He gently tugged her back into the circle of his arms, and she slumped against him. “I have a few hours, still.”
Georgie’s hands slipped up around his neck, and her soft breath fluttered over his neck.
Was she trying to start something? He desperately hoped so. Before last week, it really had been nine months for him. Maybe ten. Just touching the soft skin of her arms was enough to make the testosterone in his body surge.
Yet he asked, “Are you safe here?”
“No, but I’m going to take care of it.”
“How are you going to take care of it?”
“Leave,” she said.
Alexandre felt that word like a bat to the back of his head. “But you have your classes. And law school.”
“I’m going to have to ditch all that anyway.”
“Because of the pictures with me.” He felt horror twist his face. If he had fucked everything up for her—
“No. They called me on my cell a couple days ago. I started making plans to run then. It’s not you. The pictures didn’t even make it worse. They’re too recent. They just emphasized the fact that I need to leave again.”
Every time she said something new, a red flag waved in his head. “Again?”
“Long story. You don’t want to hear it.”
He turned her to face him. “Are you in actual danger?”
She sighed. “Maybe.” Her hands clenched on her knees. “Yeah.”
“I can’t leave here if you’re in danger, Georgie.”
“Oh yes, you can. You need to get right back on that plane and fly away so that I can go underground.”
Panic trickled through him, even as he reminded himself that he didn’t believe in muses. “I can’t believe that you’re going to give up law school.”
“I won’t give it up. Law school is the plan. I’ll go someplace else. Maybe Alabama. They won’t look for me in Alabama, although I thought that about here, too. Change my name legally again. Get my transcripts, and finish my undergrad there. I’ll lose this semester, but I’ll be okay. I just have to work my plan.”
Her vehemence on that last sentence sounded like it masked desperation. Alexandre had felt those sharp indigo tones in his own mouth. “What can I do to help?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Just get on your plane and don’t look back. It’s been lovely fucking you, Alex. Have a nice life.”
He didn’t believe in muses, but he believed that when he stepped out of the town car and back on the tour bus, he would be Xan Valentine again. “I don’t want to leave you.”
Georgie twisted in his arms, standing up on her knees, and kissed him. Her lips slanted across his, and he opened his mouth when she did, feeling her soft tongue on his.
Alexandre couldn’t speak anymore. If these were his last few moments with her before she made herself disappear, he didn’t want those precious moments to be spent on an argument.
FIVE
Georgie
Five.
Everyone has a number, whether they have kept track or not.
Georgie’s number was three.
Georgie slept with a guy a maximum of three times, and then she untangled herself from any budding relationship before it got serious or was even acknowledged.
There were two guys out there that she had slept with three times before she had extricated herself. One of them had looked a little hurt, but they were cordial to each other for a couple weeks, then they were friends. She had lots of onesies and two-fers, of course. She wasn’t a fucking nun.
But, five.
The first time with Alexandre had been in Paris, after the performance at Flicka’s reception.
The second time had been the kinkfest in The Devilhouse.
The third and fourth times had been in his hotel room, tangled in the sheets of his bed.
And now.
Five.
Her arms shook a little, but Georgie slid her hands up and into his long hair, feeling the softer, honey-colored strands on the nape of his neck and the ridges crossing his back that felt like the deep calluses on his fingers.
She was going to disappear in a few hours anyway. He knew it. She wasn’t lying to him.
But five.
Alex’s strong arms were already around her, stroking her back and cupping the back of her head under her braid. He moved nearer to her on the mattress, lifting her, settling her against him, and arranging her legs around his waist.
Georgie could already feel his hardness through his jeans, and he dragged her ass across his thighs until his bulge pressed her clit. The thick, double-stitched seam in the denim of her pants nestled inside her spread-open folds and rubbed.
She refused to think that there was anything magic about five.
Alex rolled her back on the bed, his body still wedged between her legs. Her braid flopped to the side, and he snagged the elastic at the end, pulling it off. He used his fingers to comb the plaits out of her hair and wrapped long hanks around his hands.
“Just this once,” he whispered against her throat.
She nodded and stretched her neck to feel his warm breath on her skin. The mild scent of his cologne—green fields, wide-open spaces, and rich fruit and spices—lifted off his skin, and she breathed in his natural masculine scent underneath.
Yes, it would be just this once.
But it would be five.
Alex held her hair, turning her as he wanted, moving her head to mouth her collarbone and dragging her up against him, her back pressed to his torso, to explore her body with his strong, confident hands. He wasn’t rough with it, but her long hair knotted around his hand was a giving away of control that shook Georgie inside, but Alex held her in his arms, slowly stroking into her as he held her head down on her bed, making the springs creak gently under them, his face just above hers, his hair falling around them like a curtain, looking into her eyes with an openness that frightened her more than the mafia killers hunting her.
It was over too soon, and they lay in her bed, their limbs snaked together, watching the dappled sunlight from the slot windows high on the wall.
In the tiny dorm shower, Alex washed her body again, and took care to smooth lotion over her skin, like he was renewing her for her new life. As his arms and back flexed, his arms sweeping the cool moisturizer on her, the watercolor tattoo on his back looked like teal and blue ink had been poured over his pale gold skin. Darker designs of treble clefs and musical notes flowed over the strong muscles like flotsam in a flood. A serpentine, five-line musical staff wove through the design like a swimming water dragon. As he crouched and stroked lotion on her calves, Georgie ran her hands over his shoulders, feeling the rough ink under his skin.
After they dressed, Alex checked his instruments in his combination guitar and violin case in Georgie’s study room and told her that his other luggage would be delivered to his plane so they didn’t need to stop at his hotel.
Georgie wondered how he ranked that, but skipping his hotel was a ten-minute detour, lost.
The thick traffic on the freeway under the noontime sun ran fast and clear, bumper-to-bumper and eighty miles an hour. Georgie gripped the hot steering wheel and drove precisely in the zero-tolerance formation, the hot wind whizzing by her windows. She had never wished for a traffic jam before, but that day, she did. She couldn’t even hold Alex’s hand because she needed both hands on the wheel, but he looked out the passenger window at the beige freeway walls speeding behind them.
At the airport, she pulled her car into the first parking spot, the one nearest to the private terminal that she and Lizzy had flown out of only a week before.
Alex walked around the car and retrieved his guitar case from her trunk. She met him back there, thumbing the fob to release the trunk latch.
“I guess it’s time for you to go.” She couldn’t even make a joke about how it had been lovely fucking him.
Alex grabbed her around her waist and pressed her back against the car, which warmed the backs of her legs. �
��This feels wrong.”
No, it didn’t. His tall, lean body pressed against hers felt so right, but she knew what he meant.
“Tell me where you’re going,” he said.
“It’s better if no one knows,” she said. “I’ve got a quick meeting in town to support a friend, but then I’m hitting the road. I’ll be in Albuquerque tonight and past that tomorrow.”
“No matter where you are, if something happens, if you need help,” he whispered, “get to an airport with a private terminal. Call me. Evidently, if they have suitable incentive, my plane can be in the air in under two hours. I will come for you. I’ll send people if it’s faster, but call me.”
“I don’t know,” she said, feeling his arms around her waist and body.
Alex pressed his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. His long lashes lay like fringe on his cheeks. “No matter what you need, call me. I’ll help you.”
The first two times she had disappeared, no one had said this to her. His words comforted her down to her core. “I will.”
“Good.” He held the sides of her face as he kissed her mouth, so tenderly, and then he walked away, into the terminal where the golden sunlight glared off the glass.
YOUR GRACE
Alexandre de Valentinois
Alexandre carried his guitar case by the backpack straps clenched in one fist and strode across the sun-baked tarmac to his airplane, the tail painted red, white, and blue to mimic France’s tricolor Republican flag. His mother insisted on maintaining French pride even though his family was Monégasque and had been Monégasque back to when Monaco was just another feudal city-state, though like most noble and royal families, his ancestors were as often Austrian or German. The most he could really say about himself was that he was blue-blooded European with more than the average Italian mixed in. His mother, however, still believed that France would recreate its dukes and counts someday, and their family would be restored to their dukedom as they deserved.
God, he hoped they never did that.
He retrieved his phone from his pants pocket and told it, “Call security.”
After a ring, a man’s voice asked, “Ouais?”
Alexandre said, “Paul, Adrien, we’re delaying the flight for a few hours, and I’d like you to stay behind for a few days. I’m concerned about Georgie, and you should follow her even if she leaves town. There may be something very wrong, here. She was attacked in France, and now she thinks someone is after her here. I’ll come back through the terminal. Pick me up at the doors.”
“Oui-oui, monsieur.”
Alexandre hung up. If she wouldn’t come with him, at least he would not leave her unprotected.
The plane’s jet engines were revving hard, a white-speckled yellow blast, probably running the air conditioning inside to combat the desert sun glowering down on the plane’s titanium skin.
He reached the plane and took the stairs up to the door two at a time. The smoky exhaust billowing around the plane crawled like insects on his skin, and he hurried inside. Alexandre handed the guitar case to the steward to stow it.
Guillaume, a middle-aged man with more scalp than hair and more paunch than legs, said in a low, servant’s voice, “Your Grace. Would you like a drink?”
“Reschedule the flight for three hours from now and refile the flight plan.”
“Won’t that be cutting it awfully close to your,” he sniffed, “performance?”
“You’re right. Tell the pilot that we’ll have to make up time in the air.”
Guillaume rolled his eyes. “Very good, Your Grace.”
Alexandre ran to catch up with Paul and Adrien.
SAYING GOOD-BYE
Georgie
Georgie sat in her car, resting her arms and forehead on the steering wheel and giving herself a few moments. The air conditioning blew full blast, cooling the car even though it had been off for only a short time and tickling her ears with icy streams.
Alex was flying away, and she was running away.
It had been lovely fucking him.
Cars whizzed by on the road outside the terminal’s parking lot, blotting out the blobs of the prickly pear cactus on the other side of the road.
Damn.
Georgie should drive.
She should find herself some lunch before the Devilhouse meeting.
She should get ready to leave.
Instead, she dug her laptop out of her black bug-out bag from her closet, connected it to her cell phone, and composed emails instead, scheduling them to send in a few hours when she would be on the road to Albuquerque, telling everyone goodbye.
She was a coward, but she couldn’t face their reactions because, for all pragmatic reasons, Georgie Johnson was going to die tonight, even if a new woman with a new name would rise phoenix-like from her ashes.
But her reincarnation would be in Alabama, not the Southwest.
So Georgie composed her suicide notes, telling them how much they meant to her, how sorry she was, but not to look for her, and she set up notes for Rae, Lizzy, some other friends, and even Wulfram von Hannover.
And Flicka.
Flicka’s was the hardest.
I have to disappear again, Georgie typed, We just found each other, and I’m so, so sorry. In a few years, when things cool off, when I can pay everyone back, I’ll find you again. I’ll pay you back soon, right after the charities. The charities were the worst thing he ever did.
THE NEW, IMPROVED DEVILHOUSE
Georgie
Georgie sat at the end of the long, polished table in The Devilhouse conference room and stared out the tinted windows at the park-like expanse of lush grass and bushes shining in the blazing afternoon sunlight.
At the other end of the conference table, Lizzy—finally clad in a black suit appropriate for business instead of stupid slavewear—was doing her best to look competent and in control and pulling it off really well. She had gotten her short hair trimmed in the last couple days so that her blond pixie-cut was back in spiky shape.
Dozens of other contractors surrounded the table, seated in the squeaking leather chairs and in the other office chairs dragged in to line the room. More people leaned against the walls. Georgie tallied a quick head count, and she thought only two people might be missing.
At the head of the table, Lizzy’s boyfriend Theo Valencia, the Medium Guy turned Radiant Sun God Dude, and Wulfram von Hannover flanked the tiny blonde, looking for all the world like giant, golden lions guarding a child. They turned in, toward her, directing the group’s attention in and to Lizzy.
Nicely played.
“First of all,” Lizzy’s raspy voice projected over the conference table and dozens of people around it, “let’s get this out of the way. I’m not The Domme, no matter how you spell it. I prefer Domina. You’ll address me as Domina or Ma’am when we’re inside The Devilhouse.”
Georgie’s purse was tucked under her chair, the strap looped around her ankle so it wouldn’t get kicked around. She had thought about shoving one of her bug-out bags in a locker inside The Devilhouse, but the parking lot was fenced. No one was going to break into her car in that parking lot in the middle of the brilliant desert afternoon. She had cracked her windows so that her laptop wouldn’t broil.
Yet, maybe she should have brought it in with her.
But it was such a pain in the ass to tote the big backpacks around. People would ask questions. She didn’t want anyone to know that she planned to say good-bye to Lizzy and a few other people here before she bolted.
After this meeting, and she was only here to support Lizzy, Georgie was going to drive through a coffee place, buy a triple-shot latte, and drive at least as far as Albuquerque that night, about six hours.
The next day, it would take her about eight more hours to get to Oklahoma City.
She had downloaded everything that she needed to get her to Alabama on her phone, including maps in case the cell phone towers were sparse and all of Killer Valentine’s music.
&n
bsp; If she had to leave, if she had to become someone else, she could at least hear Alex sing to her one last time.
Beside Georgie, Josephine brushed her lavender hair behind her shoulder and shifted in her seat. “Um, I did one a couple months ago.”
Lizzy, up at the front, projected, “A couple months ago. Georgie?”
Oh, crap. She cleared her throat, stalling.
Josephine ducked her head and whispered, “Blow job. Last one. When?”
Georgie flipped her hand, looking like she was dithering. “I have a new guy, so he wanted one. Other than that, it had been a couple months for me, too.”
“And how many clients do you have?” Lizzy pressed.
“Eight regulars, plus some special occasions,” Georgie said. Damn, she really needed to write them good-bye notes, too. They were all so fragile. Many of them had emailed her during the time The Devilhouse had been closed, asking her to meet with them, just for coffee, just to talk. Their lonely voices had saddened her cold, dead heart, so she had met with them at The Coffee Plantation for an hour each to tide them over, just for coffee.
They were all sweetly grateful. Only two had wanted hugs. The rest just needed to talk.
Oh, damn. What was Georgie going to do about those guys?
“And it’s been months,” Lizzy said, her gravelly voice firm.
“Well, yeah. They’re not really here for the BJs. They think they are, but, you know. They’re not.” Eight more emails. She could probably do that from Albuquerque tonight.
“Yes,” Lizzy said. “That’s the point. Dommes and Doms, when was the last time yous guys blew anyone?”
Jesus, did Lizzy want a mutiny? Georgie turned around to where the Dominants all sat behind her to watch the carnage.
None of them twitched.
Mairearad shrugged. “Dommes don’t do that, ever.”
Every Breath You Take (Billionaires in Disguise: Georgie and Rock Stars in Disguise: Xan #1) Page 17