“Help me, Dylan,” she moaned feverishly.
“God bless it,” he hissed, and she heard the fierce anguish in his tone. His hold tightened on her hips and ass, and his muscles swelled impossibly hard. He pounded her down on him, and she was tossed in a sea of pleasure and pressure. She felt his thumb on her clit, pressing and sliding. Lifting her cheek off his chest, she screamed and bucked her hips against his hand. Orgasm slammed into her.
Her eyes sprang wide at the sensation of his cock swelling in her while she shuddered in bliss. He jerked her down against him, nailing her to his lap as he started to come. Through her haze of pleasure, she saw him watching her with a tight, glittering gaze, a slight snarl shaping his mouth. A muscle leapt in his rigid cheek. She felt his cock convulse deep inside her. With a hand at the back of her head, he pushed her down until their foreheads touched.
“I’ll always give you what you want, Alice. Always.”
The words sounded like they’d been ripped out of his throat. No, Alice thought wildly as he moved her over him again, withdrawing and sinking and making her gasp.
Surely she was mistaken, but his words sounded like they’d come from someplace even deeper.
TWELVE
Alice’s brain was confused. She couldn’t figure out why she kept cherishing those strange, wild, emotional moments making love with Dylan and, at the same time, cringed in anxiety when she found herself indulging in the experiences and the memories so completely.
“I think I’m going crazy,” she said quietly, her lips feathering Dylan’s skin. They’d turned out the light and set the alarm. He lay on his back with his arms surrounding her, and she on her side pressed against him, her cheek resting on his chest. His idly caressing fingers on her shoulder slowed.
“Why do you say that?”
&nb
sp; “Because I can’t figure it out.”
“What out?” She pressed her lips to his skin, a pressure building in her chest. “Alice?” he prompted.
“Why everything seems so strange.”
Her thready whisper sounded very fragile in the yawning silence that followed.
For a moment, he didn’t speak. Alice imagined he was trying to decode her feminine oddness in his rational male brain, and again experienced that twinge of discomfort. She was exposing too much of herself.
Dylan’s hand opened at her back. He stroked her along her spine. She sensed a tension building in the air between them and regretted her momentary weakness.
“Aren’t you going to ask me anything about the reports?” she asked.
“Did you actually get anything out of them? I thought you were too distracted,” he murmured. She heard the humor in his voice and suppressed a sigh of relief. The tense moment had passed.
“I didn’t attend to them a fraction as much as I could have, but I have a few preliminary observations.”
“Okay. Let’s hear them,” he said, his firm, matter-of-fact tone reassuring her.
“That new marketing firm you hired for the Northwest region? You might want to consider hiring them globally for the VitaThirst campaign,” she said, referring to a new and popular Durand energy drink. “That social media campaign they’ve designed has had a huge effect on sales for the eighteen- to twenty-four-year-old age group, and the cost of their campaign was a fraction of what other regions spent.”
“Yeah. I noticed that. The Northwest was our test market, and that’s where we hit the hardest.”
“To good effect, obviously. But I’d warn against assuming that because you had such awesome results generally, that you’d spent your advertising dollars as wisely as you could have.” She delved into her findings, hitting the statistical highlights of what she’d absorbed so far. She sensed Dylan’s sharp focus on her the whole time, although he remained silent. “My quick and dirty cost-benefit analysis of the Northwest region campaign versus your more traditional campaigns in the other regions shows a fifteen-to-one payback, factoring in relative population of the region, age group disbursement, company costs and net sales,” she finished.
“If that’s true, then we also might need to make a correction in regard to our targeted market as well. We were going for the twenty-five- to thirty-nine-year-old health-obsessed urbanite,” Dylan mused.
“That’s exactly what I was thinking. The numbers suggest that the younger person in more sparsely populated, ‘outdoorsy’ regions might be just as prime for the product, if not more so, than your current target. Those commercials that little advertising firm came up with were hilarious. They went viral, you know,” Alice said, yawning. It took her a few seconds to realize he didn’t speak. “If you don’t believe me, I can show you my numbers. I drilled it down. The spike in sales in that region has to be due to that advertising campaign.” She started to get up from bed despite her exhaustion, determined to get her notebook and defend herself.
Dylan halted her. He pulled her back against him.
“I’m not doubting you. I’m amazed, that’s all. You got all that, after looking at those reports—by your own admission distractedly—for a little over an hour?”
“I can do better with more time. I only got through the VitaThirst numbers.”
He laughed. The low rough sound of his mirth made her stiffen.