Zane bit his lip. "Nah, I'm not accepting that as an answer. In every single relationship, even if it's five minutes of grinding on each other at a nightclub, there is always a pursued and a pursuer. Which one were you?"
I sighed resignedly. "I guess I was the pursued."
"So you broke it off?"
"I never called him back after our last date, which was right before Callie met him. I was busy with lab work and the honors college and all the new clubs I was running..." I trailed off into nowhere.
Zane nodded slowly. "So you told him to fuck off, then he married your sister, and now all three of you are living in the same house?"
I nodded. "That's about the sum of it. Except for the underlying things that you're implying; I promise you there is no tension there. Zero. Patrick loves Callie. They’re the ideal married couple. Everything you think about when you think 'perfect yuppie marriage' - that's Callie and Patrick. Just without the babies."
Zane raised his eyebrows skeptically. "Whatever you say, Rachel."
"Okay, I've spilled enough. It's your turn."
Zane got off the couch, his huge cock swinging in the air. I blushed when I looked at it. "You hungry?"
"I could eat," I replied. "But you're still not off the hook with sharing your past with me, by the way."
"Wouldn't dream of walking away from that conversation," Zane retorted. He picked up the phone on the kitchen wall. "They can make whatever you want downstairs."
"Pizza," I said.
Zane laughed. "Seriously, you could have filet mignon, you could have Afro-Carribbean fusion food, or a kobe beef burger-"
"Pizza. Deep dish. Pineapple and ham, please," I said easily.
"Fuck I love you. A simple woman for once." He placed the call to the kitchen.
I chewed over what he'd just said about me. "I'm not simple," I said challengingly. "Is simple why you chose me to breed?" I’d meant the last word as a joke but it hit Zane hard.
He had a look of shock on his face but he quickly recovered. He was still naked, and he crawled on all fours over to my place on the couch. He moved the blanket aside with his teeth, kisses cascading generously once again from his plump lips. "I chose you," he said. "Because I've wanted to see you on all fours since the second I laid eyes on you. That's why I chose you."
I pushed him off of me. "How many women have you fucked on this sofa?" I spat at him.
He grinned, showing me his dimples. "Not nearly enough," he replied. "And there's room for at least one more on that list." He grabbed my ankles and pulled me toward him. I kicked him off of me, wrapping myself in the blanket and walking as confidently as I could toward the doorway. I pulled my bra, panties, and dress back on with a haughty flip of my head.
"One more is going to have to wait," I replied, walking to the guest bathroom and locking the door behind me. I leaned against the wall, breathing hard. I looked at myself in the mirror and pinched my cheeks. It was still me: red hair, horn-rimmed glasses, chubby cheeks and freckles. Huge tits and curves everywhere. I walked closer to the mirror to look in my own eyes. It was as if I was scared there was going to be someone else looking back at me through them.
But it was still me. I ran the tap on the faucet until the water was steaming. I took off my glasses and splashed hot water over my skin. I dried it off with a fresh, fluffy towel and rinsed my mouth out with cold water. I spit into the sink. Somewhere in the back of my head was the knowledge that what we were doing here, together, was attempting to make a life within my body.
But I was segmenting. Compartmentalizing. This was something I'd done ever since my dad had died. None of this was real. I knew how biology worked. I wasn't even ovulating yet. This was just sex. Nothing else. Really hot, steamy, mind-blowing sex. That was it.
Liar, said a voice in my head. I pushed it aside.
I finally emerged from the bathroom. "I'm not simple," I said defiantly from the bathroom doorway. Zane had pulled his boxers back on and was scrolling through apps on his phone.
He looked up at me. "I know that," he replied. "I swear to fucking God I was only talking about the pizza, Rach."
"Don't call me Rach. You don't know me well enough for that. Not yet."
Zane put down his phone and considered my words. He tilted his head to the side and looked at me. "You want to know something about me that no one else knows?"
I bit my lip and crossed my arms over my chest. "That was the general idea here, yeah."
He stood up and walked over to me, taking my hands and unlinking my arms. I let go begrudgingly. His touch, even just on my fingertips, was like fire. "I've always had a thing for redheads, but they usually don't like me. That's why I've never been seen with one."
I blushed for the millionth time and smiled even though I was fighting hard not to. I didn't want to give in that easily. But he wasn't finished. "I had my first girlfriend was when I was in second grade. She was a redhead. I told her I was going to marry her."
"Mm," I replied, grinning. "And what happened with that relationship?"
"She punched my arm, called me a poop head, and took all my lunch money," Zane said, his eyes glimmering.
"Don't think I won't do the same, Zane," I retorted, sticking out my tongue childishly.
Zane lifted me over his shoulder and carried me into his bedroom. "Put me down!" I yelled, still laughing.
He tossed me on the mattress and flipped me over. He held his face inches from mine. "Only kissing. I promise. Even if you beg me for sex, I'm only going to kiss you. Got it?"
I twisted my mouth in response. "No sex. I don’t want anymore. Not today."
He nodded. "Only kissing. Even if you're screaming bloody murder. I'm not fucking you again tonight."
"I made it through five boyfriends with only kissing and guess what? I never needed sex from any of them."
Zane kissed my lips with a tenderness I didn't know he possessed. Then he slowly slipped his tongue out to trace the edges of my mouth. A shudder passed through my body. He pulled away from my mouth and went to my ear. "But I'm not your other boyfriends, am I?"
He proved as good as his word. Even when I begged him to take me again, he didn't.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ZANE
It had been a month. Rachel was already storming through business meetings with the board I'd assembled. We'd already sold the first fifty-thousand units. She was working harder than any person I'd ever met in my entire life.
If only she were as goal-oriented in the bedroom, she'd already be knocked up with quadruplets.
Not that the sex wasn't good - it was mind-blowing. She was my virginal clay and I could shape her however I wanted to. I'd never been with a woman like that, yet she was teaching me things that even seasoned sex workers couldn't dream up.
But it had been a month with no positive pregnancy tests. "You're not secretly still on hormonal birth control and not telling me, are you?" I asked her one night while we ate pizza in my bed.
She laughed. "You think I would risk one of your lackeys following me to the drug store?"
I put my pizza down. "I'm not having you followed."
Rachel flashed me a sarcastic thumbs-up. "Right, okay."
I wiped my mouth with a napkin and sat upright in bed. "Seriously. What do you think this is?"
"A business deal," Rachel replied, biting into her next slice.
I bit my lip. "It's more than that," I grumbled.
Michael knocked on the door. "Mr. Reid, if there's nothing else, I'll be leaving for the weekend."
"Cheerio, good man," I quipped in my best approximation of a British accent, grateful for the interruption. Rachel rolled her eyes.
"Sorry he's maligning your people with that horrible imitation," Rachel said consolingly to Michael.
He smiled. "I assure you, ma'am, it's nothing I haven't suffered through fifteen hundred times before." Michael turned to leave. "Oh, and Ms. Rachel?"
"Yes, Michael?" she asked through a mouthful of cheese and
pineapple.
"The kitchen called. They just bought stock in the Dole pineapple company based off of your menu choice alone." He grinned devilishly at her.
Rachel giggled. The sound was like a melody to my ears. "I haven't ordered that many of these pizzas over the last few weeks, have I?"
I gave her a significant look. "You've had a few. Dozen. A few hundred."
Michael tipped his head toward both of us. "You enjoy your weekend alone, you two." He shut the bedroom door behind him.
My phone rang and I answered it at once. "Zane," I said simply.
"Jesus, man, I thought you were dead," Roger said sarcastically. There was music pounding in the background of the call. He was yelling. "You haven't been returning my phone calls in the last two weeks."
I looked at my watch and realized it was on the floor with the rest of my clothes. "Yeah, sorry about that. I've been busy."
"Fucking your side redhead?"
I put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and jerked my head toward the living room. "It's Roger," I mouthed.
Rachel wiggled her fingers in my direction to say that she was fine with me leaving the room. I shut the door behind me. "Talk, asshole," I said into the phone.
"Well isn't that a fine how-do-you-do from my best friend and recent ghoster."
"I'm kind of busy right now so make this quick." I suddenly realized that Roger was drunk. Or drinking. Or a combination of both. That wasn’t good.
"So you are fucking the redhead right now. Well done, man, well done."
"Where are you, Roger?"
Roger laughed. "I'm at 1OAK in Vegas, man. Took my plane over from California, because fuck California. Seriously. Just fuck her sideways, fuck her until she cries, fuck her fuck her fuck her."
I ran my hands through my hair and sauntered into the kitchen. I was too sober for whatever Roger was about to vomit all over me. I opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of German beer. I twisted the top off using my forearm. I realized Rachel had never been given the opportunity to see me do that little parlor trick. Women always liked that. "Roger, man, talk to me. What happened in California?"
Roger laughed darkly. "What happened? Oh. Right. I didn't get to tell you that this was supposed to be my trip for proposing. But of course what actually happened is that my little fling out here - remember her?"
I sipped from the ice cold neck of the bottle. "Yeah, waitress at a diner or something."
"Yeah. That one. Well, I thought she didn’t' know who I was. But she did. She did know. Oh, fuck, did she know who I was."
"How do you know that?" I asked him. I wanted him to slow down the talking and the drinking; I knew this all lead absolutely nowhere good. I'd known him long enough to be certain of that.
"How do I know that? How do I -" he laughed again.
"Roger, stay with me. Are you alone right now?" My heart was pounding. The bedroom door opened and Rachel was standing there, naked and with a look of concern on her face.
"Everything alright?" she asked me.
"It's Roger. Yeah, I think so. I'm not entirely sure, but yeah." I went back to the call. "Roger. What hotel are you staying at?"
There was nothing but music and heavy breathing on the other end of the line. I suddenly realized that Roger was crying. "I couldn't do it, man. She wasn't honest with me. She knew who I was this entire fucking time but I just couldn't fucking do anymore. Seriously." He broke down sobbing.
"Roger. Hotel. What. Hotel. Are. You. Staying. At. Talk to me, buddy." I heard a familiar man's voice on the other end of the line. "Roger! Is that Vince?" Vince was Roger's long-time bodyguard. I sighed with relief.
"Yeah, it's Vince. He's handing me a goddamned handkerchief like I'm some motherfucking maiden in distress. Can you fucking believe that?" His voice sounded angry.
"Roger, just hand the phone to Vince."
"Fine. Fuck you," Roger spat.
"Mr. Reid?" Vince's calming baritone voice slid through the phone and met my ears.
"Thank fuck you're there, man. What hotel are you staying at?"
"We're at the Wynn. Penthouse."
"Great," I said. "We will be there in three hours. Make sure there's a bed for us, okay?" I hung up the phone and slammed it onto the counter top.
Rachel looked at me, confused. "Where exactly are we going?"
***
A single phone call to Michael was all it took. Within the hour, we were sitting in my Citation X jet. Flight time: two hours and seventeen minutes. Rachel and I were cozied up in seats across from each other. She kept sliding the toe of her high heels up my leg absentmindedly as she gazed around the jet.
"Not bad, huh?" I asked her, a smile on my face.
"You know, I worked hard as a kid to lose my Georgia accent. I knew one day I'd be living in a big city and I didn't want it held against me." She shrugged in amusement. "But that's not worth much now that I'm gazing around this jet like a hayseed who just fell off the turnip truck." She affected an adorable Southern accent for this last sentence.
I reached across the space to put my hand on her thigh, sliding it up under her dress. "You should have kept the accent. It's fucking sexy." She laughed. "And I like you being awestruck. It's not too often I get to travel with anybody who can actually appreciate all of this for what it is. Myself included." I paused to look at her face again. She was still wide-eyed and staring around the cabin. "So you do like it."
"Yeah, I'm never ever flying commercial again. Like, I'll just walk from here on out if I can’t fly private. No security, no lines, no screaming kids, no stench of stale air and jet fuel."
I unbuckled my seatbelt and walked on my knees over to her. I spread her legs open and she gasped. "Also there's none of this on commercial flights."
She curled her fingers through my hair as I moved my mouth to her hot, wet panties. "Speak for yourself," she said in a low, husky voice as my tongue found all of her secret, most sensitive places. "I get this on Delta every single time I fly down South."
I paused only long enough to laugh, but it wasn't long before she had her high-heel-encased feet wrapped around my shoulders. She came twice before I went back to my own seat. I left her, sweaty and panting, in her chair, her cheeks a delicious apple red.
"What?" I asked her. She was still staring at me with an odd look on her face.
"All of this but you're not going to let me join the Mile High Club?"
***
Vegas was thumping and glowing, as always. The desk clerks recognized me and gave me a key card at once. Vince had clearly warned them that I'd be showing up soon. Rachel was wide-eyed again. "Never been to Vegas, either?" I teased her, wrapping my arm around her side. There were men staring at her in the black mini dress she'd poured herself into before we left the plane. I wanted everyone to know that she was mine and only mine.
I knocked hard on the double doors of the top-floor suite. Vince had the door open in a second. "Thank God," he whispered. I heard moaning sobs coming from somewhere deep in the suite.
Rachel held out her hand to introduce herself to Vince, who was three hundred pounds of pure, thick muscle and no hair whatsoever apart from his neatly trimmed facial hair. He looked like a WWF wrestler. "Rachel Cobb," she said cheerily. "I'm Zane's - uh. I'm with Zane."
"Vince," he replied. "Lovely to meet a woman with Zane who doesn't just ignore me."
"You okay here with Vince?" I asked her. "I'm guessing that Roger would probably prefer if it were just me witnessing his current humiliation."
Rachel nodded. "Say no more," she replied. "What's on TV, Vince?"
I heard Vince responding that a new episode of The Walking Dead was on in a few minutes, and I knew that Rachel would be just fine popping her Vegas cherry with an hour of sweaty Daryl Dixon and Rick Grimes. She had a thing for both of them, apparently.
I pushed open the master suite door and heard the sobs getting closer. They seemed to be echoing around a marble room. The light was on in the bathroom. I pushed the
door open and saw Roger sitting pitifully in a large tub of bubbles, surrounded by candles. I was relieved to see that whatever alcohol he'd consumed previously in the evening was all there was going to be. Vince had removed his immediate access to it. Condensation dripped down the side of an ice-cold, glass bottle of Evian on the edge of the tub.
"Hey there buddy," I said cautiously, pulling over the velvet settee to sit next to him. "Rough night?"
Roger wiped his eyes with his hands and blinked at me. "Okay, I was drunk enough to be hallucinating a few hours ago, but I’m not at all drunk enough right now to be imagining you here." He still seemed uncertain. He reached out a pruny, waterlogged finger and traced my forearm tattoo with it. "Okay. You're here. How is that possible? Aren't you supposed to be in Chicago?"
I nodded. "The power of modern aviation. What a time to be alive."
Roger chuckled and sniffled, reaching behind him to grab a box of tissues. The soap bubbles on his arms fell onto the countertop. He blew his nose. "Man, I'm a fucking mess. I'm so sorry. You really didn't need to come all the way out here. Seriously."
I shrugged. "Yeah, well. My best friend falls spectacularly off the wagon? I'm going to be here to come help him climb back onto it. That's what we do. That's the deal. That's what friends are for."
Roger teared up again. "Jesus, asshole. Don't make me cry again."
I unscrewed the bottle of Evian and handed it to him. He took a few grateful gulps. "I'm glad you've got Vince, at least, to take care of you. Can’t have you wandering the streets of Vegas drunk and crying. Funny drunk? Sure. But not sad drunk. Nobody likes a sad drunk."
Roger set down the glass bottle. The water lapped peacefully against the edge of the bathtub. "Did I get angry with you?" he asked quietly.
I shrugged. "Yeah, you know. A bit. That's why I'm here."
"I'm sorry, man. It's just that my girl. She lied to me. I can't get over that."
I nodded. "You wanna tell me what the fuck happened?"
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