Chapter Six - Jack
Not that I didn’t have freedom while I was dating Vicky, but I still had reason to celebrate today. She was like cancer, sucking the energy out of me whenever we spent time together.
I grabbed another chilled beer bottle and watched Shawna leave the penthouse. She was holding her hands together with her head down. There was a timid vibe to her. She was usually more energetic than she looked like right, but maybe the events of tonight had also taken a toll on her. I gathered today that she is actually friends with Vicky. I didn’t think the two of them were this close but it made sense. Vicky spent a bunch of time in this penthouse, which now just annoyed me to think about.
I mean, I had all my things laid out inside my closet that was always open. And I never particularly trusted her. But to me, material things were never so important. It was the paperwork, any confidential or private that she might have stumbled upon. And I was sure that she’d opened my drawers and snooped around. I spent a significant amount of time working from home so the chances of me having something at home that I wasn’t supposed to were high.
Anyhow, she was gone now and it looked like this was going to be a quiet night since Mom was leaving as well.
I’d get to kick back, maybe watch the news, and then fantasize about Emma and relieve myself of the tension that she’d given me during that kiss.
Emma was something else. The most beautiful thing about her was that she didn’t know how beautiful she was. Maybe she did. I mean, every good looking person knows it when they’re above average. I bet she had men throwing themselves at her but she was looking for the one. I was good at reading people. It’s why I was where I was. Judging people’s characters wasn’t just a personal thing. It had helped me avoid a lot of bad partnerships, dodge a ton of bogus deals. During the time that I’d been in business, I’d had a lot of experiences with different kinds of people. Some were nice to my face, but tried to stab me in the back. That someone was my former business partner that I cut ties with before I founded Precken. But some people were genuinely nice, and I could just see what their hearts looked like by looking at their faces.
Emma’s eyes were expressive. She always had a concerned look when she glanced at me. I could almost tell what she was thinking about and when. She wasn’t particularly fond of Vicky and shared a similar opinion of her as me. But she’s too nice to abandon a friend, too loyal to ask her to fuck off. Though, I was pretty sure that Vicky had done that to her tonight. And for good reason. This time I wouldn’t blame her for anything. I’d be annoyed, too, if I were her.
“Bye Jack,” I heard my mom’s voice all the way from the living room. “I probably won’t be back for a while so don’t wait up.”
Like I was about to…
“The girls and I are playing poker and then I’ll probably want to talk about how ridiculous your dad is so it’ll be a while.”
“Okay mother. Have fun and behave.”
“I’ll try to,” she responded before the door shut, leaving me the only person in the penthouse that reminded me of silver foil.
It was just so silver.
I’d asked my interior designer to make it neutral. I’m not a fan of too many colors, and neither do I like all black and living in a place that looked like it belonged to the evil queen. I needed something subtle, and yet bold.
A mix of silver and grey is what she’d come up with and I never found the time to really go and check all the things she was buying for the place. All in all, it’d turned out well and complemented my personality perfectly. I reached for the TV remote once I was laying in bed and heard my phone buzz.
“Argh,” I grumbled, moving my butt forward and getting off the bed. I was certain that she’d just forgotten something at home and wanted me to come down to hand it to her.
But I wasn’t prepared to hear what she actually told me.
The concierge pointed at her. Since I’d seen Emma earlier in the night, I knew what she was wearing and I wasn’t expecting her and my mom to be standing behind the staircase like two shady shoplifters trying to hide themselves.
Mom gave me a knowing smile with narrow eyes before she exited the door. She knew something was up. Mothers always knew for some reason. Mine definitely did. Maybe she was smarter than most people. After all, she’d given birth to me.
Emma on the other hand, looked always guilty when she saw me, like she knew that this was the last place that she should’ve been at.
“So,” she pursed her lips and glanced at her phone screen that was still dark.
“What happened?”
“Vicky and I had a bad fight in the Uber. Long story short, I said I’d just leave and then I left and couldn’t think of another place to go, honestly. I thought I’d just leave in the morning after I book a flight -”
“You were,” I pointed at the seat. “You were planning to spend the night in this lobby?”
She shrugged.
“I didn’t have a plan.”
“Well you have one now,” I sighed, extending my hand. What was I thinking? Of course, she wasn’t going to grab it. She looked away and started rubbing her hairline instead, then crossed her arms.
“I should really just wait here,” she mumbled, her eyes landing on my lips.
She craved the taste of my lips as much as I craved hers.
The way her hair was parted made her jaw line look even sharper than before. All I wanted was to kiss her there, to make her moan, and…
No. I couldn’t think about that right now.
She was obviously in a crisis, and though I might have been a dick to all the women that I’d just met and were even remotely interested in sleeping with me, I couldn’t be the same way with her.
Because she was different. I couldn’t exactly understand why I felt that way but just the fact that she wasn’t jumping at the opportunity to go up to the penthouse with me and potentially taking advantage of me was a good sign.
When you make a fortune at an early age and prove most people wrong, you get a little cocky. But I could’ve been worse. Moments such as this one with Emma was reminding me that I wasn’t made of steel when it came to affection.
I did want her, yes. But right now, I just wanted to make sure that she was taken care of.
“If you want to wait here,” I shrugged.
“Oh please,” she whined. “Don’t say that you’ll wait with me.”
I laughed. “I wasn’t going to. But I’ll make sure to pay someone to keep you company. I’ve got a long say tomorrow. Can’t spend this entire night sitting on some shitty seat with a girl I just met.”
“And just kissed,” she said. “For a second, I almost thought you had a heart.”
“I do.”
She stepped closer to me, touching her lips with mine and then pulling away,
“Prove it.”
Those were the last words she said to me before we both walked toward the elevator while holding hands. Emma sighed as she stood next to me, waiting for the door to close and I lifted her leg up to my waist the second it did. I put my hand over her stomach and felt her delicate silk blouse under the jacket.
I could kiss this woman all night long. Her breath on my lips had me tightening my grip on her thighs. We were lucky that the elevator didn’t stop before reaching my floor because her jacket was off and the dainty strap of her blouse had fallen off.
“Stop,” she whispered into my lips when the elevator doors opened. I placed my finger over the button to keep them that way.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” I said, looking her straight in the eyes. Her brows furrowed and her breathing picked up. That was the only answer I was looking for.
“I can’t,” she said several seconds later with the most needy, sexy face I’d ever seen.
I was going to take her tonight.
