With one hand around the pole, Lola circled the stage. The gown would inhibit her, but she got the feeling Beau wouldn’t mind. The music was fast. She found a slower beat within it. She jumped, grabbed on and spun with one leg partially hooked around the pole. Angel and Golden sat on both sides of Beau. He was unblinking, unwavering in his attention. Even in the red haze, she saw the gleam in his eyes, the black shape of his bowtie. Her body rattled like a speaker with the music’s bass.
Facing Beau, she raised her arms behind her. She snaked down the metal, cool through the back of her dress, and back up. Beau stood suddenly and walked to the base of the stage. He took her calf and pressed his lips to the inside of her knee. His mouth left wet spots on her dress as he kissed up her thigh to her hip. He gripped her, nuzzling the fabric between her legs.
Lola’s breaths swelled from her stomach. She felt him—felt him there—acutely for the first time. God, it was unfair. He’d barely touched her and her will to fight him dissolved in seconds. She put one hand in his hair and pulled it with all the betrayal, shame and arousal she felt.
He looked up at her.
“Touching’s not permitted in here,” she said.
His smile was more than just crooked and sexy. For all her effort to hide, that smile told her he knew he had her. He turned and cleared both women from the room with a word.
He backed away to the sofa, and this time, Lola went to him. She pulled her dress up around her thighs. One knee went outside his hip and one stayed between his legs. She held on to the cushion behind his head. She was careful not to touch him as she danced over his lap, but now and then her skin would brush against the fabric of his tuxedo pants. When he looked as though he might touch her, she got up, pushed his knees apart. She let her hands wander over her body as she swayed her hips. She dipped a hand between her legs and slid the other up her neck.
Beau reached for her, but she stepped back and shook her head. “You can’t—”
“Come back here.” His level tone left no room for play. “Don’t deny me when I’m like this.”
When she was back at his knees, he took her wrist in one hand. “Kneel.”
She got on the floor.
“You’re all red,” he said.
“It’s the lighting.”
“No, it isn’t. You’re hot.” He let go of her and pressed his cold tumbler to the side of her neck. She sucked in a breath with the chill. Condensation trickled between her breasts. He lifted the glass to her lips. She tilted her head back and let the liquor run down her throat.
He set the drink aside and nodded at his lap. “Take it out,” he said quietly.
This was it. This was why she was here. She had wondered several times what exactly lay under his suit, what was the source of his unshakeable confidence—now she would know for sure. Hold it in her hand.
Her fingers were slow and shaky as she undid his fly. He lifted his hips for her to pull his pants down. Through his underwear, she pressed her palm against the bulging outline of him. His head fell back. She lifted the ends of his dress shirt, dragging her fingertips up the hard crevices of his stomach. His body expanded with each breath.
“Don’t tease me, Lola,” he said. “I want your red lips on me.”
There was new desperation in his voice that made Lola ache badly for him. And this deal—this promise—she’d already made it. Johnny, even, had made it. So she put a bullet through her guilt and gave Beau what he wanted.
She pulled him out, looking into his eyes while she took him in her mouth. He fisted her hair, then stroked it, then pulled it again. He thrust up, hitting the back of her throat. She tried to taste even more, wanting him deeper, wanting him to the last inch, but still he was too much, every bit as big and daunting as she’d suspected.
“Your mouth alone could ruin me.” She paused, unsure how he’d meant that, but he kept her going with a hand on her head. “Don’t stop,” he said. “I want to be ruined.”
With her tongue, she traced him—the ridge of his head, the veins of his thick shaft.
“You’re driving me to the edge,” he said. “I don’t know whether to come, or bend you over and finally take you.”
She became ravenous from his rumbling, suggestive words. He responded, pushing her down so he was crammed to her throat with every bob of her head. Her underwear dampened with the way he thoroughly fucked her mouth. With both his hands tight in her hair, he came. She gripped the red velvet cushion and swallowed everything.
There was calm in the eye of the chaos, in the labored breaths, the pounding music, the room, which had turned pink again sometime during it all. But while they looked at each other, anything else, including the regret she thought she should feel, faded into the background.
On impulse, Lola stretched up and kissed him on the mouth. He wouldn’t lower his head to meet her or move his arms from his sides. She pressed her hands down on his thighs, her breasts into his wall of a chest. His body breathed beneath her.
“How’d you know?” she asked. “How did you know I’d react like this?”
He seemed to stiffen under her. “It’s not even midnight,” he said. “We aren’t finished.”
“I know.”
He touched her cheek with his whole palm. “You’re burning up.”
She bit her lip. She could feel it too. “It’s a good thing.”
He helped her to her feet, and they left the room while it was blue.
“You’re supposed to tip them,” Lola remembered once they were outside again.
“It’s taken care of. They won’t be millionaires after this, but they’ve been well compensated.”
“Millionaire,” she repeated to herself. She still couldn’t wrap her head around it, and it’d be a while before she could. After tonight, she’d be a millionaire and all this would be over. The thought didn’t give her as much comfort as it once had.
* * *
In the car, driving down Sunset at a much easier speed, Beau asked Lola what she planned to do with the money.
“You already know,” she answered. “We’re buying Hey Joe.”
“I know what he wants. But what about you? You’re the one doing all the work.”
Lola balked. “It makes me feel cheap when you say that.”
“Believe me, sweetheart. You aren’t cheap.”
She shook her head and sighed up at the Lamborghini’s roof. “I want us to be happy and have a shot at a real future.”
“But what do you want for yourself?”
“That’s what I want. Making Johnny happy makes me happy.”
“Fine. Everybody’s happy. Now give me something real. A new car? A trip to New York City? What’re you going to do for yourself?”
“To tell you the truth, I haven’t given it much thought. I’m okay with what I’ve got.”
“Slinging drinks is what you want to do forever? Haven’t you ever asked yourself what you’d do if money weren’t an issue? You have some freedom now.”
“Not until the sun comes up,” Lola said.
Beau scoffed. “I’m glad to see one blowjob hasn’t killed your spirit.”
What a blowjob it’d been. Lola was incredibly turned on, and she’d barely even been touched. She made an effort to control herself, even though she squirmed in her seat a little. “What do you want me to say? That I love to paint landscapes, or I’ve always dreamed of backpacking through Europe? I don’t and I haven’t. Not everyone has hobbies or dreams. That’s not the kind of life I live.”
Beau slammed on the brakes. The car behind them swerved and honked. “So tell me what kind of life you live.”
“What are you doing?” Lola asked. “You can’t just stop in the middle of the road.”
“Conventional methods aren’t working,” he said. “I don’t want platitudes. Just give me a real answer.”
“Are you drunk?” Lola asked. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t even finish my drink. I want to know more about the girl I played darts with.
Who you are when he’s not around.”
Lola shook her head. “You’re getting sentimental on me just because I let you come in my mouth?”
Beau barked a laugh. “Can you blame me? You’re so charming.”
She smiled through the honking of passing cars. “You’re really going to stay here?”
He nodded. “Here’s an easier question. Tell me something you don’t want out of life.”
She squinted through the windshield. It was an easier question, and even though she’d never articulated it, the answer didn’t come with difficultly. “I don’t want Johnny to lose his sense of self-worth along with the bar. I was afraid if he didn’t have Hey Joe, he’d have to start over somewhere else, and he’d feel like he’d failed.”
“Failure’s good for us, you know.”
She looked over at him. “Are you saying I shouldn’t have taken the deal?”
“I’m saying you can’t be the sacrifice for the fulfillment of his dreams.” He took his foot off the brake and resumed driving. “When he asked what you wanted to do with the money, what’d you say?”
Lola chewed the inside of her cheek. She wasn’t sure Johnny had asked. There’d never been any other option. She was using the money to keep them intact. Johnny knew the ins and outs of Hey Joe. He was master of that domain. Maybe it wasn’t her dream job, but she’d never had a dream job—so she wasn’t losing anything. Only, Beau seemed to think there was more to it, and now she wondered if there was. “You’ve made your point.”
“You need to figure out what you want,” he said. “Not what you want for him. Then you need to tell him.”
“I don’t know if you’re right,” she said, “but you might not be wrong.”
He pulsed his eyebrows at her once. “That’s a start. So what would it take to get you to figure it out?”
They happened to be in a familiar part of town. Giving in to Beau had loosened her up a bit, and he was working hard to shine his spotlight on her, so she decided to help him out by moving under it a little more. “How about a trip down memory lane?”
“What’d you have in mind?” he asked right away.
She pointed in front of them. “Take a right up here.” After only a few minutes of driving, she told him to park at a curb. “See that place?” she asked, nodding through the window.
“The Lucky Egg,” Beau read the flickering sign off the corner diner.
“When I was a kid, my mom worked there. Days and nights. The life of a single mom.”
“Where was your dad?”
“Gone. I don’t have a lot of memories of him. I remember weird things, though, like the smell of his shampoo when he’d pick me up before leaving for work, or the time he kissed my elbow after I’d fallen climbing a tree in the backyard. Then it was just me and her.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“No. If he’d come back, I think my mom would’ve killed him. She got so angry after he left. It flipped a switch in her. They married right out of high school, so she’d never been on her own. She thought we were going to lose the house, or they were going to take our car. She’d get really rundown from working so much.”
“Sounds the opposite of my mom. When my dad died, she became helpless. I kept waiting for that maternal survival instinct to kick in, but it didn’t.”
“I don’t even think it was maternal instinct for my mom. She just saw me as this little person who drained her meager bank account. Around seventeen, I moved in with some older kids. We partied a lot. The first night I went to Hey Joe, Johnny should’ve kicked me out because I was underage. Guess he took pity on me, though. He gave me a tequila shot instead.”
“Or he was trying to get in your pants.”
Lola shook her head. “We didn’t start sleeping together for a while, actually. And when we did, I didn’t take it seriously until he broke up with me.”
“I see. Obviously that didn’t last.”
Lola kept her eyes out the window. “He was sick of me screwing around. He gave me an ultimatum—grow up or get out. Quit the drugs, the partying, the—” She paused. “He saved me. Turned my life around. If not for him, I don’t know where I’d be.”
“You should give yourself more credit. You’re a fighter. That much is obvious.”
She finally looked at Beau. “If you’re fighting against the wrong thing, the only person you’ll hurt is yourself.” The digital clock on the dashboard changed. “I’m sure this isn’t how you want to spend your precious few hours,” she added.
He looked at the clock too, then out the windshield. He turned the car around. “What happened to your mom?” he asked.
“Oh, she still works there.” Lola turned her face away when he peered at her.
They didn’t speak again until they were on Santa Monica Boulevard. “How many women have you done this with?” Lola asked.
“None.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Why would I lie?”
“To seem like less of an asshole.”
Beau chuckled. “What does it matter if you think I’m an asshole? I already got you here. If you don’t like me by the time we’re done, it’s all the same to me.”
Her eyes drifted to the clock again. She assumed they were now going to the hotel, but she didn’t ask. Beau had his own agenda. “If you don’t care either way, then I could be anyone.”
“That’s not true at all.” He sighed and shifted in his seat. “I’ve met a lot of women over the years. All kinds—blonde, brunette, athletic, short, sweet, married, single. Something’s different about you, Lola.”
Lola didn’t think of herself as the same as or different from anyone. But she could guess the things she was compared to Beau’s usual women. For one, she didn’t go for bullshit, but his world turned for it.
“Something’s different about you too,” she admitted. Lola wasn’t proud that she’d pegged Beau as another corporate asshole during their first meeting on the sidewalk. He’d proved her wrong during their darts game, but that’d only lasted until his proposition. Then he’d been worse than an asshole in her eyes. She worried he was proving her wrong again. That would make the evening entirely different. The Beau she’d agreed to spend the night with was the repugnant one who’d offered money for her body—not the sexy one she’d known before that.
“It’s always been my opinion that different is good,” he said. “I hope you agree.”
“You know, you aren’t the first man to try and sleep with me behind Johnny’s back.”
“Did you?” Beau asked.
“Did I what?”
“Sleep with them.”
“No,” Lola said emphatically.
“Good.” He hit his blinker and slowed for a light. “I don’t like cheating. It’s for people who don’t think they can win. If you don’t believe in yourself enough to play by the rules, you aren’t worthy of the prize.”
“Are we still talking about sex?”
“Cheating is always weak, no matter the circumstances.”
“Beau, some people—lots of people—might call this cheating.”
“I don’t. And I didn’t try to sleep with you behind his back like you said. It all happened in front of his face. Johnny’s aware of everything. He had his chance to put a stop to it.”
“Have you ever turned down a million dollars?” Lola asked wryly. Beau had been desperate before. Had he already forgotten how that felt?
“Sure I have,” he said. “When the company on the table was worth more.”
“I’m not talking about business, Beau. We’re people. I’m talking about lives.”
He didn’t speak. Money, sex, worth, people—it all shaded into a gray area for them. Had anyone asked her before all this, she would’ve answered that a dollar amount couldn’t be put on a person’s life. She still believed that, but the concepts were no longer completely unrelated in her mind.
“Let’s not argue about it,” Beau said, sighing again. Ahead, they were ent
ering Beverly Hills. “I don’t want you wasting any more energy. You’re going to need it soon.”
11
On the sixteenth floor of the Four Seasons Los Angeles at Beverly Hills, Beau and Lola exited a gold elevator. They’d been quiet since the car. To their left, a large window showcased the dark sky and the faint silhouette of mountains on the horizon. She followed him the opposite direction past the elevator bank to a hallway. At the end of it was a single black-lacquer door with a knob in the center. The corridor was long and carpeted, muting their steps. Her heart beat faster. It’d been nine years since she’d been with a man other than Johnny. And about that long since she’d wanted to.
Beau pulled out his key and unlocked the door with a click.
Lola’s stomach was beyond butterflies—she was sure an entire zoo had been released inside her. She stared at the doorway, which was a threshold, a point of no return, a choice plain and simple. Sweat beaded on her upper lip.
“It’s too late to turn back now,” Beau said.
She didn’t look away. “Not if I give back the money.”
Beau let the door close. “I know what you’re doing.” He walked to her, his steps deliberate. “If I force you into that room, then it isn’t your choice.”
“Nobody forced me here,” she said. “I made every decision. I had to. That doesn’t make my choices right.”
“Lola,” he said softly. “You don’t have to put on a show. Tonight is about you and me only. Take control of what you want.”
She glanced up at him. “You think you know what I want?”
He moved forward until the wall was at her back. He pushed a hand in the neckline of her dress. “You’re right,” he said. “I have no idea what you want. Since your nipple isn’t hard between my fingers. And you weren’t wet earlier as you sucked me off.”
“Just because you manipulate my body’s reaction,” her voice wavered, “doesn’t mean I want this. You can’t control my mind or my heart no matter what you say.”
His hand stilled. The muscles in his jaw flexed. “You’re so fucking concerned about your heart? Keep it. I’ll use your body. I won’t be gentle. And when I’m finished, you can have it back.”
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