by C. A. Mason
“I want you to pretend I never told you about… the attack. I want you to act as though I’m normal.” She sounded as though she was rushing to get those words out before she lost her nerve. “Make love to me the way you would if I were any other woman. Please, I just want to feel normal, to forget my past and all my hang-ups about sex, and pretend that one of the sexiest men in the world finds me irresistible.”
“You are irresistible, but I can’t pretend you’re normal,” I said, stroking her face. “That would imply you’re average, and you’re anything but.” I punctuated my point with a kiss. “You’re exceptional, like no one I’ve ever met.”
She closed her eyes as though she was savoring my words, as though they were a balm that soothed her battered body and spirit. “Thank you for saying that.”
That was the second time she’d thanked me, and I couldn’t help but feel I should be the one thanking her. I’d done nothing to deserve her faith in me. I’d set out only thinking about what I hoped to gain from being with her, not what this night could mean for her. She left me feeling humbled, and more than a little ashamed of myself.
I reached into the nightstand for a condom, thinking about a time when she’d placed her future in my hands by forgoing condoms. I’d told her I was clean, and she believed me without hesitation. Naïve maybe, but also breathtaking. I wanted to forget about the reasons I’d brought her to my hotel room and just focus on the fact that she was there, in my arms, in my bed, and I was finally good enough for the woman of my dreams. I had more money than I’d ever dreamed of when we’d shared a second-hand bed in my bachelor pad. I was living my dream, and she was a part of it.
Her eyes tracked my movements as I rolled on the condom. For a split second, I feared she saw it—the tattoo to commemorate my brother’s life. It was one of the only things left from my previous life because I couldn’t bear to erase it. There were so many secrets, so many lies between us. I didn’t know how we could ever move past them all, how she would feel if she ever found out the truth, but I knew one thing for sure: I didn’t want her to go back to him. I wanted her to stay with me tonight, tomorrow, for as long as she would have me.
She was tight, but gliding inside her was effortless. She was as turned on as I was, but this time I took her slowly, locking eyes with her and letting her know that I was enjoying every second of being inside her.
“You fit me perfectly, like you were made for me,” I said.
“I bet you say that to all the girls.” She smiled before I stole her breath by picking up the pace.
I’d said that to one girl before. Her. “Fuck, you feel so good.”
I tightened my jaw as I tried to regain my composure. Her hands were bound, but she was still in control, milking me and making me wrestle for every ounce of restraint I could muster. I couldn’t curb my reaction to her. It was building too fast, coming on too strong, taking me down.
“Don’t, baby, please. I want to make you come again. I need to make you come again.”
“I love watching you like this,” she said, her eyes filled with passion as she rolled her hips beneath me. “On the edge of losing it, trying so hard to hold on. It’s so hot, so sexy.”
I released a shaky laugh as she arched her back, thrusting her tits up and inviting me to caress her nipples. I withdrew to the tip of my cock and plunged in again. Grasping her hips, I tipped her pelvis at just the right angle to hit the spot that would make her explode.
“No,” she said, tossing her head from side to side. “It’s too much, too intense. Please, Blaise. No!”
I stilled, prompting her to look me in the eye. “If you’re telling me no because you’re not ready to trust me, I understand. I’ll let you go. But if you’re telling me no because you’re afraid of what you’re feeling, I can’t let you run from it anymore. You deserve this, Maura. You deserve to feel pleasure that makes you lose yourself, makes you forget your own name.”
She hesitated before she whispered, “I don’t want you to stop.”
She’d reacted the same way the first time we made love. She feared the loss of control, but I’d convinced her to trust me. When she finally did, it was unlike anything she’d experienced before and, I suspected, since.
“That’s it. You know what you need to do,” I said, helping her reach for her release. “That’s the spot.” I maintained the right amount of pressure, the right position. “Now you just need to let go and explode for me. Your body knows what it needs, baby. Let me take you there.”
She cried out, pulling on her restraints as she thrashed, trying to pull away from me. “I can’t. It feels too...”
“You know it’s going to feel amazing.” I knew she needed this to help her remember what it felt like when she let go and trusted her lover to take care of her. I probed the elusive spot with the tip of my cock as I prevented her ass from touching the mattress.
I realized I may have said too much. The only way I could know she’d been there before was because I had been the one to take her there. I had to be careful. I couldn’t give myself away.
“Ohhhh…..” She shuddered and cried my name, the sound reverberating through the room.
I was certain the people next door could hear her, and I didn’t care. The only thing on my mind was her. Her pleasure.
“Yessss….” I found my release at the same time she did, spurred on by the relentless outpouring I felt from her.
I gave her a second to catch her breath. I held her, tenderly kissing her lips, her cheeks, her forehead. I couldn’t get enough, couldn’t express in enough ways how incredible I thought she was. I hadn’t expected her to be able to let her guard down with me, and the fact that she had reminded me of all the reasons I’d fallen in love with her fourteen years earlier. But that girl loved life. This woman was just going through the motions. Putting that sparkle back in her eye, reigniting that passion in her was one of my greatest accomplishments, bar none.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
I chuckled as I released her hands, nervous that she may have seen the depth of my feelings in my eyes. “I’m just stunned. I never expected… this.” I never expected to still love you after all these years.
“Neither did I.” She rotated her wrists when I released them, cuddling into me as soon as I lay down beside her. “You knew exactly what I needed.”
I kissed her forehead. Letting her go would be the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. “You’re easy to read.”
She smiled, planting a kiss on my chest as her hand traced my abdomen. I tensed, thinking of the tattoo that could give me away even though it was dark and the blanket covered it. I had no doubt she’d remember it. She’d commented on it numerous times, often outlining it with her fingertip as she asked about my brother, the kid he’d been before drugs got the better of him.
“I should go back to my room. I have an early flight in the morning.”
I tightened my arms around her. God, I didn’t want her to go home. Home. The town where we’d met, the people and landmarks we’d once had in common now seemed like another planet. Even the parents who’d once loved and supported me were strangers to me. I’d fallen off the face of the earth as far as they were concerned, and it had to stay that way until I found the evidence I needed to clear my name and reclaim my life.
“Forget about your flight,” I said, rolling over so I could pull her closer. When she wrapped her arms around me and slipped her leg between my legs, I felt a sense of contentment I hadn’t experienced since the last time she was in my arms. It was that feeling I remembered when I was alone in my dark, cold jail cell, the feeling that had helped me survive the endless days and nights. “You can take my jet when you’re ready to go home.”
She smiled as she tipped her head back to look at me. “That’s a sweet offer, but tomorrow’s my birthday. Jeff and my parents are planning a lunch for me.”
Her birthday. I thought of how we’d spent her birthday when we were together. I’d saved
my money to buy her a gold bracelet and took her out to the nicest restaurant in town. It meant eating peanut butter for the rest of the week, but she had been worth the sacrifice. Now I could give her anything she wanted, but she didn’t want anything from me. That was killing me.
“At least stay and have breakfast with me then,” I said. “Let me help you celebrate your birthday, angel.” Angel. I’d called her that often when we were lovers, and when she looked at me with her brow furrowed, I feared she saw something in me, something she recognized and feared.
“Thanks for the offer, but I really shouldn’t. Tonight was beyond my expectations. You’ve already given me so much.” Skimming her lips across the stubble on my chin, she said, “In many ways, you’ve given me back my life. You’ve reminded me how great sex can be when I’m not afraid to let go. Thank you for that.”
Would she take that knowledge back to her relationship with the man she intended to marry? The thought turned my stomach. I kissed her forehead as the hot sting of regret filled my eyes. If life had dealt us a different hand, this would be our bed, and I would be her husband, the man hosting her birthday party tomorrow. “Thank you for trusting me enough to let go.”
“I’m tired,” she said, stifling a yawn behind her hand. “You wore me out. I should get back to my room.”
I traced her heart-shaped face. “I meant what I said about you doing a great job for us tonight. This event was important to me, to our company, and you made it memorable.”
“I appreciate you saying that.” Instead of pulling back the covers and crawling out of bed, she traced patterns on my chest. “How did you get into this business? I mean, your rise is kind of incredible. It happened so fast, like one day you guys weren’t on anyone’s radar, and the next year, it was the only thing sports fans could talk about.”
It may have seemed like an overnight success story to her, but in prison, I had been a man on a mission. I’d learned as much as I could about business, created a business plan that outlined our rise to success, and thought about the kind of partner I needed to realize my dream of bringing mixed martial arts fighting to the masses.
“I found Malcom,” I said quietly, thinking about how nervous I’d been when the business legend had finally granted me a meeting to pitch my idea. “He was the perfect partner. He knew how to make businesses successful, and he had the money to fund the venture. I knew mixed martial arts and how to find fighters who were hungry. Blend the two, and the rest, as they say, is history.”
“I had an opportunity to speak to Malcolm tonight. He’s a lovely man, not at all what I expected.”
“Yeah, Malcolm’s great. Meeting him changed my life.”
“I saw the two of you interact. You seem close.”
“He’s like a father to me.” I was surprised by how easy it was to share that with her, to be honest with her about my feelings.
“Does that mean you don’t have a relationship with your father?” she asked. “Or has your father passed on?”
Blaise Walsh was an orphan. It was the easiest explanation for why I didn’t have any family, but I couldn’t force that lie past my lips, so I decided to change the subject. “I’m kind of hungry. I was too busy watching you to eat. How about room service?”
She looked hurt by my dismissal. “Thanks for the offer, but I really should get back to my room.” She glanced at the digital clock on the bedside table and groaned. “God, I didn’t realize how late it was. My cell died earlier, and I didn’t have a chance to run upstairs and charge it. Jeff’s probably been trying to call. He’ll be worried by now.”
“He should be worried,” I said without thinking.
“Why?”
“Because you and I have something special. You don’t have that with him.” I was taking a hell of a risk, but I didn’t get where I was by playing it safe.
“How do you know that?”
“Because you wouldn’t be here if you did. If you were my fiancé, you wouldn’t be looking for other men to help you fill a void.” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but it crept in despite my efforts. She deserved more than he could give her. She deserved to be happy. With me.
“Don’t blame Jeff for my indiscretions,” she said, sounding defensive. “He’s a good man. He loves me. What happened tonight should never have happened. I’ll have to find a way to live with the knowledge that I betrayed him.”
I wanted to tell her she was lying to herself, but that would only drive her further away, and I didn’t want her to leave on bad terms. “Are you going to tell him about what happened here tonight?” If she were my fiancée, I’d want to know—so I could hunt the guy down and force-feed him his teeth.
“I don’t know yet.” She sighed, looking miserable. “He’ll be devastated. I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t know if I can pretend nothing happened.”
I wanted him to know. Maybe then he’d see how wrong they were for each other and let her go. “You don’t seem like the type of woman who could live with that kind of lie. You’ve never been unfaithful before, have you?”
She shook her head emphatically. “No. I never thought I would be.” She sat up, pulling her knees to her chest, and raked her hands through her hair.
I knew she’d never been unfaithful to me, though guys had been tripping over themselves to get close to her. That made me crazy. She made me crazy. “What happened between us tonight happened for a reason. Maybe there’s a message in there you need to pay attention to.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, looking at me over her shoulder.
“You don’t belong with him.”
“You don’t even know me.”
God, I hated when she said that. How could she be so oblivious to our connection? Couldn’t she see that I was the only one who really knew her, who’d taken the time to peel back her layers and find her truth? “Yes, I do. I know the real you, Maura. The one no one else gets to see.”
“How can you say that after one night?” she asked, sounding incredulous and a little scared. “We had great sex. End of story.” She threw her legs over the edge of the bed, her back to me.
I traced a finger down her spine, flinching when I saw the jagged scar at the base of her back. That must have been from the rock that stopped her descent. I reached for her wrist when she tried to stand. “We had great sex because you let me in. You trusted me. Tell me the truth, have you ever had great sex with him?” When she shook me off instead of responding, I smirked and said, “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Chapter Seven
I had to wake up early the next morning because I wanted to catch Maura before she left for the airport. I’d managed to bribe a hotel employee to find out which room she was in, promising him it would be our little secret. He was hesitant to tell me, but when I alluded to the fact we’d spent the night together and I wanted to surprise her with a gift before she left town, he agreed. Of course, the five hundred bucks I offered helped.
I’d also contacted the hotel manager to ask that the manager of the jewelry store in the lobby meet me there before breakfast. The store didn’t open for hours, but it was Maura’s birthday. I had to get her something to remind her how special I thought she was.
With the wrapped gift in hand, I made my way to her room. I was nervous. She’d been annoyed with me when she left my room, and I didn’t think I’d be well-received this morning, but I didn’t intend to let that stop me.
After I’d rapped on her door several times, she finally answered. Her hair was wet, and she was wearing a hotel bathrobe. “What are you doing here? I thought you were my assistant.”
“Happy Birthday, beautiful.”
Her eyes softened when she saw the carefully wrapped package in my hand. “Blaise, you didn’t have to do that.”
“I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to. May I come in?” I looked past her into the room. It was much smaller than my suite, with just a queen-sized bed, bathroom, and table for two tucked away in the corner. The bed de
finitely dominated the space, and my thoughts. I wondered if I could change her mind about leaving if I could lure her back to bed.
“Okay, but just for a minute. I have to finish getting ready. I have to leave for the airport soon.”
I looked for a room service tray, satisfied when I found none. “You haven’t eaten yet?”
“No, I was just going to grab a muffin on my way out,” she said, closing the door behind me.
“I thought that may be the case, so I ordered breakfast for us. It should be here soon.”
As if on cue, someone knocked at the door.
“Allow me,” I said, opening it for the uniformed gentleman pushing a service tray. “Please, come in.”
Maura’s eyes were drawn to the white roses on the lower shelf, three dozen in a crystal vase. I knew she couldn’t take them with her, but I wanted her to know I’d thought of them nonetheless.
The server set the roses on the small desk in the foyer before setting up the breakfast trays at the table beneath the window. He opened the champagne I’d ordered and poured it into two glasses with orange juice. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
“No, that’ll be all, thank you.” I peeled a twenty off the roll of cash in my pocket and handed it to him.
“Thank you, sir,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
“You shouldn’t have done all this,” she said as I closed the door. “It’s too much. I—”
“You’re wrong.” I stepped toward her. “It’s not nearly enough, but it’s the best I could do on short notice.” I handed her the box. “Open it.”
Her hand trembled as she reached for it. “I really shouldn’t accept a gift from you.”
I knew she was thinking about how she would explain my gift to her fiancé. I smiled when I realized there was no logical way to explain it. My gift wasn’t the kind of thing most women would or could buy for themselves on a whim. “Yes, you should. Go on, open it. You know you’re dying to know what it is.”
