He pressed his lips together, and amusement warmed his expression. “Just a heads up, I haven’t either.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Hey, remember when you told me you were going to fuck me non-stop once I had a ring on my finger? When, exactly, is that going to start?”
“Marist.” He sighed softly as he traced a fingertip over my cheek, brushing my hair back. “You think I don’t want to? You have no idea how badly I want you. But what I don’t want is to be the asshole who tries to get inside you five minutes after you’ve come home from the fucking hospital.”
I wasn’t sure I could persuade him with words alone. I’d have to show him I was physically okay, beyond ready. When I smoothed my palm up his thigh, he caught my hand and stopped me before I reached my final destination.
“Please?” I aimed for the sultriest plea I could manage. “Let me go down on you. I promise to stop if it gets to be too much for me.”
His hand tensed on mine, and his voice dipped low. “Jesus. Are you actually begging to suck me off right now?”
I slipped off the bed, dropping to my knees, and as I turned to face him, the electricity between us crackled. He twisted with torment and need. Lust was a beautiful emotion on his face. It made his full lips part and his eyes hood, and all the wicked thoughts I had swelled until I was too tight. The only way to keep myself from bursting was to act on them.
It came from him quiet and with awe. “You’re something else, Medusa.”
My insides quivered with excitement and nervousness as I closed in on another first, raking my fingers up the inseam of his jeans. But while my mouth would be occupied, his wouldn’t be, and I still didn’t understand. “Tell me why you want your father to buy Ascension.”
Royce put his hands on the bed behind him and leaned back on his straightened arms, opening his legs wider to make more room for me.
“On paper,” he said, “they’re a smart buy. It’s only a matter of time before Ascension’s growth in private banking and mortgages starts to rival our numbers.” His heavy gaze was cast down on me, watching as I stroked my fingers over his fly and traced the outline of his thickening cock beneath it. The words were weighted with double meaning. “They’re aggressive. Hungry.”
A smile eked out of me, in spite of the anxiety I felt. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I’d talked him into this blowjob, but what if I were terrible at it?
“Ascension pushes its people to perform,” he continued, distracting me from my worry. “They pit their executives and departments against each other and incentivize deals. I’m told it’s ruthless, and almost as brutal as it can be at HBHC. So, it’s right up my dad’s alley.”
His chest rose with a deep breath as I popped the snap at the top of his jeans and inched down his zipper.
“But if that’s true, why’d you vote against it?”
“Because Ascension looks so good, it’s too good.”
I paused. “What do you mean?”
“Executives get bonuses when they meet or exceed their quarterly numbers. Each year the quota goes up and gets more unrealistic. And yet every year their top performers manage to pull it off.”
Suspicion rolled through me. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“They’re forging signatures and opening dummy accounts to inflate numbers. They’ll tack on additional products without the client’s approval. We’re talking about tens of thousands of accounts, probably more. Corporate looks the other way because the only thing that matters is keeping the stock price up.”
Whoa. What he was saying was serious bank fraud. I sat back on my heels. “You know this? How?”
He blinked. “Tate Isaacs works for them.”
“Holy shit,” I breathed. Tate was the closest thing Royce had to a best friend.
“If my dad took the time to really look at Ascension, there’s a chance he might notice it smells off. But I know him. He won’t. He thinks I want Ascension, so he’s way too focused on taking it away from me. All that matters is winning. On the surface, Ascension looks amazing. He’ll fight to get control, and once the deal’s done, he’ll welcome it under the umbrella of HBHC.”
Everything went still. Time suspended as he looked at me. His smile was cruel and yet undeniably sexy.
“Ascension is a bomb I can activate with one call to the SEC,” he whispered, “and when I do, it’s going to blow up in his face.”
Royce was wrong. Ascension wasn’t a bomb.
It was a Trojan Horse.
FOUR
AFTER A TEN-YEAR SIEGE AGAINST THE CITY OF TROY, the Greeks constructed a huge wooden horse, only to abandon it and set off to sail their army home. The Trojans hauled the horse inside their gates, claiming it as a war trophy, unaware of the danger hidden inside.
That night, after the city was asleep, thirty of Greece’s finest warriors slipped out from inside, including King Menelaus, and opened the gates. The Greek army hadn’t sailed away—they burst out of hiding and stormed the city.
Troy finally fell, and Helen was reunited with her husband.
The most famous of the Greek myths endured. A Trojan Horse was anything your foe invited inside that brought about their own destruction.
Royce’s blue eyes were fixed on me as I knelt between his spread knees, my hands on his thighs and his pants undone.
“Acquiring anything right now when our stock is down is risky enough, but when the board realizes what a terrible deal my father made? I’ll call for a vote of no confidence and strip him of his seat.”
The puzzle pieces snapped into place. “That’s why you voted against it, even though you want the deal to go through.”
A smile curled on his lips. “The board will see me as the smarter, reasonable Hale.”
I nodded. “The one who’s a better fit to be in control.”
“My father’s strength is also his biggest weakness, and he’ll commit the cardinal sin of business. He doesn’t care about the deal, or if it’s any good, he just wants to win.”
I knew firsthand it was true. Not just with the chess game or the night in the maze, but the whole way Macalister acted toward me. He didn’t care if seducing me was a good idea. He only wanted to beat his son.
A dark laugh threatened to escape from me as I resumed my plan of getting my mouth on Royce. I curled my fingers around his underwear-covered dick, massaging him through the soft fabric.
Macalister had certainly failed, hadn’t he? It was pointless he’d even tried to make me his. I’d belonged to Royce the second I looked up from the book I was reading in the Hale library last year and discovered his provocative eyes staring at me.
I captured my bottom lip between my teeth as I slipped my fingers under his waistband and inched his underwear past his hipbones. I worked the elastic down just until he was exposed. He was thick and hard, laying across his thigh, and when I leaned in, he twitched.
Once again, his words were full of subtext. “Do you like my plan?”
“I do,” I whispered.
And then I sucked in a breath and ran the tip of my tongue up the length of him in one tentative lick.
It made his whole body shudder and his voice tight. “Oh—fuck—I think your plan is better.”