Taking the Score (10 page)

Brody’s closet was open. Emma tiptoed over and spied inside.

“Kevin!” The incubus was sniffing out Brody’s shoes, likely looking for a place to make his mark. “Come here.”

The little shit ignored her.

“Oh, you are in for it.” She moved to grab him, but he shot right by her. That’s when she heard it.

Well, she wasn’t quite sure what “it” was, but if she had to hazard a guess, she’d say it was a moan. Panic seized her chest. Was Brody hurt? Hungover? Singing?

With the quietness of a ninja, she moved toward the bathroom. The door was open a few inches, the soothing pitter-patter of the shower the only noise now.

“Mr. Ka—uh, Brody?” she asked tentatively. “Are you okay?”

The sound came again, this time louder, and now that she was close, there was no doubt that it was Brody. Only he was definitely not hurt.

A groan disturbed the air. Full-throated, pleasure-tinged, threading an invisible line of need to the sensitive flesh between her thighs. A throb started up there, a sweet ache—oh God, there he went again. A deep, shuddering moan.

She turned away from the door, moving her back to greet the wall. Needing its support to keep her upright.

He was jerking off in the shower.

Oh. My. “Wow,” she whispered.

Acknowledging the fact tightened her nipples painfully. The pulse between her legs beat faster and joined the rhythm of her pounding heart. Instinctively, she moved her hand over her chest, seeking calm, but now that she had her hand on her breast, the action had a sensuous effect. Stroking her aching nipple produced short-term relief and a deep-seated need for more.

She dropped her hand like her breast was forbidden country. She couldn’t do that. Not here with her boss next door.

Her boss next door under a steamy spray with his big, rough hand stroking that monster cock.

Leave this room now. Forget what you heard.

Her feet seemed incapable of following her brain’s instructions. This was ridiculous. She shook her head, giving herself a mental shake, and stepped toward the door.

“
Uh-uh-mmmm-a
.”

She stilled. Surely that was her imagination. Surely he had not just said her name. With that big hand wrapped around that big—

“Oh, Christ,
Emma
.”

She slumped against the wall, boneless, paralyzed at what she’d heard. Once might have been an accident, twice was the stuff of fantasies. His, apparently.

Hers, definitely.

Maybe it was a different Emma. Maybe he was fantasizing about his favorite Jane Austen novel.
Right.
Sure there had been odd moments in the office when she glanced up and found him staring at her from behind those sexy rims with an intense regard that made her sex tighten in need. But then he would look away as if it meant nothing.

However, things had changed. Lines had been hazed beyond recognition. She knew what he felt like inside her, how his beautiful cock was crafted to fill her emptiness. He had made her come hard, and last night, her dreams had been steamy and filled with him. She awoke sweating, humping her hand, her entire body on fire with want. Now he was using her in his fantasy. So flattering.

And arousing.

Unbearably arousing.

His next groan sounded louder, the shower tile’s amplification conspiring to crank up her own craving. What would he do if she walked in there, threw open the glass door, and stepped inside? Fell to her knees and took him in her mouth?

She squeezed her thighs together, desperate for relief. Aiming for completion without doing something so deliberate as touching herself. Look ma, no hands!

It was useless. The ache between her legs wouldn’t be soothed by damn Kegels. She should leave and down a quart of ice water. Douse it over her flaming skin.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Instead she pressed the heel of her hand against the part of her that begged for a salve.
Yes.
Better. Just a few rubs outside the boxers she had borrowed to ease the ache. Brody’s boxers, the thought of which merely hiked her desire. A couple of seconds of naughty indulgence, but damn…they were damp. And no touch had ever felt so good.

No touch but his.

Another moan from the shower went straight to her blooming clit. At this rate, a single press of her fingers to her bare, damp skin would do it. Get it done, then back to her day and her shitty life. As long as she heard the shower and those moans from within, she’d know he was otherwise occupied. Jerking off with her as the inspiration.

She slipped two fingers inside the boxers and delved between her swollen folds.

Ah, so good. She bit down on her lip to keep her moan from finding voice. The slick heat between her thighs increased with every slippery stroke of her fingers. Just a few more seconds, just a few more. The build so intense, almost there, almost—

Brody’s moans increased in volume, and the strangest notion overcame her. She wanted to hit it when he did. The idea took hold, and she slowed her stroke, bit back on her pleasure as she listened to his ratcheting up. For someone who always appeared so contained, he was shockingly vocal and uninhibited.

His moans built, the coil in her belly with it, and she knew he was about to go over. She clamped down on her lip as her orgasm gripped her, fueled by a lusty shout on the other side of the wall.

They came together, though only one of them realized how freakin’ fine that was.

Slumped against the wall, wrung out from her pleasure, she tried to ignore the pang of guilt in her chest at having used his private moment like that. But she had no time for regrets. She needed to pull herself together because any minute now, he would be out of the shower.

“Emma.”

Or, how about
this
very minute?

She jumped and removed her hand from her boxers as if she hadn’t actually had her hand between her legs. “Fake it ’til you make it” seemed apt right about now.

Brody stood before her, still wet, a towel loosely draped around his hips. Her mouth went bone-dry, though she’d be hard-pressed to credit the precise reason. Embarrassment, mounting panic, or the most impressive chest she’d ever had the fortune to see up close. A light thatch veed over his pecs, shading dark copper nipples. The hair continued down his stomach, arrowing through his taut abs like an unstoppable train on the way to his…
Rawr.
Stopping at the border of his towel, slung disruptively low, she swiftly raised her eyes.

She had worked at Score Property for three months, had mind-blowing sex with this man in a strip club, but this was the first time she had seen him shirtless. And now, she was shy.

“Hi,” she managed.
Hi?

“Hello.”

“I—I was just looking for Kevin and he came in here and I thought I heard something.” It emerged in a run-on gush.

“Something?”

He rubbed a second towel through his dark hair and eyed her like he’d caught her in the act. Hand in the cookie jar-slash-boxer briefs, so to speak. Well, he needn’t be so judgy. After all,
he’d
been the one flogging the log in that shower.

Do not go there. Do. Not. Go.

Ah, hell. As had been demonstrated several times already this week, her brain was not the boss of her.

She went.

Her gaze dipped to the towel, willing it to fall, calling on her X-ray vision to discern the exact nature of that tented bulge behind that damp, fluffy hotel-quality cotton.

A well-used cock.

Not well-used enough
, her dirty mind chimed in. How could he still be primed after that steamy shower release? Her eyes shot up to find his locked on hers like silver magnets.

“You thought you heard something?” he repeated in complete seriousness as if the
something
they were talking about was not his husky moaning of her name while he jacked off.

“Yes. From the bathroom.” She waved helpfully in that direction. “I thought you might have been…in pain.”

Those silver-gray orbs of light widened, followed by a slow mouth curl brightening his forbidding face. Just shy of a smile, it made her heart flutter madly. His gaze raked her body deliberately. With intent. In that moment, it was clear he knew that she knew exactly what had been going on in that shower.

Fantastic. Everyone was in the know.

“Well, it was a little painful for a while. But I soldiered through. How about you?”

“How about me what?”

“I might not be wearing my glasses, but I don’t need them to recognize a woman with her hand down her panties. Or boxers, as is the case here.”

“I—I…”
Oh, shit.
“You got me.”

That surprised him. He had expected denials, and while she was embarrassed as all get-out, she wasn’t a prude.

Two nights ago in the club, he had fucked her hard, deep, and to the root. Just the sight of him rubbing a towel through his hair, each motion flexing shockingly large biceps for a man who sat at a desk all day, made her nipples bud to the hardness of bullets. How could they go back to employer/employee? The fantasy she could never indulge in again? Frankly, she was tired of being good. One night with Brody had unleashed that inner vixen she had crushed for the last year while she tried to redirect her life. Look where that had gotten her.

Homeless. In debt up to her stiffening nipples and stripping for her supper. Worried sick about her drug-addicted sister and her cat. Her life a train wreck squared.

This should have been her time. She wanted something of her own, something her father and Daisy couldn’t take away from her. The Stricklands might be white trash who thought they were better, but dammit, they were. Surely what’s inside decides the game: the needs, the wants, the ambition. Ten years after she had made her first deposit into the savings account that would fund her education and life plans, she was here. Only to have it taken from her protecting the one person she loved most in the world.

Perhaps she needed to spare some of that love for herself.

She wanted to take her pleasure where she could find it. All she had was a week. Less than. This job that she really enjoyed—this life she had been starting to love—would be kaput once she figured out her escape plan.

She met his dark gaze directly. “If you’re going to use me to get off, there’s no good reason why I shouldn’t return the favor.”

His eyes widened further. “Quid pro quo?”

“Exactly.”

He stalked toward her. She held her ground.

Stopping inches from her, he ran a finger up her arm and hooked the hem of the T-shirt she was wearing, a frayed Texas A&M tee that had a rip in the shoulder and had clearly been washed too many times. It smelled of him.

“Sleep well?”

“Better than I have in some time,” she lied. “You?”

“Terribly.”

“Rough night with Mr. Smythe-Osborne?”

That sexy mouth twitched. “Not half as bad as what came later.”

“Oh?”

“I lay awake in my bed wishing you were in it. Wishing I were buried balls-deep in you and you were riding my cock to oblivion. I jacked off twice. Still wasn’t enough.” He dropped his hand, stepped back. “Sorry, your honesty a moment ago inspired some ill-advised honesty of my own. Less than twenty-four hours, and it’s already more difficult than I imagined.”

“Doesn’t have to be.” Moving in, she placed a hand on his still-damp chest. Its hardness flexed beneath her fingertips. “I heard you saying my name in there.”

He shut his eyes briefly. “More Human Resources infractions.”

“Very inappropriate. Possibly”—she paused—“illegal.”

“What do I have to do to keep you quiet?”

That made her smile. “Well, I’m sure I could blow Score Property wide open with the secrets I’m holding in. How Mr. Dade sleeps in his cowboy boots on the sofa in his office and murmurs his wife’s name. Or how Mr. Cross is addicted to Goobers. I mean of all the candies, that’s pretty damning right there. But not quite as bad as the boss jerking off to his assistant.”

He gave that the consideration it deserved. “You could blackmail me. Make me give you anything or do whatever you want.”

She found it interesting how he tried to recast the dynamic to give her the power. Not especially believable, but she appreciated the effort.

“What will shut me up, Mr. Kane? Got any ideas?”

“One or three.”

The moment stretched as they both thought about what would make her quiet.

Your mouth on mine, your cock between my lips. That’d shut me up real quick.

Except it wouldn’t for long. She’d be a moaning, begging fool as soon as their skin connected in dirty, sweaty nakedness. All the heat previously flushing her skin in embarrassment now rushed between her legs. Pounding started up in her veins, the throb of memory at what he’d done to her the other night. What he’d done while thinking of her a few minutes ago.

How it still wasn’t enough.

“Brody, we’re both too keyed up around each other, especially after what happened at the club. All joking aside, you’re not taking advantage of me, not if I’m touching myself and wishing my fingers were your cock.”

“I imagine that would make typing difficult.”

She stared, wanting to laugh.

“If your fingers were replaced by my cock,” he clarified, “it would be hard to type.”

“Oh, I got it. I’m just amazed at you making a joke. You’re always so serious.”

His forehead crimped, remembering something. Perhaps a time before, when he wasn’t so serious.

“That’s what you think of me. Serious. Stick up my ass. Mr. Control.” He scrunched her T-shirt in his fist. The action pulled her closer to him and drew her gasp. “You think you’re the one to make me lose control, Emma?”

“I think I already have. You lost it at the club. You lost it in that shower.” She tiptoed up so her breath fanned his lips. Provoked. “And the way your erection is pointing at me like a divining rod tells me you’re not in control now. Ding, ding, ding, Brody. Your cock just found a wet spot.”

The groan he let loose found a corresponding callback in the beat of her racing heart. He claimed her mouth with a terrifying fierceness, and she immediately questioned whether this was such a good idea after all. Inciting Brody into losing control would make for an amazing bout in bed—or on the floor, against the wall, in the shower—but unleashing it might produce her own nasty freak. Because she liked it dirty, and the challenge of getting this buttoned-up man to give it to her was almost too much to resist.