“That’s a sex shop,” Shyla says.
“Still.” Aimee should’ve added a foot stomp there. “It’s attention grabbing to some of us who don’t have a dick to ride every night.” She snaps her fingers several times. “Get your shit together and let’s do this. There’s so much here!” She peeks to Shyla before twisting around and sashaying away.
Shyla rolls her eyes. “And I thought I was the chocolate whore.”
Grabbing my sunglasses and purse, I pause at the mirror to primp my hair and straighten the strings to my black bikini under my tank top. I look better than I feel. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Aimee’s phone pings as we step on the elevator. She pulls it from her back pocket, sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes. “Does Bethany not know what the hell she’s doing?” she complains, tapping out a text.
“She’s trying to run both our booths and use our things. She knows no one and doesn’t have a clue where everything is. Give her a break,” Shyla tells her sounding slightly annoyed.
Aimee waves her hand. “You’re right. The distraction of chocolate is playing with my emotions.”
Our flip-flops smack the marble floors of the lobby as we stride through. Pillars with water trickling down them acting as waterfalls fill the air with a calming effect. Just then, Nathan steps out and snatches my arm, pulling me away.
“What are you doing?” I yelp trying to dig my flip-flops into the floor. “Stop.” I twist back to Aimee and Shyla for help, but Aimee blows me a kiss and keeps walking.
And that’s when it hits me. That bitch set me up.
All the talk about taking a trip on his dime, how badly we need it, and us being distracted between here and the chocolate factory has been part of her plan.
“Nathan, what are you doing?” I hiss as he swipes a card and drags me into a long hallway. Secluded.
“If you don’t let me go, I’m going to scream,” I warn.
He smirks, daring me to.
He swipes his card again and pulls me into a room with a long table lined with chairs. Shutting the door, he twists me around, grips the back of my head and kisses me.
I’m dizzy from it, intoxicated by his lips. It’s ardent, a perfect blend of hard and desperate, soft and zealous. The electricity that has always been between us zips over my skin, dipping my stomach and draining all the sorrow from my body. Softly, I moan.
“Let me talk,” he pants against my lips before leaning back to meet my gaze. “I’m flawed, Brooklyn. No amount of money can make me perfect. You’ve done nothing but screw my head up. When I saw him in your house…” His nostrils flare. “It devastated me. You fucking own me and have no clue. Whether we work out or not, I’m not going another day without you knowing how much I’m madly in love with you.”
Those words…
My breath catches in my throat.
“I love you so much it hurts. You’ve caused every wall I’ve ever built to crumble. I wasn’t looking for anything when I met you. I didn’t want to love, yet I couldn’t stop falling. Even with the mess of our beginning, I knew I wanted you. I fucked up and I don’t deserve another chance, but I do trust you. I do.”
Emotions swarm inside of me. My head swims in the rush. My gaze flicks between his eyes and I utter the one thing I’ve been dying to say, “I love you too.”
He slams his mouth to mine, tangling a hand into my hair and unbuttoning my shorts with the other. I’m frantic to get his pants off, to feel him inside of me. Shoving my shorts down, he pushes his pants to his thighs and lifts me, my legs instinctively wrapping around him.
When he enters me, he hisses as I moan.
His thrusts are hard, jutting deep. I pull his hair as he bites on my neck. Our pants are loud in the silent room, but neither of us care in the heat of the moment. We’re engulfed in the passion we share.
My orgasm builds from my toes and crawls up my legs. “Nathan…” I voice my urgency.
He pumps faster, gripping my ass and digging his fingers into my skin.
I tumble, spiraling down into the depths of my orgasm. Falling so incredibly… He bucks savagely, pushing me harder into the door as I fall apart.
Suddenly, he roots himself deeply and groans into my neck, a sound so unrestrained and full of desperation my soul feels it.
He keeps his forehead resting on my shoulder as we slow our labored breaths until he shifts and places my feet back to the floor. He watches me intently and I’m positive he sees the realization of what we just did donning in my expression. I buckled instantly and put up no type of fight—not even for a condom even though I’m on the pill.
“Oh shit,” I mutter, looking around the room.
Flashing a devil-may-care smirk, he tucks himself back into his jeans.
“This doesn’t fix us,” I say.
Remorsefully, he exhales. “Yeah. I know.”
“Can we go somewhere and talk?” I straighten my shirt.
“You lead the way and I’ll follow.”
Knowing I don’t have the willpower to resist him, I take us to the beach, where public is my friend.
“Did you rope Aimee into this plan?” I ask walking through the warm sand.
“Yes. But in her defense, it took a lot of persuasion.” He raises a brow. “She demanded a private tour.” He laughs. “Huge price on that.”
“You don’t mess with her chocolate,” I snort.
“I’ve learned.”
“Is Shyla involved?”
“Where there’s Aimee there’s Shyla.”
Those bitches.
“Vincent swore my mother was a home wrecker,” he begins. “She wasn’t. I had watched his father come to our house six months before his divorce was final. Mom and Dad’s was final almost two years prior. I was sixteen and uprooted from the home I grew up in and shoved into a home with a thirteen-year-old stepbrother who immediately despised me and wasn’t afraid to make it known. I tried building a brotherhood for my mother’s sake, but Vincent wasn’t having it. He would destroy anything of mine from shit in my room to my relationships.”
I stop walking, peering up to him. “We’re talking about Vincent Hoyer, right?”
“He was good at hiding his bullshit outside the house. I’ve heard the stories he’s told about me and Mom. But they’re untrue, made up and twisted. You know when I was studying for my finals, he burned my books in the backyard fire pit?”
“What? That’s not the story he gave me.”
“Of course not, but I’ll call my mother to validate if you’d like.”
I shake my head and he begins walking again.
“Then Cassie. I didn’t want a long-distance relationship and neither did she. She wanted fun for a short time. She never told me she had a boyfriend. Had she, I would’ve walked away. I tried explaining that to Vincent, but he wasn’t hearing it. He didn’t believe a thing I said and swore I was out to ruin him. That’s when he started messing with any girl I dated. He’s smooth when he wants to be, and when you have a boyfriend whose sole focus was on school, work, and developing plans to begin endeavors…I was absent. He wasn’t. One girl didn’t fall for his shit. We dated for years, but absence makes a heart lonely and she split. And I don’t blame her for leaving. I was never home.”