The Seduction 4 (5 page)

I piston her into the
wall again, faster now. Keely thrusts to meet every stroke. She holds
my gaze, her eyes bright with lust, urging me on. “Did you think
about me?” she demands.

I yank her bra down,
squeezing her breast hard. She moans. “I don’t stop thinking
about you, baby,” I growl, my balls getting tighter. Oh fuck, she
feels so good. “I’ve got a permanent hard-on. Nine inches, all
day long, just waiting to hammer deep into your wet pussy.”

“Harder,” she
gasps. I slam my hips, impaling her deeper. Keely’s eyes roll back,
she cries out, “More!”

My dick is happy to
oblige. I pin her back against the wall, ruthlessly fucking her
slick, willing body, holding nothing back. “Harder,” she chants,
her voice rising. “Oh God, Vaughn, fuck me! Don’t stop!”

Dammit, this girl is
perfection.

I pull out, almost all
the way, and then pound into her clenching pussy, all the way to the
fucking hilt. My cock demands every inch, shoving so deep I swear I
feel the back of her walls. Keely lets out a scream, and then she’s
coming, spasming around me in tight vibrations as I shoot a load into
the depths of her cunt with a roar of release.

I pull out and set her
down, my heart racing. “Fuck, baby.” I grin. “Now that’s what
I call an afternoon pick-me-up.”

Keely laughs,
straightening up. She heads towards the bathroom, but I yank her
back. I pin her against the wall, wrists above her head, her chest
still rising and falling in eager pants.

“Don’t clean up,”
I order her. “I want you smelling like you just got fucked.”

Keely flushes. She
looks down, and I feel a stab of power. Yeah, that’s it. It’s
time for me to be the boss.

“You’re going to
walk around all day with my cum still inside you,” I growl, running
a possessive hand over her body. I squeeze her breast, hard. Her eyes
flare. “You’re going to feel me dripping down your thighs, and
know you belong to me. And when you get back tonight, I’m going to
lick it all right out.”

Keely shudders. I
release her. Yeah, that’ll give her something to think about.

She pulls her skirt
down, taking a couple of hesitant steps. Sore, like she just took all
nine inches and begged for more.

That’s right, baby.
Feel how good I stretched that cunt.

“What about you?”
Keely tries to pull herself together. “What are you going to do
next?”

“Get answers,” I
say. “We’ve been running around playing catch-up for too long.
It’s time to get ahead of the game. Starting with Brent Ashcroft.
I’m going to take a look at what that guy’s hiding in his
apartment.”

KEELY

I insist on going with
Vaughn to break into Brent’s place.

He flat-out says no.

“We’re in this
together,” I remind him, standing my ground. “Either you take me
with you, or I follow you on my own. Either way, we both know I’m
safer with you.”

Vaughn grits his teeth.
“Damn you. Can’t you see I’m trying to keep you out of
trouble?”

“Maybe that’s not
your job.” I take pity on him, standing there looking all noble and
protective. And dangerously hot. “Look, I promise I’ll be
careful. But I won’t just sit around while you go out and risk
everything. This is my future on the line too, you know.”

So we go together,
staking out Brent’s building in Tribeca until he leaves on the arm
of some hot, Swedish blonde. Of course he’s got a fuck-pad in the
city -- all paid for by Ashcroft Industries corporate accounts. The
same company he’s doing his best to destroy.

“Come on, stay
close,” Vaughn tells me. He grabs my hand and pulls me across the
busy street. But instead of going to the lobby, he heads around the
back of the building. “Too exposed,” he explains. “The fewer
people who see us, the better.”

He pulls a baseball cap
low over his face and gestures for me to put up the hood on my
sweatshirt. I do it, feeling a thrill of excitement. Dressing in a
disguise, sneaking in. It’s dangerous, but still, I love the buzz.

Vaughn finds the
service entrance open, propped by a trashcan. “I slipped a guy a
twenty.” He winks, ushering me inside.

“Top floor,” I tell
him. “Penthouse suite.”

“Nothing but the
best,” Vaughn drawls.

We take the stairs,
climbing fast. I shiver, remembering the last time I was in a
stairwell like this, when someone pushed me hard enough to send me
tumbling. Was it Brent? I wonder. And if it was, what else would he
do to steal the company he’s fixated on as his rightful
inheritance. He’s willing to dismantle the whole thing to keep it
from anyone else. Just how twisted is he?

Vaughn checks the
penthouse hallway. All clear. We hurry to the front door, and I pass
him the key. It wasn’t hard to get a copy. It belongs to the
company, after all. I just had to call the management, pretending to
be Brent’s secretary. I said we needed spares for redecorating, and
had them message one over to the office.

Now, my heart catches
as Vaughn swipes the card and the door clicks open. I exhale with
relief.

“Careful,” he warns
me, stepping inside. He flips the lights on, and looks around. “We
still have the alarms.”

A tell-tale beeping
comes from the box on the wall. I cross over, and tap in the code I
scribbled down earlier. I pulled the same routine on the security
company, and had them send over the info.

The beeping stops.
“We’re in!”

Vaughn sees my grin and
chuckles. “You little criminal.”

“What? I’m not
breaking any laws,” I point out. “This was part of my
inheritance. It’s all perfectly legal.”

“Tell that to Brent.”
Vaughn looks around. “Where do you want to start?”

“The office, I guess.
That’s where he’d be keeping all the business info.”

“Then let’s get
started.”

We find the office down
the hall. I flip on the lights, revealing a sleek room filled with
porny art and hi-tech computers. Vaughn tries tapping at the
keyboard, but he shakes his head. “Password protected.”

“Try ‘Brent is the
greatest’,” I joke, rifling through a cabinet. Vaughn tries out a
few combinations, but has no luck.

“We don’t want to
risk it,” he sighs. “He might have a tracker installed, to tell
him if someone tries to log in.”

We look through every
drawer and cupboard in turn. “I think I’ve found something.” I
call him over. A stash of papers in a drawer, a rough draft of some
kind of contract with notes in the margins.

“It’s with
Excaliber Finance!” I read the dense print. “Something about
establishing a partnership...”

“He’s sold you out,
just like we thought,” Vaughn says grimly. “He’s agreed to
support the takeover, in exchange for a co-head position of the new
company.”

It confirms all my
worst suspicions, but it still hurts. It’s one thing for me to have
considered walking away when I first got news of my inheritance, but
Brent’s spent years watching his father build the company. He knows
everything it means, and still, he’s happy to tear it all down.

“What about
Excaliber?” I ask. “Does it have any more information about who
that guy is?”

“There’s a
signature, right here,” Vaughn flips to the last page. “Martin
Ridley. Fuck.”

“What?” I see his
expression change. Shock, and realization.

“It’s their old
partner.” Vaughn looks at me, clenching the contract. “Back when
my father and Ashcroft started the company, they brought on a third
guy, the money. He disappeared, went to jail on tax charges. I always
figured Ashcroft set him up too, to get him out of the picture.”

“And now he’s back,
plotting with Brent.” I frown, trying to make sense of it. “And
he’s the guy he’s been meeting?”

Vaughn taps his phone,
bringing up an image search and typing in the name Martin Ridley.
“Shit,” he says, showing me the results. Martin Ridley, the guy
Brent and Carter have been sneaking around with. “I should have
checked this earlier. It’s him.”

“But what does it
mean?” I ask him, confused. “This guy has been planning to take
back the company all this time?”

“Seems so,” Vaughn
answers, putting the contract down. He goes back to searching the
room, checking the waste paper basket and smoothing out discarded
papers. “You said this Excaliber company had been trying to bid for
the company before, but Ashcroft always turned them down.”

“Which means this
Ridley guy is bad news.” I look at the contract again, leafing
through the pages. There are notes in the margins, in handwriting I
recognize as Brent’s, and another even scrawl. I try to make out
the words, looking for any clues at all about what they’ve got
planned. “We’ve got to stop him. If Ashcroft didn’t want him
back at the company, there’s a reason.”

I check every page,
looking for something, anything at all. And then it hits me. Not the
words themselves, but the handwriting.

I’ve seen it before.

“Vaughn,” I gasp,
chills running down my spine.

“What is it?” He’s
at my side in an instant.

“Look.”

With shaking hands, I
unfold the photo of my mother I’ve been carrying around in my
wallet. The surveillance photo from Ashcroft’s attic, the one with
the bullseye on the front.

You’re running
out of time. I promise, the people you love will suffer if I don’t
get what I want.

It’s the same. The
notes on the contract. The threat on the photo. Written by the same
man.

“Ridley,” I
swallow, another chill gripping my body. “It’s him. He was the
one threatening Ashcroft, promising to hurt my mother and your
father. He’s who Ashcroft was trying to protect them from. This is
all because of him.”

VAUGHN

I want to go smash
Ridley’s fucking face in. That’ll get us some answers quick. But
Keely pleads with me not to go charging straight in.

“What will that do?”
she says, when we’re back at her apartment. “It won’t prove
anything. There are still too many questions about what went down.
Hurting him won’t solve anything.”

“It’ll make him
talk,” I growl, pacing. I’m full of restless energy, wired so
fucking tight now I’m like a bomb about to go off. This guy is the
one, the one who destroyed my father and drove him to suicide. I’ve
been waiting twenty years to have justice done. “Let’s see if he
can lie about the past when I’m breaking every bone in his body.”

“Vaughn.” Keely
tries to pull me back. “Vaughn!”

I stop, turning at the
sound of her yell. She stares at me straight in the eyes. “I know
you’re angry and confused.” Keely takes my hands, holding tight.
“This guy is the reason both of our lives turned out like this. He
set everything in motion when he threatened Ashcroft, but it’s not
enough. We have to play it smart, we can’t risk our one chance to
discover the truth.”

She’s right.

I exhale in a
frustrated bust. Fuck. Even though every part of me is burning to
beat the answers out of him, I know Keely’s making sense. A guy
like Ridley would just call the cops and have me thrown in jail, and
then where would we be?

I’d be locked up
somewhere, and Keely... Fuck, Keely would be on her own. Unprotected.
With that attacker still out there, ready to strike.

I could never live with
myself if anyone laid a hand on her again.

“What do we do now?”
I demand, still pissed as hell. My hands are tied, I hate feeling so
powerless. “Just sit around waiting. For what?”

“We get ready,”
Keely corrects me. “Find out everything about this guy, everything
that was going on back when he and Ashcroft and your dad were
partnered up.”

“He was threatening
Ashcroft over something. It has to be something big.” I scowl.

“It’s all
connected,” Keely agrees. “If we can nail him on that old
blackmail, there’s no way the board will vote to have him take over
the company. Everything’s on the line now. We need to know the
truth.”

“So how the fuck do
we get it?”

Keely flinches. I drop
my voice. “I just mean we’re no closer to a plan.”

“So we make one.”
Keely smoothes her hands over my chest. Her touch calms me, draining
the blood from my raging mind, and redirecting it in a much simpler
direction: my cock.

“I’ll call Justine
in LA. If Carter’s involved too, then maybe there’s something in
his files she can find for us. You keep watching Brent, I’ll ask
around at the office. We’ll find something,” she insists.
“Everything’s going to be OK.”

It won’t be, not
until I can look Ridley in the eye and know for sure what drove my
father to the brink. But for once, I’m not carrying the burden of
the past alone. Keely is right here too. It’s easier with her.

I’m not alone
anymore.

* * *

I trail Brent for the
next couple of days, hoping he’ll lead back to Ashcroft, but the
bastard cares more about dropping cash at designer stores and
partying until dawn than handing us a break. Again, I’m tempted to
beat the answers out of him, but I force myself to stay cool.

Keely needs me by her
side. I can’t fuck this up now.

“Come meet me for
lunch,” Keely tells me when I call in a status update. “Let’s
take a break from all this, just the two of us. I’ve been going
around in circles trying to figure it out.”

“But I could miss
something.” I stare through the window of some fancy tailor,
frustrated.

“Vaughn...” Her
voice is soft. “Come on. We can’t let this consume us.”

It’s easy enough for
her to say, she’s not the one fighting to unravel twenty years of
lies and cover-ups. But I’m hungry as hell, so I leave Brent to his
new suit, and go meet Keely at a spot in Greenwich Village.

She’s waiting at the
table when I arrive.