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Hours after my explosive release I can’t seem to help letting my mind drift back to the former SEALs instead of focusing on the multimillion-dollar contract in my hand. Thank God I’m alone because heat creeps back into my cheeks, and my body is suddenly warm all over, my heart pounding through the silent minutes.
Instead of using my time for work, I shift from one foot to the other, feeling the wet spot between my legs grow. Great. Here I am, needy and wet all over again. Won’t I ever learn?
Kandy, my mother’s secretary and my close friend, left me an iced coffee for my wait. God bless her sweet soul. I sip on it, not really savoring the sweetness or vanilla, but I appreciate the coolness all the same.
I stare out over the city below me, holding the cold drink to my cheek. Thousands of people are rushing here and there. How many of them were running home for a lunch quickie with their lovers? I take another big swallow of the caffeine and focus on the taste this time, but it doesn’t help. Part of me wants to go to security’s private floor on the eighteenth level, and like the fool that I am, divulge how utterly turned on each of the untouchable, powerful men make me. It would be fun to see where it leads, throw a big wrench in my mundane routine of school, work, work and school. And I imagine the look on my mother’s face when she finds out. I’m tired of being the wholesome, obedient bookworm my mother is grooming to one day take over her billion-dollar tech company. For god’s sake. I’m a twenty-four-year-old virgin. Half my mother’s doing, half mine. Some days I daydream about creating my own tech company. Breaking off from the family and going solo.
But I hold back, stick to my office, iced coffee and books where I belong until I one day take over the company. Take the path of least resistance, my grandfather used to say.
And then what?
People of our station belong at the top, never with the commoners.
Complete bullshit, if you ask me. With supreme effort I only roll my eyes at my mother’s heartless words uttered in one fashion or another through the years instead of storming out of this metal box like I should without a backward glance.
Needless to say, I’ve stuck it out for my own reasons. But if the situation were different and I were not a Thorne, then yeah, maybe.
Still, I catch the heated caresses of their gazes like a kiss against my skin when no one is looking and their lingering touches when they help me from cars. Their need to always see me from the building though I have my own team.
Or, it could all be my imagination. What would a virgin like me know? As a matter of fact, given my luckless experience with men, I bet it is all in my head.
Ugh. What’s wrong with me? Fluttering sensations cause me to bring my hand to rest on my stomach. Three men? How would that even work? The scandal. I don’t need my mother to tell me how fast I would lose everything I’ve worked so hard for if I were to pursue that line of thought.
But I still want them. Crave them like a saint needs their prayer time. Maybe I need a God-fearing saint to rein inmydesires.
I sigh heavily as I turn on the heel of my stiletto and retrace my steps for the hundredth time. Cold, empty echoes bounce off the marble walls and chase behind me.
Click. Click. Click.Hypnotic and disheartening.
More like empty and hollow to match the office I’ve been waiting in for half the morning.
Everything looks like it came out of a black and white movie except there is no nostalgia to be found here with quaint furniture and sensual settees to lounge on.
Nope. Not for my mother. It’s all razor-sharp lines and symmetrically positioned gray furniture. No plants, splashes of color on the white walls or any signs someone spends the majority of their time here. I swear not even a stray slip of paper is out of place and the morning sunlight barely brushes against the large wall-to-wall windows.
No signs of life, just like the house I grew up in—not a home. Just how my mother likes it. Nothing to distract her from making money.
I scowl to myself and press my forehead against the cool glass. I check my phone again and find no new messages asking me to wait just a few more minutes.
I’ve walked the same path in my mother’s office until my feet have started to ache, and she’s yet to show for our appointment. It’s laughable, really. What kind of mother needs her only daughter to make an appointment for a celebratory lunch? Mine apparently.
I rub at my arms to chase the chill away and catch a quick glance over my shoulder at the large clock dominating the back wall. The original five minutes I should have been waiting for has turned into an hour and a half.
“Great.”
I hadn’t planned on sitting in this damn cold, colorless office longer than fifteen minutes waiting for my mother to finish whatever meeting on her endless agenda so we could go out and celebrate. Instead, I spent it waiting and then waiting some more, but that’s nothing new. Maybe it was for the best anyway. Meals we take together usually end up with her on the phone and me enjoying my own company. It’s no secret money and a good deal mean more to her than blood. On more than one occasion I’ve joined the security detail at their table, and my mother didn’t even realize I was gone. I have the paparazzi snapshots to prove it.
It’s also how I know Seth is allergic to mushrooms and Lucian only drinks water with his meals. I’m just pissed at myself that I thought this time would be different. Being an official holder of a bachelor’s degree in business as of two days ago should be noteworthy. Damn, even cold-hearted people can give out a handshake, right?
We’re both workaholics, so I get it. I’m also a studyaholic, compounding the multiple issues that sit between us. But my heart still aches for some kind of acknowledgment from the woman who should be the first to cheer me on.
“Forget about it, Justice.” I straighten my shoulders and shove down all the shit that enters my brain every time I come to the twenty-fifth floor—aka the ice cave.
A small woman with a tight blonde bun and flawless skin pokes her head through the door, does a quick check behind her and then pushes through metal doors large enough to fit a herd of elephants. Instead of the thrill I wish I felt at finally seeing my mother, all I have inside me is disappointment. One look at the other woman’s face and I know what’s about to happen. It’s almost become a game between my mother and me.
I show up. She has to leave. If I didn’t know any better, I would say my mother is allergic to any element of emotion. Or me. Both more than likely. I remind her of her one weakness. Lucky me. Sins of the mother, I guess.
Who the hell really knows? I never have long enough with her to ask. Years of boarding school led to college and then working full-time to one day take over the Thorne empire. Or so goes the plan. Honestly, I’m having second and third thoughts about the whole life design my mother cooked up for me before I could even walk.
