by C. D. Reiss
I knew it was already going to take some effort to keep Cara past her thirty days, but if this headline was bad, and I had to assume it was if Ken was texting, then I was going to have to bust my ass to keep her.
“What’s that say, Daddy?” Nicole asked. I didn’t even realize she was looking over my shoulder.
“Grown-up stuff,” I said. “Can you read it?”
She knotted her brows and sounded out the letters slowly, but quicker than I’d do it.
“SSSSSttttttttt . . . what sound does O make?”
“It depends. Try the ‘oh’ sound.”
I was so proud of her. I knew what people meant when they said their hearts melted. I hadn’t before, but that phrase was exactly what it was. It hit me all of a sudden. Not just that she was a cute, little puppy with a big “awww” factor, but that she was mine. My little girl. My own creation. My responsibility. My joy.
And all those words were inadequate. The change was that big and overwhelming. It wasn’t about thoughts or even emotions. The feeling was a part of my body.
All at once, my heart turned liquid for my daughter.
“Stoooooo . . .”
When Cara came out, I put the phone away. She stood in the doorway wearing a knee-length XXL T-shirt with a neck-to-waist graphic of thirty or so happy characters.
I tried not to laugh and failed.
CHAPTER 45
CARA
Brad didn’t focus on his phone much. He didn’t spend time on social media from what I could see, leaving it to his fans to talk about him behind his back. I didn’t wonder about that. Some stars didn’t engage that way.
So when I’d walked into the VIP waiting room and he was staring at his phone with his lips straightened in concentration, I’d been tempted to ask what the problem was.
But whatever was on Brad’s phone simply wasn’t my business. He put it away as soon as he got a good look at me, and cracked up at my new, clean, horrible T-shirt. So I’d forgotten about it.
We’d chatted about the DVD and my shirt on the cart ride and in the limo until we pulled into the hotel driveway.
“Everything okay?” I said, giving in to temptation.
“Yeah. It’s cool.” He smiled a big movie star smile that I didn’t trust at all.
We stopped in the circular drive in front of the hotel.
He and Nicole had a suite with a grown-up bedroom and bathroom while she slept in a princess-themed room with a separate bathroom done up in castles and rainbows. I was in the studio next to them. There were only two suites and two studios on the floor. The nanny setup was obvious.
“I should give her a bath,” I said, holding my arms out. Nicole yawned and tucked her head in her dad’s neck.
“You need to give yourself a bath, teacup.” He flicked me my keycard, and I snapped it out of the air.
“But—”
“I’m perfectly capable. Go on, now.” He shooed me.
“All her outfits are in little bags, set up together.” I stepped backward down the hall.
“Are you joking?”
“She was supposed to wear the frogs tomorrow, but she might need them today.”
“Yes, ma’am. Shoo.”
I backed up another step, turned, and went into my room.
He was capable in small doses. I knew that. I was being too sensitive to his inconvenience. He’d live. He might even get closer to his daughter.
The room was small but luxurious, with pillows galore on the queen mattress, a down comforter, a TV as big as a dinner table, and a glass-enclosed shower separate from the tub. There were perks to being a nanny to the rich and famous. I pulled off my pants and soaked them in one of the two bathroom sinks. Brushed the yuck out of my mouth at the other one. Peeled my underwear off, set the water to scalding, and got under it.
I had vomit chunks in my hair. Gross. That’s what I got for puking into the wind. Ugh. What a weird scene. What a weird, fun scene. I’d laugh about it in ten years. Hell, I’d laughed about it five seconds after it happened.
I’d never had so much fun with a family. Not even my own. We never went anywhere because we lived everywhere. When you live in Paris for eight months, where are you going for vacation? That’s how my parents thought. Maybe they were right. Their lives were crazy. The last thing they needed was to block out fun time with my brother and me. They couldn’t even plan a week ahead because they never knew when we’d be packing to move.
I never felt like I’d missed out on anything until I rinsed the shampoo from my hair in a Disneyland hotel shower. I’d missed something, but I wasn’t dead yet. I had plenty of time in life to puke on all kinds of rides.
“What are you laughing about?”
I jumped. An indistinct yet unmistakable man’s form stood on the other side of the wet glass, in the center of the bathroom. Fully dressed. Bare feet.
“Brad!”
He snapped the door open, looked at my naked body up and down.
“I knocked. You didn’t answer.”
He stepped into the shower. His tan shirt got dark under the water, sticking to every curve and angle.
“Jesus! You boiling crawfish in here?” He put his hand on the knob, and I pushed it off.
“Go away.”
“Say it again and I will.”
My mouth made a shape for the G sound, but a rivulet of water flowed down his cheek and changed direction, following the path of least resistance to his lips, and dripped down. It enchanted me. Like the crystal droplets between his eyelashes and the steam rising off his shirt. They glistened as if infused with magic.
“Where’s Nicole?”
“Cleaned up and passed out.”
His lips. The way they moved. Just like on screen, but bigger, better, wetter. Every second that passed took my breath away.
Was he waiting for something?
Me, perhaps?
I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I was frozen. He didn’t belong there. We didn’t belong in the same shower. He didn’t ask first. Why wasn’t I mad? Why didn’t I scream and throw him out?
Because my nipples were tight even in the hot water. Because his body called to mine. Because I was made of flesh and blood.
And common sense. I was made of all the sensible thoughts I’d ever had.
“This can’t be a thing,” I said. “This is now. And it’s a secret.”
I didn’t do things like that. I didn’t have one-night stands or booty calls. Not for any moral reason. They just didn’t interest me anymore. Been there, done that, puked on the T-shirt. Until now, and now was all I had.
“That’s a yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. I didn’t know what I was agreeing to, exactly, but I was okay with it, whatever it was. As long as it was now, when I wanted it, not when I could make excuses for it.
He crashed his lips into mine.
Without his daughter between us, away from his property, far from Los Angeles, I let myself feel the things I’d forced away.
You’re allowed.
It was such a conscious decision to let go. I had to tell myself I was allowed to enjoy his mouth, his hands, and the pressure of his body against mine. But once I did I was flooded with the agreement of mind and body.
Go ahead.
I kissed him back fully. His hands went down my back, over my ass, grabbing it and pulling me into him.
“How long does she nap?” he whispered in my ear.
“Forty-five minutes.”
“Turn around.”
He turned me gently until I faced the wall with the shower head.
“Let’s get this soap out. Come on. Head back.”
He stroked my hair, letting the water run through it, running his hands over my body in tandem with the superheated water. I groaned when his hands drifted low, slipped between my legs, pressed down where I throbbed most. I bent my knees and spread my legs so he could get all the way down.
Losing my mind. I was losing my mind.
“Do you want me to fuck you?” he said into my ear.
“Yes.”
“Now?”
“Yes. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but . . .” The last word dropped into a groan as he stroked my clit. My legs wouldn’t hold me.
“Not just once. This isn’t a one-time deal. God, you’re so fucking sexy. I need more than forty-five minutes.”
“We can’t be a thing. Say it’s not a thing. I can’t be a thing.”
“Not a thing.” He pulled moisture from inside me and ran it along my clit.
“Zip it. Oh, God, lock it.”
“Put it in your pocket.”
He punched the shower knob, shutting off the water.
“Not standing in the shower,” he said. “Not the first time.”
He picked me up, both of us soaking wet, and carried me out of the shower with my legs wrapped around him. He dropped me on the bed and stood there, hair dripping wet, shirt sticking to his utter perfection. I got on my knees and he gently pushed me back down.
“I want to look at you, teacup. We don’t have a hell of a lot of time.”
He peeled his shirt off and tossed it. His wet shorts hung heavy and low on his waist. Past the line dropping below his navel. Past the V at the top of his legs and bottom of his abdomen. Way past propriety.
“Time, Brad. We don’t have a lot.”
“Yeah—and I’ve wanted you too long. What a good girl you were. Stayed on the subject. Never looked at me. Never flirted.”
He took me by my knees and opened my legs slowly. That action alone sent shock waves through me.
“I saw you look at me.”
“And?”
He put his lips on my inner thigh.
“I wanted you, but—” I gasped and stopped when he nipped the sensitive skin.
“But?”
“No but.” Saying the truth was hard, because I hadn’t let myself consider it fully, not when his mouth was near me and his hands pulled my skin so he could see where I was most tender. “I want you to fuck me.”
I could barely breathe it. I hadn’t let words like that leave my lips for a long time, and they felt so good.
He wrestled with his fly and his pants dropped with a wet slap. His dick was long and, God help me, so hard the skin stretched.
From the other room, his phone dinged. He didn’t even pause for it. I felt like the most important woman in the world. Just for the moment, his world was mine.
“Tell me how you want me to fuck you,” he said, moving to the inside of my other thigh, making me crazy with lust.
I was out of practice, but his lips inspired me. And his hand, stroking my folds ever so lightly, yes.
“That day you saw me in the shower?”
“Mm hm.”
“I was thinking about you deep inside me so hard. I was sucking your fingers as you took me.”
He looked up at me and kissed my mound. “I had no idea.”
“What?”
“That you had such a dirty mouth.”
Oh, he didn’t, did he?
“Eat my pussy, Mr. Sinclair. Like a southern boy eats pie. I want to come in your mouth.”
“Before I make you come, you need to agree. This isn’t the last time. I’m not finished with you.”
But how?
How will that work?
I pushed all the questions out of my mind when his tongue ran from clit to opening and back. My mouth opened and he reached up, putting his finger on my lips and I sucked it, digging my fingers in his hair.
Sometimes Nicole woke early, and with the overstimulation of the morning, it was possible she could get up. I prayed for that nap, sucking his finger harder when I thought I’d burst. I didn’t make a sound. Bit it back. Sleeping child. So close.
He stopped. That was when I gasped.
He looked up from between my legs, a smile touching the corners of his eyes. Laugh lines and pores, just like the man on the billboard, only better.
“You close?” he asked.
“God, yes.”
He got up on his knees, stretching magnificence over me.
“Have you ever tasted yourself?” he asked, lips on mine, not kissing. Not yet, just touching me with them.
Had I? I didn’t even remember. I couldn’t even stir up a particular memory of another sexual encounter. I kissed his lips, his cheek, tasting myself on him. Tart sex and musky water. In my world, the relationship was so forbidden that I was more uninhibited than ever, putting my tongue on the lips that had been between my legs.
“I was telling the truth.” I felt the head of his dick on my inner thigh. The lower half of my body gravitated toward it. “I can’t get pregnant. We can skip a step.”
He didn’t answer right away, but cast his eyes down to my lips. He’d skipped a step before, and it ended with a little girl. Why should he trust me?
“Or not,” I added quickly. “But I don’t have anything. And I don’t know if you brought protection into the shower.”
“I’ve been around. I always wrap it up.”
“Except the one time.” I smiled a little to take the accusation out of the words. I didn’t think he was lying. He was remembering with a scalpel.
“You don’t have to trust me.”
“I know I don’t.” I spread my legs wider in answer.
“Go ahead, teacup. Put it where you want it.” I tingled. Filthy. Raw. He moved his hips, grazing it over me.
I swallowed. Reached down. Stroked him. My thumb found the drop of wetness at the tip and rolled it around.
I wanted it immediately, and I wanted to make it last. I pulled him close and ran his tip along my seam. I groaned. He’d gotten me so close with his mouth. I wanted to make this the fuck of his life, but I didn’t know how.
I put his dick at my opening and pushed forward.
“All the way,” I said, and he thrust all the way in. Stopped. Closed his eyes. Sucked in air. I yelped in pleasure. And he went in to the root, full friction against my clit. “Hard. Hard, Brad, hard.”
He gave it hard enough to hurt, fast enough to please. I was reduced to gasps and vowels. I clawed at his chest and he drove into me with power and precision, angling himself to rub me where I needed it.
“Come. Come for me. Let me see you fucking come.” He growled it, and I yelled for him, overtaken with an orgasm without boundaries. A toe-curling, back-scratching, muscle-tightening climax.
And then he came, and my God I hoped I’d remember it the rest of my life. I touched his face to remember it, how he was even more beautiful when he lost himself.
I did this.
CHAPTER 46
BRAD
Lying in bed next to Cara, I felt a wave of guilt. I could forget about the texts I’d gotten on the way to the hotel for only so long. But once we were done, the texts poked me like a sharpened dowel.
—I suggest you come back to LA right now and do some damage control—
Ken had texted while we were talking about puke smells in the limo. Supposedly there was a picture from the teacups, and I was waiting for it.
In the meantime, Cara’s body was directly responsible for the smile on my face.
I hadn’t had skin on skin in a long time. She was wet and tight and supple everywhere. She came like a fucking storm. If I hadn’t had something on my mind, I would have exploded on the third thrust, and I could have forgotten my stupid reply to Ken.
—What? I got some puke on me? Big deal—
—They’re prepping headlines that have nothing to do with puke. What are you doing with the nanny?—
It was dishonest to fuck her after I saw the headline, and more dishonest to not take sixty seconds to decipher it.
—Nothing—
“I took it easy on you,” I said, getting off her. I’d told Ken it was nothing, but she wasn’t nothing. I wasn’t sure what she was or what we were together, but it wasn’t nothing.
“Next time you’re going to come so hard you’re going to have to slap yours
elf out of it.”
Up on her elbows. Knees bent. Tits pointing right at me. Nipples still hard. I wasn’t interrupting that moment with the picture that was about to be published. Not before I handled it and fucked her at least one more time.
At least. Once more from behind. Her on top. Bent sideways. And that mouth.
“Promises, promises,” she said, rolling over. That ass.
My shorts were a soaked, ten-pound pile on the floor. I wasn’t putting them back on. She got up on her knees, back to me, and I wasn’t letting that pass. I grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled until she was bent, looking at me. I wrapped my other arm around her and got my fingers between her legs. She gasped. The way that made me feel. Like a fucking lion.
“I say what I mean and I mean what I say.”
“That a southern thing?” She moved her hips against my fingers. She liked it. That cold, emotionless professional liked my fingers on her pussy. Every thought in my head was filthy.
“You’re never going to forget me.”
“One more time.” She whispered it. I could make her beg. The thought got me hard again. “Can we?”
Could we? Shit, she was already begging. Sure we could. I kissed her hard. Let that be her answer.
“Daddy? Miss Cara.” Nicole called from behind the door to the suite. I’d closed but not locked it. “I’m lonely!”
“Coming!” Cara jumped off the bed like a shot, leaving me kneeling on the mattress naked, dick at half-mast.
As far as I was concerned, she hadn’t even started coming.
CHAPTER 47
CARA
I wiggled into sweatpants and a T-shirt, totally commando. I went into the suite and closed the door behind me. Nicole stood in the middle of the living room with her dad’s phone in one hand and Pony Pie in the other.
“This beeps too much.”
“Did it wake you?” I took the phone from her and put it on the side table, scooping her up. She rubbed her eyes with her fist, dislodging a huge sleepy bit from the corner of her eye.
“I was dreaming about the ride with the log. The one that goes down the river like this?” She dropped Pony Pie to flatten her hand and move it down diagonally.
“Maybe after lunch we can go.” I rubbed her sleepy crust away. It was only late morning. We’d left very early, and that’s how fast the park goes when there are no lines.
