Will wanted to groan; this was going to be a disaster.
Still refusing to look at Laura’s face, he knew it’d gone too far. He gently removed Lila’s hand from his chest, “Lila, I’m here with someone.”
“Who?” she asked, glancing back to where Laura had been, revealing an empty space.
Fuck.
“I have to go,” he told her, leaving her gaping at his rude exit as he navigated his way out of the ballroom.
It took him over an hour of shaking hands with more of the city’s richest men and women, socialites who drove business to his hotel, and acquaintances he’d made over the years before he made it out of the ballroom. Through it all, he didn’t see a single glimpse of Laura, not her soft strawberry blond hair or the strapless cornflower-blue dress he’d remember on his dying day.
By the time he got to the penthouse it was nearly midnight, the energy in the hotel and outside on the street vibrating through his veins. All he wanted to do was start the year with her.
The elevator doors opened and he saw her outside, the fire on the terrace roaring in the grate along with the standing heater. One of the thick fleece blankets from his couch draped over her bare shoulders as she stared out over the skyline, her pale skin luminous beneath the lights of the city.
* * *
Laura knew the moment Will arrived in the penthouse behind her; she felt it in the air. She wasn’t jealous of the woman who’d glommed onto him as if Laura wasn’t even there, but it had brought home the fact that she’d been living in a fantasy world where Will was still her friend and protector like he’d been when they were kids. But he wasn’t.
Will Walker was a billionaire hotel magnate who could crook his finger and have anyone or anything in this city. That she’d thought all he needed was her love was so heartbreakingly naive of her. He was so far beyond her dream of a normal life and family that she felt embarrassed that she ever thought he needed her.
It was clear from him punking out on her family and all the work events he’d dragged her to that Will didn’t want a lifestyle change. He’d given no indication that he needed her in his life in any real or meaningful way. And she wasn’t going to beg. She hadn’t begged for a family when she was a kid and she wasn’t going to do it now, so it was time for her to accept that he didn’t want to be in her life like that.
Will came to stand by her at the all-glass railing, watching her for a moment.
“She’s just an old friend,” he finally said, his voice low but audible over the steady roar of the crowd forty floors below them on the street.
“I believe you,” she allowed, drawing the blanket farther around her shoulders. The fire and the heater did a lot to keep it warm, but it was still the dead of winter.
“Why’d you leave then?” he asked, his forearm coming to rest on the glass railing as he regarded her, his fingers so close to hers and his eyes searching. “I was hoping for another dance.”
“I’d just had enough of the crowd, I guess,” she lied. “If you didn’t want to come to the gala, I would have skipped it too,” he said, surprising her. But then she didn’t actually believe him. He wanted to do whatever he could for her, but every event he’d dragged her to had been a way to push her away, to make sure she didn’t get too close to him. She knew every trick in the book, had used them all on her boyfriends past.
“I didn’t want you to feel like you needed to babysit me when you had stuff to do.”
She saw his tongue bury itself into his cheek like it did when he was trying to work something out. “I never consider spending time with you babysitting. I liked having you there. These two weeks have been the first time these kinds of things haven’t been a complete pain in my ass and that’s because of you.”
Laura smiled, having a hard time not touching him. He was so close, she could reach out and run a finger down his silky black lapel, like she’d wanted to do while they were dancing, but the time for that had passed. He was out of jeans and a leather jacket and in a bespoke Tom Ford tux that had been delivered to his penthouse from the designer this morning. Every bit of the tux was black, from the tailored pants to the fitted jacket and shirt to the onyx cuff links and buttons. The lapels were shiny silk, but that and his tie were the only variation in color. He looked as handsome as ever, but mostly she just wanted to rip it off him.
So she drew him to her, reaching out to pull off his bow tie, then letting it drop to the ground.
Shouting started in the street, the crowd already roaring in anticipation of the ball dropping. Slowly, her eyes on his, she unbuttoned his shirt.
His eyes were burning through her clothes. He’d never be easygoing, but watching him watch her undress him was painfully erotic. Even in his hotel where he ruled his own little kingdom, she was in charge and it was everything. All at once, she pushed off his jacket and shirt and leaned forward to drop a kiss on his collarbone. “I liked this even back then,” she told him, her voice hushed with reverence as she explored his body for what she knew was the final time. But unlike last time, she intended to show him just how much he meant to her before she had to say goodbye.
“Yeah?” he asked, face still as a statue as she licked across the protruding bone, his skin salty and smelling faintly of musky tobacco and bright vetiver at his pulse, which was beating steadily in his neck.
She nodded her head yes in response, drawing her hands across his shoulders and down the cords of his arms. “These have changed, but I always thought you were the strongest person in the world, even when the muscles might have been a little smaller.”
Dropping the blanket because she was already overheated, Laura moved around him, drawing a single fingertip down the sections of his abdomen and around to the muscled planes of his back. She drew kisses down his spine and back up to his shoulders. “I’m sorry I never said goodbye,” she told him, finally breaking the seal on their past. “I wanted to.”
He stiffened so she knew she’d hurt him. “I should have left with you—I know that. I should have trusted that you could take care of us.”
“You would have been an idiot to do that,” he rasped, and she could see his throat working.
“I thought about it all the time,” she admitted, resting her forehead on his shoulders. “I missed you so much, Will. And I wanted to go with you and I’m sorry you were alone.” Tears fell to her cheeks as she imagined for the thousandth time Will completely and totally on his own in the world after she left. “You were my only friend in the world and I left you alone and I didn’t ever expect you to forgive me.”
Taking a deep breath, she reached around and undid the button of his pants, pulling them down to the ground as she came to stand in front of him, his strong legs splayed powerfully apart, his hands fisted at his sides. “What do you want, Laura?” he got out, his eyes burning holes into her.
“You,” she told him truthfully. She went to her knees then, took off his shoes and socks, pushed them aside and glided her hands up his legs; her trail stopped at his knees to run her thumb over an old, now faded scar. She remembered he’d gotten jabbed by a barbed-wire fence he’d been climbing to get her backpack that some bullies had thrown over to torment her.
She leaned over to kiss the pale slash, the tears coming in earnest now and she didn’t stop them. They were for now and for then and for what they could have been, then and now.
Standing, she faced him and he remained stock still, his cock jutting out and throbbing for her. He reached out, his thumb brushing away the tears on her face, eventually kissing them away. She wrapped her arms around his neck, finally giving in and kissing him. “I’m sorry,” she breathed against his lips, wanting the absolution he had never once tried to give her in the weeks they’d been together. And she knew why, but just hadn’t wanted to accept it.
She kissed him, blindly, her lips and tongue sliding over his with little finesse, only feeling and desire an
d hopeless desperation to be his and to be forgiven and to be loved unconditionally by him like she’d once been. The two of them against the world.
The barely there sound of her zipper lowering drifted through the air around them as her dress slid into an iridescent silken puddle on the ground. Lifting her bodily out of the pool of fabric, he held her in his arms, his hardness throbbing against her stomach, the strong bands of his arms encasing her just a little too hard as he fought against the avalanche of their inevitable end.
His fingers found her center, testing and coming away wet because she wanted him more than anything she’d ever wanted.
“Laura,” he gritted, leaning his head on her forehead, his breath warm and wine scented on her cheek. “I want—”
But she didn’t want anything other than what she wanted, which was everything, so she met his lips with hers swallowing the words that would inevitably fall short.
He picked her up, carried her and the blanket to the chaise lounge in front of the fire, kissing his way down her chest, taking a nipple hardened by cold air in his mouth and then sucking softly, the gentle movement incongruous with the shouting going on below and around them as the world prepared to ring in the New Year. A pop star she recognized performed a block away, the pulsing bass beat reaching them even as high up as they were.
He placed himself at her entrance, already stretching her through what felt like molten-liquid heat between her thighs. Everywhere he touched, from her hand, to her fingertips, to where the hair of his legs subtly abraded the smooth skin of her legs was electric.
“Laura,” he choked out, as he pushed his way inside her.
The crowd below began to count down just as he started to speed up, his pace and hers a frenzy of limbs, clutching nails and seeking mouths. She needed more of him, pulling him tightly to her as she ground up against him, their groans lost to the night.
“Fuck,” he growled as she pulled his hair back so she could bite into his neck, all of her bottled feelings and resentment that he just wouldn’t forgive her coalescing as she used a little more force than necessary.
He levered higher over her, breaking the contact as he pounded into her, his hip bone hitting her clit so hard that she saw stars, her whole body flooding with sublime pleasure. She lay there, stroking him as he hammered into her as if he could change everything, change the fact that they still meant everything to each other but they were too terrified to admit it. The rigid length of him stretched her, the shuttling wet channel clasping against him as she shuddered her release, screaming it into the countdown as they and the city met the New Year together.
One more thrust and he went completely still inside her, shuddering against her before lowering himself beside her on the chaise, panting with exertion.
Shouting, screaming and joyful music floated up from the street below, but she barely noticed the countdown to one or the ball dropping or any of the raucous revelry. She had everything she wanted and she still had to let him go again.
Thirty seconds in and it was already shaping up to be her worst year yet.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WILL’S OFFICIAL NEW YEAR started by waking up in his pitch-black bedroom with a heavy sense of dread pushing on his chest. His hand reached out to the other side of the bed for Laura but as he’d feared, she wasn’t there. The handful of cold thousand-thread-count cotton confirmed his worst nightmare. Fear but then rage, hot and icy and sweet, scalded through his veins.
She had left him again.
He was just about to throw the covers off when he heard shuffling across the room. After waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, he saw her lurking around the room, probably trying to collect her things before he woke up so she could head out and continue living her perfect life without him.
“What are you doing?” he asked, his voice ripping through the quiet like a glass breaking. He watched as she halted abruptly by his dresser, caught.
“Sorry,” came her hushed voice. “I was trying to be quiet.”
“Are you leaving?”
He knew where she lived so it wasn’t as if she was going to disappear, but if last night was goodbye then he was going to make her say it to his face. Make her explain why exactly she couldn’t be bothered to entertain what was obviously a relationship already just because he hadn’t said the words?
Christ, did she think he let people stay at his penthouse? Let alone for nearly an entire week? Or make dinner together or show up to multiple events with the same woman on his arm? Because he did none of that.
“I have a lot of work to do tomorrow, so I thought sleeping at my place would save me time in the morning.”
“Is that so?” he asked, his anger, along with dread that she was leaving, rose in his veins in a slow, but insistent burn. That she was running out on him again hurt him beyond measure. There was no measurement for complete and total emotional devastation, it just was. Rationally he knew he was overreacting, but just those few moments when he thought he’d never see her again had locked the air in his chest as fear coursed frantically through him.
“Yeah,” she said, her body straightening as his eyes further adjusted to the darkness. Her blue evening dress was dangling in her hands.
“You have clients on New Year’s Day?” He was baiting her, but he was so tired of pretending he didn’t have feelings for her. When they’d been kids he’d been trying to protect her, keep her alive and fed and safe, so he’d accepted that someone else, like an actual adult, could do that better for her. But for her to walk out of his life now after they’d finally reconnected, he couldn’t handle it.
“Well, no,” she hedged, “I was just planning on doing work on their jobs.”
“At,” he glanced at the digital face on his watch, “four o’clock in the morning?”
“I wasn’t going to work on it now,” she explained in a falsely reasonable tone as she pulled the dress on, “but I thought if I spent the rest of the night at home I’d be able to get up early and get an early start on work. If I stayed here I’d have to do a walk of shame back to my apartment, shower, etc.—you know how it goes.”
“Yeah, I do know how walks of shame go. It seems like that’s the problem,” he said.
“No, I’d just like to be home, that’s all,” she managed, her tone unconvincing.
“I never pretended I didn’t have a past, Laura. I’ve slept with Lila a total of three times in my life. Sometimes she’s in town and we do and sometimes she’s in town and we don’t. I don’t know what her middle name is, I don’t know where she’s from, where she lives now, who her friends are, if she likes movies or the kind of music she listens so. I know literally nothing about her.”
Laura’s face went from mildly annoyed that he was keeping her from leaving to full-on glare by the end of his explanation. “You are cracked if you think that somehow makes me feel better.”
Will regarded Laura, not knowing quite how to fix this situation and not knowing even if he could try. He had his own anger to contend with that in the face of hers was only gaining ground. She’d talked up her perfect, well-adjusted family life just to throw him off, to make him believe that he was the one with intimacy problems, and he definitely had them, but not for one second should he have believed her charade. Laura had scars just as deep as his.
“Why would I be trying to make you feel better?” he shot back. “You’re trying to cut out of this before it even begins.”
“I am not cutting out, Will.”
He threw the covers back and stood, knowing he was completely naked and not giving a single shit. “Tell me the truth now, Laura. Did you have any intention of coming back here after you left tonight?”
“What are you talking about?”
He crossed his arms over his chest, digging in. “You know exactly what.”
She started shaking her head, twisting her body so she could zip
up the back of her dress, finally getting it with a vicious tug as she glared at him. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe not, but it seems to me like you’re sneaking out of my place in the middle of the night right after things got the slightest bit bumpy between us.”
“There is no us!” she suddenly shouted, swinging to face him. “You have made that quite clear.”
He grabbed his robe from the back of the bathroom door and yanked it on.
“I’ve made that clear how?” he asked her, amazed at how steady his voice was considering how out of control he felt. “By housing you and celebrating a holiday I’ve only ever hated? Maybe by buying you gifts and sleeping at your place even when I live in one where people bring me whatever I need in under a minute?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” Laura said, not buying it. “Just like tonight, you have gone out of your way to let me know that this isn’t a relationship. I left the gala for nearly two hours before you finally followed me. But now that I’m leaving and you’re not the one in control, you’ve decided to have this little hissy fit.”
That she could be so flippant about his feelings hurt. Her leaving wasn’t him having a hissy fit, it was him breaking apart again.
“Well,” he bit off, stalking to the bedroom door and pulling it open with an angry flourish. “Don’t let my hissy fit change your mind. By all means, you can get out.”
Her eyes widened, but he just didn’t care. All of the angst of his entire life seemed to be bubbling up in his chest like a medieval cauldron of the disgusting dregs of his early life and he couldn’t stop from boiling over if he tried.
“Were you even planning on telling me this time that you weren’t coming back?”
“I live in the same city, Will—it’s not like you can’t find me. This isn’t goodbye.”
“Felt like it.”
Sinfully Yours Page 13
