by Alex Lucian
We wandered through the packed farmer’s market on 79th, Jack’s arms getting progressively weighed down with each item that lit up Grace’s face.
“You know,” I told him when he bought another loaf of cinnamon bread that she pointed to, “you don’t actually have to buy everything she wants.”
“I know,” he sighed, shifting the bags. “It’s how I assuage my guilt at working so damn much. I’m mom and dad and still have to work sixty hours a week around both of those roles. Fucking sucks, man.”
I clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re doing good, Jack. She’s happy, and she’s the sweetest fucking kid I’ve ever met in my life. That means you’re doing something right.”
Jack stared at me. “I think all this sex is doing strange things to your brain. That was so … nice. And supportive. What’s wrong with you?”
I opened my mouth to tell him to piss off when my phone vibrated in my pocket. Instead of being Ruby like I’d hoped, it was the editor of one of the bigger travel magazines that I’d done some freelance work for in the past.
“I gotta grab this,” I told Jack, and put the phone to my ear. “Hey, Donovan, how’s it going?”
“Depends on whether you say yes to me right now. If you say no, I’m fucked for this piece.”
I laughed, scooting around a stall selling fresh fish. “What’s the job?”
“I need someone in Amsterdam next week to cover the Kwaku Summer Festival. The other photog I had booked fucking broke his leg yesterday and my other freelancer is on maternity leave. Can you go?”
Blowing out a slow breath, I thought through what events for the book I’d miss, and knew there was nothing vital. “How long?”
“Eight days. Enough to catch events on the first two weekends.”
My mind raced at the job, it was something lighter than I’d been doing lately. And I hadn’t been to Amsterdam in years.
“Can I bring someone with me?”
He snorted. “If you’re paying, sure. I only have approval for your expenses, and you damn well know it.”
“I’m doing you a massive favor, Donovan. I’m missing events for the book, which is a big fucking deal. You can at least spring for a higher daily stipend.”
“You’re such a dick.” He hummed and I heard him clicking some keys on his computer. “Fine. I can double the daily stipend but airfare is on you.”
I grinned, imagining Ruby’s response to jetting off to Amsterdam. Hopefully her form of gratitude involved nudity and more blowjobs. Before my thirty days were up, no way was I not finishing in her mouth at least once. And now I’d have eight solid days of access to her body. “You got yourself a deal.”
Chapter Seventeen
The day after my girls’ night with Stella, Elias asked me to come along to a signing he had in lower Manhattan, at a specialty bookstore. He’d told me to dress down for this one, as it was more of a meet and greet, so I wore my black pencil jeans and a white silk, sleeveless tank that had four buttons beginning from the v-neck to my waist. It was more casual chic, but I had enough décolletage to still garner an appreciative smile from Elias when he saw me outside the bookstore.
“Hello,” he said, taking my hand and leaning in to kiss my cheek. He smelled amazing, some kind of woodsy fir scent, something reminiscent of dark nights under a cloud of stars. I pressed my lips to his cheek before pulling back. “Glad you could make it,” he said, holding my hand warmly. Behind him, a line of people had gathered behind a black ribbon, and they watched us carefully. I wondered how we looked to them, this tall, dark hunk of muscle beside me—an escort trying to look more like a girlfriend.
“Thanks for inviting me,” I told him beneath my lashes. He looked down at me like he had a hundred things to ask, but had tucked them away for the moment. “What do you want me to do while you meet with people?”
“Well.” He looked up at the building. “Explore? See if there’s anything on the shelves that interests you. I can’t imagine you often get an opportunity to indulge in some pleasure reading.”
The way “pleasure” rolled off his tongue made me momentarily tighten my grip on his hand. “I don’t, you’re right.” I gave him a sincere smile. “I’m good at exploring.”
“Ah,” he said with a laugh. “I’m positive you are.”
I followed him into the building and he was pulled away to speak with someone wearing a headset and someone else holding a stack of papers. So I did as he’d invited me, I perused the shelves.
It was my first time in a bookstore like this, one that catered more to travel nonfiction, and it made me yearn a little for the chance to escape from the confines of my studio apartment, to hop on a jet and fly to the places books were written about.
I pulled a book about Italy from the shelf, a book detailing the churches of Rome. The photos were abundant, and showed the ornate artwork painted on ceilings. Altarpieces that depicted the Madonna and Child. My fingers traced the lines in the ceiling fresco of the Triumph of the Name of Jesus and I felt that ache deep in my bones. The ache to travel and see these with my eyes before me, instead of the pages of a book.
I had very few regrets in my life, because I believed that each choice I’d made had brought me to the point where I stood, living and breathing and healthy. That was more than a lot of people could wish for, so I harbored my blessings despite my climbing student loan debt. But, I did regret not traveling back when I’d purchased my passport.
I’d done it on a whim, a few months before spring break. A bunch of students in my Christianity and Art class had planned to take a week in Rome, and I’d very nearly boarded the plane along with them. But I was plagued by anxiety. What if it hadn’t lived up to my expectations? What if on the journey over the Atlantic, the plane plunged into the ocean? I wasn’t someone who fed on irrational fears, but because I’d grown up flitting from home to home, I’d never had the opportunity to enjoy a vacation with a family. And I worried that going to Rome would cause me to question my pursuit of study.
I closed the book and set it on the shelf with a wistful sigh. There was no opportunity for me now, not with my debt as high as it was. I may have had a relatively healthy paycheck, but I was practical—any extra cash was tucked away, not spent purchasing airfare that would likely cost a month’s rent.
I wandered down another aisle, picking up a book on a student’s journey into the heart of Africa, and his experiences connecting with the Pygmies of Central Africa. A hunter-gatherer society, they form intimate connections to the forests. I knew from my recent sociology studies that many forest peoples had begun to be evicted from their lands, which had devastating consequences. I looked at the photos of people who held their sticks for photos, looking directly at the camera with just a hint of a smile. They’d likely lose everything that had formed their entire identity and forced them to the bottom of mainstream society.
It struck a chord with me. Not because I’d ever suffered such a profound loss of self. But because I wanted to feel like my studies could help me somehow. That the piece of paper granted to me by my university wasn’t just something in a gold gilded frame to hang on a wall. Something I’d need to remember to dust. I wanted to leverage my studies into something productive, something meaningful and impactful.
Once again, I sighed as I replaced the book, feeling like a fish floundering on the shore, aching for its own environment. I studied sociology partly to become more sympathetic to the people who needed it the most. But I didn’t know yet how to accomplish that goal.
As I stepped out of the aisle, my gaze fell upon Elias, who was standing beside a desk covered in the books he’d helped work on. He was talking with someone a head shorter than him, but he had the ability to not look like he was talking down to them at all. He maintained eye contact, nodded, smiled, and did everything to make the person welcome. Perhaps I was projecting, but I felt he was making this person feel like he cared what they had to say. Such a simple thing, really, but something undervalued and rare, too.
“Hot photographer, huh?” a woman asked beside me. I glanced at her, but she was looking at Elias with a dreamy kind of look in her eyes. In her arms she held three of his books.
“He is,” I agreed quietly, turning my eyes back to Elias as he greeted the next person and wrapped an arm around them for a photo.
He looked completely at ease, and in his dark jeans and charcoal t-shirt, I found myself warming just looking at him. He certainly was attractive—and not just from far away, like some men were. He’d treated me kindly in public and he’d been attentive to my needs in the bedroom. It was so unlike most of the clients I met with, that it was easy for me to forget he wasn’t mine. Maybe for the thirty days our agreement would last, but not longer.
“He smells incredible,” the lady said, and reminded me of a fawning woman from some Disney movie. And in comparing her to that, I felt a small trill of annoyance filter through my head.
“He does,” I told her, not letting that annoyance color my voice at all.
“Are you waiting to meet him?” she asked, but didn’t look at me for my answer. “I’m tempted to jump back in his line, just to have another minute of his time.”
“I’m not,” I told her, “but why don’t you go for it?” And then I walked away, my back a little stiffer than it had been before speaking with her. Why did the lady bother me? She wasn’t much older than I was, and perhaps a little dowdy in her oversized shirt and baggy jeans. Elias was not mine. As long as I reminded myself of that, I would be fine.
Two hours later, the last straggler was being all but pushed out the front door and the woman with the headset was speaking with Elias when I slid into a seat a few feet from him. Elias met my gaze before turning back to the woman and saying something that had her smiling and nodding. Elias stepped around her and came to me.
“So,” he said, tucking his hands into his jeans. “Thanks for hanging out.”
I stood and gave him an easy smile. “It was nice. Seeing you, interacting with the people who came to meet you.”
“Well,” he said and looked around the room, “all that talking has worked up an appetite.” He raised one dark brow and I felt myself titter a little on my heels. “Want to get out of here?”
Did I ever. “What’d you have in mind?”
“We could go back to my place. I can order some takeout?”
“No,” came from my lips before I could stop it. I never ever entertained clients at my own home, for obvious reasons, but I definitely never went to a client’s house. Partly because it was safer to be in a hotel, where Taylor and Dave could assist if needed and partly because—as vile as it may sound—many clients were often married or at least living with their partners.
“Elias?” the headset woman asked and Elias turned away from me for a moment with an apologetic smile.
I pulled out my phone and shot a quick text to Lenore, asking if it was against the rules to go to Elias’ house. The situation was different, considering that I had thirty days with him instead of the one night. I certainly didn’t expect him to drop hefty cash for a hotel every time we were together, but going to a client’s house was so foreign that I didn’t know if it was even allowed.
Lenore: What a silly question. We have all of his information, so you could go to Antarctica with him if you want. Of course it’s all right.
It was amazing how three simple sentences could make me feel so stupid. It was Lenore’s gift, perhaps. So when Elias joined me again, I turned to him with a smile.
“Actually, that sounds great,” I told him, not wanting to elaborate on why I’d said no with the several employees still milling around.
“Good. Let’s go.” He said it in one breath, like he couldn’t wait to get me alone. And as my eyes tracked over the muscles bulging against his sleeve, I felt just as impatient.
Chapter Eighteen
Ruby wandered around my apartment, eyeing the framed photos on the wall behind the couch with a tiny smile on her face. It felt pretty fucking foreign to have her in my space, to have any woman in my space, I guess.
“Did you take all of these?” she asked over her shoulder while I poured some wine for us in the kitchen.
“Most. The one you’re looking at isn’t mine. New Zealand is actually one place I’ve never been, and that’s in Christchurch. Hamner Springs.”
She hummed and gave me a small smile when I handed her the glass of cabernet. “Pictures are all I have of all these incredible places. I guess I should be thankful for people like you who take them for me.”
The simple way she said it, with no trace of bitterness, said a lot about her to me. It wasn’t an invitation for pity either, because I knew that the path I’d taken in seeing the world wasn’t typical. Most people hadn’t seen all the places that I had during my career. Diana’s death was definitely the impetus, lighting a flare in me so bright that I had no choice but to avoid the places that she’d been.
Ruby’s deep-seeded desire to explore other cultures was why I knew she’d say yes to joining me in Amsterdam, but I still wanted to tread carefully. I’d asked her about the passport as a formality, not really expecting that we’d do any international travel during our time.
When she turned her attention from the photo to me, I could see the spark of desire in her dark, bottomless eyes. It had been simmering in me since I saw her outside of the bookstore looking more casual than I’d ever seen her. It suited her. All the facets of Ruby that I’d witnessed suited her.
The calm professional.
The voracious student.
The uninhibited vixen.
It almost felt like I was fucking three different people sometimes, seeing glimpses of all the parts of her personality. Not like she was crazy, but it felt like there was so much untapped depth to her, and I wanted nothing more than to dig as far as she’d let me.
“Food will be here in about twenty,” I told her, setting my wine glass down so I could touch the ends of her hair where she’d pulled it back into a simple ponytail. “I hope it’s okay that I took the liberty of ordering for us.”
Her mouth slid up into a smile. “What if I had deadly food allergies?”
“You don’t.” My eyes dropped to her hips, which were encased in tight denim that did fucking phenomenal things to her impossibly long legs and perfect ass.
“Who’s the little girl?” Ruby asked, looking over my shoulder at the small framed photo of Grace. She’d decorated the black frame with pink and purple foam stickers in shapes of crowns and hearts.
“What if I said she was mine?” I watched her face carefully while she thought about that. Grace could have easily passed for my child, with her long dark hair and brown eyes.
Ruby didn’t miss a beat. “I’d say she’s beautiful, and has great taste in stickers.”
With a laugh, I turned to look at the picture. “That she does. Grace is the daughter of my friend, Jack. She wants to be a princess when she grows up.”
“At least she knows. I can’t imagine what that must feel like,” Ruby said ruefully.
Moments like that, when Ruby lowered the veil and gave me a massive chunk of honesty, I knew well enough not to waste them.
“Oh come on,” I said, using a finger to trace the edge of her lower lip, gratified to see her take in a shaky breath. “Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it.”
“Of course I’ve thought about it,” she answered, staring at my mouth.
My finger never left her skin, following along the line of her jaw and the graceful column of her throat. “I know someone that could help you.”
That snapped some of the thick haze of desire from her eyes. “What?”
“A professor that was part of a piece that I shot a few years back. She was a pretty fucking cool chick, and I know she’d be happy to sit down with you if you wanted to talk to her about some of the options you might have. Her education background is similar to yours.”
Ruby stared up at me, and even though the lust had cleared s
lightly between us, I felt a tidal wave of satisfaction at the fact that she was so obviously blindsided by my offer.
“You’d do that?”
I furrowed my brow, cupping the side of her throat. “Of course.”
In the next breath, her hands were in my hair and her mouth was over mine. She moaned into my mouth when I gripped her ass in both hands and clutched her to me. Her fingernails pierced into the skin of my scalp, and I sucked her tongue into my mouth, driven half-crazy by the taste of wine mixed with the taste of Ruby.
“Not that I’m complaining,” I said between kisses, half-carrying her, half-guiding her until her back hit the wall. “But is this always how you’ll show your appreciation?”
“God, yes,” she breathed, palming my aching erection with a firm grasp.
“I can’t wait to hear you say that in my bed later.” I punctuated the statement by palming one breast, plucking at the nipple that I could feel through her thin bra. “All fucking night, you’ll be saying that.”
Ruby thumped her head against the wall, exposing her neck for me. I placed my mouth right over the skin that showed the rapid beat of her pulse. Knowing that her blood raced like that for me, because of me, because of us, made me feel savage. Pressing my hips against her to find some sort of relief for my unfettered lust, I shoved a hand up her shirt so I could feel the weight of her tit in my hand, against my skin.
“Oh fuck, yes, Elias.”
“You need my hands on you, don’t you, baby?”
“I need more than that,” she hissed, trying to rip at my zipper when the buzzer on the wall went off. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
I sank my forehead into the curve of her neck, chuckling at the awful luck that we seemed to have when it came to interruptions. “I swear, every time that happens, I feel like I’m experiencing some sort of karmic punishment.”
Ruby laughed, cupping my face and dropping a sweet, short kiss on my lips. “Maybe you are.”
