"Thank you, boo. You know how much that means to me."
"You're welcome, bae."
But throughout the entire conversation, she'd never taken her eyes off Alt as he jumped, dove, spiked and served his way through an incredible match that had her on the edge of her seat, although she did her best to appear as if she was merely reading from her Kindle as it was propped up on her bent legs.
She did such a good job of watching him surreptitiously that she didn't see him coming towards her.
"Are we still not speaking?" he asked, hunkering down next to her chair – much too close to her – with a small smile, not appearing quite as brashly confident a he had when they'd first met, a few days ago.
"I never said we weren't speaking…"
"Oh, my mistake. I must've incorrectly assumed that, when you ran out of the limo as if the hounds of hell were chasing you."
"Not the hounds of hell, exactly, just a man with a palm like a paddle." She couldn't help but automatically reach to rub a behind that was only just beginning to return to its normal color and feeling. Although she caught herself halfway there, and him staring at her much too tenderly because of it, as he reached to claim it for his own, kissing the tips each of her fingers individually and then her palm.
"I'm sorry. I overstepped. You're not yet mine to spank. But I already think so much of you that I won't tolerate a word of criticism – even from you."
Elle felt bamboozled. "Not yet yours to what?"
He didn't feel like going into what he wanted from her here and now, so he ignored her query. "Have dinner with me tonight?"
She was already shaking her head. "I was really going to just order room service. I haven't slept well lately –" She didn't go into the reason because he didn't need to know, but the nightmares she'd thought she'd gotten over were back.
With a vengeance.
"Just what I was thinking, too. I have no interest at all in joining the geriatric crowd in the dining room."
Elle snorted. "Then you shouldn't invite me to your room."
"Elle."
Her senses were instantly on edge – not as they'd had to become when she had been going through what she had come to refer to as her "troubles," but in a way that made her more acutely aware of her own body – and his – and their reactions to each other.
"That was self-deprecating, not insulting."
His scolding expression hadn't changed one bit, in fact, his eyebrow rose at her words and he looked even more doubtful.
And then her bottom began to tingle.
"Come to dinner and leave your self-deprecating tendencies in your room. Seven-thirty, sharp." He rose, then leaned down to press a very gentle kiss on the top of her head before he sprinted back to join in on the next game.
AT EXACTLY SEVEN-THIRTY, there was a knock on his door, and he was very glad to see that she was punctual. It was one of his personal bugaboos. He could not stand lateness, from anyone, including himself.
"Come in, come in." He reached for her hand, but she was backing away from him.
"You didn't tell me to dress."
He was wearing dress pants and a white Oxford shirt.
"That's because I didn't want you to. I just got back from a business meeting, and I have yet to change. Do you mind if I grab a quick shower?"
His hand was still out to her as he looked down at her but didn't say anything more.
Elle swallowed hard at the filthy thoughts that flooded her mind but nodded and walked into his room – which was on one of the restricted floors – but didn't take his hand.
He didn't make a big point of it but turned away from her, saying, "I'll just be a second – make yourself at home. There's a bar in the corner if you'd like a drink. I'll be right back."
Elle spent the entire time he was gone trying desperately not to think about what he must've looked like, standing naked in the shower. She wandered around the suite and ended up out on the balcony, looking out at the ocean.
"You're always by the water," he commented from behind her.
Elle nodded. "It's where I feel the most at home – the safest, for some reason."
Alt nodded, too. "I understand."
She turned back to him, and he opened his arms wide. "Is this better?" He was in shorts and a t-shirt, not unlike her shorts and slightly better shirt.
"Yes!"
Alt took a step towards her. "Good," he murmured. "I want you to be comfortable, Elle. I-I want you to want to be comfortable when you're around me."
That was a very touching revelation, and she suddenly felt an enormous lump in her throat.
When he kissed her, it was soft and completely undemanding, experimental and coaxing at the same time. Just perfect for her, in other words, and he left off at an almost frustrating point, just when she would have moved towards him, perhaps even close enough to press herself fully against him.
"Are you hungry?" he asked, holding the door back into the living room of his suite open for her.
"Starving."
"What's your favorite kind of food?" he asked, motioning for her to take a seat, which she did, in the corner of the big, comfortable sofa. He took a seat – to her consternation, on several levels – on the cushion next to her, not close enough to touch her, not crowding her in any way, but entirely too close to achieve the comfort he said he wanted her to feel around him.
Still, she didn't think her answer gave any indication of just how her nerves were jangling because of his nearness. "Oh, I'm pretty easy. Fish is not my favorite, but I like most other kinds. My parents weren't much for catering to individual tastes, at least not until you were old enough to cook it for yourself"
"Are your parents still alive?" he asked, and she thought she detected a bit of a wistful note in his voice.
"Mom is – although she's in an assisted living facility now, but Dad's gone."
"They're divorced?"
"No. They loved each other till Dad died, and Mom still loves him – she's living in the past more than the present now, so he's very real to her and it's downright heartbreaking. How about your parents?"
"I don't know if they're alive or not," he said casually.
Elle chuckled softly, then heartily wished she could recall it. "What do you mean?"
"I never knew my parents. I was abandoned, given up, a ward of the court, raised in the system."
She was thunderstruck and couldn't keep herself from reaching out to pat his hand, becoming even more flustered when he captured it with his own, tightening his fingers around hers when she tried to reclaim it. "Oh, Alton, I'm sorry. I've always tried to be very careful about trumpeting my luck in having parents who adored each other because I assume everyone else's are divorced, but I'm so sorry that you never got the chance to know yours."
He shrugged, as if it was of no matter to him, but she couldn't help but think he felt the loss of what he'd never had, quite acutely. 'Probably for the best, though, since they didn't want me."
Without a thought, Elle leaned over and hugged him, which seemed to surprise and delight him, his arms settling around her as if they'd sat like this many times before, and she found she'd lost not only her hand to him, but the rest of her, too.
"Well, if I'd known this was going to be the result, I'd have told you my hard luck, rags to riches story the moment I met you!"
When he kissed her this time, it was less tender and more passionate. So much so, that she did something she didn't usually do very often and practically never with a man she didn't know very well. She wasn't sure if it was his easy manner – which definitely had gone a long way to making her feel relaxed with him in general – or her general horniness for him – but she allowed herself to sink into the kiss, to simply enjoy it for what it was. Her eyes drifted shut and she let him kiss the breath out of her, and it took very little effort on his part to make her dissolve like sugar into tea.
"Oh, fuck me," she breathed with what little air she had left.
Alt could feel her
total surrender and was doing his best to hold himself back, but he had to ask, "Is that an invitation?"
He regretted it immediately, of course, when she pulled away from him – hard, as if she expected that he would try to hold her against her will. Then she sat in the corner of the couch – as far away from him as she could get physically without moving to the next chair and looking for all she was worth like a scared rabbit.
Alt had a flash of intuition that she might well run from him this time as she had before. So he stood, voluntarily putting distance between them, giving her space and trying to chuckle as he said softly, unable to tear his eyes away from her, "Obviously not." He felt an unfamiliar ache in his chest and stomach at her cowed demeanor.
He opened his mouth to say something more – to question her gently about her unexpected unusual reaction – but there was a sudden knock at the door.
"Ah, dinner has arrived."
The room service waiter entered and set up a pretty table for two by the balcony.
Elle sat on the couch, unmoving, trapped in her own mind and the horrors of her own memories, doing her best to fight the impulse to run out the door again, just as he suspected.
It was the smell of dinner – when she hadn't had much appetite all day – that convinced her to stay, although she couldn't seem to convince herself to leave the couch and join him at the table once the waiter had left.
She only knew that Alt had come to stand in front of her because she could see his sneakers as her gaze was glued to the carpet.
Alt was at a loss as to what to do next, so he relied on his own instincts. He bowed deeply before her and then offered her his elbow.
Elle was slow in realizing what he was doing because she was staring at his ginormous feet and realizing exactly what that might mean in regards to other of his bodily proportions. But then she realized he was waiting for her to do something, and she looked up, all the way up those long, lean legs of his to see him with his nicely muscular arm bent out to her in a wonderfully gentlemanly fashion – something she would never have expected of him, or, indeed, any twenty-first century man.
"May I escort you to the table?" he murmured, an almost smile playing about his lips, as if to chide her for being scared of little old harmless him.
She rose and allowed him to place her hand on his arm – no more than that – and walk them the few steps to the table – which even had a pretty rose bouquet centerpiece – holding her chair out for her and generally acting like every little girl's idea of Prince Charming.
CHAPTER 4
A nd he kept up the act through dinner, pouring them both an excellent wine that was a just right compliment to the chateaubriand, insisting that she try some of the Lyonnais potatoes, although she tried to demure, saying they were too caloric.
He gave her a look that made her not want to push him and let him put a spoonful of them onto her plate. Along with a more generous portion of haricot vert, a small side salad, and a wonderful toothsome French bread spread generously with butter, they each had more than enough to eat, although he ate at least three times what she did, and she wondered where he put it, considering that she'd seen just how flat his stomach was.
As he'd done before, he kept her amused throughout dinner. There never seemed to be any awkward lulls in the conversation, nor was it one sided. He asked smart, sound questions – and follow-ups – of her, and to Elle's delight, he seemed just as tickled by her sense of humor as she was with his.
"More roast?" he asked, offering her the last slice the waiter had cut before leaving them.
Elle patted her stomach. "Only if you want to have to roll me back to my room, but go ahead, if you want it."
"No, I'm stuffed."
"Thank you for a wonderful dinner," she said, feeling shy for the first time since they began eating.
Alt raised his eyebrow at her. "I hope you don't think it's over yet, my girl."
She had to laugh. "I don't think 'girl' quite fits any more, unfortunately."
"Nonsense," he said, rising to collect her from her seat and guide her out onto the balcony again, only this time to occupy the sumptuously cushioned lounge chairs there, where they could no longer see but could still hear ocean that was right in front of them. "You're one of those women who will be girlish until the day she dies."
She gave him a quizzical look. "Uh, thank you…I think."
He grinned. "I did mean it as a compliment."
Suddenly, he dashed back inside, returning with their wine glasses, which he'd filled. A few minutes after settling back into his chair, he said quietly, "I'm sorry if I startled you on the couch. I knew you weren't serious about what you'd said, although I definitely wish you were."
Elle was damned glad there was no ambient light but the full moon – then he couldn't see how brightly she was blushing at his words. "If anyone owes anyone an apology, it's me to you. I'm sorry for being such a ninny, but…well; this may be more than you want to know about me…"
"No such thing," he interjected quietly but firmly. "But continue."
That did not help her blush in the least. "I probably should have told you sooner, but I'm doing more than vacationing down here – I'm trying to…well…for lack of a better word, recover a bit from a particularly bad relationship. You were quite right when you asked me in the limo if I'd had a bad experience. I have, and it's made me even more wary than I was before, about men in general. And then there's the fact that I really can't fathom why you're with me instead of any number of the amazingly gorgeous co-eds around here."
Alt was suddenly on full alert. He took a swallow of wine and said, "Well, thank you for trusting me enough to tell me that. And I won't lie – I've had my fill of amazingly gorgeous co-eds and women like the ones we saw at the party. But…at the risk of sounding clichéd, I want more than that."
If she wasn't quite sure that she was sitting within arm's reach of him, so that she could touch him if she wanted or needed to, she would have wondered if he was real. She couldn't detect any trace of nastiness – sarcasm or snark – in his tone, although she was much less willing to trust her instincts about men now than she ever was before, and she hadn't been all that inclined to trust them in the first place.
And yet here she was.
Or wasn't.
Within seconds, he had leaned casually over and lifted her, gently but determinedly, onto his lap, arranging her with her head on his shoulder, her bottom perched atop what she immediately recognized as unmistakable evidence of his interest, not that it soothed her much. She was of a mind that he was young enough to still be in that "anything female sets him off" stage of life.
Damn, he was young!
He didn't try to take any further liberties – didn't get handsy or try to cop a feel in any way, which didn't surprise her as much as she thought it would. He didn't really seem the type. Instead, she was treated to the sight of his classic profile as he reached for the rest of his wine and took a healthy swallow then caught her staring and watched her face burn bright red.
"Want some?" he asked huskily, holding out the glass to her, turned so that she would drink from the same spot he had.
"Yes, please," she whispered, wishing she couldn't hear how meek and submissive she sounded.
Alt held the glass to her lips and tipped a moderate amount of the excellent vintage into her mouth, his eyes caught by the sight of her lips closing as she swallowed, wishing they were closing over him.
The glass was hastily deposited on the side table, just before his lips took slow, deliberate possession of hers, the fingers of his big hand weaving themselves into the hair at the back of her head, not forcing but firmly encouraging her to tilt it back, to expose herself to him, to show him her jugular.
And she did it.
She had never felt such a rush of purely sexual desire with any other man, but somehow it welled up within her with him, and she knew – deep down knew, with terror in her heart – that she was lost – even against her will.
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br /> His fingers hadn't remained in her hair as his lips made their way down the exquisite length of her neck. It had moved down a bit, splayed just over her bra, as if to hold her there while his other hand fiddled with the first button of her shirt. Undoing it slowly, expertly, with that one hand and those long fingers, then moving on to the next one, although he stopped there, as if intuiting that she might object if he simply stripped her, as he would have loved to do.
But she was more than worth the time and attention he would give her to proceed with more caution than he might with someone else – someone younger, someone he didn't know was still hurting. He didn't want her running from him again; he was pretty sure he'd end up with a complex if she did.
Elle was thinking that at least she'd had the forethought to change from her serviceable white bra to something prettier – a lace champagne pink number that showed off her breasts to a nice advantage.
He'd removed enough button obstacles that he could lean back and reach both hands in to cup both of her breasts at once, hearing her draw in a sharp breath, then sigh it out as his fingers found her still lace covered nipples and began to draw lazy circles over them. Alt thought he'd lose it altogether when her head fell back as if she couldn't bear to hold it up a second longer, as she bit her lip, just the slightest sigh of a moan escaping her lips bringing him to full, aching prominence beneath that enticing bottom of hers.
And he wanted more – much more – from her than that.
He wanted to hear her scream his name at the top of her lungs while she came helplessly in his arms – preferably while lying on a hot, sore bottom, but he'd take her anyway he could get her.
His hips arched against her instinctively as he nipped at her lips then, gently removing a breast from its pretty pink cup, he bent his leonine head to coax a nipple to bud even further in the wet, hot depths of his mouth.
Her gasp spurred him on as he found its mate and treated it the same way, leaving her wet, sore peaks long moments later to look up at her with raw, undisguised hunger in his eyes.
The Gentleman Dom Page 4
