting the silver-and-white bag. I’m smiling all the same, though, because I love knowing Gunner is thinking about me.

Over the course of the last week, he’s showered me in jewelry and designer clothing.

Just yesterday, a man arrived with a box containing two sets of keys. One to a Rolls Royce and one to a penthouse apartment, both of which are waiting for me near my college campus. It’s as though I’m right on the cusp of true adulthood and a new life is waiting for me to step into. I don’t want to wait. If possible, I would move out of my parents’ house today, but I have another month before I’m scheduled to move out. Eventually, I’ll have to answer questions about my new lifestyle, but I’d like to delay that as long as possible. There’s no way I want to rock the boat when everything is so perfect. When my evenings belong to Gunner, just like I’ve been dreaming about for so long.

I bring the Cartier bag into my bedroom and close the door, pulling out boxes one by one and gasping over the contents. A sapphire necklace, a diamond choker, an array of tennis bracelets and cocktail rings that must have cost him a small fortune.

I’ve just finished closing the final box when my phone rings.

Gunner.

Just like that, my body turns to molten liquid, my erogenous zones pulsing at the memory of how he took me last night, my palms flat on the panoramic window, dressed in nothing but five-inch heels while he grunted and groaned, thrusting ferociously into me from behind, the force of his drives lifting me off the ground.

Now, I roll over onto my back and let the silk material of my robe fall open. “Papa,” I whisper into the receiver. “I miss you.”

His breath is unsteady in my ear. “I miss you, too, baby. Did you get your presents?”

“Yes. Thank you, Gunner, they’re beautiful. My favorite is the emerald cocktail ring. I’m already wearing it.” I look down at the hand resting on my belly, the huge rock on top. “It matches my panties today.”

“Does it?” Was that the sound of him gulping? “Josie, I don’t think…” His footsteps signal that he’s starting to pace. “I don’t think I can wait until tonight to see you.”

Slowly, I sit up.

This is a first.

Gunner works like a machine during the day, taking endless meetings and phone calls, making large-scale decisions. The fact that he’s stopping in the middle of his work day to call me is unusual in itself, but wanting to see me? That’s definitely unexpected.

And my heart is fluttering up into my throat.

Does this mean his feelings for me are…expanding? Getting more serious?

Don’t make a big deal out of it. “I can bring you lunch, if you want. I’m working on my class schedule, but I still have a few days to finalize. I need every minute of them,” I mutter, wrinkling my nose in the direction of my desk.

“You need help with it?” Gunner asks, then continues briskly. “Bring it with you. We’ll work on it.”

Okay, I can’t just let this go without comment. “You are going to cease conquering the universe in the middle of a weekday to help me with my class schedule?”

“Of course I am.” He pauses for an extended moment. “Josie…I am aching.”

My lips part on a silent moan, thighs cinching together. “I ache, too, Papa.”

His breath begins to rattle in my ear. “I’m not just talking about my cock. I’m aching everywhere. My chest, my gut. You’ve…done something to me. I can’t describe it. Since we agreed on you being mine, my world looks different. I’m less cynical. Less impatient with people. I…it’s you, Josie. You’re having this effect on me. And I want to see your beautiful face in the daylight. I want to hold you, make you smile. Do I sound ridiculous?”

“What?” I say breathlessly, my hand pressed to my racing heart. “No. No, you don’t sound ridiculous. You’ve done something to me, too—”

My words are interrupted by a loud knock in the background.

“Goddammit,” says Gunner. “That’s my eleven o’clock meeting.” His voice lowers to a rasp. “You’ll be here at lunchtime?”

“Of course.”

“Thank God. I’m sending a car.”

We hang up and all I can do for several seconds is stare straight ahead, processing everything that just occurred. Everything Gunner said. And then I’m launching myself up off the bed with a squeal and turning in wild circles, arms thrown out at my sides.

It’s starting to happen.

His feelings are beginning to match mine.

I’m his sugar baby, he’s my sugar daddy…but we can be more.

This is proof that he’s starting to want something real with me.

With a happy pinch in my throat, I rush to my closet to find the right outfit for visiting…my future boyfriend? At his office. Something sexy, but shows maturity. Something a wife would wear to have a respectable lunch with her husband, while still wanting to make him salivate. When I spy the black, skintight pencil skirt, I take it off the hanger and match it with black stilettos. A silk, champagne-colored crop top that tucks into the high waisted skirt.

Meeting my eyes in the full-length mirror, I’m surprised to find that, despite my happiness and excitement over the recent developments with Gunner, there’s a line of concern between my brows. Immediately, I know it’s my guilt beginning to weigh on me. Gunner has been so open with me, especially just now on the phone, but I’m keeping important secrets from him? No. I can’t do it anymore. Today, I’ll come clean about everything. My father being broke, the truth behind the email he was sent, my feelings for him.

I’m going to lay all of my cards out on the table.

* * *

Gunner has an armed guard meet me downstairs in the lobby this time.

I’m escorted upstairs and no one is allowed into the elevator with me.

I know he’s just ensuring my safety, but I wonder if he’s aware of how hot it makes me all over, how coveted his protectiveness makes me feel. I’m all but melted against the wall of the elevator, fanning my fevered skin. For someone who claims he wants to see me for more than just sex, he is really trying to get attacked.

We arrive on the top floor and I follow the guard through a sea of curiosity, the traders and market analysts looking up from their desks to watch me walk to their boss’s office. Remembering Gunner’s directive from last time, I don’t make eye contact with any of them, wanting him to be pleased with me.

Wanting to be a good girl from the man who is so good to me.

The guard opens the door for me and I step into the crisp, dark interior of Gunner’s space, the fire crackling straight ahead, his desk to the left. And looking at him, I can tell immediately the eleven o’clock meeting didn’t go like he wanted. His shoulders are all bunched up and he’s frowning at the computer screen, hands balled in fists on the surface of his desk.

But all of that stress visibly melts away when he sees me.

“Josie,” he mouths, pushing back from his desk and standing. “Jesus. Come here.”

I don’t hesitate. I set down my oversized bag containing his lunch and my course paperwork, crossing the floor and walking straight into his arms. Moaning when his hard mouth stamps down over mine, his tongue invading the hollow of my mouth and stroking in, out, in deeper. Our bodies mold together as if magnetized, his hands groping for my ass, lifting me roughly against his growing erection. So good. So perfect, but if we keep this up, I’m going to be bent over the desk within a minute—and I would love every single second. Both of us would. But my heart came here hoping for more. I think Gunner needs more than our physical connection, too, so when the kiss is finished and we break for air, I give him a solemn look and start to loosen his tie.

“I don’t like seeing you so stressed, Papa,” I pout, taking his big hand and guiding him to the desk, pushing him back into his chair. I remove his tie completely, dropping it into a silk pile beside his keyboard, flicking open his top button. With a serious sniff, I collect my bag from the other side of the room and turn, laying out what I brought. “This sandwich has all the vitamin C and magnesium vegetables to help you de-stress.”

He looks dubious. “A vegetarian sandwich?”

“Don’t knock it until you try it. And before you assume I’m putting you on a diet—I am certainty not, I love every sexy inch of you—there is a giant dark chocolate bar in here, too. Also good for destressing.” I trail a finger across his shoulder while circling around the back of him, digging my thumbs into his muscles in a slow, relaxing massage. “Get started. I’ll just be back here making sure my favorite man is taken care of.”

His head drops forward. “Christ, that feels so good, baby.”

My pulse pumps madly, pleasure passing through me in a wave, all the way down to my toes. This is what I want. What I love. Taking care of him in these small but significant ways. He likes to buy me expensive material items and I’m the one who soothes him. Makes him better from behind the scenes. It’s what I’ve longed for since the first time I walked past Gunner’s office and saw him pinching the bridge of his nose, poring over endless paperwork.

After absorbing my touch for several minutes in silence, he takes a bite of the sandwich. “Damn,” he rumbles, examining it. “This isn’t half bad.”

I wiggle my hips triumphantly. “I’m going to have you meditating in no time.”

He glances back at me over his shoulder. “It really bothers you, doesn’t it? Having me so stressed out and overworked?”

Smile fading, I nod, leaning in to kiss his cheek. “I worry. A lot,” I whisper. Wetting my lips, I search for an explanation. “For you, mostly. You work harder than anyone. I was little, my father’s business partner would come to the house for dinner once a week. Bunton was in his fifties, a sweet man. Old-school finance, where my father was the young upstart. And one day, Bunton didn’t come to dinner anymore because the stress gave him a heart attack.” My chest starts to get crowded. “If something like that h-happened to you—”

Gunner turns in his chair and pulls me into his lap. “It won’t, Josie.” He kisses my mouth softly, followed by my forehead. “I won’t let it. I’m…” Pulling back, he seems like he wants to say something important, his complexion reddening slightly. “Let’s just say, my priorities are beginning to…change.” Our eyes meet and the gravity in his pulls me under. “There is more to life than working and making money, isn’t there?”

“Yes,” I whisper, holding my breath.

“I’ve made my fortune. I…have a girl I want to spend it on.” He picks up a strand of my hair and rubs it between his fingers. “A girl I want to spend my time with.”

My heart is poised to rejoice, until I realize…Gunner is already spending his time and money on me. He can have both of those things while I’m his sugar baby. He isn’t saying anything about going public with our relationship or seriously committing. But I refuse to be disappointed. We’ve only had a week since our arrangement started. I’m being greedy by wanting more already. It’s my heart’s fault—it has loved him so long.

“Are you talking about me, by any chance?” I murmur, kissing his jaw flirtatiously.

In lieu of response, Gunner slides something across his desk. A black American Express card. “Does that answer your question, little girl?”

My body has an odd response to Gunner’s newest gift.

At first, my heart sinks, because I thought he was on the verge of confessing real, lasting feelings for me. Instead, he’s giving me a bottomless credit card. But oh…there is something about being spoiled rotten that makes my flesh clench needily. There is something about being the naughty little secret, paid for pleasure, that turns me wet and pliant. My heart and my body are not communicating properly—and unfortunately, right now in this dark office, sitting on the lap of this gorgeous hunk of man, my lady business is winning the battle. Later, I might feel differently, but right now all I can think about is pleasing my overworked sugar daddy. Being his relief, his port in the storm of this cutthroat business.

“Thank you,” I twist my bottom on his erection. “You’re so good to me.”

He exhales in a rush, shaking his head. “You’re much, much better to me.”

I bite my lip and giggle. “Papa, you sound funny.”

Gunner’s gaze flies to mine. My pulse dances dizzyingly, waiting with bated breath for his response. He calls me little girl and I call him Papa. But we’ve never played a game like this. Does he want to? It came so naturally to me, I didn’t have to think about it. What if he thinks I’m weird? Twisted? “Well…” he swallows hard. “You’re getting a little old to sit in Papa’s lap.”

I almost gasp at the inundation of lust that blares through me. What is this? Why does it feel like we’ve been heading here all along? “Why?” I pout. “I like sitting in your lap.”

Gunner tugs on his collar, breathing hard. “Do you feel that…hard bulge underneath you, baby?”

Frowning thoughtfully, I wiggle around, making him hiss a curse. “Uh-huh. What is it?”

“That’s my cock.” His index finger traces a circle on my knee. “It’s getting harder and harder the longer you sit in my lap.”

I giggle again. “Why?”

“It knows you can make it feel good.” Very slowly, he drags my skirt up to mid-thigh, roughly kneading the sensitive inner portion. “All kinds of different ways.”

I try to close my thighs, but he holds them open, pulling my skirt higher until it’s almost exposing my panties. “H-how?”

His breath saws in and out against my ear. “Just play with it a little. You can do that for Papa, can’t you?” His middle finger presses to my entrance through the barrier of my emerald-green underwear. “And I’ll play with this sweet little treasure.”

He gently shifts me to his left thigh, so he can unzip his pants, his erection pushing out, thick and ready, though still trapped inside his black briefs. “I don’t know how, Papa.”

Quickly, he uses the wrist of his sleeve to swipe at the sweat forming on his upper lip. “Stroke it like you would pet a kitten.” Without waiting, he snags my hand and guides it to his arousal, grunting a curse when my touch finds him, testing him curiously. “Don’t you want to see what happens when you pet it long enough, baby?”

I gasp excitedly, my palm beginning to rake up and down his steel shaft. “What happens?” The pads of Gunner’s fingers find my clitoris and I whimper, squirming on his thigh as if confused by the sensation coursing through me. “What’s h-happening to me?”

His mouth is open on my neck, his fingers delving down the front of my panties, parting my wet folds and rubbing, rubbing on that sensitive spot. “When we feel good between our legs, we come, little girl. We release. It’s the best feeling you can have—and do you know what it tastes like when Papa comes from his cock?”

“What?” I ask, wide-eyed, squirming through his touch.

“It tastes like candy.”

I suck in a breath, my legs literally trembling with excitement, my core clenching tighter and tighter with every knowing stroke of his fingers. “Candy?” I slide my hand into his briefs, fisting his bare erection. Pumping my fist up and down the length. “Can I taste some?”

“Only if you’re a good girl,” he says roughly. “Only if you suck as hard as you can and swallow the candy down. All of it.”

“I will, Papa. I promise,” I say solemnly, sliding off his desk to the space between his splayed thighs. This isn’t the first time I’ve taken Gunner into my mouth, but I pretend it is. I examine his swollen inches with youthful apprehension, kissing the trunk cautiously, before closing my mouth over the bulbous head and swirling my tongue around it, experimentally.

“Oh, fuck yes, baby,” he growls, twining his fingers in my hair. “Suck the candy out.”

Flashing him a look that says I’m excited for candy, I pull a significant portion of him into my mouth, fisting the enormous base to hold him steady, stroking upward with a twisting wrist. His huge balls fall through the V of his pants and I take a moment to suck the left one into my mouth, tonguing it lovingly, like he instructed me to do the first time, my hand still riding up and down his sex, now lubricated by my saliva. I lick over to his right ball and give it the same reverent treatment, glorying in the way his thick thighs jolt, his hips shifting anxiously.

“It’s going to taste so good.” He tugs down my chin, his lower body rolling forward, teeth clenched. “Just try and fit a little more—”

A low buzz goes off in the room. “Mr. Kraft. John Lancaster is here to see you.”

I freeze in place with Gunner halfway down my throat. He goes very still, too, before dragging his erection from my mouth with a shaking hand, shoving it back into his pants. “Goddammit. What the hell is your father doing here?”

“I-I don’t know…”

I start to crawl out from behind the desk, but Gunner shakes his head. “There’s nowhere in here to hide and he’ll see you if you leave, Josie. You have to stay put. There’s no choice.”

Hide.

There’s no choice.

There is a choice, though. He could come clean to my father about us. We could explain to my father that we have feelings for each other. Instead, I’m being kept hidden like a dirty secret. And I can’t help what the clandestine nature of our trysts does to my body. Our dynamic, our secrecy, makes me undeniably hot. But it’s a little too real, too symbolic, being kept stuffed beneath a desk. A little too patronizing.

To his credit, Gunner looks conflicted, even guilty, like he wants to say something. But there’s no time. He barely manages to get his pants zipped when the office door opens.

“Gunner,” my father says, his tone jocular. “It’s been too long. How have you been?”

A creak tells me my father has taken a seat in front of the desk. Literally a foot away from the back of my head. “John,” Gunner says, his tone flat. “How is business these days?”

“Incredible. Just incredible.” He clears his throat hard, a sign that he’s lying—I know it well. “I took a meeting down the street and I thought, hey, why not stop by and set up a round of golf with my old buddy? Want to hit the green tomorrow morning?”

“Tomorrow morning.” Now it’s Gunner’s turn to clear his throat, but unlike my father, he’s not lying. I can see it in his eyes when he glances down at me briefly. The regret and apology lurking there. “I, uh…I can’t. I’m going out of town tonight. Through the weekend.”

My heart stutters in my chest, suffering.

When he called me this morning, I thought he was on the verge of professing his affection for me. Instead, I’m hiding under a desk and finding out that he has plans to leave town. Plans he told me nothing about. Am I so insignificant to him?

Maybe this relationship really is all about sex.

Maybe I’m expected to shut my mouth and take what he gives me. Be happy with it.

Screw that.

Coming forward on my knees, I reach between Gunner’s thighs and unzip his pants. He didn’t have time to pull up his briefs, so his swollen manhood bobs free immediately, still rock hard from my mouth’s treatment. He gives me a warning look from above and I pass him a tart one in return, wrapping my lips around his stiffness and deep throating him.

Gunner chokes a sound, his hand pressing my head down into his lap for one, two, three seconds, before he releases me, breathing raggedly.

“Are you all right over there, man?” asks my father.

“I’m fine,” Gunner responds unevenly. “Just some heartburn from lunch.”

“Ah, right.” My father laughs. “I know all about that affliction. So, about golf…would Monday afternoon work better for you?”

Gunner can’t formulate a response, because I’m riding my eager mouth up and down his pulsing length, scraping my teeth over his sensitized tip, before letting him invade my throat. He once again holds me there, in place, longer this time, his big belly shuddering, his balls hauling up tight to my chin. “Fuck. Schedule,” he heaves, swallowing. “Let me uh…”

His hand fumbles with the mouse and buys him some time as he looks at the screen without really seeing it, his manhood disappearing in and out of my mouth, faster and faster, his free hand tugging me, tugging me, my hands twisting up and down the thick pole, the color of it deepening with every suck.

“Monday works.” Gunner abandons the mouse, reaches across the desk and shakes his hand. “I’ll see you then. Got some work to finish up here—”

“Say no more. I won’t keep you.”

Determined to make Gunner come before my father leaves, wanting to be acknowledged in some way, any way, I hold my breath and take him past my gag reflex, waiting, waiting, longer than my usual few seconds. Ten seconds, eleven. I swallow, squeezing him with the walls of my throat. And Gunner spews. He rifles his hips forward and fucks my mouth once, ferociously, his guttural growl filling the office. Warm, salty liquid travels down, my inner thighs moist from my own need, my infatuation with this man forcing me to consume every single drop. Needing all of it. All of him.

“Ooh boy. Better take care of that heartburn. Sounds like a nasty case,” my father says, getting up from the chair, his footsteps carrying him across the room. “See you Monday.”

As soon as the door closes, Gunner yanks me to my feet. Picks me up and drops me down on the desk, getting right in my face. I think he’s going to lecture me, get angry with me, maybe even end our relationship for being so indiscreet—and I brace myself.

Instead, he growls, “You beautiful little brat,” and seals his mouth over mine, kissing me like tomorrow morning will never come. “Jesus Christ. I ought to spank you silly.”

I moan and tip my head back, allowing him to lick and suck my neck, welcoming his bulk into the V of my thighs. “Why aren’t you?”

His hand grips my throat unexpectedly. “God help me, I…” His eyes glitter wildly. “I wanted to look him in the eye while claiming you. I’m your Papa. Not him. You’re my little girl. Not his. I don’t care if that makes me fucking sick. That’s the way it is.”

“I don’t care either,” I whisper, shaken, slipping past infatuation, straight into obsession. Despite my hurt. Despite my wishes for us to be more. I force myself to accept this as enough for now. Knowing Gunner is mine. That I’m his. That at least we know that as fact.

My heart twists in my chest, yearning for more, though.

And I ignore it for now, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to much longer.

Maybe not even one more day.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the business trip,” he says, kissing my mouth passionately, fingers combing through my hair. “It’s why I was so stressed when you got here. I don’t want to leave you, baby. I was arranging to bring you along, but Paul asked to come. I’ve been gone every night, with you at the hotel. Absent. I couldn’t say no to him.”

“I understand,” I whisper, reveling in the mauling of my mouth, his hands all over me, groping my bottom and breasts and hips. “I understand, Papa.”

That’s not a lie. I do understand. The last thing I want is for Gunner to neglect my best friend. But nothing about his explanation repairs my flagging heart.

Groaning over my use of the word Papa, Gunner sits back in his chair and strips my skirt down to the floor, his erection already stiffening again in his lap, his eyes wild on my wet, green panties. “Get on and ride it,” he growls. “Remind me again that I’m the luckiest man alive.”

And dutifully, I do. I ride him until his eyes roll back in his head, until my own orgasm blinds me, our flesh slapping roughly in the silence of the office, the words I love you lodged in my throat, begging to be let out.