Rush: A Second Chance Romance

by Ellen Lane

  “I’ll be fine,” I cut him off quickly. Better I didn’t dig the hole even deeper than it already was. “You go ahead.” I did the best I could to busy myself with unpacking once more. I didn’t think I’d be able to draw a comfortable breath until Rhett left. Despite our history, and despite the fact that I’d slept with the man twice already, I was always nervous around him. His mere presence was enough to make my palms sweaty and my knees weak.

  “Cece.” When he said my name again, I refused to look up. One glance at him and I knew I might do something stupid - like drag him back into bed at me. I only promised myself one private experience...I couldn’t extend it to the whole trip. That meant every time I fell into bed with Rhett in Katmandu, I’d have to dish. That should be enough to dissuade me from doing it. “Cece.” When Rhett’s hand cupped my cheek, drawing my face upwards, for the barest moment, I forgot how to breathe.

  It had to be illegal for a man to look that good coming off a fourteen hours flight. His hair was mussed and his clothing was wrinkled, but I strongly suspected that not even the apocalypse could make the man unattractive. “What is it?” I managed, somehow annoyed and aroused all at once.

  “If you want me to stay, all you have to do is ask.” The moment the words left his mouth, I was severely tempted. All rationality flew out the window and selfishness threatened to take hold.

  But there was no way I was giving in. He was baiting me. He couldn’t possibly imagine that anyone in their right mind would demand he forego business meetings and other matters of import just because they asked. I wasn’t going to fall into that trope just because he offered.

  Even though it made me wonder if he’d made any of his revolving door collection of women the same offer. “Don’t be ridiculous.” I finally managed. “I don’t need a babysitter. You have matters to attend to and so do I.” I definitely needed to get more material to Jim before he decided that he needed to call me again. I wasn’t looking forward to explaining why I had just skipped the country - though, as long as it made the article juicier I could hardly imagine my boss would care.

  “I dunno. I don’t think I’d mind babysitting you.” Before I knew it, Rhett had trapped me between his solid form and the bed. My body responded shamelessly - in an instant, my panties were wet, my nipples pebbled nubs of sensation against the cups of my bra. “For as long as you needed.”

  My hands came up to press against his chest as I swallowed thickly. “Rhett...If you need to work, you should go.”

  His hands came up to cover mine - warm and heavy. Those blue eyes of his were going to be my undoing if I wasn’t careful. Here, nine thousand miles from everything I knew and loved, I was particularly vulnerable. “Do you want me to go?”

  Jesus, if my life was built on what I wanted, we’d hardly be in this position, would we? I’d be a renowned reporter back in Atlanta and some other gossip-column floozy would be here with Rhett. I wasn’t special. This was in his nature and I... I just happened to be the closest warm body.

  So why the hell was he looking at me like that?

  “Yes.” Somehow, I pushed the word past my uncooperative lips. “Go.”

  Rhett’s gaze lingered on me for a moment longer, as if he were waiting for me to reveal the truth of things, before he finally released me. When he turned away, I felt, somehow, as if I’d said the wrong thing - upset him in some way. “I’ll be back later, then. Have the hotel call me if you need anything.” He grabbed his jacket from the coat-hook near the door, and in the next instant, he was gone.

  The suite, already lavishly oversized, seemed even bigger without him inside it.

  Taking a deep breath, I slid to the floor, leaning against the side of the bed for support. Perhaps this hadn’t been as good an idea as I thought. Hypothetically, our readership would love to hear about a whirlwind affair in a foreign country, but was I comfortable writing about it?

  Ultimately, it didn’t really matter.

  Setting my mouth into a firm line, I stood, digging through my carry-on until I extracted my laptop. I sat at the intricately carved desk in the corner of the room and booted up the device. When I was faced with the document where I’d been detailing Rhett’s story, I hesitated. Up until this point, things had remained fairly platonic. A kiss here and there - a few details designed to titillate the minds of people more absorbed with people’s physical and monetary disposition than anything else...but I knew that wasn’t what Jim wanted. Ultimately, I’d have to deliver on my promise.

  And the sooner I started, the better.

  Chapter Ten

  ~ Rhett

  I’d long come to discover that travelling most of the time for work could be a headache. People might see it as glamorous, but even with a private jet in tow, jet lag could be a bitch. I was gone more than half the days out of the year, which meant home was a relative term, and this certainly wasn’t the first time I’d traveled with a woman.

  But it was altogether different than any trip I’d taken before.

  Cece didn’t expect anything of me. Certainly, we’d set a precedent on the flight over and I only hoped she continued to let me have my way physically, but that wasn’t my primary concern. The moment we landed in the country, it was apparent just how different she was from a prima ballerina or a world famous actress. Hell, most women in general expected that a man at my level of success would pamper them just because.

  But not her. Cece was enamored of the tiniest things - landscapes, experiences, glasses of champagne on planes…. she didn’t expect to have the best of the best all the time...which was why I was so goddamned determined to give it to her.

  I had less business in Kathmandu than I let on, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to take advantage of our time there. The things I wanted to do with Cece required a bit of organization - a necessary evil that would keep me from her for only a few hours.

  I took a taxi downtown to the city center to make our appointments. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to forget that damn pout Cece had when I told her I was leaving her. It had only lasted half a second - and I was pretty damned certain she hadn’t even known she was doing it. But half a second was all it took.

  She would miss me.

  Of course, I had to bait her. The fact of the matter was that, if Cece had asked me to, I might have stayed in bed with her for the next year...but we were a long way from her being so bold. Despite the fact that we’d been together twice, Cece was still Cece - and that meant she refused to admit what she wanted most.

  When she was a kid, it had been to spare the people around her any trouble. Her parents, her brother, her friends...but now, what purpose did that shit serve? If she’d just write me a laundry list of the things that made her happy, I’d hand them over on a silver platter.

  Fuck, I was in deep.

  The taxi ride was the first time in a long time that I hadn’t been occupied with business or the woman in question herself, so I had a moment to breathe. To ask myself: how the hell had I ended up here?

  When Cece first showed up at the manor a few weeks ago, I called seducing her an ‘experiment’. Years of success had spoiled me and I was used to getting what I wanted. She had quickly robbed me of any notion that having her in my bed would be easy - and then, all at once, it escalated beyond getting her in my bed.

  I don’t think I’d ever even realized it. In one moment, I wanted to make a conquest of her, as I usually did with women. And then the next, I realized she was completely justified in calling me out on the fact. That alone should have been enough to make me want to turn tail and run.

  But it wasn’t.

  I was pursuing Cece like I’d pursued no woman since her - and the realization was more than a little unsettling. My entire life, I’d put a fourteen-year-old girl on a pedestal and now...now she was a woman. A ridiculously alluring, stubborn, sensual, intriguing woman that I wanted to spend more time with. The only reason Cece was spending time with me, however, was because it was in her job description.

&
nbsp; So how was I supposed to change that?

  I paused outside the door to the Intrepid office. Was pushing Cece’s boundaries like this really the best way to spend our trip? Should I have taken her to Paris or London and made some excuse to wine and dine her all night?

  Immediately, I scowled. While I had no doubt that Cece deserved all those things and more, I didn’t want to put up a front with her. I’d brought her to Kathmandu to escape everything at home - to show her what really made me happy.

  I wasn’t going to change my plans now.

  It took about two hours to get everything set up. By the time I came out of the offices, my jetlagged body was all but screaming its exhaustion. Usually, I managed to sleep away at least half of all plane trips but I’d been a little too occupied with Cecily this time around to care much about resting.

  And I’d be presented with the same problem when I got back to the damned hotel room. Sometimes I found myself torn. Cece liked to run away from me when I came after her - and a part of me was tempted to let her. If she ran away, that meant I wouldn’t be tempted by her. Just a glimpse of those gorgeous eyes of hers...of that full mouth...it was enough to ensure my concentration was shot for the rest of the day.

  But if she didn’t run from me, that meant she was in my arms - which was arguably far sweeter.

  I wondered which scenario I’d face when I got back to the hotel.

  It was close to nine in the evening by the time I returned - though our bodies felt as if we’d stayed up all night and it was nine in the morning. By any estimate, I’d have understood if Cece was grouchy, irritable and otherwise unwilling to put up with my attempts at flirtation. Instead, what I found when I entered the room was that she was waiting for me in a chair by the door, a bundle of nervous arms and legs.

  The moment I entered the room, she shot to her feet, her cheeks coloring adorably. It was clear that she’d cleaned up while I was gone - her hair was still damp from the shower and she was wearing a pair of the long underwear we’d brought together.

  I had never imagined something so basic could be so ungodly sexy, but Cece’s rampant curves made the drab clothes look like something off the page of a glossy magazine ad. “I...um...I ordered room service for dinner. I didn’t know if you’d eat while you were out and I just...I mean…” She twisted her fingers together in a terse moment of indecision before words tumbled from her anew. “Look, I didn’t mean to be a bitch earlier, I just...well, this is all new to me. I wasn’t supposed to get involved with you and now we’ve slept together twice and you...you…”

  I lasted about a minute into the tirade before I was pulling her into my arms. Her mouth met mine without resistance and I realized that it could only have been a few hours since I kissed her last...but those hours felt like fucking eternity. Had she always tasted this sweet - like mint toothpaste, peaches and Georgia sunshine?

  When I kissed Cece, I didn’t have to think about what my next move was. I could just be...and that was something I hadn’t done in a long fucking time.

  “I... what?” I finally drew away from her for long enough to let her finish, arching a brow in inquiry. Cece’s eyes glazed as she stared up at me, and she shook her head slightly to clear them.

  “What?”

  I swallowed a laugh. As troubled as she had looked when I walked in the door, she seemed to have forgotten all that now. “You were going to call me something...probably an asshole.”

  At that, Cece’s eyes widened and she slipped from my arms, obviously embarrassed. “I was not going to call you an asshole,” she tossed sullenly over her shoulder. “Much as you might deserve it.” She uttered the last part so softly I was pretty sure it wasn’t meant for my ears, but I heard it anyway.

  “What was that?”

  “Dinner,” she repeated quickly, tossing me a smile. “I ordered dinner. Tell me you’re hungry.”

  “Always.” I decided not to specify what I was hungry for. Letting her assume seemed like the safest course of action - especially considering what was on the docket for the next day.

  I was surprised by how adventurous Cece was with our dinner. She ordered a number of Nepalese dishes I’d never even heard of before and tried them all with great gusto. I didn’t remember her ever being a picky eater, but I had never known a woman to even attempt something as outlandish as pig stomach or bone marrow.

  It was fun.

  Though we weren’t actually on a date, having dinner with Cece was enough to make me recall “dates” I’d had with other women that had almost been my undoing. They wanted the most expensive thing on the menu, they wanted to go to the most highly rated show in town - they knew I had money and they wanted to take advantage of it. In this hotel, the western menu had been touted at astronomical prices...and Cece hadn’t even given it a second thought.

  By the time we were finished and she insisted on organizing the tray to send it back herself, I found myself marveling at just how much she seemed to have grown up. Certainly, she was opinionated and stubborn, but she was far from demanding.

  And I adored it.

  I’d be lying if I denied sleeping wasn’t a trial that night. Part of me - a very large part of me - hoped I’d be lucky enough to charm myself into Cece’s pants again, but, ultimately, jetlag got to her before I did. By the time I got out of the shower, she was sprawled on the bed, fast asleep.

  The sight of her was enough to give me pause. Though there had been a lot of physical intimacy between us in the past few weeks, I’d never seen her like this. Cecily with her guard down, lashes long on her cheeks and hair mussed against the pillow, was enough to make my heart stutter in my chest.

  Carefully, I sat down on the edge of the bed, reaching out to rest my palm on the curve of her hip. It was warm, supple, and inviting as hell…. but beyond that - beyond the call of my ever present libido - there was something softer. Something both flattering and humbling about the way she allowed herself to fall asleep around me. I had hardly ever seen Cecily let her guard down since she came to stay with me. This was a treat I couldn’t afford to let pass lightly.

  Though I knew I was probably tempting fate, I snapped a picture of her with my phone. It was the kind of imagine women tended to clobber their men over - something they found and then deleted quickly because they imagined there was no way they could possibly look appealing when caught off guard.

  But I meant to keep this one. I’d had women the world over send me shots that would make even the staunchest preacher’s wives blush, and this was my favorite. Cecily, in her long underwear, sleeping peacefully without a care in the world.

  I tried to give her as much space as I could when I slipped into bed, but ultimately, my cock was eager to bridge the gap between us. To say the least, I got very little sleep that night.

  “No. No way.”

  I might have imagined she’d react like this, and I knew Cece had to be nervous. That said, I still found myself fighting a smile. Her expression was one of both fascination and terror - I knew it well. For the first day on our trip, I planned to take motorcycles through hills and valleys of Nepal - with only a single guide to lead us.

  There was no part of me that expected Cece would drive her own motorcycle, but it appeared that even the idea of riding behind me was intimidating. I supposed I couldn’t blame her. The brochure pictures were slightly intimidating.

  “Don’t worry, Miss.” Aadarsh, our guide, was grinning at her from atop his own bike. “I go with Mister Wilder many times. He’s good driver. Very safe.”

  Cecily looked from the small, weathered brown man to me and then back again. I could all but see the conflict going on behind those bright eyes of hers. She wanted to let herself go and enjoy the adventure, but the prospect of driving along sheer ninety-foot cliffs was enough to upset her stomach slightly.

  Just like the first time I had ever gone out with Aadarsh.

  “How...how many times have you done this?” She finally asked, twisting her gloved fingers together nervously.
Aadarsh’s smile only widened. “Over two hundred times. Most people very nervous - they scared to fall, go very slow. Mister Wilder nervous only first time. He take good care of you.”

  Cece’s gaze flicked back to me in surprise. “Where do you find the time to practice something like this?”

  I chuckled lowly. “Whenever I can. Trust me, in the world of adrenaline junkies, this is pretty tame, darlin. Didn’t you say you wanted to join the club?” I held out my hand to her - casual and undemanding. She could always say no. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had thrown a fit at my daredevil tendencies and demanded to be taken back to the hotel.

  So why was I so fucking nervous.

  Cece took a deep breath before glancing around us. It was barely seven in the morning but, outside the garage, the city was already bustling. Usually, there would be six or seven people going on a bike tour like this, but I wanted to ensure that it was just us this morning. I wanted to show her what it really felt like to be on top of the world.

  Setting her mouth into a rigid line, Cece curled her hand around mine. “If you crash, you owe me.”

  I couldn’t remember the last time I grinned so hard my cheeks hurt - but I couldn’t seem to stop. Aadarsh gave her a helmet and explained the basic rules of being a passenger on a bike before he checked the gas and mechanics on our transportation. A few emergency supplies were packed and then we were ready to go.

  Cece waved off Aadarsh’s help, hopping onto the bike behind me with surprisingly little difficulty. When we dressed that morning, I told her to prepare for cold weather, and so she was wrapped in a thick coat and scarf - but that didn’t mean I couldn’t feel that divine form of hers underneath when she wrapped her arms around my waist.

  I pat myself on the back for taking advantage of another opportunity to get close to Cece - all while showing her what it was like to really live.