EmberA smirk touched his lips, but he released the loofah and let it float away. “You haven’t, but you can tell me now.”“How about I let you feel instead?” I reached for his hand and brought it between my legs, letting him feel my slickness under the water and graze my hard clit with the backs of his fingers.Kaden cursed, releasing another groan. “Fuck. You’re really trying to kill me, aren’t you?”“Why would I do that?” My eyes burned into his. I was shocked at the depth of the need I saw lurking in them. Suddenly aware of the fact that I was the only one who had found any kind of release yet, I scooted closer and wrapped my hand around his length. “I wouldn’t kill you before getting at least a few more orgasms out of you.”“Yeah,” he gritted out, but all traces of humor had vanished from his expression. His jaw was tight as I ran my thumb along his slit. He let me work him over in silence for a few more minutes before grabbing my wrist. “We need to talk.”“What?” I would have sti
KADEN“Thank fuck it’s almost the weekend,” a guy whose name I couldn’t remember said, dragging his hands down his pale face and over his patchy attempt at a beard. “This has been the longest week, and there’s still a day and a half to go.” I was standing in the bullpen outside my old office, a loose circle of younger investment bankers around me. Some of them, I knew better than others. They had all reported to me until a couple of weeks ago, except for the pale guy talking. I didn’t know when he started.It was a strange feeling, not having my finger on the pulse anymore. Strange and freeing. A rush of exhilaration that felt a hell of a lot like another tie to this place snapping hit me.I grinned at the new guy, happy to be just one of the guys now. I didn’t have to play by any rules but my own anymore. I didn’t have to keep any professional distance between employers versus employee. I could shoot the shit with them like I was doing now and not have to worry about a thing.“It’s
Kaden“What the fuck was that?” she asked in a scathing tone, planting her hands on her hips. It was so unexpected, it took me a few seconds to reel my mind back from where it had already gone: lifting that tight-ass pencil skirt, bending her over her desk, and fucking her from behind.Christ, being inside her with nothing between us? My dick started hardening behind my zipper, straining for a repeat. I came so hard, I— “Wait, what?”“Why would you badmouth the company like that?” she asked, indignant fire raging in her eyes.“You’re asking me what the fuck that was?” I retorted, all thoughts about fucking her flying from my mind. “What about you?”“What about me?” Her eyes became slits, her mouth pressed into a hard line. “I didn’t do anything. You, on the other hand, were talking smack about a company you no longer work for.”“Exactly,” I said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Which it was to me anyway.She tilted her head and surveyed me as though she was waiting fo
EMBERMr. Marx’s office door was open a crack. A terrible wracking, retching sound was coming from inside. I peered through the open sliver, knocking softly.He was sitting behind his desk, his hand clutching his chest as the other covered his mouth. The sound was coming from him, his coughing worse than before.“Can I come in?” I asked, not wanting to interrupt him. Sure, he had asked to see me, but it looked like now might not be a good time.He nodded through the coughs, lifting the hand from his chest to motion me in before reaching for a glass of water and draining it. He cleared his throat once he set the glass down, the coughing finally over. “Sit down, Ms. Jordan. I apologize about that. Some water went down the wrong way.”“I hate when that happens,” I said, taking the seat he offered and folding my hands primly in my lap. “You wanted to see me?”“Yes.” He sat back in his chair, transforming back into the all-powerful CEO he was from the sputtering man I walked in on. “I want
EmberWhich was where Kaden came in. Despite what Mr. Marx thought and his obvious bad mood when it came to his son, I had to stand up for myself. And for Kaden. “With all due respect, sir, I’m not moving forward until Kaden teaches me everything I need to know in order to be properly equipped to take the reins from him. We haven’t yet reached that point. I’m going to keep working with him, or not at all.”Mr. Marx raised a salt-and-pepper eyebrow, silenced by my words. I was taken aback by them myself. Had I really just given Hank Marx an ultimatum?I had. Oh my god. I wanted to bury my head in my hands or run around to find a remote and rewind to a couple of minutes ago when he told me how well I was doing. Fuck. What was I thinking?My words hit me with force of a freight train. I’m not going to keep working at all?Of course I was going to keep working! Even if I had to call Kaden behind Mr. Marx’s back every five minutes for help, I wasn’t walking away from this. No way. “I’m so
KADENWaking up on a Friday morning without having to go to work was going to take some getting used to. The same went for any other day of the week, for that matter. While I took a day off here and there, it wasn’t something I was in the habit of doing.Life had always been busy for me. From high school, I went straight to college. After graduating from Harvard, I had all of three days to move before I started working.No gap years, no time off, no nothing.Hanging around the penthouse during the working week just wasn’t something I did. Staring down the barrel of taking an indefinite amount of time off work, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Sure, I promised Ember I would keep helping her, which meant I technically had work to do. I just didn’t have to go into the office to do it.I had no interest in being there when my dad was such a dick about it. My home office was fully outfitted with state-of-the-art electronics, software that alerted me to any movement in the finance worl
KadenThere was an uncharacteristic desperation in her voice I couldn’t ignore. It was faint, but it was definitely there. And it was the only thing in the world that could convince me to drag my ass through a shower and to that place today.“You need me.” It wasn’t a question. “I’ll agree to come in if you admit that you need me.”I would have preferred if she needed me right now in other ways, but I couldn’t say no to her outside of the bedroom, either. Apparently.Ember paused for a second, only the sound of shallow breathing coming through the receiver. “Fine. Okay, you win this round. I need you. I need to get some documents from his office, and I have no idea where to start looking, but I don’t want to ask just anyone because it feels like I should know this. There’s a meeting scheduled later with a potential new client, and I...”She trailed off, but I didn’t need to hear the rest. I already knew what she was feeling. I also knew she would be absolutely fine without me there. S
EMBERMy mother always told us to respect other people by being on time. As flaky as I could be, I always tried to heed that advice. Glancing down at my rose-gold knockoff watch for the fifth time in as many minutes, I realized I was the only one of my mother’s children who had paid attention during that particular lesson.I was sitting at a small round table in the center of the bistro Ryan and I had agreed to meet at. It smelled like melted cheese and pastries, vegetable soup and a hundred other mouthwatering aromas I couldn’t quite put my finger on.My stomach growled, and I took another sip of my water, utterly dissatisfied with the taste given how delicious everything else in the room looked and smelled. When the server came by earlier, I told her I would wait before placing my order.She kept giving me sympathetic looks now, almost thirty minutes after I had told her I was waiting for someone to arrive. Obviously, she thought I had been stood up and that I was still holding out