by Helena Maeve
“You’re telling me we’re shouting at each other because your boss overreacted?”
“That’s not—yes.” I propped my hands against my hips. “But that’s not the point.”
Ashley rolled his eyes. “You can barely see the damn thing!”
“I’m wearing makeup now!”
We hadn’t graduated to shouting until Ashley said the word. I felt my face heat with a mixture of annoyance and mortification. I held up my hands in surrender. “This is ridiculous. I’m going home—”
“It’s just a hickey,” Ashley opined. “What’s the big deal?”
“My clients—”
“Expect you to help them pick out clothes, yes. I doubt any of them care what you do in your spare time—or how.” Ashley ran a hand over his face. “Look, I’m sorry I jeopardized your reputation, but you had the hickey yesterday, too.”
I remembered him biting my shoulder as he got me off. I’d just had the foresight to wear a cowl neck that fortuitously concealed the bruise yesterday.
“I’m not blaming you for the goddamn hickey,” I shot back. “I love the goddamn hickey! I want more hickeys, all right?”
My voice echoed around Ashley’s otherwise silent living room. He arched an eyebrow, the corners of his lips twitching.
“Don’t laugh at me,” I warned, but it was useless. I was smiling, too.
Ashley sighed. “I was wondering when we’d have our first fight.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “I had money on three weeks in.”
“Your faith in my ability not to bite your head off is heartwarming.”
I wanted to hang on to my righteous indignation as he bridged the few feet of empty space between us, but it was impossible. I gave up the attempt as Ashley cupped my face in his hands. I pouted, hoping he’d kiss me. He obliged.
We made out with soft, nipping pecks for a few moments before Ashley broke away for breath. “You want to stay over? I promise I’ll wake you in the morning this time.”
“You’d better,” I said and kissed him again.
The couch became our next port of call, a spread of takeout menus laid before us, my feet in Ashley’s lap. He might have been an ace in the kitchen, but he wasn’t averse to a door-delivered pizza now and again. I could think of no better way to make up after a fight.
I told him about my day as we waited for our food, then Ashley took over, letting me eat while he filled me in on the latest about the book he was working on. He’d submitted the first draft of the first five chapters today—something he reported with a certain degree of pride.
“Does this mean I’ll see the end of presidential biographies soon?” I asked hopefully as I plucked a castoff olive from his plate.
Ashley didn’t believe in olives. He’d only ordered them for my sake. It was more touching than a diamond ring.
“Keep dreaming. I’m still narrowing down my sources. So much conflicting information, so little time…”
“So many mistresses, so little time,” I countered.
He flashed me a grin. “That, too.”
“Oh, no. I know what that smile means. I’m not finished with dinner!”
“I could persuade you,” Ashley said, wriggling his eyebrows. “I’m very persuasive.”
“Yes, you are,” I agreed, licking grease off my thumb. “But nobody comes between me and my pizza.” I didn’t expect him to persist and was relieved when he didn’t. Javier had been too bright to comment on my diet, but there had been men in my life who thought their opinion was welcome. “Speaking of your, uh, persuasive skills… Would I be correct to assume I’m not the first woman you’ve gone all caveman on?”
Ashley snorted a laugh behind his Coke can. “Is that what you want to call it?”
“What would you call it?”
“Dominating my partners.”
I waved a hand as if to say same thing. I’d spent my formative years in France, where sexuality was hardly a secret. I didn’t have a standing membership to fetish clubs, but I’d known people who did—Melanie included. My tastes were slightly more pedestrian. Approaching someone who didn’t have expectations that I’d walk all over them in high heels took enough energy. Whips and chains were above my pay grade.
And yet I couldn’t deny that Ashley’s brand of kink turned me on.
“No,” he confessed, “you’re not the first.”
“Your ex-wife?” I ventured, trying to be helpful.
He paled. “Oh, no. No, no. Carmen is very—she’s good people, but we were never like that.”
I offered him a sympathetic smile, the best I could do. Marriage was mysterious, unknown territory for me.
Ashley rolled his shoulders against the backrest of the couch. “I married my best friend. Then we had Marissa. And we both worked long hours…”
“You grew apart.”
“Yes,” Ashley said. He seemed relieved that I understood. Having grown up with one parent in the ground and another in prison, an amiable separation seemed like an elegant solution.
I finished my wedge of pizza and set the plate aside. “But there have been other women since.” It wasn’t much of a guess. Ashley was too charming not to be attractive to women, especially when he tried to muddle his way through French.
Accents made many of us melt. It was practically science.
“A couple,” he confirmed. “Nothing serious. And before you ask, no, no one in my daughter’s age bracket.”
“Except for me.”
Ashley groaned, much to my amusement. “Don’t remind me… Marissa won’t let it go.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to try to suppress a smile. “I’m sorry.” I had made the worst possible first impression. I didn’t look forward to meeting her again—Marissa had inherited her dad’s snark and she had nothing to lose by putting us both on the spot.
In her shoes, I might have done it too.
“You talk about me with her?” I asked, quick to curb my thoughts before I spiraled down the rabbit hole into dark depths.
Ashley froze, a deer caught in the headlights expression on his face. “She’s curious. You know how kids are…”
I knew how I’d been at twenty—a rebellious know-it-all convinced that the world owed me penance for an unremarkable adolescence and a bizarrely normal childhood. I was still working to shed my sense of entitlement, never mind break free of my grandparents’ snaring generosity.
“She wants to know if we’re dating,” Ashley added. “She asks me that every time.”
“Smart girl. I’d like to know that, too.” I propped my chin on my knees, looking to Ashley for the answer.
“You expect me to tell you?”
“Do I have to say please?”
He smirked with half a mouth. “I usually deflect and change the subject. You know, like an assertive grown-up…”
“If we’re not, I think we should be,” I blurted out, butterflies absurdly fluttering their wings in my belly. “I like you. And I think you like me, too… At the very least, you like—how did you put it? Dominating me in bed?”
“I love it,” Ashley confirmed. I wasn’t counting on him to admit it like that, though, his voice all low and gravelly.
I bit my knee to curtail a moan. “So do I.”
Ashley held my gaze. “Prove it.”
I thought about refusing, imagined him pinning me to the couch and having his way with me. I wanted to be used, but tonight I wasn’t in the mood for punishment. “Okay,” I whispered and, after a moment’s deliberation, knelt between his legs on the floor. Ashley didn’t stop me.
I held his gaze as I undid his belt and pulled down his zipper. He didn’t help at all. I was glad. My pulse was racing fervently beneath my skin, anticipation mounting with every passing instant. This was payback for the hoops he’d made me jump through two nights ago—except I didn’t fuck around as I freed his half-hard dick from his boxers.
Nor did I tell him to keep his hands to himself as he cupped the back of m
y head in a warm palm. Truth is, I liked being cradled like that. The illusion of being made to do this for his pleasure when I was really doing it because it made me feel all hot and bothered was enough to trigger a moan.
He firmed against my tongue, silky skin pulling taut around the column of flesh and salty moisture beading at the tip. I licked it off, circling the cockhead at my leisure for a few long beats before I deigned to take him into my mouth. Ashley groaned and flexed his fingers in my hair with a low, “Fuck yeah…”
I hummed in agreement. Fuck yeah was right. I wanted him to enjoy this. I wanted him to get off on being with me, whether that meant a hard fuck as soon as we got off work or a slow, sexy blow job once we’d slaked all other appetites.
He let me find a rhythm and, between my hand and my mouth, it wasn’t long before I had him bucking to meet my lips. I knew the position worked for him when I felt him reach down to tweak my nipples through my shirt—like I needed the extra incentive. I made to swat his hand away only to have him catch my wrist. I worried he’d claim my other hand, too, and in doing so I somehow managed to conjure captivity into being. So much for my neat, dexterous tempo.
I flicked up a nervous glance. I didn’t mind giving head, but I wasn’t big on being choked while I was doing it.
“Steady now,” Ashley growled, a tender edge in his voice. “I’ve got you.”
That’s my line. Peevishness aside, I did as I was told. Ashley fucked my mouth slowly, his control putting my wantonness to shame. Short of pulling off completely, I couldn’t stop him thrusting into my mouth. He scraped my tongue with his cock on every thrust, the tip of his erection spreading moisture onto my lips when he pulled out.
He had the good grace to gulp for breath, at least. “I want to come in your mouth,” he panted. “You okay with that?”
“Yes.” I didn’t let myself think about it. I wanted to get him off. I didn’t need to look beyond that.
Ashley flashed me a smile as tense as a bear trap. “Good girl.”
I opened my mouth to him and took him in as he picked up the pace. I could feel his thighs quake on either side of my shoulders as he raced to his peak. With my hands trapped in his punishing grip, I couldn’t spur him along. All I could do was wait—wait and take it when his release finally hit.
Ashley snapped his hips back and I could tell it cost him not to bury himself down my throat as he climaxed. A moment later I was deeply grateful for the care he’d taken. The first spurt of hot cum hit the back of my throat and I coughed, trying to swallow it down. Another followed, then another.
I pulled off, the bitter tang of his release painting my lips, and struggled to regain my breath. Ashley released my hands at once.
“Breathe slowly… You okay?” Worry hung heavy in his voice. It tugged at my heartstrings like a sappy rom-com.
“That was crap,” I coughed. Correction—I was crap. I rested my cheek against his thigh, breath knifing in and out of my throat as I glanced up at him. “Think I need to practice some more.”
Ashley heaved a breath, apprehension leaching slowly from his features. “That can be arranged, if you’d like.”
Oh, I liked.
It took a few moments more before I found the strength to crawl into his lap, but I wanted that, too, and I got my way in the end.
Chapter Seven
I couldn’t suppress a flinch when Ashley reached across the leather seat to take my hand. His palm was scorching hot against mine and yet I trembled. “Sorry,” I said, shamming a smile.
“Don’t be. Nervous?” City lights reflected in his eyes like fireflies against a darkened windowpane. Not for the first time, I wondered how I’d ever thought of him as average.
Because you’re shallow. I sold expensive, brand name clothes for a living. The concept of inner beauty was a direct challenge to my daily bread.
“I’m bringing a guy home for the first time since high school,” I shot back. “A guy my grandparents don’t know anything about… Yeah, I’m nervous.”
Grandmother’s phone call had been interspersed with brief moments of disbelief between needling questions. Was it serious? Where did I meet this new boyfriend? Did he have a job? I would’ve been offended by the grilling if I hadn’t given my family ample reason to mistrust my taste in men. After purveyors of cannabis, white supremacists and, on one occasion, a tattoo artist with a seven-year-old kid, the blame lay entirely with me.
Ashley’s answer remained unchanged. “Don’t be. How bad can it be? We’ll have dinner, make small talk… You can show me the famous library I’ve heard so much about. We’ll re-enact that scene from Atonement.”
“The one where you enlist and I become a chain-smoking nurse?” When in doubt, resorting to sharp retorts always kept me from looking like I was out of my depth.
Ashley squeezed my hand. He was beginning to read between my quips.
The taxi slowly eased to a stop outside my grandparents’ lavish town house. The street was as quiet as a cemetery. We were on the fringes of what I considered real Paris, secreted in the vast tree-lined stretch between Porte de la Muette and the Bois de Boulogne. To one end of the park lay luxury villas and turn of the century apartment buildings preserved like insects in amber, while to the other hookers and junkies converged in one of the seediest parts of town.
“Have a little faith,” Ashley urged me.
“You say that now,” I muttered and stabbed a finger into the doorbell.
I’d never known my grandparents to be anything less than punctual, but I still crossed my fingers that they might not hear the musical chime. Maybe they were out. Maybe we could call this a miss and try again another night.
No such luck. The click-clack of heels beyond the door gave way to a gust of warm, rose-scented air as my grandmother welcomed us in. She was wearing her hostess smile—the affable, diplomatic variety that often foretold trouble for me once the guests were gone.
I took a perverse sort of pleasure in seeing her expression freeze when she realized my plus one wasn’t a Mohawk-bearing, heavily pierced raver.
“Hello, Grandmother. This is Ashley.” I folded his hand in both of mine.
“Thank you for extending the invitation,” Ashley said in his sexy, accented French. “Laure has told me so much about you.”
“She has?” Grandmother shook herself. “Oh, do come in.” She opened the door wide, gesturing us forth into the white marble foyer.
Soft echoes of Satie’s Gymnopédies leached from beneath the door of my grandfather’s study. With no Komorovs to look forward to, he was in no rush to make his way to the dinner table. I couldn’t wait to take a seat. The sooner we made our way through the ordeal, the sooner I’d be on my way home with Ashley. I’d already promised to make it up to him.
“You have a lovely home, Mrs. Reynaud,” Ashley said, casting an appreciative glance over the dining room.
I tried to see it through his eyes—the gold-plated candlesticks, the ornate silverware, the ivory-white tablecloth—and knew that if I wasn’t in my childhood home, I would’ve been awed, too.
Grandmother waved the compliment aside with a flick of her bejeweled wrist and beamed a delighted smile. “Please, call me Anne-France. We’re nearly of an age. Do have a seat.”
Blood curdled in my veins. I knew at once that I’d misjudged her reaction to Ashley. She’d fooled me again—she wasn’t impressed, she was livid, and she was doing a fantastic job of concealing it. Grandfather wasn’t half as hard to read.
He actually did a double take in the doorway when he saw us.
Ashley rose to shake his hand. “Mr. Reynaud, it’s a privilege.”
“Ashley is Laure’s new partner,” Grandmother supplied, heavy on the ‘new’. “She was just telling us how they met.”
My eyebrows shot up. “I was?”
Grandmother smiled icily. Fortunately, I’d already had practice crafting a summary of our fortuitous run-in for Melanie, so disquiet didn’t interfere too much with the telling of the s
tory. Ashley’s silent encouragement kept me afloat. He cut a gorgeous picture sat across from me, the east to my west, in his black shirt with a gray jacket and gray trousers.
The thought of taking him home and ripping his clothes off was incentive enough to play nice.
“And what do you do, Ashley?” Grandmother prompted when I didn’t crash and burn to her satisfaction.
A maid emerged from the kitchen with the starter course while Grandfather selected the wine. He was very particular about his cellar. As a child, I’d ventured inside only once. The scolding I’d borne when he found out cured me of ever trying it again.
“I’m a journalist,” Ashley replied, albeit haltingly. We’d talked a bit about his upbringing in New Mexico and, though he’d never put it in quite so many words, I’d surmised that he hadn’t grown up with household staff, much less cutting his meat with silver cutlery.
In fairness, neither had I. Wealth had found me relatively late, in a sort of Dickensian comeuppance.
“A journalist!” Grandmother smiled. “Financial news?”
“Politics.”
“Ah…” She and Grandfather traded a long, meaningful look across the table.
“Nobody’s perfect,” I quipped. “What are we eating?”
Grandmother’s tone remained frosty when she addressed me, but she put too high a premium on etiquette to pretend that she hadn’t heard. “Tuna tartare with ginger, sesame, yellow peppers and black olives… Is something the matter?”
I was grimacing. “Ashley—”
“No, no,” he said. “This looks delicious.” He tried a respectful forkful despite the olives.
I revised my take on the rest of the evening.
The tuna tartare was followed by fennel quiches, escargots in a green sauce and a plate of scallops with parsley butter. I wolfed down my dinner, barely tasting most of the byzantine dishes on offer. The white wine helped each mouthful go down, the spoonful of sugar to my medicine.
I was first to the profiteroles and cognac. Never mind giving Ashley a tour of the library—if we made it to the end of the evening unscathed, I’d blow him on the cab ride home.
