He Divorced Me in Front of Four Hundred People, So I Moved Into His Rival's Glass Penthouse novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Forty-Eighth Floor

Leighton Davenport offers Margo a job and a guest suite in a penthouse with no curtains, and says nothing in it touches his bed. Then he unzips her ruined gown in the closet mirror and makes her come with his hand while she watches, and stops there: not tonight.

Leighton Davenport's penthouse had no curtains.

I saw that before I saw anything else, when the private elevator opened on the forty-eighth floor.

The whole top of the building was a single long room, with glass on three sides from the floor to the ceiling.

Past the glass lay the black rectangle of Alder Park, and past the park stood Hartigan Tower, lit gold against the sky.

"This is the Lantern," Leighton said.

"You can see everything."

"So can everyone who looks up."

He said it as if it were a plain fact about weather.

A skinny man with copper-red hair and round glasses was waiting by the kitchen island with a tablet and a face of polite alarm.

"Emmett," Leighton said. "This is Margo Ellsworth. Margo, my assistant, Emmett Prowse."

"I'm so sorry about your night, Ms. Ellsworth," Emmett said. "Your line about pane fourteen has eleven million views."

"Is that good?"

"It's something."

Leighton had walked to the counter and was looking at a bowl of lemons, with his arms folded.

"Margo," he said, without turning. "Say something for me whenever you come into a room. Anything. It's a habit of mine."

It was a strange request, so I said the first thing that came into my head.

"I'm in a ruined dress and I'd like a sandwich."

"Thank you." He turned around. "Emmett, a sandwich."

I ate it standing at the island with my shoes in my hand, and Leighton told me the job in four sentences.

He owned the Harbor Parcel, the last empty lot on the waterfront, and he wanted a tower the city had never seen.

He wanted the woman who drew Hartigan Tower to draw it.

He would pay me four hundred thousand dollars for six weeks, and my name would go first on every sheet.

I would live in the guest suite until the Skyline Awards, six weeks away, where my ex-husband would be given a trophy for my building.

"That's the whole contract," Leighton said. "It's a job."

"I know what it is."

"Then I'll say the rest out loud. Nothing in it touches my bed."

His dark eyes held mine across the counter.

"If that ever changes, it will be because you walked down the hall and said so.

"It won't be written down, and it won't be owed."

My face went hot.

I wanted, very badly, to be insulted.

What I felt instead was something low and warm that I hadn't felt in years.

"Where do I sign?" I said.

The guest suite was at the end of a short hall.

It had a wide white bed, a stone tub and a glass wall that looked out over the lake.

Emmett had hung a rack of clothes in the closet while we ate, all in my size.

A tall mirror was bolted to the inside of the closet door.

It was the only mirror I had seen in the whole place.

I stood in front of it in green silk with a smear of mascara and my hair coming down.

I reached behind my back for the zip and my fingers couldn't find the pull.

I twisted, swore, and tried again from the other side.

A knock sounded on the open door of the suite.

"Margo? Say something."

I almost laughed.

"I'm stuck in my dress."

"I'm coming in."

"Yes."

He came in quietly and stopped behind me, a full step away.

In the closet mirror he was a tall dark shape with silver hair, and he kept his eyes on the glass between my shoulders.

"Nine years married," I said, "and Bryce never once helped me out of anything."

"Face the mirror," Leighton said. "Hands on the shelf."

I put my palms flat on the shelf below the glass.

He set two fingers on the top of the zip and drew it down, one slow inch at a time.

The silk fell open along my spine.

Cool air touched my back, and then his knuckles did, all the way down to the base of my spine.

My breath caught on the way in.

"Look," he said.

I looked.

My shoulders were bare, the gown hung open to my hips, and my breasts were held up by the built-in cups.

My nipples had gone hard against the silk.

Behind me stood a man who looked at my back, my shoulders and my mouth in the glass.

He looked as if he were reading something he had waited for.

"You're the most beautiful thing I've seen all year," he said.

"You've known me four hours."

"It's not about the hours."

He put his hand flat on my ribs, and his palm was hot, and I felt every one of his fingers.

I leaned back against his chest without deciding to.

He was long and solid, and the heat of him went through my bare skin.

His mouth touched my shoulder, open and slow, and I made a sound I hadn't known I could still make.

"Tell me what you want," he said against my skin.

"Keep looking at me."

"I'm not going anywhere."

He slid his other hand up over the silk and cupped my breast.

His thumb dragged across my nipple, and my whole body arched into his palm.

"Take it off," I said.

He pushed the gown down over my hips and it fell around my ankles in a green puddle.

I stood in front of the mirror in a pair of black lace knickers and nothing else.

I had never watched myself be undressed.

I looked soft and wide-eyed, with a full breast in each of his hands.

I looked like someone I would have wanted to meet.

"Look at your hips," Leighton said, low in my ear. "Look at the way you move when I do this."

He rolled my nipples between his fingers, and my hips moved on their own.

His hard cock pressed against the small of my back through his trousers, long and thick, and I pushed back against it.

He groaned into my neck.

"God, Margo."

"Lower," I said. "Put your hand lower."

His palm slid down my belly, slowly, and stopped at the lace.

"Here?"

"Leighton."

He pushed his fingers under the lace and found me soaking wet.

"Look at that," he said, rough. "All of this. For me."

He parted me with two fingers and dragged them up over my clit in one long slick stroke, and my knees went.

His arm locked around my waist and held me up.

"Watch," he said.

I watched his hand work under the black lace, a slow circle, and my own mouth fall open in the glass.

He kept the circle exactly where I needed it.

My hips rocked into his palm, and I could hear how wet I was.

"Yes," I said. "Right there, don't stop, don't you dare stop."

He didn't.

He pushed two fingers inside me and curled them against the place that made me cry out, and his thumb stayed on my clit.

I ground down on his hand and back against his cock, and I couldn't tell which one I was chasing.

"That's it," he said. "Fuck my hand. I want to see you take it."

I took it.

I rode his fingers with my palms flat on the shelf and my hair swinging.

I watched a woman I did not know come apart in a mirror.

The heat gathered low and hard and tight.

"I'm going to come," I said. "Leighton, I'm going to."

"Look at yourself when you do."

I looked.

I came with my eyes open and his name coming out of my mouth.

My whole body clenched around his fingers again and again, and his arm held me through all of it.

When it was over I hung in his arm, shaking, and he kissed my temple.

Then I reached behind me for the buckle of his belt.

His hand closed over my wrist, gently, and stopped me.

"No," he said, breathing hard. "Not tonight."

"I want you."

"You've lost your whole life since breakfast. I want you to choose this on a day you're not bleeding."

My eyes burned, because he was right, and I hated him a little for it.

"Then what happens tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow you tell me to start again, if that's what you want."

"That's a dare."

"It's a standing offer."

He took his hand out of my knickers and kissed my shoulder once, and went out, and pulled the door shut behind him.

I lay in the wide bed in the dark, still wet, still shaking, and I watched the clock on the table turn slowly toward three.

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