by Melissa Blue
He hadn’t wanted her to leave the hotel room. It bugged Sebastian now, but he didn’t regret the request for more time. They’d moved to the kitchen and since then she had tried to fit the entire food platter on the small plate. She’d already tucked away the steak and potatoes and was working her way through the fruit.
He cut into his rare steak and considered her. “I can order another steak if you want.”
“No, I’m good.” She swirled the strawberry in the chocolate sauce and devoured it in one bite.
He wanted to believe their situation gave her the comfort to eat like this in front of him. To relax and to let loose with exactly what she thought. She didn’t mind him seeing the real Nicole. The likely truth had everything to do with it being in the middle of the night and him being a stranger she had no intention of seeing again.
He pushed that worrying belief aside. “Watching you, I know you’re not from L.A.”
“Why?”
“You actually eat.”
“Haven’t all day. Didn’t realize how hungry I was until there was gravy and potatoes for me to dive face first into.” She closed the top of the robe, covering the beautiful curve between her breasts he’d let his gaze feasts on while they ate. She crossed one arm over her stomach and sat back from the table. “That was delicious. Thank you. You’re being so gentlemanly.”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Take heart, I won’t be in a little bit.”
“You keep making these dirty promises. I’m starting to think you’re all talk.”
He chewed another piece of steak before he answered, “A hazard in my line of work.”
“But we aren’t talking about our jobs, remember? So tell me about your childhood, because, of course, that’s not a landmine.”
He considered the boundaries from earlier and shrugged again. “Two parent home. Loving and quite boring when you hear some of the stories from actors and writers. I think my parents wonder why the hell I am the way I am. I’m not settled down nor do I have plans to be.” An old memory dredged up and turned the food in his mouth to dust. He put down his fork. “I’ve always been able to talk my way into and out of trouble.”
“That, I can see.” She let out a breath. “Me? I came from a single parent home. My father raised me. My mother up and left one day. Turns out, after she left, my mother started a family with someone else.” She stuffed another strawberry in her mouth. “I should be bitter over that, but why should I give a crap about a woman who didn’t care enough to send a postcard on my birthday, at least? Of course, my father felt guilty for this and spoiled me rotten. It’s a miracle I’m not some Prima Donna bitch.”
Appearances were everything in the PR business and she appeared to be unfettered by a shitty childhood. He narrowed his gaze to see any cracks beneath the veneer and found none. “How many years of therapy?”
“Five,” she answered honestly, and then laughed.
He couldn’t laugh with her. Sebastian wanted to, but now he was developing a crush on a woman he would never see again. A woman whom he should have had hemmed up against the headboard, making her come and moan and forget her own name.
But here he sat, asking her to stay a little longer with him, eating and joking with her about their past. This was some ass backward way to conduct a one night stand. Every moment he wasn’t buried balls deep inside her, she’d become a real woman and not some fantasy of an attractive woman. The real her would overshadow and become more appealing than any imagined details he could fill in. They had to get down to business, and quickly.
She plucked another strawberry from the fruit basket. “Have you spent time in a therapist chair being analyzed for what’s human about you?”
“No, but I probably needed to a time or two.” Especially when his college girlfriend took his heart and shish kebabbed it. He wasn’t going to reveal that to her, not while she still looked soft and flushed.
For the millionth time, her gaze strayed to her phone. She tapped the screen and frowned. It was a little past one in the morning and she was expecting a phone call or a text. If they hadn’t been busy having sex, he would bet she’d have checked her phone then too. Sebastian had a feeling he was getting a glimpse of the woman no one else got to see. He didn’t want the privilege. Definitely didn’t want the way that made him feel about her either.
He stuffed a hand in the pocket of the terry-clothe robe. Not only could one get room service in the middle of the night, one could discreetly order other necessities like condoms in an upscale hotel.
“Are you full and satisfied now?”
“Impatient for your turn?” she said.
“You bet I am.”
She tsked and fought a smile. “You had me fooled down in the bar.”
Confused, he frowned. “How?”
“I thought you were full of charm and humor. You’re a pervert.”
He snorted and stood from the dining room table. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
“No, but I can tell from your little display earlier.” Her hand fluttered toward the bed. “I’m scared.”
“You should be.”
She pointed at him. “See. Dirty promises and a pervert.”
He chuckled and put out his hand. “Come on, let me give you something to tremble in fear about.”
“What is it you want?” She took his hand, rose and stepped in his path.
To keep her here with him all night. Touching her, tasting her and talking to her, but he’d settle for the first two and let the rest go.
“I want to feel just how soft you really are. Everywhere.” He peeled back her robe, teasing his fingers with her silken skin, and let the clothe fall to the floor. Each step he took, she took another back. She was too far away from him. He wanted them skin to skin, mouth to mouth. He needed to be inside her again already.
“Unfortunately for you, that means during my turn I’ll be taking my time,” he said.
“Well it’s only fair that you get your own pleasure. Plus, you came after only a few real strokes. I’m sort of disappointed.”
“You’re going to pay for that.”
Her eyes lighted with the threat, the challenge. “Bring it.”
His cock hardened. He was just as turned on as she when it came to competition. “Get on the bed and assume the position.”
She crawled to the middle of the bed, stopped, arched her ass up and glanced over her shoulder. “This one?”
Sebastian had other things in mind to do to her, but now she had to pay for teasing him. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Stay just like that, but spread your legs a little wider.”
She blinked, surprised at the request, but he could see the moment her imagination took flight. Her teeth sank in her bottom lip and her ass rose up. She ached for him, and Sebastian could say the same. Disrobing, he tossed the terry-clothe robe on the foot of the bed. A condom wasn’t needed for what he planned to do to her.
Settling on his haunches behind her, he leaned down and placed a kiss in the center of her back. Nicole didn’t taste sweet like strawberries. She tasted like sex. Smelled like it, too. Their own unique mating scent. His cock lengthened, seeking the one thing that would ease its ache. Soon. He had things to make up for from the first time around.
The sable strands of her hair, damp and slightly curled from sweat, tickled his fingers as he brushed it aside. He hadn’t gotten his fill of her skin before, but now he explored her lush curves. She wasn’t trembling, yet, beneath his fingertips but that was fine. He placed a kiss on her bare shoulder blade and caressed the sides of her breasts.
She sighed. The heat of her core pressed was tightly against his cock. He ground against her, a tentative grind. The sigh deepened into a moan. He kissed her earlobe, and like a whisper in the dark, let his fingertips rove over her nipples. Her arms shook, but she lifted her ass higher, quietly begging for him to thrust into her.
“Not yet,” he murmured in her ear. “We have to make up for lost time. Sit up.”
&
nbsp; He straightened so she could and Nicole obeyed. She rest her back on his chest, not allowing any room between his cock and her core. Sebastian closed his eyes, wishing he could see her from the front. Her nipples would be dark pink, pebbled into tight buds. Her clit would be swollen and hard, probably peaking out between the folds of her pussy. One hard stroke and she could make him come from the image alone. But she had denied herself this and he would give it to Nicole as her lover for the night.
“Since I want to get this right…show me how you like your nipples to be touched.”
Her moan was barely audible. He nipped at her ear lobe as she entwined her fingers with his. He closed his eyes again when she guided his hands to cover her entire breasts. The more he massaged Nicole under her tutelage, the heavier her breathing grew. Her grasp fell away and he tugged lightly at the hardened tips.
“Like that?”
“Yes, Sebastian.”
She said his name, leaving no room to doubt Nicole knew who the night would be spent with, who it was giving her pleasure. A simple thing, one he didn’t ask for, but it aroused him.
He took his time and waited for the sign to do more for her. Her breasts were full and the tips tight, but he waited until she rocked her hips forward, seeking to sate a thirst. He reached down to the hair covering her mons and spread her open for his exploration. He toyed with the swollen nub until her arousal soaked his middle finger.
“You’re still not ready.” She whimpered and he bit back the smile. “Don’t move. I want you open for me, just like this. Can you do that for me, Nicole?”
“Yes,” she said, but it sounded like pleading, begging for something to ease the ache between her legs.
He moved, away from the heat and slickness of her pussy and laid on his back. Lids low, she glanced back at him, her breath caught on a curse. He scooted forward, putting his face right where he’d finish his payback. She tried to rise up, away from his mouth, but he gripped her thighs.
“This is what I want,” he said.
She moaned as his breath feathered along her core. To settle the argument, he licked from around her entrance to the edge of her hooded clit. She trembled above him and moaned deeply.
“It’s your turn and this is supposed to be for you,” she said. “You know I’m not going to tell you to stop.”
He chuckled and then flicked his tongue over the swollen hood. She bit back the moan this time and fisted her hands in his hair. He deepened the intimate kiss and effectively silenced any more half-hearted protests. He supped on the taste of her femininity and it filled him more than the meal. Her bouquet was intoxicating. And fuck, his cock throbbed wanting a taste of her again. He held her prisoner to his desire, his mouth, and tongue and made her come. He continued to lick her even while she bucked and rocked against his mouth. This was what he wanted all along: Nicole undone. Oblivious to anything but her own pleasure.
It was selfish to want her like this. And, quite frankly, he didn’t give a shit as her hold on his hair loosened and she shuddered above him.
“Oh, you win.” She let out a shaky laugh. “You sadistic son of a bitch.”
He let her move and she flopped on the bed beside him, a tangle of limbs and soft moans. He rolled and captured her beneath him. “It’s unfortunate for you that now you’re ready.”
“You’re insatiable.” She sighed and it sounded happy. Relaxed. “Get the condoms the waiter gave you.”
He laughed out of shock. “I didn’t think you saw the exchange.”
The light in her eyes darkened. “This isn’t the real me. I’m not like this. If I could feel my legs I’d get up to check my phone.” She let out a chuckle that sounded bitter. “By day I’m a shark.”
Sebastian had picked up on that much and was curious, but he was going to leave it alone. Bad enough he had a crush, he didn’t want to be some mooning, simpering idiot over her, too. “Even with your shark-like personality, you lost.”
She shook her head. “I’m sick. Like really, really sick because now I’m turned on. I have to prove you wrong.”
He lowered his voice, pressed his cock against her soaking wet entrance. “Bring it.”
Chapter Five
Friday night, or early Saturday morning, had been perfection for Nicole. If you planned to have a one night stand that’s what it should be. Great sex, beginning to end. Yeah, there was some emotional sharing that shouldn’t have happened, but it paled in comparison to coming her brains out. Maybe not paled, but they were mere oversights in the scheme of things.
Saturday night, or early Sunday morning, was the mistake. A big one. One that shouldn’t have happened. A clerical error when you got to the heart of it. The hotel staff had booked the room for the weekend instead of the night. They knew Sebastian’s real identity, thanks to his platinum credit card, and assumed the room would be needed the entire time he’d be in town.
Oh, she would blame them for running into Sebastian at the elevator bank at the end of a very long day. They should have had quick and efficient elevators. If they hadn’t stood there for three painfully, silent minutes, by the fourth, neither one of them would have broke. They would have been able to pretend to be strangers. Not people who couldn’t keep their hands to themselves.
The hotel was to blame for the one moment of weakness that had escalated to more. She was on the eighth floor and he was on the tenth. Their room sat on the sixth. If it hadn’t, the mistake would have ended there. Neither Sebastian or Nicole would have been remiss in their unspoken agreement of one night and one night only of pleasure. Except the hotel made it too easy to go back up to the room and repeat the previous night, with the same specular results.
The bastards.
And now here she sat, hiding in the bar on a Sunday afternoon, because who came to the bar on a Sunday? Hunger clawed at her stomach viciously, but the restaurant wasn’t safe to enter. She might see him and her sex would swell at the sight of him. There was no denying that greedy little mouth, not when it came to Sebastian.
The need and want to be with him…was a mistake. Their conversation over late night meals, the laughter, the teasing and competitive foreplay—a mistake. One she could get past as soon as nine p.m. came around and she stepped into a cab, heading for San Francisco, her home. A little past noon and all she had to do was sit there with her carry-on bag until the cab came to pick her up.
Sebastian wasn’t a lush so he wouldn’t think to come to the bar. He loved to eat and the likely place to find him, if he didn’t have an earlier flight, was the restaurant. Nicole would be safe and then she could let this weekend go.
A waiter passed by her table in the dark corner. Nicole needed to relax, something she had managed to do with Sebastian. She lifted her hand to call the waiter back and order herself a drink to calm the nerves making her fingers tremble. She glared at her hand. Maybe not nerves. Something more akin to withdrawal symptoms, like DTs. Dick tremens in her sad, sad case.
“Have we met before?” A familiar deep and rich timbre asked behind her.
Crap on a cracker.
Nicole didn’t turn around, but glanced over her shoulder. Sebastian had on his con man smile as he stood ten feet away. He dragged a carry-on bag behind him. Not for the first time, she wondered about his profession. She’d long since tossed out actor or model.
Sebastian didn’t ring any bells for a publicist, but in her line of work, it was less about them and more about the client. A potential client found out about her due to word of mouth, not because you could look her up in a phone book or online. Even with social media being the new thing, you still knew a publicist by their client list.
None of that mattered as he stood there tempting her. He wore a crisp dress shirt, rolled up at the sleeves and dark gray slacks. The price of his shoes could pay someone’s monthly salary. He had charm and could fast talk her under the table. Or charm and fast talk a woman’s panties off, which he‘d done with a cheesy-ass line. There was more to Sebastian than his surface-level
personality.
She wanted to know what lie beneath the veneer of the man and be the woman he chose to tell those secrets to. Not a mistake, but a problem. Her heart wanted things they hadn’t agreed to. Things she’d long since sworn off. Her body wanted to relive the touch of his mouth, hands and tongue. Two nights, or mornings, and she was conditioned to go hot and wet at the sound of his voice, at the sight of him. Her mind might be saying to let it go, let the experience with him become a memory, but her body knew what happened next.
She blew out a breath and then smiled at him, the picture perfect image of unperturbed and not needy and wanting. “I thought you’d be off on a plane by now.”
“Red eye flight,” he said and came to stand at her table.
Nicole shouldn’t have motioned for him to sit down, but what could she do? Send him away when she wanted him there, right there in her breathing space? This was bad and the longer they prolonged the goodbye between them it would only get worse.
“You?”
“A cab picks me up at nine tonight,” she said.
They were doing it again, laying out the boundaries between them. He watched her as he filed the information away with a slight lift of his head, a gleam in his eye and calculating the things they could say or do between now and then.
If this wasn’t what it was, she’d have the cojones to ask him out for drinks. To see where things could go, because she liked him. He made her laugh and come in equal intensity. They’d shared secrets, because they hadn’t thought Sunday would come and they’d still want to sit across from each other. It was stupid and a mistake and…
“I still have the room,” he said.
Nicole wanted to believe she was conditioned to say yes to the implied question. But what she wanted was to go up to the room and have him one last time, and then she’d be gone like a ghost.
Her lips pulled into a smile, probably as wicked as his kisses, and said, “Lucky for you, that’s where I want to be.”
*****
