Beg for It (5 page)

“I don’t like tomato juice,” he says. “Tastes like pennies.”

Corinne smiles. “Fair enough. I’ll remember that.”

He leans across the center console to kiss her once more, taking a chance that she won’t chastise him again. The kiss is sweet and lingering. When he tries to draw away, she holds him by the collar for a moment, staring deep into his eyes.

“Good boy,” she says.

And Reese is lost to her.

Chapter Six

He’d ordered her a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. Her favorite. After all these years, and he still remembered. It shouldn’t have meant anything, but try as she might to pretend it didn’t, all she had to do was sip from her glass to be reminded of how once upon a time, Reese Ebersole had been hers, completely and utterly.

He’d ordered the meal for her as well, and she ought to have been annoyed but found herself amused, instead. Charmed, a little. He got it mostly right. She’d have preferred grilled chicken instead of shrimp, though he couldn’t have known she’d started keeping modified kosher after she got married. He had chosen the right dressing for her salad and exactly the appetizer she’d have picked for herself, though.

“Most men don’t order for their dates these days,” she murmured, taking off the shrimp and setting it aside without comment. “It’s considered a little overbearing.”

“You’re not allergic,” he said with a glance at the cast-off shellfish.

“No,” she said, and offered him no more explanation than that, because she didn’t owe him a damned thing, especially not about the changes she’d made to her life as part of her now-defunct marriage.

Reese stroked a thumb along the sweating edge of his water glass, drawing her attention to his hands. God, how she’d always loved his hands. Strong enough to break her, although he never had…at least never physically.

“Anyway,” he said, “this isn’t a date.”

Corinne arched an eyebrow. “Of course it’s not. I was joking.”

“I guess my sense of humor’s changed since the last time we saw each other,” Reese replied.

At least he was acknowledging there’d been a last time. He’d greeted her the way a stranger would and had seemed surprised when she hugged him. Corinne sipped her wine, relishing the earthy flavor.

“I never thought I’d see you here. I knew the offer was coming from Ebersole Enterprises,” she said after a moment. “I did have a minute where I thought… But then, no. How could it be? What kind of coincidence would that have been?”

He sat back in his chair. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Hard to believe what?” She studied him. “In coincidence?”

“That you’d have even for a second imagined it might have been me.”

The tone of his voice was hard to read. Corinne paused before answering, then said carefully, “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I find it hard to believe you’ve spared a passing thought for me in the past fifteen years, that’s all.” He shrugged and gestured to the passing waitress, who turned at once, all big eyes and bouncy, swinging hair. “Another glass of Cabernet for Mrs. Levy.”

Corinne shook her head. “Actually, no, I’ll take an iced coffee, please. Cream and sugar.”

She waited until the girl had left before she added crisply, “One glass is enough. I have to drive, not to mention I have to head back to the office after this.”

Reese said nothing.

“And it’s Ms. Barton. Not Mrs. Levy. I never took my husband’s name.” She paused again, watching him. When they’d been together, she’d prided herself on being able to know his emotions just by looking at his face. Now she had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. “Should I ask how you even know that?”

“I saw it in the paper when you got married.”

It wasn’t an implausible explanation, but something in the way he cut his gaze from hers told her it wasn’t quite the truth. Corinne frowned, not at his words but at the way her stupid heart had lifted at this casual admission that he’d somehow paid attention to her life. “Anyway, we’re divorced.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

He didn’t sound sorry. He sounded vindicated. Corinne felt her frown threatening to become a scowl, and she deliberately smoothed her features.

“Don’t be sorry. It’s for the best. He’s very happy with his new wife and I—”

“And you’re very happy with your
career
, I’m sure,” Reese said in a low, angry voice.

It was her turn to sit back and look him over. “Yes. I am, as a matter of fact. Why do you make that sound like some kind of sin?”

Interrupted by the arrival of the waitress with the appetizer of Thai sweet chili spring rolls and Corinne’s iced coffee, they were quiet until the girl left. Then Reese leaned forward to speak across the table.

“You told me once you didn’t believe in the idea of sin.”

“It’s a turn of phrase,” Corinne told him. “And by the looks of things, you’re not exactly an unsuccessful slug yourself, so why are you being so judgmental about my career? Or about anything in my life, for that matter?”

His mouth thinned. “Right. Of course, what you do isn’t any of my business.”

Something occurred to her. She narrowed her eyes. “You knew. Didn’t you? That I worked for Stein and Sons. You knew I’m the CFO, and that you’d be meeting with me.”

“I did,” he told her without so much as a blink or the faintest blush of shame.

A vivid memory of the red imprint of her hand on his cheek reared up inside her head, so fierce and gut-punching that she recoiled. He noticed too. She knew he did. Again, she wanted to slap him, right there across the table in front of everyone, for that single tilting quirk of a smug fucking grin.

Of course she didn’t slap him. Normal people didn’t go around slapping people in public. Or in private, she reminded herself, shoving away the memories again, harder this time.
Put those motherfuckers in a box
, she thought.
And close that goddamned lid.

“This meeting is over.” Corinne stood and shouldered her bag. She tossed her napkin on the table. “Thanks for the wine. I trust you’ll take care of the check.”

Head high, back straight, she headed for the parking lot without looking from side to side. She couldn’t. If any tiny thing distracted her, she was going to burst into huge, ugly sobs.

This was not how she’d imagined seeing him again. In her dreams they ran into each other at a party, both of them dressed in their best. He was with another woman, she another man, but that didn’t matter. The second they caught eyes across the room, he’d move through the crowd toward her. He’d take her hand. Kiss the knuckles. Ask her to dance. He’d pull her close and whisper in her ear that he’d been a fool to ever leave her.

God, she was so stupid.

At her car, Corinne dug for her keys in her overstuffed purse, but they eluded her beneath the drifting tide of receipts and permission slips and used tissues with pieces of gum inside. It was a mom purse, like her shoes and her hair and her entire freaking life, and then shit, she was crying. Silent, painful sobs tore at her throat. She closed her eyes and gripped the roof of her car, hating how something so ridiculous and simple could make her so fucking sad.

He was surprised she’d ever spent a minute thinking about him in all these years? Of course he couldn’t know how sometimes all she felt like she did was pine away for the past, and her boy, and how it had felt to be young and kinky and in love.

Love
.

She could admit it now, looking back, though for years after it ended she’d told herself it hadn’t been anything close to that. Corinne had learned the hard way that love could never be assumed or even really understood. You could say the words a million times without making them true; you could deny them for eternity and never make them false.

“Here.”

She looked up through the blur of her tears to see Reese. Corinne swiped at her eyes. He took her bag from her with a gentle tug. Dug through it. Pulled out her keys. He clicked the remote to open the driver’s door, then carefully snapped the carabiner around the strap of her purse exactly as it was meant to be done so that she wouldn’t lose her keys in the first place.

He handed her back her purse along with a paper sack emblazoned with the StockYard Inn logo. “I had them box up your salad. You should take it along.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You’ll be hungry later,” he said. “Then you’ll want it.”

Corinne dabbed at her eyes and gave him a long, hard stare. She did not take the bag from him. “The question is, Reese, what the hell do
you
want?”

“We have terms to discuss,” Reese told her. “A business meeting. Remember? This isn’t personal, it’s not about you and me.”

Corinne opened her car door and tossed her purse onto the passenger seat. She straightened to look him in the eye. “Oh, no?”

Reese shook his head.

“You’re a liar,” she told him. “And you’re not any better at it than you used to be.”

Then she got in her car and drove away.

Chapter Seven

Before

They are lying in her bed when Corinne says to him, “I could own you forever.”

He has already spent hours between her thighs, worshipping her with his tongue and fingers; she has so far denied him access to her pussy with his cock, and he’s throbbing. His balls are tight and hard and full, and a minute or so ago, Reese would’ve said that burying himself inside her heat was what he wanted more than anything else.

At her words, though, the spinning world seems to slow and stop.

“You want to…own me?” He pushes up on his hands to look at her. His mouth is full of her flavor, sweet and tangy. His cock, pressing the softness of the bed, twitches. He has to hold himself back from pumping his hips. It won’t take much to make him spill, and she hasn’t given him permission.

Corinne looks faintly surprised, as though she hadn’t been expecting him to question her. Or maybe it was her own admission that so shocked her, because now she sits up, withdrawing from him. She pulls her knees to her chest.

Reese sits up too, though he is on his knees with his heels pressing into his ass. His cock bobs, tapping his belly, and he watches her look at it. Her smile leaves him light-headed. He wants to take his hardness in his fist and stroke, stroke until he explodes, but that’s
his
weakness. He needs to be stronger for her. To prove himself. He crosses his hands at the wrists just behind his lower back.

A sigh shudders out of her when he does that. “Fuck, you are so beautiful.”

Her praise sends a rush of crackling, electric heat all through him. He can’t help letting his back arch a little. The motion thrusts his hips forward. It’s not enough to make him come, but it’s enough to tighten his balls and his asshole too.

Corinne reaches to swipe the string of precome off the head of his dick with one fingertip. Keeping eye contact with him, she tucks the finger in her mouth and sucks it clean with a soft moan. Reese’s entire body jerks at the sound. When she slides another finger into her mouth and sucks them both, he swears he can feel that sucking wetness on his cock, which is exactly what she obviously wants him to feel.

“So fucking beautiful.” Corinne trails a fingertip along the underside of his shaft, toying for a second in the small divot beneath his cockhead. “Such a pretty purpley red. Leaking. For me?”

“Yes,” Reese says. “All for you.”

She’s toyed with him plenty. Teasing. Edging him until he’s sure he won’t be able to hold out for one more second, only to ease off and leave his cock twitching with no release. He hates the denial, the persistent fullness in his balls. He hates his frenzy, how everything focuses on his cock, his balls, his ass, how his entire world shrinks until all he can think about is coming.

But he loves it too, because Reese loves her. The games they play turn him on more than anything ever has. More than that. They fulfill him. It’s like Corinne is the key that unlocks a door to rooms he didn’t know existed.

She grips his shaft with a fierceness that makes him gasp. She pulls him toward her, and Reese moves, eager to keep her grasp from hurting him. When she offers her mouth, he kisses her. She strokes him, balls to head. His cry is muffled inside her mouth. Her tongue swipes his. She takes his lower lip in her teeth and bites, not hard enough to draw blood, but still painful.

He’s so hard he’s sure he’s going to break.

“Do you know what it feels like, for me?” She licks the spot she bit and locks her gaze to his. Her stroking hand slows, fingers squeezing just behind the head.

He couldn’t come now if he tried, but Reese knows better than to even make the attempt. No matter how much he yearns to spatter her belly, no matter how much it hurts to hold off, it’s a point of pride. He’s given her the right to command his orgasm, and damn it, he’s going to do his best to please her.

“To look at you, that lovely erect cock so thick and hard and dripping for me. To know how much you want to come. But you won’t, will you? Until I say?” Her other hand cups his throbbing balls. Her thumb strokes the seam behind them.