Returning to the bathroom, I dried my hair and put on a fresh layer of makeup. I must have dropped every brush twice and the tube of lipstick almost landed in the toilet. I was struggling to get the necklace on when the doorbell rang again.
I glanced at the clock. It was exactly six. Carrying the clutch and jewelry with me, I answered the door. Blake stood on my front step, resplendent in a black dinner jacket as his appraising gaze swept over me. Beyond him, taking up two spaces at the curb, was a limo.
Blake stepped inside, taking the jewelry from me as he dipped his head, his lips gracing mine with a soft, fleeting kiss. Reaching behind him, he shut the door. “You looking stunning, Pippa.”
I arched a brow in his direction. “In an outfit that costs as much as a car—who wouldn’t?”
“Baby, that’s not how it works.” Taking my hand, he fastened the bracelet then moved around me. I’d left my hair loose and straight. He draped it over one shoulder and then lifted the necklace over my head, stepping in close as he fastened it around my neck. “When, in future, I say you look stunning, you smile at me and melt like I mean it.”
Finished with the necklace, his hands gripped my shoulders. His mouth trailed along the side of my throat that was bare, starting at its bottom curve and running up to my ear. “Because I do.”
“Blake, we're all alone.”
“We’re never alone, PJ.” His hips brushed against my bottom as his hands dropped to circle my waist. The tip of his tongue curled against my earlobe, a ripple of pleasure running through me. “The chef at Robuchon’s will be insanely jealous—all that food and all I want to eat is you.”
He gripped my hips, cinching me tight against him while his teeth traced the curve of my ear. I reached for his hands, intent on removing them from my body.
“You have to get used to my touch.” A soft warning growl accompanied his reprimand. “One flash of aversion, love, and the whole show is ruined.”
Love...show. I blinked back tears. Those two words were all it took to expose the small crush I'd thought I was nursing for what it was—something much bigger. Realizing my true feelings for Blake, I didn't know if I could take even one night of his touching me and calling me love for show and emerge from the deal with my heart intact.
“Shhh, Pippa. You’ll get used to it, baby.” Blake turned me in his arms, his mouth covering mine in a possessive kiss that drew me in. His fingers stroked the back of my shoulders through the silk wrap, taking up a soft and rhythmic pace that lured me deeper.
He was easy to get lost in—exactly what I was afraid of.
Breaking the kiss, he ran his cheek against mine. “Where are your keys, love?”
I pulled back. “My keys?”
He nodded. When I stared at him instead of immediately fetching them, he frowned. “So I can lock the door when we leave.”
I shook my head. “I'll lock the door when we leave.”
He blinked, his frown deepening. “No, you won't. You've spent the last year helping me define a certain brand, Pippa.” He pulled me to him, his grip on my ass and back unyielding. “That brand is an image of a very proprietary man who gets what he wants. A man who, right now, wants your keys.”
I opened my mouth in protest, but he stopped me with a shake of his head. “You know I'm right. You're mine now. The whole world has to see it that way. No doubt a Post reporter will interrogate your neighbors tomorrow, focusing on the smallest of details.”
I closed my eyes. It was the largest, not smallest, detail I was worried about the Post reporter focusing on—the flesh of my overgenerous backside that Blake was fondling.
“Look at me, Pippa.”
I obeyed, regretting my compliance immediately. His eyes were like darkened quicksilver, the irises swirling as his pupils pulsed. Mesmerized, I felt myself leaning into him.
“You know I’m right.” Quirking a brow, he smiled at me. “The limo is already attracting attention. The reporters will hear how I locked your door, how I folded you into my limousine, how I got down on bended knee in Robuchon's.”
There was no arguing with his logic. We both knew how the tabloids—and New York—worked. Some “citizen journalist” had probably already recognized Blake and was on standby with his or her cellphone for a quick payday.
I nodded and he loosened his grip on me enough that I could reach into the clutch and remove the key. Handing it to him, I hesitated at the last second.
“Trust me, PJ. You're in good hands. I promised I'll protect you and I will, but you have to think before you push back.”
I let go of the key. My head bobbed in something that wasn’t quite acquiescence.
“Good. I'm glad you see it my way.” Placing his hand along the curve of my back, Blake led me outside.
Knowing it would look like a set-up if I scouted the street for anyone with a camera, I kept my gaze focused on Blake. I watched him lock the door, my house key disappearing into his pocket. Waving Carson, his driver, aside, Blake opened the door to the limo. Taking my hand in his, he held me steady as I slid into the back seat. Once Blake was sitting next to me, he directed Carson to take us to the restaurant and then he raised the interior window.
The dark tint of the limo's glass meant we were cut off from the rest of the world. Blake put his arm around my shoulder, shushing me when I tensed. His hand covered my exposed knee. “Relax, love, you can do this.”
I couldn't—not if he kept calling me love. I looked at him, scolding myself as I felt my eyes grow moist. My panties were already drenched, my body in a state of arousal from the first brush of his lips against my throat when he had fastened the necklace.
I lifted my brows, my gaze and quivering mouth pleading with him to ease up on the act. “Blake...please...”
“Please?” He murmured the question, his thumb caressing the side of my knee. “Please kiss you? It would be my pleasure, PJ.”
My pleasure, too, far more than I wanted to admit.
He started at the corner of my mouth, his lips lightly gnawing at the edges until my head lulled against the seat cushion. His finger trailed across my cheek to gently pry my lips apart. He took a small lick center top before his teeth captured my bottom lip and sucked it into his mouth. Letting go, Blake allowed me a small moan, and then suffocated me with another kiss that had me trembling and arching against him.
The hand on my knee tightened, his fingertips digging into my flesh as he sought to control one or both of us. He pushed the bottom hem of the tube dress a little higher, his kiss sharpening to sucking bites. I brought my hands up between us, forcing myself not to clutch at the lapels of his exquisitely expensive dinner jacket.
My restraint lasted maybe five seconds and then his fingers drifted up the inside of my thigh. Gasping, I fisted the fabric of his jacket in my hands. “Blake, what are you doing?”
“Relieving some of the tension vibrating through you, PJ.”
My eyes feeling big as saucers, I shook my head at him. “That’s not what I call tension relief.”
“Then you’ve been dating amateurs, baby.” Chuckling, he slid his fingers higher, a wolfish grin splitting across his face before he buried his mouth between the upward thrust of my breasts. “A few minutes from now and you’ll be completely—”
The limo slowed to a stop in front of the restaurant. Blake lifted his head, a growl rumbling low in his chest as Carson exited the car and came around to Blake's door.
He looked at me, his fat pupils slowly narrowing to normal. A final kiss, almost chaste, was followed by a promise as the driver opened the door.
“We'll finish this later, love.”
Dinner and a Ring
Blake managed to keep his hands off me through dinner. Mostly. Every few minutes, his hand would brush against mine, caressing or capturing it for an instant, never venturing higher than my wrist. Where his hands wouldn't go, his gaze roamed freely. I would finish a sentence to find his attention focused on my mouth. He would look up, smile, and then his gaze woul
d drift down to my shoulders before whispering across my breasts and the hard outline of my nipples as they tented both the sequined bodice and silk wrap.
The whole meal felt like one long sex act, his tongue darting out to capture a small morsel, his lips sliding over it. Trying to focus on the conversation while his mouth teased my imagination was pure torture.
Every question he asked was a gentle interrogation—my work before starting my own agency, my years at college. I had the sense he'd already vetted my background and that none of the details I offered were new to him, but he listened as if it was his first time hearing them. Inevitably, he asked me about my parents.
“Really, what's there to say?” I blinked, nose stinging at the thought of my parents. To the outside world, they looked perfectly respectable. A job for each of them—one blue collar, one pink—and a small two-bedroom ranch paid in full, at least it had been ten years ago when I'd last spoken to them.
I had fielded questions and conversations about my folks hundreds of times, a good dozen in casual conversations with Cross. It shouldn't have been any different at Robuchon's. There was no boozing, no drugs, no broken bones. He didn’t need to know about how my mother made me weigh myself naked in front of her three times a day—before and after school and before bedtime—once I turned ten. He didn’t need to know how she would take a permanent marker and draw dotted lines around the awkward bulges of my flesh like she was a plastic surgeon. He didn’t need to know about the weekly tape measure sessions, the tennis lessons, the nightly ritual of an hour on the exercise bike for school nights and two hours Friday and Saturday. The Saran Wrap suits.
Shrugging at him, I blinked again, my lashes wet against my cheeks.
Blake slid to the floor, his hand dipping into his pocket to pull out a ring box. He lifted the lid, the giant rose cut spinel flashing its dark secrets like black glitter across the linen tablecloth.
I knew the ring's history, had crafted an entire advertising campaign around it that had tripled his stores' sales to women. It was the symbol of the great love and romance of his grandmother Eliza Cross to a soldier who died before they married but not before Blake’s father had been conceived. Symbol, too, of a bastard child, a mother and son outcast and the empire Blake had built in their memory.
The campaign had ended with Blake’s declaration that the ring would one day be worn by his future wife, and only by a woman worthy of the memory of Eliza Cross.
Vogue, Glamour, Cosmo—ads, interviews, TV spots. Every woman in New York knew that ring and he was about to put it on my finger.
But only to save his company from Anna Burke.
My eyelids fluttered, the tears now streaming freely down my face having nothing to do with my mother. Blake said something, his words drowned out by the thunder of blood rolling through my head.
He lifted my hand, his eyes slowly shutting as he pressed his lips against my fingers. “Pippa, love, I asked if you would marry me.”
He looked up, his pleading gaze so convincing I would have believed he loved me if I hadn't known better. Around us everyone stopped and stared.
My throat too tight to speak, I offered a slow nod of acceptance. Blake put the box on the table, took the ring and slid it onto my finger before kissing my hand once again. He surged up, his fingers threading through my hair as he kissed me.
The waiter came up, clearing his throat after a few seconds of being ignored. “Champagne, Mr. Cross?”
Another long second passed before Blake broke the kiss. Staring at me, he shook his head and smiled. “Just the check...we're leaving now.”
Minutes passed like hours until we were back in the limo. The whole time, Blake kept his gaze locked on mine, didn't turn his head to look at another person, barely acknowledge their existence as he signed for the dinner.
I reflected his devotion, my skin starting to crawl as the whispers built to a buzzing drone. A voice cut through, echoing the room’s confusion. By the woman’s pitch I would have guessed her my age or a little older.
“But who is she?”
“What is she?” Another voice, droller and older, asked a little more loudly.
I didn’t search for the speaker, pretended I was deaf to anything but the beating of Blake’s heart as he led me outside and tucked me into the limo’s back seat. The instant the glass partition was up, I slugged him in the shoulder.
“You knew...” It was an accusation, whispered but edged with hurt and anger. “You knew how I would react when you asked about my parents—”
He captured my hands before I could punch him again. “No, PJ. I had no idea the question would upset you. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t.”
My gaze narrowed. “What do you mean, should have?”
“Love, even with the people you care about, you hold everyone at arm’s length. That’s something you learned to do as a kid.”
I was too angry to listen to reason. I tried to jerk my hands free. “If you didn’t know, why'd you wait until that moment to propose!”
Blake let go, wrapped his arms around me and held me tight, his voice a hot whisper in my ear. “Because I saw the hurt the question caused and thought I could make it go away. I'm sorry, Pippa. I didn't think it would make it worse.”
I struggled but he wouldn't release me. I started to flail but he cinched me tighter. His mouth sought mine, but I buried my face against the seat cushion.
“Stop it.” The warning rumbled low in his chest.
“Right, someone might be watching.”
“No, love—”
I brought my hands to my ears. I wasn't going to let him sweet talk me into compliance. The timing of his proposal had taken me by surprise, coming at me as images of my mother’s disapproving face lingered in my mind. And those bitches at the restaurant!
“Pippa, be reasonable.”
I couldn’t lay my hurt feelings entirely at his feet, but he was the only one in the limo with me besides poor Carson. I pressed my hands tighter against my ears.
He spun me in my seat, my back tucked up against his broad chest as he pulled the hem of the tube dress up. His hand slid along my thigh, lifting the dress with it, until he came to a stop at the edge of my lace panties.
I froze, not even breathing.
“Are you done with the hysterics?”
“I wasn't hysterical.” I had the urge to jab him with my elbow, but he had me pinned against him, his forearm digging into the soft curve of my stomach.
“Are you done?” He repeated.
When I didn't answer, he brushed a finger against the edge of the flimsy mesh panties he’d dressed me in, lifting the fabric half a centimeter.
“Yes!” I blurted. “I'm done.”
“Good.” He lowered the fabric back down, his fingertips brushing across my covered mound. “Now we can resume that other conversation.”
“What other—” The question died on my lips as he cupped my pussy and squeezed.
His chin brushed the hair along my throat to the side, his lips fastening on the flesh just below my ear. Beneath my panties, my clit jerked up, my labia and stomach clenching as he squeezed my pussy a second time.
Damn him! He shouldn’t be doing this right now.
Damn me, too, for wanting him to continue.
“Are you just as tight as you are wet, baby?” Blake licked behind my earlobe, his voice a hard moan of need. His hand dipped lower, one finger pulling the gusset of my panties to the side while another finger stroked the outer edge of my labia.
“Blake, we didn't—”
He didn't wait for me to finish. His finger parted my lower lips, ran a hard line along my clit that had my hips thrusting. “Shhh, Pippa. Let me show you I'm sorry, how it's more than just money you're getting out of the deal.”
I tried to shake my head, tell him to stop, that I wasn't going to give him more than a perfunctory fuck to make the marriage legal.
My resolve melted beneath the feather light touch of his finger as it traced the hood
of my clit. Finding the pearl tucked inside, he made short lifting strokes against it, his warm voice subduing me.
“Just relax, love.”
“Don't,” I whimpered, the rest of my body warring with my heart. “Not that name, please.”
“But you are my love, Pippa. And I’ll call you that as long as it takes.”
I knew he was talking about the lawsuit, the timeline of our marriage—however many months or weeks needed to grind Burke down. But for the moment, I wanted to pretend it was otherwise, to stop worrying about how quickly things were progressing and go, just once, with the moment.
“Blake...” I started to squirm, my indecision chewing at me.
“Don’t Blake me, baby.” He peeled one thick fold of flesh to the side and smoothed the pad of his thumb slowly down my clit. “I love you, remember? I just proposed to you. You said yes—you know what that means.”
“That I’m yours.” My hips started to pump small circles as his thumb took another stroke along my length.
“That’s right, PJ.”
Another stroke had my hips thrusting high, a harsh moan leaving me in a shudder.
“Mine to touch, to test...”
Test me, he did. His fingers slid down my wet slit, their tips taking a shallow dip inside to find more moisture. His fingers curling, he pushed three of them into my clenching depths before they re-emerged to rub against the hypersensitive spine of my sex. They danced against my clit, stroking, pulling, gliding wet with my juices.
His lips caressed my neck, coaxed small gurgles of pleasure from my throat as my hips began to move in time with his hand. I felt myself cresting, my stomach muscles and thighs tightening as my mound lifted higher.
“So beautiful, Pippa.”
I whimpered, begged him for the first time that night not to stop what he was doing.
He slowed, teasing for a second before he buried three fingers in me again, the heel of his hand manipulating my clit. His free hand took hold of the hair at the nape of my neck, drawing my head back until I was looking up at him. “Baby, nothing in the world could make me stop.”
Crazy About Curves: 10 Luscious Reads Page 11
