Thank You For Holding: On Hold Series Book #2

by Julia Kent

  Every woman groans in disappointment. “C’mon, Ryan! There’s always room for more!” Angela calls out to laughter.

  “That’s what she said,” Zeke shouts, triggering more groans and cheers.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Carrie come from the building, brow furrowed with a puzzled look. She grins at me, then laughs at the sight of Jenny crouched at Zeke’s feet.

  “Carrie! Can we borrow your boyfriend?” Zeke shouts. “We want him to feed you sexy beasts!”

  “What?”

  “He means,” says Angela, giving me a coy look, “we need another stripper. And Ryan’s a professional, you know.”

  I hide my reaction. If I just stare at Carrie, no one will know I’m yelling inside.

  Carrie is a people pleaser. She looks at Jenny, then Angela. Jenny’s sister, Jessie, starts laughing, holding a glass of something alcoholic high in the air. Everyone in this batch of twenty women is drunk as hell.

  “Well,” Carrie says, uncertain, her face flushed, the hair along her brow a little damp with sweat. “Um…”

  The way she looks at me makes it clear Carrie’s loose and feeling no pain either.

  I reach for her hand, her clasp tight and strong, fingers on her other hand roaming up my bare arm, tracing my tats. She pushes me into a chair and climbs into my lap, straddling me.

  Her hair tickles my nose as she bends down and says loudly, “I don’t want to share. Sorry.”

  Zeke lets out a loud wolf whistle. “Then don’t! Ryan can do a special dance just for you.”

  The music stops, Zeke grabbing the iPhone from the speaker it’s attached to, fumbling with the screen.

  And then the opening notes to Earned It by The Weeknd starts, the slow, sultry tones from the Fifty Shades movie making women move their hips like they’re already making love.

  Carrie does a slow, sultry grind in my lap, whispering, “I don’t know what to do,” in my ear.

  I don’t know what to do, either.

  “You are so luscious,” I groan, my breath echoing against her jawline, my lips on her neck before I can think.

  The women around us start moving in time with the intense, overpowering grind of the song and Carrie’s hips move against my cock like she’s fucking me.

  Too much. Too little.

  Too public.

  I pick her up in one fluid movement, suspending her against me in midair as she whoops with surprise, her hair windswept as an ocean breeze blows through the crowd, whipping the flames from a fire pit and making Zeke call out with boisterous fun, moving from woman to woman to give each a little piece of himself.

  I settle her in the chair I was just in and start to dance, locking eyes with Carrie, the music fading into my pulse, the women around us disappearing into a void.

  All I see is Carrie.

  All I feel is her skin.

  All I know is her eyes.

  And all I want is her.

  CARRIE

  I’m so happy. Three mojitos happy. One mojito, two mojito, three mojito — four? Not sure, but they’re all happy.

  Ryan smells amazing, like salt and soap and sand, timeless and old, but young and fresh. When we kiss, it’s like drinking the best latte you’ve ever had, the kind that makes you moan and want more.

  Wait. Am I actually moaning?

  I break the kiss and realize he’s on me, hands in my hair, body gyrating, except I’ve never seen Ryan dance like this before. Two years of working together at O means I’ve seen him do pretty much everything with our clients.

  Everything legal, that is.

  But he’s never been like this before. Our eyes meet and he’s so serious. A woman could burn for a thousand years from one look like this, his smolder lighting me up.

  Making me burn for him.

  “Car-rie! Car-rie!” the wedding party starts to chant as Ryan grinds into me, his cock sliding between my legs, the friction of him against my clit too much. Embarrassment rips through me and I clamp my thighs shut, suddenly cold, suddenly self-conscious.

  “Only you, Carrie,” Ryan says in a deep, sexy voice. “I’ll only do this for you.”

  Angela shoves her fingers in her mouth and does a wolf whistle. Diane’s drinking wine straight out of a bottle. Jenny is still kneeling before Zeke, her face in his crotch, and Jenny’s mom has a tiny, battery-powered fan aimed at her face.

  Then under her dress.

  The world swims, filled with Ryan’s hot, muscled body on mine.

  And then I remember.

  It’s all fake.

  Every move he makes is a show. Every kiss he’s given me has been staged. I put him up to this. I asked him to pretend. He’s just being a good, dutiful friend.

  This is what he does for a living. He’s a pro.

  I asked the best to do me a favor, and boy is he.

  My mouth goes dry. My throat tightens. My nipples turn painful, and my skin just hurts. I’m sick to my stomach with the kind of grief that you swallow when you have no choice.

  I haven’t been acting, have I? At some point everything I’ve done with Ryan has shifted from pretend to real.

  When did it become real?

  I shove Ryan off me, so hard he crashes into Jessie, who is quick on her feet and wraps her arms around his chest, keeping them both upright.

  She flattens her palms on his belly and shouts, “I count eight! Eight pack for the win!”

  And then I run, shooting down hallways, running past people who are staring at our little party.

  The party I can’t escape fast enough.

  “Carrie!” Ryan’s calling for me, but I ignore him, yanking open the stairwell door and sprinting up the steps.

  I can’t.

  I can’t pretend any more.

  A hot ball of emotion forms in my gut like a new star, roiling and twisting, hot and fevered.

  What have I done?

  I race to my room — our room — and throw myself on the bed, the cool sheets like my mother’s hand against my cheek.

  Within seconds, though, I realize I’ve made another mistake as I look up to see Ryan standing before me, hands at his sides, giving me that smoldering gaze.

  And just like that, it’s time to be real.

  RYAN

  “What the hell was that?” she hisses as the hotel room door clicks shut. Carrie is on the bed. Whipping around, the hem of her skirt twirling slightly as she stands, she rears up on me like a frightened horse. “What did you think you were doing back there, Ryan?”

  “Having fun. Putting on a show.” My mouth fills with copper. The conflict between pretend and real is bitter, a sour taste I can’t stomach any longer. My smirk makes her face go blank, but only for a few seconds.

  The replacement emotion is unthrottled fury.

  “I can’t believe you danced like that for the bachelorette party! You’re not here to work. You’re here to pretend to be my boyfriend!” Fuming, she grabs a pillow and punches it. “Every woman in that room ogled you.” Her words are incriminating, accusatory, weighted with unspoken expectation.

  I broke a rule I didn’t know we had.

  I broke a rule I knew damn well I hated.

  “You do know what I do for a living, right?” I can feel my eyebrows hit my hairline. I gesture at my body, undoing my belt buckle, sliding the belt out of the loops.

  Snap! I crack the two ends and make her jump.

  “What are you doing?”

  I drop the belt, undo the button of my pants, then reach up and rip off my own damn shirt, buttons pinging against the ceiling, the lampshade, the ocean-view window. In seconds I’m standing there in my boxer briefs, hand on one hip, giving her a show.

  A private one, this time.

  “I’m giving you exactly what every other woman in that room got. Go ahead. Look.”

  Her pupils go wide, breath catching in her throat. A few strands of wavy hair have pulled out of her hairstyle, curling down the lobes of her ears, brushing against the tops of her breasts. Her c
leavage is the pink tone of outrage.

  “I’ve seen you in a g-string a thousand times, Ryan.” She pauses, eyes going up and to the right. “Literally. Two years of work is more than five hundred days we’ve been at O together, and I’ve looked at you twice each day.” She closes her eyes and swallows hard, then makes a breathy sound. “At least.”

  The dismissive huff makes my blood boil, pulse rolling like a boulder in an avalanche. The air between us is an electromagnetic pulse that shuts down my thinking mind until I am nothing but instinct.

  Near-naked instinct.

  “Then why do you suddenly care that Jenny’s bridesmaids and mother saw me like this?” I cross the room, determined, my arms tense and akimbo. Every hair on my body starts to rise, standing at attention, the creep of awareness capturing my skin.

  “Because… because...” She tosses the pillow at me. I catch it and fling it to the floor, moving slowly like a big game cat, prowling to her, unafraid.

  I’m done with fear. Just done.

  “Kissing you in public is part of what you wanted, Carrie.” I’ve gone low and cold, my heart thudding in my throat like a bell tolling at midnight, warning the world of the thin layer between light and dark. She’s about to tip everything – our friendship, this fake relationship, the last two years of working together – into dangerous territory.

  And I’m ready.

  But that doesn’t mean what we’re about to say to each other doesn’t have consequences.

  “You know, if we really were boyfriend and girlfriend, that’s not how I would kiss you!” she shouts.

  “Oh yeah? Then how would you kiss me? Because that kiss in front of all those people was damn hot.”

  “So was your dance!” Our faces are inches away, her breath sweet, the rum in the mojitos she drank earlier drawing me in. The skin under her eyes pulls up as she scrutinizes me. Carrie’s trying not to look at my body.

  I grab her hand and put it flat against my stomach, willing her to feel the pulse there, to touch my center, to feel my heat.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice cracks midway through the sentence, body betraying whatever anger she has and making her take a step closer to me. One hip brushes against my erection. I close my throat so I don’t react.

  “You’re angry all those women ate me up like I’m eye candy.”

  “I didn’t — ”

  “Admit it.”

  A dawning look of something damn close to admiration and revelation ripples across her face. It’s like she’s seeing me through a new lens.

  She tries to pull her hand away but I hold her to me with an iron grip, closing the inches between us, my other hand on her chin, making her look at me. Our eyes say a thousand words.

  “I — ”

  Releasing her hand, I reach up and thread my fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck. “If we really were boyfriend and girlfriend, how would you kiss me, Carrie?”

  “Look, I just said that because I was...” My hand in her hair prevents her from looking down, looking away, looking inward instead of straight through the bullseye of my heart.

  Where she can see so much more than my naked flesh.

  “Carrie,” I insist, pressing her, the stakes too high to step back into the shade of safety. “How would you kiss me?” I move so close but hold back that final half inch, tortured by the blow of warm breath from her lips, the hesitation I feel in her tendons and bone, my own need on display.

  “Ryan.” My name sounds like a promise. A plea. A cry for help. A koan. A question. A riddle.

  An exaltation.

  I close my eyes.

  And realize that half an inch might as well be a mile.

  Her hand moves from my abs up the center of my breastbone, fingers tracing the lines of my collarbone. I look at her. To my surprise and agony, she steps back, her hand staying on me, eyes riveted. Without a word but with so much purpose, my C-Shel takes her time enjoying me. I’m rock hard as she uses her fingernail to brush the thick vein that pops from my forearm to biceps. My blood turns me into a furnace as she grazes her fingertips along my side, counting each rib. When she steps back, breaking our physical connection, it’s the look on her face that keeps us in touch.

  I can’t do this.

  I can’t breathe without her touching me.

  Blinking hard, she clears her voice, turning around and stepping backward. Her hands tap the base of her neck as if giving instructions.

  And then she says, “Unzip me.”

  With stupid, clumsy fingers caught off guard I obey the request. As she steps out of her dress, I watch the exquisite frame-by-frame release of the cloth as it drops away, revealing a shapely bustier, black lace panties, and legs that go for miles in tall heels. She’s damn close to my height, a fact I hadn’t considered until now, the jut of her ass a dream come true as the height of the shoes changes how she carries herself.

  She turns around.

  “Now we’re equal. How would you feel if I walked out into public looking like this?”

  “No fucking way. I won’t allow it.”

  “See? You’d be jealous, too, and besides, ‘allow’? Seriously, Ryan, when did you — ”

  Whatever she was about to say is buried by my mouth, my tongue, my hands, my cock, all on her and touching, exploring and demanding, silencing and opening her. Anger makes her kiss back hard, teeth banging together, her mouth opening and sucking my lower lip, biting down as if pinning me in place, as if telling me I can’t escape.

  “I won’t allow it,” I inform her, slipping my knee between her legs, pressing up with a slow, grinding beat that makes her gasp, her hand moving over my ass, fingers biting into my hip, pulling me closer to her, “because you still haven’t shown me how you’d kiss me if we were really together, Carrie. Show me. Show me now.”

  CARRIE

  I don’t know what he means. Panic splits my mind in two.

  Desire weaves it back into one whole. The two forces fight in a dark corner of my mind while my body won’t stop touching him. This can’t be happening, right? This is Ryan. My buddy. My friend. My couch potato and Friday night television binge partner and holy hell, I’m kissing him like my tongue is a part of his body.

  He tastes so good. How does a man taste like all my dreams in one hot, warm, wet tease? My arms are around his neck and his hands cup my ass, pulling me against him as he uses his leg to drive me crazy, my clit rubbing through my panties as he – wait, is he seriously doing this? How is he doing this? No man has ever moved my body with such expertise, kissed me like that with his tongue, moved his fingers like that along my nipple, made my own body work in concert with his to —

  “Oh, God,” I moan into his chest, gripping his arm for balance as I start to shake, something deep inside widening and narrowing at the same time, like a secret chime being called in my core. Electricity rushes to the surface of my skin and I whimper, legs tightening as Ryan reaches down with his hand to touch me and that’s it.

  I disappear.

  In my place comes heat and sighs, groans and cries, my head tipped back and hair falling out of my updo, spilling down my back, Ryan’s strong arms holding me to him, making it impossible to escape the sheer bliss he’s giving me.

  “I’ve never – I – what are you doing?” I gasp, trying to wiggle away, desperate to move closer, completely unable to calibrate my mind and body as chaos takes over and turns me into a warm, wet noodle.

  “What I should have done long ago,” he says firmly, bending down to lift me, moving across the room with confident strides and dropping me on the bed. The room is a hazy spell, the air filled with my orgasm, a sexy scent that combines with his masculine musk. It hangs in the air with nothing but promises of more.

  More.

  We’re – we’re actually going to – I’m about to —

  “Turn over,” Ryan says, face serious in the moonlight. I don’t question him. I do as he says. He swiftly removes my bodice. I start to pull my shoes off. His hand g
rips my ankle.

  “No. Leave those on.”

  His voice is so different, yet familiar. Simultaneously, he’s Ryan and someone else. This feels like having a one night stand.

  With my best friend.

  “You’re beautiful,” he says, on the bed above me as I turn over, almost naked before him, breasts pulled slightly by gravity, belly flat, high heels on the bed as my knees go up. Ryan takes his time to look at me, an appreciative, unhurried quality in his eyes that I’ve never seen before.

  Ever.

  In any man who has ever looked at me naked.

  I curl my hands into fists to stop them from covering myself or ripping the bedspread off the bed and flinging it over me. Nothing about him says he’s displeased. In fact, Ryan seems utterly captivated by, well...

  Me. Practically naked, laid out before him.

  My pulse quickens as I return the look, and now he’s staring at me with eyes that pierce, his hands moving to my belly, one curved around my breast, a half smile forming.

  “You’re more beautiful than I ever imagined.”

  “You’ve imagined me naked?”

  He just smiles.

  “Because I never had to imagine you naked,” I blurt out, awkwardness rushing in to replace everything good about this moment. “I mean, you know, you wear a g-string at work and those really show everything so I never need to really conjure up an image of — ”

  His smile widens.

  He removes his boxer briefs and holy hell, am I wrong.

  Way wrong.

  Like, hugely wrong.

  “Oh,” is all I can say, struck dumb.

  “Your turn.”

  “My turn?” I squeak.

  His finger curls under the edge of my lace panties, a silent gesture that’s pretty damn clear. But he doesn’t peel them off, leaving me the choice. It’s my move, his fingers say.

  All mine.

  I sit up and kiss him instead, needing the anchor of his embrace.

  “You’re such a good kisser,” he says.

  I bark out a really mood-shattering laugh. “I am no such thing.”

  “If I say you’re a good kisser, then you are, Carrie. You’re not the judge of your own kissing ability.”