Lovegame

by Tracy Wolff

  Her reassurance is all I need to dive back in, my tongue licking inside her mouth. She moans a little, sucks my tongue deeper, and all I can think about is getting her off. The noises she makes when she comes are the sexiest sounds I’ve ever heard.

  Keeping my mouth on hers, I bend down a little and grab the hem of her dress. I pull it up slowly, sandwiching it between us as I slide my hand up her thighs and into the top of the very tiny pair of panties she’s currently wearing. But the second I dip my fingers inside, she bites down on my lip, hard, then shoves me back even harder.

  At first I think it’s just another step on the power exchange ladder—the light is dim, but I can see well enough to recognize the challenge in her eyes. But I can also see something else in them, something deeper, something darker, and every instinct I have warns me to tread carefully here. Oh, she’ll let me have her, of that I have no doubt. She’ll let me kiss her and fuck her and make her scream right here, with only five feet and a glass door separating us from one of the biggest social events of the year.

  In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s what she wants. But every instinct I have is screaming at me that if I do that, if I go that route, then I’ll never get to touch her again.

  Fuck.

  I take a couple steps back so that she knows I got the message. But I keep one hand on her hip and the other tangled in her hair—partly because I want her to know that I’m not going anywhere no matter what tricks she pulls and partly because I can’t make myself let go of her. Not when there’s still so much unsaid between us.

  “I need to go back in,” she says, shaking her hips a little, like she’s trying to shrug off my touch. I don’t budge. The sooner she figures out that I’m planning on hanging on for a while, the better off the two of us will be.

  Still, I’m the one who screwed up the tentative peace between us and I’m the one who’s going to have to make it right.

  “I’m an ass.” The words come out before I know I’m going to say them, but once they’re out there I don’t have any desire to take them back.

  She lifts a brow. “While I don’t disagree, I have to wonder what brought that on. I mean, besides your desire to get laid.”

  “I woke up this morning and you were lying there—”

  “I get it. I spent the night too soon. Does it help at all that I had no intention of—”

  “Is that what you think?” I ask incredulously. “That I freaked out because you spent the night?”

  “Isn’t it?” She looks and sounds like it doesn’t matter, but I can feel the fine trembling beneath my hand. I rub her hip soothingly. “You couldn’t get me out of that room fast enough. Which I totally understand. I’m a big believer in the fuck and run, too.”

  “Yeah, I’m aware of that. But that wasn’t what this morning was about.” The last thing I want to do is open up this can of worms here, in the middle of this party, but right now I don’t think I have a choice. She’s written me off—I can see it in her eyes—and I’m not about to let that happen.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally tell her. I’m stumbling over the words like a teenager with his first girl, but I push through, determined to be as honest with her as I can. “Look, I think we both know I lost it a little bit last night and…I don’t do that. I just don’t. So when I woke up and saw all the bruises I left on you, it freaked me out. That’s not an excuse for all but shoving you out of my hotel room, but it is the truth. The idea that I hurt you—”

  “You didn’t hurt me and you know it.” She tilts her head back, lifts her chin, and I know it’s because she wants me to see the bruise on her jaw. The bruise I very deliberately gave her last night and the bruise I even more deliberately exposed in the ballroom. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you like the fact that I’m covered in marks that you gave me.”

  And there it is, my biggest regret—and my biggest fear—laid out between us. I start to deny it, to tell her that I feel nothing but shame for what I did to her last night. I can’t, because there’s a huge part of me that loves the fact that my touch is branded in her skin. It’s the same part that was unpleased when I realized she’d managed to cover up all the bruises and love bites, the same part that made sure to uncover at least one—for my eyes and for the eyes of everyone else at this party.

  The profiler in me wants to run from the implications while the man in me wants nothing more than to mark her, to brand her some more. Anywhere, everywhere. Until the marks she already bears—the scars she’s borne for far too long—finally fade away.

  I don’t say that, though. I don’t say anything. Then again, I don’t have to. Veronica already knows.

  Why she isn’t doing anything about it? is the question I can’t answer.

  She should be turning away, making a mad dash into the house in an effort to get as far away from me as she can. With her past, she has every right to be terrified of the darkness in me. God knows, I am.

  She doesn’t run though, doesn’t even put a few inches of space between us. Instead she just watches me with those eyes of hers and I’m reminded, again, that this is Veronica Romero I’m tangling with. Brilliant actress and sex goddess extraordinaire.

  It will take a lot more than a mere man to make her retreat.

  Inside the ballroom, the DJ puts on something slow and sultry and strains of it make their way through the closed glass doors. For a moment, I think about pulling her back into my arms. Think about dancing with her on this small, dark balcony with nothing between us but the night.

  If we were different people and these were different circumstances, I would do it. I would slow dance with her, bring her flowers, woo her like she so richly deserves. But things are what they are and right now it would serve both of us if I take a few steps back.

  So I do. It’s hard—harder than it should be after four days—but I manage it. At least until she takes my hand, brings it to her lips. She kisses my knuckles, the back of my hand, the tips of my fingers. At this point, I’m so hard it’s painful. My dick throbbing, my every muscle tense, my focus solely and completely on her wicked red mouth as she slowly sucks my index finger into her mouth.

  She uses her tongue on me, licking, stroking, swirling it back and forth along my finger before biting down softly, so, so softly, on the tip of my finger. Heat explodes through me and it’s all I can do not to pull her panties down and shove myself inside of her.

  She must see it in my eyes, feel it in the tension of my body, because suddenly she pulls back. Lowers my hand to the top of her breast. Then she’s pushing down on my finger and using the wetness of her own saliva to guide my finger back and forth across her breast.

  Again and again she does it, until seconds later, I see it. Another, darker bruise.

  Another mark I put on her last night, this one more obvious—and more intimate—than the one on her jaw.

  I really do almost lose it then, my hands clenching into fists and my dick leaking pre-cum like a sixteen-year-old with his first girl. To hell with the party, with the guests, with the goddamn glass doors that anyone glancing this way can see through. To hell with the article or the book or the secrets that neither one of us want to share. If fucking her is all there is for me—for us—then I’ll take it and be fucking grateful.

  Except Veronica’s having none of it. In the second it takes me to get my brain to function, she twirls away from me and opens the balcony door.

  “Wait,” I tell her as I wrap a hand around her upper arm. “Stay.”

  “You set the rules last night, Ian. And you know that isn’t how it works.” She glances back at me. “Staying isn’t what either one of us does best.”

  And then she’s gone, slipping out of my grasp and back into the party without a backward glance.

  What stings the most is, she’s right. The parting shot is the move we both have down cold.

  —

  Two hours later and I’m still watching as she flits from group to group, from celebrity to celebrity. It’s fascinating to watch, re
ally, and if I hadn’t spent most of the night with a fucking hard-on, I might even appreciate the theater of it all. As it is, I’m running low on patience as yet another B-list jerk puts his hand on her ass.

  I’d intercede, except Veronica has her own way of dealing with it. She’s never rude, never abrasive—more’s the pity as I’d love to see her take one of these assholes down—but then she doesn’t have to be. Not when she can draw blood with a smile and freeze a man’s brain cells with a simple slide of her hand down his arm. No, she doesn’t need to be abrasive to put a man in his place. All she has to do is give him a glimpse of what he’ll never, ever have. It’s amazing how quickly devastation makes a guy fall into line…

  She’s just fended off another jerk with too much ego and not enough class, when I see Melanie Romero leave the ballroom in a sweep of black satin and sequins. She’s been courting the spotlight all night—she is the birthday girl, after all—and no matter how many times I’ve tried I haven’t been able to get her alone for even a minute. Until now.

  With a last look at Veronica, who has once again made her way over to Damon, I slip out of the ballroom after Melanie. Part of me wants to stay, to make sure the famous chemistry between her and Damon is only on the screen, but if I do I’ll miss this chance to talk to Melanie. And since I’m pretty sure she holds at least one of the keys to unlocking Veronica’s past, it’s an opportunity I don’t want to pass up. For personal and professional reasons.

  I follow at a discreet distance as Melanie makes her way toward the two bathrooms on the left side of the ballroom. I pause on the landing, spend a few minutes looking over the ornate gold railing to the floors below as I try to figure out the best way to approach one of Hollywood’s former sirens. Oh, she’s got nothing on her daughter—Veronica has her mother’s looks and her father’s abundance of talent—but there was a time when Melanie Romero was a household name. A time when a poster of her in a red bikini hung on many a straight boy’s wall.

  Not for the first time, I wonder what that’s like. Not being a sex symbol, necessarily, but being the woman after the sex symbol has been forgotten. The woman who keeps up the charade of turning fifty seven times because she’s terrified that she’s no longer relevant.

  It’s an interesting question, one that continues to hover at the corners of my mind as I idly count the number of whirls in the gold banister. But I’m not here to do a book on Melanie Romero, I remind myself as I attempt to linger as unsuspiciously as possible. I just want to know what she remembers about William Vargas—if she remembers anything at all.

  I think back to the lack of expression on Veronica’s face when we stood in front of that photograph in her parents’ room and can’t imagine how Melanie wouldn’t remember. If I had a daughter and a man put that look on her face…I’d carry that for the rest of my life.

  Melanie doesn’t take long in the bathroom. I watch out of the corner of my eye as she stops to talk to an up-and-coming actor whose face I recognize but whose name I can’t remember. They chat for a couple of minutes but I’m keenly aware of the fact that her eyes are on me.

  Good. It saves me the trouble of trying to find some interesting conversation opener to get things started between us. Sure enough, it isn’t long before she excuses herself from him and makes her way over to where I’m standing.

  I prepare to introduce myself so she doesn’t have to—divas like to be recognized and everything I know about Melanie Romero points me toward thinking she’s one of the biggest—but she holds out her hand with friendly ease.

  “Ian. It’s so nice to meet you. I’m Melanie Romero.” She flashes a hundred-watt smile—one that’s very similar in shape to Veronica’s, though the intensity is about a million times higher. I can’t help wondering if that’s by Melanie’s design—is she trying to shine more brightly than her daughter—or has Veronica just learned not to compete?

  “It’s nice to meet you, too, Mrs. Romero.”

  “Oh please, Mrs. Romero was my mother-in-law. I’m Melanie,” she says warmly, her other hand coming up to cup my elbow for emphasis. “I hear you’re doing wonderful things for my Veronica.”

  I try not to choke on my own saliva as images of last night in my hotel room flash through my head. Not what she’s taking about, I tell myself fiercely. Not what she’s talking about. “I think it’s more accurate to say she’s doing wonderful things for the article. Your daughter is a vibrant, fascinating woman.”

  Melanie’s tinkling laugh rings out before she loops her arm through mine and starts propelling me along with her. “She is, isn’t she?”

  “She’s a force to be reckoned with. I can’t imagine Veronica ever wanting something that she doesn’t go after.”

  “In that account, she’s very much like her father.”

  I take the in she’s offered me. “What was he like?”

  She looks startled. “Salvatore? He was a wonderful man. Full of life, full of dreams.” She pauses and her voice breaks strategically. “It’s been years, but this house still feels so empty without him.”

  “I can imagine. He built this house, didn’t he?”

  “He did, yes.” She blinks her eyes for a moment, like she’s fighting tears, but brightens almost immediately. “Would you like a tour? This place has a million secrets.”

  I feel a little like I’ve got whiplash considering just how many emotions Melanie Romero has run through in the last five minutes. Almost like she isn’t sure which one it’s appropriate to feel right now, so she’s throwing all of them at me at once.

  Her color is a little too high, her eyes a little too bright, her laugh a little too loud. As I follow her down the long, winding staircase, I can’t help wondering if it’s natural—if she’s always like this—or if she’s just hyped up from the party. Or maybe she’s on something. This is Hollywood, after all. If you’re famous, there’s always someone around to get you whatever little pick-me-up you need.

  “Have you seen the guest rooms?” Melanie asks as we hit the third floor landing. “They’re quite unique.”

  “I’ve seen a couple of them,” I tell her honestly, “but I’d love to see more. I love art.”

  “Well then, you’ve come to the right place. We have plenty of that.” She leads me down the hallway straight to the Andy Warhol room. I don’t tell her I’ve already seen it—she’s the one giving the tour after all—and her face is filled with pride when she thrusts the door open.

  “My husband had this piece commissioned many years ago,” she tells me, gesturing to the painting of her that dominates the wall across from the bed. “I had such fun posing for it. Of course, back then, everyone wanted me to pose for something or other.”

  “It’s gorgeous. The color palette suits you.”

  She laughs, slaps gently at my arm. “Darling, didn’t you know? Everything suits me.”

  It’s such a Veronica thing to say—at least when she’s in man-eating mode—that I do a double take. Then again, it shouldn’t really surprise me. Melanie Romero is one of the best. Is it any wonder her daughter learned from her.

  “And down here is the Mapplethorpe room,” she says, leading me across the hall and several doors down. I notice she skips the Picasso room and the Pollock room. Because she doesn’t like them? Or because—this time when she throws open the doors, what’s on the other side is a surprise. Except that it isn’t, because of course, there are two Mapplethorpes hanging on the wall. Both portraits, both in his signature, stark black and white. Both of Melanie, nude, in her heyday.

  “Robert was such an amazing man,” she tells me as she walks over to the window, as if to look outside. But I can see the subtle way she’s posing next to the photograph, her positioning mirroring that in the photo perfectly—almost like she’s had a lot of practice.

  “You can come in, you know,” she tells me without turning around. “The art won’t bite. It’s meant to be looked at.”

  “They’re beautiful,” I tell her as I follow her instructions, stop
ping halfway into the room so I can get an objective look at both photographs.

  “They are,” she agrees. “But then, Robert always said I made it so easy.”

  I bet he did say exactly that to her. I bet a lot of people do. Not because it’s necessarily the truth, but because it’s what she needs to hear.

  “So,” she says, turning back to face me. “Do you like them?”

  “Of course. They’re stunning,” I tell her honestly.

  “They are. Robert was a genius and such a powerful social influencer. Such a shame we lost him so early.” She sighs. “Like my Salvatore. Did you ever meet him?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. I’m a big fan, but I’ve always stuck to the solitary writing side of things, at least until Belladonna became a movie.”

  “And now you’re here, in one of Salvatore and Melanie Romero’s guest rooms. How does that feel?”

  “Surreal, honestly,” I tell her with a laugh. “But I was under the impression that this is Veronica’s home now?”

  I watch her carefully as I say it, looking for I’m not sure what. Some sign of discomfort, angst, something. Whatever it is, I don’t get it. In fact, Melanie laughs—a real laugh and not that weird tinkling sound she usually makes. “Forgive me,” she says after a moment of unchecked mirth. “Here in Hollywood we aren’t used to your East Coast bluntness. But yes, this is Veronica’s house now, though she lets me stay here whenever I’d like. She’s also lovely enough to still let me call it my house, though it’s not anymore. But that’s the kind of woman my daughter is, Ian. Lovely all the way through.”

  “She absolutely is,” I agree, relaxing slightly now that I can see the woman behind the Hollywood mask. Or, more accurately, see that whatever else Melanie Romero is, she is a mother who loves her daughter very much.

  Melanie switches the light off as we head out of the room. “What would you like to see now?”

  “Wherever you’d like to take me. I saw most of the house the other day, during the photo shoot.”