Undeniably Asher (The Colloway Brothers Book 2) (40 page)

I swallow hard before asking my next question, but I’m tired of wondering if everything she said was a lie. “Tell me one more thing. Was it mine?”

She’s silent for so long I don’t think she’ll answer. When she does, I’m gutted anew. “I was never unfaithful to you before that night, Asher. And I didn’t sleep with Rick until two months after we broke up. I’m…God, I’m so sorry.”

“Good-bye, Natalie,” I croak, blinking the sting from my eyes.

“Asher, wait. Are you with someone now? Happy?”

“Yes.” I don’t tell her it’s Alyse, because for some reason that doesn’t feel right, even though she deserves to have the knife twisted a bit. She’ll think I was lying to her, and it turns out the only person I was lying to all along was me.

“I’m glad.”

“Good-bye, Nat.”

“Bye, Asher.”

I hang up with mixed emotions, anger and relief fighting for dominance, but knowing forgiveness is somewhere deep within me. It will take a while for it to trump everything else, but at least I’ve taken the first step.

______________

Later that night, after one fan-fucking-tastic bj and a round of toe-curling sex against the shower tile, I lay entwined with Alyse in comfortable silence. It feels right to finally tell her about Natalie.

“I know I get irrational sometimes about other men looking at you or talking to you, Alyse, but…I can’t stand the thought of losing you to anyone else. It makes me fucking crazy. It’s not that I don’t trust you. I do. It’s my own insecurities. I’ll try to work on it.”

“Okay,” she says, lightly running her fingernails over my flank.

“You were right, you know.”

I feel her smile against my pecs. “I usually am,” she replies saucily. I grasp her side, making her giggle.

“Her name was Natalie.” Now I feel her smile fall and her hands grip me a little tighter. “I started dating her when I was twenty-three. We met at the gym when she was trying to figure out how to use some piece of equipment, I forget even what it was now. Anyway, I had just graduated with my MBA and started working at my father’s company. In the early days as VP of client management, I had to travel a lot, so I was sometimes gone all week for weeks at a time.

“Natalie was an editor at a small publishing house and she struck up a close friendship with a fellow colleague. A male colleague. I knew they spent a lot of time together when I was out of town, but she swore nothing inappropriate was going on. Only it was, and I was young and naïve and ignored all the signs. She knew how much it bothered me that she spent time with this guy, who was clearly after her, yet she did it anyway. She talked about marriage all the time, as if that would solve our relationship issues and change the scope of my job so I was home more.

“So I decided I would ask her to marry me. In retrospect, I don’t know why, because I have no doubt we’d be divorced by now. I had been out of town all week and she was expecting me on Sunday morning, but I ended my meetings early and caught a late flight home on Saturday night instead. I had the ring in my pocket. I had the words memorized that I would say when I got down on one knee. Instead, I caught them in bed together. In my house. In
my
bed.”

“God, Asher.”

The final piece of my confession sits like arsenic in my veins, slowly corroding me from the inside out. Saying it out loud is harder than I ever imagined.

“And the worst part of it was,” I choke on the vile words that I’ve never told anyone else before. “Two months later she sent me a text. A fucking text. Told me she was pregnant, that it was mine but she’d aborted it because she knew I would never forgive her and she couldn’t raise my baby without me. I now know just how manipulative Natalie was.”

This whole time, I wasn’t even sure if she had ever been pregnant. And if so, I had no clue if it was mine or someone else’s. To get through the wrenching pain I’d felt at the remote possibility it was true, I told myself it was a lie. But now I know she was telling the truth. She made a life-altering decision without even discussing it with me first.

“Oh, my God, Asher. That’s horrible,” she breathes, and I know she understands. While different circumstances, she’s suffered the same loss that I have. Then she rolls onto her back, encouraging us to change positions, so I am now lying on top of her.

With my head nestled on her stomach and my arms wrapped tightly around her, she strokes my hair, my back and quietly lets me cry the tears of anguish I’ve held inside for four long years.

Chapter 45

6 weeks later…

Alyse

“Thank you, detective. I appreciate the update.

“Yes.

“Please keep me informed.

“Thank you.”

I listen to Asher’s side of the conversation and know it’s about the class-one felony charges that were filed earlier this week against his CFO. The total funds embezzled were close to six hundred thousand dollars, occurring over a ten-month period of time and most of it has already been recovered, thankfully.

“What’s going on?”

“Reigen posted bail earlier today.”

“Well, we knew that would happen.”

“Yeah. Still chaps my hide that fucker isn’t going to be spending his nights on a cot being someone’s bitch.”

“Oh, I think he’ll get plenty of time to get used to that role. Four to fifteen years, to be exact.” I laugh, but he doesn’t. He frowns instead.

I turn back to the box I’m packing and we work in silence for the next few minutes.

“Is this box ready to go, baby?”

Every time he calls me that, my pussy tightens. I hope when I’m eighty, it still does. “Did you put the files from the bottom drawer in it?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“Then it’s ready. You can tape it up.” I stand from the box I just finished securing, wipe my brow, and look around. My office is a mess of boxes and paper and…crap. I didn’t think I had this much stuff in here. It’s amazing what you accumulate over the course of a year.

“Did you talk to the landlord?”

“Yes. He has someone who’s interested in subleasing coming through on Tuesday. And Heather has the movers scheduled for next weekend.”

“She excited about moving to Chicago?” he asks, stacking the box he just taped up onto another. I admire the flex of his muscles as he lifts the heavy object. He looks delicious today in his black Foo Fighters T-shirt and faded jeans. The need to feel his two-day stubble scraping between my thighs is making me pulse with intense need. I want to strip every piece of clothing from him and have him fuck me against the wall. Hard.

“Alyse?” he asks, bringing me out of my lurid fantasy. Damn him.

“Uh, very. Her sister and three nieces live there, so she’s going to stay with them for a while until she finds a place. Her brother-in-law is in the military I guess and is stationed overseas for another three months, so she could use the help.”

“I’m glad she’s making the move,” he says, leaning his fine ass against the nearly bare desk. He crosses his arms, biceps bulging, and smirks as he catches me practically drooling. “Like what you see?”

“You know I do,” I retort, eyes silently challenging his.

“When is Tabitha planning to come?”

“She’s going to commute two days a week for now until they can sell their house. That may take a while in this market.”

He nods. “And Al? What did he decide to do?”

“Who cares?” I say, dropping the tape to the floor as I stalk toward him.

“I care. I want to be sure you’re staffed appropriately so you’re not working eighty hours a week. I’m selfish like that.”

“Wow,” I tease, running my hands underneath his untucked shirt, savoring the taut muscles contracting under my fingertips. “We’re adding selfish to the ever-growing list of notable personality traits, huh?”

“Yes,” he tries to answer, but it comes out as a hiss when my nails scrape his flat masculine nipples. His eyes dip to half-mast. I feel his growing erection against my lower belly. My core tingles, flooding with want. It’s heady to know I can bring a man like Asher Colloway to his knees with just a look or a simple touch.

“Fuck me,” I whisper, my lips finding the hollow of his throat. I don’t know if the movers are still outside in the main lobby or not, but I don’t care. Not like I’ll see them ever again. And my door is shut, so there is that.

His answer is to twine his fingers in my hair, yank me back, and take my mouth with claiming, branding force. His tongue invades, twisting with mine, our moans and breaths becoming one. My hands roam up and down his sinewy back, scratching lightly while his free hand snakes under my yoga pants and panties, palming my bare ass.

I groan when his fingers slip between my crack, toying with my forbidden entrance. He moves lower, dipping into my wetness before bringing a lubricated digit back, pushing it in slightly. He swallows a long moan that passes through my parted lips.

“I want you here,” he murmurs against the line of my throat, nipping his way upward toward my ear. The raw lust in his voice causes ripples of pure desire to implode every brain cell. “I need all of you. Soon, baby.”

No one has ever been there. I would never allow it. But hell if that’s all I can think about now. “Yes,” I grate, my body willingly, submitting to his fervent ministrations. “More,” I beg, not able to understand the incredible sensations I’m feeling at such an illicit act. As he pushes in further, my eyes roll back, my breath expelling on a rush, a low curse falling with it.

“You’re incredible, Alyse. Fucking incredible.”

“Fuck me. Now. Please.”

“Baby, you beg so nicely. Makes me so damn hard.”

His finger hasn’t stopped its relentless assault and I’m so close to coming, it will take one swipe on my clit to send me into the stratosphere. I almost whimper when he withdraws his hand from my pants, but he’s quickly peeling off my clothes, along with his, dumping them unceremoniously onto the matted carpeted floor. As usual, his smoky, desire-drunk eyes never stray from mine.

But mine briefly break away when I notice he’s stroking himself, circling the angry bulbous head, rubbing pre-come onto his silky soft shaft.
Sweet baby Jesus
. There is nothing fucking hotter than your man taking his throbbing cock into his own hand while you watch. My eyes raise, connecting once again with his stormy ones right before he palms the back of my head, pulling me roughly to his waiting mouth.

“Do you want my fingers, my mouth, or my cock, baby?” he whispers crudely against my kiss-swollen lips.

“Do I have to choose just one?” I pant, my hands now full of toned, taut ass cheeks.

He chuckles darkly against my goose-bumped flesh. “All three it is then, my greedy girl.”

Before I can think or respond, the cold metal of my desk bites into the naked flesh on my back, but the warmth of Asher’s mouth on my aching sex lights up the only nerve endings that matter.

Two, then three fingers stretch me, thrusting feverishly in and out as Asher’s talented mouth devours me, tongue circling and flicking. The instant I feel suction on my pounding clit, I shatter into a million, ecstasy-filled pieces, floating aimlessly for long seconds. I feel nothing but searing pleasure race through each molecule. I never want to leave this wonderland of sheer euphoria.

Dimly I become aware that I’m being lifted and pleasure crashes into me once again when I’m slammed down onto Asher’s thick, hard cock. He stills for a few seconds to let me adjust to his size. My legs dangle over the edges of my guest chair, which luckily for me doesn’t have arms. I always hated that…until now.

His hands snake under my arms and up my back, gripping my shoulders from behind. God, I love the way he completely dominates me, while putting me on a pedestal at the same time. It’s sexy as hell.

“Ride me, baby.”

I tilt my pelvis and roll my hips slowly back and forth, wanting to draw out his bliss.

“Yes, just like that. You’re a goddess, Alyse,” he moans. I tighten my walls, silently rejoicing in the swell I feel as he nears his own release already.

“Fuck, I love the way you feel clenching around me.”

“Keep talking,” I beg, loving every naughty word. I clench again and gasp when he leans me back and picks up his pace, driving into me harder and faster. Just the way I love it. The way I need it.

“Come, sweet Alyse. Come undone around my cock.”

As I watch the pleasure rise in his blue eyes, almost like the tide, darkening and swallowing them, I’ve never wanted to simultaneously stave off an orgasm and have it wash me away at the same time. But his own moan of desire, combined with the slight bite of his teeth on my neck unravels me completely and I explode again headlong into pure, uncontrolled bliss. Asher’s grip tightens seconds before he follows, groaning as his own orgasm takes hold. I feel his release deep inside.

“When are you going to marry me?” he asks as we lay against each other panting, recovering from our mind-bending expression of our passionate love for each other. His fingers feather slowly across my back. I sigh in contented happiness.

This is a conversation we’ve had several times since New Year’s Eve. “I’m moving my business to Chicago and moving in with you, aren’t I?” And I even did it without a pros and cons list, because the only thing on that list that matters now is that’s where Asher is.