Conflicted (29 page)
Authors: Lisa Suzanne
“Mr. Benson, your three o’clock is here.”
I smirked at Julian.
“Send her in.”
Cole laughed as I walked into his office. “You don’t have to make an appointment, you know.”
“I know, but I shouldn’t get special treatment just because I’m your girlfriend.”
He pressed his lips softly to mine, and I pulled back. “Excuse me, sir, but this isn’t a personal call. I actually have a few questions about the Hinkley account for my four o’clock meeting.”
His hand found the back of my head. “It can wait.” He pressed his lips to mine again, but this time there was nothing soft about it.
I allowed myself an unrestrained moment. I wrapped one arm around him—the other was holding my iPad—and let my fingers wander down to his firm ass. I squeezed hard, and he whimpered.
I giggled. “I’ll give you more of that later, but for real, I need your help.”
He sighed, kissed me once more, and returned to his desk. I sat across from him in the seat I’d occupied so many times, but this time I sat there as a project manager instead of as an assistant.
It was hard to believe that just two months earlier, I’d been shacking up with my sister while I tried to “find” myself. Turns out someone else had been holding onto the biggest piece of who I was, and I wasn’t complete until my heart clicked back into place with Cole’s.
Everything had happened so fast. One day Cole had proposed a new position for me at Benson Industries, along with a raise and a standing offer to move in with him, and the next day it was a done deal.
It was next to impossible to find a good apartment at a fair price close to the office, and I’d been staying with Cole anyway.
He’d gone with me to look at several apartments, but compared to his gorgeous beach house, nothing fit. Waking up in Cole’s arms morning after morning and taking long walks on the beach evening after evening had spoiled me. Not a single dumpy apartment could compare, and so eventually I stopped looking.
I still assisted Cole from time to time, but typically only for dinner meetings or out of town engagements. He had a new assistant now, Julian, and since Julian was a man who preferred the company of other men, I had little room for concern that Cole would hook up with his new assistant.
I trusted him completely, anyway. He’d more than proven to me that I was the only woman in his life who mattered. He was a changed man in many ways. He was still the Cole I loved, but he had a new lease on life. He lived every day like it could be his last, and he never wasted an opportunity to show me what I meant to him.
“Is that all?” he asked once I’d finished all my questions, and I nodded. He glanced at the clock. “You’ve got thirty minutes until your meeting.”
“Then you’ve got about fifteen to pleasure me.”
He started unbuckling his belt. “Come here,” he commanded, always the boss in charge. I did as requested and stopped in front of him. “I know you said fifteen, but I may need twenty.”
With that, his hand trailed up my skirt. He found what he was looking for, and I let out a moan when he pushed my panties aside and inserted one of those deliciously long fingers. He let out a low growl. “Jesus, Lucy. You’re soaked.” He pulled out his finger and I frowned.
“I’m always wet for you, Cole. You should know that by now.”
He grinned up at me and then focused on unbuttoning his pants. He stroked himself a few times, and the sight of the attractive and nearly unattainable CEO of Benson Industries stroking himself in his desk chair was a beautiful sight.
“Get on,” he said.
Even though we’d been together hundreds of times in this very office in the two months since we’d officially gotten back together, we hadn’t had sex in his desk chair. It had brought back too many memories of the time we’d been apart.
But it was time to replace those sad memories with some new memories of our own.
“Just to be clear, has this chair been disinfected since—”
He cut me off with a whine. “Aw shit, woman. Do you have to bring that up now?”
“I’m just saying.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, it has. And for both of our sakes and the sake of this,” he motioned toward his steel erection, “I’m not going to let that question ruin the moment. Now get on because we’re wasting time.”
All I could do was laugh. He was right, of course. I’d never tell him that, but he was always right.
I straddled him, and he wasted no time before he thrust up into me. I braced myself on his shoulders.
The feel of our bodies connecting was different now than it had been before.
I’d been so worried that the reason the sex was so good between us was because it had been forbidden, but now that we were free to be together, I found that wasn’t the case at all. The sex seemed to get inexplicably better and better each time as my love for Cole grew deeper and deeper.
I glanced at his handsome face. His eyes were closed and his lips were twisted in pleasure as he pumped up into me. His eyes opened, and his lips turned up at the corners in a sexy, secret smile reserved just for me.
“God, I love you,” he said, and those words with all their sincerity and passion from those plush lips were my undoing as I fell into a frenzied release.
When my body stopped tightening over and over around him, he pushed up hard into me a few more times before letting go himself.
As we clung to each other in our post-orgasmic bliss, I whispered into his chest, “I love you, too.”
I worried I’d always wonder if the cost of hurting one man was worth the happiness I had now. Did I deserve Cole after what we’d done?
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever know the answer to that, but I looked forward to the road ahead.
THE END
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XOXO
First and foremost, thank you to my husband. Thank you for your unending support and your belief in me. Thank you for reading contemporary romance books when I know they aren’t your preferred genre. Thank you for talking plot and characters with me and for offering advice and guidance. Thank you for being an amazing daddy to sweet Mason. Thank you for working hard so I can write and stay home to be a mom. Thank you for believing me when I say I’m making up all the details about the emotions involved in cheating and divorce. I couldn’t do this without you.
Thank you to my beta readers: Matt, Susan, Cathy, Pauline, Jen, Anna, Wendy, Kelly, Diane, Johnnie-Marie, and Nikki. I appreciate the time you took to read my book and give me honest and critical feedback. And of course, thank you to Lisa Suzanne’s Darlings for being an awesome group of readers. If you would like to join my Facebook reader group, click here:
Lisa Suzanne’s Darlings
. And a special thank you to Anna Nicole Ureta for suggesting
Conflicted
as the title for this book!
In addition to all of the amazing blogs who tirelessly review and promote my books, I also have to give a huge thanks to Give Me Books for running the Release Day Blitz and to The Hype PR for handling the cover reveal. Thank you also to Amy from Q Design for the gorgeous cover.
Finally, thank YOU for reading this book! There are so many things to do in the few hours that each day offers, and I’m honored that you took time out of your day to spend it with my characters. I’d love if you left a review on Amazon.
XOXO,
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Lisa Suzanne is a romance author who resides in Arizona with her husband and baby boy. She’s a part-time college instructor and former high school English teacher. When she's not cuddling baby Mason, she can be found working on her latest book or watching reruns of
Friends
.
NOT JUST ANOTHER ROMANCE NOVEL
HOW HE REALLY FEELS (HE FEELS, BOOK 1)
WHAT HE REALLY FEELS (HE FEELS, BOOK 2)
SINCE HE REALLY FEELS (HE FEELS, BOOK 3)
Flip the page to read the beginning of
Not Just Another Romance Novel
, a romantic comedy about all your favorite types of book boyfriends!
NOT JUST ANOTHER ROMANCE NOVEL
© 2015 Lisa Suzanne
1
His thunder stick pounded ferociously into her delicate flower.
“Thunder stick?” I muttered aloud to myself.
I’d seen some interesting terms over the years, but “thunder stick” had to be one of the dumbest ones I’d seen used to describe a man’s penis. I supposed it sounded better than “meat popsicle” or, my personal favorite, “fuck rod.”
I set my Kindle on my nightstand. I was in the middle of reading a sex scene, but the stick entering the flower managed to kill the mood.
I stood and headed toward my kitchen for a snack as I pondered books.
I had a top ten book boyfriend list, which of course changed (often) depending on what I was reading. I had a collection of signed bookmarks. I had a bunch of signed paperbacks I never opened, preserving the beautiful words and the new book smell with my favorite authors’ signatures inside.
But what I didn’t have was a real, actual, living leading man.
I needed some excitement to spice up my life. I needed an adventure like the ones I’d been reading about in romance novels since I’d first stolen
The Flame and the Flower
from my mom’s closet shelf when I was twelve.
I needed a boyfriend who could pound his thunder stick into my delicate flower. It was getting a little dusty down there. There may have been a cobweb situation happening.
In addition to the woes of my love life, I also needed to figure out a research topic for my master’s thesis.
I was less than a year away from my master’s degree in Psychology. I just needed a few more classes, including the one class I’d been dreading since I first filled out my student application: Master’s Thesis Research.
I had to generate a topic I’d research over the next few months. I’d need to complete field studies. In April, I would have to defend my paper to a panel of professors who had the power to negate my two years of post-graduate work in Psychology. If they hated my project, I was screwed. I’d end up on deep fryers at a fast food joint instead of counseling couples whose marriages were in trouble.
I thought about the thunder stick book still lighting up my Kindle in my bedroom. If only I could write about romance novels. Now
there
was an area where I was a true expert.
A knock at my door pulled me out of my thoughts.
I glanced through the peephole and found my best friend in the world, Scott Redland, and I opened the door.
“I’m looking for a treasure. Mind if I take a look at your chest?”
I burst out laughing, and then Scott held up a six-pack of Stella Artois bottles—my favorite beer. I grinned and opened my door wider.
“Are you religious? Because you’re the answer to all my prayers.”
Scott laughed as he walked past me. “I win tonight.”
I nodded in agreement. His cheesy pick-up line outplayed mine. “What’s the occasion?”
“
Big Brother
starts in fifteen minutes.”
I giggled, glancing over at the clock on my oven. Scott claimed to hate the reality show, yet we spent the entire hour of the broadcast psychoanalyzing every “character.”
But really, he loved the drama. In any event, it was a good excuse to get together with my friend to practice our burgeoning analytical skills.
“Who got sent home last time?” he asked, setting the six-pack down on the counter.
“Jasmine was
evicted
.” I stressed my word to encourage him to use the correct show terminology—a constant uphill battle.
Scott narrowed his eyes at me. “Right. You want a beer?” He grabbed the bottle opener from his keychain and popped the top off of one before he took a long gulp.
I nodded.
He popped the top off of another one and grinned as he handed it to me. “Then lose the attitude.”
I giggled, and we settled into my couch to analyze our favorite (but Scott’s non-favorite) show.
