Page 6 of The Seascape Between Us

I looked down at myself, completely unsurprised to find my pants open and my cock out while I leisurely stroked its length. A part of me hated myself for getting off to memories of a man who had broken my heart, but I couldn’t bring myself to stop. Instead, I imagined the man I met with today. Fuck, he’d look hot on his knees in front of me, my cock pushing between his pink lips.

My hand moved fast, balls drawing tight.

Even hotter, Daniel naked and bent over that cheap desk of his, spread wide and desperate for me. I’d grip the perfectly rounded globes of his ass and spread them, letting me look down at that hungry pink hole before thrusting inside him. The sound of his quiet gasp, his low moans, would make me fuck him harder, faster.

I came with a strangled groan all over my hand and on my shirt. I knew I should have changed. With a sigh, I wiped my hand on my shirt since it was garbage-bound, anyway.

I couldn’t believe I’d jerked off thinking of a man who had cheated and lied to me. In my gut, I knew going forward, I would be smart to avoid Daniel as much as I could while arranging to sell the hotel—but I knew I wouldn’t.

Chapter Three

Daniel

I’d spent the better part of my morning in my office, looking through the hotel’s financial records and reviewing paperwork from my accountant. A mix of devastation and hopelessness left me feeling nauseous. I had no idea how to fix any of this.

There’d be no appealing to Grey’s softer side. When it came to me, he didn’t seem to have one. I wasn’t sure what I had ever done to Grey to earn such animosity.

Back when we were kids, I’d thought maybe he’d been extra harsh, so I would get the hint that all I had been to him was a hook-up. Someone to entertain him while he’d been stuck spending the summer with his father. I probably should have figured it out sooner, like when he’d stopped calling and returning my calls, but it just didn’t occur to me he was finished with me. After all, the last time we’d been together, he’d been toying with transferring to Bayside University in Saltwater Cove so he wouldn’t have to leave. Then, like someone had flipped aswitch, he stopped coming around and ignored my calls. Even when I left messages for him on his father’s landline, he didn’t return my calls.

Looking back, it had been so obvious, but I just didn’t catch on. Maybe I’d suspected, but I didn’t want to acknowledge what was happening. After all, by then, doctors had diagnosed Romona’s condition, and my future had been wiped clean. I was terrified. Grey had been like a life ring in a dark, turbulent sea, and I’d been clinging to him to keep from being dragged into the abyss… until he’d been gone, too.

You’re going nowhere, man. Did you think I would hang around going nowhere with you? I have a future. This is all you’ll ever be.

I hated thinking about the things he’d said to me that day. My face still burned with humiliation. Worse still, he hadn’t been wrong. Grey had gone on to start his own business, and he had more money than I’d ever seen in a lifetime, and here I was exactly where he’d left me—struggling to keep this hotel afloat.

The thing was, I had never been able to figure out how we’d gone from nearly two months of talking, laughing and fucking to him staring me down with furious disdain while he’d told me he was going back to school early and whatever we’d been doing with each other was done. Or why that same animosity remained seventeen years later.

He could say selling off my hotel was just business all he wanted, but it was pretty fucking personal to me. Maybe if I didn’t give him the numbers he needed right away, I could stall until I figured out a way out of this mess. Though, outside of winning a lottery, I couldn’t see a way to fix this. Besides, the way my luck had been running lately, Grey would probably sue me, or more likely, shove his way into my office and do it himself—or pay someone else to shove into my office and do it for him.

Raised voices from outside my closed office door pulled me from dark thoughts.

“What now?” I muttered, standing and crossing the short distance to the opening. I pulled the door open, and my stomach sank. Grey stood on the opposite side of the front desk, poor Carter standing opposite him, eyes wide like a deer in headlights.

What did he want now? Somehow, he looked even better than he did yesterday. Instead of a suit, he was dressed in a pair of jeans, a dark blue t-shirt and a blazer. While more casual than yesterday, he still looked expensive and put together, especially compared to my own gray pants and black button-down. At least I wasn’t covered in sweat and dirt from the roof this time, so that was something.

“There he is,” Grey announced brightly. His dark eyes gleamed, and his hard smile sent a wave of unease rolling through me. “I was asking this delightful but clearly confused young man to summon you.”

“He wants the second-floor suite,” Carter said, turning his panicked gaze to me. “I tried to explain it wasn’t available—”

“How isn’t it available?” Grey cut in. “There are no cars in the lot. Isanyonestaying here?”

I was staying in the suite in question. In the off-season, the suites, with their small kitchenettes, were rarely used by guests. Since I sold the home I’d grown up in with my mother and Ramona, I’d been living in the hotel. My friend, Brody, had been on me to find an apartment, but I didn’t want to take on the expense. Of course, I didn’t want Grey to know any of that. The less he knew about my personal life, the safer I felt.

“That room is having work done,” I lied, then turned to Carter. “You can take your break. I’ll handle this.”

Carter nodded gratefully and hurried away, ducking into the dining room on the opposite side of the lobby. Once he was gone, Grey turned his hard smirk on me.

“You’re going tohandle me, are you?” That smirk widened but didn’t touch his hard, gleaming gaze. “Go ahead,handle me.”

After years of dealing with guests of every temperament, I was more than certain I could manage Grey. I turned my most neutral expression on him. “Whatever issues you have with me, I would appreciate it if you didn’t torment my staff while you were here.”

For a split second, I could have sworn his furious smile faltered, but it was back in place so quickly I couldn’t be sure.

“They’re my staff, too.”

“All the more reason not to act like an asshole around them,” I told him mildly.

Grey’s eyes widened theatrically, and he pressed a hand to his chest in faux outrage. “My goodness, is that how you speak to your guests? No wonder you don’t have any.”

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