Addicted (Tempting Book 4)

by Alex Lucian

  “Where do you think you’re hurrying off to?” I called down to her. “I have the key.”

  She lifted her arms up and let them sway to a rhythm that I couldn’t hear. Weed, apparently, made Ruby really fucking happy. For two solid hours, she’d been dancing and smiling, a far cry from the woman who’d met me in the bar wearing a skin-tight black dress and a reserved smile. This Ruby was wild and free, uninhibited and happy. The walls were down around every part of her. Her hands touched me freely, her lips found mine countless times throughout the last two bands and we’d swayed together to the undeniably sexy beats of the final show.

  When she reached the door of our room, she turned to me, twisting her body into the kind of fluid movements that strippers dreamed of. Suddenly, a vision of Ruby on the pole, rolling her body around the stage stymied me.

  I wanted to see her dance for me. Just once.

  When I reached her, I pulled the key from my wallet and handed it to her, lifting my chin in expectation. Weed didn’t have a huge effect on me, only loosening the tight grips of my politeness. Sounded fucking ridiculous, I know. But the part of me that thought about how I spoke in public, how I introduced myself to people, the way I thought about how they might perceive me, that was not very present when I was under the influence. Basically, I was stripped down to the bare bones of what I wanted.

  I wanted to know Ruby. Wanted to see the sides of her that she kept hidden. And by god, I’d get to them tonight, since tomorrow we’d be boarding a plane.

  So instead of pushing her into the room, I gripped Ruby’s hips and tasted her top and bottom lip before sucking her tongue into my mouth. My hands were down into the back of her pants, gripping the taut flesh of her ass with my fingers. She broke her mouth away, sliding her hands underneath my shirt to finger the grooves of my abs.

  “You’ve got the key, sweetheart,” I whispered into her ear. “But if you keep feeling me up like that, I’ll fuck you right here.”

  Ruby laughed, pulling her hands away and turning to face the door. Perfect, I could press myself against her back and tuck my hands down into the front of her shorts. Those fucking short shorts. All day, I’d had trouble keeping my eyes off the impossible length of her legs.

  “You wouldn’t do that,” she said while she fumbled with the key in the heavy wooden door.

  “I wouldn’t?” I licked up the side of her neck when she finally clicked the key into place, and we fell into the room.

  Ruby walked backward, pulling the yellow bandana out of her hair and using her fingers to pull apart the braids. “No. You wouldn’t take advantage of me in this state.”

  That stopped me short. Like someone had dropped a forty-foot brick wall right in front of me. “Of course I wouldn’t. Have I made you think that I would?”

  “No.” She shook her head, even though she already answered, which made the dark kinks of hair settle around her shoulders. Then she cocked her face to the side and gave me a considering look while she leaned back onto the bed. “But if you did, what you would you do?”

  “If I what?” My brain didn’t work when she looked at me like that, casual and sweet and curious.

  “If you wanted to take advantage of me, what would you do?”

  Dick? Hard. Heart? Pounding. I didn’t have the resolve for this kind of test. If Ruby pushed me, I’d fucking fall. But the thing she might not have realized is that I’d pull her down with me if I did.

  “I’d ask you questions,” I answered easily. It didn’t even register that she might find that funny until she laughed.

  “Really?” When I nodded in answer, she slumped back, her shoulders losing their frame. Her eyes were open and curious. “What would you ask? Hypothetically, I mean. If I were to tell you what you wanted to know.”

  I took a deep breath, sifting my thoughts like someone had just dumped out a box of puzzle pieces. “I don’t want to go down this path unless you actually mean to give me a truthful answer.”

  She smiled. “No games then?”

  “No games.”

  “Okay.”

  “Really?” I clarified. “You’ll answer me?”

  Her eyes were direct when she nodded, trained on me with so much candor that I forgot we had both taken a foreign substance. Nothing about this felt tainted or forced. It was me and her, an us that we’d never been before.

  “Okay then,” I said on an exhale. “I want to know about Nicholas.”

  I had enough presence of mind not to keep going. I wanted to say, I know he’s not a former client. I know you lied to me. I know you couldn’t trust me with the truth. But I didn’t say those things, I just waited for her to confide in me. There was enough of a pause that I knew it would be the truth. When Ruby answered quickly, I trusted it less. Then it was practiced, a line off a script that I didn’t know we were reading. We both had cues, sending us offstage at different times, changing the lighting and the mood without the other’s knowledge. Me the client. Her the escort. Roles, characters, masks.

  But for once, it seemed, we were on the same page.

  Ruby and Elias.

  Student and photographer.

  Woman and man. No falsities, no pretense, no disguises.

  When she opened her mouth, it was truth that came out. I could tell before she said a word, just by seeing the look in her eye.

  “He … he wasn’t a client, like I said before.” She tucked a crimped piece of hair behind her ear. “We met in class, during undergrad. He was smart. Wittier than anyone else in that room, by a long shot.”

  I hated him. Just like that, more than the fucking psycho feeling he gave me at the hotel bar so many days ago, I hated him because I heard from her lips that he was smart. That he was witty. “How long were you together?”

  Her eyes were steady on me, despite the bouncing Ruby that I’d seen on our walk back. She was transparent now, willing to let me question her to satisfy the ridiculous alpha urges that were coursing through my veins.

  “Eighteen months.”

  I hissed in a breath, undoing my belt without even realizing that I was doing it. Her eyes tracked the motion, and in answer, she pulled the tank over her head, revealing her bare, full breasts underneath. Thousands of people had milled around us, and underneath the scant layer of white cotton, Ruby had been braless.

  It was enough to drive me fucking insane. And as much as I wanted to blame the weed, that wasn’t it. It was her. It was me. The combination of Ruby and me was enough to change my very DNA. Something welled up inside of me, possessive and greedy.

  Eighteen months was a long time, which is probably why his beady little eyes had looked at her like he owned her. I’d rip them out if I ever saw him again.

  “What happened?”

  Her fingers floated over my shoulders and her eyes followed them. “He got strange. Manipulative. Demanding. Didn’t like when I went out. Didn’t like when I dressed up. Always thought I was cheating on him. Finally got to the point where he was keeping me from class, because if I looked too nice before walking out the door, he’d threatened to kill himself if he found out I was cheating on him.”

  “What the fuck?” I said under my breath, unable to believe she was actually giving me all of this and didn’t expect me to fucking murder this guy once we were back in the States. “How long ago were you with him?”

  “Two years.”

  I pulled back and her hands fell away. “Right before you started this.”

  She nodded and stood up. Her hands touched my waist and I could feel my skin tighten underneath her fingers. Could feel my dick stir right along with the visceral protective feelings that I was having. That guy made her feel out of control. Setting the parameters with her johns gave her that control back.

  “Did he hurt you?” I asked, trying to keep my thoughts centered, but her hands were moving over me, steady and sure.

  “He never hit me.”

  “That’s not a fucking answer.”

  Her eyes hit mine, like a fucking bulle
t. “Yes, it is.”

  “So what did he do to you?”

  “I don’t want to answer this,” she said immediately, harshly. But her breath was still mingling with mine, she was standing so close to me. “So tell me why I want to tell you.”

  “I don’t know,” I breathed, taking her mouth in a long, soft kiss. But I knew. I fucking knew. And I refused to believe that she didn’t know too. This was different, it was just for the two of us. And the idea that some numb-nut got into her head, into the brain of someone like her, oh, it fucking burned.

  “He … he just made me less. He made me feel small. Made me feel insignificant.”

  “Fucking hell, Ruby,” I growled, rolling my forehead against hers, like the touch of her skin could calm me, could soothe me. Then I pulled back. “When we ran into him at the bar, was that the first you’d seen him since you broke up?”

  She nodded, smoothing her hands over my skin. “He’s texted a few times over the years, but I usually just switch my number. I’ve never figured out how he keeps getting my new ones.”

  “Do you know what that does to me? To hear that?”

  Mother fucking Nicholas. I’d rip his balls out through his skin with my bare hands, shove them down his throat and let him choke on them for taking the beautiful, smart woman that Ruby was and making her feel so wildly out of control that charging strangers for sex felt like a good alternative.

  But without him, I’d never have met her. It stopped me short, right as I stepped up to her, ready to take her mouth with my own.

  “Don’t let him in here,” she begged me, lips a hair away from my own. “He has nothing to do with us.”

  I groaned, sliding my tongue in between her lips and splaying my hands on her naked back. Our mouths met over and over, her tits pressed tight against my chest.

  “Elias, please,” she said, when I ripped at the button of her miniscule shorts.

  “Tell me, Ruby. Fucking tell me what you want.”

  She braced both hands on my chest and shoved me back onto the bed. With sure hands, she pulled at my shorts, taking my boxers with when she pulled them off. Completely ready, my dick bobbed up and I gripped it with one hand.

  “That,” she whispered, looking at my cock. “I want that. It feels so fucking perfect inside of me.”

  My fist worked up to the tip and unbidden, my hips lifted with the action. She bit her lip, crawling over me and licking up the base before kissing over my abs. The valley between her tits brushed over my dick and I bit out a curse. Ruby paused, looking at me with glowing eyes.

  “This?” she asked, pressing her breasts together over the head of my cock and working it in between the firm globes of flesh.

  “God, Ruby,” I groaned, tilting my chin up so I could see my dick sandwiched in between her tits. “If you don’t stop, I’ll come all over that pretty neck of yours.”

  She moved away, and I hated myself. Hated myself for breaking the moment, for correcting whatever the hell she was doing. Until her mouth was on mine, her tongue swirling in my mouth. Then there was no hate, no self-pity. It was all perfect.

  Her kisses were artless and a little clumsy. She grabbed at me with ferocious hands that held on too hard and cut too deep. I fucking loved it. Because it allowed me to do the same. I pinched at her nipples with fingers that had no finesse, and she gasped into my mouth. When I slicked the pads of my fingers over her hard clit, she swore, tilting her head back like she was a wanton sacrifice. And maybe she was. Maybe Ruby was sent to me as a sacrifice to a god of sex, of pleasure, of avarice. She couldn’t possibly last, because no one could feel this good, look this good, and fit this perfectly with me without there being some catch.

  Ruby held herself over me, her knees balanced outside of my legs. All of her curves were on display, and I wanted to be able to touch all of her at the same time. With one hand, I wanted to be able to cover her entire body. But I couldn’t.

  So when she rolled her hips, slicking the wet part of her pussy against the hardest part of me, I didn’t stop her. And when she gasped, using the head of my dick against her clit, I didn’t stop her. Stupid, yeah, it might have been. But when I felt the pure, unaltered, unfiltered heat of her against me, I wanted to push and thrust and conquer.

  It’s just the tip, I thought. Just the tip could go in and it wouldn’t hurt anybody.

  “Oh my fucking god, you feel so good,” she moaned, working herself over me in a cruel display of her body, one long undulating roll. It was cruel, because we shouldn’t have felt each other that way. Another inch into her scalding heat, and sweat beaded on my forehead. One more and I damn near sobbed. Then Ruby froze, her wide eyes meeting mine. “Holy shit, the condom.”

  Yeah. That.

  I held one hand on her hip, not allowing her to move. With the other, I grabbed a foil packet and ripped it open with my teeth, only slipping my dick out of her to roll it on with a quickness that I had no fucking clue I possessed. Once it was on, I used the hand on the sharp edge of her hipbone to guide her down again, until I was fully seated inside of her.

  Fucking heaven.

  “Yes, baby. That’s it.”

  She worked me, raising herself up and down, back and forth, in such slow, tortuous movements that I almost cried. “Like that?”

  “Faster, baby. Show me how you fuck me.”

  Her eyes flared and her back arched so that she took me so deeply, so completely that my eyes rolled back in my head. Ruby moved her hips in a slow figure-eight movement and I gripped her with both hands. I wanted to see my fingerprints on her skin the next day. Wanted to know she’d see me for days after being away from me.

  The thought she might not made something snap, and I lifted one hand, only to slap her ass on her down thrust. She gasped, moving faster. I spanked her again, harder, so that my palm stung from the contact.

  “Harder,” she moaned.

  Down thrust, spank, pull of her hips up, hammer of my hips along with her, down thrust, spank, over and over until I knew she’d bruise. On her last down thrust, I hit her so hard that she cried out, and I let my fingers curve into her firm flesh while I filled the condom with a roar.

  We were leaving tomorrow, but no part of me wanted to separate from Ruby. After we cleaned up, she curled into my side, her forehead pressed into the most vulnerable spot on my neck. The same place that if she pushed hard enough, if she opened the skin there, she’d let all the blood spill out of my body. And while we fell asleep, wrapped around each other, I whispered to her, “I don’t want you to be anyone else’s but mine.” And I knew she’d done about the second most damaging thing she could have possibly done to me. Ruby implanted herself in my heart, next to my pulse, into my veins, and I’d never be rid of her.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Even though we’d only spent a week in Amsterdam, something had changed between us before we’d landed back on U.S. soil. I’m not sure when the change had been initiated, because everything we did had seemed natural.

  But when Elias had said goodbye to me at the airport, he’d held me a little tighter than he’d ever held me. And when he had let go, I’d nearly called him back to me. Instead, I stood on the pavement by the open door to my cab, watching him walk away from me with a mix of anxiety. The thin pump of my heel had quivered as I’d slid into my cab, and I stared at my phone the entire ride to my apartment, waiting for Elias to text me again. Which he had, that night.

  Elias: Does it make me less of a man to admit that I want to see you again already?

  That was one of the things I appreciated about him the most—his gutless honesty. And his ability to say exactly what I was thinking, but what I didn’t feel—as his paid company—appropriate to say. I’d typed up my reply, It makes you more of a man, to tell me how you feel.

  It made me a little breathless, to know that his interest in me wasn’t just thanks to our paid arrangement. So when his reply came through, I felt my entire chest constrict.

  Elias: I haven’t even touched
the surface, Ruby.

  After that, we’d made plans to meet at one of the hotels on the upper east side, away from the areas we’d frequented. In a way, it felt like we were capturing a small moment of the privacy we’d had in Amsterdam. The thought of alone time with Elias had made me positively giddy, and had warmed a part of me that hadn’t been warmed in so long I’d forgotten it had existed altogether.

  It was crazy—mind-bogglingly crazy. I couldn’t be falling for my client. No way. I’d kept myself always at a distance, at least emotionally. Right?

  That’s what I’d convinced myself of at least, as I stood in the hotel room I’d gotten for the night. It’d been two days since I had said goodbye to him, and to say I was looking forward to being spread out underneath him was a major understatement.

  I’d just felt … happy. The word itself seemed inadequate for the way I felt after returning home from Amsterdam. Something had clicked between me and Elias, something I couldn’t articulate.

  As I applied another coat of mascara, my phone chimed from the inside of my clutch.

  Stella: Drinks tomorrow? Lenore hooked me up with a foot fanatic and he chewed off most of my pedicure.

  She’d included an emoji that looked like it was visibly ill. Laughing, I tapped out my reply, Should I break out the nail polish so you’re ready for your next date with him?

  Stella’s reply was a meme of someone vomiting in the street. I laughed again and checked the time. I had just about fifteen minutes before I was supposed to meet Elias in the bar, so I checked my appearance again in the mirror just as a knock sounded at the door.

  Elias. The thought made a smile form easily across my red-slicked lips. An effortless smile, I acknowledged, as I strode to the door and checked my reflection one last time. Excitement bubbled up inside of me as I closed my fingers on the door handle and just as I was about to turn the handle, my phone rang. I knew because of the customized ring tone that it was Lenore calling me, but knowing Elias was on the other side of the door caused me to ignore the phone completely as I turned the handle.