Final Call

Chapter Twenty-One

I wake to the feel of fingertips trailing down my spine and look straight into startling blue eyes. Shivers follow the trail of Aaron’s fingers, and I shift in bed.
And remember the events of yesterday. Guilt hits me full force in the stomach, and I part my lips to speak.
“No. Don’t you look at me with guilt in your eyes,” he says softly. “Cut that shit out, Dayton. What’s done is done.”
I sit up, knocking his arm from around me. “How aren’t you mad at me, Aaron? Why aren’t you yelling and screaming at me?”
“Because that would solve nothing. Am I angry at you? Yes, I am. I’m mad that you kept it from me, but not for the reasons you think. Not because you berated me for keeping her a secret in the first place. I’m mad because this, us… We’re a couple, and we share this stuff. It means we don’t have to deal with anything alone, but you have been.” He sighs, sitting too. “And yes, Dayton, it hurts that you told Tyler but not me. I understand why you’d prefer to tell someone other than me, and I’m glad it was him, but I wish you could have been honest with me.”
“I’m sorry.” The words feel so inadequate, and I understand how he felt. Why he couldn’t say the words in his office when I so desperately wanted him to. They seem so small and unnecessary when the thing you’re apologizing for is so potentially devastating.
“I know you are, and I accept that. Now we’re not going to sit here and think about what could be. We’re going to get up, go to my office, and do something about it.”
I swallow when he gets up. “But there’s nothing you can do. You read the note.”
Aaron stops before walking into the closet and looks at me. “If you believe my influences lie within the modeling and advertising world alone, you’re incredibly wrong. Get up, get dressed, and make me coffee. Without all the sugar.”
I can’t help the upturn of my lips. His company could be destroyed at any second and he’s worried about coffee. Only I could be in love with a man who has that train of thought.
I pad my way to the spare bedroom and change my underwear. When I’m back in the closet, I pull out a pair of jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Aaron grabs them from me and chucks them on the shelf.
“No. You’re not hiding. If she’s keeping tabs on you, which she likely is, then you’re not hiding.” He cups my chin and looks at me square on. “She’s playing a game, baby, and you’re not going to let her win. So ignore the jeans, grab a dress, and pack that self-loathing away because we don’t have space for that in our relationship, okay?”
I nod and pick a red dress from a hanger. “You know, the easy solution to all this would be to just—”
“Say it and I’m going to slap your pretty little ass until it’s red and raw.”
I chew on my bottom lip. “Okay. Not an option. I get it.”
He smirks and spins me to do up my zipper. “Red. Good choice. I notice it matches your panties.”
“Red is my color, and it’s a red kind of day, I think.”
He drops a kiss to the spot below my ear. “I think you’re right. Now, about that coffee?”
I reach behind me and smack his leg. “I need to do my makeup. Your coffee will have to wait.”
I stroll into the bathroom and grab my makeup bag from the corner of the sink. I’m brushing foundation across my cheeks when Aaron joins me.
“Coffee,” is all he says.
“Is that a demand?”
“I require coffee every single morning.”
I finish with the foundation and grab his arm, moving his shirt so it exposes the watch on his wrist. I tap the face lightly. “Seven thirty. There’s still four and a half hours of the morning left. Your requirement can wait a little longer.”
He stands behind me as I finish applying my makeup. He grabs my brush and runs it through my hair, and I meet his eyes in the mirror.
“How do you do it?”
“How do I do what?” he responds.
“Make it seem so normal. There’s this huge cloud hanging over us ready to piss all over us and you’re just…normal.”
He smiles. “Haven’t you learned anything? Great love makes the bad stuff disappear, if only for a second, and you and I? We have the greatest love I’ve ever felt. Don’t think I’m not thinking about it, because I am. I’m merely choosing to focus on the good things, and right now, that’s you. It’s always you.”
Aaron sets the brush on the side and grabs our toothbrushes from the holder. He runs them under the sink and squeezes some toothpaste on them. I take mine and we stand, side by side, brushing our teeth, looking like a real couple.
And it’s this, the little mundane things you really do skip over, that make a difference. I never thought brushing my teeth next to someone could make such a difference, but it does.
This, right now, makes me want to fight.
And if all f*cks up, if Mia Lopez is exposed and my life is thrust into the public eye, I’ll fight then, too.
I’ll fight like hell for the man standing next to me.
Even if he has missed a button on his shirt.
I put my brush back and turn to him, finding that missed button and fixing it. Aaron grins down at me, toothpaste around his mouth, and moves me to the side so he can spit it out. I shake my head with a smile.
He’s right.
Great love makes the bad shit disappear.
I leave him in the bathroom and make my way to the coffee machine to provide Mr. Stone with his latest requirement. He’s definitely getting a little requirement-happy, regardless of how many of them I like.
The coffee one? It should definitely be a two-way requirement. I need it too, ya know.
“Oh, she’s learning,” he quips, taking the mug from me.
I turn the sugar-heaped spoon in his direction. “Watch it, Mr. Stone, or I might decide you need some sweetening.” He laughs, and I stir the sugar into my own mug. “Why am I coming to work with you?”

“Because I don’t trust Naomi. If she knows you live here, when no mutual acquaintances of ours do, she’s definitely keeping tabs on you. She is coldhearted and ruthless, and leaving you here alone is putting you at risk. That’s something I can’t comprehend. The idea of putting you in harm’s way makes me sick to my stomach, Dayton. If that means I have to glue you to my side and take you everywhere with me until this is figured out, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
“I can’t help but think it’s a little over the top. Isn’t that what she’ll be expecting?”
“She’s expecting me not to know. And regardless of what she’s expecting, protecting you is my number-one priority.” His eyes crash into mine. “I would kill a man to protect you, Dayton. Don’t ever doubt my need to keep you safe or the lengths I would go to in order to do that.”
I walk to him and wrap my arms around his waist. His words should shock me. I should coil back, reel in shock, but I’m not. I know it. I know it because I feel it too. When you love someone so intensely that it knocks your whole world off-kilter but still somehow keeps it spinning, there are no barriers to what you’ll do to protect them.
“I love you,” I say into his chest. “Okay? I love you.”
“I know, sweetheart. I know.” He envelopes me with his arms and breathes me in. “And I you. I love you so fiercely that I’m afraid it might consume me one day. So please, humor me right now.”
“No need to. There’s nothing funny about this.”
Aaron kisses the top of my head and releases me. He downs his coffee and grabs his jacket from the bedroom. “Are you ready to go?”
I nod and drop my cell in my purse. “I’m ready.”
He links his fingers through mine and takes me downstairs to the car waiting to take him to the office. I stay by his side through the journey, his arm wrapped around me securely. He waves the security guard off when we arrive at Stone HQ Seattle, and the elevator clears when we step inside.
That must be a thing. Very Devil Wears Prada.
We step out onto his floor, and Dottie, his assistant, is sitting behind her desk. She’s in early. I know she doesn’t start until nine, and it’s just after eight.
“Dottie.” Aaron waves at her over his shoulder, and she grabs some paper and a pen and follows us into his office. He sits me in the chair behind his desk. “Dottie, this is Dayton, my girlfriend. Dayton, my assistant and the woman who keeps my business in order, Dottie.”
“It’s lovely to meet you properly, Dayton,” Dottie says, offering a tentative smile.
Oh yes. The last time I met her, I was an angry mess of a woman. Oopsie.
“And you, Dottie. I’m sorry last time I was less than desirable.”
Aaron pokes me in the back. “Okay, enough chitchat. You two have plenty of time for that. Dottie, we have a situation, and I need you to help me.”
I swallow. Oh, god. No.
“Anything I can do, I will.” She sits up straight and clicks her pen. “What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to get someone to find out where my ex-wife is staying.”
Dottie’s eyes widen, and I’m sure my expression mirrors hers.
“Mr. Stone—”
“She’s taken it upon herself to blackmail Dayton, and as you can imagine, I’m less than happy about it. We know she holds some important details about Dayton’s life that could impact both her and the business, and it’s in everyone’s best interests if this story doesn’t make it past the printers into the public eye.”
“You want me to send out some feelers and see who, if anyone, has this information.”
“And this is why I pay you.” Aaron smiles and leans forward on his desk. “How soon can you find out?”
Dottie clicks her tongue and rocks her head from side to side. “Around noon, give or take an hour or two. I happen to have a couple of reporter friends, and one works at a local tabloid. If there’s anything to reveal, she’ll have the scoop. And I can ask my boyfriend to see what he can find out. Is there anything else I need to know?”
“If you hear the name Mia Lopez, you’re on the right track.”
Dottie scribbles that on her paper and stands, nodding. “All right. I’m on it. I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything out.”
“Thank you. Oh, and, Dottie?”
She pauses by the open door and glances over her shoulder.
“If you get me this information, your next pay will have a considerable bonus in it.”
Her lips twist to one side. “I’m not doing it for money, Mr. Stone. I’m doing it because we’ve all noticed how happy you are now. And, if you’ll excuse my language, Naomi is a raging bitch.”
She closes the door behind her, and I laugh. “I like her. She gets it.”
“Dottie has worked for me for four years, and Naomi spent the majority of that time trying to convince me to fire her.” Aaron perches on his desk and folds his arms across his chest.
“Why?”
“She didn’t like her. Dottie was fresh out of college when we hired her. It was supposed to be for the summer so she could gain a little experience doing admin work. She took to being my assistant like a duck takes to water when my previous one got pregnant, so I kept her on permanently. Naomi was jealous of how closely we work together. And that Dottie has a crush on me.”
I roll my eyes. “It’s a good thing there are no trust issues here, isn’t there?”
He smiles. “Very.”
We stare at each other for a long moment, and he leans in slowly to take my mouth with his.
“Can I…say something?” I ask quietly.
“The amount you talk, I’d be worried if you didn’t.”
I backhand slap his thigh, and he laughs. “No. Have you ever considered that maybe Naomi is in love with you?”
Aaron pauses, his eyes still on mine. “Once or twice. The problem is, Day, I know her better than anyone else. She loves the money and influence I have more than the man inside.”
“I think she’s in love with you,” I say softly, looking away. “And that’s why I think she’s doing this.”
“Hey.” He crouches in front of me and tilts my face into his. “The only person whose feelings matter is the woman I’m looking at right now. I have loved you since the moment I laid eyes on you all those years ago. I never stopped, not even for a second. You have my heart in a viselike grip, Dayton, and I hope to God you’ll never let it go. Naomi hates that. She knows I never loved her, and yes, she probably is in what she has come to perceive as love. Money, influence, and social standing don’t equal love or a successful relationship. Love is what’s beneath the surface, beyond all of those things, and that’s what you see. You see the man beneath it all. You see me, baby. You look at me and see the way I look at you, not dollar signs. If I have to hurt her to keep you safe, then I will.”
“I know.”
“Nothing is as important to me as you are. When you understand just how much you mean to me, you’ll understand that I’ll walk all over anyone who keeps me from protecting you.”
“I know.”
“I mean it, Day. I’ll walk until I can’t—”
I tug his face to mine and silence him with the touch of my lips to his. “I know,” I murmur. “So please, shut up and kiss me now before you make me cry.”
“No more crying,” he orders, curling his fingers around the back of my neck. His mouth sweeps across mine in a firm way that backs up his words.
I agree. No more crying. No more doubting or worrying or crying.
I have to put my faith in the man kissing me like I’m the air he needs to breathe. I have to believe that he’ll take this mess I escalated and spin it into gold, keeping us both safe in the process.
I have to believe in him, and I have to believe in us.
And I do.
I believe in us.
I believe we can conquer anything thrown our way.
We just have to do it.

***

I sigh and lie back on the sofa, lifting my legs and resting them on the back of it. I’m all for Aaron keeping me safe, but I’d like to be amused. As it is, I’ve run through all my lives on Candy Crush, dropped all my coins on Coin Dozer, and listened to the Spotify top chart five times. Okay, the songs I like on it. That lowers the time consumption considerably.
And now I’m bored. Really, really bored.
I sigh again, this time the breath escaping through pursed lips, and kick my legs. Aaron’s in the meeting he left yesterday because of my mini meltdown that left me on the kitchen floor, and he has some damage control to do.
I think. I could be exaggerating. I have no idea how this business stuff works.
My third sigh leaves as a huff. How long does it take to negotiate a contract? Half an hour?
No, that’s silly. I’ve been here alone for at least two hours.
He really needs to invest in a coffee machine for this office. Stat.
The door opens, and I roll my head to the side. A smirk curves Aaron’s lips as he flicks his eyes over my body and takes me in.
“Comfortable?”
“Comfortable but bored,” I reply, flexing my ankles. “Did you get your contract?”
“Don’t ask me such stupid questions, Dayton. I was in charge of the campaign. Of course I did.”
I swing my legs around and sit up straight. “Even though you ran out halfway through the meeting yesterday?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Every person in that meeting was married. They understood my need to leave.”
“For your girlfriend? Married and girlfriend are different things.”
“For one second, will you stop doubting your importance to me? F*ck, Day, it’s driving me insane. Do you honestly think I wouldn’t walk you down an aisle tomorrow if it wouldn’t freak you the hell out? I love you, and love is love, regardless of a piece of paper declaring forever. My heart has promised you forever and that’s the f*cking end of it.”
“I don’t doubt my importance. I was just asking. And I’m bored. So my brain is kind of numb right now.”
“You’re bored? How bored?”
“I-could-claw-my-own-eyes-out bored.”
He crosses his office and leans over me, one hand on the back of the sofa, the other flattened on the cushion by my side, and curves his lips. “Bored enough you can cope with me in here for an hour until my next meeting?”
“Debatable. I might get annoyed. You know what they say about couples that work and play together.”
“Oh, believe me, baby. I have no work on my mind. Only play.”
He covers my mouth in a kiss so forceful I push my hips up. Shit. His tongue slides along the seam of my mouth, flicking between my lips and begging for entry. I allow him, opening for him, letting my tongue sweep against his. He squeezes my waist and lowers his body on top of mine, hard and defined and so f*cking perfect.
I slide my hands beneath his jacket and tug his shirt free of his trousers. The skin on his back is hot beneath my fingers as they creep under the hem of his shirt, and he groans quietly when I wrap my legs around his back.
The way my body arches into his, the tensing of my muscles that hold him to me, the deep sweep of my tongue across his—they all say how much I need him. They tell both of us how much my body needs his, how much it craves the sweet touch of his skin against mine.
He loosens his tie and loops it over his head, still knotted, and slides one hand up my dress to my ass. He squeezes lightly, and I tug desperately at his jacket. It falls to his elbows and I tear his buttons open, his shirt following shortly after. Then he slips his hands beneath my body. They flatten against the small of my back and hold me to him.
Aaron lifts me, walking me across his office, and perches me on the edge of his desk. “I told you I’d f*ck you on this desk, and since everyone is gone for lunch, I’m going to f*ck you hard. Hard enough that you scream my name so the whole building can hear you.”
My body arches into him in response to his words. I don’t need to say anything. This is the time my body says everything I can’t put together.
He swipes his hand across the desk, and holy f*cking shit, the papers and pens scatter just like they do in the movies. Before I can wonder when this became my life, he lays me back and eases my dress up over my hips.
Once again, my mouth is taken by his, this time hot and desperate, needy and forceful. I’m a prisoner beneath his body, my bare ass against the chill of his glass desk, while he runs his hands over my body.
They find my hips and, eventually, my aching, wet *. He rubs me through my panties, making my back arch and my breath hitch, but it’s not enough.
I want all of him. I want every inch of him inside me until I forget the crap hanging over us and give in to the sheer pleasure I know only he can give me.
“Aaron, please,” I whisper into his neck, grabbing his back desperately. “I need you.”
“How badly do you need me, Day? Tell me. Tell me how badly you want me to f*ck you right now.” He kisses down my neck to my collarbone, sucking lightly on my pulse point, making me tighten.
“Don’t f*ck me around Aaron. Just f*ck me. You know how badly I need you.”
“No, I don’t,” he breathes, grinding his erection against my throbbing p-ssy. “Tell me, Dayton.”
“Tell you what?”
He slips two fingers inside me. “Tell me how desperately you need me to fill you and stretch you until you throw your head back and whisper my name. Tell me how fiercely you want me to drive my cock into you. Tell me how hard you want me to hold your hips against mine. Tell me how much you want this.” He unzips his fly and positions the head of his hard, gleaming cock at my opening. “Tell me how desperately you need me inside you until you’re incapable of screaming anything but my name.”
“You demanding?” I flex my hips, trying to get more of him inside.
“Requiring, baby. Tell me right the f*ck now or I’m zipping my pants and leaving you here wide open and begging on my desk.”
The idea of that sends a lightning jolt through my body, and I dig my nails into my skin. I lift my face to his, my mouth by his ear, and I give him what he wants.
“I want you inside me, Aaron. I want you to sink into me until you forget where you end and I begin, until we forget what’s real and what isn’t. I want you inside me until you’re f*cking me so hard all you can think of is the sweet heat of my p-ssy clenching around you as I cry your name into your ear and bite your shoulder in pleasure. Is that enough for you, baby? Is that what you want? To know I want you to f*ck me until I see motherf*cking stars from the sheer force of the pure pleasure you give me?”
He drives into me in one swift thrust, stretching every muscle and making them clench. “Yes. That’s what I want to know, Dayton. I want you to know you’ll see nothing as you come around me.”
“Then you should stop talking and f*ck me right the hell now.”
And he does. He pulls me into him, tilting my hips up, and pushes himself so far inside me that there isn’t a part of my core untouched by him. The heat from his penetration spreads through my body, taking each of my limbs hostage by the beauty of the feeling.
He pushes deep with every thrust into me, each one harder than the last, more desperate, more frantic, more needing. I claw at his back and push my body into him, loving the rawness of it. This is pure. Unadulterated. Desperate. The very thing I need right now.
He pinches my nipple and rolls it between his fingers. I moan at the body-filling feeling. Desire hotter than I’ve ever felt encompasses me as he takes my other in his mouth, still pounding me.
He releases my nipple, and at his groan, the sex turns carnal. It changes to a f*ck in the purest sense of the word. It’s primal, and the only goal is pleasure. A scream and a clench and a release.
Our skin slaps together as he drives himself into me relentlessly, his only goal to come. I tilt my hips up and take him farther, allowing him to hit every spot inside me.
Then the skin above his cock rubs my *, the stubble from his trimmed hair harsh and brutal against the tender nub, and I give in.
To the harsh pounding, to the desperate breaths in my ear, to the clenching of my muscles, to the digging of his fingers at my hips.
I come. Explosively. Suddenly. Incredibly. An all-encompassing shudder of my body that tenses every muscle I have. A crazy, out-of-this-world release that takes all of me hostage.
Aaron’s fingers dig as deep into my skin as mine are into his as he grunts my name. I push into him, milking every drop of his orgasm.
The feeling of his skin against mine is something to savor. No matter how many times I grind my hips into his and pull every drop of salty come from him.
Aaron slides a hand into my hair and turns my head into his. “Good thing I just cleared my afternoon for you, Miss Black.” He pulls out of me, a hard kiss taking my lips.
“No. You reschedule and get the hell on with it, Stone.”
“No. We have other things to attend to this afternoon.” He stands and buttons his fly, tucking his half-hard dick inside his boxers.
“Like what, exactly?”
He wipes some tissue along me, tenderly wiping me clean, and passes me my panties. “Sorry. I don’t have clean ones,” he murmurs. “And things I don’t want to discuss while you’re lying on my desk after I f*cked you.”
I sit up, courtesy of his arms around my back and lifting me, and brush my thumb along his jaw. “Let’s deal with it, baby. Together. As one.”
“We will be, but I’m still not discussing it while you’re on my desk.”
“Oh, for f*ck’s sake.” I stand, stepping to the side of him. “There. I’m not on your desk anymore.”
Aaron looks at my hand. “And you’re also not wearing any underwear.”
I tug my dress down my thighs and stuff my wet panties into the pocket of his pants. “And I won’t be for the rest of the day, so that’s a moot point. Now. Talk.”
His phone rings and he holds his finger up. “Yes?”
“Mr. Stone?” Dottie’s voice comes through the speakerphone. “I gathered the information you asked for this morning.”
“Thank you, Dottie. Can you bring it in?”
I cough quietly and point at the floor. More precisely, the mess of papers, files, and pens covering it.
Aaron runs his tongue across his bottom lip. “On second thought, give me a minute.”
“Of course.” She clicks off the line, and Aaron stalks toward me, a fiery amusement reflecting in his eyes.
“You realize you’ll be reorganizing all these later, yes?” He scoops the files and papers up in one swift movement and replaces the pens in the jar next to his laptop.
“Why? You’re the one who put them there.” I poke him in the chest with raised eyebrows.
He slaps my ass slightly. “We’re not getting into this when my assistant is walking into my office in…right now.” He kisses me quickly and turns to face Dottie as she eases the door open after a couple of light knocks.
“Mr. Stone?”
“Come in and shut the door behind you,” Aaron orders, sitting behind his desk.
I stand to the side and wrap my arms around my stomach, the playful, sexy mood of only minutes ago dissipating into a much heavier one that feels somewhat suffocating.
Dottie takes a seat on the opposite side of his desk and places a folder in front of her. “I called around this morning and put some feelers out. What I know, so far, after promising an intern at The Seattle Insider that risking her job would be worth her while…” She pauses, catching my confused look, and one side of her lips quirk up. “After bribing her,” she adds. Oh. Ah. “Naomi met with them on the day after you and Dayton returned from London.”
“The day after I moved in.” I look at Aaron. He nods once and puts his hand out without returning my gaze.
Dottie hands him the folder. “She promised them the ‘scoop’ on Dayton’s past employment for a fee higher than it’s worth. The story—as you can see in the file—is ready to go into print at the first word from her.”
My fingers dig into my sides. Shit. She’s really planned it all out. I step up behind Aaron and skim the paper in his hands.
A sick feeling rises in my stomach.
I don’t know how she managed it, but she’s uncovered everything but my bra size. My clients, my schedule, my fees… Everything. She knows absolutely everything.
“The Seattle Insider, you say?” Aaron looks up and taps his finger against his mouth thoughtfully. “What would they want with this? It’s not sleazy tabloid material. Why isn’t she running it with a bigger press?”
“Because they’re desperate. They’ve been running out of stories for months, and their readership has been going with it. They’re willing to pay a lot of money for something that will put them back in people’s hands. A story on Seattle’s version of royalty is the way to do that.”
“Interesting,” he replies after a long moment. Slowly, he turns to look at me, and I see a spark in his eye. One that screams of an idea, something that could only be accomplished by someone with money. The money he has.
He looks back to Dottie. “Get Sheila to deal with rearranging my afternoon schedule. I want you to send out more of those feelers and see if you can find out just how desperate the Insider is.” He pulls his wallet from his pocket and slides several bills across the table. “I might be interested in broadening my portfolio of investments.”