Public Relations

by Tibby Armstrong

  “I’ve heard it’s customary to wine and dine before the sex.” She should have stopped there, but her lips kept moving. “Or are you so sure of yourself that you’ve stopped trying at all?”

  He stepped back. She slowly faced him. Their gazes met. Held. He lifted her coat again, and damn her if she didn’t swallow hard. Raising her chin, she approached him and allowed him to help her.

  His hands dropped away as he stepped back, crossed to her front door, and held it open for her. Sweeping through before him, she handed him the key and waited for him to lock the door. She held open her clutch so he could drop the key inside.

  They made the descent in the elevator in silence. Peter spent most of the limousine ride checking stock prices and making calls to important stockholders about an upcoming vote. As the limousine parked at the curb, he pocketed his phone and emerged first when the driver opened the door, then assisted her from the vehicle.

  His hand, warm and steady, clasped her fingertips for the briefest moment, and she pulled in a sustaining breath as the air around her seemed to shimmer and sizzle with erotic awareness. Then his touch was gone, and they were walking into the gallery.

  Inside the open, starkly white space, Manhattan’s moneyed elite—transformed for a night on the art scene—mingled and posed. The traditional tux was markedly absent, with men sporting their blacks and whites from the likes of Wu and Givenchy. With their attire carefully conforming to an unspoken rule about monochromatic palettes, nobody clashed with the giant canvasses and their primary-colored prison of wide, vertical strokes. Even the floor was black marble, and the strategically placed viewing benches white leather.

  A waiter passed with a tray of champagne, and Peter swept up two glasses before handing her one. The artist, a young man, mingled in a small crowd by his signature piece. Georgia sipped her champagne, the bubbles breaking like dry laughter across her tongue.

  Peter left her by the buffet with a terse “Stay here” and crossed the room to the artist. They smiled and posed for the cameras as they had their photographs taken for a column on Peter’s charity good works. No doubt a puff piece Peter’s PR firm had fabricated to spin positive press.

  She wandered the gallery for an hour or so, stopping to make small talk with people she didn’t know. Commenting on this piece or that and studiously avoiding the invited press, she knew she imbibed one too many glasses of champagne to help keep boredom at bay. Eventually, a tad too tipsy to easily make intelligent conversation, she made her way to the far corner of the gallery.

  Away from their host’s epicenter, the crowd thinned to a few dimmer stars who were more interested in art than artifice. Here, the canvasses showcased wild brushstrokes of black and white. Splatters of color struggled to peek through, as if obliterated but not conquered by the shades of crisscrossing darkness. Georgia shifted from one foot to the other, disquieted.

  “That’s the one Peter’s keeping for his collection.”

  Georgia turned, surprised to find the young artist studying the piece beside her.

  “It’s lovely.” Though the work tugged at her heartstrings, drawing them tighter than was comfortable, she meant it. This was where his real soul lay.

  This work told a story, and she drank it in. Cut off by poverty from life’s joys, separate but aware of the potential always just out of reach, the artist found color where he could. Cultivated passion where society let him. He barely dared to hope for anything more. Out of crumbs, this young man had built an entire piece of the pie. All his own.

  “Have you known Peter long?” she asked.

  “Nah.” The artist—he couldn’t be much older than nineteen at the outside—folded his arms protectively and contemplated his work, very possibly for the last time. “He saw me at a street fair. I was selling stuff smaller than this.”

  Journalistic curiosity engaged, she asked, “And he asked to see more?”

  “I took him to this storage bay I had.” Gaze far off, the young man smiled. “He drove away having bought everything you see on this wall.”

  “Really?” She looked around the gallery with new eyes. “So someone sponsored a gallery opening for you off his recommendation?”

  “No. He couldn’t get anyone to take a chance on the work.”

  She frowned, then glanced over her shoulder to where Peter stood with his guests. “So what then?”

  “He bought this gallery when I turned eighteen and gave it to me.”

  Shock coursed through her, prodding nerves and spiking her blood. “He bought this place? For you?”

  “Yeah.” With a faraway, wistful smile, the artist glanced at his work one last time and slipped away with a quiet “Thank you for coming.”

  The man’s work was wonderful, to be sure, but there were any number of things Peter could’ve done to give him a leg up that wouldn’t have been quite so personal. Had he identified with the young man in some way? And what had made him choose this artist in particular?

  From across the room, Peter caught her gaze. Held it.

  Sexual heat reached out, caressing her pulse points, moving lower to her nipples, and then pooled at her sex. Even at a distance of twenty yards he quickened her pulse. She didn’t have time to bank the fires before he detached from a group of hangers-on, leaving the artist to enjoy the attention and accolades.

  Georgia watched as he wound his way toward her. Unable to hold his stare any longer, she turned to face the piece she’d been examining and made a decision. Against her better judgment, she wanted to know him. Unwrap those layers, if only to say she’d conquered the virgin territory of his heart. And if she failed? She sipped at her champagne again and decided, if nothing else, the sex would be amazing.

  “Seventeen,” she said, sensing his arrival and commenting on the artist’s age at the time he’d painted the work they both examined.

  “Amazing, isn’t he?” He dropped his arm to her shoulders, his touch igniting nerve endings nowhere near where his fingers brushed. “This was the one that made me buy the gallery.”

  The way he phrased the statement never let on that he’d bought the gallery not for himself but for the artist. She looked sideways at him, tilting her head to better take in his expression.

  “Why did you do it? Buy a whole gallery and give it to him?”

  “Because he’s worth more than the hand society dealt him.” Darkness flickered briefly, there, then gone, in his gaze. He lifted his chin, nodding toward the painting. “And because I get his message.”

  Dear God, he really did identify with that boy. Had firsthand knowledge, no doubt, of poverty’s skeletal grasp. There was too much recognition there. A connection that went beyond a mere interest in art.

  Georgia shook her head, dumbfounded, as a different kind of numbness made her rewind her perceptions of the man who skimmed fingertips against the skin of her left shoulder. His palm traveled to her bare back in slow circles, progressing lower until his fingers rested lightly on the crest of her derriere.

  Though she knew his attention was all for show, to complete the ruse of his having a real date, a shiver worked its way up her spine. Found its way into her shoulders and along her neck. The dip of his fingers into the crevice between her cheeks drew her heated gasp.

  “My favorite.” His thumb strummed over the barely there strap of her thong. “Next to nothing at all.”

  Her sex grew heavy, and she breathed deep. Would it really be so bad to be this complicated man’s conquest? her libido asked.

  She glanced over her shoulder and back to him. “I think even you might find it difficult to escape the bad press if you fucked me against this wall.”

  His hips jerked, a sure sign she’d added a few megawatts to his arousal with the visual.

  “Don’t tease.” He issued the warning through clenched teeth. “You won’t enjoy the consequences.”

  The siren in her rose to the challenge. Champagne making her bold, she gripped his muscled thigh, her hand out of view between him and the wall.
Exploring ridges and contours with subtle fingers, she asked, “Who says I won’t?”

  He groaned, and her sense of power surged. This must be how he felt when he had a woman on her knees or over his thighs. The mere thought pulled an answering moan from her throat, and for once she didn’t think it’d be so bad to be a mistress. Not to this man.

  “The offices.” He motioned behind him with a tilt of his head. “I can—”

  Georgia laced her fingers with his and tugged him along. Surely she was dreaming, because she knew she didn’t do these things. They reached a fire door behind one of the panel display walls. Shoulders tight, motions jerky, Peter punched in a code and unlocked the door. Exit lighting cast a short corridor in a reddish glow, sharpening the planes of his face with shadowed relief. One hand at her hip, the other at her shoulder, he spun her around until her cheek pressed against the smooth coolness of the freshly painted wall.

  New. Everything smells new, she thought a little ridiculously.

  The rustle of fabric up her hips and the sound of his zipper melted her insides until he had to hold her up. Her beaded clutch fell to the floor. Using the sweet spot at her juncture, he levered her into position with his thigh. His foot kicked her legs wide. She gasped, the sound expelling a sweet rush of pleasure from her middle.

  Not that she had a lot of experience, but something told her the afterglow from this tryst would be neither warm nor glowy. More like a nuclear sunburn. She lifted her head to tell him no just as his fingers rolled her panties aside to discover her sex. Her hips pushed forward, an automatic response. Any protest she thought to make died the moment he slid one long, capable finger deep inside.

  More. She wanted so much more from this man. “Please.”

  Heated lips nuzzled her neck. He added another finger. Curled the digits against her G-spot. “You want it?”

  Hot, shallow breaths and the susurration of fabric against skin filled the air. The pad of his thumb circled and hit home. She threw back her head on a cry. “Yes!”

  His hand left her to dip inside her décolletage. Warmth and kneading pressure accompanied the lift of first one breast and then the other over the neckline of her gown.

  “You’re gorgeous,” he whispered over her shoulder, having the advantage of height. Though she couldn’t see his eyes lingering on her chest, she felt the heat of his breath rush past her skin.

  The brush of his breath sent a shiver down her spine that had nothing to do with a chill. Every bit of her caught fire from that small spark. Knees that had been jelly before turned insubstantial, completely unable to support her weight. With his thigh poised to catch her, she fell only as far as he desired.

  “Oh no.” His laughter rumbled over her. “Stand up. I’m not finished. Here. Like this.”

  Taking her by the waist, he set her on her feet. She swayed but somehow managed to remain upright.

  “Good girl,” he murmured, and damn her if the scrap of approval didn’t make her flush with pride. “Hands on the wall.”

  “What?” In her lust-soaked haze, the command made no sense.

  His hand encircled her wrist, lifting her arm. At the desired height, he opened his palm and pressed her hand flat against the wall. First her left and then her right. “Don’t move.”

  She could only nod. Skin tightened across her back, thighs, belly. A rush of blood swelled her sex, opening her for him. Readying her for what her body craved. And oh how she craved. Thrums of pleasure traveled in heated waves from her pussy. The rhythm of her pulse pulled at her apex, making each breath a shallow gasp.

  Ever so slowly Peter bunched her dress past her waist once more. Holding the fabric aloft in one hand, he lowered her panties with the other. Satin and lace slid past her thighs, then her knees. “Step out.”

  She looked over her shoulder as he pocketed her thong. His gaze met hers and held. A banked fire within his eyes said this was once again his show. He was the conductor to this symphony of lust, she his only instrument. He’d play her until he hit all the high notes and reached the finish he sought.

  She looked away, at once turned on by but unable to bear the emotional distance with which he held himself.

  A condom packet tore. Crinkled. Cool fingers, deliberate and controlled, said he’d discard her after this. Never call again. Panic welled. Then she remembered who she was and what their relationship really consisted of. He might never want her again like this, but the knowledge she’d be able to see him, at least for the time being, relaxed the ropes of fear.

  He reached for her hips, and she fell into the moment. Pressure against the heels of her palms increased. He lifted her, his invasion of her body quick and complete. A pillaging she hadn’t expected. Barricades crumbled in his wake. A grunt of pleasure, the tightening of his fingers on her hips, said he immersed himself in the act as fully as she. For this moment he was hers and hers alone in an uncomplicated exchange.

  Stretched and filled, beyond sanity’s grasp, she gasped his name. He took her in a frenzy of full-seated thrusts, jarring her clit with each stroke. Her breasts bounced with the rhythm he set, nipples tightening to painful points. She focused on scent—his musk. Sound—flesh against flesh and the pull of labored breaths. Touch—digging fingers and the flutter of her internal muscles in his wake. In the midst of it all, with her cheek pressed against the unyielding wall, she realized he hadn’t kissed her. This was raw, unadulterated passion. Fucking. Yes. Peter Wells was fucking her, and she loved it. Still, she needed the taste of his lips to make the memory complete.

  “Touch me.” She begged for release and an intimacy she didn’t fully understand. “Just. Please.”

  His hands remained on her hips. The frenzy of his thrusts increased. Each graze of her G-spot became a revelation of sensation, lifting her higher. Who needed intimacy when you had the runaway train of an orgasm barreling down your track? Her fingers slipped, squeaking against the glossy paint. Peter shifted and leaned into her. The band of one arm became a fulcrum against which he held her aloft when she would have collapsed. Warmth infused her skin at the press of his torso against her spine. She keened, incoherent. So close, yet so far.

  Breath coming through his nostrils in a labored rush, he seemed to grapple for control. “Wrap your legs around me. Lock your ankles.”

  Somehow, facing away from him, she did as he asked. With her forearms pressed against the wall, one of Peter’s arms and the pressure of his hips held her aloft. With his free hand he plucked at her nipples, pinching them to aching points. Then he moved lower. He trailed over her bunched dress to her clit. Fingers poised against that bundle of nerves, he drew his hips back for a full-seated thrust.

  “Come for me.” The hoarsely worded demand might have been a whisper, but it registered as a shout.

  Spasms racked her limbs, pushing her up the last steps of an internal mountain until she leaped off the precipice. Down, down, down, tumbling over and over until she drifted to the bottom of a wide, deep chasm.

  An eternity later, he withdrew from her. Georgia realized he must’ve found his own release while she’d been in the throes of the most incredible orgasm of her life. Legs unsteady, ankles wobbling, she turned and leaned against the wall while he smoothed her dress.

  He brushed the fabric downward, then cleaned up. Leaning through the door of a small bathroom, he found the paper-towel dispenser. The whir of the device and rip of the towels said he wrapped up the leavings of their interlude and tossed them into the rubbish.

  Facing her once more, he hesitated. One hand brushed her shoulder, his thumb a quiet stroke of regret she saw mirrored in his gaze. His attention lingered on her mouth. When his lips parted, she closed her eyes in anticipation of his kiss.

  His warmth left her. Sound and light cut through her awareness. As she opened her eyes, the door back to the gallery clicked closed. He was gone.

  Chapter Eight

  The scent of hazelnut and dark roast tickled Peter’s nostrils. He breathed deeper. Felt the bed shift. His
brow tightened as he tried to remember who he’d gone home with. Coming up empty, he opened one eye.

  Georgia, her hair wound into a messy topknot, considered him over the rim of a paper coffee cup from her position at the end of his bed. On one elbow, Peter sat up and examined her cross-legged posture. Bare feet. Pink toenails. His gaze traveled up jean-clad thighs to a trim waist and the swell of pert breasts molded against a pink mohair turtleneck. Bluish circles painted the delicate skin under her eyes.

  He hadn’t seen her since he’d left her in that hallway last night, and his morning erection waved all sorts of flags, trying to get him to renew his attentions in her direction. She’d been spectacular. Genuine in her need and pleasure, as well as her apprehension. He’d read the opposite pulls of dread and desire in the way she moved into his touch even as her eyes had skittered away. Despite his reputation, or maybe because of it, she’d come down on the side of bravado.

  Fuck her against a wall indeed.

  He’d not had uncalculated, uninhibited sex like that in years. He toyed with the idea of sleeping with her again, now, and quickly discarded it. Women he hadn’t paid for were like a socialite’s outfits. He never wore them twice. Georgia had known what she’d been getting into when she’d made that offer and hadn’t wanted any more attachment than he.

  “You overslept,” she said, barely meeting his gaze.

  He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It flashed an accusatory 9:33. Scrubbing his face with one hand, he sat up fully, the covers falling to his naked waist.

  Pointing with his chin, he cleared his throat. “Got any more of that?”

  Leaning over the side of the bed, she reached for something on the floor. When she came upright again, she held a small paper bag with steam rising from the top. He reached for it.