At that moment, Luke decided to rejoin us at the table and I sat tight-lipped, avoiding his gaze. The waitress brought us three steaming pies surrounded by mashed potatoes and a moat of gravy and I soon forgot everything I was worried about. Brandon laughed at me as I sighed in ecstasy with each bite. The steak and ale pie was dripping with decadence; the meat had been slow-cooked for hours so that it fell apart and melted in my mouth. The gravy mingling with the mustard seed mashed potatoes was delicious and I devoured it quickly, burning my tongue in the process. After we finished, we sat for a while and enjoyed the peace of a warm, full belly. Brandon patted his full stomach and stood up to leave.
“Should probably get going.”
“I hope I see you again,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Likewise.”
I don’t know why, but I felt as though I made a lifelong friend. I couldn’t say why I thought this, but we had reached a sort of mutual understanding through both of our attempts to help Luke. I did want to help him in any way I could, even if there wasn’t any money involved.
Luke stepped forward to grasp Brandon in a one-armed hug and then he turned to me as Brandon left the pub.
I couldn’t read his face. “Luke, I’m really sorry. I didn’t know what to say—”
“Don’t be sorry. That was brilliant, even if it was a bit mortifying.”
My cheeks flushed at his praise and they burned even brighter when he smiled at me.
Over the next couple weeks, Luke made a point to avoid staying too long with me in the same room and I was left alone for hours while he went to work. It wasn’t too terrible. I used the money I earned to travel across England, but it was quite lonely. I visited York by train, refusing to accept Luke’s offers of a hired car to take me there. I visited York Minster Abbey and marveled at the Gothic splendor. I climbed the abbey’s spiral staircase—hundreds of stairs that led to a narrow passage along the abbey’s wall, to another series of steps that finally brought me to the roof. The view was fantastic; I could see the whole town and the castle walls sprawling around the town, encasing hundreds of red-thatched roofs and neat trees. When I left the abbey, I just walked around the medieval town and climbed the ramparts, wishing that I had someone—anyone to experience it with.
On the weekends, Luke and I went out together on dates. We kissed in front of paparazzi, we made out in park benches, and we took trains to Bath, Oxford, to the Lake District. The sexual tension between us was as taut as a tightrope, trembling, ready to snap. It all felt so damn real, but every time we returned to the hotel, Luke acted cold and distant. He separated himself from me the moment we stepped inside, as though he couldn’t wait to be rid of me.
There was an aching hole inside my chest. Even though I was traveling the UK and doing the things I always wanted to, I was absolutely miserable. I no longer enjoyed going out with him—he made me feel even lonelier than I did when I walked alone.
There were times when I thought Luke could sense my simmering emotions. I dropped his hand before we entered the hotel and Luke gave me a sidelong glance, which I ignored. I entered the elevator and watched him check his phone. I gazed at his hands, lips, and face. I was always holding his hand, feeling his gentle caresses—I felt his body all the time, and yet I longed for him because I knew that his heart wasn’t really into it. He was just going through the motions. Whenever he touched me, it was like a solar flare in my body. I was paralyzed and giddy, and then he would push me aside the moment we were alone and I felt ugly. Unwanted. I was enamored with him, but he could care less.
I would never let him see how upset I was. My insides were bursting with the need to tell him how I felt. Just tell him. You have nothing to lose.
I closed my eyes. “Luke?”
“Hm?”
“I can’t take this anymore.” I looked up as the elevator lights beamed with the sixth floor.
I opened my eyes again while Luke looked at me with a puzzled expression. “What do you mean?”
Luke sucked in his breath as I closed in on him. I was close enough to see the vein jumping in his throat.
“I can’t go on kissing you every day and acting like it means nothing to me. I want you. I have feelings for you. I can’t just switch them off, it’s driving me crazy.”
He finally looked up from his phone, his mouth parted. “Jessica, I’m just—”
Sadness billowed around me like a cloud. I turned away from him and faced the wall. “Fine.”
A heavy weight settled on my shoulder. His abdomen bumped into my back and I tried to stamp down the swell inside my heart. His fingers brushed aside the strands of hair on my naked shoulder, and just that was enough to make the heat between my legs blaze into a forest fire.
“You never let me finish,” he breathed.
I turned around and he looked at me with a lopsided smirk. I hated that. He bent his head. His hands fell on my head and his lips seared against mine in a slow, long kiss. I moaned into him and his tongue slipped inside, flicking my tongue as if his head was between my legs. As I imagined that, my hands slid around his back and clenched over his ass.
“Is this what you want?” he asked in a heated whisper when he broke the kiss.
I glared at him, angry with him and at myself for allowing him to get to me so easily. “Don’t toy with me.”
“I’m not toying with you. Do you think this is easy for me?”
My cheeks burned as he grabbed my breast and pinched my nipple. “You make me feel lonely. Like I’m unwanted. Can’t we be friends, at least?”
“I’m sorry. I was just trying to keep my distance.”
He didn’t seem to care about distance anymore. I gasped as he unzipped my pants and pulled my panties down. “Luke! They might be recording—we’re in an elevator for crissakes.” I looked at him in amazement. What had I done to get him so excited?
“So? I love that you’re so blunt. Straight to the point. You’re unlike any girl I’ve ever met.”
My emotions felt like a Ping-Pong match. How does he do this to me? He cupped my mound with his palm, which was soaking wet with my arousal. He dipped into me with his finger, watching my face transform with a satisfied smirk.
“Luke.”
“That’s it,” he whispered. “I want to get you off.”
There were two fingers inside me now, pumping inside my wet walls. I clenched myself around him and seized Luke’s head, burying my tongue in his mouth. He kept the same steady rhythm, his fingers curling into the spot that made me moan out loud. It was increasing and I felt my stomach clench as Luke pushed me towards my breaking point. I cried out and felt my core contracting around his fingers as he plunged them in hard one last time.
The elevator doors opened to our floor and Luke slid his wet fingers out of me. I saw the bulge in front of his pants and knew that he wanted to bury himself inside me. But he wouldn’t. He shook his head.
“I can’t, Jessica, but I want to.”
Weeks passed and Luke’s father kept an unsettling silence. Returning from work one day, Luke paced the hotel suite, repeatedly asking me if anyone called. Things between us were tense lately due to the fact that Luke and I couldn’t have sex despite the fact that we desperately wanted it.
“Why hasn’t he called?” he repeated over and over as he loosened the tie from his neck and began unbuttoning his shirt.
I watched him anxiously, my eyes flicking from the toned skin peeking out from his shirt to his eyes. I didn’t know what to tell him. “He’ll call. Maybe he’s busy.” I knew that my assurances meant nothing to him, but I didn’t know what else to do.
Luke looked at me with a bit of heat in his gaze as he ripped off his shirt and threw it on the floor. “He’s busy harassing the nurses, I’m sure. This is just another way for him to screw with me.”
An ostentatiously loud ringing filled the hotel suite and Luke stood shock still. It was coming from the office. Wow, that’s creepy. He stared at me
“Well, answer it!”
I yelled as the second ring jarred the air.
He sprinted towards the office and I followed swiftly, hanging awkwardly near the door, which Luke left ajar. Should I stay here?
“Luke Pardini,” he answered in a tight voice.
I peeked inside and saw Luke hunched over the desk, shirtless, looking as though he wanted to throw up. He saw me looking and pressed the speakerphone button.
“Hello, Luke,” said a wizened, male voice. “I see that you’ve been very busy this past few weeks. A new girlfriend and a drunken brawl already?”
“Hi Dad,” he said in a grim voice. “I wasn’t drunk. I was trying to help someone and—”
“I’m not interested in hearing your excuses. I’m more interested about the girl. She doesn’t look like the tarts you usually date.”
I yanked my necklace chain against my skin.
“Well, her name is Jessica.” Luke gave me a worried look. “She has a BA in English—”
“Useless degree. What else?”
A ripple of anger went through me. Useless? Well, I had heard it before.
“She—um, she volunteers at a soup kitchen every week and wants a job in editing.”
“How quaint.”
I was astounded at how demeaning he could sound in the few words that he spoke.
The speaker of the phone let out a garbled sigh. “Luke, I called because I’m removing you from VP of Acquisitions for a few weeks.”
Luke’s shout of rage was enough the make the walls tremble. “You’re what?”
“I can’t afford to get any more bad press on the company. You do know that you’re a magnet for it, right? I don’t know why you like to make my life so difficult.”
“Dad, you can’t believe everything you read in the press!”
The explosion of rage that erupted from the speaker made me back away.
“Do you think it matters to the shareholders? What about the board members? They see you as a loose cannon. You’ve attracted so much negative attention to the company and I do not want anything getting in the way of the Hilton merger. I am sick and tired of our name being dragged through the mud because you can’t fucking grow up!”
“Then you can say good-bye to the multi-million dollar deal I just made in San Francisco!”
The voice screaming through the speakerphone suddenly drew a sharp breath and began a violent coughing fit. When the voice recovered, his tone was shrewd.
“What deal?”
“I didn’t tell you, but I discovered a bed and breakfast chain in the city with high profit margins and cut them a deal. They’re all over California, and we have plans to expand to Oregon and Nevada. It will net us an annual thirty million dollars. I was going to tell you when it was finalized.”
I almost winced at the unspoken plea in Luke’s voice: I wanted to impress you, Dad.
“What will make me happy is having a son that doesn’t shame me and the name he was born into. When are you visiting me?”
Luke didn’t bother answering back. He smashed his fist down and ended the call, making the phone bounce off the table. He bent over and picked up the phone. He grunted as he hurled the machine at the glass, but the phone was one of those expensive, well-constructed, sleek models and it didn’t break.
“Luke, stop!”
He yelled at the fallen phone. His screams seemed to be a combination of insults and unintelligible outbursts of sheer rage.
I never saw him lose complete control like this. I tiptoed towards him, ripping back my hand as I approached him. I was scared that if I touched him, he would whirl around and unleash some of his rage on me. He kicked the phone across the room and paced in front of the glass, refusing to turn around.
“Luke!”
He slammed his fist into the glass and crushed his hand. I saw his dark reflection in the glass and his lips were parted as if he had just finished a thoroughly exhausting run. “I hate him,” he whispered into the glass.
My heart constricted painfully. I knew what it was like to be bullied by a parental figure. When my foster parents weren’t threatening me with violence, they would utter snide comments about everything I did, always comparing me to their perfect son, Vincent. I placed my hand on his trembling shoulder and I took it as a good sign that he didn’t throw my hand off. I spread my fingers like a starfish and stroked his shoulder. When he didn’t protest, I lifted my other hand and did the same to the other side. I crept up behind him and tentatively curled my hands around the firm muscles of his abdomen. Luke’s body leaned against mine. My heartbeat was almost painful.
Maybe I should say something. “I’m sorry that you have a jerk father.”
Luke took one of my hands inside his and I felt a swift flare of attraction as he traced lines in my palm. “I think he wants to drive me to commit suicide like he did with my mom.”
My chest froze as I digested this. It was too horrible to consider. No, that’s too much. It can’t be true. “No,” I said quickly. “I think he’s just cranky from his illness and he’s pissed that you won’t visit him and he wants to hurt you. If you died, he wouldn’t have anyone left to bully.”
He turned around in my arms and looked at me down his straight nose. “Hell, maybe you’re right.”
Still, his hollowed eyes were shining with years of tortured anguish. Deep down, he was still a little boy desperate for his father’s approval and some scrap of affection. He knew he would never get it. He was a man without love or guidance, and he looked utterly lost.
My eyes burned as tears slowly welled up. I had no one to look up to when I was growing up. I wasn’t very close with Natalie’s family. After I turned seventeen, I left my foster parents to live in a group home for a couple years. They were two dark years fueled by drugs and alcohol. Though I had escaped my abusers, the nightmares, the pain, and the panic attacks refused to go away. It was either drugs or a noose. I needed something to take it away.
They made me go to rehab when they found out I was hooked on painkillers, and when I finished the program, Natalie insisted that I move in with her. I remembered sitting in the car with her, my stomach feeling strangely empty as if I had vomited for hours. I sat in that car with no fucking idea what I was supposed to do with my life. I had absolutely no one to ask for advice, no idea what to do or what I wanted. I just copied what Natalie was doing and applied to the same college she planned to attend.
Luke did the same thing.
He still didn’t move from me, the same resigned expression on his face that I knew deeply. His lips pulled into a bitter, half-smile and he shrugged his shoulders. Suddenly, I knew from the bottom of my heart that this would end badly. We were two damaged souls and together we were a self-destructive entity. The suggestion to drink ourselves into oblivion was hanging on my lips.
But he moved in closer before I could speak. “I need to feel good about something.”
His lips came crashing down on mine and I responded with a fervor that made his back slam against the glass wall. It was probably our first real kiss, not borne out of a desire to present an image to the press, but borne out of a visceral need to feel better. I needed him. I needed his closeness, his naked chest writhing over mine, and his lips and tongue fondling my breast. I moaned into his mouth as his hands slid underneath my shirt and groped my breasts, his thumbs slipped under my bra and grazed my flesh, flicking my erect nipples.
Luke’s mouth pulled away only to lift my shirt from my head, and then his lips were sealed against mine once again, his hot hands wrapped around my back to search for the clasp of my bra. It snapped away with one twist of his fingers and I felt the shock of the cold stinging my nipples. Luke closed the space between us and kissed my neck. My head tilted back and I let myself dissolve into the ecstasy that was his lips and tongue. His fingertips ran up and down my body, running up the small of my back and along the curve of my breasts. Then his hands began to tease the waistband of my jeans, slipping his fingers through to stroke the very top of my ass, curving around
my hip bones and slipping down the thin fabric of my panties. His middle finger stroked my mound in a circular motion, both of us breathing hard. The familiar feeling of desire and fear reared up again, but I knew I was safe with Luke and it all felt so incredible. I reached down and unzipped my jeans and Luke bent down slightly to pull my jeans and panties down my legs. I wrapped my arms around myself, now completely exposed, and gazed at Luke with a little bit of fear.
He sighed in pained voice. “You are so gorgeous and I want you so badly, but—”
“—No.” I covered his lips with my hand and his blue eyes cut through me. “Please, don’t. I need this, too.”
My head was ringing. I was stark naked in Luke Pardini’s hotel suite, overlooking the night sky of London in his office. Perhaps I was dreaming. He nodded at me and I uncovered his lips.
“Ok, then.”
He grinned as he suddenly swept me into his arms and I yelped as I was lifted into the air. Luke sat down in the office chair with my body in his arms. I was curled over his legs and chest. I liked it. It was much more intimate. His erection was like a rock under my legs and I felt a stab in my chest, but he leaned over and kissed me, stifling my violent vortex of thoughts. Then he kissed my neck and then my breast, until finally his tongue went for the kill and sucked my puckered nipple until it was raw.
I moaned his name and wrapped my arms around his head, tugging at his dark locks as he sucked and tongued. His other hand groped down my hips, searching for the damp heat between my legs. His fingers found my slit and he rubbed the ridge of his middle finger up and down; I was so wet that I could hear myself all over his hands.
Everything condensed to just us; the external sounds disappeared and the background seemed to fall away like in a dream. His body was lean and hard, full of a powerful desire for me. He was like a furnace, chasing away every wisp of cold that clung to my skin. He stroked a finger inside me, curving it and striking just the right spot with the tip of his finger. I bucked my hips and cried out as pleasure bloomed all over my body.
Dirty Prince Page 33
