The Right Man

by Mankin, Michelle

  Her.

  Chapter 18

  * * *

  Jewel

  “Baby.” Rush gently spun me around in his arms.

  My eyes were misty. Did he know why? Did he sense how quickly I was falling for him? In that moment, I thought maybe he did.

  He stilled, his metallic gaze linking me to him. But what did I have to bind him to me?

  I didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t even think as he slowly lifted his hands. Sliding them into my hair, he framed my face. Lowering his head, he breathed out my name as if it were a plea . . . or a prayer.

  “Jewel.”

  His fingers tangled in my hair as he brought our faces together and pressed his lips to mine. Warmth like the clouds parting to reveal the sun replaced the emptiness inside me.

  This. This was the kiss I’d avoided last night. So much for being in control.

  I reveled in it, in him, in now. Rich waves of luxurious sensation lapping at my skin, my entire body tingled as he moved his mouth ever so softly against mine.

  “Open, baby. Let me taste you.”

  I parted my lips willingly, surrendering to my desire, and he slipped his wet tongue between them.

  A bolt of heat shot through me the moment his tongue touched mine, and I let out a moan. He groaned in reply, and the vibrations from his pleasure zinged straight to my clit.

  He shifted closer and I melted into him, feeling his hard cock against me, right where I ached. He stroked my tongue with his, and my legs began to tremble. When he did it again, I could swear I felt the ground quake. I began to suck on each thrust and curled my fingers around his forearms.

  “Wrap your legs around me.” He released my mouth to whisper, trailing kisses across the curve of my cheek. “Baby, baby, baby.” His warm breath tickled my ear. “Hop up. I’ll catch you.”

  When I jumped, he was ready, his large hands a ledge, his fingers digging crescents into the underside of my ass. I twined my arms around his strong neck, clinging to him as if my life depended on maintaining the connection, and maybe it did.

  He brought our mouths together again, fanning the heat between us to an intense flame. Higher and hotter, deeper and deeper, I fell under his compelling spell. The catalyst for the madness was his deep, drugging, demanding kisses.

  On one level, I realized he was moving, that the roar of the waves faded behind me. His kiss consumed me as his strides took us back inside, down a hall and into a large bedroom. His steps were fast, his goal as certain as his lips were.

  Devouring me. Eating me alive. Swallowing me whole.

  Suddenly, I was sliding down the long, sculpted length of his body. He ripped his mouth from mine as my feet touched the floor. Swaying, I stared at him. His hair was disheveled from my impatient fingers. His gaze was wild, his muscles visibly tensed.

  Without warning, he pounced. Grabbing my tee by the hem, he yanked it over my head. My hands shaking, I fumbled for his belt buckle while he reached behind my back and unhooked my bra, then whipped the straps down my arms and tossed the scrap of lace aside.

  My nipples honed to points in anticipation. I wanted my breasts crushed to his hard chest. I wanted to score his smooth skin with the tips. I wanted to feel the weight of his body bearing down on me, but to get that, I needed him naked. I wanted to see all of him, wanted to experience all of him. But he wasn’t done with my mouth.

  He plunged his hands into my hair, bringing our lips back together again. While he drove me crazy with his lips, teeth, and tongue, I unthreaded his belt and released the top button of his jeans.

  “More. Need more.” He growled out the words, tugging urgently at my hair to get me to part my mouth wider.

  He kissed me like he was drowning and needed to gulp air from my mouth to breathe. I kissed him back just as desperately, giving him all the oxygen I had.

  I clung to him as the room tilted and my mind spun.

  Without releasing my mouth, he moved me across the room until we reached the mattress. I dropped onto the bed, and he followed me down. Our descent into further insanity was completely under his control, so I surrendered to him. There was no other way.

  His gaze intense, he peeled my jeans off my body. I had no idea where my flip-flops were. I only knew that one moment I was partially clothed on his bed, and in the next, I was completely naked and so was he.

  “I can’t go slow.” With his hands propped on the mattress on either side of my shoulders, he swept a devouring glance over me.

  “I don’t want you to go slow.”

  His eyes flared, the color of smoke, fueled by out-of-control desire. Moving his weight to one arm, he curled his chiseled lips upward as he reached between my legs.

  “You’re soaked.” He growled the words approvingly, gliding his fingers along the slick skin on my inner thighs. “All this wetness for me.”

  My breathing hitched when he deftly parted my curls and swirled his thumb in a slow, deliberate circle around my needy clit.

  “Rush.” Fiery sensations blazed through me, and I started to shake. “Please.”

  “I’m right here, baby.”

  He spread my thighs apart and moved between them. As I watched, my breathing choppy, he grabbed a packet, ripped it open, and rolled a condom on. After positioning himself, he slid inside me, filling me with his hard length. Stretching me with his thickness. Covering my quivering body with his steady strength.

  I ran my hands all over him, everywhere I could reach. Greedily, I explored his chiseled contours and smooth skin as he pumped his hot, steely cock in and out of me. No shallow fucks this time. Just deep and deep and deep.

  “Baby,” he choked out. “You’re burning me up. You feel so good.”

  “You feel so right inside me.”

  Every guy had been wrong before him. All of them.

  Did he get it? Did he guess the truths that I couldn’t speak? I’d been lost before he found me on that street corner.

  I grabbed his ass. It was so taut. And it felt so good to feel him flexing as he pounded his cock inside me.

  “Yes!” I shouted. “Yes! Yes!”

  Each thrust was perfect. Every single stroke jolted my clit and me with electrical current.

  “Rush!” I screamed his name as my climax raced toward me at the speed of lightning streaking across a stormy sky.

  “Jewel! Baby!” He hammered into me, then stiffened. “Fuck!”

  His fevered eruption catapulted me to a place where everything we’d ever known disappeared. It was only the two of us alone in a remade universe, fractured particles forged by our passion into a new whole.

  Chapter 19

  * * *

  Rush

  I pulled out, my heart still hammering, and my jaw dropped as she immediately turned and slipped away from me.

  “Mind if I use your shower first?” she murmured.

  “Of course not.” My brows dipped as she quickly scurried from the bed. “Anything you want, baby,” I added softly, lost in the show of her sexy ass and hips swaying as she padded to the master bath across the hall.

  She didn’t acknowledge me. Had she even heard me?

  The shower door creaked, and the water came on.

  Probably not.

  Turning to the side, I disposed of the condom in a nearby wastebasket, then came up onto my elbows and stared at the spot on the bed where she’d only just been. I reached out and laid my hand on the wrinkled sheet. It was still warm.

  My spine still tingled from coming so hard. And within my chest, a very strong emotion was careening around that I didn’t want to process alone.

  I think better with her in my arms. Turning that thought over in my mind, I sat up and threw my legs over the side as another realization hit me. And I need her back inside them.

  My cell rang, and I sighed. I wanted to ignore it, but it was display side up, revealing the caller’s name. Brad. With no other choice, I slid my cell the rest of the way out of the pocket of my jeans and answered the call.


  “Yo.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me she threw out the entire album!”

  With the phone clamped between my neck and shoulder as I stepped into my jeans, I cringed as he blasted my ear. I’d been anticipating his call and his displeasure. Only with him and Bree and the holidays, I hadn’t been anticipating it quite so soon.

  “She’s right,” I said carefully. “It sucks.”

  “It wasn’t that bad.”

  “It wasn’t good either.”

  “You get that the entire cost of recording a new album is coming out of your wallet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah? Is that all you can say? What the hell’s up with you?”

  “How do you mean?” I stared at the open door to the bathroom as the water shut off and the shower door creaked again.

  “I’ve been dropping hints about those tracks since they were laid down. You nearly snapped my head off at the mere idea that I didn’t think they were up to your standards. Why the change? Where’s the real Rush McMahon? This can’t be you. You almost seem . . . amiable?”

  “I haven’t been that bad.”

  “Oh yeah, you have.”

  “I met someone.”

  “Last night? She must be a miracle worker.”

  She was a miracle, all right. A miracle I didn’t deserve.

  “A groupie?” he asked.

  “No.” I ran a hand through my hair and gave it to him straight. “A hooker.”

  I held my cell away from my ear as he released a string of expletives at top volume.

  Jewel took that inopportune time to reappear, a fluffy white towel draped around her breasts. She stopped in midstride, her bare feet seeming to snag on the hardwoods.

  She’d heard me. I saw the flash of hurt in her gaze before she dropped her chin and moved to the pile of her clothes on the floor.

  “Are you insane!” he shouted. “Did you get a nondisclosure?”

  Her hair a reddish-brown curtain hiding her face, Jewel slid on her panties.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said carefully. “It’s not like that.”

  “What is it then, Rush? You tell me. Because I’m thinking the major amount of cash that we’re going to have to fork over for new recordings is going to be nothing compared to the amount we’re going to have to flush to make this mistake go away. If we can get her to go away without bleeding you dry. What did you do with her? Did she video any of it? Does she have anything she can blackmail you with?”

  That pleasant careening feeling came to a sudden stop inside me.

  Am I being played?

  I knew what I felt, but as I watched Jewel pull on her clothes, I suddenly wasn’t sure.

  “I’ll have to call you back.”

  “She’s there with you now,” he said flatly.

  “Yes.”

  Dressed, Jewel lifted her gaze, and her eyes met mine. Shadows swirled in them like the tempest swirled within me.

  “Listen, I need to go.”

  “Have you paid her yet?”

  “Last night. Not today.”

  Her hair an auburn halo around her delicate shoulders, Jewel shifted from one foot to another. She didn’t look like a hooker. She looked young, beautiful, and uncertain.

  Unable to take my eyes off of her, I said into the phone, “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Get her to sign something, Rush. Pay her. Get a receipt.”

  I ended the call while he was still shouting instructions.

  “I should get going,” she said, her eyes glassy and bright.

  “Do you want to go?” My lips flattened. Brad’s cautions echoed in my brain.

  She dropped her gaze. “It’s late. Cam will worry.”

  “That’s not an answer.” I tossed the phone on the bed, rejecting caution as I moved toward her. Gliding my hands up her arms, I felt the shiver that rolled through her. “Baby, look at me.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Her chin rose, her eyes pools of liquid gold. “I am a hooker. We have an agreement. I provided a service. As soon as you pay me, I’ll leave.”

  “Jewel.” My fingers flexed on her skin. “There’s more.”

  “There’s not.” She shook her head, and the wetness in her eyes shimmered. “You said it right on the phone. I am who I am. Don’t make it complicated. Don’t . . .”

  Her voice cracked, deflating the anger that had risen within me at her rejection.

  “How about this? I pay you, and then you stay for a while. You just being you. Me being just me. Without money being between us.”

  Light eclipsed the shadows. Her unshed tears evaporated. And the shutters that had been hiding her true self flew open as she gave me a fleeting glimpse of what I wanted.

  Her.

  All of her.

  • • •

  Jewel

  His stormy eyes intense, he asked, “Sound good?”

  It sounded dangerous. And yet I found myself agreeing like a naive fool.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  He yanked me against him, sealing our unlikely agreement with a searing kiss. No tongue, no teeth, just his firm resolve overwhelming my uncertain compliance.

  His cell rang again.

  “Shouldn’t you get that?” I asked, frustrated at how the real world didn’t want to give us a break.

  “I don’t want to. It’s not a ringtone I recognize. I’ve got what I want right here. It can wait.”

  “Okay.” I breathed out the word, searching his eyes and finding only sincerity within them.

  I twined my arms around his neck. Lifting me onto my toes and using his grip on my upper arms, he returned his mouth to mine. I surrendered to him and the persuasion of having his lips moving across mine.

  Only the ringing started up again.

  His fingers tightening, he broke the kiss and set me from him. “I’d better get that. It’s my private number.”

  “It’s okay.” I rubbed my arms, trying to erase the chill bumps that had suddenly erupted on my skin without his warm hands.

  “Hello,” he said, and his brow creased immediately. “Yes, this is he. And you are?”

  In the pause that I assumed was a reply on the other end of the line, his eyes rounded.

  “Yes, she is. Yes, she’s fine. No, I haven’t harmed her. Hold on, she’s standing right here, wondering who I’m speaking to. You can ask her yourself.”

  He thrust the phone at me, and his lips twitched.

  “It’s your friend. She seems kind of worked up.”

  “Jewel Serena Anderson,” Cam screeched into my ear. “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

  Oh. Shit.

  “I think I left it in the car, along with my bag.”

  “I’ll get it for you,” Rush said, and I nodded.

  “That’s not cool.” Cam’s tone was full of disapproval.

  It wasn’t. Unwise decisions littered the floor all around me. “I know.”

  “Are you really okay?”

  “No. Yes. Mostly.”

  “What the hell does that mean? What’s going on? You’ve been gone for hours.”

  “I met his boss. We ate lunch. He brought me to his house. Well, his condo. It’s on the beach. In Santa Monica. It’s gorgeous.” I was rambling, not letting her get in a word. Because I knew the ones she would say would crumble my compliance.

  “Not a hotel?”

  “No.”

  “His boss?”

  “Yeah. We met her at the restaurant where he used to bus tables. He put in a good word for me to apply for a position. It’s a nice place. Food’s included as a benefit of employment. It’s not too far from us.”

  “A job like that’s not going to come close to paying the rent, honey.”

  “I know.”

  “And you have a record.”

  “I know.” Deep down, I knew it was impossible. I sank onto the bed.

  “Girls like you and me, we’re not girlfriends with our clients.”

  I nodded without spe
aking.

  “You know it won’t work out.”

  But my heart wanted what it wanted.

  “Just a little while longer, Cam,” I said as Rush returned.

  He set my purse on the teak dresser, and he lifted a wad of bills to show me he was keeping his end of the bargain. I nodded numbly, watching him tuck them inside.

  “A little while longer,” Cam said, “and it’s going to hurt more when you wise up and end it.”

  “Yes, I know.” I was going to be obliterated. I could already feel tiny fractures opening up inside my chest, just thinking about how it would be.

  “Or he ends it. It’s worse when it goes that way.” She spoke from experience . . . experience I had been around to witness. I had to shoulder a month of rent alone after she’d gotten her heart broken.

  “I can’t . . .” I coughed, trying to clear the tightness from my throat. “I already agreed to try.”

  “Oh, Jewel.”

  “I love you, Cam.” What I didn’t say, she knew. I was going to need her every bit as much as she’d needed me after she let her feelings blind her.

  “I love you too. And I’m here.”

  “I have my phone back now. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Yes. If he wants me to stay the night,” I said, glancing at Rush, and he nodded. “I’m staying the night.” Ridiculous how my heart soared because of his simple nod.

  “Okay. Tomorrow it is. But, Jewel, just to remind you in case you’ve forgotten, you’ve got regulars on the calendar. The money Mr. Rich and Famous gave you is only gonna stretch so long with only one of us working. Christmas is our busiest season. Makes up for the slower times.”

  My throat completely closed. Be with someone else after Rush? Just the thought made me want to hurl.

  “Noted.” I dropped my head.

  “Do what you feel you have to. I support you. Friends forever goes with the territory without it needing to be said.” Her tone softer now, Cam said, “Just be careful. Don’t let this go on with him too long.”