Chapter Eight - Paxton
Cinderella’s lips pull back in a smile as she looks at me over her shoulder. Her hips thrust backwards, urging me to take her, to keep going. I grab her hair and pull as I ease away, lifting my weight off her back. Her perfectly tanned skin is already dotted with little beads of sweat.
“Don’t go too easy on me, Pax. I’m not as fragile as you think. And your cock is the perfect size. You won’t hear me complain about that.”
“You little slut,” I say, letting go of her hair so I can grab her hips. I slam her ass back into my cock, our skin-on-skin contact echoing off the ceiling like a series of slaps as I pound her hard, then harder. She moans, her hands reaching up to grab the white cotton duvet, and then they become fists. Like she’s desperate to hold onto something.
I let go of one hip, reaching under her to find her pussy, and begin to strum. Her moans get louder and louder as I increase the friction on her sensitive spot. And just as her back is arching, I stop.
“No, you asshole!” she whines.
But there’s no need for her to worry about me leaving her hanging. I flip her over on her back, spread her legs wide, and crawl between them. My hands flatten against the folds of her pussy, pulling them slightly apart… just enough for me to slip my tongue inside and lick.
Her spine arches and her back comes off the bed. I hold her in place at her hips with both hands, fighting her, not letting her escape my swiftly flicking tongue.
“Oh, shit!” she cries. “Shit!” She writhes under the pressure of my punishing lips. Her legs begin to kick, catching a shoulder and a kidney in quick succession.
“Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”
“Be still,” I murmur into her wet folds.
“I can’t, Pax. Oh, my God. Just make me—”
She screams. Her kicking goes wild, knocking me in the head. I’d laugh, because it’s so fucking cute. But her hands clamp down on my shoulders and—
“Aww, fuck!” I yell, as her nails draw blood. “Jesus.”
She stills, hands over her heart as she breathes and pants her way through the lingering contractions of her orgasm. Each time a wave hits her, she lifts her hips up and I take the opportunity to kiss her swollen clit.
“I have never—”
“Shh,” I say. “I’m not interested in what you have and have not done with anyone but me. Now, be a good little cookie and climb on top, Cinderella. It’s time to go to the ball.”
She’s still breathing heavy as she wiggles herself upright, using my outstretched hand to steady herself. Then she slides her leg over top of me and plants her hands firmly on my chest. My cock is throbbing with anticipation. She has her relief from the build-up, but I’ve barely started.
“Just lie forward,” I say, pulling her face into my neck. “I’ll do the rest.”
She does as she’s told. I like this side of her. The obedient side.
Her mouth seeks out the skin just below my ear and she kisses me like we’ve been lovers for eternity. I close my eyes for a moment and enjoy this new feeling. There’s something very intimate and sexy in that little move.
Her kiss becomes a nip, becomes a bite, and it’s on.
I wrap my arms around her back, holding her so tightly to my chest, she’s gasping for air, and I pound her from below. My balls slapping up against her ass, her huge breasts smashed against my chest. We are slick with lust, and carnal desire, and the sweet sweat you only get from lovemaking.
I come inside her—forgetting everything I know about safe sex, and unwanted babies—because in that moment I am gone, man. I am in some erotic fucking heaven of my own creation with this little bombshell of a girl who weaseled her way into my life with sandwiches, and jingling boots, and that stupid little powder-blue VW bug.
I am gone.
Later, when she is sleeping beside me and I am looking down on her hot twenty-something body… I realize something.
She’s a natural blonde.
My hand slips between her legs, eliciting a sweet moan from her lips as I play with her pussy. And I can’t stop myself. I can’t stop even if I want to, and I don’t. I help myself to more, and more and more as I dip my face between her legs and wonder—as she begins to writhe again—what she might look like if all that jet-black dye was washed out of her hair.
“Huh,” I laugh to myself, hours later, when the sun is coming up and my semi-waking dreams are filled with visions of a blonde princess wearing a blue dress.
“What?” she asks lazily, angling her body into the curve of mine like we were made this way.
“You’re definitely the bombshell version of a Disney princess.”
I feel her smile against my shoulder.
And then it all fades away.
I stumble out of bed, searching for my ringing phone. Cinderella is still sleeping, but all the movement and the damn ringing makes her turn over and expose her breasts to me.
Jesus fuck. They are spectacular. Tight nipples in the middle of dark pink circles of peaked skin. They fall slightly to the side, but they are so big they don’t lose their shape, but instead make perfect mounds on top of her chest.
My mouth wants nothing more than to take them in and suck until she’s begging me to fuck her again.
The ringing stops, and the silence jolts me back to reality until a sharp ding signals a voicemail.
I place my head in my hands, rub my hands down my scratchy face, then get up and walk to the bathroom to take a piss. When I’m done, my phone is ringing again and I manage to tab the accept button in time to save myself another voicemail as I pull on a pair of cut-off sweats.
“Yeah,” I groan.
“Mr. Vance,” the voice on the line says.
“Who is this?” Usually I’m good with voices. I can remember a voice forever. But I’m distracted right now, and I don’t feel like racking my brain when a simple question gets the job done just as easily.
“Liam Henry. I hired you to help my son a few years back.”
Steven Henry. Yeah, I remember that stupid little fuck. “What can I do for you, Mr. Henry?”
“I think the better question is, what can I do for you?”
“OK,” I say, walking down the stairs to take this conversation to the kitchen. “Shoot. Tell me. I’m all fucking ears, man.”
“Hmmm,” Henry says, like he hates my guts but has to talk to me because he needs something. I don’t take that personally. I expect everyone to hate my guts. It sucks being nice to an asshole like me. Especially when I hold all your dirty little secrets. “I think this calls for a personal meeting. How soon can you be in Miami?”
I think of my little bombshell upstairs and smile. “A week? Maybe two if I lose interest in what I’m doing here. But I have to be honest, Henry, that’s not looking good.”
“This is a job, Mr. Vance. Are you, or are you not, a professional?”
“A very busy one at the moment. If we have this out over the phone I’ll get your problem sorted twice as fast. How about that?”
“No,” he says sternly. “In person.”
“OK, well, it’s gonna be a week, maybe two—”
“I’ll come to you.”
“Fantastic. How about Monday at—”
“How about today at six PM?”
“What time is it now?”
“Noon.”
I sigh. Well, I can fuck her once more, then we can take a shower and fuck again, then take a nap. “I guess that’ll work. Where—”
“I’ll be at your house.”
I get the hang-up beeps and the line goes dead. So I just stare at it for a few seconds and then toss it over onto the couch as I go searching for the coffee I most definitely need.
“Who was that?” my delectable little bakery girl asks, coming down the stairs rubbing sleep from her eyes. She’s wearing a half-buttoned dress shirt she must’ve pulled out of my closet.
Her legs, man. I know I’ve seen them in skirts, and shorts, and bikini bottoms plenty of times. But coming out from under that dress shirt. Fuck. Sexy doesn’t even cover how that shit looks.
“Just work,” I say, filling the coffee pot with water.
“You’re leaving me today for work?” Cinderella pouts. “On Saturday?”
“Nah,” I say, smiling. But with my back to her, so she can’t see. I feel like I have a girlfriend all of a sudden. And it doesn’t feel like a bad thing. “He’s coming here tonight. So unless you’ve gotta work, we can spend the whole day together.”
“I don’t have to work,” she says.
I start the coffee maker and turn to face her. Fuck. She is fun to look at. “So what’s the story with that? The sub shop? You bought it”—it’s crazy, but everything about her is crazy—“to stalk me?”
Another shrug. “Is it creepy?”
“Depends, I guess. Why are you so interested? Are you some femme fatale out to screw me up? Or…” God, the smile on my face.
“Or?” she prods.
“Or the distraction I’ve been waiting for.” I exhale. Unsure what those words mean. Knowing full well what those words mean.
Cinderella walks towards me, her mouth not smiling, not frowning. Just flat. And my honesty feels like a mistake all of a sudden. “What does that mean?” she asks, taking my hand in hers and placing my palm against her cheek. She’s warm and her cheeks are flushed pink. Her lips gently brush my fingertips and that little red flag that I tried to put away last night is flying again. “What kind of distraction do you need?”
What’s wrong with me?
That’s a loaded question.
“I’m just…” I can’t stop looking at her mouth. I want to kiss it. And even though I don’t consider myself to be an impulsive person, I do kiss it. I lean down, take her face in both hands, and it’s the gentlest, the softest, the sincerest kiss I’ve ever had. “Tired,” I say, practically whispering. “I’m tired of thinking about things. Of fixing things. I’m tired of all of it. I bought these two islands in the Exuma Cays and I’ve been fixing them up, you know? One is sorta shitty. Just a small house and I haven’t done much to it. But the other one is perfect. I remodeled it all. Kitchen, bathrooms, everything.”
“Two islands…” she says, letting her sentence drop off. Then, “Why do you need two?”
“I…” But it’s such an important question. The answer is so telling, it makes me stop.
“Pax?” she asks. “Why do you need two islands?”
And even though I’ve never articulated the answer, I know the answer. “The backup plan, right? I always have a backup plan. I bought the little one first but then I realized it wasn’t what I needed. Too small, too insignificant. Too easily washed away in a big storm. So I got another one nearby.”
“Just in case?”
I bump my forehead into hers and nod. “Just in case.”
“It sounds a little like running away,” she whispers.
“Call it whatever you want, I guess. I just like to have options.”
“Running from the past? Do you really need to run?”
I think about this for a second. Yes and no. “No, I don’t. But I want to. I want to leave everything—everyone—behind. Stop working and just do nothing for a while. Sit on a beach. Catch fish off a boat in the middle of nowhere. No cell phone, no email, no problems.”
“It doesn’t sound very fun. The leaving everyone behind part. You have friends and family. Wouldn’t you miss them?”
“No,” I say, pulling away, stepping back. “Not really. They wouldn’t miss me either, so who cares.”
“Hmmm,” Cinderella says, side-stepping me and walking over to the coffee pot. She reaches up and opens a cupboard, pulling out a coffee mug like she’s helped herself to coffee in my house a million times.
It reminds me of… me. In Nolan’s houses. The way I help myself to his things when I’m there. The way I know all his houses intimately, even the ones I have no right to claim. Because I use them whenever he’s not there. He has almost as many houses as me, and you can only stay in one at a time.
She’s been in here before. In my house. Without me.
This should be the last straw. This should be the part where I freak the fuck out and drag her to the front door, slamming it in her face after pushing her outside. This should be the part where I grab my things and walk away, leaving her behind.
She’s lying about a lot of things. I’m not sure anything she told me was the truth, if I’m being honest with myself. In my line of work, you gotta rely on instinct and every instinct I have about Cinderella Vaughn is screaming lies… lies… lies. And all it would take is one more search. One more thorough search when I don’t have her looking over my shoulder or sucking my dick to distraction, and I’d figure out what the lies were.
So what’s stopping me from getting that truth?
This is the part I’m suddenly having problems with. It’s like… it’s almost like… I’d rather not know. Maybe ignorance is bliss? Maybe having access to whatever you need, whenever you need it, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?
I watch her pour her coffee. But then she turns, without adding sugar or milk, and hands it to me.
“Here,” she says. “Let’s sit and be still together for a little bit. I’d like to hear more about your escape plans, if that’s OK. Just in case you bolt and I have to go after you.”
I take the mug and set it on the island countertop. “If I… do bolt, you’ll never find me.”
“So I guess you better not do that, Mr. Mysterious. Or you might miss out on the chance of a lifetime.”
I smile and turn the questions to her. “What about you? You don’t come off as the most grounded person.”
“Oh, God.” She laughs, reaching for the teapot and filling it with water. She sets it on the stove and turns up the flame, then turns to face me. Leans her hands on the counter behind her. Smiles. “No one has ever dared to call me grounded. I’m as flighty as they come. And not in the ditzy blonde way, either.” She stops, looks away quickly, then catches her mistake and looks me in the eyes again. Recovered. She is a natural blonde. That is something she’s hiding for sure.
“Is that the reason the carpet doesn’t match the drapes?” I ask, taking a sip of my black coffee as I try to hide my smile.
“I didn’t think you noticed.”
“It’s my job to notice, Sugar.”
She draws in a breath through her teeth at the nickname. “I think we might be the two most secretive people on the planet right now, Mr. Brown.”
“Hmm,” I say, wanting to wince at the name, but deserving it. It was the one I gave to the sub shop, after all.
“Do we want to share these secrets?” I ask.
She shakes her head slowly. “I don’t think so. Not yet.”
“So we’re going to ignore all the red flags and warning bells?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
How did I get sucked into this conversation? Why am I still participating in it? What is happening? Inside I’m screaming, waving my arms around like that robot on that old-ass TV show. Warning, warning, warning. But outside I’m as cool as they come. “Not really,” I say.
“Well, me either. I’m sure they’re gonna come out eventually. And by that time we’ll have it all figured out.”
“Will we?”
She nods. “We will.”
When the teapot whistles she makes herself a cup and we go out to the beach patio and lie next to each other on top of a giant double lounge chair and take in what’s left of the summer sun. She’s still wearing nothing but my dress shirt and her bikini bottoms. I’m still wearing nothing but my cut-off sweat shorts. And the beach is filled with people, and kids, and games of volleyball and surfers.
But we pay no attention to any of it.