by JA Huss
His hips start grinding on me. My button is being pushed, over and over, and I know, in this moment, that if I don’t do something quick, I will explode.
So I swing my leg over his body, turn around, and position myself over the top of him. His abs are hard, like a plank. And those irresistible hip muscles, forming a V, like they are pointing to his cock, are staring me in the face. I lick them without thinking, just as his tongue flicks against my clit.
My mouth covers his dick. I suck, but only because that’s what he’s doing to me, then gasp when I realize how close I am. My head dives down, taking in his whole shaft.
“Ahhh,” he moans. “Ahhhh.” Again. “Miss Cookie, you’re a dirty whore if you can take my giant—ahhhhh—cock all the way into your throat.”
Keep talking, I think in my head. If he’s talking, he’s not licking.
“I’m gonna come in there,” he says, practically growling the words as he thrusts his hips.
But… “Oh, fuck,” I mumble, thinking about his words.
“Sugar,” he says, thrusting his hips again, forcing himself inside me so far, I fear I will gag and ruin all the hard work I just put in. “Mumble against my cock again and this game is over.”
“Mmmmm,” I say, feeling the vibrations as they bounce off his shaft.
And then his tongue is working. And I’m humming myself into a frenzy, and my hands are underneath his balls, my fingertips searching for that tender spot around his asshole that will end this game once and for all. But my hips are out of control as he licks, I realize. I’m rocking back and forth until I find his chin and… “Oohhhhhhh…”
That word goes on forever as I come, and in the same moment, his warm, salty semen is filling my mouth, spilling out from between my lips.
“Game over,” he says, flipping me over as he fists his sticky cock so it stays hard. He hikes my hands up above my head, leans down to bite my nipple, and rams himself inside me with such force, my whole body moves. My head bumps up against the armrest of the couch.
I lift my knees up, giving him more access as he slams me with all his power. Balls against my asshole, and his lips on my mouth, kissing me and kissing me and kissing me…
We come again. I drag my fingernails down his back, making him roar.
We go still. He collapses on top of me, our hearts beating so hard, they are drums in my ears. The motion of the boat comes back to me, soothing us as the beat slows and the sea becomes music. Our hot, sweaty bodies the product of what we just composed.
“I win,” he says. “I win.”
“No,” I say, and snuggle up to his chest when he angles his body towards mine and puts his arms around me. “We both won.”
Chapter Twenty-Two - Paxton
I didn’t think she’d be so competitive, to be honest. I figured she’d call me ridiculous and we’d fuck around some more, then I’d just pound her against the wall.
Which is still not a bad idea, and I might be ready for another round real soon.
But… she did try real hard to win. And it’s not the house.
Nope. I have a feeling Cinderella Vaughn is not the kind of girl who gives a fuck about owning a house. She was living in a trailer on the beach and seemed perfectly content.
She really doesn’t want me to meet her family. And maybe later, when I’m not so happy and content, I might have to think about that some more. But right now I’m just gonna chalk it up to being some kind of Daddy’s girl and let it go.
“I love your boat,” Cindy says.
“Just wait,” I mumble back, unable to open my eyes. “The other one is so much nicer. We could sail around the world on that one.”
“That would be perfect. Alone with you for months and months,” she says, her voice barely audible. She’s tired. Hell, I’m tired. But we need to get going.
“I want nothing more than to lie here with you, but BRB.”
I get out of bed, clean up in the head, then get a hot washcloth and go back to Cindy so I can wipe her sweaty face down. “Thank you,” she says. But I’m not done. I open her legs up and wipe her inner thighs, then her glistening pussy. God, I’d like to fuck her again so bad. As soon as we get home, first thing on my agenda.
I lean down and kiss her on the lips. She wakes up just enough to kiss me back, and then I whisper, “I’m gonna change the heading and take us back to the marina. Stay here and sleep.”
She sighs softly, then tucks her hands under her cheek and goes still.
I go up to the cockpit and change course, lingering a little, looking out at the vast emptiness of ocean, contemplative. After a few minutes we are heading back towards land, and it’s weird how you can be looking at the end of the world one minute and civilization the next. We’re not that far from shore. Only about an hour away. But it strikes me how easy it is to unplug. Disconnect. Become disconnected.
Isn’t that what Cindy does? Isn’t that why she lived in that trailer in what amounts to a parking lot? She likes her freedom. I hadn’t really articulated it in my head when I offered up my house as her prize tonight. But this underlying difference between us isn’t money. It’s expectations. Or maybe just what you’re willing to settle for.
Cindy is happy in her little trailer. She made that perfectly clear when we drove out there to get her clothes. It’s a nice enough place, I guess. It’s clean, and cozy. Decorated in a beachy cottage kind of way. Girly, if pressed to come up with a better description. Something she is and isn’t at the same time.
I can’t figure her out.
And what’s more, I don’t have much to go on. Her father makes sense in all kinds of ways. Tough guys raise tough girls, right? But naming her sisters after Disney princesses? That’s not tough. Cinderella’s name is the thing that doesn’t fit. I don’t really know the names of any other Disney princesses. Snow White, right? She’s one of them? Poison apples? Or mirrors? I’m not sure. I’m ninety-nine point nine percent sure I’ve never even seen a Disney princess movie.
I know the Cinderella one. That’s a book, and when I was little my mother read me stories every night before bed. So I’ve got Prince Charming’s number. Dumbass who can’t even recognize his girl unless he’s got that damn shoe on her foot.
And what was with that comment about not having an office? She finds her clients through her brother’s website? I didn’t see a brother when I looked online.
I should really do a thorough background check on her. Figure out how she ticks. Where she came from. Why she’s addicted to the nomadic lifestyle.
I could be a nomad. I like to travel.
But… there’s this little nagging void in my head that says it’s just not the same thing.
When Cindy travels she has a backpack of clothes and that’s it. She leaves everything else behind, she said. Starting over is a hobby for her.
And if she decides to stop and stay a while, she just buys new stuff. Just enough stuff.
Besides, I still get the feeling she’s hiding something. And whatever it is, I don’t want to care about it. I really don’t. Hell, I’m hiding a billion things about myself. Why would I go digging into her life if I don’t want her digging into mine?
And yet I wish there was a way to prove we’re the same, even though we’re so different. I have houses all over the damn world. Those two islands. The boats. Two again. Paxton Vance has to have a backup plan.
I’m a collector, I realize. I might even be a hoarder. A house hoarder. Why do I have so many houses?
I have cars stashed away too. I should get one out of that storage facility in Long Beach and give it to Cindy. That VW Bug is cool for driving around Malibu, but you can’t really go anywhere in a car like that.
That’s the point. I hear her voice in my head. Everything is disposable.
How does she work like that? I mean, like… get clients and shit? If she’s traveling all the time?
“Hey,” Cindy says, coming up from behind and wrapping her arms around my neck. I smile up at her in the fadin
g light. The reflection of the setting sun on the water makes her skin glow. “I thought you were coming back down?”
“Got caught up in the moment,” I say, pulling her into my lap. “Realizing you just lost a twenty-one-million-dollar house in a bet is kind of sobering.”
She slaps my arm. “You didn’t lose anything. We both lost.”
“No,” I say, playing with her long strands of golden hair. It’s got a little bounce in it today. “We both won. That means we both get the prize. I get to meet your mom, by way of your dad. And you get the title to my house.”
“Pax. Please. I don’t want your house.”
“Why not?” I ask, reading way more into that statement than I should. “Because then you might have to settle down? Stick around? Get serious?”
“What?” she asks, pulling away from me. “Where’s this coming from?”
“You don’t even have an office. How do you work?”
“I told you. People get in contact and I go where I’m needed.”
“You just pick up and leave?”
“Pax, you’re being weird. I’m not going anywhere now.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Yeah, why is now different? Because it’s not old yet? Things are still shiny and new? What if you get a request for a job in like, Iowa?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “If I do get a job in Iowa, I’ll let you know and we can decide how to deal.”
Hmmm. How to deal. I don’t wanna have to deal. I want to nail this shit down like… right now.
“Well, the house is yours.”
“That house is not mine. I won’t take it.”
“I’ll just put your name on the deed and be done with it. You won’t even know.”
“I’m pretty sure I’d have to sign something.”
“I’m positive I could fake your signature.”
She shifts in my lap so she can look me in the eyes. “What is going on with you?”
I just look at her. How fucking beautiful she is. Not just her looks, which are incredible. But her whole… everything. Her everything.
I don’t know what this feeling is. I don’t have a word to describe it. It’s bigger than anything I’ve ever felt before about a woman. It’s everywhere and nowhere all at the same time.
“Hey,” Cindy says, placing both of her palms on my stubbled face. “I’m not going anywhere.”
For now, I say in my head. But when she gets tired of me, she’s gonna sell that car, buy herself a plane ticket—hell, hitch that backpack over her shoulder and stick out her thumb on PCH. It could go that way. In fact, I can totally see her doing that.
“Detective,” she says, kissing me on the lips. “I’m not leaving you. Ever.”
“Miss Cookie,” I say. “I’d just feel a whole lot better about that if you owned my house.”
“You’re crazy.”
“They do say that.”
“But I’m crazy too.”
“That’s the part that scares me.”
“Why?” She giggles. “We’re practically soulmates.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Mysterious. That’s who we are.”
“Yeah,” she says, leaning her head on my shoulder. “Yeah I like the sound of that. Mr. and Mrs. Mysterious.”
We sit like that a little longer. Until I have to take the boat off autopilot and steer my way through the marina and back into the boat slip.
“I love this boat,” Cindy says as I help her step back onto the dock. “I can’t wait to see the other one.”
I smile all the way back to the car. In fact, I smile all the way back up to Malibu over that little comment.
“You’ll see all of it,” I say just as we pull into Malibu Colony, even though she’s been sleeping for the past fifteen minutes. “Every house, every island, every boat, every car.”
Prince Charming is gonna deliver the fairy tale to his sweet-smelling Cinderella. Whether she wants it or not.
Chapter Twenty-Three - Cindy
“Hey,” Pax whispers in my ear as he unbuckles my seat belt. “We’re home.”
Home. God, what was up with that whole conversation about giving me this house? I can’t take this house. That’s crazy.
I sigh, let him help me out of the car, then follow him into the house by way of the garage. This door leads straight out into the pool area, since the garage is street level and the guest house is technically on the second floor.
“You ready for some steaks?” he asks as we walk into the beach-side part of the house. He drops his keys on the kitchen island and walks to the refrigerator to pull it open and study what’s inside.
“So hungry,” I say. “I’ll start the grill.”
We went grocery shopping yesterday since he didn’t have to go into the office to work and our take-out options in Malibu are limited.
Have I ever… grocery shopped with a man before?
Honestly, I don’t think like that. I have had girlfriends who gush over a guy asking her to grocery shop with him—like it’s something very meaningful. But even though I’m a romantic in many ways, I take love very literally.
Grocery shopping is… well, buying food to eat and nothing more. Now, letting me win a house from him in a silly bet—yeah, that gesture has some meaning behind it.
I just don’t understand why he’s so worried about me leaving. And it’s not like I can even tell him how obsessive I’ve been trying to sneak my way into his life.
No. I can’t tell him any of that. And he’s right. I’ve got the past of a girl who takes off. A wanderer. A leaver, as my uncle Ford would say. I’m a leaver.
“I need to call that Liam asshole and let him know I’m out.”
“You were in?” I ask from the patio. “You’re not considering it for real, are you?”
“I told him I’d call him tonight and let him know. So I just have to wrap that shit up and get him off my back.”
“You said text. I was there, remember?”
Pax backs away from the fridge as the door closes, with a package of T-bone steaks and a head of broccoli. “He’s not really the kind of guy who takes no for an answer in a text. I’ll have to call at least.”
“Hmmm,” I say.
“Hmm, what?” he says, tearing the plastic off the meat and walking towards me on the patio. “I can handle him.”
“OK. I trust you completely.” I just wish you’d trust me back, I want to say. But then he’ll bring up all the things I really can’t talk about. Like why I have no office and why I never stick around in one place. Why I bribed a teenager to let me deliver his food all summer. And why he can’t meet my mom and dad, even if we did both win today.
Am I in too deep? Did I fuck this all up with my stalking?
“You wanna go surfing?” Pax asks. “After we eat? And watch the sunset from our boards?”
God. How does a man like this—tall, dangerous, mysterious—manage to say the most romantic things ever?
“Yes,” I answer. “Yes, I’d love that.”
He cooks the steaks to perfection while I wash the broccoli and squirt ranch dressing into little ceramic dipping bowls. And then we eat outside and watch a movie star toss a football with his two sons on the beach.
“You’re gonna love it here,” Pax says, once we’re done. “It’s your kind of place.”
“I already love it here, Detective. And it’s not because of the ocean, or the house, or the movie stars on the beach. It’s because you’re here. I’m not leaving, Paxton Vance.” Not after I worked so hard to get you in the first place.
He looks at me for a long second. “How about you let me fuck your brains out on the kitchen counter and we’ll save that sunset surfing for another day?”
I laugh, feeling more comfortable with this man than anyone I’ve ever known. “You’re like a goddamned poet. Anybody ever tell you that?”
He stands up, pulls me to my feet, hoists me over his shoulder as he smacks my ass, and says, “Only the girl I fell in
love with.”
We fuck all over the house that evening. On the kitchen island, as promised. Then we take a swim in the pool and fuck in the outdoor shower, Pax pressing me up against the hard stucco wall until we laugh about the impressions it leaves on my back once he throws me down a lounge chair and starts rubbing lotion all over my body as he massages the tightness away in my wound-up muscles.
He fucks me during the massage, since the massage mostly consists of him playing with my pussy until I’m squirting and screaming his name. And some time after midnight he puts me into bed, drags the light cover over me, and kisses me on the cheek, saying, “Be right back. Just gonna make that call to Liam now.”
I don’t know what happens after that.
Because when I wake up he’s gone and the only clue he left behind is a note.
I stuck it out for two weeks. Patted myself on the back and read that note over and over.
Cinderella,
I gotta do this job for Liam or he’s just gonna get someone else to do it instead and the only way Corporate comes out of this alive is if I take over. Be back soon.
Mr. Charming
P.S. Don’t leave.
I admit, the cute note was what made me stay so long, wondering what the fuck just happened. How I went from the best night of my life to… well, dumped. What else can I call it? I called him about a hundred times and it went to voicemail. I even hacked into his email just to make sure he wasn’t dead. Because I thought he was dead for a good forty-eight hours before I got the new password to his email account.
He changed it. He knew I was hacking him and he changed it.
Which means we’re over.
But nope. He’s still alive. Because he’s been checking emails. None of them with a reply, but every day some are marked read.
He’s not even leaving me messages or texts in the middle of the night while I’m sleeping, so he doesn’t have to talk to me. Not an email—I mean, he’s online, right? He can’t just bang out a few words? Hey, it was fun, but moving on? And there’s always good old snail mail. I’m not expecting a Hallmark card, for fuck’s sake. A few words scribbled on a Taco Bell napkin would suffice. And do I really need a slap in the face like that to take a hint? He’s just not coming back.
