“Don’t what?” she murmured.
“Don’t act like I’m the bad guy.”
She laughed without much humor. “I could hardly say that, could I? I mean, you’re practically a white knight, am I right? Riding in here on your charging steed to rescue us all? Save us?”
“I haven’t saved this company yet,” he said. “But I can. I will.”
“So, you think you just saved me?” The question slipped out of her, unbidden but brutally honest. She wanted…no, needed, to know.
His hands went flat on the desk as he leaned forward to look at her. His fingers curled on the smooth wooden surface. He took a breath, then another.
“You don’t have to worry about taking care of your kids now, do you?”
She swallowed a rush of emotion. “Is that what this is all about? Me and you?”
She watched the pulse throb in his throat. She got up and went around the desk to stand in front of him as he turned to face her. This close, she could smell his cologne.
“What are you wearing?” Corinne asked in a low voice.
His tongue swept along his lower lip, leaving it glistening. “Something by Armani. It’s called Code.”
“I like it,” she said.
Something glittered in his gaze. She should walk toward him, she thought. Or he should take those two steps to her.
Neither of them moved.
“I don’t like that cologne, whatever it is.” Corinne takes a long, deep breath of the skin of his throat, then bites. She holds his flesh between her teeth, teasing him with the idea she might actually take out a chunk, leave him bleeding. She knows she never would. She’s not sure Reese does, though.
He groans. That noise, guttural and helpless, makes her lose her fucking mind. It makes her want to hurt him and heal him all at the same time.
She releases his skin but can still taste him. “Don’t wear it again.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
She puts a hand on his shoulder, pushing him down to his knees. Inches her skirt up to reveal the edges of her panties. Her boy moans again. When she buries her fingers in his hair, tangling them tight, pulling hard, he looks up at her with a dreamy, blurred gaze.
“Tell me what you want,” Corinne murmurs. Her voice sounds thick and sweet as syrup, dripping off her tongue.
Her boy smiles. “To make you happy.”
Her finger traces the line of his jaw. Her fingers curl lightly around his throat. She could choke him, but she doesn’t. Even so, he closes his eyes, still smiling, and leans almost imperceptibly into her embrace.
“Hurt me,” Reese whispers.
“Why did you buy this company, Reese?”
He didn’t look away from her. “Because it’s what I do.”
“It wasn’t to…” Her breath hitched. It was hard to swallow, her throat tight. Too much emotion. She took a step toward him. “To protect me? To take care of me?”
She was wrong; she saw that immediately in the twist of his lips and the way his gaze shuttered. He took two steps back from her, far enough to be certain there was no way she could reach and touch him. His look of utter disdain hit her like a stone through a glass window.
Shattered.
What had she really thought? That after all this time and all that had passed between them that any decision he ever made had anything to do with her at all? How could it?
Hadn’t she learned already that she wasn’t worth the effort of being cherished?
Hadn’t Reese been the one to teach her that very painful lesson?
She’d seen it at once written all over his face and could have gone the rest of her life without hearing him seal it with his words, but of course he said them anyway.
“I think you’ve got the wrong idea,” Reese told her. “I’m not your boy anymore.”
Chapter Eleven
Before
“He’s going out again, Mother.” This is what Reese’s father says while looking directly at his son. “Look at him. What are you wearing? Girls’ clothes?”
The hot pink skinny tie had been a gift from Corinne, true, but it’s still from the men’s section of the store. The soft cotton panties he’s wearing under his dark jeans, though—those are girls’ clothes for sure. His dad would have a heart attack if he knew his son was wearing panties. Reese is pretty sure that’s a big reason Corinne has asked him to. She’s never met his father, but she knows exactly how to push every single button Reese has.
“When you’re wearing my panties, it reminds you constantly that you’re mine,” she had told him two days ago as he knelt between her thighs to press his cheek to her skin. Her hands had stroked, stroked through his hair. He could smell her pussy, so close and yet denied him for the sole purpose of making him crazy with desire.