Home at Last [Davis Hollow, Davis Ranch 1] (Siren Publishing Allure) Page 4

  “I talked to Liz last night. We’ve been playing this game for almost ten years and it needs to stop now. Marcus and Cheryl are the ones clamoring for me to marry her. They can take care of Liz when she realizes I meant what I said. The wedding is off. She’ll be okay, after I give her something sparkly and expensive.” CJ fanned Iona’s hair over her shoulder. He couldn’t get over the feeling that coursed through his body when she opened the door. A tiny, brown, and beautiful ball of fire that went right to his heart and his groin.

  “Elizabeth ain’t gonna go away with a pretty bauble and a thank-you and neither is her daddy, Judge Blankenship.” Clint lit a cigar and floored the car to ninety. “I’ll watch your back on this one except with the ’rents.”

  “Nobody has to handle Marcus and Cheryl. They’ll love her to pieces.”

  “Except that piece is a little darker than they are accustomed to.”

  “Yeah, but it I don’t plan on living without her, not even gonna try.” CJ leaned back against the headrest, lulling himself to sleep as he stroked Iona’s thigh. She felt so warm and soft. She moved over to lie across his chest. He rearranged his legs to join her in sleep.

  Chapter Five:

  When the Lawd Gets Ready

  Three hours later, Iona woke up to a dimmed room. A steady hum of an engine penetrated her consciousness. She didn’t move for a minute, trying to figure out where she was. She tried to get up but found herself held down by a muscled, hairy arm holding her close to a large snoring man. She tried wiggling away but that only made CJ grunt and pull her tighter. She finally succeeded by slipping down the bed.

  The back cabin was dimly lit but the rest of the plane was a hub of activity. Three women of varying ages were speaking urgently into satellite phones while four young men typed furiously on computers, and Clint lounged at the small bar with a cut crystal glass of scotch. From a crowd of eight people, each one seeming to urgently speak into a satellite phone, a smiling, curvy black woman waved Iona over to her. Once she arrived by her side, the woman hung the phone in midsentence and stood up to enfold Iona in a Chanel No. 5-clouded hug.

  “Ah, mija, you are way, way smaller than I expected. I got size eights but you’re not as tall as CJ said. He said you come up to his chest. I do that, so I thought you were at least five foot five, but you don’t look like you’re over five feet. Thank God that I thought to bring Mr. Yablonski. He’s our tailor. Jason, go wake up Mr. Yablonski. He’s in the guest cabin.” The woman shooed one of the young men from his seat at a large conference table.

  “What does CJ know about sizes? All the time with the big tatas and the wide hips, but I think you’ll carry babies all right. Excuse me, my biological clock is ticking and these days the only thing I think about is babies. I’m driving my mother crazy. She wants to be an abuelita, but she wants me married first, although one of my brothers has had three wives and I don’t see any children yet. But they’re guys and I’m just Willie Mae. Did I introduce myself? I’m Willie Mae Dollar, call me Will. I didn’t know you were black and so young. This means that CJ owes me $5,000. I told him you weren’t a dried-up old maid. Anyway.” Will continued talking as she walked Iona to the middle of the room.

  “People, this is Iona. She put most of this deal together.” There were nods and lifted drinks, some sodas but mostly beer and wine coolers. It was 7:00 p.m. East Coast, way past drinking time by the Oklahoma clock.

  Iona ducked her head and trailed along with the woman. “You’re the Will I talk to all the time, right?”

  “Ah, mija, I’m CJ’s personal assistant. I’ve been with him since I graduated from OU with an early-childhood education degree. I need it to work with a bunch of babies. My Papa works the cattle on CJ’s ranch. I’ve known him all my life. I probably know him better than his mother. Talk about tatas and hips. We’re on the company jet, four cabins and the lounge. Almost all the chairs except the ones at the conference table turn into single beds. I’m so used to it, I have trouble flying on commercial planes now.” She laughed and knocked on a door. “Mr. Yablonkski, here she is.”

  A small man with glasses thicker than a soda bottle bottom stared at her. They were of the same height although his was from age.

  “Oy, a pixie he has now. What happened to the Amazon?” he muttered to himself as he began pulling clothes out of a garment bag. Five dresses, three pants suits, and an assortment of blouses were laid onto a deep leather seat. “Put this on.” He shoved a blue silk sheath at her. He spun her around. “More in the back than I expected.”

  Iona ducked into the bathroom. It had a full-size shower plus a tub. “It’s my first flight, but I know you don’t get this on a commercial flight.” She slid the dress over her head and almost had it zipped when someone knocked on the door. Will popped her head in.

  “Mija, I figured you’d need better underthings. Here.” She thrust a bag full of bras, panties, garters, and hose at her.

  Iona tried to not like them but just sliding the silk panties on made her shiver. She added the bra and left the stockings and garters in the bag. The bra was a little tight. She was almost a C and this was a B. She finished dressing as quick as she could and stood on the stool Mr. Yablonski arranged in the middle of the main cabin. Iona was self-conscious, but nobody looked up from what they were doing. Clint raised his glass from the back. She gave him a half smile and turned and twisted at the tiny tailors instructions.

  Forty-five minutes later, she was back in her regular jeans and sweater, pecking away at her computer when CJ popped out of the back bedroom. He took a glass of scotch from Clint, listened to the combined ideas from his team and walked directly to Iona and kissed her, hard.

  “Hey, Lil Bit, did you sleep okay?” he asked as he flopped into a seat beside her.

  “Yes, thank you.” She dropped her head as her cheeks warmed up, knowing that at least it wouldn’t show on her skin.

  He grinned because he did see it. “Okay, people, what do we have?”

  “The Chinese proposal undercuts us by about €2 billion. They’re offering to build and run the wind farm for right at €43 billion for the first fifteen years. We are offering the same but for €45 billion. Our only advantage is that we can install the infrastructure throughout the island but if you throw in the Chinese savings, even if the Brits install it, it’ll still be cheaper.” The young man looked around to get the okay from his colleagues.

  CJ grunted. “How do we save this, people? This is almost three years’ worth of work that’s going down the toilet unless we can get a cheaper price.” Silence met his statement.

  Iona shifted in her seat. “You don’t need a cheaper price. You need to adjust your price up about thirty percent or so. I’m really bad at math.” The soft sound of the engine was all that could be heard for a few minutes. All eyes were turned to her.

  “Explain.” CJ leaned over her, his hands braced on the thick leather arms of the chair.

  “I have to apologize first. What we, I, didn’t do and what the Chinese didn’t do was to adjust for the cost of a living wage in the proposal. This will be under UN rules and regulations. They insist on proper wages based on the prevailing labor rate.

  “Our proposal is closer to the mark. It projects out fifteen years, but I didn’t automatically do a local COLA. It’s based on US wages. That brings our proposal down to €43 billion. But the Chinese proposal only delivers the infrastructure without any bells or whistles and is based on 2008 numbers for labor. Last December, the workers in this particular region went on strike, one of the first successful ones in the nation, and demanded an increase in salary of fifteen percent with a guarantee of another three each successive year. That region holds most of their skilled welders, concrete men, and construction artisans, plus there’s an emphasis on computer specialties there. That would put their bid under by about €7 billion if my calculations are correct.”

  The silence stretched out over a few minutes. “I could be wrong,” Iona finished weakly.

  “Bu
t. You. Are. Not! Williams, you, Jason, and Cedric get on this right away. I want a new proposal for me to go over in two hours. We land in Gatwick in…”

  “Three hours or so,” Clint supplied.

  “Three hours. Lil Bit has saved your collective Ivy League asses, and she’s going to go get some rest with me in my cabin. Do not disturb me for the next two hours.” CJ beamed his smile at her, tugged her past the already busy team, picked up two glasses and a bottle of scotch, and hustled her into the master cabin.

  CJ caressed her body from shoulder to hip before he flipped Iona onto the king-size bed so hard she bounced. She was scrambling off the bed when she heard the snick of the door being locked. She wanted to go home but she was pulsing under the heat of his eyes. “Damn, he’s big. Is he that big all over?”

  “As a matter of fact I am big all over, Lil Bit, but I got this feeling that you will be more than able to handle big ole me.” He inched his T-shirt off and unbuttoned his pants with cool deliberation.

  “You’ve not asked me if I want to have sex with you,” Iona said. She crab crawled up to the head of the huge bed, trying not to pant or show the arousal that was making her think things she only thought about every now and then. That is, if every day was every now and then. She’d stopped using her BOB, battery operated boyfriend, eighteen months ago when she’d spent three days with it and some Ben & Jerry’s. She’d been sore for over three weeks. So she’d taken the celibate route since then, concentrating on this once-in-a-lifetime deal. She loved putting together different strings of disparate ideas and information until they solidified into a complex energy deal. It was exhilarating. “But I want to have really good sex that makes me holla and shout before I die.”

  “I’ll make you holler, shout, and call to God, Lil Bit, but you have to come to me. You have to trust me and you have to give yourself to me. Totally.” He stood beside the bed, naked, gloriously so. His large dick swayed as he moved over the bed, pre-cum glistening on the tip, beckoning her to taste it.

  Without hesitation she crouched low on the bed, looking up at his dick moving with every breath. “Have you been tested recently? I’ve never had completed sex with another person and I kinda want my first time to be without a rubber, just for the first time. I promise you that I just finished my cycle, and besides, I have a morning-after pill…Shit! I left it in the damn cabinet in the bathroom. Anyway, I can get another one.” Iona stopped.

  CJ’s laughter started quietly then built in volume and intensity until she had to join in.

  “Oh, Lil Bit, you are gonna be the death of me. I would be very happy to make love to you without protection.” He collapsed on the foot of the bed and pulled her by her ankles to him.

  “I’m the COO of a major multinational corporation, and as such, I have a complete medical exam quarterly. I am disease-free and my little guys are very, very healthy so we will be very careful about this until we, you and I, decide to have another Lil Bit.” Iona lay face-to-face with CJ.

  Her hands buried in his shoulder-length curly blond hair, massaging her fingers into his scalp. His eyes sparkled a darker green and his smile deepened as he leaned over to kiss her. It was a soft kiss, full of promise and tenderness. He pulled her into a tighter embrace, licking her lips, biting her tongue, and teaching her what she needed to know in order to please him while he was pleasing her.

  He smelled wonderful, deep, earthy, savory with an undertone of musk and spice. Grabbing her hair into a tail to hold, he loomed over her without touching, looking deep into her eyes then, confident by what he had seen, he sucked her bottom lip into his mouth where he used his tongue to taste it over and over again until she pulled it away with an audible pop.

  “Or Big Baby CJ,” she said before she dove back into their kissing. She could feel his erection pressing against her knees. “Can we kiss and fuck at the same time? I really want you.”

  “You have to learn patience, but you are right, if I don’t get into that”—he slipped his fingers into her soaking pussy, stroking around and around her clit, making her gasp and thrash—“soon, baby, oh so soon, then I’m liable to bust or just make a fool of myself by shooting all over this bed.”

  “This should be really, really good,” Iona said. CJ spread her wide, looking at her pussy and lapping up the pools as the moisture pulsated from her, while he tasted and smelled the center of her. She moaned into her cupped hands, trying to be quiet, trying to hold back from coming in a full-throated scream.

  “Take your hands down, Lil Bit. You always come so that I hear every gasp and groan.” He licked her clit in a tandem of hard then soft and used his arms to keep her steady as she screamed her release into the cabin.

  While her pussy contracted into tinier spasms, he positioned his throbbing dick at her entrance ready to take her, allowing her nether lips try to suck him in. His big hands cupped her head.

  “Look at me, baby, look at me. Now!” he yelled as he plunged into her slick, wet, sucking pussy. This time they screamed together. “Don’t come ’til I tell you, Lil Bit.”

  He couldn’t stop stroking within her, allowing her to come back to earth. “Does it hurt? Is it okay with you?”

  “Oh shit, more than okay…Ahh I want to do this forever. Oh, shit, don’t stop.” He plunged in deep.

  “You ready to come again?”

  “Please, CJ, please. Let’s come. I want to feel this. Please, baby, please.”

  “You beg so pretty, I think we deserve this.” He stroked down, rubbing her clit at each movement. He clutched her tight and yelled. “Come, now.”

  They came together with sweat and cum making a puddle under her hips. He collapsed on his back, pulling her close to lie over him like his blanket.

  “Thank you,” Iona whispered, eyes closing in exhaustion.

  “You’re welcome, Lil Bit, but no thanks necessary. I make it my business to keep my woman happy,” CJ said. “You belong to me now.”

  Iona was too sleepy to argue.

  Chapter Six:

  Sunday in TJ

  “CJ, wake up. We’re about an hour out.” The disembodied voice sounded in the cabin.

  “I’m up.” CJ didn’t move from his spot. Iona was wrapped tightly in his arms, timidly trying to rise out of the bed.

  “Don’t you move, Lil Bit. It only means we’re close. Gatwick is busy so we might circle for an hour or so. Mmm, you smell like me, girl,” CJ said.

  “But you smell like a New York whorehouse.”

  He laughed. “Like you know what a whorehouse smells like. Come on and get showered.” He pulled her into a complete bathroom with an open shower. Along the shelves was a selection of shower gels, body creams, deodorant, toothpaste, and lotions, all of them the same brands she used at home.

  At her cocked eyebrow, CJ grinned. “I figured you didn’t have toiletries in that teeny, tiny bag you have. I called Will while you were upstairs packing. Told her to get what you might need for a few days after I looked in your bathroom.” He adjusted the temperature and pulled her into the water.

  “It takes hours for my hair to dry, you know.”

  “I didn’t know, never had a woman with dreads before. Seems like I have a learning curve to work on.” He began washing her hair. “Like they feel so soft and they curl around my fingers. And while I’m at it, you’re ticklish on your neck, your pussy feels hotter and silkier than this dang ol’ recycled water, and you’re light as a feather.” He lifted her high and placed her on his turgid dick. She slid down the full length of him, settling down when their pelvic bones met. He held her close, not allowing her to move even when she squirmed around, wanting to repeat the orgasm that they’d shared earlier.

  CJ kept her still, washing her back and rubbing soap over her surprisingly big breasts. He pulled her nipples away from her body, watching as they sprang back to her chest. She whimpered and held onto his shoulders, biting his collarbone and enjoying how each bite made him twitch inside her.

  They gasped as he jerked her
away from his body and put her outside the shower. CJ shouted as he turned the cold water on full blast.

  “You leave, Lil Bit, or I won’t make it out of this room, much less to the meeting at four.”

  Iona grabbed up her creams and stumbled into the bedroom. She wrapped a towel around her hair, put on her second set of jeans, sweater, and Vans. Discarding the towel to plat her hair so that it hung leaving a wet trail from her neck to her butt, she walked into the main cabin. She tried to come in without anyone noticing, but as soon as the door to the cabin closed, the entire team rose in a standing ovation.

  CJ followed, catching her before she could retreat back into the bedroom. “They’re just jealous, Lil Bit. None of these old things had that much fun in a long, long time.”

  He moved her to the buffet set up along the bar, heaping a plate with finger food and pouring her a glass of wine, him a scotch.

  “Can I have a scotch, Clint?” Iona asked. Clint poured her three fingers.

  “You’re gonna need your strength,” Clint said “These Ivy League hotshots can’t seem to put the presentation together without somebody holding their hands.”

  Iona found a spot away from the general brainstorming that occupied the conference table. She fired up her computer and, after sipping from the scotch, began typing furiously. She nibbled on the sandwiches and fruit that Will put on a table at her elbow. Iona choked on a piece of cheese when CJ came over to where she was sitting. Her cheeks warmed up, but she resisted the urge to drop her head. A breath escaped her as he sat at the opposite end of the center conference table in a loud discussion with his team. He listened to their suggestions and shook his head in agreement when they shot down his ideas.

  From time to time, CJ looked over to her, trying to catch her attention, but she continued her concentrated typing until they were doing the final circle over London.