Naked Love

by Jones, Lisa Renee

  “The police, probably. Whatever. I pay taxes, and nobody’s doing anything they don’t want to do.” He held out his hand. “What about you? Did you work today? You look fucking amazing, by the way. Not that you don’t usually, but I haven’t seen you in a while. I missed you.”

  Before I had a chance to answer, he pulled me off the couch. His hand was warm against my bare back as he slanted his lips against mine in a kiss. Not one, but a series of little nips that made me realize how long two weeks was.

  “I missed you, too,” I murmured, tempted to kiss him again, but we were only a kiss or two away from this dress being a puddle of fabric on the floor and the two of us going into my bedroom. And since this was a chance to change my opinion about Christmas, I hoped it would be more than a sex-soaked tryst.

  Not a whole lot more than that, but we had to at least make it to Zach’s house.

  What the hell had he asked me? Work. Right. “I worked at the gallery this morning. Leah and Jagger had people coming in all day. Raven, her parents, her best friend—”

  “Karina?” he asked with a smirk I didn’t think I liked.

  “Kari,” I said. “Do you know her?”

  “Yeah. She’s a former client.”

  I couldn’t have heard him right. “What?”

  “She’s hired me. A few times. She’s cool.”

  “Wow.” I jerked away, landed on the loveseat, and buried my face in my hands. I wasn’t judging her for hiring him. Technically, I had too. But Kari hadn’t fallen in love with him.

  I’d fallen in love with an escort.

  I wasn’t sure which revelation was more shocking.

  “Hey.” He squeezed beside me on the loveseat, and I cursed myself for not having my shit together and owning a real couch or apartment, like I was sure Kari did. “It won’t be weird. We’re friends. Like with Claire. Kari was never anything more than a client.”

  I was a fool.

  The first kiss landed on my shoulder, and with each following one, he got closer to my ear. “She’s not like you,” he whispered.

  I pulled my hands away from my face and met his gaze. An escort had fallen in love with me.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t be more shocked.

  Zach took advantage of my parted lips to drive his point home. “Ready to go? Let me show you life on my side of the tracks.”

  “Your side of the tracks?”

  “Yeah. Miami Beach. If we leave now, we can watch the sunset over the water.” He stood and looked around the room like he’d never been here before. “Where’s your suitcase?”

  My heart pounded. “On my bed.”

  He didn’t have to be told where to go, and he emerged with my striped suitcase, which looked small in his hand. If only Grandma knew where he was taking me. Probably not the adventure she had in mind when she bought it.

  Zach’s sleek, black sports car was as powerful and sexy as he was. The city had settled in for Christmas Eve Eve, and we were at the beach as the first hint of pink streaked the sky.

  “This is where you live?” I asked. Right on the water, as promised, and the building was made of glass. He pulled into a garage underneath the building and tucked into a spot between two luxury cars. I’d been a fool not to take his money. Zach was rich, and our trade cost him much less than it did me.

  “Home sweet home. Come on. I’m starving.” He grinned and winked at me before getting out of the car. He greeted me on my side when I got out. “I would’ve opened the door for you.”

  “I can open my own door.” It was going to take me a while to get used to working without a script.

  His fingers slipped in between mine. “I know. But I wanted to get it for you.”

  Every outer wall in the apartment was floor-to-ceiling glass, and I was drawn to it like a magnet. Candy-colored clouds hung on the other side, and this high up, they felt close enough to touch. Everything else in the apartment was white, besides me in my little black dress.

  I was so out of my league. Like I didn’t have enough to nervous about.

  “Moved in last year. It’s still a work in progress. I bet you see a bunch of stuff you’re dying to fix.” He stood beside me, shoving his hands in his pockets as he looked out at the bay. Lights twinkled below us.

  “A few things.” I couldn’t take my eyes off the deck, which also had a glass encasement. Everything around me was fragile, and one wrong move would send me crashing back down to reality. “That’s not open to trade, though.” Leah would kill me.

  “No.” He turned me away from the window. The sky, the bay, all the buildings surrounding us disappeared. There was only Zach. “No more of that. I don’t want you thinking I owe you something.”

  All my new rules went right out the window and got swept away with the tide. “But I like telling you what I want.”

  “What makes you think you can’t do that anyway?” He brushed my ponytail over my shoulder.

  I wished he’d use it to tug me into him, and take me against the glass. Let it all come crashing down around us. I didn’t care anymore.

  “Tell me what you want, Shannon. I’ll do it. Not to pay off my tab—because I like it when you’re happy.”

  “The last time I tried that you couldn’t follow my instructions.”

  “Because I wanted to be more to you than an escort,” he said. And there was the kiss I craved. We were a universe away from when we did this last, in my tiny rented room. Zach didn’t care about the difference, and I had to get over it. “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  He approved of that answer with another kiss. The glass rattled when our knotted hands slammed against it. Zach startled and grinned at me.

  “Please tell me you like sushi, because I bought a fuckton of it.” He rested his forehead against mine, and this close, his grin was fuzzy. “If not, we can go get something or have it delivered.”

  “I love sushi. Do you need any help?”

  “Nope.” He kissed my cheek before pulling away. “Everything’s done. Head out to the deck. The sun’s setting.”

  It wasn’t easy for me to sit still, but Zach had billed the sunset as the main attraction for a reason. The buildings glowed bright blue against a burnt-orange sky. A glass of white wine appeared in front of me, and after a kiss on the top of my head, he disappeared.

  “Hope you’re hungry,” he said when he came back with a platter of sushi. “This place is the best. I’ll take you there some night. They’ve got drinks that will make you forget your name.”

  He dug in right away, and I followed suit. “I still can’t believe you live here.”

  “Some days neither can I.” He looked up at me and grinned. “Not bad for a guy who never graduated from high school, huh?”

  “Really?” Wow, I hadn’t realized that. “Do you own a second business?”

  “Nope. Just this one, now. But I worked for Barry, who owned the old agency, for twelve years.”

  “You must be really good at what you do.” A big swallow of wine didn’t drown that comment.

  “You tell me.” He wriggled his eyebrows as he picked up another roll. “I’ve always been lucky, but I thought my luck had run out, until I met you.”

  “I’ve never been very lucky.” I took a piece of sushi with my chopsticks. Using them was always hit and miss, and I was relieved when my roll didn’t land in my lap.

  “You’re too hard on yourself,” he said. “You’ve worked on a huge TV show, and Leah asked you, no one else, to move down here and start her business with her. People put an awful lot of faith in you. And I think you’re pretty fucking amazing. When are you going to realize that?” An electric current delivered his words.

  “Believe my own hype, huh?” I asked. “I’m getting better at it.”

  Zach took a sip of his wine and looked out at the bay. I loved that he didn’t take it, or anything else, for granted. “What are you thankful for?” he asked.

  “So many things. That I met Leah and she opened a whole new world
to me. That I had the strength to follow my heart and not settle.” The last one was going to be the hardest. “And that I met you.”

  It shouldn’t be so hard to say it. And I should’ve been relieved when his expression changed, like he let out a breath I hadn’t been aware he was holding.

  “I think everyone comes into our lives for a reason,” he said. “I’ve fucked a lot of things up, but if I had another chance, I wouldn’t change much. All that stuff led me to you.”

  19

  Zach

  I didn’t usually drink wine, because it had a tendency to sucker punch me in the gut. Get me to a place where I felt real good, then bam. It hit like liquid stupid. I had to keep that in mind, as the wine coated the night and made us believe what it wanted us to. I topped off our glasses; its pull was stronger as we got to the bottom of the bottle. Everything could be different in the morning, but I’d believe the wine, as long as its lies lasted.

  I hadn’t expected Shannon to freak out when I brought her to my place, but I understood. I grew up with less than nothing, too. It was like falling through a gritty crack in the sidewalk and screaming for help, but no one heard my cries. For a long time, I felt like an imposter, fucking all those rich ladies, knowing that if they passed me on the street, they’d turn up their collar, clutch their purse, and pretend they didn’t see me at all. But the longer I did it, the more I realized we weren’t that different, and everyone was in danger of falling into the cracks. Becoming forgotten. Invisible.

  We moved from the table to the lounge chairs. Shannon kicked off her heels—I was sorry she didn’t wear her sneakers with the dress. She wound her ponytail around one hand, her glass of wine in the other, and stared out at the bay. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. This was more than the condo. We were still strangers, no matter what secrets we whispered to each other in the dark. At my house, the glass walls hid nothing.

  “I’m nervous about the wedding,” she said.

  It made no sense, unless she’d taken it on herself to put together something elaborate. “Why? Leah doesn’t strike me as the runaway-bride type.”

  That got half a grin out of her. I was on the right path.

  “It’s not that. The wedding’s definitely happening. It’s me. I was engaged when I broke up with my ex, and helping her plan the wedding’s been harder than I thought it would be. I keep thinking this should be happening to me. That makes me sound like a real bitch, doesn’t it?”

  “But the breakup was for the best,” I said, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “Wasn’t it? The ceremony is meaningless. It’s the rest of it that matters. And for you, that came with a lot of things you couldn’t live with.”

  “You’re right.” She sighed and put her empty wine glass down. “I did what other people expected of me for so long, now doing things for me is scary.”

  I moved over to her chair and straddled the end of it.

  She inched back, and her skirt fell away from her thighs. She was so fucking hot, and she had no idea. She was too busy trying to live up to everyone else’s standards that she didn’t realize she’d surpassed them in so many ways. That those people she envied wanted to be like her.

  “Is that why you have such a hard time when it comes to me?” I asked.

  She curled her legs under her body. It took her a few moments to answer. “Maybe. Because I don’t see a way out of this without one of us getting hurt. I’m not ready to go through that again.”

  “Nobody ever is.” I put my hands over hers, trapping them on the cushion. “I’ve avoided it my entire adult life. I wound up living in a glass house. Alone. Do you want to know why I don’t get along with Leah? Because she’s marrying my best friend. The guy who made me feel like my life was normal. And now he’s gone to the dark side, with a wife and a kid, and I’ve got no one.”

  “You have me,” she said softly.

  “Do I?” There was the sucker punch. Fuck you, wine. Fuck you so hard. Our relationship was touch and go, and I was trying to get a commitment out of her after half a bottle of wine on Christmas Eve Eve. A time that smarted like an open wound for both of us. She’d say anything to make the bleeding stop. Even if it was for a night, I had to believe that someone could care about me.

  “Yes.” She slipped her hands out from under my grasp and cradled my face. Her palms were warm and soft and I could die happy like this. “You have me.”

  Maybe I was still lucky after all.

  Our lips met in a kiss, and tonight, Shannon was mine. There was no need to worry about what happened after that, when tonight was perfect. I slid my hand under her skirt and up her thigh.

  She moaned against my lips before pulling away. “I have to give you my present.”

  “What’s that?” I knew damn well what it was, but I liked hearing her say it.

  “Me. You get to choose what we do tonight.” Her voice was softer, and this wasn’t like the other times she gave me instructions on how to pleasure her. She was handing herself over—not only her body, but also her heart. And she trusted me to take care of both.

  Nobody ever gave me that responsibility before. I’d prove to her I was worthy. “I want you just like this.” I tapped her thigh before giving it a tug, so she straightened her legs. I ran my hand up to her hip and landed on a ribbon. Shannon writhed under my touch, inching the hem of the dress upward and revealing barely-there, black lace panties with ties on the side.

  “You took the night literally, huh?” I asked as I pulled on the ribbon.

  She bucked her hips upward, letting me strip her bare. “They’re pretty.”

  “They are.” I shoved them in my pocket, and she widened her eyes. “They’ll blow off the deck otherwise,” I said.

  I parted her bare legs, but as she scooted toward me, the rest of her body fell back on the cushion. She balled her hands in the fabric billowing around her middle. “We’re going to do this here?” she asked.

  Huh. She waited for me naked in front of a window, but the deck freaked her out. “Too out in the open?”

  “Maybe a little?” She looked around. “It’s a whole building full of exhibitionists.”

  I laughed. “Sort of. We’re ten stories up in the air, and if I can’t see in the other apartments, they can’t see us, either. There was much more of a chance that people saw you standing in your window than that anyone will see you here.”

  She swallowed hard and nodded. “Okay.”

  “If you’re not okay—”

  “I want you,” she said and bit her lip. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

  “I’ll go along with it, because I’ve got your panties in my pocket and it’s hard to concentrate on anything else.” I positioned her legs into my lap. My cock strained through my pants, so close, yet so far away. “But eventually, we have to talk about this.”

  Her eyes were squeezed closed until I said that. They snapped open. “Do we? That’s what everyone else does, and it never works out. You gave me shit when we were talking about the wedding. Can’t we go with it and see where it takes us? Fuck the rules, Zach. They work for everyone else, but not for us. We’ll make our own.”

  Wine had sucker punched Shannon, too. But a couple glasses into it, I thought her reasoning made too much sense. “You want to keep fucking each other and see what happens?”

  She nodded. “Something like that. But tonight’s about what you want.” She squirmed in my lap. I’d had yet to touch that beautiful, glistening pussy.

  Topping me from the bottom again. Shannon had nothing, yet everything to lose, and it gave her power. She had no idea how dangerous that was. Our unspoken agreement, a connection tied with a pretty satin bow, could unravel and blow away. Off the balcony, into the bay, and if we tried to find it we’d only see our reflections. There was a reason my house was glass and not mirrors.

  “You sure about that?” I dropped my thumb to her clit, and she jumped as I circled the nub. She’d swell and tremble under my touc
h—I could make any woman do that—but I couldn’t get her to take the next step, to be with me.

  “Yes. Zach, please.” She dropped her head onto the pillow, and she twisted the hem of her skirt in her hands.

  I drew my fingers away from her pussy and took her in. This woman who so badly needed to let go.

  “Why’d you stop?” she asked.

  I tapped her hand and took it in mine when she dropped her dress. “Come with me.”

  She sat up and groaned. “Where?”

  “To bed.” It was a place I took very few women. I hooked up plenty outside of escorting. Sex was my favorite sport, but I always went to their place or a hotel, and I never let them in. I didn’t stick around until the morning, unless they paid me to. But even if they did, I woke up alone.

  I was so fucking tired of the game.

  We didn’t have far to go. The deck wrapped around my apartment, and there was a door that led into the bedroom. It was never completely dark in here; the lights of the city kept it from total blackness. But there were enough shadows to keep Shannon safe.

  “This isn’t what I expected,” she said when I slid the glass door shut behind her.

  “I didn’t want it to look like a hotel.” It was the only room in the house I put any effort into, and the only one I wouldn’t let Shannon redesign if she ever offered. I made it dark and soft and deep, and nothing like the rest of my life. Sometimes, I needed to fucking get away.

  Shannon sat on the foot of the bed and ran her hand over the thick pile of the blanket underneath her. “You wanted it to look like home.”

  I nodded. No wonder she didn’t want to talk, when every word was like a wrecking ball. I hadn’t prepared myself for what it meant to me to bring her in here. My heart was made of glass, too.

  “I think you did a good job. That’s only a semi-professional opinion.” She reached behind her and pulled on the strings that kept her dress pinned in place and the universe in order. The straps fell, but she clutched her chest, not ready for a true confessional. Yet. “I wouldn’t mind waking up here. With you.”