WE TOOK our leave of the bossy bald bodyguard a little while later after both Derrick and I had gotten new phones and exchanged numbers with Chase. He even let us stop and grab breakfast, though we had to get it to go. By the time we had made our way back to the hostel, it was nearly lunch. We took our food up to our room, where thankfully all the other roommates were out. They’d mentioned going and doing a tunnel and cave tour, so we quickly ate our breakfast and then took advantage of the empty room (not that that stopped us) and humped like adrenaline-fueled bunnies. I’d hardly had a chance to finish my ceviche and undercooked French fries before Derrick was on top of me, peeling away my clothes and biting my neck, ordering me up onto all fours.
But as we laid there in post-coital comas, atrophy in our limbs and sweat on our brows, I felt something in him change. He didn’t move, he didn’t say anything, but the aura around him shifted, and he pulled away from me. He was mad. It was the same vibe I’d gotten after we’d checked into this place when we’d followed Elissa and Matt back, right after we’d been robbed. He was withdrawn and contemplating something.
“Derrick?” I whispered.
He made a noise in his throat but didn’t say anything.
“Y-you okay?”
I looked up into his face; he was staring straight up at the slats of the top bunk, a muscle twitching along his strong jaw.
“A-are you mad?”
More silence.
“Are you mad at me?”
A long, deep exhale. “What you did today was incredibly reckless, Piper.”
I turned to face him, angling myself up on my elbow so I was looking down on his face so that he couldn’t help but look up into my eyes. Those deep and stormy grays were fixing me with a steely stare. “What I did?”
“Going back to the hostel and antagonizing Gladys the way you did. You could have gotten seriously hurt; you could have gotten killed.”
My lips parted, and I went to say something, but the conviction, the fear, the anger in his eyes stopped me.
He swallowed. “Seeing the panic in your eyes like that, when you ran into me on the sidewalk after you left the hostel, and then finding out the cops were after you — you scared me half to death.”
We’d just met. He hardly knew me. Why was he getting so emotional?
He must have sensed my skepticism, because his face softened just a fraction, and his hand came up and cupped my cheek. “I know we haven’t known one another very long, but it’d seriously suck if you got hauled off to prison or stabbed in the street…” His lip lifted into a barely discernible smile. “Just saying.”
I rolled my eyes, but then his face grew hard again. He was seriously pissed, but seeing as we weren’t really together, and he wasn’t my boyfriend, the line where he could get legitimately upset was very fuzzy.
“Don’t do anything like that again, okay?” The edge to his voice was starting to dissolve. “I like you…and I’d hate for something to happen to you.”
My hand landed on top of his, and I closed my eyes and leaned my face into his palm, nodding. “Okay.”
His eyes took on a wicked gleam. “Save your inner beast, the one with the temper and the fire and the rage, for the bedroom, okay? Let your beast out on me.”
I lifted one eyebrow skeptically. Finally, he smiled. I was not a sex beast. I was not a dominant in any way, shape or form. I might be a hothead and have my bossy moments in my everyday life, but in bed, I was begging to be dominated.
“Go savage on me, woman. I can take it.” Big, straight, pearly white teeth glowed back at me, while his eyes twinkled with all kinds of mischief, the frustration from earlier having seemed to evaporate and join the smell of sex in the air.
I turned my head and took one of his fingers into my mouth, biting it just hard enough to hear him inhale.
“Yeah, like that…but really let those claws come out, let those fangs drop and go mental. Give it to me.” I lunged forward and nipped his chin, so far out of my comfort zone. But he was telling me to be a beast, so in a way, I was still obeying orders.
“More.” His free hand drifted down beneath the blankets to where I was once again growing wet and hot for him.
I grappled for his back and brought him on top of me, letting my nails rake him from shoulder blades to buttocks and back, all the while my teeth continued to drag along his skin, tasting him, claiming him. I clamped down hard on his deltoid when his fingers brushed my clit, and his mouth captured my nipple. The man was a multitasker, and I couldn’t have been more grateful. Playing my body like an instrument he’d known since birth, a prodigy, and we’d only just met.
I felt his cock prod the apex of my thighs, and I spread my legs wider for him, welcoming him home. He slid in with ease, my pussy clenching around him, reveling in the feeling of being full once again.
He started to hammer into me, splitting me open, while his pelvic bone rocked against my clit in an oh so wonderful way.
“Don’t fucking do that again!” He said with a snarl, rearing up and pulling out, only to slam back in, hitting my cervix and making me hiss in pain in the process. Wait. Wasn’t I the one who was supposed to release the beast? And yet here he was, as feral as they come and fixing to fuck or fight. I’m not saying I didn’t like it; this just hadn’t been the plan. I opened my mouth to say something, but he changed the angle, and all I could do was gasp from the sudden rush of pleasure.
He glared down at me. “Don’t be reckless!”
More hammering, more pleasure. He hit my cervix again, more pain. Yes. Oh God. Yes. Pain, pleasure, it all felt so good. It all made me feel so alive, so craved. He was punishing me for my behavior in the best way possible, making my body hum, making me scream for him and plead for forgiveness, for release.
He growled. “Say it! Say you’ll never put your life in danger like that again. Say it!”
I nodded and swallowed, our eyes suddenly locking, blue to gray. So much emotion poured out of him that I found myself verklempt and unable to speak. So, I just nodded again and again and again, until I felt like my head was going to fall off.
“I need to hear you say it, Piper!” His tone was thick with longing and need, only it wasn’t just the need to hear me come; there was a deeper need, a darker need.
“Yes,” I finally squeaked. “I promise never to do anything reckless like that again.”
“Good!” And then he picked up speed and vigor and fucked me until tears streamed down my cheeks and I’m pretty sure I met God.
CHAPTER 5
A fter our multiple afternoon delights, which had wound up being more intense and revealing than I ever could have predicted, we found ourselves restless and agitated with the fact that we couldn’t go out and explore. Mind you, after the way the city had treated us, a part of me didn’t really want anything to do with Miraflores anyway. But I at least wanted to have the option to boycott it.
I felt bad that my behavior had put a proverbial target on Derrick’s back, and I urged him to go out and explore on his own if he wanted to. Perhaps without me, he wouldn’t draw so much attention, but he didn’t seem interested. Instead, we spent the afternoon lounging up on the top floor of the hostel, enjoying the hazy sky and blistering sun, while drinking pisco sours and swimming in the pool when the mood struck us. We’d also booked our flight to Cusco and our hostel. No sense wasting time being disorganized and without a plan of action.
I was in no mood to read my depressing book, so instead, I downloaded an e-book onto my new phone while Derrick flipped through the pages of his Ultimate Traveler as if it were an action-packed thriller and not a fact- based, outdated list of hostels and restaurants.
Elissa had been right; it was a party hostel. No matter what time of day it was, bass, loud and heavy, beat around the building, and it was no different up on the pool deck.
“Did you know that Lima is home to one of the oldest higher-learning institutions in the New World? The National University of San Marcos, which was founded in 1551
during the Spanish colonial regime, is the oldest continuously functioning university in the Americas.” He tipped back his beer and lifted his aviator-clad eyes up to meet mine. All I saw was my own reflection, and I was giving him an amused half-smirk. “What?” he asked.
I giggled. “I can’t figure you out. Beast in the sack. Bossy as fuck, but then you’re also this adorable, fact-spewing nerd.”
Even though I couldn’t see his eyes I didn’t need to to read his body language, and suddenly I found myself beneath him, in front of everyone on the pool deck.
He stretched himself on top of me. “I’ll show you who’s a nerd, woman.” He went to grab my hand, and I can only assume, whisk me back to the bedroom, when our plan of more naughtiness was suddenly interrupted.
“There you are,” Elissa sang, coming up beside us, looking incredible in her hot-pink bikini. Matt was in her wake, board shorts hanging low and a towel draped around his neck.
“How were the caves? Or were they tunnels?” I asked. Derrick moved back over to his own lounger and took a swig of his beer. I followed suit and took a sip of my pisco sour, this drink that Elissa had introduced to me the night before and had quickly become an addictive favorite. Pisco was a clear brandy local to Peru and Chile, and bartenders added fresh-squeezed lemon or lime, simple syrup, and a frothed egg white. It was cool, tart and refreshing, like summer in a boozy glass, and I was already on my fourth for the afternoon.
“Tunnels.” She grinned, pulling up a lounge chair next to me. “They were cool. Is that a pisco?”
I nodded and took another sip, frowning when I realized it was empty, my straw making that slurpy sound at the bottom.
Derrick chuckled. “Empty?”
I pouted and nodded again.
He stood up and nodded at Elissa; she grinned with a wink.
“Fear not m’ladies, for I shall replenish your beverages.” And he sauntered toward the bar, looking sexy as hell in his black board shorts, while Matt loped after him.
Somehow, I’m not entirely sure how it happened, we spent the entire day up on the pool deck. Before I knew it, it was dark out, my stomach was rumbling, and I was drunk. We ordered burgers from the hostel kitchen, because in addition to being a nightclub, a hostel and a rec center, apparently, the place also cooked up some righteous dishes, local and Western alike. I practically had an aneurysm from how good my burger tasted. My inner sex goddess busted out some serious moans and groans with each messy bite, while my eyes rolled into the back of my head and I’m pretty sure I heard angels singing behind me. Greasy and gooey, with so much cheese and what, at first, I thought was going to be weird but ended up being wonderful, an over-easy fried egg, it was the perfect meal to chase away the hunger pangs and balance out all the alcohol that was currently coursing through my bloodstream.
“Let’s play a game!” Elissa announced, staggering where she stood, the two of us having donned beachy summer dresses over our bathing suits, as we all continued to sit up on the pool deck, the entire rooftop having been converted into a nightclub. There were strobe lights and disco balls, smoke machines and even louder music than before. I’d thought it had been loud during the day, but now I found myself having to yell just to hear my own thoughts.
I nodded and sipped my drink. I’d lost track of how many pisco sours I’d had. I was beginning to think my blood was slowly being replaced with pisco, but at the moment things were feeling so good, so I didn’t really care.
“Let’s play ‘would you rather,’ and if you’re the odd man out, you have to drink.” And then over walked Matt with a tray of shots.
My eyes went wide, oh mama.
Elissa grabbed a shot. “Okay, I’ll start…I would much rather…have sex with a guy after he’s just been for a run, then a guy who hasn’t showered in a week.”
I nodded, we all nodded, nobody drank.
It was Matt’s turn. “Okay, I would rather…”
WE WENT this way for some time, back and forth, drinking and laughing. All of us coming up with ridiculous scenarios to try and get the others to drink. And it seemed the more we drank, the racier and more outlandish the scenarios became. At one point, I found myself nodding that I’d rather have a threesome in a room full of my family, then go down on an octogenarian priest (that had been Matt’s contribution to the game).
The tray had originally been loaded with sixteen shots of a potent liquid I couldn’t actually put my finger on, and when I looked back over at it a few minutes later, only three full ounces remained. Where had they all gone? How many had I had?
“Okay, Piper, you’re up.” Elissa giggled, her body swaying to the beat of the music as she closed her eyes and sucked her drink through her straw.
I bit my lip. All right, I guessed it was deal-breaker time. “I…I would rather be with someone who has a criminal record, and potentially done time, than someone who has ever had to pay for sex.”
There! I said it. It was out. I averted Derrick’s eyes and looked down into my half-full glass, swirling the straw around like I was cooking some temperamental mole that needed to be watched in case it boiled over. But this was a big deal for me. The boyfriend I’d had right before I got married had been cheating on me with prostitutes.
It wasn’t until he gave me chlamydia that I found out his little Thursday night “hobby” was that he went out, got a hotel room and handed over cash for a good time. He’d called them “call-girls,” women who were willing to do things that he was too afraid to ask me to do (even though, had he asked me, I probably wouldn’t have said “no”; I’m not afraid of rough play or a little kink). He’d said he always went through an agency, and the women were all supposed to be clean. But none of that made a difference. The fact of the matter was, he’d been cheating on me, and he’d been paying to do it. It didn’t matter that we’d only been seeing each other for around six months by the time I found out (even though he’d been doing it for the entire six months). I found the whole idea of paying for sex, even before Nolan had gone and done it, absolutely disgusting.
So even though I hardly knew Derrick, I think we were going on thirty-six hours or so, had sex with him only a handful of times, the drunk in me felt it was the right time to lay some cards on the table. If the man has ever paid for sex, I was hitting the bricks.
I saw some bobble heads in my peripheral vision. “Me too!” Elissa cheered. “Paying for sex is gross. That’s what blow-up dolls are for!”
I heard Derrick snort, but I’m pretty sure he was nodding.
“Me too,” he finally said. “I’ve never had to pay for it…does that sound like bragging? That I’ve always managed to get laid without it being a transaction of sorts? I mean I made out with my R.A. in college a few times, I think I might have gone down on her, but that was so that she wouldn’t break up our dorm parties. Was I whoring myself out?”
I couldn’t help but laugh, and then I finally met his eyes. They were soft but inquisitive, and he gave me a sexily quirked eyebrow. But I just shook my head in dismissal. I’d tell him where that drunken bit of nonsense came from later.
“I’m bored with this game,” Elissa slurred. “Piper, what do you do for work?”
“I am…or I guess I should say I was a lawyer.”
Derrick’s eyes flashed wide, and he turned to face me.
“Was?” Elissa asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. Went to law school, wrote the bar exam, the whole shebang, but I only lasted a year in the industry.” Eyebrows around our little group all rose up in surprise. My parents’ brows had done the same thing when I’d finally told them I was quitting law. Seven years of schooling down the drain. But that didn’t matter to me.
Ray had told me from the very beginning he thought I would do better in a more nurturing job, like a teacher or something else with children, a speech path or child therapist. But I’d always thought law or medicine. Given my grades in school, those had been where the teachers had pushed me. But medicine was off the table; I hated the sight of bl
ood. So, law it was. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
“It just wasn’t for me,” I continued, shaking my head. “Too high-stress. I wasn’t sleeping, wasn’t eating, was having panic attacks and nervous breakdowns. I need a low-stress job…I need a low-stress life. I’m not even thirty, and I often feel like I should be getting ready to retire and move to Florida, my body and brain are so tired.”
Everyone nodded, seeming to accept my answer. And then the focus quickly switched to Elissa’s schooling and that she still had one more year to go in her bachelor of history degree and was just totally done with academia. She’d also been considering law but wasn’t sure she could endure another three years of school to get there.
Somehow, though I’m not entirely sure how, our conversations of school and work eventually morphed into discussions of sex. Because when you’re drunk, sex is almost always at the forefront of your mind, and it’s also a hilarious topic of conversation, especially when you’re drunk. People who are otherwise rather prudish in their normal day-to-day life can come out with some crazy one-liners that could make a sailor blush (this was my mother after her fourth Chardonnay). Thankfully, though, I managed to keep a tight lip about our little morning dorm room escapade. It would do no good to let our generous roomies know we kind of, sort of had sex right in front of them.
It seemed the longer we talked about sex, the hotter I got, the more I wanted to go and have sex. The five or so times Derrick and I made love had been fantastic, but it’d only been sex. But at that moment, as he stood up to go and grab another beer, the heavy sway of his cock inside his shorts, just a hint of what lay beneath, I found my mouth dry and my panties wet.
Elissa and Matt had shared with us earlier, that despite what we thought, they were not actually a couple, just friends on a backpacking trip together. I desperately hoped that they wouldn’t be jonesing for bed anytime soon, and Derrick and I could take advantage of a free room again. He caught me looking at him like a starved man might stare at a loaf of bread, and instead of hiding my desire I screamed it from the rooftop with my body language. A lick of the lips here, a fluttering of the eyelashes there, a well-timed bob of the eyebrows, and before I knew it, we were eye-fucking one another like crazy.
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