Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Matthew

Goddammit.

I didn’t imagine her effect on me yesterday. As soon as she turned the corner, beautiful beyond words in her soaked dress and damp hair, my resolve grew fuzzy. Every thought in my head but her became translucent, insignificant. How does she reach into my chest and make my heart beat differently? Faster with arousal, excitement, slower with calm. Relief. Like I’ve…

Found what I’m looking for.

But a relationship between us is not to be. It’s not happening.

I can’t let my bond with her become more important than the one I lost. The one that was stolen from me and my family. When I look into Kaylee’s eyes, I need to see the girl for what she is. Someone who agreed to spy on me. Infiltrate the company I built from the ground up in my agony over the loss of my parents. The company I made successful. She wants to help her bastard father take that away from me.

It’s not going to happen.

I won’t allow it.

No matter how much I want to get inside this apartment, sink my cock between her slick thighs and immerse myself in her, I have to remain focused on what I’m doing.

I’m ruining Kaylee before she ruins me.

Watching the play of her delicate shoulder muscles as she unlocks the apartment door, my guilt tries to bleed in and drown me. Maybe she’s under duress. Maybe she doesn’t want to fuck me over. I want to make a million excuses, but the fact is, she came to my office with the express intention of being a spy. That much I know to be true.

And because of my underhanded plan for this afternoon…

It’s easier to believe that she addicted me on purpose, intrigued me with her wit and her taste…knowing full well I’d come running. She’s a master manipulator.

It’s just simpler to believe that, as hard as it is when she turns and blinks at me over her shoulder, visibly self-conscious and still flushed from my touch. “Be prepared for weird, okay?”

“Weird?”

“Oh yeah.” Briefly, she covers her face with her hands, dropping them away and leaving her face even redder than before. “I live upstairs, but this…this is my design studio.”

Design studio.

I know nothing about this.

What does she…

I step into the quiet space, lit only by lamplight. And there is wood everywhere. Tables covered in tiny little parts that I can’t make out. Small figurines of people and…is that furniture?

“When I’m not…” She looks down at her feet. “When I’m not studying finance, I design dollhouses. I would call it a hobby, but I think you can see it has become a little more than that.”

She just lied to me about studying finance. That’s good.

I needed that reminder that she’s a liar, because I’m rapidly losing my determination to do what I came to do. I can’t. The company is all I’ve got to show for the destruction of my past. My family. Everything. It’s my whole life—and she’s threatening it.

When Kaylee turns away to hang up her tote bag on a coat rack, I take my phone out of my pocket and hit record, quickly before I can stop myself, positioning it on a shelf, tucked back into the shadows. The contents of my stomach swell over what I’m doing, but I take a deep breath and force it to recede. Calm. This is the ultimate chance to bite back at her father.

You have to take it.

Not easy to do when I’m literally surrounded by the fact that she’s fucking fascinating. I want to know more. Everything. I want to soak her up before we’re exposed as known enemies.

“How long have you been doing this?”

She turns, pushing back a hunk of soaked hair from her face. My God, she’s gorgeous. Her makeup, if she wore any to begin with, has been washed off by the rain. Her skirt is molded to her hips, thighs flexing invitingly as she toes off her drenched Vans. My body is screaming at me to hold her, but with my phone recording behind me, I can’t seem to approach her like I need to. I’ll get there. “I got a dollhouse for my birthday when I was twelve. My mother said I was too old for it, but I loved it so much. And one day…” She tries to force a smile. “My father lost a major deal and my dollhouse just happened to be within reach.” A beat passes. “It turned out to be a blessing that he destroyed it, though, because when I put it back together with glue and nails, I found out what I love. Making these little worlds. Do you think it’s weird?”

No.

I want to. I want to be callous and dismissive of her passion, the way I am with everything else. But I can’t. The same man has destroyed something we both loved. If anything, that only gives me more in common with her. “No, I don’t think it’s weird,” I say, moving toward one of the half-finished projects in the middle of the floor. “I think it’s admirable that you took an ugly incident and made it…beautiful.” That word sounds foreign on my lips. “Most people would hide from the memory or chalk it up to a tragedy and walk away, feeling only the pain. You didn’t do that. That takes a lot of strength.”

“Thank you.” My praise seems to fluster her into silence for long moments. “Are you speaking from experience?” she finally murmurs, closer now, her soft voice harmonizing with the rain that pelts the windows.

“Yeah,” I say, hoarse.

She knows it, too.

She knows what her father did.

Doesn’t she? Yes. Of course she does.

“My parents went to prison when I was young. They were there for fifteen years.” I watch her for signs of recognition—and I get it. It’s easy to tell that Kaylee knows about the incarceration of my mother and father. How they were sent to prison for purchasing property with laundered money. Turned in by their competitor who made it his business to expose them. Break them. Turn our world inside out. “When they were released, they just…they were so ashamed. They’d lost their will to live. My father was a shell of his former self and when my mother passed from heart disease, he just…followed. Didn’t wake up. Prison withered them into nothing. Dust.”

Her golden eyes are wide, unblinking. She starts to say something and stops short, her face losing a healthy degree of color. “I’m so sorry. I d-didn’t…I didn’t know that.”

“Didn’t you?” I ask, with slightly too much accusation in my tone.

She shakes her head rapidly. “No.”

Do I believe her? I can’t tell. “I just assumed you would, because it was highly publicized. Or maybe you’d done some research on the company before coming in for an interview.”

“I did some, but…” She swallows hard, frowns down at her dollhouse. “I wasn’t aware of how the story ended.”

I want to grab her by the shoulders, shake her and demand to know if she’s telling the truth. Why? It’s bad enough that she knows—obviously— that Gerard Hale gave information to the Feds that put my parents behind bars. Does it matter if she’s in the dark about my parents withering and dying in their shame? Shame wrought by her father?

No. It doesn’t.

It can’t matter.

Still, part of me wants to snatch up my phone and leave, before I can execute my plan to get back at Hale. She speaks before I get the chance, reaching down to brush a fingertip along the dangling crystals of a mini chandelier. “I think my favorite thing about building the dollhouses is…it’s like a secondary world with a lot more light and positivity. Everything is perfect in these little rooms. There’s no inadequacy or sadness or fighting. Only harmony.” She looks up at me. “At our interview, you pointed out my…anger. And I do have it—at myself. For not being a grander version of however I turned out. For carrying around the disappointment of my parents when all I want is to be free. But I don’t feel any of it when I’m focused on building these happier places. It helps to channel it.”

“I channel my anger, too. Into the company. Into being the best.”

“Does it help?”

“No,” I choke—admitting it out in the open for the first time ever. “And you’re the grandest version of you that’s possible. You’re enough. Who the hell made you believe otherwise?” I pinch the bridge of my nose so hard that my eyes pulse. “Never mind, I already know who it was.”

“How?” she whispers.

Jesus, keep your fucking head. Remember who she is and why you’re here together in the first place.“You told me the story about your father destroying your dollhouse. I’m assuming he tried to do the same with you.” I’m moving toward her as if magnetized, watching her chest rise and fall for me, her eyes soften even as her skin pinkens with awareness. “Well he didn’t, Sarah. Maybe he’s disappointed because you turned out better, worthy of happiness, and it only makes him realize he’s not.”

She takes several deep breaths and I suck them in. I inhale them because our mouths are pressed together. How did I get here? I don’t know, I just have this incessant need to be as close as possible to her.

“And why are you angry?”

“It’s not obvious? What happened to my parents…”

Her gaze cuts right through me. Sees everything. “Yes, but there’s more. Isn’t there?”

There is?

I’ve always just been so rageful that someone swooped in and took away my family overnight, smashed it into pieces like a wrecking ball. One day I was learning the ropes from my proud father and the next, he and my mother were hollow-eyed. Defeated.

But there is a swelling in my chest right now. A bubble getting ready to burst. And the feeling is alarming. It’s like one of those horror films where the babysitter has been on the phone with the killer, only to realize the calls are coming from inside the house. Kaylee is right. There is more to my anger than meets the eye—and it was so well hidden, I didn’t even know it was there. Lurking. Twisting me into knots.

“I’m like them. I’m just…just like my parents. I’m corrupt. I was going to be smarter and safer, but here I am at thirty-one with the same enemies, the same house of cards. I’m angry with myself more than anyone else. For being a pattern. Following the same path and expecting a different outcome. Letting my need for revenge rule me. Is that what you want me to admit?”

“No. Yes.” Are those tears in her eyes? “Thank you for being honest.”

“I don’t want to be. Why can’t I keep my fucking head on straight around you?” With my lips pulled back in a snarl, I back her across the room to the big leather easy chair. “You’re some kind of drug. You’re in my system and you won’t come out.”

My dick is confused. Hard, ready. Sensitive. I’ve never had an erection while being this vulnerable, this exposed, before. It’s the kind of combination that makes a man want to kneel and beg. And she has done this to me twice in twenty-four hours. I need to fuck. I need human contact—from this girl. Only her. I want to hide myself in her and show her everything at the same time. I’m conflicted and horny and shocked at what I just revealed to her. To myself. All of this self-reflection is her fault. I was fine before this villain and savior came along.

No, you weren’t.

You aren’t.

There is redemption inside of her. For me. I just need to reach it. Consume her.

When the backs of her legs touch the easy chair, I reach down and snag her knees, pulling, so she lands on her back on the big cushion, gasping, looking up at me with her innocent golden eyes, her rain-soaked dress molding to her mindfuck of a body.

“From some angles you look like a sweet little virgin.” I remove my overcoat and toss it onto the closest worktable, quickly untwisting my cufflinks. One. Two. Shoving them into my pocket. “From others, you look like a woman who has experience driving men to drink. Those high, martini-glass tits. An ass that begs to be smacked. We’ll find out which one you are right now, Sarah. Won’t we?” I fall to my knees in front of her, taking her ankles and settling them on my shoulders. “I’m here to fuck you. I won’t have a reasonable thought in my head until I’ve lathered up this pussy in sweat and spit and you’re cursing my name for coming inside you without a rubber.”

She pushes up onto her hands, attempting to leave. Shaken. Wheezing. “Stop—”

But I surge up over her, bending her knees all the way back to her shoulders, pinning her to the easy chair with my mouth, my bared teeth against her parted lips. “Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t want it.”

Our hot, panting breaths mingle between us.

When she blinks rapidly, her hand curling in the front of my dress shirt, I’m caught off guard by a wave of regret. Of…affection. For her. It leads me to speak without thinking. “I’m a bastard. I don’t know how to be any other way. I don’t have an ounce of sweetness inside of me. I’m sorry if that’s what you need. I’ll make up for it in other ways.” A swallow gets stuck in my throat. “Let me make up for it in other ways.”

Her grip on my shirt loosens in degrees, as does some of the fight in her body.

When she nods, that permission is…Jesus, it’s better than conquering. Or winning a fight. It’s the most intoxicating victory I’ve ever experienced. “Yes?” I ask her, just to be sure.

“Yes,” she whispers, a line marring her brow slightly. As if she’s perplexed by her own admission. “I want you. Wounds and all.”

With those incredible words ringing in my head, I fall on her like a starving beggar. Her knees are still slung over my shoulders and I’m kissing her, stroking my thumbs up the backs of her thighs, my heart stuttering when she whimpers my name as our mouths slant, collide, my tongue memorizing her texture. Every ripple and change of pace is ours. We created it.

I’m starving for her pussy.

Starving.

There’s a sawing sound inside of my chest as I drop back down onto my knees and yank at her panties, needing them off. Right the hell now. Want that pussy. Want to eat it raw. Fuck. When her underwear is nothing but a ball of material in my hand, I groan at the sight of her sex. Young and dewy and waxed clean as a goddamn whistle. “You shouldn’t be allowed out of the house with this thing.” I kiss my way up her inner thighs, my dick on the verge of spraying come against the front of my trousers. “Swear to Christ, I could nut just looking at it. God, I can’t stop thinking about how it shook and wet itself yesterday. All that proof that you liked Daddy’s tongue so much, just dripping off you. Need to lick it. Need a lick.”

Her thighs open slowly. Shyly. More permission. It’s like a rush of euphoria I never knew was available to me. Honesty is what gets me victories with this girl.

There’s a prodding voice in the back of my head, reminding me there are secrets between us, not honesty, but I ignore it, because I’m dizzy with her scent of cedar and roses and that sugary slickness tempts my mouth closer until I’m lapping at her cunt like a dog. I drag her to the very edge of the seat and she falls back, whining my name, her thighs open so I can consume the paradise in the center, her juices wetting my tongue more with every drag, her clit swelling every time I tickle it, tease it and finally ride it firmly.

“Matthew,” she pants, wrapping strands of my hair around her fingers, her stomach shuddering, thighs alternately clamping and loosening around my head. I’m fucking her with my tongue, feasting on the most succulent flesh ever created, and she’s close. Ah God, she’s so close, her hips grinding up into every stroke of my tongue, unable to help it, her pussy wracked with little tremors I remember from yesterday. No. Not yet. I don’t want her to come so fast, because I want to keep licking. I want to lick this girl between her legs like it’s my job. Every hour of the day. But she tenses up and sugar trickles down my chin, my mouth continuing to move in that animalistic manner, growling and suckling and lapping. “Matthew! It’s too good. Please, please, please. It’s too good and it hurts and…”

“Again!” I roar, biting her mound, shoving her thighs back open. “It’s mine. I say when it’s come enough.”

I bar a forearm across her stomach to cease her struggles and tongue her again. Again. Until she’s back to the precipice, sobbing, raking her sex up and down my mouth, begging for faster movements of my tongue. Begging me to stop. To keep going. She turns into a babbling, arching, grasping mess and I love it. I bask in every single second of her pleasure, knowing I’m the one giving it to her.

It’s time to fuck, though. As badly as I want to keep exploring the land between her thighs, my cock is throbbing. I had no idea it was possible to need this much. My sides are shuddering and heaving when I unzip my pants and climb on top of her, crushing her hips to the edge of the easy chair, our mouths locking and battling for the deepest taste. My balls are going to explode before I get inside of her. I’m convinced of it.

“I want my come in you,” I rasp against her perfect little mouth. “I want it inside you right now. Right the fuck now. Say yes to Daddy.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Sweating, burning alive for her, I grip my dick and guide it to her sopping wet hole, pressing until she blooms open and allows my head inside. Like a suckling mouth. “Oh Jesus,” I bite out, squaring up my hips for the fuck of a lifetime. After the head I gave her, she’ll be able to take it rough. Thank God. Because she’s turned me into a salivating beast. “Tell me if I get too mean, baby. Little girl. Unless your pussy likes it, then just let me go off.”

She nods, trusting eyes on me, her hands holding the sides of my face.

Damn. Goddamn. How does she look so innocent when I’ve got her folded in half, her eyes glazed from too many orgasms. I find out a second later when I catch her mouth in a searing kiss and punch forward—

She screams into the kiss. Pulls away and stares blindly at the ceiling while sucking in shallow breaths.

Virgin. She’s a virgin.

No…

No. She told me she had no experience with men. I didn’t believe her. How could I believe her? There is nothing so pure in my world. Purity doesn’t exist. Not like this. Not like her. Everything is morally gray and corrupted, including me. And I’ve just defiled her. I’m…

I’m recording this.

An invisible clamp closes around my windpipe, denial rattling my skull. I forgot about my phone across the room. I lost myself in her and forgot, but I remember with a vengeance now. I remember I’m an immoral bastard and I’ve just crossed the line into irredeemable.

“Matthew,” she whimpers shakily.

And for the moment, I forget about everything but her. Everything but making this right and good for her. “I’m here,” I grit out against her lips, because there are no words to describe how tight she is. My eyes are watering, she’s squeezing me so brutally, her delicate pussy muscles stroking me every time she breathes or blinks or shifts on the chair. “I’m here,” I say again, kissing her mouth gently, then more thoroughly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you haven’t been with a man.” I’m starting to shake with the need to thrust, teeth chattering, skin inflamed. “I couldn’t stay off you for five minutes. Couldn’t imagine anyone else managing it. Didn’t seem possible.”

“It’s okay.” She blinks her beautiful bedroom eyes up at me. “I think it was just…it was meant to be you.”

A hoarse sound escapes my chest.

I’ve spent so long abandoned, but she’s claiming me now.

I’m a pauper on the steps of a palace, unworthy of being allowed inside, but she’s taking me in, regardless. “Tell me I’m not hurting you.” The thought of her pain makes me see red, my shoulder muscles knitting together. “If I injure you I’ll kill myself, I swear to God.”

“You didn’t,” she murmurs, her hips beginning to rock beneath me. “Stop worrying and be here with me. I need you here with me.”

Five milking rides of her cunt and my balls begin to tighten. “My God.” I pin her down and begin to ride, to pump as carefully and slowly as I can, so I don’t ruin the magic she’s weaving. Not only with her snug, soaking sex that flexes and grips and ruins my dick with horny little strokes, but with her eyes. They capture mine and never leave, the universe pausing around us. Stopping dead in its tracks to witness two soulmates colliding. That’s what this is, isn’t it? She’s my fucking soul mate. “I’m never letting you go. I’m never, ever, letting you go. Don’t go anywhere. I’ve been lost, baby.”

“Me too,” she breathes, her palms smoothing down my back, branding me through my shirt. “It’s okay. Me too.”

I can’t believe either of us is wearing clothes. Emotionally, we’re stripped down to nothing and yet my balls ricochet between her wet pussy and my open zipper, faster and faster with her encouraging nods, the sharpening of her claws in my back, until we’re straight-up fucking, my hips drilling her against the edge of the chair, my hoarse bellows clashing with the sound of the rain. And underneath it all, Christ, is this little squeak her pussy makes every time I land balls deep. The friction of my cock bottoming out in her insane tightness elicits a tiny squeal. I’m a lunatic for that sound. Instantly. I bang away at it, panting, sweat soaking through my shirt while she whines and opens her thighs wider for my abuse. My abuse. That’s what it is. I’m devouring her. Biting her neck and throat and dominating her smaller body. But she only screams for more. And I give it until her heels dig into my ass and that pussy cinches up like a belt, blinding me with acute pleasure.

“If anyone ever finds out what you’ve got between these legs, I’m fucked. We’ll have to go into hiding, baby, it’s so motherfucking tight. I’m coming in it now. I’m the one who comes in it, starting now until forever.” I am rampaging, hips blurring, flesh smacking, seed burning up the trunk of my cock to the place it belongs. Where it will always belong. “Oh baby, baby, feels like I’ve never come before in my life. So good. So good. So good.”

“Daddy,” she breathes against my mouth, tits shuddering, complexion rosy. Flushed. Goddess. “You’re my Daddy now.”

Does she have father issues? Yes.

Am I here to solve them? No. I’m here to bask in every piece of her. Good or bad.

I’m here to make her feel right, because she is. She’s perfect.

“That’s right. That’s who I am. That’s who you breathe for,” I growl, our foreheads meeting, my loins convulsing, lower back muscles pulled tighter than violin strings. She’s wrecking me. The pleasure is verging on too intense. Jesus. Christ. “That’s whose cock you sit on. Period. The end.”

She nods, seemingly awed by how long I’ve been ejaculating. She’s not alone. Every time I think the well has run dry, another spurt wrings free, adding to the overflow of her sex, ruining the chair beneath her ass, caking her thighs with come. And that pussy keeps on making that squeak sound. How am I supposed to stop when it doesn’t stop? I’m going to hear it in my sleep, throughout my day, for the rest of my life, aren’t I?

Finally, I collapse on top of her sweet body with a groan. I’m…changed. Somehow I’m not the same person who walked into this dollhouse studio. I need her close. Close. Attached to me, if possible. But I settle for pulling her down off the chair into my lap and encircling her with my arms. Holding her tight and kissing her hairline, whispering words I never thought would leave my mouth. Loving words. Promises to protect someone, something besides my own interests. Across the room, my propped-up phone mocks me, roasts my conscience alive. But I console myself with the fact that no one—no one—will ever see the video.

I should lay all of my cards on the table right now. How can I do anything else when I’ve just had the most raw and honest experience of my life?

There is still a trace of distrust and cynicism inside of me, though. I can’t help it. I was raised this way. So while I want to confess to Kaylee that I know her real name, who her father is and that her mission was—is?—to spy on me, I can’t bring myself to say the words.

Not yet.

My heart tells me her feelings for me are genuine.

God knows mine are beyond real for her.

But I have to be positive before I rip away that last veil of vulnerability.

Which means, I need to know if she still plans to steal my secrets for her father.

Please don’t do it, Kaylee.

If she does, I think it might obliterate any remaining humanity inside of me.

I kiss her forehead, bundle her closer. “Come to work for me.”

After a few seconds, she nods. “Okay.”