Tied to the Tycoon (17 page)

“Remember not to come,” he said, and then there were hands on her buttocks, pulling her slightly forward, and a warm, wet mouth on her pussy.

“Oh my God,” she screamed. She tried to writhe, to pull away, because she was sure she would come at any instant, but she was bound and helpless, and he ignored her. It was like he needed to drink his fill, and he lapped at her mercilessly, fucking her with his tongue while pressing on the protruding vibe. Briefly, he took her clit between his teeth, then wrapped his lips around it and sucked cruelly. She almost cried before her let her go, setting her swinging gently in the air.

“Almost,” he said. He sounded hoarse.

Ava heard him move slightly away, and then there was the sound of the pulleys again, and she felt herself begin to move laterally, parallel with the ground. Still blindfolded, it took her a moment to orient herself, but eventually she was certain: she was moving towards the edge of the roof.

“Jackson,” she said. She was still moving. The sounds of the city below were getting louder. When she finally stopped, she felt herself swaying in the air, and she didn’t stop until he put his hand on her lower belly to steady her.

“Almost,” he said again.

He pressed down on the base of the vibe that was still in her ass, and it started to softly vibrate. Ava moaned. She could feel those vibrations in her clit, in her nipples, in her fingertips, in her freaking teeth.

“Don’t you come,” he said, and as though to test her obedience, he began to rotate the vibe inside of her. She had grown so accustomed to it that it didn’t hurt at all, and now she could feel herself stretching, opening, inviting.

“That’s right,” he said, and more cold lube fell on her. “I’m going to take your ass.”

Something pulled on her blindfold and it fell away. Ava gasped and had to keep herself from screaming. She was looking over Manhattan, hanging off the edge of the roof, suspended in the air and spread for Jackson’s pleasure.

“Oh, holy shit!” she cried. “Oh God, oh God, oh God…”

She’d known it was coming as soon as he’d led her up here—of course she had—but that knowledge was nothing to the actual sight, the experience. She was babbling, mumbling over and over, her chest heaving against the ropes and her core alight, when Jackson removed the vibe. Immediately, it was replaced with the tip of something else, something warm, something much, much bigger.

“Jackson,” she said.

“Trust me,” he said. And grabbed her hips with both hands, swinging her whole body onto his rigid cock, and pushed himself slowly inside her.

She lifted her head as much as she could, shaking, sure she couldn’t take him. He felt her strain, looked up sharply, and said, “Relax. Let it wash over you.”

That voice. She let her head drop, watched the city below her, the skyline inverted from her nearly upside down position, and did just that, no matter how ridiculous it was. She relaxed into the ropes, into herself, into Jackson. She felt completely supported and left with no choice but to submit. It was like she was floating, like the world spun gently around them both, and she felt like finally, finally, when held up like this, she could let go.

The pressure increased, and she felt that same pop as he forced the head of his cock into her. Slowly, he guided her fully onto him until she was impaled on his dick.

“So tight,” he groaned. He pulled out slightly, holding her in place with his hands, and gently pushed into her again. Her whole body began to sway as he rocked slowly with his hips, one hand still guiding her, the other pressing into her lower belly, his thumb rubbing against her clit.

The pressure inside her was intense. She kept blinking, looking out as snow fell around her, and water shed from her eyes, though she wasn’t crying. The moisture that fell to the sides of her face reminded her of how cold it was outside. She should have been freezing, but the warmth of the vents and the feeling that had begun to pulsate out from her core overwhelmed any other concerns.

“Please,” she managed. Somehow, it was hard to talk. All she knew was that she ached to feel even fuller.

The rocking stopped, and she heard the familiar sound of the duffel. He must have hung it nearby, and soon she knew why. More lube, and then the feel of that blue rubber vibe poised at the entrance to her vagina.

“Oh God,” she moaned.

Slowly he pulled partway out of her ass as he pushed the vibe into her pussy. He alternated the strokes, going deeper each time, until finally she was completely full of both. Words seemed so far away from anything she was capable of, but she managed to cry out, “Jackson!”

Just before he turned the vibrator on.

“Now you will come, Ava,” he said. “And don’t stop.”

Ava wailed into the night as Jackson fucked her slowly and thoroughly with his cock and the vibrator, every nerve in her body lit up and sparkling and telling her to come right fucking now. Her whole body felt like one contracting muscle, like an imploding star, until everything exploded outwards in a rippling wave and vanished.

chapter
18

Jackson dreamt of Ava, and of being interrupted. He dreamt about making love to her, and he dreamt about the moment when she’d said she loved him, only to have something pull him away at the last second.

He awoke to the incessant buzzing of his phone, vibrating its way across a bedside table, but he didn’t reach for it. He didn’t move for what seemed like a long time. He wanted to get things straight in his mind.

Had it really happened?

Ava had called him. She had needed him, had been upset for some reason that she still hadn’t told him about. She had asked him to show her what it felt like to trust someone, and he’d known exactly what she’d meant. Knew she still needed to experience things physically, first. And he’d shown her. Christ, had he shown her.

And then, as he was carrying her to bed, she’d said it almost too softly to hear:
I love you
.

She was there, in his bed now, sleeping soundly next to him. It had all happened.

The joy that gripped his heart hit him so strongly that it almost hurt. For a minute, he couldn’t breathe, his chest constricted. She had said it. He reached over to her and she turned onto her side, murmuring a bit. Then she sighed and slipped deeper back into sleep.

Ava’s face was peaceful and content. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known, and she’d never looked more beautiful than when she was happy.

He doubted she’d slept so well in ages. She looked so goddamn right, lying there in his bed, it made his heart hurt all over again. Jackson was so full of relief and happiness he didn’t know where to put it; he turned away, to his phone, just to give himself something else to do. Looking at her like this was like looking at the sun. He’d have to take it in small doses at first.

His fucking phone. Lillian. About a million missed calls and texts to scroll through. No details; Lillian was cautious about that, like he’d told her to be. One phone gets stolen or hacked, and they’d read about the details of their new product on the internet the next day.

But something was obviously wrong.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Jackson was an engineer by nature. He designed his company to run right, to run with redundancies in place, to run modularly, with the right people heading up the right tasks, people who were good at their jobs and could handle their responsibilities without having to bring the knuckleheaded stuff to his desk. This was one of the reasons he could, if he felt like it, take a couple of days off to thoroughly fuck the love of his life until she agreed to stick around.

But bad design led to chaotic, shoddy, and sometimes catastrophic results. Bad design pissed him off. It meant someone was careless, or lazy, or just bad at their job, and if something was wrong with this product launch—something big enough for his phone to blow up for twenty straight minutes—then that someone was him. It meant he’d lost control of the process.

And it meant he had to leave Ava.

In the end, he just couldn’t bring himself to wake her. He tried, gently, but she was sleeping deeply, and Lord knew she needed the rest after the night they’d had. Instead, he made a compromise with himself: the office was ten minutes away, and he swore he’d be back in an hour. And he swore he’d make up every missing minute to her.

He left her an apologetic note on his pillow, dressed hurriedly, and left.

~  ~  ~

The thought—the memory—of Ava saying that she loved him put a smile on Jackson’s normally impassive face all the way to the ArTech office. It had been dumb to think he’d be able to think about anything else. She’d said it. All he’d had to do was engineer a meeting, convince her to let him be her temporary sexual fantasy, take her to a private estate, and then suspend her off the roof of his building, but the important thing was: she’d said it.

 So what was this little bit of worry that nagged at him?

He barely registered all the other young twenty-somethings who worked for the various start-ups and media companies that rented space in this building. There was a well put together little blonde, hair in an artfully messed bun, first button of her button-down open, who tried to give him a smile in the elevator. Mostly he noticed that she was not Ava.

He wondered if Ava was still asleep. He hoped so; she had gone out like a light. He grimaced at the thought of her waking up without him after what she’d said. The elevator was stopping at every damn floor on the way up for people to go to and from their coffee and cigarette breaks, and every unnecessary delay annoyed the shit out of him on this particular morning. The doors opened yet again, and two goateed and soul-patched graphic design looking types, coats on and cigarettes already out, got on, not minding the ride to the top.

Fantastic
.

Goatee number one rubbed his eyes. “Man, I don’t even remember last night.”

The phrase tore through Jackson.
Don’t even remember last night
. Ava had been deep in subspace; she’d only barely come out long enough for him to check in with her before she fell asleep. It was entirely possible that she wouldn’t remember what she’d said. Or that she’d think it had been a dream. Or that she wouldn’t be sure.

Furious with himself, Jackson jabbed viciously at the ‘14’ button.

“Whoa, man. Chill out,” said Goatee number two.

Jackson turned to face them. He took a moment to look them up and down. Finally he said, “I advise you very seriously to mind your own fucking business. Is that clear?”

The two goatees mumbled something and turned to face forward. Jackson knew he’d regret the outburst later; losing control in any facet of his life wasn’t acceptable to him. But damn it,
Ava
. And now he’d been torn away by some apparently unmanageable crisis at his company, the place he’d painstakingly built over the last decade, the thing he’d lived and breathed until Ava had come back into his life.

Whatever it was had to be bad. Lillian wouldn’t waste his time on the stupid stuff.

“Come
on
,” Jackson muttered as the doors closed on twelve.

It was just before the doors opened on 14, ArTech’s floor, that Jackson realized there was something even worse than Ava not remembering: Ava remembering.

And freaking the hell out.

“Fuck!” Jackson said, and pushed his way through the barely open doors, immediately in search of Lillian. Whatever it was, whatever the giant freaking crisis was, he’d damn well better find a way to deal with it within the hour and get back to the woman who made him absolutely insane. Ava’s well documented history of running away from anything approaching closeness, or anytime it looked like she might get hurt—like if the guy she’d just confessed her love to fucking
vanished
the next morning—gave him more than enough reason for concern. The idea of her waking up under those circumstances, with him gone, caused an actual physical pain in his chest.

Christ, that’s why they call it heartache.

He’d never forgive himself for being so monumentally stupid. Never. Whatever was wrong with ArtLingua had better be worth his time. He found Lillian off in a corner.

“Lillian,” he said tersely, taking her elbow and pulling her out of a group of programmers.

“Jackson, you made it in.” He looked at her. Her voice was slightly sarcastic, but she looked as impeccable as always. Maybe a touch more make up, but softer. There was something about her posture, too, something he hadn’t seen in her in a while. She went on, “What happened to your coat? You look like a ski bum.”

I don’t have time for this.

“What the hell is the emergency, Lillian?”

She smiled brilliantly. “I have something to show you.” And she walked briskly towards her office.

Something to show me?

Jackson wasn’t in the habit of second guessing his COO. It would’ve defeated the purpose of hiring top-tier talent like Lillian, and insulted her skills, besides. So the feeling that gathered in his gut, that told him this was about to be a giant clusterfuck, was both unfamiliar and unwelcome.

Lillian punched in her personal security code and unlocked her office door. She gave him a wicked smile over her shoulder and opened the door.

“See anything unusual?” she asked.

Her office was full of canvases. Beautiful canvases, canvases with some of the most provocative art from the most recent gallery shows. Stuff he had personally scouted out and brought into the conversations about ArtLingua. Stuff that was all on the verge of busting out big, but hadn’t quite yet. The biggest, most impressive piece—the one that dominated every room he’d ever seen it in, including this one—was leaning up against the far wall. It was a kind of controlled explosion of reds and blacks and various mixed media, all of it coming together until you realized it was a crowd, a sea of humanity. It was by a guy named Moreau out of Detroit, and it was Jackson’s second favorite painting. His first favorite was still hidden in the back of his closet at home.