Not In My Wildest Dreams (Dream Series)

by Isabelle Peterson

  “Funny you should ask, we hired someone new today. Her first shift will be at lunch on Thursday.” Shelby wagged her eyebrows at me and nearly burst out laughing.

  She? Could it be the same she? My she? “Thursday? Really?” I smiled back. “I may have to stop in and welcome the new team member.”

  “That would be nice,” she said. “Can I get you anything else?” she asked, glancing at our lunches.

  “I think we’re good. Thanks,” Peter replied. I was already planning out my Thursday.

  Returning to the office, Becca handed me the files for the agreements to be finalized for the upcoming shows and shoots for next week.

  “All right. Out with it,” she said following me to my office.

  “Out with what?” I replied, smugly, taking my seat and pulling off my tie.

  “That was no ordinary lunch. Lunch with Peter usually sends you back to the office ready to fire some poor girl. And I happen to know that the latest shoot gave Peter more than a couple of grey hairs and wrinkles. What happened at lunch?”

  I regarded her carefully before I spoke my next words. I trusted her implicitly, but sometimes her cynicism got to me. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

  A laugh exploded from her. She knew me well. Too well. “Jack Stevens! Once-and-Done-Jack. A romantic!” When I didn’t join in on her laughter, she grew quiet, leaned in, and studied my face like a doctor. “I never would have bought it. But looking at your face, and knowing you better than you know yourself, you’ve got it bad.” She sat back and crossed her arms. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s her name? Who does she work for? How did you meet her?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. And I saw her eating at Ed Scott’s.”

  She stared at me, stunned. “What do you mean, you ‘don’t know’? Didn’t you talk to her? Since when does Jack Stevens not talk to women, especially a chick he wants to bag?”

  I looked at her sternly. “I do not want to simply bag this woman. Becca. She. Is. It.”

  “So why didn’t you talk to her?”

  “I have no idea. I was enraptured? But I’ll see her on Thursday.”

  Becca fell into a fit of giggles. “Enraptured. Oh, Jack. What are we going to do with you? And what’s happening on Thursday?”

  “Just a hunch.”

  CHAPTER 19

  April 23, 2013

  Three weeks later

  I listened to her graceful steps softly descend the staircase. I heard her reach the foyer, her delicate heels, softly tapping on the marble. I strained my ear. The door wasn’t opening.

  Go to her! I shouted in my head. But I couldn’t walk. I slowly dropped to my knees. I was defeated. I poured my heart out to her, and she still left. I showed her who I was. I begged and pleaded. I didn’t even remember all of what I’d said, only that every word was true. I looked at the clock on my bedside. It was only four thirty-four. I’d planned on cooking dinner for her, but then she showed up early, too early. I hadn’t even gone grocery shopping. She upended everything. She said that she was going back to Napa. I begged. I wasn’t proud of it, but for Beth I’d do whatever it took. I pointed out why she should be with me, but my stubborn, strong girl had made up her mind.

  I heard a couple steps in the foyer over the pounding in my head. I looked to the bedroom door. Was she walking back? Please let her be walking back. I can’t move without her. I can’t function. I looked at the clock again. Four thirty-eight. She’s still here. She hasn’t left. Why?

  I started to get angry. Why wasn’t she walking back? Does she want me to chase her? I’d just been chasing for the past weeks, and with more gusto this past hour. Kissing her. Telling her how much I treasured her and that I saw us together until the end of time, or something like that. But she walked out, and now she won’t leave. Is this some sort of game? I was honest and not one word was a line.

  She cried. My words meant something to her.

  Four forty-one the clock displayed.

  I had begged her not to go. I kissed her. She pushed me away. I told her that we were always going to be together. I told her I would wait. I’m waiting. She hasn’t left yet. She’s coming back! That’s why the door hasn’t—

  The distinct clicking of the brass knob of the front door screamed from downstairs. I heard the roar of traffic on Third Avenue. “NO!” I cried out. Did she hear me? I tried to stand. Tried to get my legs to function. And then the door closed. The place was silent again. Had she walked through the door or was she still standing there? I saw it clearly in my mind. She’s leaning on the door, eyes looking up the stairwell to find me.

  I leapt to my feet and raced to the hallway and the balcony that overlooked the foyer. What I saw didn’t compute. It was just the door. The floor. The artwork. Beth was nowhere. I stood there staring. It felt like only seconds or minutes passed until I could get my brain and legs to function. I ran down the stairs and flung open the door. I looked up and down Thirty-eighth. And up and down Third. And then I realized that it was dark. How did she disappear so fast? I checked my watch; it was already six-forty. When did it get to be so late? Why was time so out of control?

  I staggered back into my home—no, my house. Without Beth, it was a house. I went to pour myself a glass of Scotch. The last time I was standing here, she told me she was leaving. I picked up the glass and hurled it against the wall, watching the crystal vessel explode and send shards of glass everywhere. I picked up the bottle of Macallan 18 and pulled a long swig from it as if it were simply a bottle of beer, willing the burn from the brown liquor to replace the burning in my heart.

  I was lured to the oversized velvet chair like a siren. She loved this chair. She had been sitting in it only hours earlier. My eyes rested on the wine stains still on the carpet from the first night she was in my home.

  * * *

  “When was the last time he made love to you and made you scream his name in ecstasy?” I asked. I’d caught her completely off guard with the question and I was immediately sorry, but then she was on her knees in front of me. On. Her. Knees. She had to stop or I was going to shove her against the wall and fuck her right now. But I didn’t want to just fuck her. I wanted to own her. Baseballs. Grandmothers. New York City subways, I told myself to get my raging erection in check.

  I placed a foot on the towel she was using to blot the spray. “Don’t. It’s an old carpet. I’ve been meaning to replace it anyway,” I offered, hoping to calm her down.

  “It’s a beautiful carpet, Jack. I’ll clean it. I’ll pay for it if I have to work doubles all month. I’m sorry,” she said, still attempting to clean the mess.

  Dom mode kicked in full boat. She was on her fucking knees! “I. Said. Don’t.” She stopped. My cock twitched at her clearly submissive tendency. “Look at me.”

  She raised her head enough to see me through her lush eyelashes. Oh fuck! I was done for. I reached out and pulled her chin to fully look at me, the way a good sub would. I searched her face, and felt it. We were meant to be.

  * * *

  I stuffed my face into the seat back to smell her shampoo. It was there, faint, but there. I gulped again at the Scotch, seeking healing. But it didn’t help. I slid off of the chair and planted my face into the seat bottom, where her pussy had been, hot and wet—for me. I did that to her.

  I replayed the unexpected afternoon in my head over and over, while sucking on the bottle of Scotch.

  I woke to something cold and rough on my face. My eyes didn’t open. I couldn’t open them. My head ached. I smelled something rotten. I groaned and curled up on the cold hard floor. Where in the hell am I?

  “Uh-huh, you keep groaning, pretty-boy. At least you’re moving now,” a muffled woman’s voice bellowed. “I was getting ready to call an ambulance.”

  “Shhhh,” I managed through the hangover-cotton that coated my mouth.

  The cold continued to press all over my face. It was cold and wet.

  And then it hit me. I opened my eyes and looked around. Becca
was sitting next to me holding a cloth, but Beth? Where was Beth?

  “Did she come back yet?” I choked out.

  “Who? What the fuck happened here Jack? You didn’t answer my calls or texts or emails for three days. I get back into town this evening and Shannon said you’ve not been in the office for three days. I come to your house and find you passed out in your own vomit wreaking of a whisky distillery. Several empty bottles of very expensive Scotch and others. You have a guardian angel with you, you know that?”

  “Where’s Beth?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  My mind raced. “What time is it? You said how many days? What day is it?”

  “Eleven-thirty. Friday night,” she answered. She looked confused. I tried to get up, but the room spun around me and I started to heave, puking up air and bile.

  Pain washed through me. Physical and emotional. “I need a shower and get to her apartment. She said she was going home. But she couldn’t have. What we had was real. It was powerful. She couldn’t just leave us. She has to still be here. I have to get to her apartment. Can you take me?” I pleaded. I felt tears burn at my eyes and stream down my face.

  “Jack. Look at me,” she ordered in the voice that I’d needed. I looked at her. “When did you last see Beth?”

  “Tuesday,” I answered, my heart pounding.

  “Have you been drinking since Tuesday?”

  I was shaking. My heart ached. I nodded, looking around me.

  Becca took me into her arms. “Shhhh….” she soothed. “The only place I’m bringing you right now is the shower. And then you will eat.”

  “But—” I protested.

  “But nothing. We’ll figure this out when you’re clean and fed.” The look in her eye was full Domme mode, but not in the whips way. In the I’m-your-best-friend way.

  By four o’clock in the morning, I was showered, fed and feeling mildly human. I watched Becca gather the bottles of booze, Scotch, vodka, rum… Shit! from all over the living room and kitchen. I stopped counting after she collected eight.

  “You’re lucky to be alive, Jack,” she scolded.

  “It just hurts so bad, Bec,” I said, holding my head.

  “Badly,” she corrected. I wanted to laugh. Even when I was feeling my worst, she wouldn’t let me be my worst. “Listen,” she said, putting the last of bottles in the recycling bin. “Go to her. I can’t believe you, of all people, let her walk out. Go to her, get on your knees, and beg, grovel, and-or seduce. Do what you have to. It’s been as plain as day since that first day that she’s your heart, Jack. Go get your heart back. Fight.”

  “She didn’t choose me. My heart is broken. I don’t think I can survive this. You know how it feels.”

  “Fuck you, Jack. Cut the pity party. You’re Jack Fucking Stevens. Get some sleep and then go to her apartment. Get her back.”

  I got some shut eye, and Saturday morning, around eleven, I made my way to Beth’s apartment building. Stepping into the lobby, Dominic, the building’s doorman, greeted me in his surly manner. When I asked him to buzz Beth, he informed me that she had him call her a cab to the airport on Wednesday and he hadn’t seen her since, and he didn’t know when she was coming back. I asked if she had suitcases or anything. He wouldn’t say. Bastard.

  Fighting the hangover, I went to Ed Scott’s to see if Tom or Shelby could shed any light on when Beth was coming back. Stepping into the bar, I nearly puked. Not from the smell of food, which didn’t help, or the wall of alcohol, but from the emotional pain that had me riding a wave of nausea. Everywhere I looked I saw her. The table she ate at the first time I saw her. Behind the bar where she worked. My table. Choking down the vomit that threatened, and my pride, I walked up to Shelby who was chatting and smiling with some guy at the bar.

  “Shelby, when is Beth working next?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Jack. She called in Wednesday afternoon and quit. She’s not returning my calls or texts.”

  “She’s gone home,” the guy said, his back still to me. Shelby looked at him, shocked.

  “What?” I asked. He couldn’t know what I was talking about.

  “She’s gone home,” he repeated, and turned to me. Fuck! It was Kevin. The neighbor guy. The young, squeaky clean, gorgeous-enough-to-be-a-male-model-working-for-me guy. The other guy who my Beth was seeing while she was living in New York. I wanted to punch him in his camera perfect face. I flexed my hands to keep from balling them up and breaking his beautiful nose. But I’d been there and done that. I wasn’t going there again. “And if you know what’s good for Liz,” he continued, “you’ll leave her be.” He did his best to stare me down, but I didn’t flinch. Shelby looked at me sadly, and shrugged. What the fuck?

  “The hell I will,” I growled. I turned and marched out of there. I barely made it to an ally just down the street from Ed Scott’s before I was dry heaving again.

  She really left.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Buckle up, please, Mr. Stevens. We’ve been cleared for take off,” Katie, the overly peppy flight attendant said, collecting my glass.

  As I settled in for the six and half hour flight to Napa, I started to run through the past three weeks. How I’d met an incredible woman, who was a perfect match for me, who came into my life so unexpectedly, and obliterated everything I thought I knew. The plane started taxiing down the runway and the speed made me think about how quickly I had fallen in love with Beth.

  When did I fall in love with her? I knew I wanted her when I saw her eating alone at Ed Scott’s that fateful day. Was it that first night Beth was in my home? How incredibly adorable she was, on her knees. Or when I followed her down the hallway and pounced on her, and the way her body responded to my touch. Maybe. Was it when I realized I knew her? Or that first dinner out with her? Our quiet table at Bella Serra’s and she let me order for her without a moment’s hesitation, and full of trust. The easy banter over dinner.

  Was it the first time we made love? Every time with Beth was making love. I was most surprised that many of my Dominant tendencies fell to the wayside. My history of simply fucking women, domineering over them, and bending them to my will disappeared. I wanted Beth to experience every pleasure; it was no longer about my pleasure.

  But her submissiveness was so appealing, so natural… The night I first brought out the blindfold… She had given me many indications of her submissive tendencies all evening long, from the lobby of her apartment, to my selecting her meal for her, and the commands I’d given to her to undress in my living room.

  I rested my head back and closed my eyes recalling that night.

  * * *

  “You are an incredible woman, Beth. I want you. I’ve never wanted to be with another woman the way I want to be with you.” I watched my words register with her. It was like she’d never heard them before. My heart ached for her.

  “And how about you, Beth? Do you need me too?” Please say you need me, I pleaded silently. She nodded. I desperately wanted to hear the words, but I accepted the nod. The Dom in me sniggered. I was becoming a pussy for Beth. I was coming undone. I was feeling and sounding desperate.

  “Stand up,” I said, reclaiming my Dom urges and made a mental note to not sound desperate again.

  She stood slowly, heeding my command. Oh fuck, yeah. She set her glass on the side table and faced me.

  “Take a step closer,” I instructed. And she did. My heart pounded for joy. “I want to see that lacy bra you wore for me tonight. Unbutton your blouse,” I continued, staring up at her.

  I watched her slowly unbutton her blouse and let it hang open. Unable to sit with my cock pounding in my pants, I stood and walked over to her, taking my place behind her. I pulled her back into me and pressed my hips into her so she could feel what she did to me. Touching her neck, I shoved the silk blouse down her arms until it fell to the ground. I stepped back and took in her gorgeous back. Oh how I’d love to take a flogger to her back and make it glow pink. But there was more to unc
over…

  I stripped her of her black wool pants, discovering that the back of her panties were all lace. Not satin, not a cheap thong—although, I’d love to see her ass in one—but a back of lace.

  “Fffuuck! So hot,” I hissed. Leaning in, my nose brushing along her thigh, I inhaled, taking in her musky scent. “Delectable.” I felt her tremble. I loved that I could do that to her. If she only knew what she was doing to me.

  As much as I wanted to bend her over and fuck her fiercely, my hands itched to feel her body. I slowly explored all that was before me starting with her calves and backs of her thighs. I loved how she felt, toned under her skin, but she still looked soft and delicate. So many women in my industry were way too thin and muscular. Beth was a perfect mix.

  Reaching her hips and waist, she pushed back against me. Aww, hell. I needed to slow this down. If she kept that up, I was going to abandon the seduction and fuck her.

  I sat back in the seat about half a foot behind us, letting her stand for my viewing pleasure. Her silhouette was all woman with perfect curves.

  I felt my throat grow thick with need. “Turn around,” I whispered.

  She obeyed my command, but only partly. She had her arms wrapped around her midsection. Her chest heaved with nervous breath. Of course she was nervous. I sounded like I was losing it, even to myself. I had to regain control. Give her back her confidence. Why she was lacking any was beyond my understanding. Women were tough to crack. I let her have her small protection, but not for long. I rather liked how her arms pressed her breasts together. I wanted to rub my cock between those globes, while thumbing those amazing nipples that were straining through the lace.

  “Lower your arms. I want to see all of you.” She listened. Perfect. In more ways than one. “Perfection,” I whispered.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “You don’t agree?” I asked.

  “I’m far from perfection,” she whispered, lowering her head.

  “Trust me on this, Beth. Your body—is perfect.”