Mating Theory

by Warren, Skye

  “There, I think we understand each other.” Slowly he moves his hand off my mouth and leans back into the light, and I can see the blue eyes that look so much like Sutton’s. It’s my first customer. God. I feel sick. “You acted all innocent with me, but now I see you dancing here with Sutton Mayfair, and everyone knows what a goddamn dirty bastard he is. You’ll give it up to him, but not to me?”

  “He’s a hundred times better than you.” It’s the wrong thing to say. I know it, but I can’t stop myself, not when I’m faced with this vicious, pathetic jealousy. Sutton stood there proud and strong today. Anyone should be able to see that. The fact that this man would insult him—

  A hand grasps my neck. And squeezes. I gasp out a cry—it’s not even pain, this sound. Not even fear. It’s pure anger right now, and I scrape my fingers down the side of his face, catching blood in my nails.

  He screeches, pulling away before lunging for me again, and I know, this is it, I’ve finally done what Ky warned me not to, pushed a man too far. I’ll end up buried in a shallow grave made of trash.

  I close my eyes, bracing myself for what happens next.

  A whoosh of air by my face. A muffled sound. Nothing slams into me. Nothing hurts, except a lingering pain around my neck. I open my eyes to see Sutton in the closet with us, holding the other man off the ground, his legs dangling, his eyes bulging.

  Sutton’s voice sounds completely ordinary and calm. “Take my wallet out of my coat pocket. The valet ticket’s inside. Have them pull the car around.”

  What’s he going to do while I’m gone? “But—”

  “Ashleigh.”

  “Are you going to hurt him?”

  “I’m going to have a talk with him.”

  I don’t particularly care about the man making gasping fish noises, but I don’t want Sutton to get violent. But I fumble around in Sutton’s coat pocket. Something soft brushes my fingertips. A velvet ring box—empty now. Then I find the wallet and rush out of the room.

  It takes me five steps to realize I’m holding a thick billfold of cash. I could take the money and run. It’s more than he was going to give me. And it’s not like he would miss it. God, even if I pawned the wallet I’d get enough to eat for days.

  It shouldn’t matter what he thinks of me.

  It does.

  When I get downstairs I pause for one terrifying moment. The sidewalk leads to a thousand different restaurants and hotels and bars. There are a thousand alleyways to lose myself in. I could disappear in a matter of seconds.

  Instead I go to the valet desk and turn over the ticket. “We’d like the car brought around.”

  * * *

  Sutton

  When I hear her footsteps disappear, I take a step back, releasing Mason from my chokehold. He rubs his throat. “Fuck,” he says. “I understand wanting to play the hero, but you could take it easy.”

  “Put your guard up,” I say, my voice guttural.

  He doesn’t understand. “How much are you paying her? I bet you got her for cheap.”

  He’s gotten enough warning. I throw a punch. It lands, solid, on his jaw. The connection feels right on my knuckles. He called her cheap. He put his fucking hands on her. I throw another one.

  He spits on the ground. “Jesus. Stop. Fuck.”

  “Stand up.” I have a rule about fighting fair. My father had no problem kicking me when I was down. I don’t fight often, but when I do, I make sure the other person has a real goddamn chance. It’s a point of pride for me, but the idea’s eroding fast in the face of this asshole. “Stand up.”

  A knee on the ground. A hand on the wall.

  Close enough. I throw another punch, this time low. The impact with his gut makes him wheeze. He retches on the ground while I shake out my fist. It aches in the way that soothes me.

  “You don’t talk to her. You don’t even talk about her. Understand?”

  He looks up at me from the ground, panting, disbelieving. “You don’t know. How is it possible… you don’t know? She’s a fucking prostitute, Sutton. She’s a whore.”

  The urge to kick him in the stomach almost cripples me. “I know what she is. I know her a lot better than you do, you sick fuck.”

  “That’s what you think.” A laugh that sounds unhinged. “I had her before you, you bastard. I had her weeks ago. She was a bad fuck. Scared and jumpy. Is that how you like them?”

  He scared her. This is the man of her nightmares, her first client. The realization settles into my bones, and before I can think, I throw a vicious kick to Mason’s middle.

  His whole body slams against the wall, and he slumps to the floor, spasming.

  For the first time in my life I kicked a man when he’s down, and it feels… good. That makes my fall complete. I am like my father. I want to do it again and again, until he regrets ever touching her, until he regrets ever seeing her.

  It’s only with force of will that I reach down to haul him up. I slam him against the wall, but he’s clearly nowhere near able to fight back at this point. His gaze is unfocused, his mouth drooling. I slam him against the wall until his eyes meet mine.

  “You don’t know her.”

  The man has no sense of self preservation. “She’s a—”

  “You’re mistaken.”

  He swallows around the pain. “Okay. Okay.”

  “Say it. You’re mistaken.”

  “I’m mistaken.”

  It doesn’t feel like enough, this admission. I want him to beg for forgiveness at Ashleigh’s feet. I want her to refuse. I want her to give me permission to rip his sorry head from his body.

  There are a handful of Mayfair bastards in Tanglewood.

  Some of them had good childhoods. Some of them didn’t.

  Some of them are good men. Some of them aren’t.

  Only one of them do I hate—and that’s Mason Smith. When I look at him, I can only see my father. It’s wild to think that in some alternate universe we might have been brothers. Real brothers who grow up together, who fight and support and love each other.

  Out of hundreds of thousands of men in the city, she had to get him as her first customer.

  Mason’s always had a cruel streak. It came out when we were in school together. Ironically he had a good mother and a clueless father. He resented me, my existence, and he made my life hell. Not with fists. He always knew I’d beat him in a fair fight. No, he turned his rich friends against me. The teachers. Anyone would believe a good straight A kid over the dirty, angry Sutton Mayfair.

  When I leave the closet I wash my hands, because I need to clean them of the bastard stink. The scent of violence and desperation and liquor that never quite leaves, no matter how hard I scrub.

  Ashleigh’s waiting for me by my car, while the valet chats her up, clearly interested. Anyone would be. I have no doubt that the man in the BMW getting out of his car, the old guy in a tux with his wife—they’ve all noticed her. The gold dress highlights her smoking body, but her smile is enough to make even the most hardened man believe in a higher power.

  The valet says something, and Ashleigh laughs.

  Her fear pulsed from the closet. The only thing I felt when I saw her with Mason is rage. Now that I see her with another man, though, I know how easy it would be for her to find someone good for her. Jealousy. That’s the name of the seething mass in my chest. Which is fucking stupid, because I have no claims on her. I don’t want any claims on her. I don’t need to care about someone else who doesn’t care about me.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ashleigh

  The ride home is quiet. I see the red marks on his knuckles. It’s easy enough to guess some kind of altercation went down. Maybe he sees it as some man poaching in his territory, even if we’re only doing this for pretend. For some strange reason it actually makes me excited to think about him fighting for me. It must be an evolutionary instinct that makes me want him to fight a saber-toothed tiger.

  At his house, he comes around to open the door for me. That
’s the thing about Sutton. He’s still a gentleman, even when other people aren’t watching. A gentleman, even with reddened knuckles.

  When he helps me down I keep hold of his hand. I lean down to kiss the bruises and marks, gently. I want to say thank you. He probably didn’t do it for me. It was his own pride, but the primal cavewoman inside me doesn’t care.

  His eyes turn to ocean as he looks down at me, deep and full of secrets.

  I walk inside the house and pause, uncertain where to go from here. He probably should have dropped me off on the street corner, but I’m glad he didn’t. Besides, he should keep the dress.

  When he comes inside, he takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom.

  Here. Here. It feels right.

  I get on my knees, where he wanted me last night, but he stops me this time. He bends his head and presses a kiss to my mouth. I start to turn away—it’s too intimate, even though I’d use my tongue on his cock. Our mouths together is the most painfully acute thing.

  He coaxes me to bear it, using slow, soft, gentle kisses.

  He lays me down on the bed, so careful with me, all of our clothes still one, lying beside me, and I realize this is how it would be if I were with a man in a regular way. The man in the closet used the words the girlfriend experience. I think he meant the experience of the man—but this is my experience, pretending to be Sutton’s girlfriend, the one who gets his tenderness.

  Part of me doesn’t want to do this. I’ll feel too much. Not fear anymore. It will be other things. Pleasure feelings. Need feelings. Hope feelings. Every brush of his lips on mine destroys my defenses. He’ll reach the exposed-nerve heart of me, and then what? There won’t be anything to protect me from wanting more. I’ll want more than he’s able to give, and I’ll be smaller for it.

  His lips are merciless, brushing away every doubt and fear. Until I’m exposed to him. This gold dress does nothing to hide me. There are my body and my dreams. He looks down at both with grave concern. “We don’t have to do this,” he says.

  He’s paying hundreds of dollars for this. Thousands of dollars.

  That’s not why I want it. I want it for myself, to know what it would be like.

  I turn him over on the bed until I’m leaning over him. The bow tie and jacket are long gone. I move aside the placket hiding the buttons and undo them one at a time. I kiss the hollow of his throat. And lower, to the mat of hair at this chest. And lower, to his sternum, to the place where bone turns to muscle. And lower, to the ridge of his abs.

  In the girlfriend experience I can do whatever I want. I can give him a blowjob—but I don’t have to. So I kiss my way back up, finding rough patches of skin where he scarred over, finding sensitive shadows in the valleys of his body. When I get back to the top I kiss him full on the mouth.

  He groans. “Ashleigh.”

  “What should I do?” I whisper.

  Large hands span my hips, and then I’m perched on top of him. “Ride me.”

  My whole body flushes hot when I realize what he’s asking, when I think about how exposed I’ll be. I’ve never done that before. Maybe that’s the point. There won’t be any memories attached to it. Looking down at his sapphire blue eyes I think he knows that.

  I unbuckle his belt and unzip his pants. There’s nothing underneath except hot flesh. No boxers or briefs. The contact of his cock to my hand makes me jump.

  “Easy,” he says. “It’s not going to hurt you. It just wants to make you feel good.”

  He’s the one who reaches for the bedside table and finds a condom. He hands it over and watches as I fumble open the package. I check the label, but there’s no directions. The curl of his lips says he finds that amusing. So I do the obvious thing and roll it over the tip. His cock jumps as I stroke my way down, and I realize why women like this. I have power in this position. He’s on his back, looking up, at my mercy. It may only be an illusion; lord knows he’s strong enough to overpower me in a second if he wants to. Here’s this big strong man with bruised knuckles lying still for me. It’s like having a wild animal roll over so I can scratch his belly. The impulse overwhelms me, and I run my fingernails over his abs—only lightly, not hard enough to hurt. He hisses a breath. “Yes,” he grunts. “More.”

  It’s the encouragement that I need to lower myself onto his waiting cock. I kneel high enough to fit myself over his cock, which looks massive when it’s standing up. It feels massive when it’s notched at my entrance. I shiver a little, but he does absolutely nothing—he doesn’t move his hips up, he doesn’t pull mine down. He reaches up to hold the bars of the bed, as if to prove he’ll go at my pace. The sight of him like that, stretched out and at my mercy, makes my pussy clench around him. He feels it; he groans.

  I press myself down, inch by inch, straining. He moves his hand to the base of his cock, and when I fully impale myself, his thumb waits for my clit. So full. Too full. Except that I rock forward, his thumb’s there. It feels good enough that I do it again. And again.

  My lids lower. “Can you come like this?”

  “I don’t fucking care,” he grits out, watching me rock above him.

  And I realize he’s telling the truth. This is a man who gets turned on from watching me come. He genuinely wants this to feel good for me, because that’s what gets him off. That releases the valve of worry and debt until I can finally let loose. I rock and rock against his thumb, closing my eyes to the ecstasy, unabashed in my nakedness, until I come in hard, blinding spasms.

  He roars from underneath me, grasping my hips, clasping me hard enough to leave marks, his cock pulsing inside me, holding tight, extending my orgasm as he rides through his own.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ashleigh

  We spend three days and three nights in this strange cocoon of sex and affection. The most surprising part is how much I find myself sharing. Not about Daddy. That part’s still too raw. I tell him about Mama and how close we were.

  “She had such big dreams for me. She used to say—you can be anything. An astronaut or a race car driver. The President of the United States. And I’d say, I want to be a doctor. There was no doubt in her voice at all. Then that’s what you’ll be, she said.”

  “You can still do that,” he murmurs, stroking my hair.

  I nuzzle against his chest, feeling unaccountably safe. We’re from different worlds. He owns this ranch and a truck. There are mentions of a business with buildings and investments. I own what I can carry, and whatever dead animals Sugar brings me. “I might as well imagine being an astronaut. Or the President. It’s never going to happen.”

  “It can,” he insists. “You don’t have to know how your dreams will happen to believe in them.”

  “No one wants their doctor to be a prostitute.”

  “It’s none of their goddamn business. You’re not the only person who’s fallen on hard times. Maybe your family doctor survived the only way they could. It’s not something they advertise on the door of their clinic.”

  It’s hard to imagine that Dr. Lim ever fell on hard times. But I wouldn’t know, would I? Maybe he’s right. Maybe I don’t have to know how the dreams will come true. It’s enough to believe.

  On the fourth morning he takes me out to the stables to meet the horses. Stormy and Lickety Split and Mischief—“be careful, she bites.” We get to the last stall, where a placid-looking mare stares at me from between a heavy fall of straw-colored bangs.

  “Her name’s Haven. Calm and steady.”

  “She’s beautiful.”

  “You’re going to ride her.”

  I take a step back. “Oh no I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I don’t know how to ride a horse.”

  “I’ll teach you.”

  “That seems like something that’s going to take…” Longer than we have. How many days are we going to live in this cocoon? It reminds me of what the man said at the wedding reception. The girlfriend experience. That must be what we’re having right now.
“Too long.”

  “It’ll take the right amount of time. There’s no rush.”

  I glare at him. “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want to ride a horse?”

  “No,” he says equably. “Everyone wants to ride horses.”

  Ugh, I hate that he’s right. I’m a regular girl who loved ponies when I was younger. All of these horses look strong and beautiful. Emphasis on strong. Their muscles bulge from beneath their glossy coats. They’ll probably buck me off if I even try to get in the saddle.

  They’re also very tall. “How would I even get up there?”

  He grins, knowing he’s won. “You’ll step on my hands.”

  “The most important thing about riding is that you have to trust the horse.”

  “I thought the horse should trust me.”

  “Absolutely, but that’s only going to happen if you trust her first.”

  I make a face at him, because the idea of trusting an animal that much larger and stronger than me makes me cringe. “I’m pretty sure I’ve already failed the lesson.”

  A low laugh. “She’s more scared of you than you are of her. You’re going to ask her to do scary things like walk into water or jump over something. She has to know you’ll keep her safe.”

  “I’m definitely not asking her to jump over anything. No jumping allowed.” I study the beautiful gray dappled mare, trying to see fear in her placid eyes. Nope, nothing. “Shouldn’t she do what I say? I thought that’s the point of the reins.”

  “Only if you want her afraid. That means backing away or jumping too late.”

  “How will she even know if I trust her? Will we do trust exercises?”

  “Yes.” He produces a shiny red apple from his pocket and hands it to me. “Hold this on your palm with your hand flat. Don’t curl your fingers.”

  “She’s going to bite me,” I warn, but I put out the apple anyway. The mare snuffles at my hand without taking the treat. She dips her head to considers the apple from the side. For a second it feels like she’s going to refuse the offer, and disappointment sinks in my stomach.