Borden (Borden #1) (21 page)

“Spread your legs,” he ordered.

I spread them inch by inch, and that rush of adrenaline only intensified as I waited for what was to come. I felt breaths on my thighs, and I squeezed my eyes shut, unbearably anxious. His hands settled on each of my cheeks, and then I felt the sweetest thing.

A long and soft lick along my sex. It was almost too much. I shook, moaning out. My hands fisted against the table as he did it again and again, torturing me with his incredible mouth. It was the most intense oral sex of my life. He moved deliberately slow, at a pace that intensified the feeling. So experienced, he drew out my pleasure, sucking at the right time and with the right kind of pressure.

“Please, please,” I begged.

“You want to come?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.

“I want you inside of me first.”

Because as much as I loved the thought of coming against his mouth, I wanted to come around his dick more. He wasted no time standing up, positioning me against him. Gripping my thighs, he thrusted inside of me. I jumped at the abruptness, and then grinded my ass against him. He growled in pleasure and drove himself in and out of me, hard and fast, filling me, stretching me, until I was aching in pain and pleasure.

“Put your arms behind your back,” he demanded, gruffly.

When I did, he gripped both my wrists in his large hand, fucking me hard as he gripped them to him. The other hand felt my ass, and too lost in my quest for pleasure, I didn’t notice what he was about to do until it happened.

SLAP! Right across my ass, making my sex clench tighter around his cock and driving out more feverish moans from me. The pain morphed to pleasure as he did it again, and the shock turned to anticipation. Every slap drove me closer to that sweet escape, and just as I was about to approach the peak, he pulled me off the table, pressing my back against his front and rubbed my clit, sending me straight over. My head fell back over his shoulder and I cried out. He slowed down for me to feel the pleasure in all its intensity, and then he sucked at my throat, sharply thrusting only once, twice inside me before he stopped and came hard, cursing like he always did.

Holy fuck. Holy fuck. Holy fuck.

Yeah, holy fuck was right, Mr Borden.

There was no awkwardness after he pulled out of me this time. He brushed my hair aside and neatened up my skirt. When I turned to him, he stared at me in a way that left me breathless.

“You’re insatiable,” he whispered, lightly brushing his fingers across my cheek. “I think I’m a little attached to that mouth and body.”

“Likewise, Mr Borden.”

Leaning a little closer to me, he kissed me lightly on my mouth and uttered, “Don’t fuck another man when you’re in my bed, okay?”

Staring into his serious blue eyes, I ignored the warning in them and nodded. “Okay.”

*

To say we were very unprofessional was an understatement. Borden fucked me every day at his office that entire week, and the more he took me, the more we craved one another. At first, it was rough and hard, but as the days wore on, Borden eased himself into me with a growing gentleness, savouring my body slowly, as he pulled me against him, kissing me through my orgasms and holding me to him long afterwards.

Sex with him had grown into something different. Every time he took me, something grew there between us. He didn’t want to acknowledge it, and I thought it was in my head, but his eyes spoke of a warmth that was reserved solely for me, and I blossomed for him.

I was entirely at his mercy.

I was weak, and I didn’t mind it.

I’d let a bad man into my heart, and I didn’t want the bad man to leave it.

Borden

“You keep staring at me like that, and I’ll fuck you again.”

Her face flushed and she turned back to her computer, smiling. Borden smiled too because she was that infectious. She still looked like a downright mess. The just-fucked look suited his alley cat to a tee.

He hadn’t grown tired of her once. It was baffling. His curiosity only grew, his need intensified too, and he was finding himself desperately powerless in her company. He liked the feel of her around him. His body warmed every time she gently smoothed her fingers over his hair after he’d roughly fucked her.

One could get used to that kind of touch.

“I’m not sure you can go another round after all that strenuous effort,” she muttered, tapping away on her keyboard like she was busy. But she wasn’t fucking busy.

“Don’t test me,” he warned her, smirking. “This dick is capable of pulling off a lot of miles on that sweet body.”

She pressed her lips down hard, resisting another smile. “Mr Borden, I am trying to work. Stop sexually harassing me.”

He couldn’t help the laugh escaping his mouth. “Is that what I’m doing?”

“Yes, and you can get into a lot of trouble.”

“And who do you think is going to want to fuck with me, babe? There’s not a single person I can’t buy off.”

Emma paused. “There are good people left in this world, you know.”

“I wish I were that gullible.”

Now she scowled at him. “Cynic.”

“I prefer the term realist.”

“Yeah, well, fuck your term.”

That vulgar mouth went straight to his dick. “You’re really asking for it, aren’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” was her cheeky replied. “And anyways, when are we going to take our affair outside the office? Imagine spreading me out on a giant bed. So many things one can do in that environment.”

“Tempting.”

“Do it then.”

“I’ll consider it.”

Maybe.

There was too much to consider being open with her outside the office. He’d already made a mistake fucking her at her place. Call that a moment of weakness, although he had to admit, images of her naked across his king-sized bed was beyond appealing.

“That’s it?” she said, eyebrows up. “You’ll
consider
it? I’m not sure how long I can take being bent over your desk. Not that I don’t enjoy it, but fuck, Borden, I’m not an acrobat.”

He chuckled at her little spat.

“Come here,” he told her, gesturing to his lap.

Emma didn’t budge for a moment, eyeing him wearily.

“Come here,” he repeated. “I won’t bite.”

She stood up and moved to him. He took her by the hips and settled her over his lap, hiking up her dress.

“No,” she snapped, hands over his. “I’m broken.”

“I’m just touching you, doll. Innocent little touches, I promise.”

She hesitated, and then let him, albeit with a look of suspicion.

He suppressed a smile. “See? I’m not doing anything. Why are you always so hard?”

“Same reason as you.”

“Power?”

“Shit childhood.”

He went still. “What makes you think I had a shit childhood?”

“You grew up on my side of the tracks. There’s no need to elaborate more.”

He frowned because she was right. “I thought your grandmother gave you a good life.”

“She did what she could, but I was always led astray.”

“Because of your mother?”

Emma exhaled slowly, scowling at him. “You went through every part of my life, didn’t you?”

He nodded, slowly. “I already told you I did.”

“Then you know what she did.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it messed me up good, and I wasn’t a very nice kid.”

He chuckled lightly. “Neither was I.”

“No? What made you a little shit?”

“My parents threw me out at fifteen. Can’t say they ever gave a shit about me, so after that abuse, it was sort of a relief to be out of there.”

Instead of looking at him with sympathy, her eyes grew hard with anger. “What a bunch of assholes.”

“Yeah.”

She waited for him to say more, but Borden hadn’t talked about that part of his life since… Well, ever. Not even to Kate.

“You know what desperation is like, right?” he asked her quietly, searching for her understanding.

She nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

“That’s why I sold drugs at sixteen. I couldn’t make it in the streets otherwise. I was wayward. Very fucked up. I latched on to some hard stuff, too. Figured taking the drugs would help me cope. I think I was searching for something to fix how broken my life was.”

“And drugs did that?”

“Yeah, they did. When you grow up so poor, so alone and isolated, so degraded by the people who are meant to love you, when you’re set free into the world, you find ways to forget all of it. Getting high worked.”

He hadn’t realized how hard he was gripping her thighs until he looked down at them. He eased his hands immediately and took a deep breath. What the fuck was he doing talking about this shit? It wasn’t important. That was all water under the bridge.

“I know what you mean,” she simply said, and that was it. No words of sympathy, no consoling him, just understanding. Pure and real understanding that he instantly felt, and it was a nice feeling, like being weightless without that extra pressure sitting in your chest.

Fucking hell, this girl… She was something else. He couldn’t shake the feeling away in that moment. Just perfection.
Real
perfection, not the fantasized kind.

Emma leaned forward and gently kissed him. All that tension in his stomach withered away at her soothing touch, and he wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her back. Languidly, he roamed her mouth, stroking her tongue, taking in her unique taste that excited him like nothing else.

She lightly rolled her hips against him, and her breaths grew heavy. She wanted more of him. Un-fucking-believable.

He squeezed her ass, ready for another hip-roll when the office door suddenly jerked open. Borden tore away from her mouth and looked over her shoulder. Hawke stepped in, staring urgently at him with a screwed up face.

“Borden,” he said sharply, “we’ve got a problem.”

Borden’s hand was still on her ass when he gritted out impatiently, “What’s the problem?”

Hawke glanced between him and Emma, displeasure clear on his face. “It’s a
private
matter.”

“Talk.”

Emma tried to pull back, but Borden’s grip tightened. She wasn’t going anywhere. Hawke would be gone soon and then he’d be inside that wet warmth all over again. Admittedly, he wasn’t thinking straight.

“We found a man sneaking into the club,” Hawke explained. “Said he was unarmed when we caught him, and we searched him thoroughly to make sure. He had a gun in his fucking underwear. Real nasty thing.”

Startled, Emma stared at Borden with a gaping mouth. Borden was no longer paying attention to her. He was staring hard at Hawke, a thousand questions flooding through him. A simmer of anger he surprisingly hadn’t felt in a while began to surface.

“Some dickhead thought they could mill past my men with a gun on him,” he muttered, his eyes hardening. “How delusional is he?”

“He’s not talking,” Hawke replied evenly, fighting his own anger.

“He’ll talk to
me
,” Borden calmly said. It was forceful, but he wasn’t about to rage with Emma in their midst. She was starting to really matter to him, and the last thing he needed was her to get upset by him.

“You’ll take care of it then.” Hawke wasn’t asking. He knew already Borden would.

“Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

Hawke walked out, and silence swept the room. Emma was staring questionably at Borden.

“What are you going to do?” she asked him.

Borden didn’t look at her as he sat up in his chair and gently moved her off. He grabbed his keys off the desk, exhaling. “I’m going to take care of it, Emma.”

She swallowed hard, standing before him. “Don’t…don’t hurt him, Borden.”

“Don’t hurt him? That man was coming to hurt
me
. If he’d found me vulnerable, I’d be eating a bullet.”

“But he’s been caught. I’m sure he’ll be scared off now.”

“Don’t be naïve. I make a dozen enemies a day. I can’t afford to let one of them go.”

“So what are you going to do then?”

Borden just looked at her.

Her lips trembled. “Borden, don’t kill him.”

“I won’t,” Borden lied.

She roamed over his features, trying to see through his façade. “That’s not true, is it?”

He stood up, not responding. He shoved his keys and lighter into his pocket and began moving to the door.

“Borden?” Emma pressed from behind him.

“The ones at the top are always the worst, Emma,” he simply told her as he opened the door. “But you already knew that.”

He glanced at her over his shoulder right before he stepped out.

The image of her burying her face in her hands haunted him.

*

The man was in bad shape before they’d even knocked him around.

Hawke had handed the gun over to Borden. It was a nice gun, a Heckler and Koch USP, certainly not cheap. He told Borden he was likely in his fifties, in good health, and dressed in a nice looking suit.

“Definitely not a druggie,” he explained, baffled. “But you could tell he’s had a lot to drink.”

They’d transported him into one of Borden’s abandoned warehouses miles out of the city on an isolated bit of land. He hadn’t been in this location for a very long time. He should have known it was only a matter of time before one of these assholes tried getting at him.

From a distance, Borden gazed at the man. At his unkempt bearded face and matted blonde/grey hair. He was on his knees, hands tied behind his back, staring off into space like he’d already made his peace. Hawke handed Borden his gun, and he walked to where the man was.

“A gun in your underwear,” Borden boringly remarked, approaching him. “I wish I could say that was a new one, but I’d be lying.”

Borden stopped in front of him, and the man’s eyes flickered up at him. The second Borden met those green eyes, his blood ran cold instantly. His whole body seized up, and his breath felt like it’d been knocked out of him.

No. This wasn’t possible. Surely he was hallucinating.

He blinked hard, trying to grasp reality. Borden could see so much of
her
in this man, which meant…

The man chuckled sardonically. “What’s the matter, Marcus? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Borden took an unbalanced step back, blinking rapidly at Kate’s father. “I don’t understand.”

“You understand perfectly,” he retorted.

Borden took a few breaths. “You shouldn’t have done this, Doug.”

“I should just let you live then? You killed my daughter. Don’t think I’ve let that go. Nothing will bury the past. It will always find you, Marcus, and it will make you pay.”

“I’m still paying.”

“No, you need to pay with your blood. You don’t deserve to live. You’re a monster! My baby girl would have still been alive had you never returned! Our lives are broken. Forever and always!”

“And what was a bullet to my head going to do, Doug? Make it better?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t fucking care either. I can’t be in this world knowing you’re still breathing the same air as me when it should be her! They should have come after
you
! Why didn’t they come after you?!”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I was taking over their turf, and they wanted to scare me off.”

“And they killed my daughter!” Doug shrieked in his rage, his pale face turning red. “Monsters like you, they strangled her and dumped her like trash!”

Borden numbly said, “I found the two men that took your daughter’s life, and I made them suffer.”

“What about
my
suffering? Or my wife’s? You will never ease our pain –”

“You think I’m not suffering too?” Borden cut in, raising his voice. “You think I don’t mourn your daughter every single day? That I don’t blame myself? I loved her, Mr Davenoth, and I wish it was me instead. I know I don’t deserve to be here, and if I could choose, she’d be here instead of me. I’d take the worst kind of death just to make that happen. Sell my soul to the fucking Devil if he could make it happen, but it’s never going to fucking happen, and I can’t change the past no matter how many times I blame myself for it.”

Doug didn’t expect Borden’s response. He went still, and his eyes rimmed red. He was vulnerable and broken, Borden realized, and in his rage for justice, he did something he would never have done. Now he was staring emptily at the gun in Borden’s hand, suddenly sober.