For now.
“The dress. Let me see you.”
She didn’t need to ask what he meant. Samara shimmied enough to get the tiny straps of her dress off her shoulders and push the fabric down so her breasts were free. Public sex wasn’t really her thing, but knowing that she was totally and completely exposed, even with a locked door between them and the rest of the club…
Her orgasm rolled over her without warning, bowing her back, and it was only sheer stubbornness that kept Beckett’s name from her lips.
He gentled his kisses until she was only barely shaking. “Damn, Samara. If you ever want to leave my aunt’s company, I’d hire you in a hot second.”
It was a bucket of cold water in the face of her post-orgasm bliss. It was one thing to fuck around. A stupid thing, to be sure, but it was a strictly physical response to an attractive man who she knew could make her feel good. His throwing around words like daggers was something else altogether. Leave the company you’ve been at for years because I like the way you fuck, and when I get tired of you—and I will—then you’ll be left just as high and dry as your mother was when your father left.
She used a single finger against his forehead to push him back, and he let her do it, his dark eyes seeing too much. Well, too damn bad. He could see all he wanted, but that didn’t mean anything had changed.
It couldn’t.
She wouldn’t let it.
As soon as he was far enough from her, she stood slowly. There were no words to explain how badly she’d just fucked up. She was supposed to be the one in control—the one who was handling Beckett and avoiding a scandal.
It’d taken him a grand total of five minutes to have her riding his mouth and begging for release. If the door lock had failed and someone had managed to take a picture of them…
Her career would be finished. No one would take her seriously. Lydia would fire her on the spot. She’d lose everything she’d worked so hard for. She fixed her dress, her gaze on the floor.
“You don’t have to look like you’re on your way to the chopping block. It was a fucking orgasm, Samara.”
There was nothing left to do but turn and face him.
Beckett looked as off-kilter as she felt. His breath was coming too fast, his hair standing on end from where she’d run her fingers through it, his entire body clenched like he was fighting between moving closer to her and putting more distance between them.
At this point, she wasn’t sure what she preferred.
Stop that. Get your priorities in order.
Once she was sure she wasn’t in danger of indecent exposure, she walked to the door. “If you start spreading around lies about Lydia’s whereabouts the night of Nathaniel’s death, I’ll see you sued for defamation.”
She didn’t hear him move. One minute he was across the room, and the next he was pressed against her back. Every part of him was hard, from his arms bracketing hers to his cock pressing against her ass. Beckett dragged his mouth over her shoulder, the rasp of his whiskers a sensation she felt in places nowhere near where he touched her. “Right here, right now, we’re going to be honest with each other.”
Not likely.
He released her and stepped back, waiting for her to face him before he continued. “We get close and it’s like our connection has its own gravitational pull. It doesn’t matter that you work for Kingdom Corp and I’m with Morningstar. You can’t resist it any more than I can.” He crossed his arms over his chest. No matter how she searched his face, his expression gave nothing away. He just…waited.
“Watch me.” She might want him, but it didn’t matter. Samara was stronger than her baser impulses, no matter what they’d been doing two minutes ago. She had to be.
Beckett didn’t have anything on the line with this. No matter how much his father’s death had messed him up, he still had a place within Morningstar Enterprise—owning Morningstar Enterprise. Whoever came out on top of this bid for the new contract, he and Lydia would walk away already preparing how they’d win the next one.
Beckett was a King.
Samara was not.
End of story.
Chapter Six
Beckett made a point to go into the office the next day despite it being Saturday. He needed the grounding effect of being inside Morningstar’s headquarters to remind him what was important.
He couldn’t even blame what happened last night on Samara. It was all Beckett. He’d been so damn off-center since his father died, since he’d lost Thistledown, and the ground only seemed to be growing more unstable with each passing day.
No matter what Samara had said, he trusted Frank. If his friend said Lydia met his father the night he died, then it happened. She might have had appointments elsewhere, but that didn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things. People missed appointments all the time. He did believe that Samara didn’t know anything about that meeting. Maybe he shouldn’t, but his gut said her surprise was real, and he’d learned to trust that instinct over the years.
His gut also said Lydia had something to do with his father’s death.
It might be as benign as drinking with him and letting him get behind the wheel, but Beckett doubted it stopped there. Someone had paid the driver off and sent him out of country, and Lydia had barely waited twenty-four hours before she was trying to convince Beckett to sell the company. It was possible it was a coincidence…
But add in the shock of Nathaniel willing Thistledown to Lydia, and it was too much to explain away. There was only one person who benefited almost uniformly from Nathaniel King’s death as things stood now—and it
