Chapter Twenty

 

Snow

 

I stared through the window on my oven door at the dough that was trying to rise. It didn’t look like it was changing much and I tried to figure out what I had done wrong. I gave a sigh of frustration and stomped back into the living room, tossing myself onto the couch. It had been a longer stretch between stays at the cottage because I had left immediately after my date with Noah, returning home two days sooner than I usually would have. It wasn’t the date that had made me leave. That had been the most wonderful date that I could have imagined and I had revisited it several times in my dreams since leaving. It was the conversation when we woke up that had pushed me to leave and return here so that I could hide.

Waking up in Noah’s arms had felt incredible. It simply felt right to feel his skin against mine and to roll over and look into his face in the first moments of the day. Almost immediately, though, things had changed.

“Tell Fawn that you don’t want to finish. Tell her that you’ve decided that it isn’t right for you and that you’d rather just go home and not come back.”

“I can’t do that, Noah.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? You know why not. I signed a contract.”

“So? Just like Fawn said, this experience is supposed to be all about you. It’s not for anyone else, including her. You’re calling the shots, which means that you can leave at any time.”

“What if I don’t want to leave?”

“What?”

“Noah, I didn’t sign up for this retreat on a whim. It might seem like I did, but it wasn’t an easy decision for me. I thought a lot about it and I am very serious about my decision. This is something that I need to do. I need to see it through.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about the pain in Noah’s eyes as he got out of the bed and dressed, leaving the room without even saying goodbye. It saddened me to see the hurt in his stare, but it also made me angry. I had started this quest with a specific purpose in mind, and I felt like Noah was trying to lead me away from it. I wanted him to understand what I was doing and that it didn’t have anything to do with him.

The knock on my door startled me and I had to look through the peephole before I realized that with all of my concentration on why I had made the right decision to start this experience and to continue it, I had lost track of the days and forgotten that it was nearly time to return to the cottage. I brought the box into my house and sat down to read the note.

“Shine like a diamond.”

I opened the box and found a long white dress. A slit that looked long enough to come up to my hip was accented by a glittering rhinestone brooch and the same light-catching details lined shoulder straps that created a complex web pattern at the back of the dress. The shoes that were into the bottom of the box had the stones along all of the straps, completing the theme. I carried the dress into my bedroom to hang it up and started to pack my bag for the next day’s journey to the cottage. I didn’t know what to expect when I got there. For the first time, I hoped that I wasn’t going to run into Noah.

 

“Oh, no,” I murmured as the limo pulled to a stop.

The door opened but I didn’t move.

“That’s where I’m going?” I asked, pointing to the building in front of us.

“Yes,” the chauffer said.

“It doesn’t happen to say the name of the man I’m supposed to be meeting, does it?”

“No, just the address.”

“Great.”

I swung my legs out of the car and let him help me stand up. The dress was tight at my waist and then grazed along my legs to my ankles, but just as I had expected, the slit was long enough to nearly reach my waist when I sat down. I adjusted it carefully, feeling incredibly self-conscious and aware of the eyes that might be on me now. I stepped onto the red carpet that led down between rows of plush velvet ropes and took a step toward the building. As if someone had been watching, the door opened and a man stepped out. I didn’t want to look like I was staring at him, but I needed to get a better view of his face. The lights outside the building hadn’t been completely turned on yet, though I knew that soon they would be as this area filled with crowds of hopefuls wanting to get inside the exclusive, hallowed walls of The Diamond Mine.

The man took a step toward me and I nearly sobbed with relief at seeing that it was not Anthony, the man who had dealt with me while I was building the marketing campaign for this nightclub. He came closer and I saw that this man was slightly older than Anthony and darker in coloring than Anthony’s hazel eyes and light brown hair.

“Good evening,” he said. “I’m Damien. Welcome to The Diamond Mine.”

“Thank you,” I said, accepting the quick, friendly embrace that Damien offered.

“This is truly my labor of love. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do.”

He crooked his elbow and I took it to allow him to escort me up the red carpet to the door.

“Do you own this place?” I asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s only been open a few months, but it has already been extremely successful.”

Yeah, because I created the advertising campaign for it.

I thought back to my interactions with Anthony and realized that he had never actually said that he owned The Diamond Mine. I had just assumed that he was and never mentioned it to give him the chance to correct me. Anthony had only showed me pictures of the club as I built the campaign and it felt strange to be actually walking through those images now. I had to admit as Damien guided me through the first large room that the pictures didn’t do the actual club justice. Though he had put effort into capturing the theme and showing me the exquisite custom details that had been installed in the multiroom space, he hadn’t been able to show me just how much they had made the club resemble the network of chambers and corridors of a diamond mine. The walls were textured to look like rough carved stone and illuminated faceted glass embedded within them created the appearance of gems while casting mysterious ambient light throughout the space. I was genuinely in awe as we walked through it and felt even more proud that the campaign that I had created was bringing success to this extremely worthy venue.

Damien gave me a tour of the club, including the bar that appeared to be carved entirely out of raw diamonds, and then guided me toward a particular wall. He reached up and pressed his fingertips into the center of a blue gem in the stone. After a few seconds, the gem glowed brighter and the wall popped forward slightly. Damien tucked his fingertips into a seam that had appeared along one side and tugged, opening the section of wall to reveal a hidden room behind. Damien stepped out of the way to allow me to enter first and then followed me, guiding the wall back into place behind us. A large table was positioned in the center of the room, tall candlesticks along the middle spreading light along the table and into the area immediately around it. I saw two place settings on the table and Damien escorted me to one of them. He pulled my chair out for me and I sat down, allowing him to help me pull closer to the table before he walked over to the setting across from me and sat.

“You look truly stunning tonight,” he told me. “That dress is fortunate to have you to wear it.”

I looked down briefly, feeling flattered heat come to my cheeks.

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

Two men suddenly appeared, stepping out of a door that I hadn’t even noticed, and carried cut crystal glasses over to us. Their movements were synchronized as they placed the glasses to our sides and filled them with wine.

“I’ve planned dinner for us,” Damien said as he lifted his glass in a slight toast to me. “I hope that you enjoy it.”

“I’m sure that I will,” I said, returning the gesture.

I brought the glass to my lips and sipped it, savoring the complex wine as it swirled through my mouth and down my throat. The door opened again and the men returned, this time carrying plates. I watched as the waiter serving me set an elaborately plated salad on the gold charger in front of me and then a smaller plate with a roll and butter to one side.

Over the next few hours we made our way through more than a dozen courses. I was more impressed with each sultry, masterful dish that came out, but Damien seemed utterly casual, as though this was something that he did regularly. The budget for his marketing had already given me a hint that he was exorbitantly wealthy, but now that I knew he was the sole owner of the club and had built it purely out of a dream that he’d had for many years, I was certain that he had even more money than I had originally believed. As he talked about the club, carefully skirting around personal details about his life to make sure that he adhered to the anonymity his contract demanded, I tried to imagine why Fawn would have selected him for one of my dates. He was sexy, certainly, and had a confidence that made him even more attractive, but there had to be a specific reason why she thought that he would be right for me. It occurred to me that she might have chosen him because of his money, creating for me the fantasy of a man who held the world in his hands and could literally do anything that he wanted. I pondered that as I finished the small gilded dish of crème brulee that finished our decadent meal.

Does his money make him a fantasy for me?

“That was delicious,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad that you enjoyed it. Now if you’d like to follow me, I have something else planned for our evening.”

He was walking toward me and I waited until he pulled out my chair and reached his hand to me to help me stand. I rested my fingertips to his palm and allowed him to help me to my feet. I had to admit that I was reveling in this kind of treatment. I enjoyed the attention and the sense of opulence that surrounded us, and looked forward to what he had planned next.

Damien continued to hold my hand as we walked through another hidden panel in the wall and made our way through lantern-lined halls.

“These are our elite lounges,” he explained to me as we passed by a few ornate doors set back in the walls. “They are for our most discerning guests who are interested in a more personalized experience.”

“So, the most exclusive of the exclusive.”

“Exactly.”

He led me toward a door at the end of the hall and typed a code into a keypad concealed behind another of the gems. The door lock clicked and he held the door open for me. I stepped through it and found myself outside, not quite able to believe what I was seeing. A helicopter sat several yards ahead of me, the blades already spinning. Damien stepped out of the building and rested his hand on my lower back, gesturing for me to go ahead. The sound of the blades was too loud for me to say anything to him, so I gathered the end of my skirt up away from my ankles and ran toward the helicopter. We ducked inside and Damien closed the door, dulling the sound.

“I thought that you might like to see the lights of the city from a different vantage point,” he said.

I looked around the inside of the helicopter. It wasn’t like anything that I would have imagined. Rather than just being a cockpit, there was a small cabin separated from the pilot with a wall featuring a movable glass panel. The cabin was decorated in a way that mirrored the feeling of The Diamond Mine and I looked at him with widened eyes.

“Is this yours?” I asked.

“It is,” Damien said with a smile. “My own little mining cart.”

I laughed and settled onto one of the plush seats, fastening my seatbelt over my lap in anticipation of takeoff. Nearly the entire cabin was made up of windows that allowed me to look out over the city as the helicopter rose into the air. The view was breathtaking and I felt transfixed by it the higher we rose and the further we traveled. Soon we were so high above the city that it had been reduced to only glittering lights beneath. I glanced over my shoulder at Damien.

“Like diamonds,” I said.

He nodded, making a sound of agreement. I could feel myself getting swept away by all of this. It was like I was suddenly existing in a different world, a world where I could do and be anything. The thought was oddly sobering. Rather than giving me a sense of thrilling liberation, it firmly grounded me, reminding me sternly of the life that I did have outside of this experience. As much as I felt that I was walking around in another life right now, I had to remember that this wasn’t reality. This wasn’t going to continue even after tonight and I was still going to have to exist in my own reality when I returned from the retreat and started rebuilding my life.

I realized that the helicopter was lowering and soon it landed. I looked to Damien.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Another little surprise,” he said.

We got out of the helicopter and entered a luxurious hotel lobby. Immediately a sharply dressed man rushed up to us.

“Good evening, sir,” he said. “We’ve been preparing for your arrival.”

“Thank you, Timothy. Is everything ready.”

“It is.”

“Good.”

Damien subtly slipped a tip into the man’s hand and we continued across the lobby and down a short hallway to an elevator. Rather than the usual up and down buttons that I would have expected to see beside the door, there was another keypad. Damien tapped a code into it and the elevator opened. We stepped inside and the elevator closed. We rose up several floors before stopping and the elevator doors opened again. We walked out into a foyer and approached a tall, arched door. Damien withdrew a black card from the pocket of his suit jacket and used it to open the door. I stepped through into a lavish hotel suite. To one side I could see a winding staircase that led up to another floor and to the other a sunken room with a sparkling pool surrounded by glass walls on three sides.

A rush of excitement coursed through me and I felt Damien step up behind me. His hands came around to rest on my stomach, subtly pulling me back against him, and I felt his face nuzzle into my hair.

“Would you like to take a swim?” he murmured.

“I didn’t bring a bathing suit with me,” I responded.

He turned me in his hands and wrapped his arms around my waist.

“You don’t need one,” he whispered.

His mouth dropped to mine and he pulled me into a deep kiss. I felt myself melting into it, my mind fogging with the strength and taste of his mouth. My hands touched his arms beside me, feeling the muscles beneath the fabric of his pristinely tailored suit. I wanted him. I could feel my body responding and my mind trying to push away the thoughts that had pricked through the fantasy created for me when we were in the helicopter. As Damien’s hand came to the zipper on the back of my dress, though, those thoughts came surging back. I reluctantly pulled my mouth away from his and stepped back from him, my head shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t do this. I need to go back to the retreat.”

“Is something wrong?” Damien asked. “Have I done something?”

He looked genuinely concerned and I reached up to run my hand along the side of his face. I shook my head again, this time trying to reassure him.

“No. Tonight was unbelievable. I had a wonderful time and I really would like to stay.”

“Then stay,” he said, trying to pull me back into his arms, but I pressed against his chest to step away again.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry. I wish that I could explain it to you better, but right now, I just need to go back to the cottage before I do something that I know that I will regret later.”

Damien still looked upset, but it was disappointment rather than the anger that I would have anticipated. He nodded.

“I’ll call for your driver,” he said. “If you change your mind before he gets here, you are welcome to stay.”

I knew that I couldn’t change my mind, but I still went outside to wait rather than remaining in the room with Damien. Leaving was the only decision that I could make. I told myself that it was completely professionalism. Damien didn’t know who I was and as much as I felt like I could use a fantasy to whisk me out of the thoughts that had been holding me down for the last couple of weeks, I knew that I couldn’t break my professional ethics by having sex with him. Soon I would have to return to my real life and he would eventually figure out who I was. It was potentially awkward enough for both of us when we did inevitably come face-to-face as I continued to work on his marketing campaign, and sleeping with him would only complicate it further. In my heart, though, I felt like it wasn’t the only reason I had to say goodbye.

 

I peeled myself out of the gown as soon as I stepped into my room. I doubted that I would ever have the opportunity to wear it again, but once I put this experience behind me, I knew that I would enjoy seeing it hanging in my closet. Bathed and changed into a pair of lounge pants and shirt, I sat down on the window seat looking out over the back lawn and held the book I had been reading in my lap. I couldn’t focus on the words, though, and my eyes wandered to the windowsill. I don’t know how long I stared at it, lost in my thoughts, before trying to pull myself back to the book.

I turned away from looking at the windowsill and found Noah standing in the center of the lawn staring up at me. In the next instant, I was running through the cottage and out of the door that led out into the yard, running toward him. Noah took several long strides toward me to close the space between us. When I got close enough, he reached forward and I felt him sweep me into his arms. We were fully visible to whoever might be watching as our bodies crashed together, but I couldn’t think about that in that moment. All that mattered was the feeling of his arms around me and his mouth coming down onto mine in a kiss that seemed to pull every emotion, every thought, every compulsion out of me.

My mind was reeling as he held me closely against him and carried me toward the cottage where we’d had our first, if brief, encounter when I was just at the beginning of my journey. Noah brought me to one of the large cushions on the floor and lowered me to it so that he sat facing me and pulled me forward, draping my legs over his thighs so that I could settle close to him. I reached up and touched his face, his hand immediately raising to mirror my movements as I gently traced the curve of his jawline.

"Noah," I whispered.

As if hearing his name on my lips broke any control that he had, Noah pushed forward to kiss me again, wrapping an arm around my waist to pull me into his lap. I gasped at the swell of his erection beneath me and he held me down harder, lifting his hips slightly to rock against me as his mouth played across mine. My need for him felt intense and primal, and I reached down to gather the hem of his shirt in my hands and pull the fabric off over his head.

I leaned down and drew my tongue across his skin, gathering the taste of him. My teeth nipped at his chest and I felt his hands pulling at my shirt. Even with the questions and hesitations that we’d had still hovering in the back of my mind, I knew I couldn't have resisted him. I needed Noah in that moment in a way I felt like I had never needed anything, and I eagerly gave myself over to him as he reached behind me to open my bra and release my breasts into his waiting hands. His thumb rubbed across one nipple as he brought his mouth down to the other, continuing to nudge upwards with his hip as he sucked the taut peak between his teeth.

He repositioned me so that I was sitting in front of him. My body shook as he removed my remaining clothing and then brought me up to my knees before he tenderly ran his hands down me, following every curve as if trying to memorize me beneath his palms. He followed his hands with his mouth, trailing kisses along me with such control and purpose it was as though he had been imagining this very moment, planning everything that he was going to do if he got me in his hands again. By the time his mouth reached my hipbones, I was trembling nearly uncontrollably. He moved it down to draw his tongue slowly and deeply through my core. It created concentrated, intense pleasure, but it was also a message, a reminder of the first time that he had touched me that way, the impulse that had brought him to his knees in front of me to nurture me as I cautiously, nervously began to learn my own body.

He rose up onto his knees and guided my hands to the front of his pants. I released the row of buttons down his fly and peeled away his pants, revealing that he wore nothing beneath them, and eased them as far down as I could. I wrapped my hand around his surging erection as he finished taking his pants the rest of the way off, and I indulged myself in the feeling of running my fingers along its hard, beautiful length. Noah groaned at my touch and my body clenched as if already seeking him. I stroked his luscious cock for a few moments, offering him back the pleasure he had given me. When I couldn't handle the empty ache any longer, I looked into his eyes, evaluating him, wanting to see that he needed me in the same way.

Noah didn’t respond, but grabbed me by my hips and pulled me forward so that my pelvis came up on his thighs and my legs draped around his hips. The movement settled the tip of his erection at my core and he took a moment to stroke me, sending a shock through me. He suddenly paused and eased me off of his lap and stood. I was briefly worried, but then I saw that he was walking toward a cabinet hanging on the wall. He opened it and pulled out a condom, slipping it on without ceremony. He returned to the cushion with me and brought me back into his lap, catching my mouth to rebuild the heat that had been lost.

We kissed hungrily, almost frantically, then he was inside me and I gasped at the intense, full feeling of him plunging so deep I felt him hit the furthest point. He held my hips tightly as he began to thrust into me in a fast, hard rhythm that told me he didn't want to hold anything back.

I gripped his arms to give myself greater stability and planted my feet on either side of him so that I could lift my hips higher. It was an open, vulnerable position that I never would have even considered before coming here, but it felt natural and real now. Noah growled in his throat and rose up slightly more on his knees. The leverage allowed him to pick up even more speed, and within seconds I could feel myself losing control. I dug my fingernails into his arms and let my head fall back, screaming as my body contracted around him and held him tightly within me before crashing into fast, intense spasms that milked him until he let out a deep grunt and released into me. I threw myself forward so that I was wrapped around Noah and focused on the feeling of his cock pulsing against my walls. I closed my eyes to savor the feeling of my body massaging him, accepting the hot steams he poured into me.

When it was over, we lay tangled on the cushion, our bodies wrapped around each other and our hands lazily stroking each other’s sweaty skin. I kissed his hair and his forehead, holding him against me as tightly as I could. Even in those first moments, clarity was coming into my mind. I knew that this couldn’t last. This shouldn’t have happened. I closed my eyes and held him closer, needing just a few more seconds before I let reality completely set in.

Noah lifted his head and kissed me, then stared down into my face. He stroked his fingertips along my cheek and jawline, and then traced my lips. I kissed them softly.

“You came back,” he whispered.

“Hmmm?”

“You came back. You didn’t sleep with him.”

I felt like a rock had fallen into my stomach.

“No, I didn’t, but Noah…”

“I knew that if you thought about it…”

“Noah, nothing’s changed.”

He stared at me, blinking as if he thought that he hadn’t heard me correctly.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re right. I didn’t sleep with Damien, but that was my choice. He doesn’t know it, but he has involvements in my life outside of all this. In my real life. I couldn’t go through with it and put that at risk later.”

Noah climbed to his feet and pulled his pants on, whipping around to face me.

“That’s it?” he demanded. “That’s why? Because he might at some point interact with you after this, that’s the only reason why you didn’t sleep with him?”

I wriggled into my pants and dropped my shirt down over my head, not bothering to put my bra back on.

“What do you want me to say, Noah?”

“I want you to say that you’ll stop this. I want you to say that you’ll leave and won’t go on anymore dates.”

I waited for more. I waited for him to say the words that I needed him to say, the only words that would convince me to end my retreat, but he didn’t. He just kept staring at me, the demands in his eyes telling me that he didn’t understand, and I felt the softness that had come over my heart harden.

“I’m going to see this through,” I said, making sure that each word was fully enunciated so that my message was clear.

Noah looked at me for a long, steely moment. Without another word, he stormed out of the cottage, leaving me alone, overwhelmed with the conflicting, battling emotions that filled me.