FULL NOVELXO Between Never and Forever: Part 2 – Chapter 37
Alcohol may have given me courage but my irritation with him gave me strength. He’d had those keys in the nightstand this whole time and hadn’t told me.
I didn’t consider anything except that I was going to chew him out. I stomped out of the suite and down that hallway in hopes he could hear each footstep.
The conference rooms were spread throughout the resort, but I knew he’d have picked the biggest one for his ridiculous meeting.
Of course Penelope was sitting at a desk that expanded across the lobby. She waved to me. “Oh, are you here to see Dex?”
“Yep,” I said, and I think I caught a smirk from her. She didn’t stop me but waved me right past her so I could shove through the double doors.
I stood there, breathless, my eyes scanning the room for his arrogant ass but instead finding all of them. I saw Armanellis, Bane Black, and the Hardy brothers. All powerful men in black suits. All men I thought were back in their hotel rooms with their wives but instead they sat there discussing something. Except silence filled the room now and on the projector was the man in the Oval Office staring at me.
The fucking President of the United States glared at me on the big screen.
Somehow, I’d let my emotions, my anger, my loss of control get the best of me. The alcohol drained from my system as embarrassment filled my veins.
What the hell was I doing? Dex Hardy was a man of business, of prestige, of a billion-dollar empire. And I stood there looking crazed in a freaking raggedy old college T-shirt just long enough to cover my ass.
Dex’s eyes had widened in probably utter shock at my intrusion and then they dragged over my body from head to toe, pausing at the hem of my shirt. I didn’t even have a stupid bra on, I’d been so mad.
“I’m sorry. I—” I whispered, all the fight leaving my body as embarrassment replaced it instead.
“You’ve got ten seconds to get the fuck out of this conference room.”
I took a step back. He was right. God, he was so right. Of course he hadn’t thought I’d actually burst into the room.
Although…Penelope had let me right through. She’d even waved me in like it wasn’t at all an inconvenience.
“I understand,” I murmured, taking a step back in my bare feet.
“Heartbreaker”—he pinched the bridge of his nose—“not you. Never you. Them.”
“But I—”
The men had already stood and were filing out past me. Dimitri kissed my cheek and murmured that I should call him when I needed him, and he winked at me like he knew this was coming.
Dex was telling the president, “I’ll call you back. My fiancée is here.”
My jaw dropped as he hung up on him. The freaking president.
Bane kissed my forehead. “We’re working on getting that bastard of a stalker, you know that, right?”
No one seemed to think this behavior was outrageous.
As Bane closed the door behind him, I heard, “Now, come sit on my lap because, right now, you’re mine.”
We stared at each other quietly, the clock on the wall ticking away as if it was counting down the seconds to the bomb between us that was supposed to go off. “You can’t tell the president you’ll just call him back!” I screeched.
“I just did.” He set down his pen and leaned back in the leather chair he was lounging in. Then, he patted his thigh. “Come sit.”
“You’re indulging me when I’m being ridiculous, Dex.”
“When’s the last time you were completely ridiculous?”
I stood there in that baggy shirt, not sure I could answer the question. “This isn’t like me, and I know that, and—”
“It is like you. You just haven’t been given the chance to be you in a long time.”
“Well, I can’t start now. You can’t up and marry a completely unhinged individual. And I think I’m verging on that. I literally…” I shook my head. “I’m happy with you, do you know that? When I thought I’d be miserable, I’m happy and I feel safe to be myself and am completely—”
He chuckled. “Perfect. You’re perfect, heartbreaker.”
“I’m not. I just got off on a camera for you and burst into your meeting with the president.”
“Yeah, and you enjoyed it, didn’t you?”
“No. I’m not enjoying this.”
He looked me up and down. “The blush on your cheeks alone shows me it’s affected you. It’s more than just a little foreplay. Don’t act like it isn’t.”
Of course he had to call out how my body rebelled against me, and I couldn’t help but snap back. “And I bet my whole Black Diamond salary that me standing here has affected you too. You hard under that conference table of yours?” Welp. Guess the alcohol hadn’t completely worn off, and I slapped a hand over my mouth.
He stared at me as his jaw worked, and then he sucked on his teeth before going to his phone to type something in. An alert sounded on my phone too, and I glanced down at the bank notification.
The number of zeros. He’d just dropped a million dollars into my account. “Jesus, Dex. That was a joke. Take the money back,” I whispered.
“What for? You won the bet. I’m fucking hard as a rock. Want to come sit on my lap and find out?”
“You’re acting like you’re for real with this idea of marriage, Dex. You’re acting like—”
“Like what’s mine is yours?” He shrugged. “It is.”
“I need a glass of water or… I need a moment.” I glanced around and saw bottled water at the corner on the table. When I picked one up, of course it was ice cold. I pointed to it. “This is over the top.”
“I had over-the-top men in here.”
I twisted open the lid and took a long drink before I glanced at the door, then the screen, and then at Dex. “I shouldn’t be here.”
“You should be where I am.”
“You won’t be saying that after our press release.”
“We are only doing a press release after we get married.”
I shook my head slowly as I walked toward him. “I’m not marrying you, Dex. We don’t know the first thing about being married. We don’t even know the first thing about being in a relationship with each other, considering this was all for—”
“Real,” he finished for me.
I stared at him as a million thoughts ran through my head. “You’re so confident in this. In us?” He shrugged like he already had everything figured out. “How can you be when I don’t even know…” How did I explain what I was feeling? “I haven’t been able to be me for years, Dex. I don’t even know exactly who I am.”
“That’s what life is about, right? People change every day, and we figure it out every day.”
“What if, when I find out, you don’t like that person?”
“I know who you are, Kee. Let me be the judge of that. That’s fair, isn’t it? You walked away from me once without giving me a chance, right? Let me have it this time.” His tone was soft, and he didn’t get up from that chair to approach me at all. He was keeping himself exactly where he was in case I bolted. He knew I was skittish now.
I bit my lip. “The wedding is still going to be a colossal mess. I’ve been just texting Penelope the most ridiculous things.”
“Looking forward to it.”
“It shouldn’t be in our hometown where they—”
“It’ll be small, right? No one will even know.”
“You’re not going to give up, are you?”
“I’m never going to give up on us again.”
I chewed on my cheek, trying my best not to cry. “I think I might be falling in love with you, Dex.”
“Well, good. At least the fall is starting for you. I’m so far down the hill, I need you to catch up at some point. Now, you did interrupt a meeting with the president. Want to say sorry?”
“Sorry.” I shrugged because what did I care about one little word.
“Say sorry by wrapping your lips around my cock.”
“Doing that in a conference room with your assistant outside, Dex, is—”
“An experience. A rush. A fucking high. Get on your knees. Show your fiancé how sorry you are.”
He knew I wasn’t going to deny myself experiences anymore. He knew I wanted every single one. I walked up to him and moved between him and the desk. Before I could kneel, he growled, “Actually, I want to see what’s under this shirt first.”
He lifted it slowly, his hands at my hips as he inched it up to my waist and saw that I hadn’t slipped anything on underneath. “I was in a hurry.”
“To fuck your future husband.”
“To yell at him.”
“Want to scream his name instead?” He slid a finger in me fast, and I gasped at how sensitive I still was from getting myself off just minutes ago. “So wet, baby. You came prepared for me, huh?”
“Your ego is getting quite big, Dex.”
“Only because I can back it up.” He shoved my hips up and back onto the desk, and then he lowered his head. There was no time to brace for how good his tongue would feel over my clit as he twirled it over the sensitive bundle of nerves.
I arched on the table and pulled at his hair. “I’m too sensitive, Dex. I just orgasmed—”
“And you’re going to again for me.” He slid another finger in and curled them against my G-spot, causing electricity to sing through every nerve in my body. I bucked on the table, my body primed for him in a way I knew I couldn’t have done myself. “You’re giving me every orgasm I want to take, heartbreaker. Forever. Your future husband deserves to see you come apart again and again.”
I shivered at him claiming that. I told myself I’d discuss it again later with him. For now, I just wanted to live in this moment. Just feel everything I could. “Please,” I whimpered, because now I wanted it. I wanted to hit that high with him again and again.
He growled against my sex, vibrating my inner walls so perfectly that my whole body tightened as I screamed his name and came all over his mouth. So fast, like lightning through the night sky, the electricity of his mouth on me caused me to see blinding light.
And still he didn’t let up but rather drank in my aftershocks until I was completely relaxed and satiated. I tried to pull him back by his hair, and he hummed low against my core. “You taste sweet as fuck afterward, heartbreaker, like you’re leaving me extra dessert to come back for more. I’m never going to get enough of this pussy.”
“Dex,” I whimpered, and he finally let up, kissing my thigh once and then twice before he sat back and looked at me.
I peered over him and saw how his trousers were tight around his cock. My mouth watered, and I knew I wanted him here, wanted him to lose control, enough that he’d find it worth it always to hang up on the president for me. Our connection was worth it. I scooted off the table and got on my knees before him.
“Kee, I was kidding about the—”
I unbuckled his trousers and held his cock in my hand before he could protest further. Then I said, “Are you going to be as loud as I was when you come in my mouth?”
He hissed when I deep-throated him as best as I could right away. My hand barely wrapped fully around his cock, but I loved the feeling of his piercing against the top of my mouth, loved how he hardened even further as I slid my tongue around his tip. “Fuck, heartbreaker. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Right then, someone knocked on the office door, and Dex didn’t do what I thought he might. Instead, he said, “Come in.”
I heard the doors open as his hands threaded through my hair, holding me there right as I was about to pull back. Then, I heard Penelope. “Sir, the president is on line one, calling back. Would you like to tell him to hold?”
“He can call back.”
There was mirth in Penelope’s voice when she said, “Again? Reason being?”
“The woman that’s about to be my wife under my desk good enough?”
“Absolutely.” Penelope snickered, and I heard her soft congratulations like she thought we’d finally worked through all our problems.
Like me sucking him off under his desk wasn’t another one. But I couldn’t stop. I wanted him to lose the control he always had so much of.
“You have to stop or I’m going to come down your throat, Kee.” Good. He tried to pull me back by my hair, but I leaned forward to take him farther in. “Heartbreaker,” he warned, but then his hips jerked forward, and I knew he’d snapped. “That’s it. Take my cock down your throat. So sick of being good. I’ve always loved you bad, anyway. That fuckable mouth was made for me.” He thrust his cock farther as he held my head and I moaned. “And only me.”
The problem with Dex’s declaration was that there was a letter that had been intercepted for us by the time we left the office. It was in a red envelope.
This engagement wasn’t supposed to be real.
If you marry him, I’ll be devastated.
Don’t you know we belong together? Please.
Break it off. Show me we can be together.
Why have you closed your hotel windows, Keelani?
I can’t see you. I need to see you.