Ember“And you never had pancakes again?” He chuckled, his color slowly returning.“We had pancakes every morning for the next two months,” I told him, watching the questions enter his eyes. “I told mom I was up early to help her with breakfast because it wasn’t fair she was always cooking it alone, which was true. But I also used the opportunity to sneak some extra salt into the batter. Only a little bit every week, until no one could stomach them anymore.”Giving me a long look, he cocked his head. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”I shrugged. “It wasn’t harming anyone. I was simply playing the slow game. In the end, even Ryan was begging for scrambled eggs instead.”“How calculating,” he said, approval glinting in his eyes.“I prefer thinking of it as strategizing.”“Don’t ever lose that quality,” he said finally. “You’re going to need it one day soon.”I hesitated for a minute, considering my question before finally asking it. “What’s your biggest regret? That story I just told
KADENA knock at my door broke the bore-fest going on in my penthouse. I was sitting on my couch watching reruns of a reality show documenting ludicrous renovations to celebrity homes. The shit people spent money on boggled my mind, but that didn’t mean I was interested.There were empty packages of snacks all around me. Coffee mugs and water bottles littered the coffee table and floor. I wasn’t expecting anyone, but that didn’t matter. Any visitor was welcome after I spent the entire day at home alone. At least I’d showered, but I only did that around noon.I was going to have to find something to keep me busy, and I was going to have to do it soon, but for now, I gratefully left my television and couch behind me and went to get the door. Yanking it open, my smile died on my lips when I saw who was there.“Kitten? This is a surprise.” My heart raced at the sight of her. I was so relieved to see her it should have been funny, terrifying, or both. Instead, it felt like there was a vise
KadenShe nodded, the guardedness in her eyes coming down. “I love you, Kaden Marx. Please trust me when I tell you I don’t want any distance between us.”“I spoke to Ryan,” I said, thinking back to our conversation at lunch the other day.Confidential stuff at work I could understand, but it still didn’t feel like the whole story. The nature of our work was such that we had to keep our secrets to ourselves, keep our play cards close to our chests.I didn’t blame Ember for having to keep them from me. It was a natural consequence of no longer working together, but I needed to be sure that was all it was. “He told me one of your friends is going through a tough time. Want to talk about it?”She shook her head, her fingers tightening their grip in my hair. “No, I don’t. Not now.”Her fingernails scraped against my scalp, her eyes not leaving mine. Desire and want burned in them. Groaning, I stopped trying to fight against her touch. It was useless anyway. Leaning my head into her hands,
EMBERKaden and I ripped at each other’s clothes, each getting the other naked in record time. After days of not seeing him or speaking to him at all, I needed him so badly it hurt. Just to be with him, to be close to him. To be held by him and loved by him.The culmination of all those things was making love to him, and I wanted that more than I wanted anything else in life at this very moment. It was about more than pleasure or sex. It was about the connection of bodies, hearts, and souls. It was a connection I craved desperately. One I needed to reassure myself and to enable myself to believe he really had forgiven me.Okay, and there was also a small part of me, a part below my waistline which was currently aching for his attention, that wanted the pleasure I knew only he could bring me, too. After months of him bestowing that pleasure on me every chance he got, I felt starved of it after nearly a week without.The thing about Kaden was that he awoke and enlivened every part of me
EmberI rocked my hips in time with his, my hands roaming over his back, down to cup his gloriously tight ass. Holding him to me, I lifted my chin to look at him. Kaden’s eyes were screwed shut, his lips parted, and a thin crease sat between his eyebrows.He was so damn beautiful like this, walking the fine line between euphoria and agony for trying to hold back. I could look at him for days, but seeing him like this was too much for me to bear. Already, I felt the familiar knot of tension tightening again.Each one of Kaden’s thrusts hit me exactly right to build on the tension, to pull it so tightly I had no choice but to let it unravel. I cried out when the final threads snapped and pleasure so intense it brought tears to my eyes swept through me, lighting up the world in a bright white as my head dug into the pillow and my muscles quivered.“Kitten. Yes.” Kaden trembled against me, his thrusts erratic and losing their perfect rhythm as he found his release. We kissed and clawed an
KADENAll was well in my world now that Ember and I were okay again. We stayed up half the night last night talking, eventually making our way back to the kitchen to finish our dinner. After that, we had a couple of glasses of wine out on the balcony before going back to the room and making love again.Ember’s alarm woke us only a few hours after we eventually went to sleep. She was out of bed in a flash, remembering she had to swing by her apartment to get dressed since she hadn’t brought a change of clothes over.There wasn’t time to talk to her about that drawer I offered her again, but I would have my chance soon enough. Later that day, she texted me to let me know she was almost done at work, so I was getting ready to meet her.Pulling on a pair of dark jeans and a light blue button-up shirt, I fastened the cuffs when I was done and was ready to go.I didn’t think driving to Marx Inc., knowing I wasn’t actually going to work, was ever going to stop feeling weird. It was almost li
KadenSwiping the card over the reader, I took the stairs two at a time and cradled the flowers in my arm to protect them. Once I reached the top, I opened the door with a bang and contemplated hiding from Ember around the corner—all in the name of the game.I was so deep in thought I almost missed the broad pair of shoulders turning so their owner could see who had caused such a racket bursting through the door. Even if he never completed that turn, I would have known it was my dad.My heart smacked angrily against the inside of my chest, my blood running cold in shock and then hot with rage all in the space of the few seconds it took me to comprehend who I was looking at.Ember was wrong. My dad wasn’t on a trip. His car wasn’t here because he’d been driven to the airport from here. It was here because he was. Which begged the question: was she wrong, or had she lied to me?I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. I really did, but there were several irrefutable facts I had to
EMBERAfter a night of tossing and turning, I arrived at the office on Friday morning wearing sunglasses almost as big as my head and carrying a coffee even bigger. I got the biggest, strongest cup I could find, but I was still running on fumes.Two nights of little sleep in a row made Ember a very dull girl. A very dull girl who still hadn’t heard from her boyfriend, even though it’d been more than twelve hours since he had arrived at the office and hopefully found and talked to his dad on the roof.Twelve hours, forty-seven minutes to be exact. I asked security discreetly this morning at what time he’d entered the parking lot and was now counting. I figured if I still hadn’t heard from him when we hit the fourteen-hour mark, I was calling him.I also checked the logs with security to see if Mr. Marx had been up on the roof last night, and they confirmed he was. Under the circumstances, I was fairly certain Kaden and his dad would have run into each other.The question was whether th