by Lilli Feisty
“Just because I let you you know what me one time does not make you my boss. Or my dom.”
“You weren’t complaining last weekend.”
“I thought I’d never see you again. I told you, that was—”
“An aberration. I know.”
“You are a very frustrating man.”
Reaching over, he lightly touched her thigh. She jumped at the warm contact, hating the way it sent tingles down her leg. “Come on, baby. I’ll play this show, all you have to do is take off your underwear.”
“You want me without my underwear? Fine.” She pulled the lace down her legs, over her sandals, shoved them into the glove box, and slammed the thing shut.
Glaring at him, she settled back into her seat. “There. Happy now? See you at the Spring Fling.”
“That’s a good girl. Funny thing, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Looks like you locked the glove box. And I don’t have the key.”
Mark handed the Ferrari keys to the valet at the Ritz. The luxury resort was located on a dramatic piece of coastline in Half Moon Bay. Reluctantly, Ruby took his hand as he led her to the front steps.
The girl was on edge. With her neat hairdo, prim dress, and shiny clutch, she was sensibility personified. The only thing that gave away her sexy side was the strappy heels on her dainty feet.
He wondered what happened to that girl he’d met nine days ago. Now she had a wall around her ten feet thick. So much different from that woman who’d melted in his arms on the patio.
But it was all a facade. There was a connection between them, nearly tangible, and he knew it wouldn’t take much to have her belonging to him once again.
He was known for his patience, but he’d been waiting for this all week, and their time apart felt like the longest foreplay ever. He was ready to explode.
They entered the grand lobby of the Ritz, but instead of heading for the restaurant, Mark pulled her into a side hallway.
“Mark, what are you doing?”
“This.” He pressed her back against a wall and kissed her. It took all of two seconds before she started kissing him back, wrapping his neck in her cool hand and holding him steady. Her little tongue tasted him, gently at first and then more eagerly. Yes… here she was, here was that girl who’d given herself to him last week.
He pressed his hips against her, showing her exactly how much she turned him on. His cock was hard and heavy, and for a moment he considered just booking a room, ordering room service, and spending the night fucking her senseless.
Instead he continued to kiss her, running his hands through her hair, trickily loosening the strands of her ponytail so he could bury his fists in the silky black waves.
When he pulled away he was happy to see a small smile on her face. It was her first one of the night; score one for team St. Crow.
She put a hand to her head. “What did you do to my hair?”
“I like it down.”
“It’s a mess.”
“It’s perfect.” He heard the sounds of footsteps so he stepped back. Blushing, Ruby looked to the side, her silhouette casual, as the strangers passed them.
When the intruders had gone, he brought the back of her wrist to his lips and kissed it. Her skin tasted sweet and decadent, like chocolate. “You know you can trust me to never push you too far in public. I need you to trust me, Ruby.”
She looked at him for what seemed like forever before she shook her head in apparent wonderment. “Yes. Somehow I do know that I can trust you. I must be crazy.”
“No. You just like what I do to you, don’t you?”
“You mean make me question my sanity? Actually, no. Not so much,” she said, and then she laughed, a nervous little chuckle that made his cock twitch.
“You’re not questioning your sanity. You’re questioning your intense need to give yourself over to me.”
“You forget that I was with a bondage expert for nearly a year. I’m not some novice groupie.”
He leaned closer. “Tell me. How do we compare? Me and him? Now that you’ve had a glimpse of true surrender, what do you think?”
He saw the struggle in her eyes and wondered if she would answer him. But then she shrugged. “I like it. With you, you cocky bastard. It scares me how much I like it.”
“Aw, sweetheart.” He brought her into his arms. “No need to be scared. You trust me, remember?”
She laughed against his chest. “I barely know you.”
But when she said the words, he realized he wanted that all to change; he wanted to get to know her. But fuck. He didn’t want to hurt her, not Ruby. The very nature of his life meant he’d spent a total of twenty nights at home in the past two years, which was, frankly, just fine with him. It was a very handy excuse when it came to relationships. Sorry, babe. See you next time around. But now he had a hard time picturing himself saying those words to Ruby.
And these feelings? Lust could run deep, but he knew it didn’t last. What lasted was the music, and when you sacrificed one for the other, it never turned out well. That was a lesson he’d learned early on. His dad only needed a few beers to start reminiscing about the “good old days” before he’d settled down. Or rather, been forced to settle down. A wife, a kid. A “real” job.
“Come on,” he said, taking Ruby’s hand. “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”
“What’s this?” Inside the dining room of the Ritz, they’d been led to a table with the best view of the Pacific Ocean, and after Mark had pulled out her chair, she’d sat down to discover a small box at her place setting.
A small box that happened to be a very unique shade of robin’s-egg blue. Her pulse jumped with a feminine excitement she couldn’t tamp down. “Is this for me?”
He looked almost sheepish as he dropped his napkin onto his lap. “I don’t see any other girls around.”
She was quite sure her smile must have been downright goofy, but she couldn’t hide it. “This is a Tiffany’s box,” she said, stating the obvious but unable to say anything else.
“Yeah, I hear girls like this kinda thing.”
“Yeah. They do,” she said, her smile stretching even wider.
“Go on, open it,” he said, as if he’d given her something as trivial as a newspaper.
Her fingers hovered over the shiny ribbon as she glanced up. “Are you sure?”
“Just open it.”
Slowly, drawing out the moment, she undid the little bow and pulled the ribbon aside. Then she delicately separated the lid from the box and pulled out yet another velvet case. Her heart beating wildly in her chest, she opened the small box.
With a gasp, she glanced up. “What’s this?”
A dainty silver chain sparkled against the blue velvet lining, coming to a V in the center, where a small pendant dangled. “It’s a lock,” she said as nerves took flight in her belly.
“A diamond-covered lock. ’Cause I’m classy that way,” he said with a wink.
“W-what does it mean?”
He took the box from her hands, got to his feet, and came around to stand behind her. “It means that, whenever you wear it, you’re mine.”
Her heart thudded in her chest. She wanted to wear it, and not just because it was a gorgeous piece of jewelry from Tiffany’s. No, there was more. She wanted to be owned, by Mark. Sure, it was just a fantasy, and a fantasy that seemed so very wrong, but she couldn’t help it, and knowing it was temporary somehow made it okay.
Behind her, his hands were warm on her skin as he pulled her hair aside and fastened the necklace. “It’s not a real lock, you know. There’s not a key. You can take it off any time.”
“Well, I guess I can wear it,” she said, lightly stroking the pendant now hanging between her collarbones. “Tonight.”
He pressed his lips to the nape of her neck, and then his teeth nipped gently at her cherry blossom tattoo. “Good girl.”
Trying to calm her racing heart, she looked for a menu. “I don’t have a
menu. Or any silverware. You’d think in a place like this, they could give a girl a knife and a fork.” God, she sounded like such a dork, but she couldn’t seem to stop babbling.
“You don’t need a knife or a fork, not tonight.”
She looked up to find Mark giving her one of those heart-stopping grins of his. The one that usually meant he was up to something.
“Actually, I do. To, you know. Eat?”
“Trust me.”
She rolled her eyes, wondering what the man had up his sleeve. He seemed to have ordered ahead of time, because a bottle of champagne had been chilled and poured, and then a waiter approached, holding a tray.
“Shrimp cocktail.” The server placed a large glass in front of her. The inside of the glass was filled with red sauce, and five large prawns hugged the rim.
“This looks divine.” She looked up. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
His eyes were dark, unreadable. “I think I’ll just watch you for now.”
Shrugging, she picked up a prawn and dipped it into the cocktail sauce. Then she brought it to her lips and took a large bite. The shrimp flesh was salty, like the sea. The red sauce was perfectly spicy and set off the subtle flavor of the seafood. Blissful. She looked up again and saw that Mark was watching her eat, studying her. She licked a drop of sauce off her lips.
“You missed a spot,” he said, reaching across the table. He dabbed the corner of her mouth with his fingertip, then slowly, gently, ran the pad of his fingertip over her lips.
The entire time he held eye contact with her and didn’t look away. And she didn’t want him to. She wanted to look him in the eye as she sucked his finger, as she’d done the other night. It was insane, how easily he excited her.
“Under My Thumb.” Her mother had always hated that song, said it was degrading to women. And yet she’d been totally infatuated with Ruby’s father, so much so that she would literally follow him to the ends of the earth. Ruby would never be so emotionally dependent on a man. Ever.
“Ruby,” he said, and she snapped out of it.
“What?”
His expression was more serious than she’d ever seen it. “I was kidding earlier, in the car. I’d never ask you to trade sex to get some business deal.”
Something inside her softened as she searched his eyes for pretense. She saw none. “Thank you, Mark. I needed to hear that.”
They fell silent and Mark picked up another shrimp, dipped it into the sauce, and brought it to her lips. She opened her mouth, let him feed her. Let him go as slow as he wanted to. She licked her lips, held his gaze. Soon her nipples were hardening under her bra, and her skin felt hot. Suddenly she wanted to feel his fingers on other parts of her body. Her neck. Her breasts. Between her legs.
He picked up her champagne glass and tilted it to her lips. She tasted the bubbly liquid, rolled it around on her tongue. It tickled her nose and she smiled.
“You are so fucking sexy, Ruby.”
Uncomfortable, she waved his words away. “No, I’m not.”
“I told you not to put yourself down.”
“I’m a lot of things, but sexy, or pretty, isn’t any of them.”
“If you think that, why did you pose nude?”
She straightened. “For one thing, I never thought those photographs would be sold. And…”
“And what?”
All these sensations—the food, the view, the scent of the sea—seemed to open her up, and she found herself admitting things she hadn’t ever before, even to Meg. For some reason, maybe because of what they’d done that first night, she felt like she could tell him anything about this part of herself.
She shifted in her seat. “I felt sexy posing that way. Like I was being decorated, celebrated.”
“You should be celebrated, Ruby.”
“No—”
“Don’t argue with me.” His tone was firm, but he was smiling and waved a shrimp in her direction as he spoke.
He glanced out the window to the endless ocean and then at her. “You grow up around here?”
She nodded. “Actually, about one mile from this very spot. Of course, there wasn’t a Ritz-Carlton here then. In fact, I spent many hours on this beach that’s been so neatly tamed. When I was a girl, you took your life in your hands just to get to the water.”
“So, you were a risk-taker, then?”
“No, not really. But my parents loved the ocean, and we spent a lot of time here and at the marina. We were always in the water, always sandy and salty. My mom always said my sister and I were part mermaid.” But Mom had been the one to disappear into that liquid sunset, not Ruby or Claire. While their folks had been off sailing the world, the girls had been landlocked.
“Where are your parents now?”
She sipped another few drops of champagne. “Being a mechanic was just something Dad did to pay the bills. He was really an artist himself, a free spirit; he painted, played music, wrote. Our house was always full of artists. But Dad could never stay in one place very long. He was always going on sailing trips.” She shrugged. “One day he never came back. Mom waited an entire year before going after him.”
“Did she find him?”
“Yeah. But Dad was never happy in one place. The sea was in his blood. So even if they came back, they never stayed long. I think they felt more at home on their boat than anywhere.”
“How old were you when your dad left?”
“Sixteen. Claire was thirteen.”
“Your parents left you to fend for yourselves when you and your sister were teenagers.” He said it as a statement, not a question, and his tone was rough.
“It wasn’t that bad. We were mature for our ages, and we knew how to take care of ourselves.”
“How did you afford to live?”
“Luckily the house was paid off. And they sent checks sporadically. I also had a grandmother in Florida who did what she could.”
“Did you work?”
She nodded. “I got a job assisting an event planner after school.” She tried to smile casually. “And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“You never thought about doing anything else? For a living?”
“Yes, I went to college and studied photography. But even at school I found I was always planning parties, mainly keggers,” she said with a laugh. “I guess it’s in my blood. I came back to this because I love organizing things, watching a series of plans come together. And it’s always a party; who doesn’t love a party?” She looked away, thinking she’d revealed way too much about herself. “Anyway, enough of that. So, you’ll really do the show for Boxware?”
He paused, and she wondered if he’d ask more personal questions, or say no. But then he smiled. “You took off your panties, even if you did lock them in a loaner car. But a deal’s a deal. We’ll do it.”
“That’s wonderful. Thank you, Mark, really.” She gave him her very best flirty look. “So, what would I have to do to get you to agree to a little preparty with James and some other high rollers?”
“I’m sure I’ll think of something, baby.” He took her hand and softly rubbed the pad of his thumbs over her knuckles. A lovely quiver of anticipation rushed through her. “After all,” he said, “we have all night.”
Ruby licked the last bit of butter off her fingertips. Mark had broken open a stack of crab legs and lobster tails and fed them to her in small, butter-dipped bites; she hadn’t been allowed any silverware during the entire meal. Now she was partway through a delicious plate of strawberries and melted chocolate. Thank God it was Sunday, the only day she cheated on her diet.
Mark watched her eat. “You enjoying yourself tonight, Ruby?”
“It’s been tolerable,” she joked, licking a drop of chocolate off her finger.
His eyes were dark, dilated behind his glasses. He liked it, liked watching her eat like this.
Leaning over the table, he handed her a strawberry. The look in his eyes caused an aching throb between her thighs. He said in a low voice
, “I want you to dip this in the chocolate sauce and then pretend it’s my cock, Ruby. Lick it like you mean it. Show me what you’d do if it were my own flesh in your mouth.”
Her body temperature spiked up a notch, and her eyes darted around the room. “Mark, no. I can’t.” But the sound of her voice was breathy, high, and revealing.
He grinned in that wicked way of his. “Can’t you? You sure about that?”
Oh, he was so sure of himself. Knew exactly how far to push her. But the gleam in his eyes nailed her right in her core, promising sinful pleasure whether she obeyed or disobeyed.
Fuck it.
She dipped the strawberry in the chocolate. His eyes on her mouth, she brought the fruit to her lips, let her tongue dart out and lick the top. A bit of chocolate dripped and she caught it with her tongue, imagining how his cock would drip when he was excited. The image made her sex pulse and she squeezed her thighs together, painfully aware of her nakedness beneath her dress.
She let her eyelids lower as she tasted the chocolate, leisurely licking around and around the pointed tip until the chocolate had dissolved in her mouth.
“Fuck, Ruby.”
She loved his eyes on her; the only other time she’d felt comfortable under such scrutiny was when Ash had looked at her through the lens of his camera. But this was so different. With Mark, there seemed to be an energy between them that pulsed like electricity.
She took a bite of the strawberry. The sugary fruit burst into her mouth, and she felt a corresponding tug between her legs. Tart, juicy, sweet.
She met his gaze and paused at the look in his eyes. Gone was the playful twenty-nine-year-old musician. Before her was a man, a gorgeous man who radiated confidence. And lust. Lust for her.
Fuck me.
She wanted him. Now. She took another unhurried bite of the strawberry and didn’t care if her eyes were begging for it, for him.
But his hands were steady when he picked up another piece of fruit and dipped it into his glass of champagne. “Spread your legs a little for me, Ruby.”
“W-what?”
He handed her the strawberry. “Do it.”
She was too turned on and too lost in this entire crazy night to deny him. So, pulse hammering, she inched her knees apart.