“It feels so good, Oliver. I don’t want you to stop. Please. Please.” She swiveled her hips when I let go, and I growled low in my throat. I bent over her and drove into her as hard as I could, moving her back on the table an inch or so. I wrapped my arms beneath her and held her in place for the punishing thrusts I delivered until I drained my seed deep within her, throwing my head back and moaning with her as we came together, our mixed sounds of pleasure bouncing off the walls of the empty kitchen.
Sweet perfection. I had found paradise. It wasn’t an isolated island in the tropics. It wasn’t a mountain cabin retreat. It was a suburban kitchen, on a breakfast nook table, with the sexiest woman I’d ever had the honor of making love to. I nuzzled into the crook of her shoulder and neck and inhaled the scent of her skin and our mixed chemistry and tried to coax my heart and breathing to a calmer place.
Finally, I untied her ankles and wrists and rubbed the pink marks left behind. Helping her sit up, I grinned at the completely disheveled look she was rocking. I had never seen her with so much as a hair out of place. Even when we had had sex in the past, it was always neat and controlled, very orderly and proper.
“Now that was a nice and dirty fucking. It suits you.” I kissed her swollen mouth and forced myself to pull back before I got started all over again.
“I don’t think I can walk.” She stood up and wobbled, so I quickly grabbed her arm for support.
“You look supremely proud of yourself,” she said.
“I am. Shouldn’t I be?”
“Actually, yes, you should. I’m dying to know what’s going on here.” She motioned to her torso where I had drawn on her flesh.
“Let’s go take a shower, or even better—a bath. Then we can get some sleep. Then you can wake me up in the middle of the night with your mouth wrapped around my cock, and then we can fuck again, go back to sleep… Well, you get the idea.”
She just stood there with her arms folded across her chest as if she disapproved of the plan.
“What?” I asked innocently.
“You have it all figured out, don’t you?”
“Do you object to the proposed plan?”
She thought for a minute and then dropped her arms. “No. Not really.” Then she took off running like a little shot, the last thing I had expected her to do. When I finally registered her action, I took off after her, both of us laughing like maniacs.
I caught up with Bailey in the upstairs hallway, where she was standing stock still in front of a full-length mirror staring at her reflection. Her fingers hovering over the letters I had written on her skin.
I didn’t know what to say, so I waited for her cue. I watched her trace the letters with her finger, mouthing the word as she went. Finally, she met my eyes in the mirror.
“You wrote your name on me. On my flesh.” Her voice was barely audible.
“Yes.”
“Why?” Still, a whisper.
“I feel like you own me. My heart.” My voice was quiet too, I didn’t want to spook her. With my volume or my message.
“You do?” She finally turned to look at me directly instead of my image in the mirror beside her.
I nodded.
“Oh.”
“Does that worry you?” I needed her to say more than “oh.”
“I don’t think so. I mean, it’s soon, you know?” She looked back to our reflections. Maybe looking at the situation directly was too intense. “But I don’t feel scared under here.” She touched her own chest again, where her heart lay beneath.
“Good. That’s good enough for me,” I said. “For right now. That’s good enough.”
“This will fade?” She traced a few of the letters on her skin.
“Yes.” I felt like the less I said at the moment, the better. She was clearly working through her feelings, and I needed to give her the space to do that.
“Will this?” She turned to me then and touched my chest, where my heart lay beneath.
“I don’t think so. I mean, it’s soon. You know?” I purposefully used the exact same words she had just used, so she understood their meaning.
We stood, naked in the hallway, in each other’s arms for some time. Not speaking, not moving. Just being. Two people, trying to figure out where to go from the point they were at. Trying to believe life would point the way for us—we just had to give it time and trust the process.
Bailey and I spent the rest of the night alternating between sleeping and screwing, with a few various breaks for showering and eating thrown in to keep things interesting. We finally fell asleep for an extended period of time around three in the morning, not bothering with an alarm or caring about obligations for the following day.
Which apparently was a cardinal sin in the world of Bailey Hardin. She leaped out of bed in horror and, when she saw her reflection in the bathroom mirror, burst into tears.
“Hey, whoa…what’s going on? What’s wrong?” I sat up, still groggy with sleep.
“Look at me! Look at me. Look at this!” she repeated, violently pointing to her torso. “It’s still there! How am I going to leave the house like this, Oliver? What on earth were you thinking?”
“Uhhhh. Well. Were you not planning on wearing clothes? No one will even see it. And dare I ask what happened to all the ‘my heart, your heart’ talk we fed each other last night?” I tried to keep my voice quiet and level, like talking a spooked cat in off a ledge.
“Fed each other?” She turned from the mirror to square off with me. “Fed each other?”
“You know what I mean.” Danger signs were popping up in my head like cartoon balloons above a character’s head.
“No. I don’t think I do. Why don’t you explain it to me, Oliver?” She leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms over her chest, a body language move I was quickly getting used to of hers to mean “tread carefully, soldier—mine field ahead.”
I held my hands out to her, palms up, an offering to her to place her hands in mine. A sign saying trust me. After a few seconds, she placed her small, trembling hands in mine.
“Why are you shaking? Are you cold?” I looked around the bathroom for a robe, since she was standing there naked.
“No, I’m angry. I shake when I’m mad.” Her volume had dropped drastically.
“First of all, the marker isn’t permanent. It said ‘washable’ on it. I actually checked before the idea became the runaway train it did.” I dropped her hands in exchange for pulling her fully into my body. “I’m sorry you’re mad.”
Kissing her forehead, I continued. “I’m sorry something I did made you mad. For the record, I don’t regret a single minute of last night. I get hard looking at my name scrawled on your body like that.” I pulled back to look at the faded lettering, not ready to release her just yet. “Yes, it’s barbaric. Yes, it’s possessive. But I like thinking you belong to me and I belong to you.”
“I’m sorry I overreacted.” She looked down, not able to meet my stare. “This is all very new for me. William and I were together for a very long time. I don’t remember how this dating stuff goes.” She laughed, trying to trivialize what was happening between us, I presumed. “I need to get in the shower and get ready to go to the office.”
“I’m a little confused.”
“About what?” She busied herself around the enormous bathroom, gathering various products and placing them in the shower.
“I didn’t realize you had a job, I guess.” I felt awkward admitting to not knowing everyday things about her.
“Of course I have a job.” She looked at me like I’d just sprouted a second head.
“Well, what do you do?” I asked, genuinely interested.
“I work at city hall too. Didn’t Skye tell you?”
“No. We haven’t been on the best terms lately.”
“Oh no. I hope that’s not because of me.” She left the bathroom and came back with a few towels in her arms.
“Why would you have anything to do with it?”
“I don’t know. I just get the feeling she doesn’t like me very much. I figured she might be filling your ear with office gossip.” Bailey turned on the water in the shower and waited for it to get hot while we talked.
“I’ve never known Skye to get involved in office politics. I doubt she’d start now. She’s way too driven.” My voice trailed off, feeling bad about what I was saying, but knowing it didn’t make it less true.
“That she is. I hope it doesn’t hurt her in the long run.” She got in the shower, and I watched her through the glass enclosure, entranced with the way the water caressed her breasts and hips as it ran over her skin.
“What do you mean?” I thought about what she had said and really wanted to hear her opinion about Skye’s ambitious nature. She was still my best friend, and I knew how important her career was to her.
She stepped under the spray to rinse her hair, so I waited for her to resurface and finish answering my question.
“Well, sometimes being too focused on one goal in the future can make you blind to what’s going on right under your nose. Does that make sense?” Her words were a bit muffled by the sounds of the shower, but I heard what she said.
“Yeah, I guess. Is there something I should be tipping her off about? I mean, she’s my best friend.”
“Nope. She has to find her own way in the game. That’s how it all works, unfortunately. Sometimes we can nudge people or situations to go the way we want them to, but ultimately, we live in a democracy for a reason. Free will and all that good American dream drivel, you know?” She shut off the water and squeezed the excess water from her dark hair.
I handed her the towel she had set on the counter. The letters of my name were now just a faded gray shadow after her shower.
“Let me take care of you before I go.” I pulled her by the hand into her room and pushed her down onto her bed.
“Oliver, no more. For one thing, I’m sore down there from all the ‘care’ you gave me overnight, and I’m going to be late as it is.” She tried to sit up, but I didn’t let her get very far. Such a stubborn woman.
I ignored her protests and took the lotion off the nightstand and then unwrapped the fluffy towel from her body, opening each half wide to either side of her. Kneeling down on the floor beside the bed, I put a generous amount of lotion in my palm and rubbed it together with my other hand, warming the lotion before holding my lubed hands above her.
“Close your eyes,” I ordered softly.
“I’m going to be late,” she protested again in response.
“Stop arguing with me and do what you’re told, woman.” I grinned down at her.
She huffed out a breath through her nose, sounding like an angry bull, and squeezed her eyes shut like a bratty toddler.
“Perfect,” I said sarcastically and touched her nose with my creamy finger, and she giggled, relaxing all the attitude out of her face and body.
“I don’t know why you insist on making everything so difficult,” I said as I rubbed lotion on her body, being gentle and thorough with my attention to all the sensitive parts of her fantastic body. By the time her skin had absorbed all the balm from my hands, my cock was begging to find its way back inside her.
“I don’t want to go to work now. See what you do to me when I give in? That’s why I have to remain in control. Left to your devices, you would be much too dangerous for me, Oliver Connely.” Her voice was husky and alluring, but I behaved and kept my attention to just the lotion.
I left soon after, knowing if I stayed, we’d be back in bed and she’d be calling in sick and then be pissed that I coerced her into it. Skye was already gone when I got back to the condo, and Janine had left three messages on my voice mail just that morning alone.
“Where have you been all morning?” she demanded the moment she picked up my call.
“I spent the night with Bailey. Mom?” I checked my display to be sure I hadn’t misdialed. Usually she was the only one who got away with that type of questioning.
“We had interviews this morning with the new candidates. It should’ve been on your shared calendar. Wait, let me look…” There was a pause while she presumably looked through her own calendar, and I already knew what was coming next. “Oliver, if I go through the trouble of sharing a calendar event with you, you need to accept it so it gets added to your calendar as well. Then bullshit like this won’t happen again. Okay?”
“Yes, Janine.” I hoped I sounded as bored as I intended to sound. She was on my last nerve and totally killing the Bailey buzz from the past fifteen hours.
“If you’re not going to take this seriously, I’m not going to waste my time or money on it either, Oliver. I’m serious. Just shoot straight with me. This has to be the priority over a piece of ass.”
“You’re treading on very thin ice right now. I’m sorry I missed the fucking interviews. I am. And I will accept the calendar events moving forward. But you have no right to speak about someone you don’t even know in such a manner. Am I making myself clear?” Yep. That was me snapping like a twig under a Timberland.
“Perfectly,” she fired back.
“And what do you mean, money?”
“What?” The abrupt subject change jarred her, but there was no sense beating a dead horse.
“You said money. Time and money,” I explained.
“The angel investor.” She paused. “Okay…fine, it’s me. I never was good at keeping a secret, I guess. But I believe in this idea so much, Oliver. I just can’t sit by and watch you screw it up. I’m sorry I was so short, but it’s too important.”
“It’s everything to me too, Janine.”
“It has to be, Oliver. It’s the only way it’s going to work.”
“Stop stressing. Did you reschedule the interviews? I haven’t received a new invitation, and I’m scrolling through email right now.”
“No. I conducted them myself. We’re calling back three of the seven.”
“Really?” I was surprised. “Only three? Why?” I thought for sure at least five of my modeling friends were perfect fits for BBI.
“Let’s talk about it in person. I’m coming over.”
“I need a shower first. Give me twenty minutes.” The last thing I needed was a lecture about smelling like sex and women’s perfume from the night before.
“Okay, see you soon.” Our call was done, but our business was just getting started.
Chapter Eleven
“Are you hearing a word I’ve said?” She tore the readers off the end of her nose and glared at me from across our small dining room table. It had become our conference room of sorts.
“Yes. Website. Web design. I heard it all. I really want you to just run with the project. I don’t have any preference on the matter, Janine. I agree, we need one. I agree it will be the way almost every client accesses our services. I agree, it needs to be modern and classy but still young and fresh. I literally agree with everything you’ve said about it. Despite you saying about a million things. I just don’t have anything to add. I trust you on this, one hundred percent.”
I also couldn’t get Bailey off the brain, but I was trying desperately to pull off this entrepreneur thing. I decided I didn’t want to model anymore.
At all.
If Harrison called with a job, it would have to be something I literally couldn’t turn down due to some contractual obligation in order for me to go on location again. I wanted to spend every night like I had the night before. I was falling in love with Bailey, and I wanted to spend my nights proving it to her.
“Jesus Christ. This is getting ridiculous. Do you want to doodle her name on your notebook? Little hearts with your initials and hers? Then in different combinations?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve been repeating the same question over and over, and you’re staring off into space with a dopey look on your face. It’s like goddamn junior high all over again,” Janine barked at me.
“No, I wasn’t,�
� I defended.
“Totally were,” she volleyed back. Then added, “Okay. Answer me this.”
I just looked at her, bored and waiting for the telling question that would prove I was as lost in love as she insisted.
“How many times did you beat it in the shower before I got here?” Her matter-of-fact tone was almost more disturbing than the question itself.
Almost.
“What? Why on earth would I tell you that? Wait. No! Why would you even ask that?” I could not believe I was having this conversation.
“Because you’re hopelessly in love. Or infatuated. One or the other. And that’s the litmus test. I’m guessing an average day for a man your age is once? So if it was more than that?” She shrugged. “You’re a lost cause. She already owns you.”
I just stared at her, shaking my head, while she mouthed the words owns you again.
“You know I’m right. That’s why you won’t answer me. And you already said you spent all night with her. So, it’s not like you had blue balls and it was a physiological necessity.”
“I’m starting to hate you. Do you realize that?” I glared at her from across the table.
“No, you’re not. You just hate that I’m consistently right. About everything.” She put her reading glasses back on and picked up the paper she was reading.
“You need to stop.” I felt like I was experiencing what it would be like to have an annoying little sister.
“Why? The truth is a hard pill to swallow?” She grinned at me from across the table.
“I’m serious,” I repeated.
“He who has nothing to hide…hides nothing.”
“Janine. Stop.”
“I’m just telling it like it is, dude.” She shrugged again.
“Three! It was three times! Fuck me! Are you happy now? Are you happy? Jesus motherfucking Christ! You are literally the most annoying fucking human I know.”
She clapped her hands in front of her. “Awww, honey, you’re in love. Isn’t it the best thing in the world? All the feels right now?” She smiled so wide, and it was such an odd look, I didn’t know if I wanted to burst out laughing or stand up and leave the fucking room.
Misadventures with a Book Boyfriend Page 13
