One Night for Love (3 page)

Once dressed, Prim turned toward the bed. That gorgeous man who’d caused her to come over and over and over last night was still sacked out. His hard-carved body was immeasurably beautiful. And those hands. Prim shivered with the memory of his touch. Goodness, she wished for one more hour to be under the tutelage of those hands. Please, yes. Instead, Prim pulled her hair back into a ponytail and finally jerked the mask from her head. She hoisted her bag up over her shoulder.

No pain! Oh my God, there was no pain in her shoulder! Layla. Goodness, Layla had been right. Right about everything. Well almost everything. Layla had said the man Prim was with last night would be in Prim’s life for a very long time. That wasn’t happening. She’d yet to see her lover’s face, and she definitely didn’t want to exchange names. Prim stopped at the edge of the bed. Well, perhaps, it would be lovely to have this very gorgeous man, with his very large cock, in her life, if only for fun-time between the sheets. That wouldn’t happen. Last night was a one-time thing. A one-off.

Prim leaned forward and reached her hand toward his face. His breath came soft and even. Her fingertips brushed the hard plastic as she lifted the mask and settled it onto his head. He was breathtakingly beautiful. In sleep he was peaceful, and those dark, smoldering eyes weren’t available to look at, but still … His nose and strong jaw, high cheekbones, and the devil’s dent in his chin made for an enticing picture. And those lips. Prim tingled with the memory of what those lips had done to her body.

A car horn sounded outside. She glanced at the clock.

“Good-bye, gorgeous.” Prim leaned forward and her lips pressed to his. A bolt of desire flashed through her.

His eyes fluttered open and his arms came up and around her. “Good morning.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye then.” He pressed a kiss to her lips.

She pulled away from her one-night stand and walked out the door and back to all the changes in her life that awaited her in L.A.

“Sir, everyone is assembled in the conference room. The video links with London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo are live. The entire company is present.”

Tristan nodded. “Thanks, Philippe. Give me two minutes.”

His assistant exited the office and closed the door. The open expanse of the Pacific lay just on the other side of the glass. He’d prefer to view those waves from his surfboard, and his gaze followed a boat in the distance. A laid-back life wasn’t part of his existence as a Rhodes. To be a Rhodes meant to be constantly on the hunt for the next deal, the next purchase, the next takeover. Business kept him busy. Unlike his brothers, he preferred a solitary existence. Tristan loathed publicity. Instead of late nights and parties, and even the continued company of women, he preferred buying companies and dismantling them piece by profitable piece.

 An unfamiliar want had collected in his belly this morning. A want that had begun the day before when the woman had left his bed. He enjoyed women, but Tristan didn’t get attached. For him, women were a disposable entertainment. A distraction that, in this point of his career, he didn’t want or need. Tristan strode across his office and down the hall. He paused at the door to the conference room.

“Sir,” Philippe said.

Tristan nodded and Philippe pulled open the conference-room door.

*

“How long is he going to make us wait?” Prim flipped her phone over and glanced at the time. The meeting was meant to begin at exactly nine a.m. and it was now three minutes after. She’d busted her ass to get here after one delayed flight due to weather and another that was canceled because of a mechanical problem. She was running on no sleep and had a desperate headache. She glanced around the room at the one hundred plus employees who fidgeted in their chairs and the two video screens that linked the three foreign divisions of Metro Media.

Panic hung in the room. Panic and loads of fear due to the sudden change in ownership. Her e-mail had exploded since the sale. What could she say? She’d failed. Ryan hadn’t believed in her enough to simply hand the company to her or even give her time to try to cobble together financing to buy Metro from him.

She’d held the place together for nearly a year after the death of Paloma, hoping that once Ryan worked through his grief he’d return. The loss of his fiancée and his unborn child was too much. Understandably so. Prim closed her eyes. If only Ryan had sold Metro to her instead of some elderly codger whose background was in steel manufacturing.

Prim locked eyes with her assistant. Alyssa sat in the first row away from the conference table. Alyssa’s eyes widened and Prim tilted her head. Her skin prickled. Their new boss was here. Prim turned her head and looked up at the man who now stood beside her. Her heart dropped to her toes. A cold perspiration claimed her palms.

The full lips, his golden skin, the Cupid’s bow of his mouth, the devil’s dent on his chin, and those eyes. Those dark eyes that had once harbored heat but now perused her with an ice-cold gaze. A gaze that did not contain surprise.

“Miss Baxter,” he said. The muscle tensed in his jaw.

His rough-edged voice. The same voice that had commanded her to do things.… The cold hard blade of panic set in her belly. Prim’s neck flamed with a blush and her entire body ignited with desire.

Desire and panic. What an atrocious combination.

She’d anticipated a man approaching seventy with white hair and loose jowls. She’d anticipated William Rhodes. Her eyes blinked—had she hallucinated this man?

*

Prim Baxter? The woman. The woman who’d created an ache of want when she’d departed her bed just yesterday morning in Mesquale. Less than thirty-six hours ago, he’d sunk his cock hip-deep into her after firmly planting his face between her legs.

“Tristan Rhodes.” He held his hand out to Prim. The Metro Media staff watched them. She’d been their protector when Ryan disappeared into his grief and the de facto CEO of Metro Media. He must be firm and yet respectful. And somehow not let the nearly overwhelming desire to bend her over this conference table and fuck her show through.

“It’s a pleasure, Ms. Baxter,” Tristan said. “Ryan’s told me much about you. I feel like we’ve already met.”

Prim unfolded her legs and stood, her body long and lean. The scent of her, that damned vanilla and cinnamon, wafted toward him. The muscles in his lower back tightened. Her lips twitched. The fluidity of her movements entranced him. The same fluidity that he’d watched when her hips had first pressed against his cock.

“Mr. Rhodes.” Prim lifted one eyebrow and grasped his hand.

An electrical circuit had just completed with Prim’s touch, and heat surged through his body. He was close enough to see her breath hitch. She felt the heat too.

“Tristan. Please, call me Tristan.”

His heart pounded in his chest. This was the worst fucking beginning to the William Rhodes Trust’s ownership of Metro Media. A colossal problem waiting to happen. Tristan was desperately attracted to the woman he was ousting from the company.

He released Prim’s hand and turned toward his new employees. She folded herself back into her chair. He ignored the uncomfortable want that collected in his body and smiled out toward the people assembled in the conference room and via satellite link, but in the corner of his eye was Prim’s décolletage, the round tops of her breasts visible in the V of her silk blouse. A memory entered his mind of her bustier and his hands plucking those lovely, firm breasts from the top of that bustier and rolling her nipple in his mouth, sucking on Prim’s nipples until her head fell back and a deep moan rolled from her mouth and a tremble rushed through her body.

“Thank you for being here today. All of you.” Tristan turned toward Prim. He looked back at Metro’s employees. “What I’d like to discuss is the future of Metro Media. My future with you.”

Prim escaped after the meeting to her plush office down the hall from the conference room. She dropped into the seat behind her desk. Her hands trembled as she dialed her best friend.

“So how’d it go with Mr. Rhodes?” Meg asked.

“I slept with my boss,” Prim whispered into her cell phone.

“You slept with a seventy-year-old man?”

“No, no, no,” Prim said. “
Tristan
Rhodes.”

“Tristan Rhodes? But I thought that William Rhodes bought Metro.”

“As did I.” Prim leaned over her desk and her cool fingertips pressed to her forehead. “It would seem we were both mistaken. The William Rhodes
Trust
bought Metro.”

“Wait,” Meg said. “Back up. I’m so confused. So the son, Tristan Rhodes, bought Metro? But how could you have possibly slept with Tristan Rhodes?”

Prim closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath. How had this happened? The odds of this actually happening were staggering. “There was a costume party—”

“In L.A.?”

“At the resort,” Prim said. “And Layla told me I had to go, that I needed to sleep with a man—”

“Well of course you need to sleep with a man. It’s been two years—”

“Eighteen months,” Prim interrupted. “And I told Layla I was not going to the Devils and Angels party at the resort, but I did go and then I met a man in a tank top and took him back to my private beach and—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Meg interrupted. “Who’s Layla?”

“My masseuse while I was at Mesquale.”

“You told her you hadn’t slept with anyone in two years?”

“Eighteen months,” Prim said. “She claimed that she could feel my lack of a sex life in my hips and in my bones.”

“I don’t understand how you could have slept with Tristan Rhodes if you were in Mesquale for a week.”

“Because he was there!”

“Where?”

“In Mesquale. Oh my God, I feel like I am losing my mind.” Prim rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “What am I going to do?”

“Was it …” Meg’s words drifted off, but Prim heard the unasked question in her best friend’s words.

“It was fucking mind-blowing, okay? The man has a huge cock and what he can do with it completely rocked my world.”

Ahem
.

Prim’s throat tightened. Her belly lurched. No, no, no, no. This couldn’t be happening to her. How was this happening to her? The company she loved sold. The boss who had been her friend and mentor gone. Sleeping with her new boss in a fit of hedonistic anonymity and now, now … She looked up through her eyelashes. Tristan stood just inside her office door.

“Prim? Did I lose you?”

“He’s here.”

“Tristan?”

“Yes.”

“Did he hear you?”

While his look remained as emotive as set concrete, the corners of his lips twitched upward. The same corners that could turn into a wicked smile.

“Yes,” Prim said. “I do indeed think so. I have to go.”

“Call me.”

Prim pressed the Off button on her phone and set her phone on her desk. A long deep breath. This was a small setback. She need only survive Tristan and his version of Metro Media for three months. Once her three months on the transition team were complete, she would receive her huge bonus and be free. She’d been prepared to head the transition team before and she was prepared to do so now, even though a day and a half ago she’d been sucking Tristan’s dick.

“Close friend?” Tristan asked.

The sick feeling in Prim’s gut churned and hit her harder. He’d heard every word, or if not every word, the most embarrassing parts. “Meg Jackson,” Prim said. “She runs TBC.”

“And is married to Cole Jackson. They make a good team.”

“Mr. Rhodes,” Prim said and rose from her chair. “Please have a seat.” She waved toward the couch and two chairs in the sitting area of her office. With deep breaths and insistent denial about what her new boss had just heard her say and all the things that they had done
together
, she’d get through this awful moment.

“Please, call me Tristan.”

“Yes, Tristan.” It would be insane to call the man by his last name, especially after he’d smacked her ass four times, to her great pleasure. Heat flooded Prim’s neck and face.

“If you’re thinking I knew who you were,” Tristan said, “I did not.”

She sat in the chair opposite the couch. Electric impulses shot over her skin with Tristan so near. He sat opposite her. His sharp-angled cheekbones were just as beautiful, just as eye-catching, perhaps even more so, in the sunlight. His hair tickled the starched white collar of his dress shirt. His lips were full.

Oh, what that man could do with those lips.

Tingles shot through her sex. Prim tightened her hands into a knot on her lap. She needed to concentrate on the now and ignore the memories of the night before last. The scent of him was still on her. She’d barely scrubbed him from her body. Her clothes, all the clothes in her suitcase, had yet to be washed and would carry the scent of him. That scent, the one of complete man mixed with clean soap, flooded her now, and with the scent came the memories. Big bold memories of his hands cupping her sex and his lips sucking her nipples, his voice whispering in her ear. Heat flamed her cheeks.

“I was under the mistaken belief that your father purchased Metro Media.”

“It’s the William Rhodes Trust, and while Dad still oversees everything as a whole, each of us makes our own business decisions.” Tristan locked eyes with her. “As long as we remain profitable.” Tristan leaned back into the cushions of the couch. “I’m surprised Ryan didn’t tell you more about the sale.”

Prim clasped her hands more tightly. “I wasn’t consulted on the sale of Metro. I wasn’t informed until the purchase was nearly complete.”

“And yet you still tried to raise capital to snatch Metro from me.”

“I did,” Prim said. “Metro Media is my home. I want the very best for the company, and forgive me for thinking that with my love for my job and my experience at Metro I am a better fit.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’ve read about your business beliefs. What is your record? You’ve purchased seven companies over the last five years and how many remain?” Prim tilted her head to the side, not surprised that Tristan did not answer nor appear concerned with her question. “None. Is that correct?”