“I’m going to come already,” he said, cutting right through her haze. “I can’t watch you come apart like that. I need to go fast. Relax everything except your grip around my hand.”
She held him tightly, biting her lip as he pulled out of her slowly. She was immediately empty without him.
He took her arm. “Come. Up. Hurry.”
He couldn’t get her off the bed and into the bathroom fast enough. He ran one hand over his cock as he flipped on the shower and tested the water with his hand.
“In,” he commanded.
She got under the water before him. He hugged her from behind, grasping her breasts and sucking a spot under her ear. Her hair slickened. He was insistently hard against her backside. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you, Lola.”
She fumbled with the hotel soap and threw the plastic wrapper on the ground. After lathering it, she turned around and took him in her hand.
“Ah,” he gasped up at the ceiling. “Lola.”
She cleaned him, rubbed him, worked him with two hands and still couldn’t feel all of him at once. When she looked up, he was also watching. Water dripped from his hair, down his nose.
“You’re sexy,” she whispered.
His eyes jumped to hers.
“I don’t think I ever told you because I’m supposed to hate you,” she said, “but you’re so handsome it hurts. And so sexy.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed. “You—”
“No,” she said. “This is about you.”
She climbed his cock with both her hands, one after the other, faster and faster. He made an expression she’d never seen on a person, something almost pained. But neither of them looked away. He leaned in, took her mouth with his and lifted her by her ass. He pressed her back up against the shower wall with the force of his kiss.
“Ma lumiére,” he said hotly in her ear as he searched for her with his hand. He found her slick and teased her opening with his cock before entering her. “It means my light. So sweet, so soft, you are the light in my world tonight.”
Her fingertips did everything but consume his textured jaw, his pliant hair, his wide, hard back and tensed shoulder blades. She was forced to stop touching to hang around his neck when his thrusts came too fast and out of control. The shower steamed over as hot water rained against his back and her limbs around him. She was warm everywhere except for her back, which slipped and slid over the cold marble.
“I’m going to come,” he said, a hint of a growl in his voice. “Kiss me.”
She drew back and let herself be devoured as he took her in every way. He thrust deep and came with his mouth on hers and his fingers denting her ass cheeks.
He removed one hand and ran it between them, gliding it over her wet skin and taking her breast in his hand. He released her to touch her clit.
“I can’t, not again,” she whimpered. She was raw, sore, used, but his deft fingers relentlessly rubbed her. She put her head back against the wall and gasped up at the ceiling.
He kissed along her neck and the underside of her jaw, running a course up to her ear and finding his way back to her mouth.
She could, and she did—she constricted her arms around him with all her strength as her orgasm roiled through her.
They breathed hard, he into her shoulder, she into his damp hair. Even when she became aware she was still clinging to him, she didn’t loosen her grip. From start to finish, it had been too good to be true. She was afraid if she let go, he’d disappear.
“Lola,” he whispered eventually. “Are you all right? Did I hurt you?”
She shook her head against his neck.
“Say something. Anything.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I just gave you everything.”
He stroked her hair with his hand, pressed his lips to the same spot, to her temple then her cheek until they were mouth to mouth again. He let the wall take her weight and kissed her like he did everything else—unforgiving, firm, but with attention to every detail.
She’d thought he couldn’t possibly possess her any more after their first night, but each time he was inside her, they became even closer. Her chest stuttered, and her eyes welled. She didn’t want to stop the kiss—she wouldn’t let him see her cry. She was overwhelmed, and it clouded her mind. Whatever was making her feel this way wouldn’t be fought off. Was it love? It wasn’t the same thing she had with Johnny, so she couldn’t be sure.
She pulled back anyway, needing to see his eyes.
“What is it?” he asked, blinking his wet lashes.
She hated to lose his green even for that second. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “How do you do it?” She ran her thumb over the corner of his eye. “Are you like this with everyone?”
“No,” he said, all his severity in that one word.
“Why me?”
“Why you, Lola? When I see inside you, it always feels like the first time.”
“You can see inside me?” she asked.
“Can’t you feel me there?”
She knew she should look away. Immediately. When had they crossed into this territory? He was gaining traction where he never should’ve been in the first place. If she didn’t stop him now, he’d only sink his claws in deeper. She had to give in or fight back. Beau wouldn’t allow anything in between. She could no longer stand anything in between.
Her heart pounded as if magnetized to the thumping organ directly across from it. Her teeth fretted against her bottom lip.
Could she feel him there? Like a thunderstorm.
She pulled him back into the kiss and gave him anything she had left. She told him with her kiss what she couldn’t with her words—Beau had her. Body, heart and soul.
11
The city still stood, even though Lola’s world had shifted. She was thankful for the bedroom balcony that gave her what she needed in that moment—fresh air. Fresh perspective. Whatever was in that room, it was getting to her.
How could she have let herself get so wrapped up in Beau? Johnny had said since she’d already done this once, a second time wouldn’t be a big deal. How foolish they had been. This time was an even bigger deal—this time, Beau demanded more from her and she was hardly putting up a fight. Because she no longer had the desire to. What had she bitingly told Beau in the beginning?
“I’m sorry if you thought any amount of money would get you my heart.”
She should’ve known if Beau decided that was what he wanted, that was what he’d get. The money no longer even registered for Lola—it was something else entirely. She and Johnny now had bigger problems.
Beau enfolded her from behind with his arms and rested his chin on her robed shoulder. “So you didn’t run out on me,” he said.
“I just needed a minute.”
“I want to give you lots of things,” he said, “but minutes aren’t one of them.”
“There’s still half the night left.” With her own words, she brightened. She and Johnny needed to have a conversation when she got home, but for now, she wanted to forget anything but being with Beau. “You should’ve taken me to dinner or something. What are we supposed to do until sunrise?”
“I don’t know. I’m all fucked out for the moment.”
She laughed and relaxed into his arms. “Me too.”
“We could sleep,” he suggested.
“Does that mean I have to give you a discount?”
He tsked in her ear. “Since when are we joking about this?”
She shrugged. “Since I’ve finally accepted this is how things are—this is our situation.”
“Really. After all this, with only half a night left, you’ve finally accepted it?”
“Better late than never.” It hit her then. There wasn’t “still” half a night left—there was “only” half. Lola couldn’t deny her feelings for Beau, but she and Johnny had history, and a lot of love between them. Aside from that, Beau hadn’t signed on for anything more than a night. So after sunrise, she
and Beau were finished. “You know something?”
“Tell me, beautiful.”
“I don’t think I want to sleep, because—” She hadn’t thought through what she was about to say. It was a huge admission. She wavered, swallowing as if she could keep the words down.
Beau nuzzled into her hair. “Hmm?”
“Because this isn’t just your last night with me,” she said. “It’s mine with you.”
He kissed her cheek. “This is our space,” he said softly. “You can always say what’s on your mind, and nobody will know but us.”
His arms were surrounding her. She was protected, but it was more than that. She was safe. While she was with him in their space, nothing could harm them. Nothing but themselves, she thought, right before pushing it out of her head.
“We can do whatever your heart desires with the time we have left,” he said. “We can go to goddamn Paris if you want.”
“I don’t think our agreement holds across international lines.”
“Yes, it does.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. There was no mention of that in anything I signed. I mean, for God’s sake, what if I got pregnant in Paris?”
“Well—”
“That wasn’t covered in the pregnancy waiver,” she continued. “How would we proceed? And then there’s the fact that we’d never make it back in time for sunrise—unless,” she put a finger to her lips, “we adjusted for time change—”
He nipped the shell of her ear. “You’re teasing me.”
She giggled and covered his arms at her middle. “You’re the only one who gets to have fun?”
“You’re having fun. I know you are.”
“You seem determined that I do. Why?” she asked, looking up at the sky. “Why do I matter to you?”
“Why does anyone matter to anyone? You’re asking me to explain something impossible.”
It still bothered her, though, that he’d never given her a reason. To pay that much just because he was drawn to her? Was that enough? She sighed. “Try.”
“If you think any of this would be happening if you weren’t you, you’d be wrong. It’s not that I paid for a night with a woman. It’s not that you’re so beautiful, it almost hurts me.”
The same was tragically true for Lola. She was there because of Beau, and she suspected that’d been the case all along. Johnny’s happiness and Hey Joe’s preservation were the reasons she’d convinced herself she could do it. She would’ve denied it until her last breath, but now she knew without a doubt—she would’ve refused anyone else’s offer.
“What was the reason then?” she asked.
“That I simply had to have you. Can’t you understand that? And maybe, can’t you admit you understand because you feel the same for me?”
She was quiet. To know that herself was scary enough, but to say it out loud was traitorous—and it was terrifying. It could set something in motion, and she wasn’t ready for that. There was nothing to be gained by a confession like that except more damage.
“Don’t feel guilty, Lola. Johnny knew this was a possibility. There’s no rule we can’t fall for each other.”
She looked over the balcony railing. “Maybe not. But I can’t jump, Beau.”
“There’s more than one way to fall,” he said. “Say, if you were pushed.”
“If you push me,” she said to the ground sixteen floors below, “it will be messy.”
“It already is messy,” he said. “Just trust in this—my hands on you.”
His protection. A safe place in his arms. Nothing about him was trustworthy. Anyone who made as much money as him had to have put his needs ahead of everyone else’s at some point. And he used that money to get anything he wanted, including her. When he was interested in a company, he designed their meetings around what made them most comfortable. Was that because he cared, or was it manipulation?
A thought struck her for the first time. Had his proposition at Hey Joe been spur of the moment like she’d thought, or had he done it there because that was where she was most comfortable?
“When was the first time?” she asked.
“The first time for what?”
“You said in the shower when you look inside me, it’s always like the first time. When? What moment?”
He was silent for so long, she began to worry.
“Beau?”
“It was at the beginning,” he said.
“The beginning of what? At Hey Joe? Or you mean the first night we spent together?”
“No,” he said. He squeezed her so hard that she gasped a little.
“Beau?” she asked again.
“Remember at Hey Joe, before I left, I tried to tip you.”
“Yes, I remember.” Of all the moments and silences they’d had between them, that one was fairly insignificant in Lola’s mind. “It was then?”
“No,” he said. “Why didn’t you take it?”
She mostly remembered it because it was right before he’d shifted from a mysterious, attractive man to a man who’d thought she could be bought. A lifetime had happened since then. “We’d been flirting,” she said. “You asked me if I was attracted to you, and I was, but I couldn’t say it. When you tried to give me that much money, it seemed somehow connected to that. Like you were cheapening our time together.”
“I wasn’t. I genuinely meant it to be nice.”
“‘Nice’ isn’t giving people money. It’s giving them things money can’t buy, like how you took me to that speakeasy because you thought I’d like it. Or letting me get syrup on your bed because it made me happy.” She paused. “I don’t care about your money.”
His entire body tensed around her.
“But I know you worked hard for it. That’s what I—” She caught herself before she could say it was what she loved about him. “It’s what I care about. Your passion and drive, and that you love to help people create.”
“You’re reading too much into what I do.”
“No, I’m not. I see you, Beau.” She saw him, but she couldn’t have him. Not when she and Johnny had given each other nine years of their lives, and not when she owed him more. “Why’d you ask about the tip?”
He shook his head on her shoulder. “Never mind.”
“Beau—”
“Stop looking over the balcony. You’re making me nervous.” There was an edge to his voice, even though he held her tightly enough that she wasn’t going anywhere. He hadn’t answered her question, but she didn’t want to spend what little time they had left arguing.
She blinked her eyes to the sky again. “All right. Is up okay?”
“Up is okay.”
“You asked what I wanted to do tonight,” she said. “I’d like to see the stars with you.”
Beau’s chin remained on her shoulder, and he was still looking over the balcony. “Can’t see them now?”
“Not enough of them. I want to see them all.”
He kissed the side of her head over her hair. “Go get dressed.”
“Really?”
“I can do spontaneous. I know a place. I have to make a call, but I’ll only be a moment.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Business overseas.”
“Oh.” She nodded. “Wait, what about—”
“In the closet,” he said. “I have some things in there you can wear.”
Things she could wear? Her jaw set. “If you think I’m wearing another woman’s clothes—”
“They’ve never been worn,” he said. “They’re yours. I can be spontaneous—rarely—but I am also always prepared if I can help it.”
That certainly sounded like him. She extricated herself from his grasp, went inside and found a couple plain, jersey women’s T-shirts hanging in the closet. She chose one the muted color of raw clay. The jeans were almost equally as soft, and on the floor sat a pair of brilliant-white Chucks in her size.
She was dressed and combing her damp hair when Beau came
into the bathroom. He also wore a T-shirt and jeans.
“We almost look like a normal couple,” Lola said to his reflection in the mirror.
He frowned, watching her.
“Is everything okay?”
“Fine,” he said. “Everything’s fine. You ready?”
The look on his face matched his cross voice on the balcony. She’d seen him that way before—and since it was on her mind, she realized one of those times was right after she’d refused his tip. Before she could think anything of it, his face relaxed with a smile.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m ready.”
Downstairs, the valet ran for Beau’s car, seeming eager for something to do in the middle of the night.
Beau took her hand as if it were the most natural thing. “I’ve been riding without the top lately,” he said when the valet pulled the car up. “You’ve liberated me.”
She smiled. “That’s a nice thing to do to someone.”
The roads were relatively quiet at that hour, and Beau took advantage of it. He turned up the music. The drive was all at once fast and slow, the speedometer needle climbing to sixty, seventy, eighty before Beau would let up on the gas. The wind had a way of soothing her conscience and wiping her clean, as if she were moving into a new state of awareness. She could no longer hide the truth about her feelings for Beau from herself. It was past midnight—the end of one day, the start of another.
They climbed the Santa Monica Mountains. Beau hugged each curve and took the sharp ones without flinching, anticipating them like he’d laid the pavement himself.
Neither of them spoke, but once in a while, Beau would look over at her and she couldn’t help looking back. Then he’d return his eyes to the precarious, winding road, and she’d allow herself a few more seconds of Beau’s hair, disheveled by the wind, and the stubble that had tickled her earlier. She hoped she’d get to feel the same burn as their first night together when he hadn’t shaved—how long would it take for it to grow a little longer? Did they have that much time? To feel that kind of thing over her lips, along her jaw, between her legs—it was ownership.
Beau eventually slowed the car to a stop, pulling over to a lookout point.
Explicitly Yours Series Page 27