His Inspiration

by Tanya Gallagher

  “Don’t turn it on yet,” she gasped. “It’ll be too much.”

  He soothed her with a kiss on the shoulder, one hand holding the toy in place, pulsing it into her while he continued fucking her, filling her.

  “I’m not going to last much longer,” he admitted as he stroked into her. The shower filled with the sound of wet skin slapping against wet skin—everything slippery, every touch heightened by the lube, by the water, by the feeling of him everywhere.

  Bex’s heart pounded in her heaving chest, and her body swayed with absolute bliss. The toy hit the end of her, and a delightful burst of pleasure shot through her. And then Gabe turned it on.

  Holy shit.

  “How do you feel now?” Gabe asked as the vibrator buzzed through her. He was getting rougher as he lost control, his breath erratic and his strokes harder.

  Bex’s orgasm was building, remaking the shape of her desire. “Keep going,” she begged him, her body on fire for him. He thrust into her, and her whole body shook, everything sensation—the touch of her hands, his hands, his cock, the toy.

  Her orgasm hit her fast, so explosive and powerful that she couldn’t even announce it before she shattered. He had asked her to jump with him, and she was still somewhere in the air.

  “You have no idea how much I love that sound, honey.” And then Gabe was coming, too, with a pulse and a gentle sting as he filled her with cum.

  Bex sagged into his arms, and her heart exploded along with him, the sound of falling water in her ears. “I’m yours, Gabe.”

  He gave her a radiant smile. “I know, honey. I know.”

  Chapter 28

  Gabe arrived early, striding into the Ivory Suite at the Palms Casino and Hotel to make sure it met his satisfaction. A large white bed sat in front of a glossy black and white wall, anchoring the luxurious space, while a plush black and white carpet dampened the sound of his footsteps. The wall across from the bed had silver wallpaper with a slight pattern and sheen, and a sitting area just past the bedroom held a curved red couch and white bucket chairs. When he inspected the bathroom, he discovered frosted, sea-glass-colored glass walls surrounding the ornate mirror.

  Yeah, this would do.

  Even the lamps in the hotel room were surprisingly sensual, their tall, silver bases shaped like pleasure beads. The client would be pleased.

  Gabe smirked, thinking of Bex. He’d left her this morning with a squeeze on her gorgeous ass and a lush kiss that threatened to turn into more if they didn’t both have to work.

  He set his camera on the counter in the hotel kitchenette and began arranging his lights in the bedroom, so when the makeup artist and stylist from Bare Fortunes Lingerie arrived ten minutes later, he was already ready for them. Today’s model followed the stylist into the room, her hair arranged in a loose chignon.

  Gabe looked around the room. Everyone here was professional, on time, and tasteful. So why did this feel wrong?

  The stylist stepped forward to consult with him and the makeup artist, interrupting his doubts.

  “We want to do a refined sensuality,” she said, tapping her finger against some sample images. “Bare Fortunes Lingerie is sexy but still tasteful. We want today’s shoot to be old-school glamour meets sleek sophistication.”

  The makeup artist rummaged through her bag of gear. “I’m going to give you a touch-up,” she said to the model. “I’m thinking fake lashes, for sure. And a bold red lip. That will be a perfect contrast to the black and white on set.”

  Gabe nodded, and the makeup artist pulled the model into a corner to add the last touches. He turned his back on them and swept his eyes over the room. This setup was such a contrast from his shoot with Bex, which had been all nature and rock and sky. Here the room was a sleek and opulent, but the shoot felt like artifice. With these photos, they’d be trying to sell sex, but he imagined it was more like what sex with strangers would be. Sex with Bex, on the other hand, felt like connection. Like unfolding himself and finding home.

  Shit. He was such a sap sometimes. How had his one-night stand turned into the woman he wanted to spend every night with?

  “Okay,” said the model, arriving at Gabe’s side and bringing him back to the job. This was a job, after all. “I’m ready for you.”

  “Let’s start on the bed,” he suggested. “Lie sideways across the pillows.”

  He climbed onto the mattress and pointed his lens down at the half-naked model at his feet. Normally, lifting his camera would give him a steadying feeling, the control coming back. Gabe couldn’t place the slight tremor of nervousness that shook his hands now until he realized with a bite of regret that it was because Bex was going to hate this. Sure, she might know logically that an assignment was just an assignment to him. But jealousy didn’t care about technicalities. She was going to be pissed.

  Still, he had a job to do.

  “Eyes on me,” he commanded and brought the camera to his face.

  Gabe brushed Bex’s hair off her cheek to kiss her lightly, smiling as a soft snore met him. He shifted her sleeping weight off his arm and slid out of bed. While taking photographs was a huge part of his job, editing images was the larger part, and he had the whole Bare Fortunes Lingerie shoot to sort through before next week. There was work to do.

  He padded into the living room of his apartment and brought his computer to life. He selected his favorite photographs in Lightroom and then brought the batch over into Photoshop. He’d give Bare Fortunes a set of color-corrected photos and let their advertising team make the final call, but there was still something to be said for handing over polished images.

  Bex slid her arms around Gabe’s stomach, and he jumped.

  “Hey,” she murmured, hooking her chin over his shoulder to see the screen. “What are you working on?”

  He minimized the screen and turned to her. “Just making final selections on the photos from today’s shoot.”

  She covered her mouth as she yawned. “Can I see?”

  “They’re not edited images,” he stalled.

  “You let me see the photos from my shoot before they were finished.” She had him there.

  “You won’t like them.”

  “I like everything you do. You make the world seem beautiful.” She was going to regret that choice of words, just like he was going to regret showing her the photos.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Bex looked hurt. “Why is it such a big deal?” She reached for the mouse and opened the screen. “Oh.” Her eyes widened in pain. “You didn’t tell me it was a boudoir shoot.” Her voice was a little scratchy.

  Gabe made a face. “Not quite. It’s a lingerie campaign.”

  She narrowed her eyes at the pictures, her lips pulled into a frown. “Doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination, does it?”

  He ignored that. There was no right answer—say yes and admit the models were half-naked? Say no and lie? “I don’t choose who hires me,” he said instead.

  “But you do.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a freelancer, right?” Bex’s voice was flinty and wounded. “So you do get to choose who hires you.”

  “I don’t know what you want me to say, Bex. I booked this campaign months ago. This is just paying the bills until the gallery show. Hopefully, I’ll get some traction with the gallery and then I won’t have to do these shoots anymore.”

  Gabe could feel her retreating, withdrawing, even though she nodded. “Okay, yeah. The pictures are sexier than I imagined you’d be shooting, but I guess they’re great.”

  Bex was holding back on him, and he eyed her cautiously. “Thanks.”

  She sighed. “That’s just a lot of naked girls, Gabe.”

  His chest tightened. He reached to cup her chin, and she flinched back ever so slightly, which hurt more than any words could. “I was doing a job, honey. This didn’t mean anything.”

  “I’m not mad that you had a job to do,” Bex whispered. “I’m mad that you felt like you had t
o hide it from me. It makes me feel like there’s some other reason you’re not sharing with me.”

  “I was trying not to hurt your feelings.”

  She shook her head. “When you’re not honest with me, that hurts.”

  They were going to go in circles here. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to hurt you.”

  Gabe could see the struggle on her face. This was still so new to her—so new to both of them. He had spent so much time having to focus on himself in the last few years, on figuring out what his life needed to look like, that sometimes he didn’t stop to think about Bex’s point of view. They were a lot alike, he and Bex. So much, sometimes, that he forgot she might not always agree with how he handled things.

  “Listen.” He reached for her waist and pulled her to him. This time she relaxed against him. “Let me turn off the computer and take you back to bed. Let me show you there’s nothing between us.”

  “Okay,” she whispered. But when they slid into bed together and he kissed her like an invitation, she pulled back and cupped a hand to his jaw. “I’m exhausted, ace. I’ve been running around to get things together for Sam and Aderyn, and it’s catching up to me. Can we just sleep tonight?”

  “Sure,” he agreed, but her words stung. Even when she’d fought with him before, she’d never refused him. Gabe knew Bex was better at communicating her feelings with her body than with her words, and this spelled out rejection more clearly than words on a page ever could.

  He wrapped an arm around her waist and held her, his lips on her neck. He couldn’t lose her now, not when they had gotten this far. But Bex was restless in his arms all night.

  Chapter 29

  What was wrong with her? Bex blinked her eyes against the morning light, secretly glad that the alarm on her cell phone had rung, giving her an excuse to leave.

  She wiggled out of Gabe’s arms and turned on a hot shower, her heart heavy with the lingering feeling of betrayal. Yeah, she knew it was a stupid lingerie shoot, and that there were probably six other people in the room with Gabe yesterday, but the idea of him directing some half-naked woman still cut. She remembered being half naked in the desert with him, and she knew how intimate and vulnerable the connection between a photographer and his subject could feel.

  So what if Gabe’s colleagues were all being professionals? This professionally sucked. Jealousy was new for her. She didn’t like it.

  Bex soaped her body, remembering Gabe’s hands making this same trail just the other night. Talk about being vulnerable. Jesus. She’d given him so much of herself, but last night she’d held back when he’d thumbed his hand down her side and wanted more. If she was honest, it felt like punishing both of them. She’d always been able to separate sex from emotion, but with her feelings hurt, she couldn’t engage. The realization made her squirm.

  Oh god. The fact that she couldn’t separate her emotions showed her just how tangled up in Gabe she was. She was really, truly in deep.

  Still, she hadn’t been lying to him about being wiped out. When she woke up this morning, the whole world sat on her chest like a dead weight. She didn’t know if this exhaustion was from the argument last night or the endless errands she’d been running this week. Or maybe it was just her inner introvert raising its white flag after spending so much time with someone else. Either way, her energizing body wash wasn’t living up to its advertised claims.

  Bex stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around her body. Soft snores emanated from the bedroom, and when she padded in to get dressed, she could see Gabe’s beautiful face, slack as he dreamed.

  She really, really loved him, didn’t she? So why did it feel like things were falling apart just when they were starting to get good?

  She frowned and tugged a hand through her hair. She needed to calm down and stop overreacting.

  Bex padded across the room to the dresser and opened the drawer to pull out one of the dresses Gabe had selected for her. She slipped on the dress and stepped back to admire herself in the mirror.

  Oh.

  She hadn’t expected the effect that wearing the clothes he’d bought for her would have, but a smile lit her face. She felt beautiful and completely owned. The silky shift dress felt like a wash of water over her skin, and a rush of gratitude swept through her. He was trying so hard to make space for her. She needed to do the same thing. But she also needed some space to cool off.

  The dress swirled around her thighs as she walked to the bed. She leaned down to kiss Gabe on the temple. He made a sound of wordless protest and tried to pull her down for more.

  “I’ve gotta go, ace,” she whispered in his ear. With a pang in her chest, she turned to make her escape.

  Bex sank down into her office desk chair and blew out a breath. Maybe work could give her some distraction from her tumbling emotions. But no. She opened her email to find a meeting request from Jeremy that gave her only enough time to fix a cup of coffee before she needed to head to the conference room to Skype in. Great.

  “Morning, Bex,” Jeremy said from the Skype chatroom.

  “Good morning, Jeremy.” She tried to make her voice bright as she responded. Thank god that today’s meeting was speaker only and that she was alone in the conference room. Right now her face was a mask of pity, and she sported under-eye circles and a trail of stress acne on her jaw.

  For the second time today, she wondered what was wrong with her.

  “I’m sorry I’m not there so we could have this conversation face to face,” Jeremy began.

  There was going to be a ‘but.’

  Dammit.

  “But I can’t let your product design submission go through.”

  Her mouth fell open, and a shock of pain zinged through her chest. “Because I’m a judge?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her lips trembled around the words. “Then I don’t want to be one. I need this chance.”

  Jeremy sighed. “Listen, Bex. This contest isn’t for you. You are so far beyond it—you’re the best toy designer we have.”

  She should feel proud, but all she felt was numb.

  “Even if you weren’t the judge, it still wouldn’t be fair to include you.” Her breath caught, and Jeremy continued. “This contest is a way to get our employees more invested in the company, make them stakeholders, too. But you’re here because you know what sells best. I trust your judgment, Bex.”

  The air puffed out of her, and her heart sank. “Thank you for believing in me.” Her voice was watery and strained.

  “Of course. Now if we’ve got that covered, let me just add Avery to the call.”

  Jeremy waited until Avery was on the line to give his instructions. “I want to make sure we don’t overload anyone’s normal workload by adding this judgment process to the mix,” he said. “What I’d like to do is divide up the entries. We can each look at ten entries per day, so we’ll be done in three days. We can start the review process on Monday.”

  “Sounds great,” Avery said.

  Bex made her voice go bright. “Excellent.”

  They finished hammering out the details, and she signed off the call, rubbing at an ache in her chest. Once she had safely stowed her laptop at her desk, she took another pass by the break room.

  Emma looked up from the refrigerator as she entered. “Morning, lady,” she called over her shoulder, resuming her survey of the fridge.

  “Good morning to you, too.”

  Emma turned at the flat tone of Bex’s voice. “What’s wrong?” She frowned in concern. “You look like you got hit by a truck. And I’m not saying that in a ‘rammed by a Toyota Sequoia-sized cock’ kind of way.”

  Bex made a face. “I just got kicked out of the competition.”

  “What?” Emma’s mouth dropped open, mirroring the expression Bex had worn on the call.

  She waved away the sympathy. “It’ll be okay. I’m just really tired and cranky right now.” And blindsided.

  “PMS?”

  Bex counted back the days
in her head and sighed. “Yeah, probably.”

  “I’ve got some chocolate if you want to share at lunchtime.”

  Bex forced a smile. “I’d love to, but I’ve got some baby gear to pick up. Apparently, as much as Amazon claims to have it all, you cannot get the dual-action, all-wheel drive, off-road luxury BabyStrides stroller just anywhere.”

  “Sounds nice,” Emma shrugged.

  “Sounds expensive.”

  Sam and Aderyn should get whatever gear they wanted, but the list Sam had given Bex the other day was overwhelming in both the cost and the size. There was so much to do in such a short time.

  “Why don’t you have a baby shower?” she had asked Sam the other week when he’d sat in the living room with her and Gabe. Gabe may have stood across the room, but the scent of his skin still clung to hers. She had smiled a secret smile as her brother answered.

  “The adoption is still not a sure thing,” Sam had said. “Might be bad luck.”

  She had offered him an understanding look. “Kind of like seeing a bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony?”

  “Something like that,” he’d said.

  She knew how much energy went into the adoption process, all for the adoptive family members to be strung along, holding their breath for months while they waited for everything to be official. Birth mothers had rights, too, and there was still a period of time when everything could crash apart.

  So, for now, Sam and Aderyn were footing the cost of the baby gear on their own—a lot of it, and all at once. It was a financial reach for them, and that didn’t even count the cost of the adoption itself. All the more reason Bex had wanted to win this competition. Which she now needed to judge.

  She sighed and turned back to her desk to do the impossible thing.

  Bex stepped out of Sugarcloud Kids, a boutique baby store in Downtown Las Vegas, pushing a fully-assembled but still-empty stroller down the street. She’d just hopped a curb to cross the street when Sam’s number appeared on the screen of her phone. She fumbled to answer the call, then held the phone to her ear while she maneuvered the stroller one-handed. The saleswoman at the shop had assured her the stroller was “the essence of urban mobility,” and Bex had to give credit for the way it glided over the bumpy sidewalk. The thing even had front-wheel suspension. Guess shelling out four hundred bucks might be worth it.