“Family comes first, Brenda. Always.”
Tears welled in her eyes and she reached out to him, snatching him into a completely unsettling embrace. He reciprocated, knowing that compassion could never be enough when someone you love is hurting.
“I...I appreciate this so much, Mr. Stanton. It’s his second round with cancer. The first time was seven years ago, and we thought we were out of the woods.” Brenda wiped her tears with the back of her hand. Gavin reached into his breast pocket and handed her his cloth handkerchief. She accepted it with a surprised look.
“I understand.” He placed a hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye. “You have two sons, yes? One still in high school? He’s autistic, as I recall.”
Her eyes widened. “You remember that?”
He did. A group of twenty-nine employees in the division where Brenda Ng was a director offered to pool their sick days so she could take six weeks off with full pay to care for her husband and, also, her son with special needs. That kind of employee loyalty was rare. Brenda was exactly the kind of leader he wanted in his company.
The request had been memorable for its aching humanity.
“I do.” He smiled. “And I hope your husband’s recovery is swift.” Gavin leaned in and whispered, “Kick cancer’s ass.”
Laughter through tears greeted him, Brenda’s sniffling making him feel tenderness for her plight. Brenda’s voice echoed up as she hugged him quickly, then said, “I have to catch my train, so I’m sorry to run off. Thank you so, so very much!”
And with that, she disappeared through the main glass doors and into the dark night.
Family comes first. Always.
Asher’s visit took on a new meaning.
The sound of his own blood pumping through his heart took on greater urgency, claiming more of his attention than it should. A sudden image of Lilah pierced his thoughts. He’d spent the better part of these last few days actively trying not to think about her. Asher’s words haunted him.
Marrying a full human is pure folly.
Asher had married Claire. They had conceived a baby, the fruits of her womb growing from their love. The Change had been imminent for Claire. With well-matched couples, a shifter male breeding with a human female could produce the same blood rite as a born shifter—the only known method for a human to join their kind. It was never certain, however, if such a change would succeed.
Indeed, pregnancy had begun to transform Claire, making her one of them, but she had died before that transition had completed, during childbirth. The babe had died too, taking Asher’s heart with it.
Gavin wondered what a baby he and Lilah made would look like. Oh, that long, thick blonde hair. Those dark eyes. He could imagine a tiny princess with hair spun from flax, with bright blue eyes like his. A dark-haired boy with an impish smile and brown eyes the color of rich oak.
A pang of loneliness and need resonated within him.
Lilah.
Her.
As he approached the bank of elevators, he stopped, buttoning his suit jacket, straightening his shirt cuffs.
He really was going quite mad.
Tonight was all business, and nothing but business. He would smile, press the flesh, pretend he cared about silly details and small talk. All the while he would read nonverbal signals, collect information, plant suggestions and seed his future business prospects.
Distractions like Lilah, the throbbing deep in his core that was ever-increasing, were a nuisance. He caught his own reflection in the shined stainless steel of the elevator doors.
Dark blonde hair, grown out to the collar, well styled and out of his eyes. Blue eyes framed by lashes his mother had once declared, “too delicious by far for a man to possess.” A cashmere suit, cut to fit by his fine bespoke tailor in London. Cuff links passed down from four generations, small gold nuggets unrefined, made from the first gold vein his maternal ancestors had plundered in the 1840s in California.
Time had been good to the Stanton family. When investments could be measured by decades and centuries, the wealth had grown. As a “thirtysomething” billionaire bachelor, Gavin’s quick rise to fame had come from his own investments. His family fortune gave him the seed money, though.
Asher had cut that off when Gavin made his first billion.
The doors began to open, and his self-evaluation came to a halt. He despised being enclosed in an elevator with a crowd, and he could hear loud voices emerging from inside. Impulsively, he turned on his heel and headed through a side door to a lesser-known elevator that he (and his Novo brethren) preferred. He stepped in, pressed the floor button, and tried to quell the deep pulse his body had become.
The elevator rose in time with his heartbeat. Except this pounding, this Beat, was deeper and filled his entire body.
Ding! The doors parted, dim light filtering in from the space opening, and the figure of a woman came to him inches at a time, the light behind her ethereal and heavenly, as if she were an angel. Blonde hair pulled back at the nape of her neck, a form-fitting wrap dress that framed an hourglass figure, and as microseconds passed and he looked from knee to breasts to neck to face, instinct caught him faster than vision, for as she turned and looked at the elevator floor buttons, he reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her to him.
Lilah.
It was Lilah.
“What are you doing?” she said in a squeaky voice, wiggling the arm he held in a vise grip, struggling against him as the doors closed and the elevator continued its ascent as if the world had not just tilted on its axis.
“Lilah,” he said. It was, indeed, the only word he knew.
“You!” Her voice shifted down to a lower register, the outraged tone gone as their eyes met. Her breath came in gasps, chest heaving. Her face began to flush as she blinked, eyes combing over him with an expression of wonder and desire. “You’re here? Who are you?”
His hungry hands slipped around her waist and pulled him to her, mouth taking hers without comment, without permission. She yielded under him, hands flat against his chest in momentary protest, her mouth responding to his, warm and inviting.
He would have stopped at the kiss if she’d said no. Thankfully, he did not have to stop.
Oh, the pleasure of touching her. The smooth feel of fabric heated by her generous breasts, the taper to waist and the cling of his skin to hips made to hang on to while in her. His tongue traced hers, dancing with urgency, his hands groping now without plan, without respect, his ability to be gentle and tender dashed, now that he finally had her.
Her.
She broke the kiss with force, her breath sweet against his nose, her earlobe daring him for a lick.
“What are you doing? I don’t even know your name!” she protested. Those eyes, though. Liquid pools begging for more.
He stroked the pale flesh of her neck with his thumb, then pushed her against the elevator wall, mouth slanting over hers for another kiss, the hot, wet connection the only way he could exist. Every heartbeat he wasn’t inside her was agony. Each second they kissed felt like an eternity.
Pulling back, he whispered, “Gavin. Gavin Stanton,” then resumed the only language they needed, mouths and hands substituting for words.
Her legs parted as he pushed them with one knee, the skirt riding up her lush thighs, his lips demanding more from her than a mere mouth could give. She moaned, a tiny sound from the back of her throat that pierced his heart and cock. In that very moment, Gavin abandoned all pretense of being a gentleman.