“Let’s get out of here,” Mateo says. He speaks softly, but everyone seems to listen. Their shock evaporates and changes to a directed energy.
In the next moment Zoey lifts her chin. “Fine,” she says, haughty as a queen. “Clearly Beau wants to fuck his pretty little nanny. We shouldn’t interrupt time that he’s already paid for.”
Oliver mutters to his brother across me. “We can probably console her back at the inn.”
A soft grunt of agreement. Lucas gives me a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll think of you fondly, darling girl. And imagine that you’re her until I black out.”
It takes some rustling around, some searching for shoes and jackets, and then eventually they’re gone. I lean back on the sofa and throw out my arms. The leather feels so blessedly good against my skin. “I think she was calling me a prostitute,” I say to the empty room.
“Don’t worry about her,” the room says. No, it’s not the room talking. It’s Mr. Rochester.
I turn my head to look at him. “You were mean to her.”
“I’m mean to everyone.”
“Not Paige.”
He raises one eyebrow. “Maybe not her.”
“It’s such a relief,” I tell him soberly. “If you were mean to her, I don’t know what I’d do. She’s gone through enough losing her parents without some guy being cruel.”
“Like your foster father was cruel?”
I bite my lip. “I don’t like to talk about that.”
“I made it so that they couldn’t foster anymore. Maybe it was worse than I imagined. Should I turn the district attorney on him? Or maybe I should just fly down there and kick his ass.”
“Don’t be silly,” I say, giving him a grin. “You couldn’t kick anyone’s ass. Your leg is broken.”
He lifts a walking stick that he’s been using to get around tonight. “That’s what this is for.”
“You know the doctor told you not to use crutches. That’s not even crutches. That’s worse than crutches. You’re going to open your wound back up and not heal properly. And then what am I going to do with you? Not bring you food, that’s for sure. You can beg Zoey to come back.”
His lips quirk. “You’re bossy when you’re drunk.”
“I’m bossy all the time. I just can’t tell you what I’m really thinking all the time.”
“I want to hear what you’re really thinking.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re just saying that now because you’ve had whiskey and everything seems funny. Once we’re sober you’re going to be a grumpy boss man again.”
“A grumpy boss man?” He’s clearly holding back laughter.
I stand up because he can’t. Then I’m leaning on the arm of his chair, the same way Zoey did. The leather’s still warm from her butt. Mr. Rochester has to look up at me this way.
We’re so close. So close I can feel the heat coming from his body.
It’s hotter than the fireplace.
I look him directly in the eyes. The dark gaze reflects the flames. “I’d say, shove it up your ass. And then you’d say, you’re fired, Jane.”
“You want to tell me to shove it up your ass?”
“Then again maybe we can just get drunk every day. Then you’d never be angry. And I’d never have to be sad again.”
He tugs me onto his lap, and I squirm, trying to avoid hurting his leg with my weight. Only then do I feel something hard that’s definitely not his leg. “You’re always sad. And the worst part is, I want to make you happy. I promised myself I’d never go down this road again.”
“Because of the woman you loved before.”
“No,” he murmurs against my neck, and I realize we’re even closer than I thought. We’re all wrapped up in each other. He’s holding my waist and my leg. I’ve got my arms on his shoulders. “I didn’t love her. I wanted her, and I almost broke myself trying to have her.”
“You built a billion-dollar company trying to win her.”
“And how do you think you build those? By becoming someone ambitious, someone cold and hard, someone unethical. I didn’t even recognize myself by the end.”
I pull back and push a lock of dark hair from his forehead. Part of me knows I would never do this if I weren’t drunk. The other part of me doesn’t care. It feels good. Maybe it would always have felt good, if I’d have had the courage to do it before. “The playboy Beau Rochester.”
“Yes.”
“The one who had sex with lots of supermodels.”
His hand tightens in my hair. “Did you like when they touched you?”
I blink slowly. It takes me a second to realize what he means. “They made me laugh.”
“But did you like it when they touched you?”
My forehead leans against his. “They weren’t you.”
“You break me apart.”
I press my lips against his. The other times we were together, in his study and outside Paige’s room, he initiated it. I enjoyed what he did, but I was passive. Obedient, even. Good little Jane Mendoza who does what she’s told.
This is another side of me. The ocean during a storm.
I’m the one crossing boundaries tonight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Beau Rochester
Jane sits on my lap. It shouldn’t feel so good, not with my leg aching and my heart heavy. But of course my cock is hard as iron. It has no problem with the idea of fucking her even though I ignored her for the past few days.
She doesn’t seem to have a problem with the idea either.
Her hands keep running through my hair, and it feels so good I close my eyes and turn my head toward her like some wild animal being tamed by a fairy. She’s surrounding me—her touch, her scent. It’s only because she’s drunk. I shouldn’t take advantage of her. I shouldn’t, but I’m upside down in the dark water, unable to breathe.
I turned my back on her, and now I’m going to drown.
“You don’t really want me,” I tell her. She wants safety, and she thinks I can give that to her. But I can’t. It’s a mirage. I’m no more capable of being the man she needs than the cliff itself. We are both impenetrable, indestructible. Made that way through decades of erosion.
Because she’s drunk, that makes her giggle. “You don’t know what I want.”
“Then tell me, sweet girl.”
She puts her hands on my head on either side and looks me right in the eye. I don’t know whether she’s doing it to appear very serious or whether she just can’t focus on me. I shouldn’t have let Zoey serve her drinks. “I want the fourth thing. What’s number four?”
I lost every principle I held dear building my shipping company, trying to win Emily Macom, trying to become more than the dirt-poor son of a lobsterman.
Who the hell am I now? That’s what I asked myself.
I swore that I’d never need anything so badly again. Then this young woman sits on my lap and asks for number four. Number fucking four. As if there’s a little kama sutra book sitting on her nightstand that she’s working through, ever the diligent straight A student.