by Lexi Aurora
“How romantic. Are you going to show her the office?” asked Alice.
“Yes,” he said. “I thought I would show her all around the city.”
“Sounds fun,” says Casey sarcastically. I exchanged a glance with Travis but my eyes didn’t linger on him, instead talking to Bruce and Alice about my plans for school when I got back.
When it was finally time to leave, I packed up my stuff and Travis carried it over to the landing pad for the jet. He wrapped his arm around my waist when he saw the look on my face, kissing me on my cheek as we boarded the plane. As before, the tables were set with food and sparkling mimosas. I sat down in one of the comfortable seats and Travis sat next to me. I felt myself relaxing as we took off, leaving Casey and our troubles behind. I wanted to believe Travis when he said that Casey would forgive us, but I had a feeling in my gut that it was a long time coming.
Chapter 18: Travis
We arrived in Los Angeles around dinner time, and I brought Jenna to my penthouse first thing so that we could rest and change before we went out to my favorite restaurant, a little Italian place that was nothing expensive or fancy but had the best food in the city.
I watched Jenna’s face as we reached the top of my building, the elevator opening directly into the penthouse. That place was massive, all one floor, with wide floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the city. She stood there for a long moment, looking out, drinking in the view with awe on her face.
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed. It was getting dark outside, and the streetlights had just flickered on. The whole city looked like it was lit by fairy lights, bright white and sparkling hundreds of feet below. I couldn’t look out the window, though. I wasn’t taking in the view myself, but looking at Jenna, my heart doing a flip in my chest. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, even prettier than the skyline of the city I loved.
“I want to get changed before dinner,” she said. “Do you mind?”
“Can I watch you?” I asked her. She gave me a shy smile.
“Okay,” she said, and I led her across the apartment to my bedroom, where the curtains were closed over the massive windows. I sat down on the edge of the bed while Jenna stood in front of me, unbuttoning her dress to her waist. She pulled it off of her shoulders to reveal a lacy white bra, through which I could see a clear outline of her hard, pink nipples. She pulled the dress down over her hips and stepped out of it so that she was in just her bra and panties in front of me.
“Come here,” I said, wrapping my hand around her waist and pulling her over. “I want to do the rest.”
She smiled at me, lowering her face to kiss me as I reached around her to unclasp her bra. My fingers stroked her spine up and down before I pulled the bra off and over her shoulders to reveal her breasts fully to me. I tilted my face up to kiss each one, tracing her nipples with my tongue before pulling away. I put my hands on her hips, hooking her panty line with my fingers and pulling them down. I leaned forward and nuzzled below her bellybutton, planting a kiss there before looking up at her.
“What time is our reservation?” she asked. I looked at the clock over her shoulder.
“In about twenty minutes.”
“Looks like this is going to have to wait,” she said. I kissed her again, a little lower, brushing my lips just over her clit.
“Okay, baby,” I said, pulling away from her, watching as she changed into a little black dress with a matching set of lingerie underneath it. I wanted to rip it all off of her and take her to bed again. I suddenly wasn’t hungry for anything but her pussy.
“Wanna skip dinner?” I asked her as we were about to leave the penthouse. She shook her head, looking amused as we headed down to the first floor.
We walked to the restaurant, which was only a few blocks from my building. On the way there, Jenna held my hand, lacing our fingers while we walked. Just being with her felt natural and perfect, holding her hand enough to make me desire her all over again. By the time we got to the restaurant, I had to linger outside to kiss her, holding her close and tasting her mouth before we went inside. We were seated at a table outside in the quaint little garden where the restaurant grew their own vegetables. There were flowers, too, blossoming in every corner.
“So, you’re going to show me your office?” she asked after we ordered our food and a bottle of wine to share.
“I thought I would,” I said. “Tomorrow morning, if you want.”
“Yes,” she said, and I was glad that she seemed eager to see where I worked. I didn’t want to bore her on this trip—I wanted to show her all of the best parts of the place that I loved the most and called home. “And in the meantime?”
“Tonight?” I asked. “I thought we’d stay in.”
“Yeah?” she asked. “And how are we going to pass the time?”
I grinned at her, leaning over to kiss her lips.
“I’m not done with you today,” I told her. “You know that, right?”
“I know,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. “What else are we going to look at while we’re here?”
“It depends. Are you interested in touristy stuff?”
She seemed to think about it for a minute. “Not really.”
“Good,” I said, relieved at her response. “I’ll take you on my private tour of the city tomorrow.”
“Are there a lot of special places here?” she asked. “You haven’t been here for very long. How do you know the city so well?”
“I went out a lot when I first moved here. Went for walks, explored the city. It’s something that I like to do when I’m on my own to clear my head.”
“Does it work?” she asked.
“Sometimes.”
“And what is it you think about, Travis? What can’t you get out of your head?”
“Work,” I responded. “And now you. Maybe only you from now on.”
She blushed, and the look was so sweet that it spread warmth and light throughout my body. We finished dinner and walked back to my place, eager to get back and into the bedroom. We spent the rest of the night locked together, making as much noise as we wanted to now that we were alone. The sound of Jenna moaning was the sexiest thing I had ever heard, and the harder I fucked her the louder it got. I made my mind up to make her scream and the entire night I spent dedicated to it until she was spent and had fallen asleep on my chest, breathing evenly.
The next morning, we headed to my office after breakfast. It was a massive skyscraper, one of the tallest buildings in Los Angeles, and my own office was at the very top. I showed Jenna through the building, stopping on the first floor to show her the café and the architecture, which was regal and elegant. We went upstairs to my office, about to go inside when I was stopped by Arthur.
“Hey, I don’t mean to interrupt,” he said. “But I really need you to do something for me immediately.”
“What is it?”
“Just some reports to sign. It’ll only take a few minutes. I have to get to a meeting.”
I sighed, shooting a glance at Jenna.
“It’s okay,” she said. Arthur was in such a hurry that he didn’t even greet her, and I apologized for his rudeness.
“Can you hang out a minute here with Scarlet?” I asked her. She looked over her shoulder at my secretary.
“Sure,” she said.
“I’ll be right back. I just have to run into the meeting and sign a few papers.”
She nodded, though she did look a little put out. I vowed to myself that I would make it up to her later in the day. I hoped to show her such a good time that she would forget about these few moments we were spending apart.
I went into the meeting, dashing inside the conference room to sign the papers. As I was trying to leave, the head of one of the companies that we worked with very closely called me back, pulling me into the meeting so that I couldn’t get away. I kept glancing at the clock, getting more and more nervous as time passed. The meeting was finally over two hours later, and I got up
right away without saying goodbye to anybody. I went back out into the lobby to see that Jenna was gone. I walked up to Scarlet.
“Did you see where Jenna went?” I asked her.
“She told me to tell you she was taking a cab back to the penthouse,” said Scarlet. Her voice sounded strained, upset. I looked away from her. I had a history with Scarlet and I knew she probably didn’t appreciate the fact that I had brought another woman to the office.
“Thanks,” I said to her, and left the building. I got in my car and headed in the direction of the penthouse, hoping against hope that there would be a way to make the day up to Jenna.
Chapter 19: Jenna
I walked around Travis’ penthouse restlessly, pacing in a circle like a cat. I felt irritated and on edge—I didn’t know what to think about what had happened today. Travis had brought me to his job to show me around but had disappeared on me, leaving me alone with his secretary. The woman, Scarlet, clearly didn’t like me from the start. She greeted me stiffly.
“Travis has never brought a woman to the office before,” she said. “And he’s been through a lot of them.”
“Oh,” was all I had been able to respond. Of course Travis was a playboy, I thought. He was handsome, wealthy, and young. He probably could have had a different woman in his bed every night if he wanted one. It made me uncomfortable to think about and I wondered again if I was just a trophy for him, his little sister’s best friend, someone who was sexy because she was supposed to be off-limits. That meant he would probably dump me as soon as he got tired of the novelty of it all. I swallowed, feeling a lump form in my throat just thinking about it.
The other women in the office treated me much the same as Scarlet had, and the cool room had felt stifling. That’s when I had hailed a cab back to the penthouse, just to get away from the women and their cold stares. It made me wonder how many of them he had been with, if he was the kind of man who ran his business by taking advantage of the women there. I felt almost sick thinking about it. I was falling for Travis, if I hadn’t already fallen for him completely. I didn’t want to think of him as that type of person, but I couldn’t help it after seeing all those women and listening to what the secretary said about how much he got around.
It was about two hours after he’d disappeared that Travis got back home. He arrived looking bashful, stepping off the elevator and giving me and apologetic look as he ran his hand through his hair.
“I’m so sorry, Jen,” he said, coming to me. He put his hands on my shoulders and I didn’t pull away, couldn’t pull away. The only thing I could do was stare at him. I wondered who he was and what he had become, if he was the kind of man I could truly spend my life with. I was starting to think that the person I thought he was didn’t exist anymore, and that the Travis who had taken his place wasn’t somebody that I could be with.
“It’s okay,” I said, although we both knew that it wasn’t. I looked away from him.
“I want to take a shower before dinner,” I said.
“Don’t you want to go out? I was going to show you around today.”
“Actually, I might take a nap,” I said, stretching and giving a fake yawn. “I didn’t sleep very well last night.”
“You didn’t sleep very long last night,” he said, grinning at me. I couldn’t bring myself to muster more than a small smile in response. I didn’t flirt back with him. A concerned look passed over his face.
“I really am sorry, Jenna,” he said, taking my hand and kissing my fingers.
“It’s okay,” I repeated, though I was feeling more and more tense the longer we stood together. I needed to be away from him and wanted to be alone. “I’m going to lay down. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
“Okay,” he said, and he looked so downtrodden for a moment that it made my heart ache. Still, I turned around and went to my room, flopping down on my bed and staring at the ceiling. This wasn’t what I’d expected from this trip. I had expected to learn more about Travis, but everything that I’d learned so far made him look worse than before—the fact that he was a player, and he was willing to put work ahead of me when he’d made me a promise, was not promising for a potential relationship. I was starting to doubt whether it would work out at all.
I lay there wondering about Travis, unable to get him off my mind. I realized that this was how it would be if I was going to be with him. Our time on the island had been his vacation; he’d had plenty of free time to relax and be with me. In his real life, he would never have time for that. It would always be long days with him and long nights waiting for him to come home. I couldn’t do that—wouldn’t do it even for Travis, even though I was falling for him deeply.
I sighed, finally falling asleep after a long time. I dreamed of Casey, that look in her eyes when she’d confronted Travis and I about being together. It was starting to feel like it hadn’t been worth it to lose her.
I woke up later and got ready for dinner, doing my best to make it look like everything was normal. I didn’t want to fight with Travis and I didn’t want him to notice how dark my mood had become, made worse by the fact that I had barely slept during my nap. I was tired and grouchy as I left the room, finding Travis in the living room already dressed for dinner.
“Are you feeling better?” he asked.
“Yeah, I feel good,” I said to him, trying to smile. I could tell that he knew I was faking it. He looked tense, like he wanted to say something but wasn’t sure what to say.
Chapter 20: Travis
We were sitting at dinner. My eyes were on Jenna as she picked at her food with her fork, hardly eating anything, her eyes turned down to her plate. She hadn’t really looked at me at all since she’d woken up from her nap a couple hours earlier. I wanted desperately just to talk with her, just to connect like we had before while we had been on the island. Those moments together in paradise had been so perfect they had seemed like a dream. I wanted to recapture that feeling and live it again and again.
“Is your food okay?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said, but I could tell from her tone that something was bothering her. Her voice was tense, her response short and crisp. It almost hurt to hear her tone, cold and hurt at the same time.
“Jenna, tell me what’s wrong,” I said to her.
“It’s nothing,” she insisted. I reached across the table to take her hand, turning it over in mine and stroking her palm with my fingers. She pulled her hand away after a moment and stared at me coldly.
“Please, baby,” I said. She sighed.
“It’s just that coming out here wasn’t like I thought it would be,” she said. “I never thought you’d be so busy—that you would have work to do. I guess I didn’t think about it.”
“Of course I have to work.”
“I know,” she said. “But that’s just not the life I want to have. You would always put work before me, no matter what.”
“My job does come first,” I told her. “I haven’t changed. I’m like I was in high school—I work for what I want. I get what I want because I make sacrifices.”
Her face turned angry then, her eyes flashing with irritation.
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to sacrifice anything for me,” she said sarcastically. “I’d hate for that to happen. God forbid you take time out of your day to think about somebody else for once.”
“Jenna—”
“I want to go home,” she told me.
“You can’t,” I insisted. “Jenna, please just stay. Let me make it up to you.”
“You said yourself that you haven’t changed. You’re never going to change. I can’t live my life waiting around for a man. I have a future. I have my whole life ahead of me, and I’m not going to live in your shadow.”
“You can do whatever you want here. You can keep going to school. I’ll pay for everything.”
“It’s not about your money,” she said, sounding angrier than ever before.
“I know it’s not like that,” I said. “I
just mean that I want to take care of you.”
“I don’t want you to take care of me. I want to go home.”
I stared at her. She looked dead serious and resolute, like there was no way she was going to change her mind no matter what I did or said. I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. I had never felt so frustrated in my life.
“Jenna, I can’t change who I am for you.”
“I know you can’t. That’s why I’m leaving.”
“Okay,” I said. It was all I could say. She wasn’t going to give in—I could tell from the way she was looking at me, her eyes like flint.
We finished dinner in a stony silence, and the car ride was the same way.