Finally, I looked up at her. She had her full lips puckered out like she was going to cry. It would have looked ridiculous, but she knew how to pull it off in just the right way. Pushing back from the table, I patted my thigh. “Come here, Elle,” I demanded, keeping my face serious.
She moved slowly around my desk, slipping her bottom lip between her teeth. Excitement flared in her eyes. That was the one thing I could count on. If I needed to calm Elle down, sex would do it.
“If you want to use that sexy mouth to turn me on, then you need to use it to get me off,” I told her when she stopped in front of me.
“Where do you want me?” she asked breathlessly.
“On your knees,” I ordered. She went down quickly and began to unbuckle my pants.
I wrapped a strand of her dark hair around my finger and let the silky texture tease me while she tugged my jeans down, then my boxers, until my cock was in her hands.
“As far down your throat as you can take it,” I told her, as I started caressing her exposed neck.
She made a whimpering sound that went straight to my dick. Bending her head, she pulled me into her mouth like a fucking vacuum, and I tilted my head back and groaned. I needed this today. Best stress reliever there was.
“That’s it, baby, suck it hard,” I encouraged her, placing a hand on the back of her head and pushing her gently so that I slid farther down her throat.
The gagging noise only made me hotter. I loved it when she choked around my dick.
“Good girl. So fucking good.” I praised her, knowing she’d only get better with the praise. “Suck that dick. Deeper, baby. So good.”
A knock on my office door caused her to freeze, but I held her head still so she couldn’t pull away.
“I’m busy. Go away,” I called out.
When the person said nothing, I patted her head for her to finish. Which she did.
? ? ?
An hour after Elle left my office, I headed to the kitchen to see if Brad had gotten everything in his order. My stress levels were down, and Elle seemed more secure and less anxious to get rid of Rose. Reminding Elle that she was the one I was fucking had done wonders for her attitude.
Laughter was the first thing I heard when I walked into the kitchen, Brad’s deep chuckle followed by a feminine one. I followed the sound to the back of the kitchen and found Brad covered in what looked like flour, while Rose held her stomach and laughed to the point of breathlessness. Rose turned to look at me.
A tightness in my chest hit me as her eyes danced with laughter. The clear blue of them was familiar, but it was more than that. It was as if I’d seen her laugh before. Heard her laugh. Watching her made my chest ache in a way that didn’t make sense. As if I . . . missed her. But I didn’t even know her.
All too soon, her smile fell, and she wiped away the tears that had formed from laughing so hard. She shifted her gaze to Brad. I made her nervous, but then I’d never been nice to her, exactly. She was just an employee I’d hired. I’d be leaving soon enough. I wasn’t here to make friends.
“Sorry, boss. I was reaching for a box on that shelf over there, and a bag of flour fell over, and, well, you can see what happened,” Brad explained, still chuckling. I tore my gaze from Rose and looked at Brad. He winked at her and began a futile attempt to dust the flour off. He needed a shower. I wouldn’t mind if he put some distance between himself and Rose.
Rose
Franny’s blond curls bounced as she ran from the edge of the water toward me. Mrs. Baylor sat under an oak tree with a fruity drink in her hand and a wide-brimmed straw hat on her head. The two of them had bonded, and Mrs. Baylor had offered to watch Franny while I worked. She said it gave her something to do and someone to spend time with.
Franny had never had any kind of grandparent in her life, but she wanted a family. It was something she’d always noticed about other kids—the way they were surrounded by a mom, a dad, siblings, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles—and she longed for the same thing. But it was the one thing I couldn’t give her, because I hadn’t had a family, either. As a foster child from the time I was five years old until I ran away at sixteen, I only had one person in my life whom I considered family. The only family Franny had, too: River.
She had my hair, or at least my natural color, and my eyes, and bless her heart, she seemed to have inherited my short stature, too. The only thing about her that wasn’t a complete replica of me was her complexion. I was fair, while Franny turned a golden brown from being out in the sun, even for just a little while. She got that from her father. She also had his sense of humor and his smile. But those were things only a mother would notice. To everyone else, she was just like me.