Lessons Learned (The Gifted Realm Book 2)

by Jillian Neal

  “Certainly sir, and where might you be headed after dinner tonight?”

  He knew better than answering that question, so he smiled and shook his head. “Haven’t decided yet.”

  The disappointment in the guy’s eyes had Rainer grinding his teeth.

  The check took longer to arrive than any of the food had taken. Rainer tried not to panic. He kept his hands on Emily as he brushed his lips over her cheeks and neck, and inhaled the scent of her mixed with the sensuous perfume she was wearing. It was one he’d given her on her last birthday, and she’d worn it with every intention of driving him wild.

  Finally, the waiter returned, and Rainer paid the bill quickly, before leaving a tip on the table and standing to help Emily out.

  He cursed as they approached the door. He’d known all along; he just hadn’t known how to stop it.

  “What?” Emily studied the restaurant again.

  He gestured his head to the sidewalk, and she understood why the check had been held so long. With a sigh, she let Rainer drape his sport coat over her bare shoulders. She’d been slammed in the press lately for dressing too provocatively for a Governor’s daughter, and Rainer had been called out for not insisting that she dress more conservatively.

  “Em, no one is supposed to know we’re here!”

  “Well, too late for that.”

  He shoved the door open hard and into a cameraman. A whispered expletive left his lips on the wind. The cab that had been ordered for them was almost a block away. Nightingales wanted shots of them in front of the restaurant. It was good advertisement.

  “Why are you in New York, Rainer?” the question came from several reporters. “Have you broken it off with Samantha Peterson?”

  Rainer moved, so Emily was between the brick wall of the restaurant and his body. They started to run.

  “Is this a reconciliation?” Reporters raced to keep up.

  With a dramatic eye-roll, Rainer reminded himself that answering any of the questions only made things worse, so he kept Emily shielded, and they moved as quickly as they were able.

  An overzealous photographer leapt in front of them and snapped a picture right in Emily’s face.

  Rainer glared, “Get the hell away from her, now!” He shoved the photographer out of her way.

  “Are you here for the Angels, Emily?” sang a female reporter, who was keeping up with them.

  “Is this for the wedding?” called another.

  “Where are you staying?” Every reporter surrounding them asked.

  Mercifully, the cabby was holding the door for them.

  “Thank you,” Rainer allowed himself to breathe as the door shut.

  “You famous, or something, kid?” the cabby huffed as he fell back in the driver’s seat.

  “Or something,” Rainer lamented.

  The cabby chuckled heartily.

  “Call your uncle, baby. He doesn’t want all of this at his apartment, and I don’t want anyone to know why we’re here.”

  Emily nodded, and pulled her phone from her purse. “You ready to play ‘dodge-the-reporter’?”

  Rainer chuckled at her eagerness to play the game they’d invented years before, right after his father’s death.

  “Where to, Sinatra?” the driver, in his early sixties with a pronounced beer gut, inquired. With a quick glance at Emily, Rainer grinned.

  “The Waldorf Astoria, and take it nice and slow.”

  Rainer pulled his cell as well, and called for another cab to meet them behind the Waldorf.

  “I’m sorry,” Emily apologized to her uncle. “No, that sounds great. Okay, we’ll see you in the morning.”

  Rainer took a cursory glance at the cars surrounding their cab. It was difficult to tell which of them contained reporters and cameras, but he assumed most of them did.

  “I can speed it up. Might lose some of ‘em,” the cabby offered kindly.

  Rainer smiled, and shook his head. “Not trying to lose them. I want them all there.”

  The cabby shrugged and slowed the cab more, per Rainer’s request.

  “The Waldorf,” he called as he moved to open the door for Emily.

  “Thanks a lot.” Rainer handed the man the fare with a generous tip.

  “Okay,” Emily laughed as she stepped out of the cab, with Rainer right behind her.

  This time though they moved slowly. Rainer wrapped his arm over her, and led her towards the vast entrance of the Waldorf Astoria.

  He pulled the door open for her, and paused as she engaged him in a long, drawn kiss. The cameras clicked feverishly. They quickly joined other tourists in the grand lobby.

  The cameras were pressed to the glass doors, and continued to snap away.

  Rainer guided Emily onto one of the elevators. They exited on the tenth floor and then switched to another. They rode elevators for several long minutes until they finally took another one down to the lobby, laughing the entire time.

  They rode the elevator until it had acquired numerous other guests, then they exited with the group of people and discreetly moved to the service entrance door of the hotel.

  Rainer glanced around constantly to make certain no one saw them. He pushed the door to the loading exit open and led Emily to the waiting cab, camera-free.

  She beamed. “We’re getting pretty good at that.”

  Rainer sighed, but nodded his begrudged agreement. It would be nice to just take a cab to their actual hotel without having to play games, but that didn’t seem like a possibility in the near future.

  He held the door for her and instructed the cabby to take them to the Gansevoort.

  They switched off their phones as soon as they entered the cab. An overzealous reporter might go so far as to try and ping their phone and get their location when they figured out that Rainer and Emily were not staying at the Waldorf.

  The chase may have annoyed him, but it certainly did have their blood pumping, and the thrill had Emily ready for more.

  She leaned into Rainer in the back of the cab, and with one long, sultry, anticipatory gaze, he devoured her mouth. He let his hand slide down her neck and used the cover his jacket provided to caress her breast as she panted slightly.

  “I want you bad, baby,” his whispered desires were barely audible even to her. She let her eyes close as she felt his energy swirl rapidly around her.

  He tenderly caressed her face with his hand and kissed her exposed neck. He watched as her eyes darkened and her lips swelled. The rebellious desire to be with her alone, despite the Realm’s insistence that their whereabouts were to always be known, drove his voracious hunger.

  “I want to touch you and taste you. I want to feel you around me. You’re always so tight, baby. I need to feel it.” He demanded in a reverent growl.

  His urgency nearly drove her over the edge without him even touching her. Her energy spiked rapidly and made him ache to give her what she so clearly wanted.

  “The Gansevoort,” the cabby called. He rolled his eyes at what was going on in his back seat.

  “Thanks,” Rainer answered. He passed more than enough money through the window and pulled Emily out of the cab quickly. They raced through the lobby because they didn’t want to be seen, and because the need to go somewhere, anywhere more private, quaked in their rhythms and desires.

  Dessert

  They entered the elevator, and waited for an older couple to exit on the sixth floor. With every gained floor, they gave each other looks that could ignite the entire hotel.

  The couple smiled at them knowingly as they left Rainer and Emily completely alone. The sliding doors took far too long to shut, but Rainer let the elevator climb a little more before he summoned and casted the elevator. He halted it in its tracks.

  Emily moaned excitedly as he pressed her to the wall with his body. He caressed her face and guided her mouth to his as he traced his fingers down her neck and over her cleavage. With his other hand, he hoisted her skirt up as she reached and wrapped her hands around his strai
ning length. She began massaging him heatedly as he growled.

  “Spread your legs for me, baby.” He ordered as a loud evulsive moan cried from her, and she did as he’d asked.

  He sucked her bottom lip, pulling his teeth over it, as he plunged her depths with his fingers. She throbbed around his hand, and he dropped to his knees in front of her. He pushed her back against the elevator wall, lifted the skirt to reveal her, and separated her slightly. He began circling his tongue slowly along her clit until it pulsed.

  A delicious gasp of approval panted from her body.

  “Take me to bed, now!” She demanded.

  Rainer forced himself to stop after he’d dipped his tongue inside of her. He allowed the taste of her nectar to satisfy him momentarily.

  Releasing the cast on the elevator, he ordered himself to wait as she righted her dress.

  After he locked onto the energy of the lift motor on the elevator again, he forced it to climb as fast as it would safely go. He engaged Emily in deep, heated kisses as they rocketed skyward.

  “I don’t give a damn about the press or anything else. Right now, I just want you. I’m gonna lay you out and have my way with you. Take you hard, make you feel it.” He stated like a man possessed. Desperation took over his entire body.

  “Please, Rainer, that’s all I’ve wanted all day.”

  Mercifully, the elevator opened on their floor, and Rainer pulled her towards their room.

  He summoned magnetic energy from the air around him and touched the card reader on the door lock. It opened instantly.

  He spun Emily into the suite and kicked the door shut as he backed her up to the wall. With a yearning like he’d never felt before, he turned her and had her chest against the wall as he pulled down her zipper and watched as it fell away from her.

  “So damn gorgeous.” He husked as he slid his hands down her rib cage then to her waist. He moved quickly to massage her backside on full display, with her in nothing but heels.

  She spun suddenly. Her eyes were on fire as she quickly unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled his tie off and unbuttoned his pants. He dropped trou quickly.

  She dragged her hands down his chest and traced her fingers over his nipples as his breath caught.

  A low, guttural, groan echoed from him.

  Simply unable to wait any longer, he lifted her into his arms. He laid her out on the large bed that had been turned down for them.

  He traced his hands down her stomach and watched her muscles shiver in anticipation as he let his thumbs trace both of her lips. He barely touched her. He throbbed as he watched her writhe wildly.

  “Did you set the cast, baby?” Rainer squeezed his eyes shut as he forced himself to halt long enough to ask. She shook her head. He summoned from the erotic energy that was thrumming all around them. He casted her and closed off her womb.

  He added in his own soothing rhythms so she felt no pain, and then he continued to let his hands track down her inner thighs, past her knees, and over her calves, until he caught her left ankle.

  He unbuckled the high heel and pulled it off. After deciding that he planned to set her free of more than just the deliciously high heels, he moved to the other foot.

  She bucked and pushed what he wanted to taste into his face as he stood over her. He caught her hips as she let her legs fall open for him.

  “Please, Rainer.”

  He blew cold breath across the fevered space as he opened her slightly. She cried out for him. He leaned in, and began to suck and lick her swollen lips. He consumed everything her body gave up for him. She tasted like heaven. Her breath stuttered as he delved between her folds.

  Her moans grew frantic. She couldn’t keep from bucking under him. Her energy was too potent. It filled the air around him. He wanted to drown in it. She grasped his hair and pushed him deeper. He growled from her need.

  “I’m gonna…” her warning was cut off by her gasped moan, but that was exactly what he wanted.

  “That’s it baby. Come in my mouth.” He ordered as he lapped his tongue in rhythmic patterns and gave her the force and friction she begged for.

  She broke hard, screaming out his name, and gripping the bed sheets underneath her as she writhed.

  He drank her, then moved to her thigh, replaced his tongue with his fingers, and built her again. He massaged inside of her and slowly edged to where she wanted to be touched. He traced his fingers up over her clit with his other hand as he sucked her inner thigh with frantic urgency until he knew he’d marked her.

  She went wild as he stroked his fingers over that magic spot once more, and she spiraled into ecstasy.

  Their energy danced and rolled in red, heated need. It was so desperate to be joined, that the air seemed to vibrate with their longing rhythms.

  “Take me now. I want it.” Her voice was rough and raspy in her need. With that, and a wild look in her eye, she flipped over on all fours, shaking her backside in his face. “I want it now.”

  “Oh, hell yeah.” Rainer had never seen anything so intoxicatingly sexy. An ardent growl spilled from his lungs. He almost lost it all just from watching her like that as she begged to be taken.

  He clenched his jaw, and ordered himself to remain in control. He grasped her backside and jerked her back over him piercing through her. He’d never felt anything so exquisite. He’d never been so deeply wrapped in the hot, wet perfection of her, and the view was utter bliss. He watched himself enter her repeatedly.

  She broke again. They were coming faster now. She fell to the bed with a plea for him not to stop. A moment later, she made another demand that threatened to end it all as she turned back to stare into his eyes letting him see the fiery storm swirling in their emerald depths. Her back dipped low and her sexy backside tensed against his sac with every pounding thrust.

  “Harder,” she demanded, and he pounded into her. He forced her open past his hilt as he drove her hard. She shuddered and pulsed around him. She swelled fiercely, and he couldn’t hold out any longer.

  “Take it, baby. I’m gonna fill you up.” His demands sent her over the edge again, and he exploded inside her. He collapsed on top of her, and tried desperately to catch his breath and to remember to move so he wasn’t lying directly on top of her. He rolled to his back and panted in utter ecstasy.

  “Okay, wow,” she gushed when she’d caught her breath. As everything they’d just done filtered back through his hazy bliss-filled recollections, Rainer grimaced suddenly.

  He sat up and caressed over her backside. She still hadn’t turned over.

  “Let me see your leg, baby.”

  Her brow knitted as she eased over on her back.“Why?”

  Once she was on her back, he spread her legs again and revealed a rather large, purple mark on her upper thigh. It was the approximate shape of his open mouth.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She sat up with her brow still furrowed. “Uh, what are you sorry for? That was the most amazing sex we’ve ever had. Seriously, I will think about that forever.”

  Caught between being ecstatic that she was so satisfied, and mildly panicked over what he’d done to her, he traced his finger tenderly over the mark. “For this,” he ran his finger gently over it again.

  “Oh,” she studied the marking.

  “I didn’t even know. Rainer, please do not let this ruin tonight. Seriously, that was amazing, and you made me feel amazing.”

  Her promises eased his guilt-ridden conscience, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d let his control slip, and that he’d taken things too far.

  Governor Haydenshire’s face flitted through his mind.

  “I think it’s sexy,” Emily declared. Rainer couldn’t halt his broad grin.

  He agreed, and decided that he didn’t care what anyone else thought. She was his, and whatever he’d done that had her up on all fours, begging to be taken harder, he was all over.

  “Well, since you are currently employed by the Arlington Angels, and you dress out an
d shower with eleven other women every day, I think I probably should heal it up.”

  Rainer summoned from his own energy that was still spinning around the room and still joined to hers. He touched his hand to the hickey, cooled the energy in his hand to remove the swelling, then he sped up the blood flow around the area, and added in heavy doses of his own energy to force her body to heal. The mark began to slowly disappear under his casting.

  “Do you remember the one before? At least you know how to heal them now.” She laughed as they watched the purple mark fade away.

  Rainer chuckled as he recalled that night before he’d begun at the Academy. Emily still had a year left in Non-Gifted high school. They’d been up in her loft drowning their devastation over not going to school together, for the first time since preschool, in each other.

  He’d known then, just like he knew that night, that he’d been marking his territory. Since Rainer hadn’t begun his Gifted education yet, he had no idea how to heal her. She’d worn turtlenecks for several days, despite the hot weather.

  Garrett had been over for dinner several nights that week just as he always had. He’d waited until the Governor and Mrs. Haydenshire were in the living room, and then he’d grabbed Emily and jerked the turtleneck away from her neck. After laughing hysterically and teasing both of them, he’d quickly healed the mark for her and had never said a word to their parents.

  When Rainer was finished and the mark was gone, Emily slid languidly off of the bed. “Let’s go take a bath in that pool-sized tub.”

  “Why? You’re not hurting, are you?” He had to make certain. He had to take care of her. It was who he was. He was her shield and protector. Every rhythm strain of his Gifted energy rang with the need to keep her safe and let her know how much he adored her.

  “No, I wanted to take a bath with you, and we only get to stay here tonight.”

  Her eye-roll let Rainer know he was completely overreacting.

  In the Daylight

  They made use of the bed once more before falling asleep, and used the steam shower the next morning before meeting Tad and Nathan for brunch.