Claiming My Soulmate, page 14
He smiled. “That’s a good way to look at it.”
I needed to lighten this up before I started crying. Sitting up straight, I said, “Truth or dare?”
He hesitated a split second before answering. “Dare.”
I smirked. “I dare you to make good on all those positions you bragged about earlier.”
Pushing the bottle of tequila aside, Tanner stood up and dropped low enough that his shoulder pushed into my stomach. Before I grasped what he was doing, he hoisted me up, fireman-carry style, and started marching back toward his bedroom while I squealed in protest at the method of transportation.
“You’re insane!” I yelled and tried to squirm off the shoulder that was digging into my gut.
Tanner didn’t stop until we reached the bedroom, and he somehow managed to dump me face down in the center of his massive bed. As I tried to push myself onto my elbows and raise my hips to get up and turn around, he stopped me with a hand in the center of my back and lowered his body over mine.
I had the majority of my clothes on — a tank top, shorts, and my underwear — but it didn’t take long for Tanner to get them off, leaving me naked with his skin against mine.
As he kissed me down the side of my neck and across my shoulder blades, I stopped thinking about how to squirm away and surrendered to what he was doing, loving the nips and kisses he was leaving.
“No more hickeys or my grandmother will kill us both,” I warned him, and he bit me in response, making me laugh. He only pulled away long enough to reach into the bedside table and grab a condom, discarding his boxer briefs and getting it on in record time.
His lips were back on my ear as he whispered, “I’m going to do all those things I promised you tonight.” He ran his tongue along the outer shell of my ear, causing a shiver down my spine in response. “But first, I’m going to take you like this, watch your ass as I slide in and out of your tight body. That okay with you?”
Oh my god. The man could demand that I put on a clown wig and sing the alphabet backward, and I’d be okay with it. I just wanted him. In me. Now.
“Yes,” I hissed as he dug his hand in between the front of my body and the mattress and found my clit. It was like magic, the way he worked both it and my neck with his mouth, then he pulled me up to my knees, his hand wrapping around my hair like a rope.
“Please,” I said, practically begging.
“I like it when you say please, baby,” he whispered against my neck as I pushed back against him.
He pushed my head down to the mattress, leaving my ass in the air, his hand running over my bare flesh. His cock nudged me open, and I tried to push back on him again, but he held me still. Made me wait. And wait…
“Tan…”
His name ended on a scream as he rammed into me balls deep, then I moaned as my body stretched and molded itself around him.
“Damn,” he growled. “So damn tight. So good.”
He set a brutal pace, just on this side of being too rough. But I didn’t complain. I loved it. Loved the sound of our bodies slapping together. Loved the way I inched toward the headboard with each thrust.
Each snap of his hips sent a cascade of painful pleasure through me, driving me toward another orgasm. “Touch yourself,” he demanded, his hands gripping my hips so tight I was sure he’d leave bruises. I didn’t care.
Reaching underneath me, I pressed my fingers against my clit, making circles that only added a new layer of sensation to everything I was experiencing.
I gasped when his thumb brushed over my anus but didn’t have the time or breath to protest before the ring of muscle was breached all the way to his knuckle.
I cried out. It was too much. Too good. Too bad. Too everything.
Then I was coming… breaking… shattering as wave after wave crashed over me, but still he pounded into me, chasing his own release.
“Yes, yes, yes,” I chanted as white-hot pleasure exploded through my every cell.
Then Tanner cried out, his body a piston, as he fell over the edge after me. I took his weight as we fell to the mattress, his hips still pumping as I milked him of every drop.
I couldn’t breathe, but somehow a little laugh escaped me.
He kissed my neck, air heaving in and out of his lungs. “Why. Are. You. Laughing?”
“Because I’m happy,” I said before I could pluck the words from the air and shove them back into my mouth.
He rolled off me but pulled me into the curve of his body. “I’m glad. I’m happy too.”
Ridiculously satisfied, I slept in his arms, a smile on my face even as I woke the next morning.
I was still smiling as I got into the shower. I was still smiling as I dried myself off.
The smile slid away as I looked in the mirror. You’ve got to be kidding.
“Tanner!” I yelled. “You did it again!”
And from the color and size of this hickey, it wouldn’t be going away anytime soon.
***
A few days later, I met two of my college friends for our monthly breakfast at La Cantina on Lake Travis. We’d all majored in communications and ended up having most of our senior classes and workshops together. Since we all stayed in Austin after graduation, we did our best not to lose that connection.
Shelly had a digital marketing agency that she ran from home and raked in the bucks. It was something I’d toyed around with for a few days after the layoff, but in reality, if I worked from home I’d be constantly distracted and never get any work done. Etta was the head of an in-house marketing department for one of Austin’s biggest architectural firms. Again, raking in the dough.
I did my best not to worry too much about the price of the Huevos Rancheros or the fact that my damn car had been stolen a couple weeks ago, and I swore I saw Shelly park a brand new Mercedes SUV out in the parking lot.
I wasn’t the jealous type, but after the month I’d been having, lunch with my super successful, super competitive friends was turning out to be less rewarding than I’d hoped.
“I heard from Sarah you’d gotten fired,” Etta said between bites of her salad. She really was a sweetheart, but Etta loved gossip, and I had no doubt that whatever version of my termination she’d gotten wind of had now circulated through half of the town.
I sighed. “No,” I said, the words dripping in misery. “Laid off. Severance package and all.”
“Well,” Shelly said, trying to be encouraging. “At least you have that.”
I forced my lips into a smile. “True.”
“How’s Mitchell?” Etta asked, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she didn’t already know the answer to the question and just wanted to see my response.
“We broke up,” I said airily. That’s me, not a care in the world. “It was getting stale.”
Etta shared a glance with Shelly that I didn’t miss.
“What?” I put my fork down and raised an eyebrow at them both. “What the hell did you hear?”
Shelly shrugged and looked over at Etta. “Just that you started seeing some rich guy, that’s all.”
Etta did one of those coughs that tried to cover a laugh, and I slammed my water on the table with a little too much vehemence, indicating for her to spill it.
“There’s a rumor that you’re dating Tanner Jackson,” she said and coughed into her hand again. “The guy that developed True Love.”
I nearly swallowed my own tongue. How the hell had that rumor gotten started? The Gala? There had been a million photographers there, so that must have been it.
“False,” I said, knowing I had to squash the rumor before it began, assuming these two hadn’t already spread it far and wide. “He’s a client on a project I’m working on.”
“Seriously?” Etta looked downright disappointed.
“Seriously.”
We continued on with our meals in relative peace and plentiful small talk, when I saw Shelly and Etta look up and spot someone or something behind me. Their eyes got bigger as the seconds passed, and when a hand settled on my shoulder, I turned, my face probably looking as surprised as my friends’.
It was Tanner. Standing over me and smiling as he leaned down and put a warm kiss on my stunned face.
“Fancy meeting you here,” he said with a wink. I was too shocked to speak and managed a squeak or two before he continued. “Just a quick meeting today,” he said as he motioned over his shoulder to the two men just sitting down. “I’ll give you a call tonight, okay?”
I nodded dumbly as he walked by. I watched him go, partly because the man looked amazing in his suit, but also because I was afraid to turn and look my friends in the eyes.
What the hell had that been?
Pretty much the same question they barraged me with as soon as he was out of earshot.
What the hell, indeed?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tanner
Layla Kendrick made good on her “we aren’t done” promise a few weeks later.
Shane called an all-hands meeting to discuss some of the recent ideas the different creative teams had been knocking around. I’d heard from Jasper that Shane had found a few investors interested in our True Friendship app but wanted to talk about concerns they’d had and even potential conditions they were considering before greenlighting the project.
The problem with great ideas like the ones the creative team and I came up with was that it required an enormous amount of money to get them translated from our brains, to a sketch on paper, to a full proposal, to an actual program that people could interact with. All of those steps required a lot of money to pay top-notch and cutting-edge teams to do the groundbreaking work.
I made plenty of money and could have funded many of my projects myself. And if I hadn’t been stupid enough to go public and be responsible for boards and shareholders, that was exactly what I would have done.
But since I had gone public, it was in my best interest to rally the troops and gain financial support, which was what Shane was good at, and what I hated doing. Once the app was released, Jasper was great at getting both the app and its creator, me, out in front of the public to get traction and publicity.
Unless, of course, the publicity was awful and created huge shit storms. That, of course, would be my forte.
Shane lived to be in front of these meetings, and I sometimes wondered if those strange, side-eye glares I found him giving me sometimes had anything to do with the fact that he’d rather be the face of the company giving the talks.
I was sure his ego wanted that more than the behind-the-scenes money guy he was forced to play.
Now that I’d had my eye on Shane for a couple months now, I noticed subtle differences in his character that I’d never noticed before, and I now had quite a few words to eat and a humble apology to give while groveling at Jasper’s feet.
The only problem with this new side of Shane was that, so far, he hadn’t really done anything wrong, and I had no proof that he was up to anything. As far as I knew, being a smarmy dickhead wasn’t exactly against company policy. At least not in the version of the handbook I’d last read.
So, the more I came to the conclusion that maybe Shane wasn’t the best fit for his position, the more frustrated with him I became because it was going to be a major nightmare to get rid of him.
Shane strutted to the front of the room, winking and finger-gunning his way through the three assembled board members before turning to the rest of us.
“Big things, guys, big things,” he said, spreading his hands wide as he began. He went around the room and introduced two guests he’d invited. They were both money men from what I remembered hearing, and both were awkwardly overdressed and uncomfortable looking next to my creative team, most of whom had tears in their jeans and wore Vans sneakers with some sort of concert t-shirt.
We all nodded politely at the deep pockets, and Shane continued, “As you may have heard, I’ve been out there finding us the best possible connections to get some of our bigger projects off the ground before the end of the year. It’s not as easy as one might think, trying to find just the right match that would fit with our company vibe. But I think I managed to do it.”
He gave a pregnant pause that was fairly awkward at first, until someone figured out that the man was waiting for applause. A round of polite golf claps later, Shane was off and running on his self-congratulatory spiel again.
“So, we have definite interest in the projects,” he said, pointing to the business men. “But we need to make sure we give them something amazing for their investment. We need to guarantee that our products will stay at the number one spot and be the one thing people are talking about day in and day out.”
He paused again, but nobody clapped. This wasn’t a clapping pause — at least that was what we all assumed. Frowning at us all like we’d done something wrong, he continued, “And to do that, we need influencers representing our products.”
The smile he gave was troubling, mostly because he was smiling right at me with what looked like a predatory glint in his eyes.
What the hell was Shane doing?
“The board gave me a few suggestions at our last meeting, and I’ve spent the past few weeks scouring social media for just the right influencer to be the face of our True Friendship launch in the coming months.” His focus shifted back on the assembled board members.
I was frowning, of course, because the project was mine, and I certainly should have input if not final say into who the brand ambassador would be.
The picture was starting to come into focus about what Shane was doing.
I’d been wrong to assume he was going to fight me head to head over the decision not to focus on games that required copious amounts of in-app purchases. I’d been expecting him to take that fight to this meeting, but he’d played me and caught me unawares.
No, while I’d been acting like a besotted puppy dog with Gemma, Shane had dropped the game fight and had found a way to get his hands and his influence on my newest project.
Son of a bitch.
Why hadn’t I considered this? He seemed so uninterested in what I was doing that now I couldn’t help but wonder if the game discussions and disagreements had merely been distractions while he worked to gain a foothold in what I was really passionate about.
I shook my head. He’d won this round, that was sure. There was no way I could raise hell about him hiring a spokesperson in front of this crowd, and if they thought the idea was good enough, there was no way I could undo it without a really messy, really distracting fight.
But the thing about Shane was, he wasn’t done.
“It’s a great day for us here at Axis,” he said, using a shortened version of the company name as he was wont to do. Which I hated, coincidentally. “We found a fresh face and a rising star to promote our newest app.”
Something in the pit of my stomach dropped, and I looked to Jasper. He was frowning, most likely also unsure of what this slippery bastard was about.
“I brought her here today. Honey, why don’t you come on in?” He pushed the door open and called out into the hall. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sure most of you may recognize her from entertainment news, but I’d like to introduce the new face of the True Friendship app — Layla Kendrick!”
If I’d gripped the pen in my hand any tighter, the damn thing would have snapped in half. Swallowing what felt like a pound of sand in my throat, I kept my face neutral and watched as my ex-fiancée pranced into my boardroom and blinked prettily at the money men, charming their pants off with only a smile.
Jasper’s eyes shot straight at me, but I gave a subtle shake of my head, hoping he understood that it wasn’t the time or place for us to say anything. Shane had his moment, and he’d orchestrated it so well that I was powerless to interfere.
For now.
During a quick coffee break in between team presentations, I sent a message to Gemma. It was probably unnecessary, incredibly unprofessional by most standards, but I just wanted to talk to her after the bomb Shane dropped. In a day of turbulent emotions and having to see Layla’s face again, the thought of Gemma was harbor in an angry sea.
Busy?
It didn’t take her long to respond. Not terribly. Waiting for my grandmother to get out of the beauty salon. Why?
What a cute chauffer driver she’d make. Dirty thoughts ran rampant in my mind for a few seconds. Meet me at the office in an hour. Lunch?
She was probably weighing the pros and cons of accepting. The thing I understood about Gemma was that she was having as much fun with whatever was going on between us as I was — but she was also worried about how complicated it could turn out.
To me, though, things were getting less and less complicated as time went on.
My phone buzzed. Sure. See you in a few.
Satisfied and relieved, I put my phone back in my pocket as I walked into the conference room. Jasper had moved seats and was now next to me. People were still milling around in the hallway.
“What the hell is he doing?” Jasper hissed, keeping his eyes on the paper in front of him. “He’s lost his damn mind.”
I nodded. It sure seemed that way.
“I think it’s supposed to undermine me somehow,” I guessed.
I’d given his purpose a great deal of thought since Layla pranced into the meeting and made herself at home. The asshole was likely trying to get me to give some sort of strong reaction — another meltdown or PR nightmare. But why?
I looked a Jasper. I knew why.
Although I was the founder and owner of Jackson Axis, the moment we went public, my personal shares fell below fifty percent. That made me vulnerable. I could be fired by a single board vote.
But why did Shane hate me so much?
With the way he was getting buddy-buddy with the board members, it seemed like he was arming himself for a war. Was he hoping I’d turn myself into another one of his weapons by waving my ex in my face? By putting her in contact with me constantly?
“We can just get rid of her if you want,” Jasper said.
“I’d already thought of that,” I said with a laugh. Really, it had been my first thought at seeing her. My second had been to wonder what I ever really saw in Layla in the first place. “But he’s got so much heavy support behind him right now, it’d just get ugly. And I haven’t really redeemed myself from the last fiasco. I can’t afford another one. I think I need to play nice.”
