Game On
Page 24
Luc groaned and looked heavenward before sliding forward so the back of her thigh was propped on his shoulder.
“Call Riley,” he said, “Tell him I need another ten minutes.”
Clara could barely punch the numbers into her phone while Luc teased her, toyed with the soft lips of her labia, before spreading her open with his thumbs and delving into the hot wetness.
Riley’s “Yo, I’m in the elevator, hold your horses!” came at the exact moment Luc’s tongue grazed the tight bundle of nerves at her apex. She couldn’t have held in the gasp even if she’d been prepared.
“Clara?” Riley sounded alarmed. “You okay? What’s wrong?”
“Need ten more minutes,” she managed to say.
“More.” Luc’s voice was muffled, but his intentions were clear.
“We’ll meet you in the coffee shop in a half hour,” Clara blurted before another moan could escape.
The hard tip of Luc’s tongue circled her clitoris. Perhaps this wasn’t a great idea to do whilst standing. She gripped his shoulders for balance.
Luc inserted a finger into her channel, sending another jolt of pure electric heat from her scalp to her toes. He added another, filling her, pushing deeper, while his tongue found a rhythm. He stroked harder, faster, until her body trembled for release.
Swirls of color swam in Clara’s tightly shut eyes. She’d never…not in a public place…and the taboo of it had heightened her senses, made the very act feel more urgent.
“In me, in me, in me,” she said, “I want you in me.”
“No condoms,” he mumbled.
Clara reached into the pocket of her trench coat and pulled out a string of foil packets. She tore one off while he wiggled his jeans lower, and sheathed him before mounting. She hadn’t yet settled her weight on him when he grabbed her by the waist and thrust his hips up, impaling her with a force she felt all the way up her spine.
“Oh yes,” she moaned, tossing her head back. She wanted to scream, to shout, to yell, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she was concerned with the acoustics in a twenty-thousand-seat arena.
He drove into her without mercy, taking as much as she could give. Unlike their soul-connecting passion a handful of nights ago, this was fucking. This was a pure animalistic coupling. Hot monkey sex. He gripped her hair and forced her to look into his eyes as he took her. He grunted, low and dangerous, with every thrust, claiming her with a primal fierceness that scared her, thrilled her, made her feel wanton and reckless.
For the first time since they’d been together, Luc came before her. For the first time, Clara got to witness his release with unclouded vision. His brow furrowed, his lids slammed shut, the cords of his neck bulged, strained, the muscles of his shoulders and arms bunched under her fingers as his body released a massive force of energy.
She made that happen.
It was powerful, momentous, and damn, it felt good to hear the one singular word he muttered when it was done.
“Clara.”
Chapter 33
Clara stood in front of her suitcase, deciding between a cami-and-cardigan or dress shirt. “How will I know what to wear if you don’t tell me where we’re going?”
“You look fine as you are,” he replied.
“I’m in my bra!”
“That’s good, too.”
Clara dug to the bottom and pulled out a three-quarter-sleeve sweater. Thin enough for indoor temperatures and basic black, suitable for any occasion. “Shall I take my handbag? A notepad? My toothbrush? Does it involve lots of walking because my feet still hurt from wandering the Smithsonian.”
“No, no, no, and yes, wear comfortable footwear.”
“But if I wear my tennis shoes, you tower over me.” Clara glanced at her watch. “Will we at least have time for some sightseeing between this surprise and the game tonight? Because I’d quite like to have a glimpse at that phallic symbol thingy on the Mall that Dan Brown says holds all the Masonic secrets.”
“It’s called the Washington Monument, and yes, if we leave now, there’ll be plenty of time. In fact, if you hurry it along, love, we can go there first.”
The phone trilled beside her. “Let me just get that, then, and we’ll dash,” she said. “Hello? Clara Bean here.”
“Clara Bean…what ever shall I do with you?”
At the sound of Valentina’s voice, she turned away from Luc so he couldn’t see the blood drain from her face. “Whatever do you mean?”
“For one, that stunt you pulled back at West Rosa’s. Though it was lovely of you to pre-order the fish for me. And the wine wasn’t half bad.”
Clara pressed her palm over the mouth piece and said to Luc over her shoulder, “Go ahead. I’ll meet you in the lobby.” She waited to see him open the door before turning her attention back to Valentina. “I thought you’d appreciate it.”
“Yes, well, cunning doesn’t suit you, Clara, so stop trying to emulate your friend. You don’t have her moxie.”
“That’s rather backhanded, but a compliment is a compliment. I’ll be sure to pass it along to Lydia.”
“Don’t bother. I can’t stand the queen bitch. But it is a nod to her shrewdness.”
“So I take it your meeting went well?”
“It was a step in the right direction. I’m back on the fashion show invitation list, but Lydia still managed to hog all of Colin Brastow’s attention when we were supposed to be there to further my purposes.”
“Yes, Lyds does get a lot of attention. Because she’s a nice person. People are naturally drawn to her. You should try it. You might find it works for you, too. The old flies-to-honey thing.”
“Ha, the problem with nice is it’s as slow as that honey and not for us fast-trackers. Nice is for the unambitious, for kindergarten teachers and cupcake bakers. Nice is fallible, it’s easily manipulated, it’s taken advantage of.”
Fine. Clara had it with being nice, too. So her tone was rather harsh, her volume on the loud side when she yelled, “Are we done yet?”
“Take you, for instance. You’re a nice girl, aren’t you, Clara Bean? Letting your boyfriend come to my apartment in the middle of the night to say goodbye…now that was nice.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know? You mean he never told you that he came to me during your last night in New York?” Val tsked. “Now that wasn’t nice of him, was it? Come to think of it, he didn’t play very nice when he ripped my robe off.”
Clara’s bottom lip caught between her teeth as her head exploded with images of what perfect Valentina must look like under her clothes. Like a Sun page-three model with their perky boobs and come hither smiles. She shook her head to dislodge the mental montage, but they were stuck like posters on a garage wall. Small black spots danced before her eyes. “You’re lying.”
“Please. I’ve better things to do. If you don’t believe me, ask him. And while he’s busy denying our parting kiss, you’ll be thinking about where he was putting his hands on my naked body.”
Clara was overcome with a sick, clammy feeling. Her skin broke into a sweat at the same time a chill ripped through her. She gripped the telephone receiver so hard—only to prevent herself from hurling it across the room and through the picture window—that it caused a shooting pain up her forearm. “What do you want from me?”
Val laughed. “Consider this a lesson, a favour from yours truly in excising your kitten-fluffy niceness so you can’t be used and stepped on. This is a man’s world, my friend, and unless you enjoy being a doormat, grow a set.”
“Are you quite finished?”
“I’m not sure,” Val said with her chiming laugh. “I suppose…unless I think of something else.” The line went dead.
Clara’s knees began to wobble, so she clutched the
desk and concentrated on breathing. She wanted to scream, loud and long, but something in the air changed, and she realized she wasn’t alone.
“Who was that?”
Luc.
She turned to see him framed in the doorway. His voice was calm, but a vein twitched in his temple. “Who was on the phone, Clara?”
How long had he been there? What had he heard? What had she said? “Nobody. Never mind. Let’s just get out of here.”
Flustered and unable to face him, Clara dug into the pile of clothes in her open suitcase until she found her burgundy scarf and matching gloves, mumbling about unpredictable weather. She pushed passed him on her way out; wouldn’t look at him. Couldn’t. Haunted by the images Valentina had planted in her head.
He’d been acting strange the morning they left New York. Surly. Affected. Bloody hell, even Riley had noticed it. Even if Clara were inclined to disbelieve Valentina, she couldn’t banish the memories of that morning at the airport. Had he been pining over her?
Leaving the hotel was like walking a gauntlet, especially with Luc regarding her so. She could see in her peripheral that his jaw clenched and relaxed like he was chewing on annoyance.
“Let’s walk,” she suggested, bursting through the lobby doors into the morning sunshine. The Mall was only a few blocks away and she needed to be physical, blow off the fury gnawing her insides.
What she really wanted to do was to run, to feel the pavement slam against the soles of her feet, to sweat all the ugliness out of her system, to get as far away from Luc as fast as possible. Instead, she walked quickly, hoping to stay a few feet ahead.
He kept up, his long-legged strides moving purposely beside her. They didn’t speak, didn’t banter. Indeed, all his energy seemed spent on brooding while hers was spent in keeping herself calm and rational and not giving in to the urge to beat her fists against Luc’s solid chest, claw his perfect face, and scream, “Why? Whywhywhywhy! Why did you go to her? Aren’t I enough for you? Aren’t I good enough for you?”
Some small voice in her head said it couldn’t be true, that Luc wasn’t the kind of person that Val was suggesting, but that part of her was drowned out by the other louder voice that shouted, “You selfish little girl. Thought you had him, didn’t you? Well, you don’t bloody deserve him!”
She wanted so badly to confront him, but she couldn’t. What if, instead of denying it or giving her a valid reason for seeing his ex-lover without telling her, what if he looked at her pityingly and shrugged. What if all those things she pictured them doing were true?
As long as she kept it inside, she could pretend Valentina was full of shit, the encounter never happened, there was no dead-of-night visit, no kiss, no disrobing, no…everything that came after. And to have to say the words aloud, “Did you…” in a voice that would surely ring with whiny humiliation, would be like handing Valentina her dignity on a silver platter.
She walked blindly, seething, fretting, replaying her conversation with Val on auto-loop, changing her response every time but never coming out the victor. The only positive outcome had her hanging up the moment she realized who it was. If only…
When she finally clued into her surroundings, Clara found herself at the Vietnam Memorial Wall, a hauntingly beautiful piece of black rock inscribed with the names of those fallen. It seemed endless, the list as well as the monument, growing taller next to her as the path sloped into the ground. She stopped at its deepest and highest point, where the wall corned into a ninetyish-degree turn. It was eerily quiet, as if all the noise in Washington stayed a respectful distance. It was disturbingly peaceful, this place that represented war, death, the end.
The end.
She couldn’t ignore it anymore. Their relationship, measured in days, weeks, cities, had come to a premature end thanks to Valentina.
A weary sigh escaped her lips.
Clara obviously meant nothing more to Luc than a business-class fuck buddy and, really, she hadn’t expected more, had she? They’d joked from the beginning about it being a game, complete with rules, though neither had acknowledged the countdown clock. So the buzzer had gone a few seconds early. Big deal. Best to call it off now and declare Luc the winner.
The etched names blurred as she focused on her own reflection in the granite. You couldn’t see both at the same time; one either honed in on the letters of the names or adjusted to see a larger vision of their own reflection. It was almost as if these loyal and selfless young men were trying to disassociate from her, knowing her greatest flaw was their greatest strength. Clara felt petty and stupid for obsessing over the heart of a man she’d known only a month in the presence of the dead, the brave, the valiant.
“You’re crying.” Luc came up beside her.
She wiped the dampness from cheeks with the back of her hand. “So many, so young. A terrible waste, and for what?”
“For a political ideal, for their families, for their country. Over fifty-eight thousand,” he said with an unbelieving shake of his head.
“Such a great sacrifice,” she sighed.
“A sacrifice for the greater good, I suppose,” Luc said.
For the greater good. Luc had taken a fat yellow highlighter to her biggest flaw. Her selfishness would never allow her to look at the greater good, never allow her to consider anything or anybody past the good of her own nose.
He reached out to take her hand, she saw this in the reflection, but before his fingers could make contact, Clara walked away; away from the fallen, away from the judgmental self that stared back at her in the obsidian-like granite, away from him.
Chapter 34
“You going to tell me what’s up?” Luc asked when he caught up with her.
“This is your party. You tell me,” she said.
“That’s not what I meant. You’re irritated, and I’d like to know why. Was it the phone call?”
“Can’t a girl have a bad day? Maybe I’m PMSing. Can we leave it at that?”
“No,” he said and picked up his pace to keep up with her.
The first two days in Washington had been filled with sightseeing and fine food. They’d laughed their asses off the night before while writing the critique, using their words to snipe at each other’s intellect while praising the cuisine. Their columns had such amazing rhythm, a synergy that could only be credited to their real-life chemistry. So for Clara to change her act so abruptly and behave completely out of character left him confused and angry.
The telephone call, which he’d never have known about had he not forgotten his wallet, had him burning with curiosity. He hadn’t overheard much, only caught the tail end of what appeared to be an intense conversation. Her responses were short, angry—you’re lying and what do you want from me—and he replayed them over and over in his mind, wondering to whom they were directed and what they meant. And why the hell did he feel nauseous about it, for God’s-damned-sake? He had enough to worry about today without this shit.
They didn’t linger by the Reflecting Pool, nor at the large phallic thingy, as Clara had called the monument. She seemed impatient and antsy, had lost the insatiable curiosity for all things American and, worst of all, her spark. God damn it to hell, he wanted to gloves-off clock the bastard responsible for taking it away.
“Can we try this again?” he said again when they got in the taxi. “What’s going on with you, Clara?”
“Nothing.” She smiled but it didn’t reach her cheeks, let alone put the brightness back in her eyes.
“I’m not blind, love. Or stupid, remember?”
Again, she gazed through him as if he were nothing more than a spectre, and forced a patronizing grin.
“Can we cut with the pretend amusement?” Luc pressed his fingers into the side of his knee. The dull throb wasn’t helping his disposition.
“I’m just not prepared to
discuss this at the moment,” she said.
“Here we are, the phone booth,” said the cabbie as he pulled up to the curb.
“Later, then,” Luc said, impatience making his words angrier than he intended. “After we’re done here, Clara, I expect some answers.”
“We’ll see,” she said, sliding out of the backseat.
He watched puzzlement cloud her face when she looked up at the sign for the Verizon Center. “Isn’t this where—”
“Yup. My old team is in town for tonight’s game against the Capitals. They’re practicing right now so I thought...” He shrugged.
“And you’re okay with being here?”
He took a deep breath and reached for her hand, relieved that she didn’t pull away. “Uh-huh.” It was only a small lie. “As long as you’re with me.”
Every step toward the building became slower, more difficult. He should have told the taxi to wait.
Panic attacks are funny things. They toy with you first, taunting you from the shadows of your mind like some kind of horror movie monster calling, I’m cooooming, as your logic center screams, get back, please-please-please, just leave me be. The cold sweat begins to form on your forehead and upper lip, your heart starts to hammer, your ears buzz like your senses are trying to escape your corporeal self, then someone like Clara snaps you out of it with a “Do I smell okay?”
And it all just stopped. He squeezed her hand to acknowledge gratitude that she’d never know she deserved. “Lovely. An entire basket of laundry-fresh towels.”
She looked at him like she was having her own brand of panic attack. “I wish you’d told me we were coming here. I feel horribly unprepared.”
“What’s to prepare?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Something. Look at their stats, maybe? Put on perfume.”
Luc slowed and pulled her up against him, or tried to, but her body felt as tight as a compacted spring. “Hey, relax. It’s not like you’re meeting my parents. And do you have any idea what a locker room smells like? Even on your dirtiest, nastiest, just-walked-through-a-bog-then-bathed-in-sour-milk day, you’d smell and look like sunshine to these guys. Trust me.”