She didn’t trust me.
She was smart.
I stood up, which made her gasp and had her leaning back so that she was almost lying flat on my desk. Her legs parted involuntarily to let me between them and her hands went to the center of my chest as I hovered over her with my hands next to her hips on the glass. The cuts burned but I didn’t want her to see them. Now wasn’t the time to show weakness.
“You buy in and you own it, Keelyn. You get a say in how things are run, what happens, and the role you play in it. Your buying in means you are part of the business whether it prospers or fails. We are on equal footing and the only person holding the basket is you. I’ll manage the profits and the power . . . you manage the people.” I didn’t have it in me to pretend that the basest human behaviors were interesting or important, but she did.
Her fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt and my cock ached as it pulsed against the inside of her leg. We had never touched this intimately and this was the closest I had ever been to her. I could feel my body humming in reaction and my blood whispering at me to take her, to claim her, to make her mine after being denied for so long.
“I buy in and I have to stay?” Her voice shook.
I nodded, and some of my hair fell forward and brushed against her cheek. I felt her shiver and it made me want to trace those faint tremors with my hands.
“You have to stay.” She had to stay if she bought into the club or not, and eventually she was going to realize that.
“I can do what I want, suggest changes, use the money I make however I want even if it goes against everything that makes sense to you?” She gulped as she asked the questions and her clutching hands went flat and pressed into my chest where my heart was trying to reach out for her hands. “What about us, Nassir?”
“What about us?” Even though there had always been an “us,” there never really had been an us. I wasn’t sure what she was asking me, or what kind of plans she had for the sizable profits she would make if she agreed to buy in.
“We get all tangled up in business and pleasure and then one or the other goes bad, and where does that leave us? You can destroy me without even trying. You’ve been doing it for years.”
I could destroy her, but she was the only thing in the world that made me weak, so she could end me without a thought just as easily. I wanted her to be mine. I wanted her to let me have her in every conceivable way, but more than that, I needed her here. I needed a life with her in it, so if that meant I had to make a choice, I chose keeping her around over having her under me panting my name in erotic satisfaction hour after hour and day after day.
I pushed off the desk and threw myself back into the chair. I pushed it back on its wheels so there was some breathing room between us and so I had space to think.
“You buy in, I’m taking that as your agreement to stay for the long haul. No more running, no pretending that the grass is greener somewhere else, and I’ll agree to keep my hands off of you. We’ll be business partners and nothing else.”
I could see my offer shocked her. Her mouth moved like she was trying to make words, but none would come out. I understood the way her tricky mind worked, so I lifted both of my eyebrows up and told her, “You are not going to fuck me and forget about me like you think you can do, Key. We are so much a part of one another that separately we are almost unrecognizable. You are so deep down inside of me I feel like I’m missing pieces of myself when you aren’t around. If keeping you here where I can see you, where I can smell you, where I can breathe the same air as you means that I know you’re safe, happy, and whole, I will keep my hands and my cock to myself.” It might kill me but I had endured worse torture and torment in my time.
Key blinked those stormy eyes at me as the words sank in and she must have read the resolve on my face. She wasn’t going to take me to bed and try to burn me out like she did with all those other boys in her past. I wanted all of her, and once I had her, I was keeping her forever, but for that to happen she needed to give herself to me for safekeeping. She didn’t have to trust me, but she did have to love me.
“No sex?”
“Oh, there will be sex. Tons and tons of sex, but none of it will be between us if that’s what it takes to get you to agree.”
She harrumphed and slid off the desk so she was towering over me in those killer heels. I was glad she was back in her right skin.
“Business only?”
I nodded solemnly and ran a tired hand over my face. It was a deal with the devil, but we both knew she was going to make it anyway.
“Very lucrative and profitable business only, and if for some reason the cops shut me down, I’ll return your investment plus fifty percent of my own.”
“How much did you sink into this place? And how much do you expect me to buy in for?”
I shrugged. “I spent enough to make it what I wanted and you can pay in the same Race did. Two hundred K. I’m the primary backer, so my word is law, but if you see something not working or a way I missed to bring more money in, we can have a discussion.” Race had actually put in double that amount, but I wasn’t about to tell her that, and no one had ever accused me of being honest.
She whistled. “That’s a lot of money.”
“You have it.” She would hate to know that I knew exactly what her bank balance was. It paid to have a computer hacker on the payroll. There wasn’t much about her I didn’t know, both inside and out.
“I do have it. I just don’t know if I want to give it to you.” It sounded like she was talking about a lot more than money.