Claiming Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy Book 2)

by Nikki Wild

  I always hated when he did that.

  It made me feel like I couldn’t keep any secrets from him… because he always saw right through me, straight down into my core.

  “Yes, yes, sorry to bother you on your, uh, date,” Jeremy smiled, although nothing in his eyes was grinning. “I just wanted to swing by and tell you that I’m glad you’ve moved on. You deserve to be happy. Why, after that nasty business before, I was afraid you’d never date again… but, that’s not my place.”

  He turned to Dalton with a smug smile and shrugged. “Anyway, enjoy your meal. I’ll see you around, Clara.”

  “No, you won’t,” I gritted my teeth.

  “I think I will,” he promised quietly before turning on his heel and sauntering back to his table. I glanced over my shoulder at him, noticing that he never looked back.

  I sensed Dalton stiffen up behind me.

  “Okay… who the fuck was that?”

  With an exasperated sigh, I turned back to him. “That’s my, uh, ex-boyfriend,” I replied. “We dated for just under two years. He’s not exactly a high point in my life.”

  “How long ago did you two break up?”

  “I’m not talking about this right now,” I told him, trying to keep the edge out of my voice.

  Dalton silenced himself, staring at me with a mixture of surprise and irritation. I could already sense the night slipping away from me, and it was all thanks to that absolute asshole.

  Why the fuck did he have to be here?

  “You’ve lost your appetite,” Dalton observed, watching how I wasn’t touching my food. “It’s because of him, isn’t it?”

  “I said I’m not talking about it,” I replied angrily. “But yeah. I’m not hungry anymore. Can we just go? I don’t want to be here.”

  Dalton looked hurt, and I realized that it wasn’t Jeremy who was fucking up the night… it was me.

  “Wait, no, I didn’t mean–”

  Dalton was already getting the attention of our server, who had chosen that moment to pass by the table. “The check, if you’d please.”

  “Oh, of course,” she replied, glancing at our plates. “Was everything alright? Do you two need boxes?”

  “Everything’s fine, we’ve just had a change of plans. And yes, boxes would be grand.”

  “Very well then,” the waitress nodded, subtly checking him out again before scampering off towards the nearest terminal.

  “We can stay here,” I tried to backtrack. “I just… it was a knee-jerk reaction. Tonight doesn’t have to end like this. I’m sorry that I overreacted, it’s just that that guy–”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he replied dispassionately. “Anyway, the night’s not over. So what if dinner didn’t work out? We’ve still got the rest of the evening.”

  “What’s… the rest of the evening?”

  Dalton chuckled. “You’ll see.”

  He paid the waitress as I boxed up our food. After we were done, he pulled me close and whispered into my ear: “Follow me.”

  I did as I was told as he led me outside. Despite my best intentions, as we crossed towards the door, I couldn’t help but glance towards the bastard who’d thrown a kink into my entire evening.

  Jeremy was watching me over a glass of wine, sipping quietly with a slight, mischievous smile on his face. There were a couple of other people with him – friends of his, who were all following me with their snarky, insidious gazes.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried my hardest to ignore the looming pit in my stomach.

  “Alright, we’re not going too far from here” Dalton indicated once we’d stepped outside. “Like I said, just follow me. If a light cycle separates us, I’ll just pull over. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough,” I confirmed.

  “Good,” he smirked. “Right this way…”

  I climbed into my faithful old car as he mounted his motorcycle. Twisting the key in the ignition… nothing happened.

  No. Not now. Don’t you dare do this now.

  I gave it a few more twists. Silently, I prayed to whatever entities were listening, and vehemently cursed the car with each breath.

  “Is everything alright?”

  I looked up, and saw that Dalton was wandering back over. No, don’t embarrass me NOW, I rapidly thought to myself.

  “Yeah, everything’s good! Car’s just giving me a little bit of trouble. I shouldn’t be any more than a few more seconds…”

  He didn’t look convinced as he paused outside my door. Steeling myself, I put my energies into one final twist of the keys. Come on, you piece of shit car! Don’t fail me now! Surprisingly, it kicked into gear – just in time for me to spot Jeremy stepping outside to smoke a cigarette, his eyes somehow finding me with a glance.

  Goddammit all to hell, I thought to myself.

  “You’re good?” Dalton asked.

  “I am. Let’s get out of here.”

  He shook his head with amusement and wandered back over to his motorcycle. A few moments later, he was revving the engine, I pulled out of park, and we were on the road.

  Of course, Jeremy appeared to watch me drive off, following Dalton’s bike.

  Dalton’s mystery locale took us down the major roads, but I couldn’t particularly tell where we were going. For a moment, I thought he was driving us towards the nearby mall – but he made a crucial last turn before the road pointed us straight to the parking lot. Instead, it wrapped through a neighborhood nearby, redirecting us towards a nearby, major shopping avenue.

  I was starting to get amused with this.

  After all, I had no idea what he had in mind.

  A few moments later, he made a turn down a small road. I followed him, realizing that it extended back behind all the stores and the local cinema, taking us towards the new, lavish hotel that had been built back there.

  Oh, this is going to be interesting, I smirked.

  We parked in the massive parking garage, and he led me towards the elevator. We barely spoke a word to each other until the lift was moving downward towards the lobby.

  “…A hotel,” I observed.

  “What, is that a problem?” He raised an eyebrow. “Not a fan of hotels?”

  “It’s a bit… forced, isn’t it?”

  “Just wait,” Dalton chuckled. “I don’t think you’ll have a problem with the arrangements I have in mind, even if they were a bit last minute…”

  I bit my tongue, sincerely interested to see where he was going with all of this.

  We stepped off at the lobby, wandering over the front service desk. A young, cheery clerk with fluffy ginger hair and cute makeup greeted us.

  “Checking in?”

  “Yes. The reservation’s under Dalton Carlyle,” he casually remarked to her, as if there was some special weight to this that I just didn’t understand.

  The front desk clerk ran the name. After a second, her eyes bugged out. “Ah, yes. You were our last-second reservation, weren’t you? My boss mentioned something about this… could you possibly wait a moment? I want to check on this before I hand the keys over.”

  “Certainly,” he replied, clearly unperturbed by her surprise. Personally, I wasn’t sure I knew what was going on, and I kept drifting my attention from one of them to the other.

  “Excellent. If I could have you step aside, I just need to make a quick call…”

  We did as we were asked, in case other guests were to come up behind us and require immediate attention. Meanwhile, the clerk lifted a telephone receiver and dialed in three buttons, waiting for the line to pick up.

  “Yes, I’m calling about the Carlyle reservation from today… yes, they’re here now… I see… are you sure?... No, I understand, I just wanted to… mhmm… yes… okay. Thanks. I’ll let them know.”

  She disconnected the call and waved us back over. “Right. Sorry about that, I just wanted to check on the preparations first. I’m afraid that they were running a little behind schedule, but I’ve been given the all clear to
let you through. Let me assign you your keys…”

  The clerk took a moment to run our door keys through the system, and quickly assembled a folder of reading material, hotel rules, and assorted information for us.

  “Now then, you’ll be in Room 4B. Let’s see… I’ve got the wifi password right here, written up here at the top…” She quickly pointed out the information with a fingertip, “and beneath that is the code you type in to request room service. If you have an emergency, please type in Pound Sign, One into the phone, and wait three to four seconds. That should be on a sticker on your phone but, you know, just in case…”

  We quickly signed the liability and reservation forms she presented to us, and the clerk smiled chirpily at us.

  “Excellent. Welcome to the Rasidion Hotel, Mister Carlyle and guest. I hope that you do enjoy your stay, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need anything at all.”

  “Splendid,” Dalton smiled, taking the folder. “You’ve been a delight. I apologize for any inconvenience in my reservation tonight.”

  “I’m just happy you managed it,” she shrugged happily. “It was canceled early this morning. You usually need to book that a month in advance, unless you’re one of our Premiere Club guests…”

  “Maybe it’s my lucky day,” he smiled, and we departed off down towards the elevator. After a moment, he keyed in the top floor, and we began the ascent.

  “What did you do?” I asked curiously, peering at him. “That didn’t seem like any old hotel reservation to me…”

  “Tonight is meant to be special,” he casually shrugged. “I called around to see if I could land a room befitting the occasion, and it just so happened that this one was open.”

  “What kind of room?”

  “You’ll see,” he smiled warmly.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence. After a moment, the doors pinged open, and we stepped out into a particularly extravagant hotel floor. It was as if Natalie had just decided to talk her parents into buying part of the hotel. The crown molding alone looked like it went for a premium, and the décor seemed to favor crystal.

  “Whoa,” I murmured to myself as I took in my environment.

  “A little better than you were expecting, isn’t it?” Dalton smugly whispered into my ear. “Just wait until you see our room…”

  He led me down the hall, looking for the right place. There were only a couple of rooms up here – maybe half a dozen, maximum. I could barely keep my eyes off of how the lights bounced off of the crystal and the silver, filling the entire area with a sort of otherworldly glow.

  Finally, we stopped at a door marked 4B. Grasping his keycard, he squeezed my hand and slid it down the reader alongside the doorknob.

  “I just want you to know that I understand what you told me over the phone earlier,” Dalton smiled. “No promises. I get it. I didn’t do all of this to break that… so, keep that in mind when you see everything.”

  I nodded hesitantly.

  Dalton opened the door, motioning for me to step inside… and my jaw practically dropped straight to the floor.

  Chapter 11

  What I had walked into wasn’t just some decent guestroom in the middle of a nice hotel. This was the most hysterically lavish room that I’d ever been in. This was the kind of room I thought belonged in the middle of some Northern European palace, and certainly not anywhere near where I lived.

  The room was decorated from top to bottom in lavish tapestries, premium antique furniture, pristine crystal décor, and lush carpeting that was soft to the very touch.

  The king-sized bed that dominated the center of the main room bore a lush mattress that was probably more expensive than half of Natalie’s apartment…

  A premium wine cooler, tucked away neatly into the fully featured kitchen, came stocked with ample red wine of a particularly historic vintage, at over a hundred years old.

  It even came stocked with all the amenities. The luxurious, oversized bathroom hid a large hotel shower chamber, with glass walls and a stunning array of showerheads in all directions.

  But perhaps the most stunning aspect of this incredible hotel room was the view. Much like the apartment I shared with my rich best friend, the far wall offered an incredible view. However, the differences were that a) the wall was a solid sheet of glass, with expensive drapes ready to draw together for privacy, and b) the view was much better, giving a jaw-dropping glance over the city, the park, and the river nearby.

  “How… how did you do this?” I asked him, barely able to coherently string thoughts together, either in my head or aloud.

  “I pulled a few strings,” Dalton chuckled, watching me take in my surroundings with warm and reflective affection. “I had to pay a little more for this one, but as soon as the opportunity was available… I knew I had to have it.”

  “Do you do that often?” I asked slyly.

  “What’s that?” He asked, setting our to-go plates of dinner into the premium refrigerator. He quickly withdrew a bottle of red wine and a pair of wine glasses from the attached wine cooler.

  “Take opportunities as they arise.”

  “I don’t like to let things pass by,” Dalton shrugged, setting the glasses on the counter as he began to uncork the wine. “Call me what you will, but even before the Marines… I acted on instinct. Followed my gut. It even saved my life a few times.”

  “Is that so. Like when?”

  Dalton went quiet, staring into space. For a moment, I thought he was thinking about how to answer the question, but then I realized that the bottle of wine was being to shake slightly…

  I took it from his hand, setting it beside the glasses, and took his trembling hand in both my own.

  “Dalton? Are you okay?”

  He blinked a few times.

  “What? Yeah. I’m fine.”

  I wasn’t convinced. “Are you… sure?”

  “Yeah, just a, uh, a flashback,” Dalton chuckled as he shook his head. “Lately, I’ve been having a few flashbacks to a particular moment during my time in the desert…”

  “Do you want to talk about it? I asked.

  He looked strained for a moment. As he resumed uncorking the bottle, he poured us a pair of glasses of wine. “I was a ground trooper in the United States Marine Corps, placed into combat zones in the Iraq War. There are things that I’ve had to do … things that I’m not necessarily proud of, and things I’ll take to my grave. But never, ever have I done something unless it was to save my life or those of others.”

  I nodded carefully, taking the glass of red that he handed me.

  “One particular time, there was this insurgent… I was trying to save another member of my platoon, an older Marine by the name of Darren. Darren was wounded by mortar fire. I was trying to drag him out of the rubble of a building when an enemy trooper got the jump on us… he knocked my gun away, but I managed to keep him away from it. It came down to him versus me, both reduced to our combat knives, and I was just trying to save my friend…”

  “You don’t have to say any more,” I reassured him, running my hand along his. “Whatever happened out there, it doesn’t matter to me. You were saving a life. Did he make it?”

  Dalton looked up.

  “Yeah. He made it. He retired a couple of years later. We got him to medical, patched him up… lost a leg, but he wears that prosthetic proud now.”

  “Then you did the right thing,” I told him.

  He nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about kind of zoning out about that.”

  “No! God, no. Don’t apologize for a thing,” I whispered, setting the glass of wine down and throwing my arms around him. “Listen, Dalton… you were in war. You had to fight for this country… and you had to save your people.”

  “That’s right,” he nodded thoughtfully.

  The thought of him out in the desert with a knife, protecting wounded warriors, tugged at my heartstrings… but it also made him look even tougher, ever stronger than ever.

  It ignited someth
ing deep inside me.

  I took him by the hand and led him towards the bed, then tried to weakly push him down.

  “Oh, is that how it’s going to be then, huh?” He chuckled, amused by my reactions. “Didn’t know war stories did it for you.”

  “Shut up and get into the stupid bed.”

  “Yes ma’am,” he winked, kicking off his shoes and climbing backwards onto the bedding. I did the same, curling up next to him, feeling the lust begin to burn deep inside me.

  I knew then that I had to have him.

  Dalton pulled me up against himself, his fingers threading into my hair to pull me into a deep and passionate kiss. I submitted to his demands, returning his zealousness with my own – I tugged his bottom lip between my teeth, slid my nose across his as I slightly adjusted my positioning, and flicked his lips ever so lightly with the tip of my tongue.

  He grinned into this last part, and our lips parted together to allow our wet tongues access to one another.

  I loved the strength and the cunning of his tongue against mine. With the warmth and power of his broad body pressed up against me, and his fingers tenderly stroking the contours of my jaw and my throat, I lost myself in that deep, carnal kissing of ours.

  There was no denying it.

  This just felt so absolutely right.

  I don’t recall exactly how my dress came off, but soon I was in just my bra and thong against him, tugging off his blazer and diving for the buttons to his button-up.

  As I slowly revealed his abdomen, I gasped in surprise; not only was he built broad and strong, but he bore a panty-drenchingly firm six-pack under his clothes.

  “You like what you see, huh?” He cockily asked, grinning confidently.

  “Duh.” I shook my head, taking in his heavily sculpted build. “Good god, you’re buff.”

  “Yeah, it turns out that a few years in the Marines will do that for you,” Dalton shrugged. “I was already in fairly good shape before, but all those drills and marches really helped me hone my physique…”

  “You’re telling me,” I nodded. I wanted to lick the contours of his abs…