Stealing Her (Covet 1)

“Julian.” I placed my hands on his chest. “I don’t know what to say.”

He grinned at me. It was a different sort of grin. It reached his eyes in a way his other smiles never had. In fact I’d never seen him look at me like that, both playful and possessive.

He gripped me by the ass and squeezed, then set me very gently next to him on the couch. “So, what do you want to watch?”

“Don’t you think . . .” I eyed what seemed to be the biggest erection I’d ever seen, and that was saying a lot since I knew the Tennysons were proud for a whole ’nother reason. It was maybe why it was so easy to cheat. They were reputedly well endowed, but this, this was . . . Did I really turn him on that much? More than I ever had? “Shouldn’t we . . . ?” I pointed.

He batted my hand away. “That’s really not helping, Izzy.”

“Sorry.” I laughed.

“Neither is the laughing.”

“Sorry!” I covered my face with my hands, feeling a hot blush stain my cheeks. He very gently pulled my hands down and kissed the insides of my wrists.

“I’ve survived worse. I’ll just be over here thinking about CNN and world hunger while you decide what you want to watch.”

A few seconds later, when I’d settled on some sci-fi fi movie with Channing Tatum, I glanced over at Julian, whose teeth were clenched right along with his fists.

“How’s that working out for you over there? All that world hunger thinking working?”

He grabbed himself and cursed. “Fucking perfect, can’t you tell?”

“You’re bigger everywhere, aren’t you?” I teased.

He whipped his head toward me as a pleased smile crossed his face. “Izzy, you have no idea.”

And I wondered if I did.

I would look back on this moment and realize I ignored the signs on purpose because it was the first time in years that I went to sleep with a genuine smile on my face.

I would learn too late that the smile was only temporary and that heartache can last forever.

I laid my head on his chest and fell asleep to his heartbeat an hour after our make-out session on the couch.

And when I woke up later that afternoon from a bad dream, Julian pulled me into his arms and held me tight.

I fell asleep to the fake tattoo on his hand and the foreign one on his biceps that also looked like a T with an X through it.

And I embraced the lie that I was falling in love with a stranger, a very beautiful stranger that would one day take me away from here.

And I woke up with sadness knowing that this was only the fantasy of a girl who’d had her wings clipped too soon.

Chapter Twenty-Two

BRIDGE

I left her a note and went for a walk to the offices, my offices, to be exact. It was a Saturday, and most people wouldn’t be in, but that didn’t mean business just stopped running. I hoped I’d see assistants and interns. None of the bigwigs would be in on a weekend when they could be golfing, right?

I scanned my ID across the metal and walked past security to get into one of the twelve elevators.

Tennyson Financial occupied the top fifteen floors. And my shining office was on the top. My hands shook as the elevator climbed. I tried to focus on Izzy’s smile, on the little sounds she made when she found release, images of her lips parting, her eyes unfocused and aroused.

She was magnificent.

She was also his.

I’d touched what was his.

I’d pleasured what wasn’t mine.

And I wondered if that was exactly what my father wanted, for me to play right into his hands, to want her so badly that I’d be willing to do anything, just like I was with my mom.

The thought scared me.

What scared me more was the fact that I didn’t know if my brother was alive or dead, and that my father had thousands of reasons and millions of dollars why Julian’s death would be welcome.

Was I just his replacement?

Something wasn’t adding up. Then again, nothing ever added up when it came to my father, he was an evil enigma who wanted one thing. World domination. I used to laugh when people said that, but now it just made me uncomfortable with how true it was.

A man like him should never hold the keys to the kingdom.

And he didn’t just have the keys. He had the crown, the heirs, the fucking iron throne.

The elevator doors parted. Both of my secretaries, Kelsey and Amy, gasped as I walked in. They were wearing too much perfume and were in all white. They looked like they belonged on a Virgin Atlantic flight with their perfect hair and bright-red lipstick.

“I’ll just be a minute,” I said, casually walking by the one on the right. She stepped forward and gave me a seductive smile that had my stomach rolling.