by Amelia Wilde
“Then you can’t blame me for my persistence.”
Juliet meets my eyes again, and the look she gives me is electrically charged. “I shouldn’t, should I?”
“I’m biased, but no, I don’t think so.”
“Give me the evening to decide.”
I laugh then, harder than I should, but wow.
“What about you?” Juliet asks me, as we work our way through the meal. I don’t know about her, but I never eat this slowly. I’m trying to draw it out as long as possible. “What’s your story, Weston Grant?”
“I’m not very interesting.”
“Oh, stop. You’re New York City’s hottest billionaire bachelor. You’re telling me there’s nothing to it?”
“It might be true, but the story’s in the headline.”
“Right.” She puts her fork down on the edge of her plate and looks straight into my eyes. “So I could be the latest shiny object?”
Irritation burns through my gut like a flash of lightning. “I don’t consider you the latest shiny object, no.”
Juliet frowns. “I didn’t—” She lowers her voice, reaching across the table and touching her fingertips to mine. When our fingers touch, there’s a miniature electric current exchanged between us, and I’ve forgiven her, just like that. “I guess we’re both saying stupid things today.”
She doesn’t move her hand away. I force myself to grin. I don’t know why the hell it hit me like that. “If you can forgive me for what I said, then I’ll let this one slide.”
Juliet grins back. “This is crazy, do you know that?”
“What’s crazy?”
“You. Me. This date.” She blinks like the lights have gone up in the room. “I shouldn’t be here. Neither should you.”
“Juliet James, I totally agree.”
19
Juliet
Weston’s words hit me like an icy punch in the gut, and I yank my hand back like I’ve been stung. “What?”
His expression doesn’t match what he’s said at all, and for a sick, plummeting second, I wonder if I’ve been had. I wonder if all of this has been some kind of cruel joke. That’s what I deserve, for relying on somebody else like this. That’s exactly what I deserve.
His face is focused as he pushes his chair back, eyes scanning the room. He gives someone a quick nod. It’s not five seconds before the waiter is back at the side of the table with a black folio. Weston hands him a credit card without looking at the total, and the waiter rushes off.
I’m frozen in my seat. Is he seriously this pissed? We were having a conversation and—
He moves around the table to my side and holds his hand out. “What are you doing?” My voice is a tense whisper.
“Getting us out of here.”
“Why?”
He holds his hand out toward me another inch, and I don’t know what the hell to do. I don’t know what to do, so I put my hand in his and let him help me stand. Then he leans in, and the scent of his skin is enough to push me over the edge from buzzed to a little drunk on the wine. His breath is hot on my ear, sending goosebumps rushing down my neck. “You’re right, Juliet. We shouldn’t be here. We should be somewhere else. Alone.”
My heart throbs in my chest. If there’s any air left in the room at all, my lungs can’t find it. “You’re not angry?”
“The Juliet James I’ve known for all these days wouldn’t care if I was.” I turn toward him in spite of myself. “But no, I’m not. I’m desperate. I’ve been sitting across the table from you all evening, wanting to be closer. And sometimes I take what I want.”
Normally, I would never let a man talk to me this way. I would roll my eyes. I would ignore him with the icy cool I’ve cultivated at the Rose, letting him think I was flirting back without ever giving a single piece of myself away. But when Weston says it, something inside me snaps. Something inside me breaks wide open, like it did on the sidewalk outside of Overlook.
When he takes my hand and leads me out the door of the restaurant, I shut my mouth and follow him.
For once, it feels good to give in.
We depart in such a rush that the waiter runs after us to give him back his card, and when we get outside, Dave hasn’t had time to bring the car around yet. My heart is pounding, my hand clasped in Weston’s, and none of the thoughts swirling around in my brain for the past few months are making an appearance.
So I don’t stop him when he pushes me up against the wall of the building, my back against the still-warm bricks, and presses his lips urgently to mine.
It’s not a battle, like before. It’s not gentle—Weston kisses me with a power that I see he’s been keeping under wraps, that he’s been holding tightly in his fist because I’ve been challenging him, sparring with him. But it’s there, nonetheless, and I breathe it in from his lips. That first night at the Rose, I saw him as one of a million wealthy men who all wanted the same thing—to sleep with any woman who looked like a prize, no matter how momentary. But he’s more than that. He must be.
He tastes like dominance and confidence and the kind of lifestyle I can only dream of having—that I’ll never have, because even as a practicing lawyer, I’ll be bound to a schedule, working my ass off to pay off my debts. But in this moment, being this close to it is enough. It’s like I’m getting away from everything, right here on the street in front of this high-rise, from the taste of him.
His hands slide down to my waist, and I move toward him, pressing myself closer into his body. The fabric of his summer-weight suit glides against my skin, a softness that can only be bought with lots of money, and I raise my hands to grab a fistful of his lapels, holding on tight. I want to undo the button and tear it from his shoulders. I want to do the same with the shirt underneath.
Weston’s hands are firm, holding me to him tightly like I’m something precious, like I’m something he never wants to let go of, and then one of his hands is against the flat of my stomach, working its way up to my breasts. My nipples are already pebbled against the fabric of my dress, and he takes one of them between his fingers, right through the dress, and rolls it in his grip.
I moan into his mouth. I can’t help myself. Electricity jolts from my nipple down between my legs, and I’m a thousand times slicker than I was when we walked out of the restaurant.
The Town Car pulls up next to the curb, its engine purring, and Weston pulls back a few inches, his eyes on mine and displaying a firestorm of pure need. “Come home with me.”
The wall rises in my chest, and everything comes rushing back—Overbrook. The Rose. The ride. My dad. Everything. I shake my head, fighting against every nerve in my body, fighting against an incredible urge to go with him. “I—I can’t do that.”
“You can.”
I bite my lip. I don’t know what the hell it is that makes me pull back now. When we walked out the door, I was ready for anything, and under the spell of his lips….
But I can’t. I’m up against a hard line, and as much as my body aches to be with him in a bed—or on a sofa, or on the carpet of whatever luxurious place he lives in when he’s not chasing me around the city—there’s a coldness forcing its way up from my gut, a wall that builds itself back up faster than his low command can tear it down.
It hasn’t been long enough. I haven’t known him long enough. We haven’t discussed repayment on the life-changing loan that he gave to me for my father earlier today. And I’m already making reckless decisions—dropping a shift at the Rose?
I can’t go home with him, because if I do, the last of my control will be stripped away. The very last of it. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to recover.
And so, when I beg him, it’s not for the thing I thought I’d be asking for. “Please, Weston. I can’t. I need to go home.”
20
Weston
I slide my phone over the sensor in the private elevator and the doors slide shut with a whisper. The car is moving almost as soon as the doors are shut.
I lean
against the polished walls and rub my hands over my face.
Juliet is frustrating.
And intoxicating.
And infuriating.
And utterly compelling.
I can’t get enough of her.
That’s it—on almost every level. I can’t get enough of her. I was certain, from the way she was kissing me outside of Skyline that she’d be here tonight.
The elevator stops at the penthouse and I step out into my entryway. The lights come on automatically, a dim setting that’s meant to illuminate without being excruciating on the eyes, and I move through my place in a daze, dropping my clothes to the floor as I go.
I need a shower.
I need something to take my mind off of her, even if I know that a shower won’t do it.
It could be that she’s right. It could be that I’ve crossed a line paying for her father’s stay at Overbrook. It could be that she doesn’t want me at all, that under the veneer of doing the right thing, she’s like all the other women I’ve met—discardable, because ultimately they were always after something of mine. Money, namely, or association—it never seems to matter.
And I don’t care.
At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for years.
I turn on the shower full blast and step under the stream, letting the hot water rinse the tension from my shoulders. But even the hottest water can’t cleanse away Juliet—Juliet in that dress, shining a spotlight on every one of her delectable curves, Juliet’s lips crushed against mine, Juliet’s tongue battling with mine, Juliet’s eyes in the candlelight, sparkling with her laughter and a heat that she won’t quite admit to, but that radiates off her like she’s an inferno.
There was the slightest give when I kissed her, her back pressed up against the building, totally under my control—at least for the moment. There was the slightest softening that screamed to me without words that Juliet James, who holds her chin up so high and her back so straight, is desperate to give up a little bit of that control.
And I was so ready to give that to her. So ready.
Then that change in her eyes, that hesitation—I knew right then that she wouldn’t be coming home with me. I pushed her, as far as I could go, but she left the Town Car without a backward glance.
I’m harder than steel underneath the stream of the shower, and as the steam rises from the tiles, it brings along images of everything I’d love to do with Juliet. Everything I need to do. I made her moan with a kiss. I could make her scream my name. With a woman like Juliet, so tightly wound, that would be the ultimate challenge. It sends a shockwave down my arms, straight to my fingertips.
I want my fingertips between her legs. I want her on all fours on my bed, ass in the air, back arched, breasts straining toward the sheets, her hands gripping them tightly to keep her place while I work two fingers into her wet slit, then take them back, making her beg for more while I roll her clit between my finger and thumb, stroking her until she’s shuddering with the effort of containing her orgasm.
I want to climb on the bed behind her, finally, when she can’t wait another moment, and thrust my full length inside her, stretching her, filling her, my hand against her back, pressing her down so she knows that I’m in control. That she can let go. That she can let me claim her, make her mine, and the only thing she’ll need to worry about is keeping that heat between her legs building and building until I give her the command to come, and then she’ll be free to explode against me.
She can scream as loud as she wants in my penthouse. She can be whoever she wants to be in my penthouse.
She can be mine.
I take my cock in my fist, bracing myself with one hand against the wall of the shower, and let all of these images, vivid like a real memory, play back in my mind. The sweet taste of her. Her delicious, slick, hot core. The way she would expose herself to me, spreading open wide, shamelessly begging for more of me, for more of us together. The Juliet James I’ve known for all of five days would be exquisite in submission. I know like I know the sun will rise in the east. Women like her—though I’ve never met a woman who kept herself under wraps to quite this extreme—are the most eager to give up their death grip on responsibility for an hour or two and let me handle it.
Please, Weston... I can almost hear her voice, and I pump my shaft harder. I’d tease her, the kind of delicious torture that will free her from thinking about anything else, and when I took her, at the last possible moment, she wouldn’t be able to contain herself, she wouldn’t be able to keep her cries locked away, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from shaking and shuddering around my cock, her muscles squeezing and releasing me in a rhythm that even she wouldn’t be able to control, and then—when it was over—she would stay in place, her creamy skin pink with the exertion, and ask me for more.
More.... Again….
And I wouldn’t deny her.
I would never deny her.
I explode onto the floor of the shower, the water washing away the evidence even as my hips jut forward again and again. Juliet....
I’ve never wanted anyone so much in my life. And it’s not because she turned me down. And it’s definitely not because I think she owes me anything.
I’m entranced by her—by her attitude, by her strength, by the way she never seems to compromise. If she does compromise, it’s hard won. Being with her, being in her presence, is like winning a battle all by itself.
Then I pick up the soap, take a deep breath, and go back to the shower that’s supposed to help me forget her, at least for tonight.
I’m rinsing the last of the shampoo from my hair when I hear it—a low buzz.
My phone.
At first I dismiss it, trying to force a little more relaxation into my shoulders. It’s probably Gideon, with some invite to some club I couldn’t be less interested in going to right now. Or one of my other friends. Maybe the Wilders are back in town. I don’t know. I don’t care.
But then the second buzz comes in. That’s two messages in the space of a minute.
I turn off the water and get out, wrapping a thick towel around me, and step out of the bathroom to where I left my phone sitting on a low table outside the door.
It’s Juliet’s name at the top of the messages.
And I can’t believe what I’m reading.
21
Juliet
My hands shake, my phone trembling in my grip, while I wait for Weston’s response.
The closer we got to my building, the more I regretted telling him that I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to go home. All I wanted to do was to keep things in perspective, keep things in my grasp, for another few minutes.
But things seem to have slipped away from me anyway, because my heart is beating so hard in my chest that no amount of deep breathing will steady it. The moment I shut the door behind me, all of the emotions I’ve been struggling to tame all evening burst out in a tingling wave of excitement and dread and disappointment, and an odd happiness.
Most of all, a piercing need to be back by Weston’s side.
There’s no way I can reconcile it with the thing I believe in the most solidly. There’s no way I can shove the two things together, make them sensible. I need to keep my chin up and get through it—whatever it is—but at the same time, my body aches to be next to Weston.
I only met him in person five days ago.
It doesn’t make any sense.
I gave in on one thing and one thing only before I climbed out of the Town Car. I gave him my phone number, programming it into his phone.
He’d looked at me steadily, his green eyes guarded. He’s probably struggling to figure out why I keep swinging between extremes—kissing him one moment, then insisting on being taken home the next.
The urge to explain myself is overpowering.
I wait as long as I can, and then I pick up my phone.
Now that I know he has my number, the silence is so loud that it drowns out the thud of my heartbeat. Why t
he hell am I so concerned that now is when he might have had enough? And if that’s the case, should it even matter?
All of me is on fire for him. That’s why it matters right now. That’s why it matters tonight.
That’s why I send the two messages, typing the words as quickly as I can and stabbing my thumb down on the “send” button before I lose my nerve.
Weston Grant, I think I made a mistake.
Can we talk?
I get up from the loveseat I crammed into this studio apartment to give myself somewhere to sit other than my bed, and put the phone gently down on the end table. I pace to one end of the apartment—six steps, if I make them relatively small ones—and then pace back. I undo the halter closure of my dress and take it off, sliding it over my hips. I hang it up in the tiny closet, smoothing it in between the other clothes.
All of this takes fifteen seconds.
My phone makes no sound.
I move into the kitchen and take a mug from the sink, wash it, and put it on the drying rack. It’s the one dirty dish in the entire place.
No new messages.
I undo my hair from its clip, brushing it out with my fingers, and put the clip back into its place in the bathroom.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
I don’t know how Weston Grant has crowded out all the other things that normally consume me—plans for paying off my father’s bills at Overbrook, the law school classes I need to study for with tomorrow coming up fast, loan applications, rent, my next shift at the Rose, strategies for making more tips so I can squirrel away every single dime—but he has. Everything seems to revolve around my phone, and whether or not he’ll message me back.
Or if I’ll never hear from him again.