“Yeah, well, you didn’t take care of me last night.”
“You didn’t ask.”
“I touched you,” he said as if that were enough.
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. “Okay, I’ll take care of you tonight.” Her body buzzed with a weird kick of desire for his he-man act.
“You’ll take care of me now. I want a blow job.”
She gave a mocking laugh, but she was wet, her nipples suddenly hard. “We don’t have sex at work. Atul or Cam could walk in. Anyone could.”
Back to the door, he reached out and unerringly clicked the lock. “Now they can’t.”
She bit her lip. He had her going. Just like that. Like he’d flipped her light switch. As if she’d been on the hairy edge of desire when she walked in, she wanted to throw herself at him. Odd, crazy, but, yes, she wanted sex right here, right now, with all the anger and emotion emanating from him like a magnetic force.
Hell
, yes. She fought anyway because that made her even hotter. “You’re trying to control me with sex.”
He smiled like a shark. “Yeah. I miss it, I want it.” He yanked her right up against his hard-on. “And you want it, too.”
“Screw you,” she said, but there wasn’t any anger in it.
“No.” He smiled, all teeth. “You’re going to blow me. Right here, right now.”
He didn’t force her to her knees; she went on her own. Because she wanted it. She didn’t care why it turned her on. She didn’t care that he was treating her like a piece of meat; in a way she couldn’t describe, he wasn’t doing that at all.
“Suck me,” he whispered. “Make me come.”
That’s why she wanted it. For all his dictatorial attitude, he needed it. He needed
her
. And his desire was her power.
She fumbled at his jeans. He had to pop the top button for her. He bulged against the snowy white briefs. Then a drop of pre-come seeped through, a dark, round spot of desire.
She tipped her head back. His eyes were deep, fathomless, burning right through her. “Beg me,” she demanded.
He speared his fingers through her hair, and with the other hand, shoved the briefs down until his cock sprang free, bobbing, caressing her lips. “I’m not begging for something you can’t wait to give me.”
A sane woman would have walked out on him, leaving him with his cock in his hand. She wasn’t sane. They both wanted to win. They both simply
wanted
.
“One cock’s the same as another,” she said, the smile on her face closer to a sneer. “And I want cock right now.”
She took him. He groaned. And Erin knew she had him. His salty-sweet flavor burst on her tongue, his flesh hard, filling her mouth. She sucked the tip until his legs trembled. She slid him to the back of her throat until his cock throbbed. Then she grazed him with her teeth all the way out again, ending with the pulse of the thick vein in his cock against her lips. Through his jeans, she squeezed his balls.
“Fuck,” he murmured. “Jesus, fuck. I want you.”
She was wet, her clit hot, on fire. He held her head in his hands, fucking her mouth, fingers massaging her scalp as he moved to her rhythm.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, baby, I need you.”
He was hers. She owned him. The power of it burrowed into her very bones. His body shook, then he grunted and held her to him, filling her mouth. She drank him, like a vampire drinks its victim, draining him, stealing his strength, his power, and she felt herself liquefy in near orgasm right along with him.
For long moments afterward, he held her like that, her face to his crotch. She sucked him gently, his body still twitching for her. And hers twitching for him.
Then he palmed her cheek, pulling free, holding her face to meet his gaze. “That was all I wanted,” he whispered.
What? An orgasm? Or a communion? Last night? Or today? It didn’t matter because he was happy again. She was glad. And it hadn’t cost her a thing.
19
HIS LEGS STILL WOBBLED, HIS MIND WAS STILL FOGGED, BUT HE pulled her to her feet and imprisoned her chin in his hand. “Kiss me,” he ordered.
“But I just—”
“I don’t give a shit. I want it.” His taste on her tongue, her arms around him. He met her lips with a hard kiss, and she took him deep. He reveled in the ache that surrounded his heart, reveled in the emotion as much as the taste of her, the scent of sex and sweet body lotion. He tasted the salt of his own come, but he was almost sure there was something else, the salt of tears, her tears. But when he pulled back, her cheeks were dry.
“What?” she whispered as if he were looking at her with a question in his eyes.
“What were we arguing about?” he asked.
“I can’t remember.”
He stroked a finger down her cheek to the corner of her mouth and her ruined lipstick. “Good.”
“I’m going to remember soon and you’re in for it,” she said mildly.
He would be. Because he remembered despite what he said. She was pushing and pulling at him about the patent, about shoring up his end of things, checking, questioning, as if she’d stopped believing he could handle anything.
The only thing he felt in control of was their sex life—as long as he wasn’t asking for it in bed like a normal husband. Things were so goddamn ass-backward. But she’d sucked him at work, and he’d take it as a victory.
She touched her lips, a slight smile curving them. “You messed up my lipstick. Everyone’s going to know we were doing something dirty.”
“It wasn’t dirty,” he said with so much meaning.
She gave no answer to that. At least not until she’d backed away and stopped with her hand on the doorknob. “The numbers are too close, Dominic.”
Ah, so she hadn’t forgotten the argument either. “What are you thinking?” He knew what she was thinking, same as he was, and with the same kind of horror. Someone had revealed their financial data to WEU. An insider.
They didn’t hide numbers from their employees. Everyone had access to shipping quantities. At month-end, quarter-end, and year-end, they could all go in and judge their shipping performance. All for one and one for all, share and share alike.
“None of them would do that, Erin.” He wanted to believe that, needed to.
“Then how?”
He didn’t have an answer, yet he knew in his gut his people were solid. But it wasn’t just him Erin had stopped trusting and believing in.
“I know you like order and rational explanation,” he said, “and for everything to fall into place. But none of them would give out our proprietary information.”
Her lips thinned. “I don’t need order. I can deal with stuff. But WEU getting that close
isn’t
rational.”
“I’m not going to outright accuse anyone without proof.”
“I’m not saying we should.” She huffed out a breath, her hand tightening and releasing on the doorknob. “We just need to be careful.”
He didn’t know what the hell
careful
was. Shut his employees out of the system? Watch their every move?
No. The only thing he could do was figure out how WEU got their numbers without having used one of his people to do it.
ERIN STOOD BEFORE THE LADIES’ ROOM MIRROR, HER LIPSTICK tube an inch from her mouth. They’d never had sex at work. Not that the thought hadn’t occurred, but they hadn’t wanted their personal life to become a subject of office gossip. Now they were screwing at trade shows, and she was blowing Dominic in the lab.
She half expected Yvonne to slam through the door and ask her what the hell was going on.
Her cheeks were flushed. No reason to add blusher now. When she closed her eyes, she could still feel him between her lips and taste him on her tongue. His lingering scent made her dizzy.
It was the only time she felt real now, as if everything else was fantasy and the only real thing was endless, mind-drugging sex. Maybe she was having a mild nervous breakdown. That might be the reason for all this. Her
irrational
behavior. And her suspicious nature.
Dominic was correct. She suspected her own people. She wondered if Atul was punishing them because he was pissed off they hadn’t deemed him qualified for Cam’s job, if Matt was screwing up assembly on purpose, if Bree was selling financial numbers to the highest bidder, if Yvonne was trying to sabotage the family unit. All those thoughts had flitted through her mind.
God, that was so wrong. She didn’t want to think that way. It was just that she felt so helpless, like she needed to do
something
to fix it all.
What she really wanted was the way Dominic made her feel in the lab when he’d kissed her with the taste of him still in her mouth. When he’d made her forget they’d been arguing.
When he’d made her forget everything.
GARLAND BROOKS DIDN’T LOOK LIKE A CEO. SHORT, GAUNT, AND bald, with wire-rimmed glasses, he had the soft features of the mild-mannered man on the beach who had his girlfriend stolen and sand kicked in his face by the body builder who stole her.
That’s how Garland Brooks lulled the gullible before he went for the jugular. He’d started his campaign by letting Dominic wait in his outer office for half an hour. Dominic, however, had not let that stop him. They’d begun suspecting their own people. He couldn’t let that go on. Coming to WEU wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but after this morning’s argument with Erin, he had to do something.
“Well now, Mr. DeKnight,” Brooks said, sitting back in his thousand-dollar leather executive chair, “I can’t comment on any issues our patent department has undertaken. But if you received a letter, I’m sure it’s been researched thoroughly and the patent is on our side.”
Dominic propped his foot on his knee. He wore jeans to this man’s expensive tailored suit and boots to Brooks’s handmade leather shoes. “Garland, your patent won’t stand. I’m giving you the courtesy of letting you know you can’t win.”
Brooks smiled genially, folding his hands across his stomach. “That’s why we have attorneys, Mr. DeKnight. To handle all this for us.”
“But you’ll be wasting a lot of money.”
“So will you.” He kept the genial smile as if it were pasted on.
Dominic considered this a fishing expedition, nothing more. He wanted to see if Brooks would take the bait, so to speak. Dominic started it off by laying the latest WEU letter on the desk and sliding it across. “This amount is ridiculous.”
Brooks blinked at the odd folds of the page. Dominic smiled. Could the man tell it had once been an airplane?
Brooks pulled his glasses to the tip of his nose to read. “Oh my.” The curve of his lips turned slightly malicious. “Now that is a great deal.” He pushed the glasses back in place.
“According to my calculations,” Dominic said, “that number is way overstated.”
Brooks raised a brow, his scalp wrinkling. “I assure you the number is correct. We pride ourselves on accuracy here at WEU, both in our gauges and our numbers.”
“How would you know that without an audit?”
“We have our ways, Mr. DeKnight.” Yeah, the smile was definitely malicious.
So, they did have his numbers. Dominic didn’t know how. He didn’t expect Brooks to tell him. “Then you’re going to have a fight on your hands, Garland.”
Brooks smiled as if he were speaking to a very small boy. “If it comes down to a lawsuit, I’m afraid you’ll find our pockets are quite a bit deeper than your own.”
“Are they?” Dominic asked.
“Of course.”
“Then why are you having trouble paying your vendors on time?”
Brooks didn’t splutter. He didn’t even blink. “That’s a business strategy to even out the month-to-month cash flow.”
“So you stiff your suppliers in order to smooth out your cash.”
Brooks grimaced. “Now, Mr. DeKnight, I assure you no one is stiffing anyone.”
Brooks was stiffing everyone. And on purpose. “That’s a matter of opinion, Garland. But DKG is going to fight you on this. We are right and you are wrong. That patent won’t stand. We know it and you know it. And we’ll win in the end.”
Brooks leaned forward, laid his elbows carefully on his blotter and clasped his hands, gazing at Dominic over them. “Right or wrong isn’t the issue, Mr. DeKnight. The issue is who can hold out longer, an insignificant little company like yours or a worldclass firm like ours. For every dollar you spend, I can spend five. Long before you prove my patent isn’t valid, you will be bankrupt.” He smiled like a mob enforcer ready with his brass knuckles. “So I suggest you simply pay the money now and save yourself any further trouble.”
Dominic gave him a full three-second look. “That’s what you did to the others, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.
The other man didn’t say a word. He merely smiled that enforcer smile.
Dominic rose, retrieving the letter he fully intended to ignore. “Thanks for the tip.”
“My pleasure.”
Dominic left WEU knowing three things. First, Brooks didn’t care whether his through-coat patent was valid or not. Second, they made their money off the
threat
of a suit. And finally, no way was Dominic giving in to that asshole. He would fight Garland Brooks down to the last dime.
DOMINIC LEFT JUST BEFORE LUNCH, ONLY HALF AN HOUR OR SO since Erin had fixed her makeup after blowing him in his lab. Maybe, if he’d been there, Erin could have resisted herself. Instead, she gave in to that need to do
something
, even if it was dumb to call Bree into her office and ask what was bothering her. It would most likely end badly, with Erin saying something stupid like “Bree, did you give someone our through-coat sales numbers?”
God, she hated that through-coat gauge with a passion. Without it, their lives would have been different. Now it haunted her. Perhaps it was poetic justice that the damn thing was going to bring them down.
“Close the door and have a seat, Bree.” She pointed to a chair.