Out of all the ways I’d had her, this was my favorite.
“Perfect,” I murmured, nearly out of my own head with pleasure and something akin to joy. “Perfect.”
Tess moaned an answer, her breath hitching as yet another orgasm washed over her. It was enough for me to tip over the edge too.
“Tess… I…” Thankfully, a hot wash of ecstasy stole the words from my mouth before I said something stupid.
I brushed the wet curls out of her face. “I… care a lot for you,” I said once I’d come down.
She panted against my shoulder then pressed sloppy kisses to my face.
“I don’t hate you as much as I thought I did,” she whispered.
Her phone was buzzing on the vanity counter in the bathroom. She grabbed a towel and stepped on her toes to the phone.
“At least you know it’s not your demanding boss calling you,” I said, sinking back into the warm water.
But Tess didn’t laugh at the joke.
Instead, she looked up from the phone and said, “Oh shit.”
56
Tess
“Why is he trying to ruin my life?” I railed at Maeve the next morning.
“I thought your stepdad already ruined your life? That’s what you told me during every drunken Friday-night baking session,” my friend said.
I pulled up the gossip page website on my computer.
I had set an alert for Beck’s name because I was thirsty and desperate and breaking my own non-dating rules. But instead of fun puff pieces about what a sexy billionaire Beck was, my phone notifications last night had pointed to a mean gossip article.
Now there were more of them.
They all were assassinating Beck’s character. Several tabloids even had videos of Ashley giving an interview, talking about how Beck had fired her. Worse, they were saying terrible things about his relationship with his sisters and with me.
I was painted as an employee Beck had manipulated, and he was starting a cult with me.
He was going to break his father out of prison and rebuild the compound.
He was a psychopath.
He was manipulative.
“They’re completely dragging his character!” I was furious. “This is slander!”
What was more concerning were the videos of my stepfather being interviewed. He was talking about how much concern he had for the girls’ well-being, how they needed to be with their family and not with men related to their mother’s kidnapper, how he was going to pursue custody of the girls, and how he was asking the federal marshals to come retrieve them immediately.
“God, this is a shit show!”
Beck hadn’t even come to work. He had gone straight to Svensson Investment that morning to talk to the lawyers.
I was at the office. No one was working. All the employees were whispering about the gossip articles.
And about me.
They were blatantly staring across the open office to my desk.
