As soon as we arrived at the event at the hotel, I realized this wasn’t just a “work thing” as Nate had said it was.
It was a wedding.
Nate Sinclair had taken me on our second public outing to a wedding.
I mentally erased every wonderful, amazing thing I’d thought about him in the last forty-eight hours. I took it back. It was null and void. All of it.
Weddings were the worst. Weddings meant commitment. Taking somebody to a wedding was making an overly bold statement. It meant you were serious about someone. It meant you wanted to be with them. At the very least, it meant you were dating.
And we were most certainly not dating.
I wondered if Nate knew that.
I made a note to tell him as plainly and clearly as possible. As soon as I got the chance. Unfortunately, it would have to wait, because we arrived at the wedding (a fucking wedding!) just as the ceremony began, and I had to keep my mouth shut.
The wedding itself was lovely—even I had to admit that. It was a simple ceremony between Weston King, one of the guys who owned the ad agency with Nate, and Elizabeth Dyson, a well-known debutante. But it wasn’t like I cared about either of them.
I made a note to tell Nate about that too.
But as soon as the wedding was over, everyone started to funnel past the divider in the room to the open space beyond. The reception began immediately, and with everyone crowding around Nate, I couldn’t yell at him then, either. I had to play it cool.
Fortunately, I had enough experience working at Pierce Industries to know how to put on the charm, and I did so, greeting everyone that came up to us with a smile and a nod. Engaging in conversation with polite small talk. I was familiar with the standard topics of conversation among the elite. Nate seemed to be somewhat bored with that, but it was his job, so I understood. He was charming, nonetheless. I could tell that he liked talking to people, liked mingling with them when the conversations got real, and occasionally they did. One couple engaged him in a conversation about a recent vacation they’d taken to Tibet. Nate, it turned out, had once spent a couple weeks there climbing and buying antique Buddhist statues. Just listening to that was a fascinating fifteen minutes.
I was still mad, though.
And then, just when I thought we had a break in the swarm, just when I thought I’d be able to give Nate more than a scowl, we bumped into the one person I never wanted to see in a situation like this—my boss, Hudson Pierce.
“Patricia,” Hudson exclaimed, as surprised to see me as I was shocked to see him. “I didn’t expect to see you here. Are you a friend of the groom or the bride?”
“Hudson,” his wife nagged him. “Leave her alone. She’s off the clock. Her private life is her business. Not yours.”
Alayna gave me a tired grin. Likely she’d been up late with her infant twins. She was still in the phase where she always looked exhausted when I saw her. Poor woman. I remembered seeing that look on my mother’s face in photographs from when I was young, and then seeing it replicated on several of my sisters’ faces when their own babies were born.
“You look lovely, Trish,” she said, with moderate enthusiasm. “That color brings your eyes out.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Pierce.” I shook my head, realizing that calling her Mrs. Pierce was maybe a little too formal for the occasion. “Laney,” I said at the same time as she said, “Laney.”
Nate turned to me with a flute of champagne he’d just scavenged off of some waiter’s tray. “Here you go, babe.”
I felt my face turn fifty shades of red. Well, Nate Sinclair had just outed us to my boss.
And there wasn’t even an “us” to out!
Now not only was I mad, I was petrified.
“You’re here with Nathan?” Hudson remarked, his eyes darting carefully from me to his newest ad manager.
“Yes,” Nate said at the same time as I said, “No, we’re just...”
But what were we “just”?
There was nothing to say. There was no answer I could give, no excuse. “We came together, yes.”
“I didn’t realize you knew each other outside of the office,” Hudson said pointedly.
I searched my mental files to see if I could remember if there were any rules about dating people that walk through his doors, but I couldn’t remember that there were any. Those had just always been my rules. But even if they weren’t official policy, it still felt like the wrong answer to say that I was on a date with Nate. It felt like a conflict somehow.
And truth be told, I did know Nate from somewhere else. But I wasn’t about to admit where from.
“We—” I looked to Nate, searching for help.
Nate studied me, sensing the source of my dismay. “We met at the party of a mutual friend.” He saved the day. Thank God.
“So you’re dating,” Laney said, trying to make the moment celebratory but inadvertently making it weirder because I hadn’t had time to let him know we weren’t dating.
He was going to find out now. Sorry, Nate.
“I only came because Nate needed someone to accompany him. That’s all. Not for any other reason. I just… Just, you know. He needed a date. Because it’s his work thing. And he had to be here.” I sounded like an idiot. I’d never sounded like that in front of Hudson Pierce. My professionalism was a point of pride for me.
He probably thought I was drunk. Or lying. Or had something to hide. And only the last was true—but I wasn’t hiding anything that directly pertained to his business, so my secrets were my own to keep.
“And how are the babies?” I asked, wanting to change the subject as quickly as I could. “They sleep through the night yet? Is that a thing that they do at this age? All my nieces and nephews live on Long Island, and you know how it is with work and all… I feel like I mostly only see them on special occasions these days, so I never remember when the milestones happen...”
That sure sounded like a sincere interest in children, didn’t it? I was mentally face-palming myself.
“The babies are fantastic,” Alayna said, ignoring my flustered, incoherent babbling. “They’re probably too little still to sleep through the night, but we do have a nanny who helps us, and I’m not working right now. Soon, though. Though they’re four months old and that’s about when Mina slept through the night for the first time.”
Mina was their older daughter.
“She did?” Hudson asked. “It felt like it was a year before she was sleeping through the night.”
Laney rolled her eyes. “Men. They never remember things the way women do. Anyway, I’ll let you two enjoy yourselves. We’re about to get going. We just wanted to stop in and give our congratulations to the happy couple. But we’re both ready to be home. If I don’t nurse soon I’m going to burst.”
TMI, I thought. And I was the kind of woman who pretty much thought nothing was too much information. But anything even remotely related to the mysteries of babydom gave me the shudders. Women always assumed other women were waiting for one eventually. I supposed most of them were. That had just never been on my list of dreams. Did men deal with the assumption that the ultimate career was child-rearing? I doubted it.
But I was grateful for her smoothing over the awkwardness of her husband and I seeing each other in a social setting, and also that they were leaving. At least one pair of us got to.
“Good seeing you both. See you Monday…Hudson.” Ew. It was awkward addressing him with his first name, even though I referred to him as such behind his back all the time. Reason number four thousand and three why I liked keeping business and pleasure separate—it was easier to keep the names straight.
When they were gone and out of sight, Nate finally pulled me aside so that we could have a conversation, just the two of us.
“I sense you are maybe not so happy with me. Or not so happy about something?”
“You brought me to a wedding,” I hissed, perhaps a little too loudly, because a guest not too far away turned and sneered at me.
He arched a brow in question.
“You don’t bring your fuckbuddy to a wedding, Nate. It’s not appropriate! And beyond what it says to others, it sends the wrong message to someone who’s already made it very clear she doesn’t even really believe in weddings. Have you ever looked at the divorce rate?” I was winding up for an even longer speech about society’s unfair expectations when he cut me off.
“I should’ve explained,” Nate said, understanding lighting his eyes. He pulled me farther into the corner. “This isn’t like, a wedding-wedding. It’s a sham. A fake. A game. You like games.”
“A fake wedding?” I had no idea what he was talking about. Everything seemed pretty damn real to me, including the price tag. I’d never been to such an exquisitely detailed event, and some of the Open Door parties had been six-figure functions, like last year’s White Christmas orgy.
“Weston and Elizabeth are only marrying each other because of some business arrangement,” he continued. “But it’s really hush-hush. Nobody knows but the partners, basically, so keep it on the down-low.”
Fake, game, business arrangement—it didn’t matter. “Everyone here thinks it’s a real wedding. My boss thinks it’s a real wedding. I don’t. Even. Like. Weddings!” He needed to listen. Not being heard was definitely one of my sticking points.
He shrugged, conceding my point, which calmed me down immensely. He finished off the rest of his champagne with one swallow and set the flute down on a nearby table.
Then he turned back to me and said, “So you don’t believe in marriage,” and I realized what conversation was coming next.
The important one. The one where he tried to talk me out of my unconventional ways. The one where he told me that there was no place for us to be together if I couldn’t adapt to traditional guidelines about how men and women engaged in relationships. The one that always preceded good-bye.
I couldn’t help but feel disappointed, even though it was the one I’d been trying to have all along.
I set down my champagne flute, untouched, and waited, my arms folded across my chest.
But what he said next surprised me. “What kind of life do you envision for yourself? What’s your dream future?” Instead of immediately hounding me about my utter disrespect for the sanctity of marriage, he wanted to listen.
This...was new.
I wasn’t prepared, which sort of pissed me off. Not only because it occurred to me that I could have misjudged Nathan Sinclair, but also because I didn’t exactly have a checklist of plans for myself. I just had things I liked doing that I wanted to continue doing, uninterrupted.
“What is it I want from my life?” I repeated back to him, buying time to think about it.
And then when I did think about it I realized I didn’t need the time. I knew exactly what I wanted. “My own stuff, my own space, steady kinky sex in different locations. Happy? I’m leaving.” I spun on my five-inch heels and walked toward the exit. Irritated.
I didn’t know why I was so worked up, maybe because the whole topic was a sore spot. Maybe because even though he hadn’t given the speech yet, I knew it was coming eventually. I didn’t fit into the traditional world with my viewpoints about happily-ever-afters. I already knew that.
Or, maybe I was worked up because people rarely believed it about me when I told them. They always thought that I was lying to them or lying to myself, but I really didn’t want what society believed I should want in the way they thought I should want it, and I didn’t want to have to argue about it with Nate, because I did truly like him. And I didn’t want to have this conflict. But liking him didn’t mean I wanted to give up who I was just to make him happy.
Instead of talking it to death and arguing my side, it was easier just to go. Get it over with. I could cut the ties now before I liked him even more. Before the string didn’t just tug me back from the clouds, but let all the air out of me, too.
I rushed out into the lobby, assuming he’d let me go, but he followed. And really, that’s what I probably should have expected. He’d already proven he was the kind of guy that chased. Shoe or not, Nate Charming liked his fairytale kink.
And I’d just performed the most cliché move of all for a sexed-up Cinderella—I’d run from the freaking ball.
I looked around, trying to decide where to go next. I had originally intended to head to the coat check before finding an available chariot, but there was a line. Since we were going to have to talk, and since I didn’t want to have this conversation in public, I headed to the opposite side of the lobby, to an empty alcove by the water fountains.
When I got there, I turned and shook a finger at him. “You’re not going to change my mind about this, Nate. I’m laying it out there. This is who I am. I’m not into the traditional life plan. It’s good that you know now.” So you can leave. Find a real princess.
“I wasn’t trying to change your mind about anything. I was trying to understand.” He didn’t sound angry or frustrated, even. He just sounded...curious.
And somehow that irritated me more. “There’s nothing to understand. I’m unique. ‘Impossible,’ as my mother says.”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t call you impossible. I get it. You want the Susan Sontag and Annie Leibovitz life. You’re not that unique. Hate to burst your bubble.”
I actually was offended at being called “not that unique,” but no way in hell was I going to let him know.
On the other hand, it was nice not being told that my ideas were ridiculous and selfish. Not to be lectured on how I’ll grow old lonely.
I shifted my weight to one hip. “What’s the Sontag and Leibovitz life?” I knew one was a writer and one was a photographer, but that was all I knew about the names he’d mentioned.
“Susan Sontag was very particular about her relationships,” Nate said, leaning a shoulder against the wall of the room next door. “She was private. Even though she was a writer and exposed nearly all of her feelings in her work, she wanted to keep her relationships out of her public life. So she denied them to anyone who asked. She didn’t marry the women that she loved, didn’t call them her partners.
“But Annie Leibovitz went so far as to buy a townhouse in the building across the street from her so they could intertwine their lives as much as possible, without ‘becoming one,’ as the Bible says.” He rubbed his hand over his close-trimmed beard. “They worked together but separately. They had their own identities, but they weren’t alone. They had each other.”
I pursed my lips, not sure what to say. It sounded nice, actually. Really nice. Fairytale nice.
But it was a romantic notion. In real life, how often did people do that sort of thing? I would bet that the couples that ended up in arrangements like that didn’t plan for things to work out that way. It was probably mostly compromise after being frustrated by relationships with impossible people for so long.
It felt like an amazingly great dream scenario for someone like me. But also, exactly that—a dream scenario. Because it was too much to ever ask of a partner. How would you propose that to someone? I like you, why don’t you live near me, but not too close. Be part of my world, but not too much a part of it. Yes, I’d love to meet your mother. She’s going to completely understand what we’re doing here.
“It sounds like a great story, Nate,” I said gently. “But it also sounds a little bit too much of a fairytale, don’t you think?”
“Fairytales, by definition, are stories. They aren’t real. But this isn’t just a great story. Susan and Annie were real people. Not only did they do this, but they were happy doing it. If you ever have the chance, A Photographer’s Life is a great book—”
I was waiting for him to finish, ready to spout out all the reasons why it wouldn’t work out in a non-artistic situation with people who weren’t celebrities, why no one would ever actually commit to that kind of arrangement, why it was shitty he was even offering the idea up when it wasn’t what he wanted, when he abruptly changed his tone.
“You hear that?” he asked.
I listened, straining to locate what he was hearing. “What?”
He pointed at the wall next to us. “In there. It sounds like someone struggling.”
I put my ear against the wall and listened. Sure enough, it sounded like there was a woman in there with a man. Like she was possibly being attacked. She kept saying no, and it sounded like they were fighting.
I looked at Nate, my eyes wide. “What room is that?” We weren’t on a floor with actual rooms, at least not the kind you could sleep in.
“It’s one of the event spaces. I’m pretty sure it was rented for the wedding. The whole floor was. Hell, half the hotel maybe, considering all of the guests. It has to be a member of the party in there, someone with a key.” He listened again.
A muffled but clear voice came through the wall. “And now we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
“That sounds kind of like Donovan,” Nate said, eyes wide. “He’s one of the owners of Reach.”
Oh, fuck. One of Nate’s friends was attacking a woman. I didn’t know what we should do, but we had to do something. Being part of a “we” was so easy when the right decision was so clear-cut.
“Should we get help?” I asked.
“I’ll deal with it,” he offered, pushing off from the wall with a grim expression. I was nervous and impressed at once that this millionaire advertising executive would be willing to physically take on a threat like this. To slay a metaphorical dragon, even though a man in his position could simply have called the front desk and had the situation dealt with in less than a minute.
I kept my ear to the spot where Donovan’s voice had sounded loudest a moment ago, monitoring what was happening. It was quieter inside now. Then the grunts and moans began.
I realized very quickly that they were familiar grunts and moans.
“Wait, Nathan.” I pulled his arm, stopping him from going in like an avenging hero. “They’re having sex. It’s rough, but it’s consensual.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded for him to listen again, and he did. We both did, locking eyes.
It was obvious now. Not only were they clearly having sex, but it was also hot sex. Very hot sex. Dirty, filthy, kinky, hot sex. In the few seconds we were eavesdropping, Donovan gave his partner what sounded like an earth-shaking orgasm, and immediately had her on the way to another.
As addicted to fucking as I already was, combined with the denied orgasm from earlier, witnessing somebody else have kinky-hot sex was not reminding my libido I was trying to have a breakup conversation. That had been what we’d been having, wasn’t it? In fact, it was very difficult to remember the point I was trying to make when all I could imagine was Nate making me come as hard as the woman inside the room just had.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nate asked, bringing me back to myself. If it had been anybody else asking the question—particularly anybody I’d only met within the last month—I might have doubted that we were on the same page.
But one glance down at his pants was all it took to assure me that he was thinking exactly the same thing I was.
“Is there a bathroom around here? Or a closet?” I looked frantically for a place we could slip away, my hand already easing under my skirt, already finding the bare, swollen bundle of nerves. I let out a moan when my fingers brushed across the sensitive head of my clit.
Nate echoed my moan. “Fuck, baby. This is private enough here. Everyone’s in there watching the first dance and cake-cutting, and I can’t fucking wait another minute to be inside you.”
“It’s a good thing you restocked your condoms when we were at your apartment,” I panted, hiking my knee onto the water fountain as he took the condom out and stuffed the wallet back in his jacket pocket. Then he pulled his cock out of his pants, just far enough to roll the condom on.
I gathered the skirt of my dress up around my waist and sighed in pure relief as he pushed his blunt crown inside. Simultaneously, we groaned in ecstasy when he completed the first perfect thrust, and again in anguish as he reversed before filling me all over again. Over and over, he beat into me with a rapid tempo, our languid moans interweaving with staccato gasps, and I wondered if the people on the other side of the wall could hear us, or if they were too wrapped up in their own fantasy and pleasure to notice anyone around them.
Just thinking about someone listening, or—oh God—someone watching while I rubbed myself with Nate’s cock inside me, made me ready to detonate.
“Hurry,” I begged, even though he was already driving into me at a frenetic pace. “Hurry, I’m coming. I’m coming now!”
“Show off.” He took a step closer into me and braced a hand on my shoulder and another at my hip and let himself go, savagely bucking into me. Holding on to me like he was riding a wild bull, even though he was the one who was frenzied and out of control.
Though maybe I was too, because I was still exploding. I was shaking and trembling and no sooner had one orgasm taken me over then another came crashing right afterward. It was some of the most intense, amazing sex of my life, and I knew it, even while I was still having it, while I was still deep in it. While I was still clenching around him. While I was still drowning. While I was still afraid that I might not survive, I was telling myself this this this. I knew that it was some of the dirtiest, no, the filthiest sex I had ever had. And I knew that I would always compare the sex I had later to the sex I was having right this second.
Nate came a moment later, biting into my shoulder to stifle his groan while he rutted into me, spilling everything inside him.
When he was done, he cleaned us both up with his pocket square, straightened my dress, threw away the condom.
He was perfect. The perfect guy.
I looked at him, realized this, and I still wanted to go home alone.
Yeah. Like my mother always said—I was impossible.