Our arrangement is strictly between the two of us.
Love is a four-letter word that will have no room in our agreement, and most importantly, I’m a selfish prick who won’t share her under any circumstances.
When we reached the parking lot in front of her building, she’d sat beside me in the BMW, with those long legs crossed at the ankle, staring blankly ahead.
“What happens next?” She had finally asked, turning down the Godsmack song playing on a random satellite station I’d chosen, and I laughed.
“I go to New York for Christmas.”
“No, I mean . . . with what I just agreed to do with you. What do we do now?’”
“I’ll call you,” I’d told her, trailing a finger up the inside of her thigh. She had shivered, flicked her pink tongue over her lips and carved her hand through her loose black hair. My hand had froze against her creamy skin because I was so desperate to get my fingers in that hair. “Now get out, Elle, before I decide to put this car in reverse, with you in it, and spend the rest of the night doing what I planned. Learning exactly what it is that makes you scream.”
“I get it!” She gasped and grabbed my hand, squeezing my fingers before I could touch her like I wanted. “Do you get off doing this to me?”
“Not nearly as much as I will when it’s my tongue making your cunt quiver and not just spoken promises. Goodnight, Elle.”
In all honesty, I had no plan to see her until I was good and ready—after I came back from the inevitable trip to New York where I'd pretend to give a fuck about my family at some fundraiser my mother saw fit to include my name in. Fate had bent me over when I agreed to meet Hannah Amherst, an old bang buddy of mine (Hannah’s words, not mine) from boarding school, before she goes overseas with her newest husband, a man twice our age that I’ve been mentally referring to as The Poor Shit since I forgot his actual name right after he was introduced.
“Why so distracted, Graham?” Hannah’s silky voice cuts through my thoughts. Curving her red lips into a smile, she leans against the table, and her tits nearly fall out of her top. T.P.S. barely notices. “You’ve been a giant stick in the mud since we met up this morning," she pouts.
“Work problems,” I respond coolly, feeling my cock throb at the scent of Elle’s fruity scented perfume. Hannah is invisible to me when my gaze follows the proper Ms. Courtney sashaying past our table with her green eyes glued to the floor, and her ass teasing me under more layers of clothes than Hannah probably wears in a week.
That’s the first thing I’m going to do. Peel away some of those layers. Get to the freak I know is somewhere underneath it all.
“Graham?” Hannah’s voice is worried. Maybe by now she’s figured out that I have no intention of going with her to her hotel, even if husband number three—or is he number four?—doesn’t care.
“Excuse me,” I tell her, earning a pout that, once again, brings no emotion out of T.P.S.
Hannah is a perfect reminder of why I’ll never get married. Why I’ll never let another woman plunge her fucking talons into my heart again. Too much risk.
“Hurry back,” she pouts, before turning her attention to T.P.S. and saying something that makes him chuckle. She probably told him she’s going to fuck me right in front of him while he jerks off.
Following Elle’s scent, I enter the pink-decorated bathroom right behind her. Mouth hanging open, she whirls away from the sink to look at me like my dick is already hanging out.
“What the hell are you doing in here? You said you’d be in New York by now,” she whispers as I lock the door. When I face her, her arms are crossed over her shapeless sweater, and she’s burning a hole into my forehead with her glare. “I’m starting to think you put a GPS on me or something.”
I laugh. “On the contrary, Elle. Like I told you before, I had no plans to see you until I got back from New York. Believe me, I didn’t wake up this morning and realize that all I wanted or needed was Eleanor Courtney.”
Dropping her arms by her sides, she stalks toward me. With her black hair flying around her face, and her trembling lips, I decide she’s the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. “If I wasn’t all you wanted, or needed, Senator." She jabs her finger to my chest, and I catch her hand. "Then why in the hell would you offer so much money to get me in your bed for the next five months? Seems like you're the one piling on the bull today.”
“You forgot to say discreetly in my bed.” I pull her to me and flare my hands over the curve of her hips, both hating the way she hides her delectable body and feeling relieved that no other man knows the curves and angles buried beneath her hideous sweater, dress, and stockings. “I never said I didn’t want you. I do. Just not today. But if you must know why I’m here, an old friend came to town, and I stuck around to see her before she goes to Paris.”
Elle stiffens in my arm, and when I glance down into her enormous green eyes, I can’t help but grin at the flash of anger. Realizing her mistake, she turns her face to the side. “Don’t you need to get back to . . . your old friend?”
“She’s not what you think.” I kiss her throat, and she sighs. “You’re going to be a greedy one, and I wonder if this—” I slide my hand between her thighs, rubbing my fingers over the slick reward her aggravating tights are obstructing. She sucks in a ragged breath. When I trace the column of her throat again, this time with my tongue, she exhales and swallows hard. “—will be just as selfish.”
“You have such a nasty mouth,” she seethes, but she clamps her legs around my hand. “When my five months with you is up, I’ll—”
I kiss her delicate chin. “Beg for more. You’ll beg for more, Elle.”
And then she’ll regret me all over again when I ruin her to ruin her father. Something cold freezes my chest at the thought of it, but I swallow that shit down. Remind myself that Eleanor Courtney is just a walking, talking piece of ass.
It still doesn’t sit right, so I make a resolution to stay far away from Vivi and her judgment for a while. It must be getting to me.
I tilt Elle's mouth to mine, and her thighs’ grip on my other hand strengthen. Fuck, I need to be inside her already, not feeling her up in the middle of a bathroom. “Have you thought of me since we parted?”
“No, not at all.” She gasps when I tear a hole in the center of her stockings, and my fingers find the soft lace beneath it. The heat emanating from her is enough to shatter the control of any man. “Oh my god, Graham!”
“No thoughts at all, Ms. Courtney?” Rubbing a knuckle over her slit through her panties, I watch her face, waiting until her eyes are squeezed shut to shove the lace aside and spread her apart. “Jesus, Elle, you’re already dripping. Did you get wet just seeing me out there? Is that where we are now? Blind turn-ons?”
She moans, curving her body against mine. “What are you doing?” she demands, as I back her against the wall. She bucks against me. “Why are you doing this here?”
“Hands over your head,” I order, and to my satisfaction—my cock’s satisfaction—she lifts her arms up, resting them against the wall with her palms turned outward. “Keep them there. Don’t move. Just feel.”
“We’re really doing this?” she whispers.
“Should I stop?” I thrust two fingers deep into her pussy. She’s tight—tighter than I ever imagined—and all I can think of is replacing my hand with my cock and taking her right here on the marble floor. “Should I go back to lunch and pretend we never saw each other?”
“Yes,” she pants, her hips rhythmically grinding against me. And then she lets out a cry when I start to pull away. “No!”
I flick my thumb over her swollen clit, and her tongue darts out to touch her lips. Then she licks them again and again. “You’re going to drive me crazy, Elle." I stop her next distracting round of tongue play with my mouth, nibbling on her bottom lip. "And you taste like blackberries. Why am I not surprised?"
There’s a knock at the door, someone jiggling the knob, and her eyes fly open. “We can’t do this,” she
whispers frantically, but I shake my head. “We shouldn’t do this!”
“Save your can’ts and shouldn’ts for confession, Elle. We already are.”
“I’m not even Catholic,” she retorts furiously.
“Eleanor?” the voice on the other side of the door calls. Her mother. “Eleanor, is everything all right?”
“If you don’t want her to hear you scream, I’d suggest you have her leave.”
“I’m okay!” she shouts, the desperate throaty sound making me want her on her knees right now with my dick filling her mouth. Instead, I spread her legs farther apart, finish ripping the center of her tights, and pound my fingers harder. “I’m fine, Mom. Just a little . . . under the weather.” Never moving her hands from above her head, she bites down hard on my shoulder, and I grasp her ass.
When her jaw drops, I stroke her clit harder, grinding my thumb, and narrow my gaze in warning. "I wasn't kidding, Elle. Get rid of her."
“Just go sit down, okay?" Elle calls out. "I’ll be out in a minute or two.”
When her mother doesn’t knock again, I brush my lips against her ear. “Are you that close?” I inhale her intoxicating scent, responding to it by curving my fingers inside her and hitting a spot that makes her arch her body until her full breasts are pressed so close to my chest, I feel her nipples tighten. “A minute or two?”
But she doesn’t even last that long. Watching the look in her eyes as she convulses around my fingers is something I won’t forget—not even after we’re through. For all the shit she talks, right now Eleanor Courtney trusts me. Part of me would prefer any other emotion than that one.
She drops her head against my chest, catching her breath.
“Did you have to do that here?” she whispers, shuddering when I drag my hand away from her and move the other from her ass to her hip. I want more, crave her wet body, but for Elle, I’ll be patient. “Graham?” she repeats my name, her voice soft and tentative.
“Yes,” I reply as her arms lower from above her head, falling limply over my shoulders. She’s too fucking warm. Too fucking soft. “I did have to do it. I’ve already told you, I want to possess you.”
And then, I’ll break you.
Chapter Twelve
Elle
“Stop shaking or you’ll give yourself away when you go back out there and face your mother,” Graham warns. He backs away from me gradually, leaving me shuddering against the Parisian pink wallpaper.
“I can’t.” Damn him for doing this to me, and piss on me for letting him. What’s gotten into me? Graham Delaney crooks his talented finger at me, and I’m hitting the big O in a ladies’ bathroom?
“Try harder, Elle. Remember what we agreed about being inconspicuous?”
“Yeah, well that sort of flew out the window when you followed me in here and shoved your hand under my underwear.”
He adjusts my clothes—turning it into a sexy romp all its own when he kneels in front of me to drag his strong fingers up my tights, stopping to trace the rip in the center. Since it’s impossible to speak, I simply hold my breath, as he hikes up the hem of my dress.
“When you go back out there. . .” Looking me in the eye, he kisses one of my thighs, then the other. I convulse, but he continues, “When you’re sitting there, with your blackberry drink and eating your dainty fucking salad. . .” His tongue darts out, and he licks me long and hard, tasting his handiwork. His tongue is a curse, and I dig my fingers in his immaculate dark hair as he hungrily laps at my sex for several more seconds before plucking my panties back in place. “When you’re doing all that, I want you to think of me. Sitting across the room from you with this in my pocket.”
Without warning, he rips a piece of my ruined tights. Pulling my skirt back down, he stands and shoves the material deep into his pocket.
“Tearing them wasn’t enough for you?” I demand, and he presses my body up against his hard chest.
Gathering my string of black pearls in his hand, he shakes his head. Watching him, feeling his body heat crash into mine, knowing that the lips working into a smile had just tasted me, I feel drunk. “And Elle?”
“Hmm?”
“When you’re home tonight, and I’m still fucking your head? I want to hear you come.”
“Phone sex?” I whisper, and he grins cockily, moving his head from side to side.
“I want to hear it whenever I’d like.”
“You want to hear me get off on your voicemail?” When he nods, I lick my lips, and his irises darken. “How do you know it’ll be real? How do you know I won’t be faking it?”
Dropping my pearls, he gives my ass a firm squeeze. “I’ve heard you. I’ve felt you. And when the time is right, I’ll fucking taste you again, too. I’ll know if it’s real. Now, run along, Ms. Courtney, before I decide to make it real right here and now and shock all of D.C.”
But he has too much control for that. That much was obvious when he hadn’t tried to sleep with me the night I agreed to be his. And just now, when he had me pinned against the wall with his long fingers driving into my body. I’d felt him. Felt his erection. Felt his hammering heartbeat. Felt the lust radiating off him.
And now, for the second time, he’s sending me away.
“I’m guessing you’ll still call me when you’re ready?”
“As long as we don’t run into each other again. Apparently, D.C. is a very small town.”
Then, giving me one last look that undresses me, he drops his hand from my ass, and tells me to enjoy my lunch.
Right before I open the door, he gives me a request that makes my throat go dry. “Keep the tights, Elle.”
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Blake says to me later that night, for the second or third time. “You hooked up with some guy in a bathroom? Not just any bathroom, but at Monroe’s? While the queen of the Resting Bitch Face was in the place? You brave, amazing girl.”
For the second or third time since I’d foolishly told her the bare minimum of what had happened this afternoon, I repeat, “Yes. Can we talk about something else? Like Boston or your crazy grandma or anything?”
She squeals into the phone, and I nearly drop my cell in the bathtub. “Holy crap, Elle, I didn’t know you had it in you! So spill it, bitch, who is he? Why’ve you been hiding him from me? Where did you meet him?” She squeals again, but this time I have a firm, if not slightly soapy, grip on the phone. “God, I knew I should’ve called your ass sooner!”
I squeeze my eyes closed. “He’s nobody special.”
I’ve been telling myself that since lunch ended and I said goodbye to Zach and my mother, shaking violently when Graham’s dark eyes met mine over my brother’s shoulder as we hugged. He is nobody special, I thought, trying to force steel into my gaze. He is a means to an end.
Like he’d guessed precisely what I was thinking, he’d tilted his head so that his top-heavy “friend” and the other man couldn’t see what he was saying and mouthed, “Mine.”
So, as soon as I was free of the restaurant and Graham’s predatory stare, I’d traded in my dress and ripped tights for workout clothes and had hit the gym a few blocks from my apartment. I was desperate to work him out of my system, even if that meant lifting heavy weights and letting a treadmill beat the hell out of me.
Only, it hadn’t worked. As soon as Blake called—from a New York City area code—I’d answered the phone with, “Haven’t you had enough of me for today?”
Which is what got me here. Facing the Blake Mayer Interrogation.
“Nobody?” Blake snorts. “Elle, we both know you’re not the one to get finger-blasted in a public restroom by Nobody!”
I sit upright, sloshing water onto the floor. “Oh my God, really?”
She laughs. “Sorry, I’ve been spending way too much time with my cousin Colton. You know, the one that goes to NYU?”
I feel like I know the blond, gorgeous, rich frat boy who frequently updated his Facebook page with his most recent conquests like the back of my h
and, honestly. Blake had mentioned Colton on more than one occasion, usually trying to play matchmaker. Glancing down at the New York-based number on my phone, I groan. “Do not program my number into the phone of someone who uses the term finger-blasted.”
“Well, now I won’t. I’d never want to come between you and the Bathroom Bandit.”
“Blake,” I groan.
“All right, all right. Just promise me I’ll get the full scoop when I come home in a couple weeks. Otherwise I’ll spend the rest of my time here, writhing in agony.”
Blake’s theatre professor—the one who’d said her acting was a bland disservice to performance arts—was wrong. The girl can lay on the theatrics like no other.
I sigh. “We’ll talk when you get back, I promise.”
“Good, you’re not going to be stingy!” Then, she promises to erase my number from Colton’s phone before telling me she’ll be in touch before Christmas. Once I’m alone again, I sink down in the bubbles, hoping the hot bath will erase both my sore muscles, courtesy of the brutal workout, and the desperate ache that still lingers between my legs for Graham.
My phone rings.
Turning it on speaker, I answer with Blake’s name on my tongue, but the low, sophisticated chuckle is all male.
Think of the devil, and he shall call.
“Did you keep the stockings?” Graham demands.
Drying my hands on the towel hanging on the rack by the tub, I turn the volume louder. “Only because I haven’t had a chance to throw them away yet. And what happened to you not getting in touch with me until I’ve left you a voicemail screaming your name?”
“My plan changed. And if you throw those tights away, I’ll . . .”
He’s back to the trailing off, and because my body absolutely can’t handle it after today, I ask, “You’ll what.”
“I’ll turn you over my knee.”
“Spankings, Senator, really?” My stomach flutters. I’ve never been spanked in my life, but hearing Graham threaten to do it sends a shiver down my spine. I reach for a bottle of soap. “Did you make it to New York?”
Pawn: Volume One Page 7