He cursed again. “Samara, I’m trying to do right by you and you’re making it fucking impossible.”
“The only thing I want fucking is us.”
He chuckled against her neck. “Yeah, I got that.” He shifted them closer to the edge of the bed and reached blindly into the nightstand. He pulled back and ripped the condom open, but Samara snatched it out of his hand.
“Let me.” She kissed his jaw as she rolled it over his cock, taking her time. As much as she wanted him inside her, teasing him was totally worth waiting a little bit. Once he was sheathed, she gave him another stroke.
“You’re killing me, woman.” Beckett settled back between her thighs and framed her face with his hands. He kissed her like the kiss itself was the main event and his cock wasn’t poised at her entrance. The slow slide of his tongue against hers held a promise that encompassed more than this moment.
A future.
He thrust into her in a smooth movement, as natural as her next breath. Pleasure and promise built with each stroke, and still the kiss went on and on. Beckett held her as if she were the most precious thing in the world, as if nothing else mattered but her happiness. Dangerous, fanciful thoughts, but she wrapped them up and held them close even as she clung to him.
“Yes. Yes. Yes.” Each word punctuated a thrust, an answer to a question he hadn’t given voice to. It didn’t matter. Words were superficial compared to the connection they built there and now.
Beckett’s tempo increased, and she rose to meet each stroke. He wrapped his arms around her, so she lay in his embrace instead of on the bed, holding her as close as two people could be. “I don’t give a fuck what the world throws at us. I’m keeping you, Samara. ”
She came with a soft cry, pressing her face against his shoulder, telling herself the burning in her eyes was orgasmic bliss and not anything resembling tears. “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes to everything.”
Chapter Sixteen
Journey made it into the office before anyone else on Wednesday morning. Even her mother hadn’t graced the building yet, which was just as well. Nothing ruined a day like dealing with Lydia before they both had their morning coffee. In the twenty-four hours she’d spent going over Samara’s information on the bid, Journey had racked up over a hundred emails.
Sixty of them were marked as needing urgent responses.
Journey dropped her head to her desk and groaned. I should have fought harder to keep Samara on this project. Or at least demanded that either Anderson or Bellamy come back here to help with the workload. She knew better than to ask for help from her little sister. Her brothers both held executive roles within Kingdom Corp, but precious Eliza was off finding herself or some bullshit in Europe. Oh, that wasn’t what anyone was calling it—she had a modeling contract, after all—but that’s exactly what she was doing. Dodging her responsibility to the family.
None of it mattered right then. There was no one to help, and Journey wouldn’t ask them for help even if they were in Houston. To ask for assistance was as good as admitting she wasn’t capable of doing her job, and her mother would never let her live it down.
The phone rang, and she spent three seconds seriously considering crawling under her desk and pretending she wasn’t in the office yet. Just long enough for her to drink her damn coffee in peace and conquer the overwhelmed feeling taking root deep inside her.
But the phone just…kept…ringing.
Journey angled her head to look at her watch. Six a.m. Who the hell was calling her at six in the damn morning?
There was no help for it. She answered. “Journey King.” It was too early to fake a smile, so she sounded downright surly.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
She went cold. Not this. Not today. Oh God, make it stop. It took everything she had to make her voice cool and disinterested. “Elliott.”
“Don’t be like that, sweetheart. You don’t sound happy to hear from your old man.”
She stared blankly at the photograph across from her desk, trying to draw strength from the vivid autumn tree standing alone in a misty field. As alone as I am right now. “I’m not happy to hear from you. It’s been…” She shuddered. “Eight? No, nine—nine months since I heard from you. I would have preferred to have gone another nine years. What do you want, Elliott?”
All the playful wheedling disappeared from his tone. “Your mother’s in a shitload of trouble. If you’re not careful, she’s going to bring you down with her when she crashes and burns.”
Journey pulled the phone away from her ear. “Where are you right now?”
“Los Angeles.”
She did some quick math. “You’re drunk, aren’t you? That’s the only reason I can think that you’d be calling me at four a.m. your time and spouting some bullshit about Mom. If you want to fight with her, leave me out of it.” She leaned forward to hang up.
“Don’t you dare end this call, sweetheart. You won’t like what comes next.”
Journey froze, and hated herself for reacting to that tone in his voice. She closed her eyes. He’s not here. He’s not even in the same state. She wasn’t a scared little girl anymore. She had her own power, and with hundreds of miles between her and her father, she should be able to handle a single conversation. Except even hearing his voice makes me feel like I’ve been doused in sewage. “If you were in a position to do something with that big talk of yours, you would have done it by now.
