Suspicion runs rampant through my veins when Tina tosses him her car key, but it’s alleviated when he discloses, “I’ll keep them occupied long enough for you to make your getaway.”
Much to my dismay, even if Regan hadn’t cautioned my staff on being vigilant about unwanted lurkers, it’s hard to miss a bright blue surveillance van that treks my every move. Everyone in this town is aware I am the focus of an FBI investigation. Mercifully, only a handful believe their scrutiny is warranted.
Fingers crossed, I can covert Isabelle’s wrongful philosophies this weekend. “Wait ten minutes, then meet me in the underground garage of your penthouse. Hunter has old footage at the ready. They’ll see you enter and exit, but they won’t know it’s me until you’re in the air. Cormack will meet you at Izzy’s apartment building.”
Hugo doesn’t give me the chance to reply. He hot-foots it in the direction of the parking lot, smiling his appreciation to Tina on his way by. We’ve run decoys like this before. It’s how I’ve kept my residence off the FBI’s surveillance hit list. I value my privacy so much not even my name is on the title of my home.
Tina bats her lashes at me when I head for the back parking lot. I doubt she would have been so eager to help if she knew who I was spending the weekend with. She’s been vying for a way to get back into my bed for months. This weekend could upend her endeavors entirely. It’s been a little over six weeks since Isabelle and I kissed, but the spark it lit is still furiously burning today. My cock twitches just at the thought of how ardent it will be once I claim her as mine.
Hugo’s plan went off without a hitch. While Hunter played old footage of me popping in to collect my cell phone I begrudgingly left in my penthouse apartment months ago, Hugo and I swapped cars. When Hugo raced out of the underground lot at the precise moment Hunter advised in my Bugatti Veyron, the blue surveillance van whizzed past the entrance of the garage a couple of seconds later. No one paid me any attention when I exited the garage in Tina’s Toyota Camry, proving sometimes it is the suit that makes the man.
“Not a word,” I warn Cormack when he spots my exit out of Tina’s car at the side of Isabelle’s apartment building. Helooks suave, sliding out the back of a stretch limousine in a tailored suit with slicked-back hair, whereas Ilook homeless thanks to the thousand furballs Tina’s cats left in her car as gifts.
Cormack holds his hands in the air like he’s about to be arrested before he shadows my walk into the back entrance of an apartment building I purchased years ago. When I spot Clayton standing next to the security desk, I request him to shut down surveillance in the foyer, elevator, and Isabelle’s floor. Only once he acknowledges my request has been fulfilled do I make my way to the elevator bank.
Although Cormack isn’t a fan of my somewhat manic security measures, he doesn’t berate me this time around. Not only does he understand my desire to protect Isabelle from a family distressingly similar to Ophelia’s, but he also isn’t quite ready to thrust his relationship with Harlow into the public eye just yet. The media are vultures. They chewed him up and spat him out when he was barely an adult. He doesn’t trust them, and for good measure, neither do I.
The light in the security camera perched at the end of the hallway doesn’t blink when Cormack and I make our way to Isabelle’s apartment. I hold my jaw tight when I spot the rattle of Cormack’s hand when he knocks on Isabelle’s door. Things have been going great between Harlow and him the past couple of weeks, so I’m perplexed as to why he is nervous. Anyone would swear he was being set up on a blind date.
My back molars grind together when the truth smacks into me. “You didn’t tell Isabelle I was attending, did you?”
Harlow pulls open the door before he can answer me. I don’t need to hear his words to know his reply, though. Isabelle’s choking response answers my theory on Cormack’s behalf.
After slinging my eyes to Cormack in silent admonition that we will discuss this later, I make my way to Isabelle. She’s on her knees, wrangling an insubordinate zipper into line.
The image of her kneeling before me is nothing less than spectacular. Her lips partas she sucks in shallow breaths, her cheeks are an attractive pink coloring, and yearning is firing in her beautiful chocolate eyes.
“Isabelle,” I greet when I stop to stand in front of her.
My nostrils flare to suck in her seductive scent when the purring of her name causes her cheeks to flame even more. Her smell is erotic, and it reminds me of hours-long sweat-producing explorations beneath expensive sheets. It makes my cock as hard as a rock and has me reacting as if the weight on my shoulders is nowhere near as heavy as it is.
After crouching down so we meet gray eyes to brown eyes, I say matter-of-factly, “If we were alone, you wouldn’t be moving from that position.”
I’d give anything to order Cormack around as if he is a member of my staff when the pleading in Isabelle’s eyes turns rampant. If the desire in her hooded gaze is anything to go by, she no longer wants to wrangle the zipper on her bag. Her eyes are on the one my cock is pressed against. Alas, we have a plane to catch and two gawking pairs of sullied eyes watching our every move.
Cormack and Harlow are as interested in the sparks firing between Isabelle and me as they are creating their own. While silently promising Isabelle our exchange is merely paused, not shelved, I stand, then extend my hand in offering to assist her from the floor.
Precum leaks into my boxer shorts when she displays her disappointment about the interlude with an unsubtle groan. If I could claim her as mine and ensure Cormack remains the CEO of Attwood Electric, I’d make true on my promise now. Since I can’t, I pluck her from the floor as if she is weightless before spinning to face Cormack—the deserver of my wrath.
“Are you ready?” he asks, uneased about my glare but not threatened enough not to point out the thickness in the crotch of my dress pants no number of stitches could hide with an unsubtle grin.
I hit him with a second sideways glare before gathering Isabelle’s suitcase in my hand and entering the hallway. Even with her being blindsided by my arrival, I’m not leaving the building without her. She either acknowledges our prodigious connection by following my departure voluntarily, or I’ll force her exploration by carrying her to the limousine, kicking and screaming.
This long weekend could be the last opportunity for us to explore the tension that forever bounds between us before Callie’s auction, so I’m not willing to give it up for anything. I won’t fail in my bid to protect Callie—failure isn’t a word in my dictionary—but I must remain vigilant. I’m sailing in unchartered waters. Only a fool would launch without a backup plan. Since that plan very much entails lessening the adverse effects it could cause Isabelle, anything I say or do after Callie’s auction will be thoroughly scrutinized. The script I’ll be forced to follow won’t allow Isabelle to seethe real me, the Isaac Holt only my closest friends and family know. She’ll see a ruthless businessman. A poser. An enigma. The very man I don’t want her to see, even with me thrustingmy empire in adirection I never wanted it to take.
My thoughts stray from dubious to unambiguous when Isabelle falls into step a short time later. She doesn’t utter a syllable during our short ride in the elevator and walk to the chartered limousine. She remains reticent, her excitement only shared by the numerous presses of her thighs and her intoxicating scent. The effect both her looks and actions cause my body is noticeable when her exit from the limousine is quickly chased by her taking a stumbling step back. Her back crashes into my chest a mere second before her delectable ass grinds against my stiffened shaft.
The heat it roars through my body is heard in my muttered comment, “The plane is that way.” Isabelle follows the hook of my thumb when I point to the new Dassault Falcon 900LX jet Cormack and I recently added to our fleet. I hear her throat work hard to swallow before she briefly shakes her head, then recommences her sprint for the empty limousine. Harlow’s head is so deeply in the clouds, she practically floats toward the idling jet. Isabelle’s fear of flying means she’ll need a little more convincing.
I halt her climb into the limousine by banding my hand around her wrist. The intense spasm it jolts up her arm freezes her before it aligns our eyes. “I can’t get in that plane,” she advises, unaware I could feel her fear a mile out from the airstrip.
While recalling the way I subdued her months ago, I run my hand not clutching her wrist down her inflamed cheek before brushing my thumb across her plump lips. When she moans, announcing my ruse is achieving the outcome I set out for, I take a step back.
A smirk pulls at my lips when Isabelle bridges the gap between us with only the slightest bit of panic flaring in her eyes. She either trusts me or is desperate enough not to break the bond binding us together to pretend she does.
Both have desirable qualities.
I coerce her to the stairs of the private jet with my eyes and subtle movements of my thumbs. The amount of fret in her eyes should dampen the intensity brewing between us, but it seems to have the opposite effect. It is as searing now as it was when we kissed in the driveway of a local law enforcement officer’s home.
