Take It - Part Two (14 page)

Harrison loses his breath as though a cannonball has been fired into his gut. “Jenny, I didn’t send any pictures. I swear. Please come outside with me. Talk to me. I have things I can explain, I’ve screwed up, but I had nothing to do with that. These last few weeks I was trying to give you space because I thought you were pissed that I distracted you from work and stuff. If I had known you thought I sent pictures of you to anyone I’d have—”

“What, Harrison, what would you have done?”

“Exactly what I’m doing right now, begging you to listen. Come outside with me and talk. Please.”

“No.” I glance over at the patio door and fully expect to see Pierce step through it. “Pierce is outside. He doesn’t know about the pictures, and he doesn’t deserve to find out this way.”

“Then follow me. I’ll explain everything, just come with me.”

There’s intensity in his eyes, a shadowing of tears that’s making my anger falter. If I don’t hear what he has to say I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if it could have changed things.

“Five minutes,” I concede as I glance again over my shoulder to check if Pierce has come back in. There is no sign of him. I take a deep breath and follow Harrison across the ballroom floor and down a hallway. He unsuccessfully tries a few door handles and then finds one that’s unlocked. He sticks his head in, checks the room, and then steps in, holding the door open for me to join him. It’s a conference room with a large oval table with a phone in the middle of it, conference speakers attached.

“Tell me about the pictures. Tell me what happened.” Harrison is speaking in a hushed voice, his body just inches from mine as the door closes behind me.

“Mr. Jones called me into his office on the day I got fired and had a stack of pictures of me. They were all of you and me together in very compromising positions. You know how Jones is, you know how a man like that would react to those pictures. He was a pig, and he got his jollies off then fired me.”

“I don’t know what to say. I’m so sorry, Jenny,” Harrison apologizes, pulling me in for a hug that I instinctually return. His arms are the best place I’ve ever been and, in this moment of distrust and hurt, I still want to be in them.

“When you were on the phone at your house, I clicked the mouse on your computer and the photos were there in your in-box. I deleted them and got the hell out of your place and almost killed myself on the way. You sent those pictures, and you ruined me. My life, my heart. Why?”

“I didn’t send them, Jenny; you have to believe that. But I think I know who did, and I swear I will make it right. They’ll pay for it.”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I love you. I fell in love with you.” Harrison’s words blow through my body like a hurricane. How are you supposed to react when the one thing you thought you’d never hear passes through someone’s lips? I open my mouth to speak, but close it again as he keeps talking. “My intentions, my motive for working with you specifically, may have been murky, but I promise you two things: I never intended for you to get hurt, and I never meant to fall in love with you. I’m only sorry that one of those things happened.” He leans in to kiss me and then stops abruptly, his hand resting on my cheek. “I’m not going to kiss you unless you want me to. Unless you believe me. If you don’t then I’ll just find a way to prove it to you. I won’t stop until you know the truth.”

“I believe you,” I whisper in a raspy voice before diving into the kiss he stopped. Like a prisoner in complete isolation finally regaining contact with another human, I’m bursting with a need. A need to touch, to feel, to be felt. Every splintered piece of me is shoved back together. Every doubt of who I am and what’s right for me disappears. In his hands I’m completely myself, a person I’d lost since losing him.

“You’re all I’ve thought about, Jenny,” Harrison sputters between passionate kisses as I push my body as hard as possible against his firm frame. “It’s been impossible without you. I’ve been drowning; I need you.” I yank at the button of his tuxedo pants and they pop open. He pulls his zipper down and drops his pants away, revealing his excitement. Containing my desires feels almost impossible as I hike up my red dress and slip my thumbs behind the strings of my panties, working them hastily down my legs.

It would be easy for Harrison to slide inside me right now and take me back in his arms. He could pull my head back and devour my neck as he plunged deeper and deeper. With a one-track mind he could take what I’m offering him and fulfill his own desires. But he doesn’t. He drops to his knees, moves me back against the table, and grabs both my ankles. He parts my legs, lifts them, and drops my calves onto his shoulders. I let out a hushed yelp as his tongue flicks at the spot he knows intimately from our many other rendezvous. His tongue continues to tantalize me. I feel his fingers begin a rhythmic dance as he enters me over and over again. In record time I’m clawing at the wooden conference table for traction as my body pulses and quivers with ecstasy. The rhythm of his plunging fingers and his flicking tongue are completely in tune with my rocking hips. If we were instruments, this song would be glorious.

“Fuck me, Harrison,” I beg, knowing with him that sentence won’t make me anything other than human. Wanting him so badly isn’t a crime in his eyes. He won’t see me as a whore or a demanding shrew. My desire for pleasure will empower us both, just as it had before.

He lifts me from the table and, in one fluid motion, buries himself deep inside me, banging my body against the large white dry-erase board on the wall. I beg him for more. More speed, deeper. I call out his name, and like the moment we shared on the lighthouse, he looks deep into my eyes and connects. “Jenny, oh, Jenny. I’ve missed you so much. You are my everything.”

He shimmies the straps of my dress down and yanks so hard I hear the material rip as my breasts come flying out. They bounce with the fury at which he’s fucking me, and they only stop when he takes them into his mouth. This is his magic. Whatever he does with his hot and powerful tongue should be studied, documented, and shared with the world because it is mind-blowing.

I feel his hands clutch my ass, angling to push deeper inside, opening me up so that no centimeter is left untouched by his hard cock.

He spins around toward the large conference table and clears its contents with a sweeping of his arm. “Ride me,” he demands as he plants his back on the table, his cock standing tall and begging to have me slide down onto it. I long for the chance, praying we won’t limit this reuniting to just one position. I shed my dress and leave only my high heels on as I climb onto the table and straddle his perfect body.

His hands plant tightly on my ass, grabbing handfuls as I guide him inside me. Like the first time I rode him, he holds me there. We don’t move an inch; I don’t rock back and forth no matter how badly I want to. I stare at him as he clamps down harder on my ass, raising his hips off the table so he can claim all of me.

“Ride me baby,” he demands as he releases his grip on me and tucks his hands behind his head, smiling up at the view. “Ride me until you’re coming all over my cock. I want to feel your hot white cum dripping all over me.”

“Yes,” I cry out. I’m finally in the presence of someone again who can be real and fiercely honest. He’s not holding back for what is right and wrong for us. We’re here, our bodies vibrating with anticipation, and that is all that matters.

I take my breasts into my hands and start pinching them tightly as I start rocking back and forth, grinding my clit against his tight abdomen. He replaces my hands with his own as though he can’t stand to share my breasts even with me. After less than a minute of fucking him, I give him what he’s asked for. My core clamps down and pulses, eliciting a desperate grunt that tells me he’s about to release his own thundering fury. I want to give him more, so I slide off him, and before he can protest, I wrap my lips around his throbbing cock.

This sends him into outer space. He arches his back and dives deep into my throat. I pull back, grab his balls, and circle my tongue quickly around his hot tip. He tastes like me, like us, all mixed together, and I can barely contain what that does to me. Knotting his hands into my hair, he holds me there as his cum begins to spurt, and his body quakes uncontrollably.

I crawl my way up his body and lie by his side. His kisses are soft on my lips and then my cheek. “I knew you’d understand. I knew you’d trust me. Come with me.”

I’ve barely caught my breath as he slides away to stand and our bodies part, leaving me feeling empty without him.

“Where?” I ask, forgetting how much reality waits for us beyond this room. How much we haven’t actually talked about yet. Even if Harrison didn’t send the photos, he still hasn’t been completely honest with me. That’s apparent. But he does love me.

“I need your help. I can explain on the way, but we have to get to the lab at BioSim tonight while everyone is here.”

“Why would we go to the lab?” I feel instantly sick as the conversation turns away from his love for me and back toward the place where all this pain started.

“It’s a long story, and the more I tell you the more trouble you could be in if this comes out. There is real danger here, legally and otherwise. The players won’t hesitate to hurt you if it serves their purpose. I’m trying to give you some plausible deniability here, but you trust me, right? You said you did.” Harrison’s thumb grazes my cheek, but I pull away.

“That was before I knew you needed something from me. Had I known this was all another part of some game I don’t know the rules to, I can assure you I wouldn’t have declared my trust in you.” Rolling away from him I get back on my feet, snatching my panties from the floor, and slide back into my dress.

“It’s not like that. How I feel about you and what I need to do for this drug are completely exclusive of each other.”

“Then go do whatever the hell you’re planning without me. If you really love me, don’t bring me in on whatever fucked-up thing you’re trying to do. If you care about me at all you’ll see what you’ve done so far has destroyed me. And now this, what we just did. It’s going to destroy the one thing I was holding onto.”

“Are you talking about that guy? You really want to look me in the eye and tell me you love him? That he means more to you than I do? I saw him that day, telling you what’s best, what you need. He doesn’t even listen to you.”

“But he doesn’t use me either,” I bark back, too confused and hurt to cry.

“I’m not using you, Jenny. I need you; there’s a difference. We could be in this together. You could help me.”

“Is it legal? Is it moral? Because if not, don’t pretend to love me while you drag me into your mess. Call it what you want, but I’m not going to be your means to an end. Before I met you I did my job with pride. People’s lives depend on that. If you love me, then you come with me. You walk away from whatever the hell you’re doing, and we just go. I don’t care where, but that’s the only way I’m going to know you want to be with me.”

“Please don’t make me choose, Jenny. It’s impossible right now. I can’t walk away. It’s already a done deal. This is the last step. I’m too close; I’ve invested too much to bail.”

“You’re that hungry for money and status? I don’t mean more to you than those things? Then why would I stay, why help? So that when this is over and you get whatever you’re after, you break me all over again?”

“It’s not about the money or my name all over something. God, I can’t tell you how badly I wish my name never touched this thing, but now I have to see it through. I’m begging you to understand, to believe in me.”

“I’m begging you to choose me instead of anything else in the world. I need to be your most important thing, or I can’t be anything. Because for me, what you do to me, what you mean to me, there’s no one else on that plane of existence. I’m clearly not that to you, so I have to walk away now.”

“Walking? Or running? Because that’s what it sounds like you’re doing. You really feel that way about me? Then how can you even think about spending another minute with that other guy? That’s being a coward.”

“Don’t you dare,” I shout, slamming my palm on the table with a loud thwack. “You don’t get to judge where I find refuge from your storm. Wherever I decide to hide, whoever I pretend to be, is just a way to protect myself from you.”

“You don’t have to protect yourself from me. I told you I love you. I’ve only said that to one other person in my life.”

“And where’s that other person now? How does being loved by Harrison work out for someone? I’d like to know.”

Like a deflating balloon, Harrison braces himself against the wall and drops his head. “Jenny please,” he begs again.

“I’m not going to break into a lab with you. I’m not going to expose myself in any other way for you. I can’t.” Grabbing the door handle I hesitate, unable to believe the height I’m plummeting from. Mere minutes ago I was back where I’ve been aching to be. But the problem with being so high is having so far to fall.

“Jenny,” I hear Harrison plead again, but his words are sucked back into the room by the slamming door. Flattening my hair and adjusting my dress, I swim through the sea of people like I’m fighting for my life, ignoring the elbows and hips I’m plowing into.

The only thought in my head . . .
what have I done?

I am better than this. All of this. Tracey’s words, the ones I tucked away, come flooding in from wherever I stored them. Whatever power I’ve turned over to Pierce I am taking back. The path that led me to this party tonight, even when I didn’t want to come, is one I’m stepping the hell off of. That stops now. Whether my choices are faulty or my judgment questionable, I start using my own brain again, right now. For some reason I thought turning my life over to someone else, letting him into the drivers seat, would help me arrive at a better destination.