“Mr. Beckett,” calls a male voice, outside in the hall. For a few beats, I resolve to ignore the person calling my name, because fuck, her skin tastes like sugar, and she’s got her fingers sliding through my hair, tugging. Those fingers are shaking a little, but she’s excited, her thighs blossoming open like a shy flower. She’d let me give her my dick right here, right now, in the middle of the day, before she has even taken off her pristine tennis shoes.
“Mr. Beckett, I apologize, but your car is waiting out front.” A short pause, punctuated by the interrupter’s discomfort. “You asked me to make sure you weren’t late to the meeting with the China branch. Their plane landed an hour ago.”
My growl is low and frustrated between Veda’s handful-sized tits, because I know I have to leave. The meeting is too important and too long in the making to miss, no matter how badly I’d like to remain in this bed for a week with Veda beneath me. With an immense case of reluctance, I gain my feet and ease a stunned Veda’s legs back together. “There is a phone on your bedside table. Press number one and ask for whatever you want. Any food you’re craving, a bathing suit for the pool, a movie in the theater. Any. Thing.”
Her eyes have gone wide as silver dollars with my list. “When will you be back, Ramsey?”
I love her saying my name. “Late, I’m afraid.” I plant a fist on the bed and lean down to give her a long, deep kiss. So deep, she gasps around my tongue and sends a vibration coursing down my abdomen, forcing me to adjust my erection. “Ask for whatever you want, angel. I will give you everything.”
I stop at the door and look back, finding she’s turned over onto her belly, ankles crossed in the air above her plaid-covered ass. Obviously, she doesn’t expect me to turn and look, because I catch a hint of contempt flitting across her face. I see it plain as day, before she smiles and gives me a little pinky wave. And I wonder if in the process of giving her everything, she’s going to take my soul.
Chapter Four
I’m wide-awake in bed, the storm outside illuminating my bedroom in violent bursts of white thunder. The meeting with China ran even longer than expected, impatience gnawing at my gut as the clock ticked past midnight and I knew there wouldn’t be another encounter with Veda until morning. Even now, I’m struggling with the urge to travel one floor down, to check on her in the back bedroom. I can picture her in the center of the bed, hair messy, lips open, the lines of her body outlined beneath the white comforter.
There’s been an urgency building in my middle ever since I saw the glint of malice in her beautiful eyes this afternoon. I want to straddle her, force her to look me in the face and spill what put it there. Perhaps I’ve underestimated Veda’s ability to see right through exactly what I’ve done. Bought and paid for her. Sent her father away when I could have given him an equally lucrative job right here in New York. Instead of seeing my actions as helpful—a way to get her family out of debt—she could very well see me as a villain. If I don’t change her perception, there is no chance she’ll stay once the contract expires on her eighteenth birthday.
An image of her jumping and twirling in the sunlight makes its way into my consciousness. Already, I know she would take the light along with her, if she left. And I’ll do anything to keep it. Keep her.
This afternoon, I let my lust overrun my sense and I can’t let that happen again, no matter how animalistic she makes me feel. If I’m to keep her, make her trust me, I have to earn it somehow.
Veda is so prominent in my mind, when I see her standing in the doorway of my bedroom, I think my imagination put her there. But no. The lightning blasts the bedroom with a white flash and I see her clinging to the doorframe, her face a mask of fear. I sit up so fast, I’m surprised I don’t get whiplash, and go to her at the door. “Angel.”
I try to bring her into the circle of my arms, but she won’t let go of the doorframe. “Storms don’t usually bother me, I just…I think it’s because we’re up so high and the windows…I swear we’re right inside of the lightning.”
My throat is closing up I need to hold her so fucking bad, but I sense I’ll get nowhere until I manage to block out what’s bothering her. Turning on a heel, I cross the bedroom, throwing the heavy curtains over the floor-to-ceiling windows. The room is doused in black, so I flip on the bathroom light, leaving the door slightly ajar and return to Veda in the doorway. “There we go,” I murmur into her hair, prying her fingers one by one off the wood. As soon as they’re all free, she throws herself against my chest and I wrap her in my arms. “Nothing can touch you when you’re with me.”