The dial that tells us which floor we’re on is made of a brass arrow and roman numerals. Nothing so coarse as a digital screen could grace this elevator. A low bell signals that we’ve arrived. The doors slide open.
It’s someone else walking out of the elevator with a warm hand at her back, another body that manages to put one foot in front of the other in high heels.
A baroque mirror hanging on the wall shows a pretty woman beside a man twice her size, his face set in stern lines. They look well matched in an unexpected way, small against his strength, delicate where he’s broad. People underestimate you because you’re different. He’s right about one thing. We aren’t the same. We’re two different elements: water and stone.
At the end of the hallway we come to my room. It’s cowardice that turns my face down so I can fumble blindly through my small clutch. There are twenty million cards in here, none of them the hotel room key. I’m running out of breath even though I’m standing still.
A hand covers mine, and I freeze. How is he so calm at a moment like this? Has he been to a thousand hotel rooms with a thousand other desperate heiresses?
There are small white marks and raised lines. “Scars?” I whisper.
He knows what I mean. “Sometimes knives. Or barbed wire. A few wild animals have got their teeth in me over the years.”
“Is that a euphemism?” I still can’t bring myself to look him in the eye.
Especially when he laughs, low and rough. “Suppose so. You want to take a piece out of me, Harper St. Claire? I think you just might before you’re done.”
Then I do meet that blue gaze, because he has it wrong. “It’s the other way around. I don’t do… this. Whatever this is. I’m out of my depth here.”
It’s like ripping myself open, being so vulnerable with a man. I learned not to trust them early, from the men my mom married, from my father. Sutton could use this knowledge against me.
Those eyes turn dark with tenderness. And this, I realize, is what makes him different. This is the way that I underestimated him. Where he could have been cold and unfeeling, there’s this humanity to him instead. Humanity, but also pure male desire.
“We’ll start slow,” he says, and then his hand holds my face.
“Why me?” I’ve been pursued by men before, but never like this. “Is this some kind of competition thing? Because of my connection to Christopher?”
He gives a rough laugh. “Jesus Christ. You’re beautiful, smart, funny. Your connection to Christopher is the least interesting thing about you. I don’t give a damn who your stepbrother is.”
“I have to tell you something—” The words catch in my throat. “I think… what I mean to say is… I’m a little hung up on Christopher. I don’t want to be. I didn’t even think I was, but sitting there with you and Hugo and Bea, I realized it’s true.”
He’s laughing, the bastard, a silent, shaking kind of laugh. “Do you think that’s a surprise to me?”
I scrunch my nose. “It’s a surprise to me.”
“For your information I knew it as soon as you walked into the boardroom. It was clear from the way you talked about him, but it wasn’t going to stop me. Do you know why?”
“Because you want to have sex with me.”
A slow shake of his head. “I want to have sex with you so bad it hurts. It’s a distraction, the way my cock gets hard every time I look at you. The way I can’t stop imagining your breasts under those little T-shirts you wear. And that dress at the gala. It took every ounce of strength in me not to rip it apart with my bare hands, the Tanglewood Historical Society be damned.”
My breath catches. “A distraction.”
“A distraction, because I’m not only trying to have sex with you. I’m a direct man, honey. And I’m going to be direct about this. I’m courting you.”
“Courting?” My voice sounds faint. What an old-fashioned word. A lovely word. God, it’s a terrifying word.
“That’s what a man does when he’s determined and serious and wants a woman for his own. So yeah, you’re hung up on another man. You work on that little distraction while I work on one of my own.”
That’s the only warning I get before his lips cover mine. There are seconds that I could use to protest. No, I’m not ready, wait. My mouth is stubbornly silent until he finds it.
I gasp my surprise, but he swallows that down.
It feels good to be wanted, uninhibited, without a million reasons why we can’t be together. Without that unbreakable control that makes Christopher Bardot a man without weakness.
Of course I can’t deny that he’s part of this equation. He’s Sutton’s business partner. He’ll find out what we did, eventually. Will he feel regret? Jealousy? I hope so. Maybe that’s small of me, but there’s a much bigger part of me that wants him to finally, finally notice me.
Whatever I give Sutton he takes, even the trembling almost-kiss that seems to be all I can manage. If he really has been with a thousand other heiresses, they must know how to kiss better than this. I’m all rapid heartbeat and heavy breaths and sharp little whimpers.
He doesn’t seem to mind, shifting so his body is closer to mine, a steady presence that manages to soothe me. My back hits the wall of the hotel, and in the cool surface I can make out the gentle embossing of fleurs-de-lis. I’m the princess and the pea, my heated skin sensing even the slightest bump beneath layers of cloth. Who knew she was just turned on?
His hands are on my waist, and I have to move my body, have to gasp against his mouth, hoping he’ll understand. There’s an ache at my breast, and the only thing that will fix it is his touch. He takes the permission with a groan of surrender, cupping me through the filmy fabric of my dress.
On his tongue I taste the wine and the chocolate we had for dessert. I taste the man underneath, something elemental and addictive.
My mind is cloudy with the sensation of him, his touch and his taste. His rough breathing, the proof that I’m affecting this powerful man as much as he’s affecting me. I tug at his clothes, yanking at his shirt as if I can tear it away from his flesh.
“Slow,” he murmurs, his voice rough. “Steady with you.”
Like I’m a horse. The thought makes me laugh, though it’s a little wild. He swallows the laugh, too, drinking me down like he’s been dying of thirst. This stops being about Christopher Bardot and my revenge against his control. It starts being about the very male, very aroused body pressing against me, and all the elemental ways he wakes me up inside.
His thumb sweeps over the curve of my breast, searching, soothing, until my nipple becomes hard. And still he moves his thumb, back and forth, driving me insane. I make little whimpers because I can’t do anything else; we could have done this downstairs. He’s right. It’s terrible, but he’s right. I would have let him do anything, everything, if only it will calm this ache.
“Please,” I say, panting, pulling at the buttons on his shirt. “Come inside.”
He sinks his teeth into the flesh of my bottom lip, like a punishment, and I yelp because it only hurts when he pulls away. His eyes are a deep ocean blue, at the very bottom of the earth. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I say, but it’s really a hiss in the quiet hum of the hallway.
“Because we don’t have to—”
“Oh my God, if you say that you know better than me, I’m going… I’m going to… I don’t even know what I’ll do, but it’s definitely not have sex with you.”
My head falls to the side, because I’m fed up with men who tell me what to do, fed up with myself, because I keep falling for them, and that’s when I see his hand in a fist against the wall. All that frustration pressed against the pretty wallpaper, because he doesn’t want to rush me.
It warms me enough that it’s a surprise when his mouth nips my throat, making me jump. He nips me again, a little lower this time. And then moves the edge of his teeth along my collarbone. There’s something primal about him. Something dangerous and possessive, but he doesn’t use his pow
er to control me. He kisses me lower, between my breasts—and then even lower, on my stomach through the dress. That’s when I realize he’s on his knees.
Somewhere between the kissing and now, this man sank to his knees. He’s on the threadbare carpet, looking up at me. It’s like having a wild animal bow to you in the jungle. I’m panting, afraid to move.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, even though I want to say, Don’t stop, don’t stop.
“The goodnight kiss.”
“We already did that.” My lips feel swollen from what he did to me. It was more than a kiss, more than a claiming. He changed the molecules that form me, made me crave him. An ordinary peck will never be enough after this. Not when I know what’s possible.
He shakes his head, slow and determined. “Not yet.”
Without breaking eye contact he reaches down to the hem of my dress, pulling and pulling the fabric, revealing inches of my bare leg. It’s indecent, what’s happening in this hallway. At the very least we should be inside the room for this, but I can’t bring myself to stop him.
The dress is held up in bunches, the delicate silk spilling from between blunt fingers. I know the exact moment when he sees what I’m wearing underneath—the sharp intake of breath. There weren’t any panties in my carry-on bag to wear with this dress.
I only packed boring, utilitarian things to wear when confronting Christopher Bardot about my mother’s hospital bill. There was no way I could have guessed that I would end up backed up against a wall by this man, my dress ruched up to my waist, exposing my bare pussy to the world—or at least anyone on this floor who decides to open their door.
They would be shocked to see me, not only my bare sex. They would be shocked to see the way my upper body leans against the wall, needing its support, one shoulder strap of my dress fallen loose, my eyes heavy-lidded with acquiescence to whatever happens next. There’s a sense that I’ve done more than submit to him; that I’ve ordered him to his knees. Not with words but by need. Everything about his broad shoulders and his hard features speak of power, and it’s an unspeakable thrill to realize that he bows to me.
God, what power a woman can wield.
One hand holds my skirts while the other runs up the outside of my calf. The inside of my thigh. His knuckles brush my sex, and I let my legs fall open. “Please, I need—”
“I know what you need.” His voice is like the rush of wind between two mountains, something that my body recognizes as eternal, that he was here before me.
That he’ll be here when I’m gone.
His fingers touch me with agonizing lightness, exploring, teasing. Letting me remain open for discovery. Is that part of what makes this hotter, knowing anyone might walk in on us? He has unending patience, even though I can see his arousal in the line of his suit pants where he kneels. I can see the arousal in the haze in his blue eyes, in the hard set of his jaw.
He’s like Atlas, cursed to carry the weight of the world. Strong enough to actually succeed in such an impossible task. Of course that makes me the world—and that’s how it feels, when he leans forward to place a chaste kiss on my thigh.
Higher, higher. He likes to tease me. There’s something playful about him that’s at odds with the burden he carries. Even the gods know how to make light of themselves.
And then he kisses my clit, and I lose the ability to think. My shoulders press into the wall. My hips push out toward his mouth. There’s nothing but his mouth and the magical things he can do with it. I cry out, and the sound of it echoes back to me in the empty hallway.
Even in this he has that terrible patience. That terrible playfulness that lets him nip at my skin, lets him tug and tease me until I’m shameless—pressing myself against his mouth, his nose, his chin, desperate for that friction my body demands.
His laugh surrounds me, piercing the madness that consumes me. “I should leave you like this,” he says, murmuring almost to himself. “You’d fuck yourself against the bedpost all night long, but it wouldn’t be the same. Wouldn’t be enough.”
“You wouldn’t,” I say on an aching gasp. “I’m dying here.”
He looks up at me, and it’s strange that he does have sympathy for me. It’s there in his blue eyes even while his lips shine with my arousal. “Are you?” he asks, his voice not shaking one little bit. Not like mine. “Or I could lay you down on the bed and tie you there, so you couldn’t get off. You’d keep trying all night, this gorgeous body fucking the air, desperate for relief. I could watch you all night.”
“Nooo,” I say, pushing my hips toward him as if that might convince him.
I’m beyond logic right now. Beyond anything but pure undiluted begging. I’ve never been more desperate than in this moment; this is what he’s reduced me to. This is what he holds in his hands.
“Whatever you want.”
And the bastard, he sits back on his heels. His hands fall to his side, somehow more powerful that way, his head looking up at me. He commands this hallway. This hotel. He commands the whole world from his goddamn knees. “Now you’re ready to make a deal.”
“Ruthless.” The word spills from my lips before I’ve thought it through. I’ve known so many men who were ruthless, including Christopher, but never one who’s managed to disarm me as much as Sutton Mayfair. That makes him infinitely more dangerous.
Casually he trails two fingers up my calf and back down. “Yes.”
“Because you’ve been poor longer than you’ve been rich.” It’s made him hungry, and I can’t really blame him for that. I’ve known what it was like to be poor, painfully poor, in small, infinitesimal drips. In the space between my mother’s husbands.
“That,” he says, with a faint dip of his head. “And because I don’t underestimate you, Harper.”
I swallow hard, because I’ve been underestimated all my life. Is that why he told me the story about the little boy who everyone underestimated? Suddenly that strikes me as totally unfair. “You didn’t tell a secret about you. You told me a secret about a wild horse.”
A faint smile. “The secret is that I wasn’t the boy with a family and a ranch. I was the one who showed up with bruises. I was the one who tamed Cinnamon.”
“No,” I whisper.
“I told you, Harper. The story had a happy ending.”
Touching him is as natural as breathing, as inevitable as the ache in my chest. Bristles on his jaw brush my palm. “I wish that hadn’t happened to you.”
“Maybe the moral of the story is that I can tame wild animals.” He’s a little mocking, making fun of himself. I’m the one worried that it might be true.
I snatch my hand away. It would be a lie to say I’m not a wild animal, since I’m considering scratching him in response to the ownership in his blue eyes. “I’m not tame.”
There it is again, that warm persistence that has made him rich when he was poor. It earned him enough money and know-how to partner with Christopher, a man who, for all his many faults, is admittedly a business genius. Not yet, he seems to say without words.
And I’m not entirely sure he’s wrong.
The elevator down the hall dings, and in a startled rush I push down my skirt. I expect to see the disgruntled businessman who’s staying in the room beside me or one of the other occupants I haven’t passed yet.
Instead Christopher Bardot steps off the elevator, his dark eyes narrowing on mine immediately, emotions flashing across his face before he manages to put a cold mask over them all. But I saw them. For that brief second I saw jealousy and anger, and something that breaks my heart—hurt.
In front of me Sutton moves much more slowly, getting up as casually as if he had been sitting at dinner, taking the time to straighten his shirt.
Then, impossibly, he runs a thumb across his bottom lip. And presses it between his lips to savor the taste of it. Of me. It’s the most explicit thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and we’re both fully clothed and covered.
Christopher’s eyes flash. “What t
he hell are you doing here?”
I’m not the kind of girl that men fight over, am I? I didn’t think so, but there’s leashed violence simmering in the air.
“Do you need it spelled out?” Sutton asks in that drawl I’m coming to realize is a sign of danger. The kind of danger that most people don’t expect from a Southern boy.
“What are you doing here?” I demand, because we’re in front of my hotel room. And what the hell does Christopher think, showing up here at night? Embarrassment threatens to strangle me, but I remind myself firmly that I’m a grown woman. I have every right to do what I want… even though I possibly should have been inside the hotel room.
It’s a question of a few feet, so I hold my chin up.
“I came to talk to you,” Christopher says in a low voice.
There’s a small move, barely discernible, the way that Sutton moves to block me. As if protecting me from Christopher. “You can talk tomorrow. At the office.”
“This is personal,” Christopher says, his eyes locked on mine.
He’s waiting for me to send Sutton away, except I’m not sure that’s what I should do.
If that kiss had been only for revenge, only to crack Christopher’s cool veneer, then it already succeeded. But Sutton made it more than that. He made it about me and him, when I didn’t think it was possible for me to desire another man.
“There’s nothing personal between us. You made sure of that. There’s only money between us.”
For all his rough background, Sutton wouldn’t do anything as uncouth as gloat. He doesn’t say a word or even move a muscle. He’s a monolith, but a sense of victory rises around him—unmistakable. I may as well have written his name on my body with permanent marker; that’s the way these men are taking my declaration.
Is that how I mean it? I don’t belong to Sutton, but God, I was never Christopher’s. Even in my teenage fantasies I should have known better than to hope for that.
“She’s my sister,” Christopher says.
A harsh laugh. “That would be more convincing if I didn’t think you were going to beat off to the image of her leaning against the wall, looking fucked out and hot as all hell.”
Love Triangle: Six Books of Torn Desire Page 33