Page 12

DEACON

The feel of my cum trickling down her creamy thighs makes my already soft cock go hard again. My hands on her hips and our foreheads resting on each other as I suck her bottom lip into my mouth feels borderline euphoric.

My cock is still inside her, and my cum leaks out of her swollen cunt as her pebbled nipples poke my chest through my shirt. The feel of her after so many years of yearning is worth more than a thousand words. I want to fuck her on a bed. I want to make love to her while I taste every damn inch of her skin that this small elevator couldn’t give me access to.

The urge to mark her has never felt so great as it does now, and I want to do that to her as soon as we are out of here.

I want you again, baby. Not once, not twice, and certainly not just three times.

My wolf howls with renewed vigor, and I agree with him when he concludes that we finally won over Winter. She’s finally let us in, and we will keep her this time around.

Unfortunately, my thoughts fail to come to fruition when the elevator wobbles and a set of beeping sounds accompany it. In mere seconds, the elevator starts moving, and as soon as it does, Winter’s lips pull away from me, the lust in her eyes fizzling out like a candle flame getting extinguished by a single gust of wind.

I can see the minute the Winter who hates me comes to her senses, and the sight itself is like taking a sucker punch to the chest.

“Put me down,” she demands.

The regret on her face makes me sick. She regrets this. She regrets us kissing and anything we did inside here.

Out of rage? Courtesy? Call it even saving myself from heartbreak, I put her down as gently as my hands can.

Winter wobbles on her feet a little, and I try to offer her a hand so she can stand straight, but the dagger eyes she shoots me have me backing down. She picks up her bra, putting it on with trembling fingers, she searches for her panties, and I’m the bastard who won’t tell her I stole her panties, and they are currently in my coat’s left pocket. She finishes putting on her clothes in seconds, and in all that time, she avoids my eyes like the plague.

I’m about to speak to her about what just happened when another sound comes from the small speaker near the buttons on the elevator.

“Sir? Alpha Deacon, are you there?”

Winter’s face turns pale.

I put my cock back in my pants, listening to the new man who’s speaking from the other end of the line.

“Yes,” I answer.

Static buzzes from the radio before the guy speaks again. ” I’m Howard from Security, and it seems we went through a blackout that made all the elevators malfunction. Our backup generators weren’t working as well. But everything is back and running. I went through the CCTV footage and saw you getting into the elevator with Ms. Cavanaugh. Is she there with you?”

I want to ask this Howard guy why my being in an elevator with Winter would concern him when Winter fixes her hair and, with a smile, replies, “I’m here too, Howard. Thanks for fixing the elevator.”

“No, my apologies go to you and the boss. You two must have been stuck there for almost two hours, and that’s somehow my fault.”

Hating the tension and Howard altogether, I cut off the chit-chat, dwelling on the most important thing.

“Hey, Howard?”

“Yes, boss?”

“Are there any CCTV cameras inside the elevator?”

Winter’s shoulders tense, but I'd rather skin alive ten men who sound like Howard than let anyone see her naked body.

“Yes, sir. I haven’t looked at the footage yet out of—”

“Delete all the footage from today that captured everything in the elevator.”

Howard goes silent. Winter holds her purse in a tight grip.

“Done, sir. Apologies once again. The elevator should be up and running by now.”

No sooner does Howard finish his apology than the elevator reaches its destination. The doors open, and Winter steps out of it like the snarling air inside chokes her.

A wise man should let her leave.

A good man should not question how she feels about what we did just there.

We might have fucked, but I felt her in my system. I felt the pull in her heart as I kissed her and made her mine after so many years. I might go ahead and say I didn’t just fuck her. I claimed her.

Goddess sake, my cum is peppering her thighs as we speak.

Since I’ve never been wise or a good man where Winter is concerned, I get out of the elevator in time to catch Winter’s wrist before she runs to her car and shuts me out again.

Touching her makes Winter stop, and instead of turning around to face me, she gives me her back.

“It’s late. I’ll offer you a ride home,” my voice sounds like nails on a chalkboard to my own ears. I don’t want to offer her a ride home. I want to take her to my place.

“I have a car, Deacon, and I know how to drive in case you missed it. I’d appreciate it, too, if you let go of my hand.”

The silence in the parking lot is so ironically loud in my ears.

“You can’t run away from this Winter. Not after what happened in that—”

This time, Winter turns around, her cold green eyes boring into mine like a scorned woman out to prove a point.

“And what do you think happened inside that elevator, Mr. Cross? Pray tell, what exactly do you think happened in there?”

“Don’t do this.” I’ve been pissed about a lot of things for years, but her denial sure as hell takes the cake.

Don’t do this to us, baby.

“I was having a panic attack, and you fucked me to help me get over it. Nothing special. Nothing worth speaking about.”

Crossing the distance between us, my jaw ticking, my anger billowing around me like steam, I call her bullshit. “The way our bodies moved in sync was like they were calling to each other. It wasn’t nothing, Winter. The way we could barely keep off each other because of this bond that ignited the minute I kissed your lips wasn’t nothing. What? You want to tell me you didn’t feel our bond, like a tight thread connecting us? You can try to feed yourself that bullshit of it being nothing because you are still hurt, but we both know something happened in that elevator. Something you feel right in that little heart that you keep on hiding from me.”

Raucous laughter slips from her lips, the type that sounds mocking and agitating. Then she decimates me with her words.

“For sex to mean anything with you, I would have to care about you first, Deacon, and I stopped caring about you a long time ago. Whatever happened in that elevator? I regret it. I regret every single minute I let you touch my body again.”

I let her wrist go.

I watch her walk down the parking lot all the way to her car.

But deep inside? I feel like I got served a cold dish of humble pie.

XXX

The next day has me tending to work emails, employing new managers for each department that are capable enough to handle the workload awaiting them, and cross-checking everything with the CFO and the board of directors.

It has been five hours since I arrived in the office, and although I’m trying to make my sour mood not too obvious in front of everyone, the truth of the matter is that I’m one knuckle away from breaking something.

Winter has been getting me every file I ask for without a word. She’s barely looked at me, and I’ve done the same. Regardless of the situation between us, the outfit she has for the day, which is a navy-blue pantsuit with killer heels, makes her stand out more than any female who’s been in here, and it’s all I could appreciate in this dull morning.

Her rejection still tastes like sour lime on my tongue. Is this how it felt like for her years ago? Like her heart was being smashed to smithereens?

“Sir? What do you think about that strategy? I mean, it’s not nearly as perfect as the one Wilfred used, but this could help us in bringing in more profits to offset the losses,” one of the newly appointed managers, the one in charge of marketing, asks.

The afternoon sun drawls through the floor-to-ceiling windows, resting on the fifteen heads inside the room with me. I’ve barely been concentrating on anything since Winter, who is seated next to me, is all I can smell and all I can think about.

Did I not make her come enough? Did she not feel our bond like a tight rubber band pulling our hearts together?

My thoughts are splintered into two when a man in a well-fitted suit walks into my boardroom like he fucking owns the building.

Six feet two in height with a cocky smile on his face and a build almost similar to mine, this new intruder speaks before he’s spoken to. “New strategies and having a new boss won’t save an already sinking company.”

My eyes lock on his, and I figure out from the get-go that he’s an Alpha. And more than that, I have an inkling who he might be.

“And you are?” I ask the question blandly.

Without answering me, my day turns sourer when this new Alpha rests his gaze on the woman seated beside me, the woman who belongs to me and no one else. The woman whose lips I kissed like I was a man starving for eons.

“Hey, sweetheart. No hugs for me?”

What the hell is happening?

“Hello, Alpha Kieran,” Winter replies to him with a blush, and I stand up from my seat, seeing more than red.

This is Alpha Kieran Vega of Vega Industries?

He calls her “sweetheart,” and she replies to that endearment?

She calls me “Mr. Cross” while she calls him “Alpha Kieran”?

The right thing to do would be to punch Kieran Vega till he bled on my tiled floors, but punching the bastard means building a bad image to my workers, to my board of directors, and to Winter. Fuck.

“Kieran Vega of Vega Industries. Wilfred was barely any competition, so it’s a pleasure to finally meet my new rival.” The cocky bastard stretched out his hand for me to shake. I stare at his hand, ignore it, and shoulder my way past him, going back to my office.

I don’t get to settle in my seat and let my simmering rage cool down before Simon comes into my office, all fidgety and nervous.

“Sir, is everything okay? Everyone was a bit worried since you left the meeting a bit abruptly.”

I look at Simon, jealousy coating every inch of me like sticky toffee.

“What relationship does Kieran Vega have with Winter Cavanaugh?”

My question has Simon’s eyes going wide. Hell, I’d bet my own money that I’ve just rattled his feathers with the way I’m looking at him.

“Sir? I don’t…I don’t understand. Alpha Kieran might not work here, but his relationship with Ms. Cavanaugh is the same as every relationship she has with the men who work here.”

Simon’s answer douses my anger in a vat of more poisonous envy.

“And what relationship is that, Simon?”

Swallowing nerves down his throat, Simon readjusts his tie. ” A friendly relationship. Ms. Cavanaugh is friends with everyone here, including Alpha Kieran Vega.”

“Is that right?” I ask with a pained, incredulous chuckle before I add. ” Send a mass email to every man in this building, Simon. Any man who’ll be seen engaging with Winter Cavanaugh can kiss his job goodbye starting right now.”