Chapter 13: What Frank Did

The binder was locked in the vault, and the brass key hung on a shoelace around my neck.

I had owned forty-nine percent of a company for nine hours, and all I wanted was to be touched by someone who had never lied to me.

Jerome came up the stairs to the room above the yard at seven with a bag of groceries.

I was waiting at the top.

"Full name," I said.

"Jerome Werner." He set the bag on the step. "Is that the whole checkpoint?"

"Not quite."

I took the front of his coat in both fists and walked him backward into the room until his legs hit the worktable.

It was a steel table he had carried up from the yard, scarred and cold, with a vise still bolted to one end.

I kissed him until he stopped talking.

His hands came up under my sweater, rough and flat on my ribs, and he groaned into my mouth.

"I was going to cook," he said.

"Later."

I stripped his coat off, then his shirt, and I pulled my sweater over my head and dropped to my knees.

He said my name like a warning.

I undid his belt and took his cock out, hot and heavy and already hard.

He put a hand in my hair and didn't pull.

"Pull," I said.

He pulled, just enough.

I took him into my mouth, slow and then deep, with my hand around the base.

He swore, and his thighs went rigid on either side of me.

I looked up.

He was watching me with his jaw locked and the scarred eyebrow drawn down, and he looked wrecked already.

"Maisie. I'm not going to last."

"You will."

I did it again, hollowing my cheeks, and a rough sound tore out of him.

He hauled me up by the arms and kissed me, tasting himself on my tongue.

"My turn," he said.

He stripped my jeans and underwear off in one pull and laid me back on the steel.