Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Kaylee

Matthew picks me up the next morning in an SUV with tinted windows.

I step out of my studio and he’s there. Waiting.

It’s not raining like it was yesterday when he left. The world is bathed in sunshine and there’s a new texture to the air. It’s easier to breathe, hold life in my lungs. I didn’t realize I was so lonely before. I had my dollhouses and my inner monologue and I didn’t need a single other thing, but when Matthew’s body joined with mine yesterday, I was home.

And I have no idea what to do about that.

About him.

As soon as I spot him outside my door, I’m elevated to a new state of awareness. Of my body. My breasts and belly and mouth. I’m rocked by the pattering in my chest that only grows louder when he slides off his sunglasses and looks at me. Simply looks. No smile. Just those blue eyes boring into mine, a greeting of souls. And everything inside of me rejoices at his presence. I’m not merely walking in his direction, I’m floating. I’m on an invisible cloud and my body doesn’t stop until we’re pressed together and he’s lifting me off the ground. Just lifting me off the ground and holding me at eye level, inhaling my neck.

“Good morning,” I manage, rubbing my cheek against his stubble like a cat. “Do you pick up all of your employees?”

“No.” He reverses our positions and flattens me up against the car, my high heels dangling uselessly inches above the ground. “Only the one who keeps me awake all night. I…” He exhales in clear disbelief. “I missed you. Like hell.”

My pulse sprints. “Well you don’t have to anymore.”

“Thank God.” His attention falls to my mouth and he gives a tight shake of his head. “If I kiss you right now, we’re never going to make it to the office.”

“Missing on my first day? That won’t reflect very well on my record.”

“I’m the one who makes your record.” He crowds me hard enough to the side of the SUV to make me gasp over the thick outline of him. “And I say you’re exemplary.”

There are people walking by. We’re in public. Before yesterday, I’d never even been with a man and now I’m dizzy with lust, Matthew dismantling my self-control with every rake of his lips up the side of my neck. But I have to keep my head on straight. At least until I figure out what I’m going to do. Or rather, who I’m going to betray.

My father or Matthew.

And if I end up coming clean to Matthew about being sent in as a spy…

What if he never wants to speak to me again?

That possibility floods me with dread. Fear. I don’t know how it happened so fast, but…I’m already attached to this man. The universe attached us before we were informed of each other’s existence. Maybe that sounds crazy, but this pull between us can’t be escaped or explained in normal terms. It’s gripping.

Anyway. Until I decide my course of action, I have to maintain focus. Not to mention my self-respect. I’ve barely scratched the surface of why I love calling Matthew Daddy. The last thing I need is to throw my scruples out along with my inhibitions.

“I wouldn’t be exemplary if I got paid…” I shift my hips on his erection. “F-for this.”

He grinds his teeth on a shudder, pupils dilating. “Goddamn.”

“Matthew, I mean it. I need to be an actual employee. Not your office pet.”

“You won’t be.” He takes a breath to steady himself, though I can feel him throbbing through my panties and the fly of his dress pants. “Actually I already have some work in mind.”

Gratitude spears me. “You do?”

“Yes.” He seems to be studying me closer than before. “It will require you to spend some time alone in my office this afternoon. I have a meeting downtown after lunch. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

It’s the perfect chance to dig for the information my father is looking for.

“No, it won’t be a problem.”

It must be my imagination, but I swear the light in his eyes dims momentarily. “Will you let me take you somewhere on the way to the office?”

“Where?”

“Come on,” he says, winking at me.

He opens the rear door and boosts me into the backseat. After climbing in beside me and buckling us both into the car, he nods at the man in the driver’s seat—a hulking bodyguard type with an earpiece—and we drive out of the seaport. We don’t go far, though. After about ten minutes of battling rush hour traffic, we pull across the street from a park nestled right on the East River. It’s small, but lush with trees and a rock formation. Shade. It’s beautiful.

“Have you ever been here before?”

“No. I…” Haven’t lived here long enough to explore much—despite the lies on my resume. I bite back the sting of guilt. “I usually just work on my dollhouses in my spare time.”

“That’s why I brought you here.”

I give him a confused smile, but he simply smirks back and helps me out of the SUV, his arm around my shoulder as we cross the street into the park. His bodyguard gets out of the SUV, too, but remains stationary by the driver’s side door, hands folded, waiting for us.

We enter the deserted park and I inhale long and deep, surprised by the sudden lack of sound. No honking. No shouting. It all seems to be muffled by the high trees. Matthew takes my hand and guides me over to the rock formation. I’m tempted to look around for whatever he wants to show me, but I can’t seem to take my eyes off him. He’s devastatingly sexy on a normal basis, but right now, when he’s being charming, he’s off the charts. And my heart starts to beat faster, along with that newly-discovered pulse much further south.

“Here.” He pulls me against him, my back to his chest, facing me toward the rock formation. That’s when I see the tiny little door carved into the bottom rock. There is another one next to it. And another. Seven in total. Tiny doors positioned along the base of the formation, each of them a stunning design, glorious combinations of color. “They’re fairy doors. I came across them by accident a few years ago while running past the park and last night, when I saw the dollhouses, I thought of you. I thought…you’d like them.”

“I love them,” I breathe, meaning it with my whole heart. “They’re like little portals into other, happier dimensions. Just like my dollhouses.”

He grins into my neck. “Yeah.”

“Although…” I look back at him over my shoulder. “This dimension is really happy lately. I wouldn’t necessarily want to walk through one of those doors and leave it right now.”

His chest rises and falls quicker against my back. “I wouldn’t let you.”

I turn around and when our fronts meet, we simply merge. Roughly.

If someone doused us in kerosene right now and threw a match, I don’t think I would be able to move from this spot. In front of him. Wrapped up in this charge, this turbulent and terrible and exhilarating energy. I can experience the hot melding of our bodies, the gravitational pull that neither one of us seems to be in charge of.

It’s gravity. It’s fate.

At the exact same moment, we let loose a shuddering exhale against one another’s mouths. Matthew’s hands climb up beneath the back of my skirt to clutch the cheeks of my backside, knead them in desperate hands. “I didn’t bring you here to fuck, but I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day without a hit.” His eyes blaze down into mine, a muscle rippling in his cheek. “You turned me inside out, baby.”

As a twenty year old girl with functioning hormones, I thought I knew what sexual frustration felt like, but I had no idea until I met this man. Had no idea that arousal could be so potent and urgent. I’m instantly wet. Or maybe I already have been since the moment I walked outside and saw him up against the SUV in his tailored navy-blue suit. There is a galaxy south of my belly button and the stars are pulling together, closer and closer. Tightening. Pulsing. “I’ll die if you don’t,” I say, winded. “I-if I don’t feel you inside of me.”

I’ll never forget the pain subsiding yesterday and the inundation of belonging and surrender and need that followed—and I need it again now. Now.

He backs me up into the shade of the trees, out of view of the street, huffing breath after harsh breath against my mouth. “Pull down your panties. Give my cock that sweet little hole. Need it. I’ve needed it all night and all fucking morning.”

While he unzips his pants and starts to stroke himself openly in the shifting shade of the swaying branches, teeth gritted, I reach beneath my skirt and drag my white cotton thong to the grass. It’s obvious how wet the panties are in the crotch area, but I’m not embarrassed. Not with this man who I’ve bonded with in such a short space of time. He’s the one who does this to my body. He wouldn’t want me hiding it.

I start to rise, but stop short when I’m eye level with Matthew’s shaft.

Up close, it’s riveting. Intersecting veins and a thickly cut ridge at the tip. It’s abundant and curved and sprouting up from a thatch of black hair. My up close and personal perusal of his sex has made him breathe faster and that makes me wonder…how would he react if I used my mouth on him? The way he uses his mouth on me? I’m suddenly ravenous for the feel of his weight on my tongue, the smooth slide of him toward my tonsils. But mainly, how it will make him feel, how he’ll react, the sounds he’ll make. I have to know.

Watching Matthew closely, I kneel down in the grass and wrap him in my hands, guiding him toward my mouth. My lips have to stretch so wide to accommodate him that it hurts, but I succeed in that first entry. I succeed in shocking him, forcing him into firing a salty string of spend down the back of my throat.

“Oh fuck. Oh fuck.” Shaking, he gathers my hair, obviously trying to be gentle, but failing when I sink down further with my next draw of his shaft. I hum with satisfaction on the way back up and his fists tighten, a choked sound painting the air above me. “You know what Daddy needs this morning. Yeah, you fucking do, sweet girl. My sweet girl. Made me so big and hard and now you’re going to take care of it. Just a little. Just a little, because I need that hole. That little pinhole pussy you fucked me over with. You fucked me for life and I want it. Dirty and wet and all for Daddy. Nod and suck extra hard if you understand me.”

By the time he’s done talking like that, in that wonderfully crude way of his, I’m so eager to keep him hissing and cursing at me, I’m taking more than I can handle, cramming every virile inch of him into my mouth and letting him cheat toward my throat. A little more, a little more until I’m choking, brought to tears—

And he’s yanking me to my feet, grabbing my chin in his right hand and kissing me brutally, calling me a princess in between curses and swinging me up, up, so my legs can wrap around his hips. He enters me with a hard upward drive, his eyes rolling in the back of his head, his whole body shaking for several moments before he gets it under control.

“Christ. Christ. What have you done to me with this pretty young cunt?” He bounces me roughly, his steel rod filling me to the very edge of pain, pleasure, possession, setting a ruthless pace from the beginning. He jackhammers me from below, clicking my teeth together, the flesh of my bottom shaking, a scream building and building in my throat. Lord, what is this? We’re not human right now, we’re mating animals, his grunts desperate and depraved in my ear, my sobs almost childlike. It’s filthy and necessary and I never want it to end.

But it does. It has to, because of the friction his inches create deep inside of me, where that source of pleasure has been living, uncharted. Neglected. He hits it over and over again like a button and I blast into orbit, clawing and fucking him back with frantic rolls of my hips.

“God help me,” he says raggedly, stumbling forward with me, capturing me gently between his heaving body and the rock structure, his mouth loving and awestruck in my hair. “God help me, I’m in love with you.”

“I’m in love with you, too,” I whisper, meaning it down to the very marrow of my bones. It shouldn’t be possible, but it is. Every pound of my heart knows this is the real thing.

And he doesn’t even know my actual name.