Greed (Seven Vices Series Book 1) Read online

  “That must suck,” Oliver said. “To come together over something that important and then know that you’re never going to see them again . . .”

  I shrugged even though that hit a little too close to home, especially with thoughts of Javier still on my mind. “Yeah, but that’s life,” I said brusquely.

  Oliver must have sensed that I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, because he let the subject drop. “Well, you haven’t missed much around the city,” he said. “It’s been pretty rainy and miserable.”

  “And yet you still found it in you to come by my office every day that I was gone?” I asked, trying for teasing but sure my tone was a little too serious.

  Oliver ducked his head, looking embarrassed. “Yeah, well,” he muttered.

  I laughed and shook my head. For everything that I couldn’t stand about Oliver, there was something about him that I just liked. It wasn’t just sexual attraction either. He knew what he wanted, and he went after it. I admired that.

  We chatted about his work and about Le Monde’s next plans for a while, until we had both finished our drinks. Then, Oliver looked at his watch. “I should probably get you home,” he said, a faint smile playing at the corners of his lips.

  “I imagine you’re going to be up bright and early tomorrow morning to go in to work?”

  I groaned. “Don’t remind me,” I said as we approached my office, my arm looped in his. “Seriously, the amount of paperwork I’ve come home to is absolutely heinous.”

  “I can imagine,” Oliver said. “I always hate that at the end of a long business trip.”

  I lingered next to his car for a moment. “Well, I should probably get myself home,” I said.

  “No way. Let me drive you,” Oliver said. “I know it’s not far, but come on.”

  “It’s in the opposite direction from where you need to go, though,” I pointed out.

  Oliver shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  “Alright,” I said finally. I got into the car with him and was secretly pleased that he was willing to drive me home, even though I knew it wouldn’t take long.

  “You know, you never told me about you and your cousins,” I said, trying to sound casual.

  Oliver looked over at me for a moment, puzzled. “I take it that Avery has been whispering in your ear,” he sighed.

  “Well, sort of. But don’t blame her, I wanted to know. I thought I knew everything . . . but I guess I didn’t know much at all about your life,” I said. “I’d like to know more though. . .”

  He idled the car outside my building and then put it in park.

  He took a deep breath. “They showed up to my place, they had nowhere else to go. I did what any other person would do,” he said, not looking at me.

  I turned in my seat toward him. “I know, but you never mentioned that you grew up without money . . . I’ve made a terrible assumption there I’m afraid.”

  “You and everyone else sweetheart,” he sighed.

  In that moment, I found it hard to reconcile the man before me, with the man who I saw splattered all over the tabloids every other day. Why did he insist on allowing them to portray him like some rich jerk who feels nothing and helps no one?

  “It must have been difficult for you, taking both your cousins into your home, while also raising you sister. I can’t even imagine the weight that you were carrying on your shoulders.”

  He turned and looked me in the eye. “It was a no-brainer. Yes, my family eventually become wealthy, but I still remembered what it was like to be hungry and to go without. I remembered watching my father working day and night, hustling every deal he could, to get us out of that life.” He looked pained as he continued on. “Will and Julian were in the same boat, but they weren’t lucky enough to have my dad. I could easily have ended up on the streets like them,” he replied, his hands shaking as he gripped the steering wheel.

  “You did a good thing, Oliver,” I said sincerely. “There’s no getting around that.” I reached out to steady his hand, slowly removing it from the steering wheel and bringing it up to my lips. He looked at me bewildered as I placed a tender kiss on his knuckles.

  In answer, Oliver leaned over and kissed me sweetly on the lips, his thumb lightly tracing my cheek. It was silent and tender, and I felt so at peace being alone with him in that moment. As he pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine. “I really thought you’d never speak to me again,” Oliver whispered. He lifted his head and looked me square in the eyes.

  I can’t quite say what came over me in that moment, but the next thing I knew, I was unbuckling my seatbelt and climbing over onto his lap. I hadn’t performed a maneuver like that since my junior year. All I could think about was how much my body had been aching for him in the weeks since the dinner party.

  Oliver looked pleasantly surprised as I straddled him, watching my hands as I reached out to feel him. I ran my hands over his hard chest, then up along his shoulders and down his biceps. I’d never had a chance to feel his body and it was a heady feeling to have him so close, beneath my fingertips.

  Our breaths were becoming so heavy they were starting to fog up the windows. Oliver leaned forward and kissed me deeply, his tongue insistently pushing into my mouth. I wanted to giggle almost at the fact that we were making out in his car. But then Oliver’s hand came up between my legs and giggling was the furthest thing from my mind.

  I groaned as Oliver slid his hand under my skirt and into my panties, rubbing his fingertip over my nub and then pushing his fingers inside of me. He continued kissing me all the while, until I was whimpering against his mouth, breathless and needy and surprised by how badly I wanted this. It felt as though the time in Argentina had been building to just this, as though my body had been waiting for this—even though, like he said, we hadn’t left things on the best terms and I’d planned to never have contact with him again.

  His fingers dragged at my walls and I automatically opened my legs wider for him. He would thrust his fingers deep inside of me, and then he would twist them and slide them out at different speeds, first one and then the other, so that there was constantly some new sensation to be experienced. With his thumb, he continued to stimulate my clit as well, and I could feel my body rapidly tensing, ready to climax.

  “O-Oliver,” I stammered out. “Don’t stop,” I gasped. “That’s not—don’t stop!” I laughed breathlessly. “I just . . .” My eyes fell shut of their own accord, and whatever it was that I’d been trying to say—something about having missed him, maybe?—died on my lips.

  Oliver grinned sweetly at me and then continued to move his fingers inside of me. I gasped and arched back against the steering wheel, pleading wordlessly for release.

  It washed over me all at once, my core spiking with heat and desire. My walls clenched and released around his fingers, pulling him even deeper into me. Oliver continued to work me throughout, until I was writhing with overstimulation. Slowly, his fingers stilled. I took a deep breath and forced my eyes to open.

  “Stay with me tonight,” I blurted out.

  Oliver looked amused, like he hadn’t expected those words to ever come out of my mouth—to be honest, I hadn’t either. I didn’t want to retract them though. I bit my lower lip. I had already cum once, but it hadn’t done anything to slacken my lust. I wanted him to take me up to my apartment and lay me down on the sheets, to spread me out and work me open again, to kiss along my body. To slide deep inside of me, to fill my aching hole, to pleasure me again and again.

  I thought it was what he wanted as well. But Oliver glanced at his phone, and I suddenly wondered whether he was really taking me home now because he knew I was going into work early the following morning, or if there was some other motivation behind it.

  Sure enough, he grimaced. “There’s actually someplace I need to be,” he said.

  I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes. “Sure,” I said, getting up from his lap. I could hear the bitterness thick in my voice. This was still nothing mor
e than a game to him. He took me out for drinks and got me off in his car of all places, and now he was going to drive over to the next bar and meet the next woman and get her off as well.

  “Sophia,” Oliver said, sounding pained.

  I opened the door and tumbled out, already stalking towards my building. “Oliver, I swear to God, if you follow me, I’ll call the police and tell them you’re trespassing,” I snapped.

  Oliver used his long legs to his advantage, easily catching my arm. And when I looked up into his face, I could see exactly how upset he was. “Sophia, please, don’t be mad at me,” he said. “I’m not going to meet some other woman or whatever you’re thinking right now.”

  “Whatever,” I spat. “If not tonight then tomorrow night, or the next night—right?”

  “No,” Oliver said vehemently. “Sophia, you of all people should know what it’s like to have commitments that you can’t break. I remember how you were the night you found out about the crisis in Argentina. This is a similar thing.”

  “Oh, is it?” I asked sarcastically. “And who are you running off to save?” But the more I thought about it, the more sheepish I felt. “It’s a business thing?”

  “Sort of,” Oliver said, glancing away from me. I could tell that he wasn’t quite telling the truth, but I remembered what he had said before, about there being certain things that he couldn’t tell me about.

  And when I thought about it, he was the owner of some multi-billion-dollar international company. It made sense that every once in a while he might have to get on a business call late at night with people located around the world.

  “Oh,” I said quietly. I slumped towards him, and Oliver pulled me close, petting my hair.

  “I’m sorry I don’t do more to inspire your trust,” Oliver said softly.

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry I don’t just . . . trust you,” I told him.

  “If you were the kind of person to trust everyone that you met, you wouldn’t be half as interesting as you are,” Oliver told me.

  I smiled up at him, and he leaned down to kiss me, gently and sweetly. “Sleep well, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I’ll see you again soon.”

  As I walked upstairs to my apartment, my mind was spinning through dozens of different thoughts. The main thing was that I needed to relax, to stop getting worked up over the idea of Oliver going off with other girls. I knew it was going to happen, sooner or later. That was just the way he was.

  This relationship between him and I, it wasn’t supposed to mean anything, not to either of us. As long as I could hold him at arm’s length, we would be all right—we could both use the relationship to our advantage. I liked our dates; surprisingly enough, I liked spending time with him. Fantastic sex was a bonus. If we weren’t in an actual relationship, I didn’t have to let him develop into a distraction.

  I clung to that idea as I fell into bed: I didn’t want a relationship because I didn’t need a distraction.

  But for the first time, it felt like I was lying to myself.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Jeri brought me a coffee the following Monday, and I barely managed to suppress a groan, wondering what she wanted to talk about now. No doubt, she was curious about Oliver having come to see me at the office on Friday. I certainly wasn’t about to tell her about what happened.

  “Good morning, Sophia,” Jeri said, sitting in the chair across from me. “I just wanted to have a little chat with you—you know, woman to woman.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What do you want, Jeri?”

  “Well, I was just wondering what exactly you and Oliver talked about on Friday.”

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I told her frostily. “Now, if you don’t mind, I still have a lot of work to get caught up on.”

  Jeri narrowed her eyes at me. “Actually, it is my business,” she said. “Oliver and I are kind of seeing one another. So I hope you don’t mind my asking you to stay away from him. You had your chance with him, and you weren’t interested.”

  I stared at her for a long moment and then shook my head. What?! “Jeri, Oliver isn’t interested in you, can’t you see that?” I asked. “He hardly said two words to you when he came in here.”

  “That’s because we agreed that given his history with you—and the amount of money that he donated to Le Monde Ensemble—we should keep things strictly professional while either of us were at work, but especially around the office here. We wouldn’t want you to get upset.”

  “Sure,” I said sarcastically.

  “You know, he and I went out on a couple dates while you were in Argentina. We shared a night of passion, if you get my drift.” She sat back, a broad smile on her face. “He’s very experienced. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be with a guy who knows exactly what you want in bed?”

  I stared at her for a long moment, shock coursing through me. But, of course, I couldn’t let her see how surprised I was. I definitely couldn’t let her see that I was upset to hear that they had gotten together. I wasn’t supposed to care about him.

  “Jeri, I don’t want to hear about all the guys that you’re cheating on Jackson with,” I said, keeping my tone carefully neutral.

  Jeri rolled her eyes. “I’m not cheating on Jackson with a lot of guys,” she said. “It’s just . . . it’s Oliver Lewin. Again, I’m using my hall pass.”

  “Sure,” I said, shaking my head. “Well, regardless. I don’t think it’s very professional for us to talk about any of this.”

  “Maybe not,” Jeri said, getting to her feet and looking down her nose at me. “But I just wanted to make sure that you knew that whatever you had with Oliver, it’s over now. And I’d prefer if you didn’t make things awkward around the office by inviting him here.”

  “Whatever you say, Jeri,” I said, even though I hadn’t invited Oliver there—and things between us had been far from over on Friday night.

  Jeri walked out of my office, pointedly shutting the door behind her, as though she were making it obvious that she was giving me space.

  I stared blankly at the wall for a long moment, trying to fight back tears. I didn’t even know what I was so upset about. It was the same thing over and over with Oliver. I thought that he was sleeping with other women. Now, though, I had proof that he was.

  I sighed and dialed his number, even though I wasn’t really sure what to say to him.

  “Hey, Sophia, how are you today?” Oliver asked, a smile in his voice.

  “I understand that you have a hard time keeping it in your pants, and I pretty much expected you to sleep with someone else while I was in Argentina. But did it really have to be my assistant?”

  There was silence on the other end of the line. “What?” Oliver finally said, sounding perplexed. “Who told you that?”

  “Oh, come on. Does it really matter?” I asked. “I’m surprised I didn’t read about it in the tabloids, actually. Jeri’s the type who would flaunt something like that.”

  “Look, Sophia, I didn’t sleep with her,” Oliver said finally, sounding tired. “I don’t know what she’s told you, but—well, something happened, but not that.”

  My heart sank. Something did happen. “Sure, like that makes it any better,” I said bitterly.

  “We should talk about this in person,” Oliver said. “I should have brought it up on Friday, but I didn’t want to stress you out on your first day back to work. I didn’t realize that she was going to tell you about it, not so quickly. I mean, of course she did, but . . .” He trailed off, sounding frustrated.

  “I don’t want to see you again,” I said flatly. “Ever. Around the office or anywhere else. If you want to make donations to relief funds, by all means be my guest—but do me a favor and leave my organization out of it in the future.”

  “I understand that you’re probably upset right now,” Oliver said soothingly. “I know what this probably looks like. But Sophia, I need you to trust me. I’ve never lied to you before.”

  “Of
course you haven’t,” I said bitterly. “You never give me enough detail about anything to really trap yourself in lies. That business that you were going to on Friday night, how did that go?”

  Oliver sighed. “Sophia, I really wish I had time to explain everything right now, but I’m in the middle of something really important,” he said. “Maybe I could take you out to dinner tomorrow, though? That’s the earliest that I’m free.”

  “Are you even at work right now?” I asked bitterly.

  There was a momentary pause. “No,” Oliver finally admitted. “I promise I’ll explain everything when I see you, all right? I shouldn’t have been hiding this from you for so long anyway, but like I said, it’s top secret. If the media found out, they’d have a field day.”

  “You’re married?” I guessed. “You have kids?”

  “No,” Oliver said, sounding frustrated. “Sophia, please. I’m just asking you to trust me. At least give me a chance to explain.”

  “Oliver, I think you’ve already had plenty of time to explain,” I said cooly. “And you’ve shown that you really don’t want to explain. I think you and I are done. Goodbye.”

  “I’m just going to show up at your office tomorrow anyway,” Oliver said.

  “Don’t make things any more awkward than they need to be,” I said warningly. “Don’t make me get a restraining order against you—I’m sure the media would love that story as well, although I’m surprised this hasn’t been a thing with women that you’ve been with in the past.”

  Oliver groaned. “Seriously, you are the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met,” he said. “No matter what I try to tell you, you refuse to believe me—to even listen to me.”

  “Well maybe if you would try telling me the truth . . .” I said.

  “All right, you want to hear the truth?” Oliver asked angrily. “You want to know where I am right now? I’m at—” He cut off abruptly, and the background noise became muffled, like he was holding his hand over the microphone. “Sophia, I have to go,” he said when he came back on the line a moment later. Before I could say anything in response, he hung up.