Her laugh wasn’t more than a breath of air, but it was enough to give him hope. “But,” she drawled, and smiled when he rumbled in satisfaction. “It doesn’t.”
“What does it feel like?” He edged closer, pinning her against the balcony until her hands stilled on his shirt and her gaze met his.
“It feels like coming home.”
All the pressure in his chest dissipated as he crushed his mouth to hers. The way he kissed her was rough, desperate, and he meant to slow down and make love to her slowly for once, to savor every inch of her, but everything inside him was driven by an insatiable urge to claim her. He wasn’t sure if it would ever subside. This urgent need, and part of it fucking scared him, but the other part relished in how she always met him in his frenzy, equally drugged by the fervor.
Lucy’s hands were under his shirt in seconds, tugging the fabric, sliding her fingertips over his abdomen and around to his back. A few more frenzied tugs between them and both of their jeans were off, and his shirt might have been tossed over the ledge to fall to the street far below. He wasn’t sure, his focus was on Lucy and his compulsion to satisfy her, to make her his in every way possible.
He grabbed the condom from his pants pocket right before she shoved them down over his hips, and when he heard her soft moan of disappointment, he almost tossed the damn thing over the ledge as well, but he knew it wasn’t time. Not quite yet. But soon.
“One day,” he growled against the soft skin of her neck. “One day very soon, I’m going to fuck you bare, and there won’t be any going back. Alright Lucy?”
Her nod was feverish against his collarbone. With a firm grip around her hips, he hoisted her up until she was propped on the extra wide ledge of the balcony that overlooked the city of their childhoods. A city that had pin drops of their family legacies all over it. Buildings upon buildings that his company had built with the help of hers. And therewas something incredibly erotic about fucking his wife over the skyline of their joint dynasties. Together, they’d take over the whole world, and he was so ready for it.
“I’ll put another baby inside you, and we’ll build a family,” he panted as he positioned himself against her. “But right now it’s just you and me, and I want to savor every second of it, like we never got to do before. Okay?”
“Yes, yes okay.” She edged closer to him, her apex seeking his. Tiny, desperate mewls fell from her lips as she licked the pulse at his neck. “Please, Joel.Please.”
When she bit down on the skin just above his collarbone, the sensation was an electric shot straight to his dick.
“Fuck.” Joel drove himself inside her in one hard thrust, holding her firm at the base of her back so she rocked into him and not backward farther across the ledge. He wanted her as close as possible, so they were one body, not two.
Lucy groaned, her mouth coming back to his for eager, greedy kisses. They rocked together in a tempo that was both frantic and measured. Their perfect cadence bringing them to their peaks one after the other like two bolts of lightning firing up the sky. Her scream filled the surrounding skyline, her head thrown back in wild abandon, and when he came inside her, her name tearing off his lips, all he saw was Lucy’s unabashed ecstasy and the city they’d built behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Being back at her desk at Barone & Sons was exhilarating. At first she was afraid she’d been away so long that she’d have missed too much. Nightmares of Nico destroying all her years of work in the span of two weeks had tortured her mind. But as it turned out, he hadn’t done that bad a job. He hadn’t done an amazing job, but he hadn’t put them in the red. Satisfaction filled her once again, knowing she could do this job so much better.
He’d said his fond farewells to her at the engagement party, and she’d had to bite her tongue as he went on and on about how his father needed him in Italy to help with the contracts that had suddenly picked up.
She wasn’t born yesterday. Nico’s boastful exit had Joel written all over it. She wasn’t sure exactly how he’d maneuvered it, but she knew he’d somehow found a way to make her dear second cousin disappear into the ether without losing face or causing tension in her family. It was the Joel Morgan way. Tying up the nagging loose ends without causing so much as a ripple. Her father probably hadn’teven thought twice about it as he drove Nico to the airport the next morning.
And all Lucy could think was,so long cuz.
She sat at her desk again, ignoring the hundreds of emails needing replies, and smiled. Life wasn’t perfect and likely never would be, but happiness was so close she could almost taste it. Her parents had arrived back in San Francisco late last night, but her father had been at work bright and early this morning, proudly bragging about his daughter’s engagement to Joel.
At their morning meeting, Luciano had let her lead, which he rarely did. He’d also signed over a few projects to her that went beyond the accounting work she normally handled. It had seemed odd, but then she remembered that this was what her original plan had been about. It was simply unfolding. Her father taking her more seriously based on the strategic alliance she’d made with Joel. And while she was happy to see the change in how her father was treating her, it wasn’t a strategic alliance anymore, it was a love match. It was her life.
And she knew it was time to talk to her father again about what she wanted point blank, instead of trying to manipulate him into giving her what she wanted.
Heaving a sigh, she gathered the files that needed signing and stood from her desk. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d talked to Luciano about her desire to take over Barone & Sons after his retirement, but it was the first time she was doing it with a different outlook. Joel was a partner at her side and not the bait she would use to trick her father. She was enough, she had to be.
Making her way down the hallway to her father’s office, she smiled and waved at her coworkers as she passed them. Familiar, friendly faces she’d spent years with. WhenLuciano hired someone, they often stayed for life. There was very little turnover. Even the tradespeople working in the shop stayed. She always admired that about her father, his ability to retain people, to give them a reason to stay.
She entered her father’s office from the business side. The room was uniquely sandwiched between the cabinetry shop and the administrative cubicles, so Luciano’s office had two doors. One led to the office and entrance of the building and the other led out to the workshop. This gave him easy access to the shop, which worked out well, because woodworking had always been Luciano’s first love, and the closer he got to retirement, the more time he spent in the shop side of the building.
Sure enough, he wasn’t in his office when she entered. The faint smell of sawdust hit her nostrils, and she inhaled the scent of her childhood. Lucy’s talents were more business oriented, but she’d learned woodworking as part of her training, and was able to hold her own with a table saw. She simply preferred and excelled at the business end of things.
Walking to the windows on the other side of the office, she scanned the shop for her father. She found him at the circular saw, safety goggles and noise cancelling ear protection on. He was in the zone. She’d talk to him later. Maybe she’d even swing by her parents after work. Mooch dinner off of them and have a chat together. Maybe having her mother there would help buffer the tension…or make it worse, depending.
Turning from the windows, she went to his desk to leave the files. As she placed them neatly on the corner where he’d see them, a contract with the Barone & Sons logo caught her eye.
Tugging the contract out from under the other paperwork on her father’s desk, she scanned the first page. Itdidn’t look like any of the ones she’d been working on. Something had come up while she’d been on holiday.
Then she saw Joel’s name and the contents of the contract registered in her mind. And then she lost her utter shit.
The Morgan Construction Building was located downtown San Francisco. A tall, narrow building that, she remembered, boasted a perfect view of the Bay from Joel’s corner office.
