The Owner of His Heart

CHAPTER ELEVEN





LAYLA woke up the next morning, thinking she hadn’t slept this good in ages. She stretched without opening her eyes. Even her bed felt better this morning. Her sheets were silkier as if they’d magically increased their thread count by a thousand fold overnight. And she rubbed her nose into the pillow, which felt especially plump. It was like sleeping on a cloud.

Best of all, she thought, for the first time in months, she hadn’t woken up in the middle of some weird sex dream involving Nathan Sinclair—

That’s when it all came back to her. Her eyes flew open and she found herself in a bed covered with black sheets, one way larger than her own modest full. She sat up with a gasp. And then she saw the stainless steel alarm clock on the nightstand next to the bed. It read eight am, which meant she was supposed to be at work two hours ago.

“Oh no,” she said, scrambling out of bed. She looked around for her clothes, but she couldn’t find them. They weren’t anywhere near the bed, and when she opened the black hamper, she found it empty.

“Looking for something?” a voice called from the other side of the loft.

She looked up to see Nathan in the kitchen, leaning up against one of the black granite counters, wearing nothing but a pair of black workout shorts and sipping coffee from a large black mug.

For a moment she became mesmerized by the view, the way his ab muscles rippled into the hard triangle of his pelvis. But then she remembered herself and said. “I’m looking for my clothes. I was supposed to be at work two hours ago.”

“No you weren’t. Kate called in sick for you.”

“What? Who’s Kate?”

“My assistant. That’s who I was texting last night.” He set down his coffee and walked over to her, making no pretense of his interest in her complete nakedness. The way his eyes ran over her body sent a shiver down Layla’s spine.

Still she forced herself to stay focused on the business at hand. “I can’t just skip work. I need the money to pay you back—seriously where are my clothes?”

“How about this,” he said, coming to a stop in front of her, so close, she could feel the heat radiating off of his post-workout body. “You sign the contract and I’ll give you back your clothes.”

She backed away from him, thinking that the last thing she had time for was morning sex. “No, I have to get to work.”

But he caught her by the shoulders and said in a reasonable tone of voice. “Your shift started two hours ago. They’ve probably already called in a replacement.”

“Yeah, but I hate letting people down. I should…”

He lodged his hand in the space between her neck and her shoulder, stroking his thumb against her jaw. To Layla, who could sense his cloth-covered erection just a few tantalizing inches away from her naked core, it felt like he was both caressing her and keeping her there, holding her in place.

“You’re not letting anyone down,” he said. “You work for a business and businesses are set up to expect their employees to use the sick days they’ve been allotted. Take a break from being the nice girl already.”

She peeped up at him. “You really don’t like that about me, do you? That I’m nice, that I take my responsibilities seriously.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, actually. You’ve always been a hell of a lot nicer to everyone but me.”

“So when we were dating or whatever we used to do together, I wasn’t nice to you?”

He paused, as if considering his words, before saying, “No. You weren’t.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“You shouldn’t apologize,” he said. “For all you know you might have liked being mean to me. You always seemed to take pleasure in it, anyway.”

She shook her head. “I would never take pleasure in being mean to somebody else.”

“Again, how would you know?”

A flare of annoyance provided her with some respite from the thick sexual tension that came with standing here naked like this. “It’s not very nice to tease me about things I can’t remember.”

Something ticked in his jaw, and he didn’t take his hand away from her neck, but he did turn his head away from her, so she couldn’t see his face. “Well, you weren’t very nice to me. So now we’re even.”

Even with his face turned away, she couldn’t help but see the haunted look in his eyes, the look she somehow knew she’d put there, even if she didn’t remember how or why.

Now she reached up to stroke his jaw, turning his face back to her so she could look into his tortured eyes. “I don’t know who I was then, but I know who I am now, and the thought of me hurting you really upsets me. I think that’s why I want to pay you back so bad, not just because I want my dad’s debt off my conscience, but because I can’t shake this feeling there’s something I need to be making up to you.”


His grey gaze became cold again, and he shifted his eyes to a point just beyond her shoulder, obviously not wanting to answer her unspoken question.

“Nathan, no one’s ever made me feel the way you did last night,” she said. “I don’t want to fight with you anymore, I just want to make it up to you, okay?”

He still wouldn’t look at her, so she pulled the hand cupping her neck down to her left breast, hoping he could feel the heart beating underneath it. “Please, let me make it up to you.”

Without warning, he turned his hand over and reversed the hold so he now held the hand she’d used to cover his in a vice grip. “You want to make it up to me? Fine, come over here.”

He didn’t drag her, but he wasn’t exactly gentle as he pulled her into the office section of the loft. The contract he offered her last night was sitting on his desk in a brown envelope. He pulled it out with one hand, then shoved a pen into her hand, the one he had taken prisoner.

“If you really want to make it up to me,” he growled. “Sign the contract.”

“No!” She tried to tug her hand from his, hurt that despite what had happened between them the night before, he still wanted her out of his life.

“Then you don’t really want to make it up to me, so stop saying you do.” He yelled this, before pushing her hand away.

“Now if you’re done pretending to be Miss Sensitivity, I’m going to go finish my coffee.” He started back toward the kitchen.

Layla clutched her heart, which was beating like a wild thing inside of her chest now. Hot tears were at the surface, threatening to overtake her, but at the same time, her damn sense of honor was already telling her what she should do, what she had to do if he was serious about needing this action to forgive her.

“Fine,” she said, her voice wet with sorrow and anger.

He turned around.

And just so there was no mistaking her meaning, she bent down, naked as the day she was born, and started signing the contract.

There were five post-it tabs with heavy arrows on them, indicating where she should sign her name for each section. She could feel Nathan standing behind her, watching over her shoulder as she signed away her life in Pittsburgh. Finally she reached the last page and signed that one too, scribbling the date down, despite her vision, which was becoming blurry with unshed tears.

But no sooner had she finished writing out the last two numbers for the current year, did Nathan turn her into his arms. He picked her up by the waist, and set her on the edge of his office desk. “Thank you,” he said. He used his thumbs to wipe away her tears. His face was so close to hers he could feel his hot breath on her face. “Thank you. Now stay with me until you have to leave in August.”

“What?” She was so sad and confused, she wasn’t sure if she was hearing him correctly.

But he kissed her, leaning into her so she could feel the thick erection tenting his workout shorts. “Stay here with me. Let me have you until you go. That’s the second part of my deal.”

Hot need burned inside of her and she returned his kisses, even as she tried to make sense of it all. “So you want me to go, but you want me to stay with you until I do.”

He reached into a nearby desk drawer and pulled out a condom. “I want to get tired of you,” he said, pulling down his workout shorts and slipping the condom on over his straining erection. “I want to f*ck you until I don’t feel this way about you anymore.”

The way he said this, it sounded like he was in pain. Like Layla’s mere presence hurt him. “Then wouldn’t it be better if I left now, went back to my apartment and never saw you again?”

“No.” His answer was vicious and hard, like the muscles that flexed in his chest and arms as he pulled her hips toward him. “Don’t leave. Stay.”

Then he drove into her. Layla gasped to be filled so suddenly, but it felt good, the thickness of him as he moved in and out of her.

“Say you’ll stay until your move date.”

“I can’t think when you’re inside of me.” Layla collapsed her head on his shoulder. The sensations building inside her were primal. She could feel herself clenching around him, eagerly milking him into her.

“Stay,” he said, his voice low and feral. “Or I’ll stop.”

Layla still didn’t understand why he wanted her to stay with him if he was just going to make her leave in two months. But at that point she would have agreed to anything. “Okay, I’ll stay. Don’t stop.”

“Promise me,” he said. He bit into Layla’s shoulder, just hard enough, walking that fine line between pleasure and pain. “I know you take your promises seriously.”

She did take her promises seriously, which was why she didn’t answer him, just held on tight as he stroked inside of her, hoping he’d let the matter drop.

But then he pulled all the way out, leaving her empty and aching. He took her chin in his hand, forcing her to meet his intense grey eyes. “Promise me.”

She didn’t want to make the promise. But her p-ssy throbbed for him, her pending orgasm howled for him. And she realized at that moment Nathan wasn’t the only one who needed to be weaned off this crazy passion they shared.

“I promise,” she whispered.

He came back to her then, re-entered her, and pumped into her so hard and fast that within minutes, she could feel the orgasm coming, like a thunderous train barreling toward her.

“Yes!” she cried out, when it hit her coursing through her womb like hot lava. “Yes!”

This time she bit his shoulder as the tide of his release pulsed through him against the walls of her vagina. He shuddered against her, coming so hard, she could feel his jaw clench against her shoulder

“O mój bo?e!”

They both looked up to see a little old Polish lady in a grey maid’s uniform standing there. She held a paper bag filled with groceries in each hand, and the expression on her face was thoroughly scandalized.