I didn't want to fall in love with him if he wasn't going to fall in love with me.
Stupid girl.
I thought I had a choice.
And my thoughts are spilling over, infiltrating reality, because Dean leans into me, close.
Too close.
“I know you remember,” he says.
“I . . . I do.”
He smiles his beautiful smile. The one that lightens up his whole face. One of his hands comes up to the side of my face, forcing me to look directly into his eyes.
“You never belonged with Jordan . . .” He trails off, his fingers sliding down my jaw, tilting my face up to his.
My skin is on fire and my thoughts freeze in place.
He's going to kiss me.
Oxygen rushes to my lips and I suck in a breath, but Dean's mouth moves over mine to steal it again with whispered words.
“You belong with me.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Gabby
Dean's kiss is sudden and intense.
It carries with it a jolt that wakes me from a coma of lies. How long have I pretended I didn't want this to happen? There's no point pretending now. Not when our desperation singes the air between us.
I forget why I held back for so long, why crossing this line always felt so wrong.
It doesn't.
This kiss is the most honest thing I've ever done.
Nothing in my life has felt this right. Or this inevitable.
He kisses me with a fierceness I never knew he was capable of. But there's familiarity there, too, like he's memorized the shape of my lips and has been preparing to make them his for a long time.
The kiss lasts somewhere between a second to a lifetime. When we finally pull back, our lips linger a hair's width apart as we breathe desperately against each other's mouths.
Words hang in the air all around us. But our hands are doing the talking now. Mine are shaking as they work to unbutton his shirt, his are tugging away at my jeans. Impatient, we get to our feet and fight against buttons and zippers, undressing like our clothes are suffocating us.
And in a way, they are.
The truth we're dying to speak is written on our skin, it has been for years. Maybe that's why nothing else has felt right. I've been swimming upstream, resisting this.
Resisting us.
My heart is throbbing madly in my chest when I realize we're standing naked in front of each other.
Holy shit . . .
There's no denying how turned on he is.
This is really happening.
Dean's gaze travels up my body, mentally tracing all my curves like he's drawing a map. When his eyes reach mine, his lips curl into a smile. “Come here.”
The way he says that sends a delicious thrill down my spine.
I close the gap between us as he eyes me hungrily. He picks me up in his muscular arms and my legs wrap easily around his waist. Our lips find each other again.
Our kiss is slow now, relishing every moment.
There's no hesitation, no pretending.
We both ache for the same thing, both starving to confess.
We kiss the whole way to his bedroom. He sets me down on the bed, and I fall back onto my elbows. My breath catches as I watch his large hands spread my legs apart.
He lowers his head between my thighs, then pauses to peer up at me, eyes dancing.
“I've been dying to taste you for so long.”
The sight is electric, his face between my legs, his hands gripping my thighs. But then his face lowers and his tongue finds the spot where I’m aching with need. My eyes shut and my lower back arches from the bed at the delicious jolt he sends through me.
Dean's lips and tongue move in maddening patterns, sending tantalizing waves up my body. My hands ball up the sheets around me into my fists.
“Oh,” I breathe out.
Again and again.
His tongue's caress grows rougher and punishing and my breathing more and more erratic. He doesn't stop, even as delirious whimpers lift from my throat and I start squirming away from the intensity of the sensations. His fingers dig deeper into the skin of my thighs, holding me in place as my moans grow louder. My hips jerking, I grind myself straight into an orgasm that splinters me.
Wow.
I've never had a man taste me like this. Like he was getting even more pleasure from it than I was, like he could do it forever and never come up for air.
My heart's beating a hole through my chest when Dean moves over me, his perfect face appearing overhead. He smirks and mutters something that sounds like, “fucking delicious.”
I reach up to touch his face, and wipe his lips with my thumb.
All the while, I can't believe this is Dean.
My Dean.
Would I have been able to lie to myself for so long if I had known he could do this magic with his tongue?
Our eyes lock and he winks at me. It's a familiar gesture for us, one he does whenever he's reminding me everything's going to be okay. But there's a twist to it now, a sort of promise for what he's going to deliver.
Everything's going to be more than okay.
He's promising to blow my fucking mind.
I hold my breath as he positions himself between my legs.
He keeps his eyes on me, but his gaze is far off and cloudy, like those pictures of celestial clouds you only wish you could touch. They exist somewhere between everything and nothing. And that's what this moment feels like.
Too big to wrap your head around.
Too striking be real.
His forearms lower on either side of me, allowing his hands to touch my face as his body hovers just over mine.
I tense when he pushes inside of me, and he curses under his breath.
For a second, he holds still, neither of us moving. I can feel myself squeezing around every inch of him. A wild need erupts in me to feel him stroking me from inside, to feel his length again and again with every thrust.
But for a second, he doesn't move, he lowers his lips over mine and plants a sweet kiss. Then he whispers. “I'm so in love with you, Gabby.”
The words threaten to disintegrate my heart, from the amount of emotions that erupt from it. But he doesn't wait for my response, he starts weaving in and out of me with a mouth-watering tempo. His pace increases slowly, and every stroke is spine-tingling, every cell in my body alive with bliss.
I swear, I can stay like this forever.
I've never felt this full.
This complete.
I'm sure I will never get enough of this man.
Every move he makes overflows with a blazing passion I've never known. It's too hot to touch, our skins burning against each other. His tempo quickening to a controlled turbulence that shakes my entire body. All the while he watches me, watches my eyes roll upward, watches me shake beneath him
I breathe out sounds I've never made before.
Desperate pleas for more, even though more would never be enough. I'm starving for him, insane with longing. So far gone off this intoxicating experience, I lose track of time and space. My body moves to scratch every damn itch that arises. And Dean takes me in as many ways as he can. Spinning me over to my stomach, pulling my hips up and grabbing hold of my ass as he drives me completely insane with desire.
We fuck, we screw, occasionally we slow to a sweet love-making, then he turns me over and fucks me some more. We make up for the years of denial, the years of fantasizing. The pent-up need.
I give up on resisting the explosive pleasure, letting it shatter me again and again until all I know is delirium.
Who knows how long we go at it? The sky outside grows dark and we can't seem to get enough. Falling off the bed and finding ways to continue on the floor until a mind-numbing orgasm shakes my entire body.
Dean’s dripping in sweat and exhausted when he collapses on top of me, with a long, satisfied groan.
I wrap my arms around his body and lay there on the floor with him. Silence engulfs us. The best kind. The sweet, comfortable kind that can last forever.
I want this forever.
Just him and I.
Just like this.
“Dean?”
He lifts his head to look at me, eyes smiling like he's well aware he's just screwed my brains out. But it was more than that and we both know it. It was more than gluttonous lust, it was a searing need that could no longer be contained. It was years of us denying we belonged together.
His voice is soft when he responds, “Yeah?”
“I think I’ve loved you my whole life.”
He lets out a small breath, so small I almost miss it.
“Gabby—I’ve loved you since before I knew what it meant to love someone.”
I bite my lip, a stampede of sensations erupting in my heart. “So, what the hell took us so long?”
“We were clinging to our friendship because it was what kept us steady. It was safe. But safe isn’t worth the price of missing out on this. Because this?” He smiles at me, his blue eyes twinkling in the dark. “This is where our lives begin.”
♬
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Lush
Marni Mann
“S+M” – Rihanna
CHAPTER ONE
Pepper
As the owner of Lush—the hottest, most exclusive chain of sex clubs in the world—I saw some incredibly handsome men come across my camera feed. That was because I had over three hundred cameras in our LA and Miami locations, giving me the ability to see every person inside.
And I saw them at every stage.
When they placed their hand on the security tablet at the front entrance, when they walked into the mouth of the club. As they wandered down all the different hallways, stopping to view the fetishes taking place inside each room.
There weren’t any secrets at Lush.
I designed it that way.
So, when Bale showed up at my LA club, I noticed.
It had been three long weeks since I’d heard from him, after he disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving only a note on my pillow.
Four lonely words had been written on the small piece of paper.
Don’t look for me.
I immediately flagged his membership, so I would be alerted if he ever tried to enter the club. The second his fingerprints were taken at the front entrance, a notification came across my screen.
The one I was staring at now.
My relationships didn’t usually last long, not with the business I was in. But everything with Bale seemed perfect.
I didn’t understand why he left after spending four perfect months together.
And I certainly didn’t understand why he came back at two in the morning on a Tuesday, dressed in a suit, staring at the front entrance camera as though he knew I was watching the feed.
I reached toward my nightstand to turn on the lamp before I climbed out of bed. After grabbing a robe from the bathroom, I crossed the silk over my naked body and made my way to the other side of the house. When I reached my office, I sat behind the large glass desk and shook the mouse to turn on the monitor.
I entered a series of security codes that got me into the system, and I chose a feed that would show me the progression of Bale moving through the club. As I watched him, I leaned into the edge of the desk, moving closer to the screen.
“Where have you been, Bale Pierce?” I whispered, zooming in on his face.
I stared at his lips while he stood at the bar and asked for a drink.
Tanqueray and tonic.
The same cocktail he always ordered.
Once the tumbler was in his hand, he turned around, pushing his back into the edge of the counter and he gazed at the camera across from him.
His skin was tanner than it had been three weeks ago. His golden-brown hair was a little longer, tucked behind his ears, the ends curling around his lobes.
“What in the hell have you been up to?” I said softly.
He smirked at the camera and pushed himself off the bar, moving toward the left side of the chamber and down the last hallway, where the club’s private room was located at the end.
Out of all the spots in the club, that was the only one I would use.
The one I’d designed specifically for myself.
My heart began to pound.
Wetness dampened my pussy.
Bale had my attention.
I could swear he knew that.
And I could swear that was what he wanted.
He stopped outside the last door, and his hand went into his pocket. He took out a key, pausing right after he slipped just the tip of it into the lock.
Slowly, he looked over his shoulder at the camera that was right above him. “Ten minutes,” he mouthed.
In eleven minutes, the punishments would start.
That was what he was telling me.
But he knew it took eight minutes to drive to the club from my house in the Hollywood Hills. It would take another minute to park and walk inside, assuming I could get through the door without every employee stopping to speak to me.
He didn’t care.
He wanted me there.
Now.
He pushed the key the rest of the way in and went into my private room. There was a table in the center. One I’d been tied to many times before.
Each of those times by Bale.
He stood behind the table and ran his hand over his neatly trimmed beard. His gaze locked with the camera in the corner of the room. He gave it a look I knew all too well.
“Fuck,” I gasped, pushing my chair away from the desk.
Seconds ticked by and his glare deepened.
His eyes were commanding me to submit.
He believed he still had that kind of power over me.
The truth was . . . he did.
CHAPTER TWO
Bale
The men who were granted a membership at Lush had to meet certain requirements. They had to have excellent credit, a clean background, and a job that earned them over a million a year.
On paper, I had all three.
And after ten months of being on their waiting list, I was finally given access.
But, in reality, the person on that application wasn’t me. It wasn’t my social security number that Pepper’s team had thoroughly researched and I wasn’t a hedge fund manager, even though they confirmed my job.
Bale Pierce was a persona my team had created to get me inside of Lush. To put me in a position where I could get the information I’d been hired to find.
As a fixer, that was my job.
I could make anything happen.
I could make anyone disappear.
What I wanted from Pepper Michaels was answers.
Before I confronted her with those questions, I first had to learn everything about her. Her habits, her likes.
What made her cunt wet.
That took some planning because she didn’t go into either of the clubs that often. So, my team hacked into her security system, and I memorized the placement of each camera. I studied the feeds she spent a majority of her time watching.
And I figured out how to lure her in.
It only took seven days of hooking up with other members, showing her how torturous my tongue could be, before she came into the club and sought me out.
Orgasm denial.
That was Pepper’s fetish of choice.
I became a fucking expert at it.
But something happened I hadn’t anticipated. Something that, in the ten years I’d been doing this job, had never happened before.
I fell in love with my mark.
I spent every night with her. I talked to her about a future.
&
nbsp; I told her I fucking cared.
And I did.
But after four months together, I had to go. It wasn’t what I wanted. I just couldn’t put it off any longer, not with my partners wondering why I hadn’t returned or my client threatening to fire me.
I left in the middle of the night, giving Pepper no notice, no explanation, no way to get in touch with me. Once I was gone, Bale Pierce no longer existed. He vanished on paper as quick as he had been created.
The client paid me half a million for my services, and I was on to the next job.
That was three weeks ago. In that time, I’d thought of her nonstop, I craved her. My goddamn hands twitched for her.
And now that I was back in LA for another job, it was impossible to stay away.
So, here I was, standing in our room, running my fingers over our table.
I had eight hours until my private plane would take me back to the East Coast.
Eight hours to do anything I wanted.
Eight hours to devour Pepper.
When I put my hand on the tablet at the front entrance, I expected to be turned away, that Pepper had revoked my membership.
When that didn’t happen, I knew she still wanted me.
I knew she’d be notified of my arrival.
And I knew it would take a little convincing, but I had the power to get her here.
Due to the time, I suspected the alert would wake her. She’d check her phone and wouldn’t be satisfied with the image, so she would go into her office and use the large monitor to track my progress through the club.
She’d watch me order a drink.
She’d follow me to the private room.
She’d get wet as I stuck the key in the lock.
Now, as I stood behind the table, I stared at the camera.
And I counted the seconds.
CHAPTER THREE
Pepper
I opened Lush because there wasn’t a sex club in LA that gave me everything I wanted—a safe place to explore my fantasies, an environment that was as sexy as the people inside of it, and exclusivity. Just because someone liked to play didn’t mean they should be allowed through the door. There had to be rules, and I found that most places didn’t have any.
Mixtape: A Love Song Anthology Page 42