Egotistically Yours by Hayley Faiman

Chapter Thirty

BETHANIE

The bathwater iswarm and perfect. Closing my eyes, I mentally go over everything that happened after I walked through the door. Laurent held me, he admitted that he’d been drinking and spent the night on Lawrence’s sofa. I believe him, I looked into his eyes when he told me and I saw nothing except the truth.

But why?

Why did he call Lawrence to talk? Why did he get drunk? Why did he check out?

These are all questions that I want the answers to, at least I think that I do. Maybe he wanted to leave us? Maybe he was trying to decide if we were what he really wanted? I’m not sure that I want to, but I think that I at least deserve to know the answer.

There’s a knock on the other side of the bathroom door and I call out for Laurent to come in. The door only opens a crack and his head peeks through. He smiles at me, his lips curving up seductively.

“Dinner is here, want me to bring it to you?”

“In the bathtub?” I ask.

He shrugs a shoulder. “I could come in, we could eat together.”

“In the bathtub?” I repeat.

Laurent smirks. “Could be fun. It’s only pizza, it’s not like it’s something we have to eat on plates.”

Sinking my teeth into my bottom lip, I try to hide my smile, but the thought of eating naked in the tub with him does something to me, it fills me with excitement.

“Let’s do it,” I blurt out.

Laurent chuckles, then a few moments later he’s naked behind me, his legs on either side of me, my back leaning against his torso and an open pizza box on the floor that only his long arms can reach.

“Why did you check out?” I ask.

He hums. “I thought we were going to discuss your visitor?” he asks.

Taking a bite of pizza, I chew and swallow, trying to ignore the strange man and that whole topic. I don’t know what it’s about and honestly, I just want to pretend it doesn’t exist. I can’t really though, I know once I walk out of this house, out of this bubble, he could be lurking anywhere waiting to hurt me.

“We will,” I whisper when he doesn’t say anything right away.

Laurent continues his silence. Then I feel his chest rise and fall with a silent, heavy breath, possibly a silent sigh. Whatever the case, he begins to speak and when he does, my stomach drops.

“I wasn’t going to tell you,” he says, keeping his voice low and his tone even. “My mother called me from prison.”

“Did she?” I ask, though my heart is racing and my blood is pumping furiously throughout my entire body.

That woman is awful. I saw what she did to Tennessee, what she tried to do, and it was terrible. It was cruel and it was ugly. There is no telling what she would attempt to do to me. Then something triggers my brain into remembering what the man said to me in the alleyway today.

Every step you take, I’m documenting. When this is done, I’m going to come back and get you. When you’re all alone, when you’ve been tossed to the side. When you least expect it.

“She’s heard about you, about Tucker, and she’s not happy,” he states.

And it all makes sense. I don’t want to believe that this woman would do that, but at the end of the day, I know that she’s capable of just about anything.

“She’s sent that man after me, to stalk me, to scare me, to threaten me.”

Laurent doesn’t answer me, though I didn’t really pose a question. It was a statement. He knows it just as much as I do. He clears his throat, then his arms wrap around me and his mouth touches my shoulder.

“I think that’s exactly what’s happening. Maybe my mom called and wanted me to stay away from you last night? Maybe she’s got some master plan, but it doesn’t matter, because just like with my dad and Tennessee, she’s going to come out the loser in this.”

Biting my bottom lip, I wonder what the hell is going to go on and how far will Susan go to get whatever she wants as her end result because I know without a doubt that she has something in mind and an ending that only she will be satisfied with.

“She’s not going to win, baby. She didn’t win with my dad and she’s not going to win with me either.”

Turning my head, I look back at him. He tips his chin to look down at me and his lips curve up into a grin. It’s more of a smirk than anything, and cocky. Sexy too.

“She’s not going to win, baby,” he says before he bends down and touches his mouth to mine.

We’ve abandoned our pizza and I’m glad for it because as soon as his lips touch mine, my body remembers that he hasn’t touched me in over twenty-four hours. All of the exhaustion melts away and I am suddenly filled with need.

Turning around in the water, I lift my arms and wrap them around his neck as his tongue pushes past my lips and circles my mouth. Moaning, I shift my legs so that I’m straddling his hips. I sigh into his mouth, as I feel his hard length against my center.

Laurent reaches for my ass, grabbing handfuls as he spreads my cheeks apart, then I feel his hand shift and his fingers slide through the crack, circling my back entrance. Ripping my lips from his, I try to keep from reacting to the touch, but I can’t.

My head falls backward between my shoulders and my lips roll, searching for anything, and sliding along the wet length of his hard cock. He groans, his fingers on my ass gripping me harder, while the other continues to lightly touch and explore.

“Baby,” he murmurs, leaning forward, and then I feel his lips against the center of my chest.

Then I feel his lips move and suck my nipple between them. I’m sure some kind of milk comes out, but honestly, I couldn’t give a fuck right now. My hips move as I grind my clit against the underside of his smooth, wet length.

His fingers circle my back entrance, massaging it, then he slips a finger inside of me there. I gasp, lifting my head and looking down into his eyes. We’ve slept together plenty of times, before and after Tucker, and never has he touched me where he is now.

Nobody ever has. Not that I have a lot of experience with men. It doesn’t matter because something that I thought was taboo feels amazing and all I care about is that part right now—the amazing part.

Lifting my hands, I grip his shoulders, my nails digging into his flesh as I look at him. “Sink down, baby, take me inside of you—everywhere.”

God, do I want that, and I want it right this second. Lifting my hips, I slip one hand between us and lift his cock, position it against my center and slowly sink down along his length, then return my hand to his shoulder to hold on for dear life.

He smiles, his finger working my ass, never stopping as it slowly moves in and out of me. Then he sinks it completely inside before he shifts forward and touches his lips to mine.

“I want that pretty ass to fuck my finger, Bethie. Make yourself come,” he demands softly.

I want that too.

So that is exactly what I do.

When I come, it’s so intense that when I pinch my eyes closed, I see stars. Amazing doesn’t begin to cover what this moment felt like. There is an intimacy that comes with this moment, and maybe it’s all in my mind, but maybe it’s also just a culmination of everything that’s happened the last few days.

I don’t know, but I’m not going to question it. Not right now, at least.

LAURENT

After drying off,I slide my arm beneath Bethie’s back and knees and pick her up to carry her to bed. She squeals and lets out a laugh. It’s a beautiful sound, and I didn’t realize it, but I needed that from her.

Laying her in bed, I crawl in beside her. “What about the pizza box?” she asks softly.

I hum, wrapping my arm around her middle and bring her back against my torso before slipping my thigh between her legs. “I’ll take care of it in the morning.”

She must be really exhausted because she says okay and then I hear her soft snores fill the room. Smiling, I close my eyes and instantly drift off to sleep as well.

It feels like seconds later when a loud sound echoes and I sit straight up. Bethie is still snoring, my heart races as I wait for whatever the fuck that was to happen again. I only wait a moment. Reaching into my nightstand drawer, I grab my handgun and head on a search of the condo … naked.

It doesn’t take me long to find the reason for the noise. There’s a dead bat on my back deck and I stare at it for a moment. I’ve had birds run into the windows before and die, some don’t, but most do. But a bat? Never. They usually aren’t flying fast enough to really do much more than stun themselves.

Deciding I’m not going to try to deal with it tonight, especially if it’s just made itself pass out, I walk around and check all of the locks. The back deck door is unlocked, but then again, it typically is. It’s not like someone can just open it and waltz right in, not at its height anyway.

I’m wide awake now, so I decide to grab some shorts and start working a little in my office until Tucker wakes up for his middle-of-the-night feeding. Slipping back into the bedroom, I tug on a pair of athletic shorts and head back downstairs, my gun still in my grasp.

I don’t know what makes me keep it beside me, maybe it’s that stranger stalking Bethie so that I can protect her and Tucker? I’m not sure, but I feel better with it at my side. Opening up my laptop, I power it on and wait for it to start up.

When it’s up, I start to search for investments that maybe I haven’t thought of. Outside of the box investments. I’m not too proud to think that I have a handle on Astor Investments yet.

I am definitely a baby bird in this game, but I’m going to build up a decent company. I may not ever do what my father did, but I’m sure as fuck going to try my hardest to make a good living for myself, my family, and my employees.

Then something tugs at me, urges me to search for Cody. I don’t know why, I’m not sure what inwardly demands that I look him up, that I delve into his life and research him some more.

I’m sure that it has to do with all I’ve learned about him, and then his wife showing up to my office yesterday, but I can’t shake that something is seriously going on with him, hell, with the both of them.

Clearing my throat, I begin to look. I Google his name, then I go on several different forms of social media, and all yield the same things. He’s got his picture up, his kids and wife looking as if they are the perfect American family. It’s all a facade, something just for the masses to see.

There has to be more.

Something else.

Something more sinister. I just feel that shit.

Then on the fifth Google page, deep into the nonsense of suggestions, I see something. It isn’t his legal name, but I recognize the username anyway.

Roof2009

Clearing my throat, I click on the OnlyFans account of this Roof2009. Fuck. It’s Cody alright, just like I knew it would be. It’s goddamn Cody on OnlyFans. It shouldn’t surprise me. I don’t dig too deep into his shit, mainly because what he’s posting isn’t anything that I want to see.

It’s very clear that when you pay for his content, it’s basically clips of him fucking someone. No faces, just parts. And he specializes in cream pies. Lovely. His profile, or feed, is all pictures of women’s panties with his cum staining the inside. He sells those too, for a high price.

Leaning back in my chair, I stare at the feed, not because I want to look at Cody’s jizz, but because I’m trying to figure out how someone who supposedly has the business and money that Cody does, along with the contacts, is selling shit this way.

I must be lost in thought because I don’t even hear Bethie walk into the office until she’s called my name a few times. My head jerks and I look over to see her standing in the doorway, leaning against the jamb with Tucker in her arms.

“Fuck, baby. I’m sorry, I’d meant to get him when he woke up, I didn’t hear,” I mutter.

“You looked like you were really focused on something. What was it?” she asks.

I think about lying to her, about hiding it from her, but I decide against it. She deserves to know everything. There shouldn’t be any secrets between us, not that this is something I really give a shit about, but it would be nice to get her take on it, especially since she does know a bit about my business.

Turning the computer around, I lift a brow and wait for her to take in what she’s seeing. “You’re showing me something, but I need more,” she says.

Laughing, I shut the screen, then I tell her exactly what it was. Her eyes widen and she walks over to the chair that is in front of my desk and slowly sinks down. She lifts her face to meet mine, and I watch as her nose wrinkles.

“Ew,” she whispers. “Why would he do that? What if his business associates, what if his employees found it?”

“That’s what I thought too, but the odds of them knowing his college fraternity nickname and putting two and two together are slim. But it’s weird right?”

Bethie nods slowly, then she licks her lips and her eyes meet mine. “I get weird vibes from them both,” she states. “Maybe it’s just their kink that has me feeling that way, maybe this is just part of that, and it doesn’t mean anything, but yeah, it’s weird.”

“On a business level, it has me a bit concerned about his financial status.”

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

I can’t even answer her, because I have no goddamn clue. “I’m going to talk to my dad, I think.”

“That’s a wonderful idea. Now, let’s go back to bed, that is, if we can sleep after seeing that.”

Chuckling, I stand and walk around my desk toward her. “Has he eaten?” I ask.

She hums. “And been changed. He’s ready to go back to bed, Daddy.”

I can’t deny I like the way she says the word, daddy, it’s hot. I don’t say that though, instead I slip Tucker from her arms and carry him toward his room. Together we place him back down in his crib, then we slip into our own bed. In the end, neither of us has an issue falling back asleep.