Ties That Bind (The Escort, #3)

by Kristen Strassel

  “What are you waiting for? You might have the day off, but I don’t.” I pulled the curtain back and stepped into the spray. I peeked back at him, shielding my body with the curtain.

  Jagger had his cock in his hand as he approached me. We needed this. Last night we fell into bed in a desperate declaration of devotion, needing to show that we loved each other, just the way we were, scars and all. Especially the scars, because he’d trusted me with his deepest, darkest secret. And I was still here.

  He ripped the curtain away and his gaze fell to my belly. “I can’t wait until the baby starts showing.”

  I stepped back, making room for him, and ran my hand over my stomach. Jagger made a noise that was somewhere between a purr and a growl.

  I laughed. “Everyone talks about the beautiful, glowing pregnant woman, but everyone leaves out the part about the swelling and the sweating.”

  I bypassed the part about peeing while sneezing. He was about to fuck me against the wall and I had no desire to change his mind.

  “Some people mention that stuff.” He pushed my wet hair away from my face, and he was fuzzy through the steam between us. “I see it more as you love me enough to go through all that. I know this isn’t what you planned, Leah.”

  “But I wouldn’t want it any other way.” And I meant it. I wanted this baby. Jagger deserved to be someone’s dad. Not only because he had his last chance so cruelly ripped away from him, but because someone should have the privilege of learning to see the world through Jagger’s eyes.

  The wall rattled when he backed me against it. Our hands were knotted together, and he had me pinned just where he wanted me. Water pelted my face and chest. Jagger’s knee was between my legs, but he didn’t do anything right away. It was sexy as hell. As much as I liked looking at him, I loved the way he looked at me even more.

  He dropped to his knees. Still holding my hands, he kissed just below my belly button. A swarm of butterflies rushed to meet his lips. “Move your legs apart,” he murmured.

  I almost lost my balance when I did as he asked, but Jagger held me firm. He sunk down, marking each inch of progress with a kiss, stopping just above my slit. I tried to slip out of his grasp. His hair clung to his cheeks and the tops of his shoulders. I was dying to push it away from his face, guide him with a good tug, and reward him with something much gentler. But Jagger was having none of it. He was in control and as much as it frustrated me to hand over the reins, I was more than willing to reap the rewards.

  He flicked his tongue, hitting my clit. My head rolled against the wall at first contact and my feet slid further apart. I had no fear of falling. He swirled his tongue, nipping and sucking, and I throbbed in time with the beat of the water against the wall. Jagger caught every buck of my hips, every sway. He had me exactly where he wanted me. The sensations became more intense, and I cried out as they built. Jagger chuckled against my skin when my protests echoed around him, but he didn’t stop.

  My bones were as solid as the water that beaded on my skin, and my feet kept sliding further apart. If I went down in a split, the only way I was getting up was if Jagger pulled me out of it. It was kind of like the pee sneeze, I didn’t want it to happen. I bent my knees. It was a much more graceful way to go down. Jagger guided me to the tub, positioning me so he could continue his advance. It was a relief to be on my back. He knelt between my splayed legs, one against the wall, the other pushing the curtain away from the rim. Now his fingers were free, and he didn’t leave them idle. He thrust inside me, hard and fast, and let his thumb take over for his tongue. When he sat up, his hair was everywhere, cock still hard and needy, but the sexiest thing about him was his eyes. His gaze was glued to my body, making sure he didn’t miss the instant that he detonated the explosion he’d tripped inside of me.

  I lay there panting, waiting for my vision to right itself. I didn’t know if it was the water making Jagger splotchy or the remnants of my orgasm. Still shaking, I sat up and reached for him. I wanted his cock.

  He held me back by my shoulders and shook his head. “I owed you one.”

  I groaned, so frigging frustrated. The first night I was here, I didn’t orgasm. I’d been exhausted and it didn’t matter how many times I explained to it to him, he didn’t understand that sometimes, shit happens. Or in that case, didn’t happen. “We’re not keeping score.”

  But that was how Jagger expressed himself. Photography and fucking. He thought he’d failed me.

  “Watch me do it,” he said softly. He lowered his gaze and put his hand on his shaft, not entertaining any protests. With a sigh, I sat back to watch the show.

  We’d done this the first night we met. Got ourselves off in front of each other. At the time, I didn’t understand why he asked for that. Now I did. He’d watched me so he could figure out how I liked to be fucked.

  Jagger wanted to show me something.

  I drank it all in. He was on his knees, water running down the defined muscles of his chest and stomach like a thousand little arrows leading me to his hand pumping his shaft. As much as I wanted it inside me, and the leftover rumble of my orgasm confirmed that, I loved watching him. I could’ve considered it a selfish move on his part, but I did this to him. I brought him to this place. At this perspective, with him between my legs, I saw so much more. The rise and fall of his chest. The twitch of his lips. His hand trembling at the tip of his cock. His balls hitching up just before the first ribbon of cum landed on my thigh.

  Only then did he meet my gaze. Something was different this time.

  Jagger was starting to heal.

  Chapter Nine

  Jagger

  I’d been cast as the villain in my own story for so long I’d started to believe it. But miraculously, Leah didn’t. Ever since our relationship had become more complicated than a business transaction, I’d dreaded the day I had to tell her that I’d failed the person who depended on me the most. It didn’t matter how hard I’d tried to make it better. I couldn’t make it work.

  She was staying.

  I watched her get ready to meet with Shannon. Her nerves were obvious, she couldn’t complete one task without moving to another. She straddled my lap, pushing me down to the mattress. “When are you leaving?”

  “When you do.” I hooked into her bra straps and pulled her down to me. Her curls hung in my face, she smelled fucking amazing. Something rumbled deep inside me and I had to force myself to sit up. “Claire does not like to be kept waiting.”

  Leah sighed and crawled off the bed. “Any other tips you can give me about her?”

  “If she wants something, she’ll spend any amount of money to get it. And if she likes what you do, she’ll tell her friends.”

  “Oh yeah?” She reappeared after pulling a dress over her head. “What kinds of things does she spend money on?”

  I swallowed hard. This was dangerous territory, but in order to give her my future, she had to make peace with my past. “She used to host boat parties. Her husband—“

  Leah’s eyes were huge. “She’s married?”

  “Yeah. A lot of my former clients are. It wasn’t my job to question their marriage.” I expected the darkness that fell over Leah’s face. “She hired me. He had to know she was bringing the boat out—it was a yacht with five bedrooms. We had a staff. Not exactly something she could pull off on the down low. Anyway, it would be me and a group of her friends, we’d spend the weekend lost somewhere in the Caribbean.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Whatever they asked me to.” There was no need to elaborate. She nodded, finished clipping in her earring, and left the bedroom.

  I followed her to the living room. “Leah.”

  She didn’t turn around right away. When she did, she wouldn’t meet my gaze. Fuck. “It doesn’t do me any good to lie to you or leave out details of my job.”

  “Right,” she said softly. “I’d rather hear it from you than from someone else.”

  “I won’t lie to you. Even when it’s ugl
y. You need to know these things about me. I know you’ve never been comfortable with it, but I’d rather lay it all on the line now than have it come out later and look like I hid something from you. I can’t change the past. But I can do my best to keep it from ruining what we have now.”

  “It doesn’t ruin it.” She wasn’t convincing. “My life was a complete one-eighty from yours. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how you’ve lived, because you’re not that different than me. When these stories don’t belong to the person I know.”

  “It’s me.” I slipped my hand around her waist, so fucking thankful when she relaxed. “Doing the right thing didn’t work out for either of us. But it brought us together.” I nuzzled against her cheek, loving the sound she probably didn’t intend to make. “If you want me to take you out on a boat and ravish you in the middle of the ocean, I would be more than happy to oblige.”

  She trembled under my touch. “Make it soon.” She brushed her lips over mine. “Before I’m too big to enjoy it.”

  **

  I’d been working way too much. I couldn’t say too hard. I spent most of the days at the gallery talking to people who came in from the street, praying they’d buy something. After they left, empty-handed, I’d go back to manipulating the same pictures I’d had on my hard drive forever. I was already sick of it. I was doing it all wrong, trying way too hard as Leah pointed out after she effortlessly paid my rent for the month with one conversation. This had been my dream forever, my one-way ticket out of escorting. I refused to fuck it up.

  But I was.

  It was art. I had to look at it in another light.

  Leah spent a lot of time with me at the gallery, and it made clinging to the place seem okay. But with her gone, planting roots in the city she’d moved to just for me, I realized she needed more. I had to give her more. There was no question I had her support, but that didn’t give me an excuse to let myself fail.

  A new property had been listed on a blog I checked out regularly. I’d contributed to it a couple times, so I got advance notice of the posts. Once the posts went public, it was a shitshow for months. People came to check it out for themselves, and they never left it the same way they found it. It pissed me off. I made sure to have respect for any property I visited.

  This one was a compound, a mansion said to have been owned by a drug cartel in the eighties. It would be gaudy and over the top, and just old enough to show signs of deterioration. Similar to what I usually did, but different enough to add variety to my collection. I didn’t have to go far. It was on the outskirts of the city, tucked into a neighborhood with equally huge houses. I’d been there a few times before, for parties or private clients, never knowing the compound was there.

  I parked my motorcycle on the street and snuck in through a couple of broken slats in the fence. The grass was brown from heat and neglect, but it wasn’t overgrown. Not a good sign. I’d get a little closer, and if it looked like someone was living here, I’d get the hell out.

  The plate glass doors were broken. Jagged glass stuck out in a starburst pattern, but the remnants had been cleaned up. I stopped to take a few photos, not convinced I was in the right place. Sometimes the blog posts listed the wrong address, but so far, things were sort of checking out. I stuck my head inside, and stillness greeted me. I’d stick to the bottom floor, making sure I could escape. If there was a squatter living here, they’d have no regard for how they got rid of me.

  Someone important had lived here and left in a hurry. The paintings that had been left behind made my mouth water. If there were any way I could get these things out of here and to the gallery on the back of my bike I’d do it in a second. Instead, they’d serve as the background for my portraits. Everything I came across was still bright and vibrant under a layer of dust. Blue and orange tiles hid behind rotting soft white leather furniture. The main rooms were clustered around a courtyard. The fountain in the center of it was choked with weeds, but the mermaid patterns were still visible in the chipped tile.

  That was my shot. I crawled on the dead grass, capturing the forgotten beauty and the flowering weeds. At first I thought I’d change these to black and white, but the color and lack thereof was what told the story. Whoever owned this house hated to leave it.

  My memory card was almost full, and I knew I had enough shots for a new collection. I might even ask Leah if she wanted to try to edit a few of them. She’d be a natural at it, with her experience in design. It would be another way to bring us together. I couldn’t control what happened when she went to meet with Claire this afternoon. I’d hated the look on Leah’s face when I told her about the boat parties. I knew she had a hard time believing I’d quit escorting cold turkey. For her.

  We hadn’t done anything fun since she’d moved down here. I’d been at the gallery almost every day. When I’d called Claudia that morning and asked her to cover the day, I’d forgotten about Leah’s meeting with Claire. We had to figure out a schedule that gave us time to get used to living together before everything changed again in roughly nine months.

  And we had a wedding to plan.

  I couldn’t wait to be married to her.

  Nothing looked the same when I got back to the sidewalk. Not unusual—I’d been concentrating on finding the property and not my surroundings. The outside world often seemed different when I left a property. The shock that things were still working. A couple of guys were standing near my motorcycle. Fuck. I didn’t carry anything like a knife for defense, and I knew I’d way overstepped my bounds this time. All the properties I explored still had a pulse, no matter how faint it was. This one was far from taking its last breath. If they’d had anything to do with the property I’d just taken from, even if it were only images, I was in deep shit.

  The guys nodded when I approached. “Nice bike, man.”

  “Thanks.”

  And they walked away.

  No, nothing was the same. Sitting on the bike, I watched their giant properties swallow them. I realized I was finally like them. A man with a soon to be wife and family. Who shouldn’t be taking stupid risks.

  This was the last abandoned property I’d ever photograph.

  I hoped I did it justice.

  Chapter Ten

  Leah

  Shannon was half good luck charm, half godsend. Just having her with me instantly gave me an air of legitimacy. I’d met Claire once in person, and since then only talked to her over the phone and email. After this morning, I knew way more about her than I needed to for her design project. So far she’d been pleasant and collaborative. My main worry, when it came to this project, was if I’d be able to see past the fact she and her friends had taken my boyfriend . . . Fiancé . . . out to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and had their way with him.

  Whatever he did, I knew he’d left a good impression. And it was probably the only reason I had this job. I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth.

  “I’m so hungover.” Shannon dropped her head against the passengers’ side window, and popped up quickly. “Sorry, that’s not professional at all.”

  Crap. I needed her to work her charm now more than ever.

  “You bought me a pregnancy test yesterday. We’ve crossed all the boundaries.” I laughed. I was still glad I didn’t have her stay with me and Jagger. “Good thing we’re going to brunch. At least tell me it’s a good hangover.”

  There was a difference.

  Her grin was too big for her face. “Oh, yeah. I drank sangria on the beach until way too late and danced with a gorgeous man all night. I don’t know what it is about this city, but everywhere I look there are hot men.” She fanned herself.

  “Sangria is my drink. Was my drink.” I laughed. “I’ll have Jagger bring a pitcher to the hospital after I deliver. Until then I need to live vicariously through you.”

  “We swapped numbers before we left the club.” Shannon sighed, obviously smitten. “Should I call him or text him?”

  “Don’t you have a boyfriend?” This was
a no judgment zone, but I remembered her talking about him all the time at the office.

  Her next sigh carried more weight. “I did. He didn’t want to move to New York with me when I transferred to the Great Start staff. And he didn’t think a long distance relationship would work. Basically he asked me to choose the job or him. I picked the job.”

  “I’m sorry.” If I hadn’t been suspended from my on-air duties, Shannon would still be in Washington with her boyfriend. But instead she’d followed me to the tropics. “I know you really liked him.”

  “I did, but he didn’t want me to be the more successful one. It terrified him. He could’ve moved to New York, no sweat. He works in finance. Hello, Wall Street. It would’ve been great, but he’d rather be stubborn.”

  “At least he showed his true colors early. And you were strong enough to see it and walk away from it.” I was proud of her for making the right choice. I pulled into the restaurant parking lot. “It took me too long to do that.”

  Shannon shook her head. “You’re a badass, Leah.”

  “No one’s calling to cast me in any superhero roles yet, but I won’t argue with your assessment. Are you going to see . . . ” She hadn’t told me his name yet.

  “Paul. Yeah, if we can make it work.”

  “I’ll text you all night long to make sure you’re not out with a serial killer.” The hostess eyed me when she sat us at the booth. “Maybe he’ll be enough to keep you in Miami.”

  Shannon scoffed. “He’s just for fun. I knew I was staying the minute you called me. You wouldn’t let me say yes.”

  “You’d never been to Miami before.” I didn’t have to look at the menu. I knew what I wanted. Eggs Benedict. “And I’ll be honest with you. Claire’s my first client here. If I hadn’t talked to her, I’d have nothing to offer you.”