RYAN
I take Jessie for dinner at my favorite restaurant in Las Vegas and it’s a perfect end to an amazing day.
I’m doing what I set out to do and Jessie is the perfect person to have by my side. I see the difference in her with every hour that passes. Her shoulders are lower, her posture more relaxed. Her face is filled with light and laughter. Her voice is soft but confident.
It’s like seeing a reflection of how I’m feeling myself.
They say time heals all wounds. Maybe it heals them out but it never gets rid of the scars.
Jessie is like a balm to my soul and I need soothing. I need the cool press of her hand on my forehead and her face pressed into my chest. I need the clasp of her hand in mine as we make our way across the casino floor of yet another hotel.
This time I decide to stop at a roulette table. I pull a wad of cash from my pocket and hand it to Jessie. She looks at me like I handed her a piece of rotting meat. “What the hell is that for?” she asks with a frown on her pretty face.
“You’re going to gamble, Jessie.”
“No I’m not,” she says. “Gambling is a fool’s game.”
I miss the hiss of venom in her voice at first. The venom that tells me that this opinion isn’t based on some abstract moral theory but from an experience close to her heart. I push the money into her hands and she looks like I’ve slapped her.
“I don’t want this,” she says. “I’m not putting a bet on in this casino or in any other casino.”
“We’re in Vegas,” I say exasperated. I’m not asking her to put her house on the line.
“Take your money,” she says quietly but firmly. Her aquamarine eyes flash in warning.
“Just one bet.” I’ll admit that I’m used to getting my own way so her pushback feels like something I need to squash. Pathetic but instinctive.
Jessie grits her teeth and looks down at the money in her hands. There is at least five thousand dollars there in hundred dollar bills. “I want to go back to the hotel,” she says. She takes the money and slips it into her purse slowly. Then she straightens her back, raises her chin and glares at me.
I open my mouth to ask her what the fuck she’s doing but the look in her eye stops me.
“Fine.” I stride out of the casino without looking back to see if she’s with me or not. I don’t like walking ahead of her. I don’t like the feeling that is now constricting my gut. She’s angry with me, but it’s more. She’s disappointed.
When I’m through the doors and into the night air I finally turn and find that she’s nowhere to be seen. My heart kicks up a notch. Where the fuck is she? Darryl is by my side and I glare at him. “Where did she go?” He shakes his head. “I had my eyes on you,” he says apologetically. For fuck sake. I stride back into the casino but I can’t spot her among the gambling tables or slot machines. Has she decided to leave? Maybe the chance of taking that extra five thousand dollars was enough for her to make a run for it. The thought fills me with panic because I have a plan and I need to stick to it. It’s what I do. I turn things over in my mind and when I’ve analyzed every angle I make my decisions. I do not waver from those decisions.
Ever.
Jessie is part of my plan for this month. She’s supposed to provide some company while I implement each and every decision I made about this time in my life. Now, it seems, she’s become something a little more central that I had expected or plotted.
I realize in that moment that I know nothing about this woman. I don’t know her cell phone number. I don’t know her last name. I don’t know her date of birth or the names of her parents. If she’s run away, aside from knowing her last address and previous employer, I’d have no way of ever finding her again.
Shit.
This is not like me. I’m letting my standards slip and the thought fills me with panic. I need to be in control. Without it, I am lost.
My throat burns as I pivot on my heel, eyes frantically scanning for the halo of blonde hair I want to bury my face into. Those blue eyes that are innocent and all-knowing at the same time. That smile that fills me with a warmth I haven’t felt in a long time. Maybe ever.
I can’t fuck this up. It’s too important. I just need to keep it together for the next twenty-seven days and I now know that I need Jessie to help me achieve that. I’m about to call the hotel and have them send a security team to look for her when I spot her striding towards me.
My heart pounds and my throat burns with pure unadulterated rage. How dare she disappear like that? How dare she make me feel so fucking low?
“Where have you been?” I growl as she gets within earshot. Her eyes widen as she takes in my expression which I know must convey my fury.
“I needed to use the bathroom,” she says slowly.
The bathroom? I take a deep breath and hold it momentarily before letting it out slowly. Breathe, I tell myself. Think before you speak now. I switch off real-Ryan and switch on boardroom-Ryan. I pull myself together in the blink of an eye because I know that chewing Jessie out about this will do nothing to serve my purpose.
“The car is outside,” I say. My voice is even and my expression now impassive. Jessie blinks as though the transformation has confused her.
“Okay,” she says slowly.
I put my hand out to indicate that she should go first. After this experience there is no way that I’m letting her out of my sight again.
My driver is there to open the door for us and Jessie slides in first, pressing herself against the opposite side. She stares out of the window and I know immediately that things are frosty.
Fuck.
I’ve messed up big time but I’ve never been a person who is good at admitting to my mistakes or saying sorry.
We travel back to the hotel in silence. We walk through the lobby next to each other but without touching. My hand itches to reach for hers but I don’t. In the elevator she remains distant and I don’t blame her. I feel distant from her too.
In the suite, she goes to the window immediately and gazes at the view. I stand and watch her, sliding my hands into my pockets. She looks so fragile; a tiny person framed by the magnificence of man-made and natural Las Vegas. I don’t know how to break the ice here. Corina would have been raging at me in this situation. She’d pour out exactly how she felt and all the things I’d done wrong. I’d shout too and somehow, at the end of it, we’d break through the issue.
“I loved my husband,” Jessie says. She doesn’t turn so I have no idea what her expression is right now or where she’s going with this train of thought. I don’t need to be compared to her dead spouse, I think, even as I was doing the same thing. “I loved him but he was a weak man. He gambled away all our money and then, when he’d run out of what we had, he gambled away what we didn’t have.”
She turns, and shrugs her purse from her shoulder, moving to place it on a console table. “It wasn’t until he died that I realized how much debt we had and I’m still trying to pay it back, Ryan. Every month I have to make another payment. I need you to understand that his gambling has taken me to places and made me do things that I would never have considered before.”
Jessie runs her hand over her face as though she’s exhausted with the world and I feel sick to my stomach. No wonder she was so pissed when I pulled out that money and told her to risk it on the roulette table. She unzips her purse and pulls out the wad of cash. “You may have the money to afford to toss it away for nothing,” she says. Her eyes are sad and cold and I don’t like it. Not one little bit. “But I can’t be a part of that. I won’t ever be okay with that.”
Fuck.
I take a deep breath because I know whatever I say next is going to have a huge bearing on, not only how Jessie perceives me, but also on the next three and a half weeks of our time together. There’s one thing I know for sure, too. That I can’t tell her that this is my casino. I can’t let her know that at least half of my fortune has come from the gambling industry.
I decide that the best option is to do the thing I’ve always found so hard. Say sorry. This woman deserves it for the shitty situation her ex-husband left her in and the crass way I was trying to force her to do something she didn’t want to do. “I’m sorry, Jessie,” I tell her, walking across to where she’s standing and placing my hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t pull away but she turns her face so she’s in profile to me. “I’m sorry for the situation you’re in and for what happened at the casino. If I’d known, I never would have pushed you.”
She exhales in a weary sigh and I just want to scoop her into my arms and hold her tight. I want to take away all the stresses she’s facing and make her understand that I can make everything better for her.
“Take your money,” she says. “What you can afford to waste would change someone else’s life. Don’t throw that chance away.”
The money feels heavy in my hands in a way that it hasn’t in a long time. It feels significant. I get a flash of a memory from when I was about ten. I was walking down the street and I caught sight of what looked like money in the gutter. When I reached down it was a ten-dollar bill and I felt sick I was so excited. That ten dollars went straight in my pocket, and when I got home I gave it straight to my ma. She tried to make me keep it. She came up with all the ways I could spend it. On sweets, on a toy, a magazine, some chocolate. She wanted me to dream with that ten dollars. In the end I told her I wanted to take her for dinner. We went to a McDonald’s and had burger and fries and milkshakes and it all tasted so good. Later that night, when I was lying in my bed, I heard my ma crying and my heart felt like it was breaking. I knew she felt like a failure for not being able to give me the things that she thought I wanted. What she didn’t know was that all I wanted was for her to be happy. She never got to enjoy what I worked so hard for. She never understood that the money I made was to give her the things I knew she’d sacrificed for me.
Ten dollars gave me a chance to lift the weight of the world off my ma’s shoulders, even for just a few hours.
Jessie’s right. I’ve lost sight of things. I’ve been swallowed up by the lifestyle and by other people’s expectations of what a man with money should be. I’ve forgotten why I got myself here in the first place.
I drop the money on the console and put my hand under her chin. As I tip her face, her eyes find mine and there is so much worry there. We’re standing in this luxury room that I built so I could benefit from the desire of people like her husband to win money rather than earn it.
I kiss her because it’s the only way I can think of to show her how I feel. The kisses are butterfly soft, each one a gentle exploration of her lips, each one a tasting of her breath. Her hand clasps my shoulder as though she needs to cling to me for stability and I understand because I feel the same way. My fingers find her nape and push up into her hair and I deepen our kiss because I want to be inside this woman in whatever way I can. Her mouth is warm and when her tongue slides against mine I feel it in my balls. Tingles fizzle up my spine and my cock thickens. I know what it feels like to push inside this woman and I want it again. I want it now.
There was a time when I would have thought nothing of picking Jessie up and carrying her to the bed but I don’t trust myself to. I’ve hurt her enough with words today; I don’t want to risk hurting her physically too. I walk her backwards towards the bed and make her sit on the edge. I kneel in front of her and remove her shoes. I kiss each ankle in turn, stroke her calves, kiss her knees. I worship this woman like she deserves to be worshiped every day. When I look up I find her watchful eyes on me. “Ryan,” she says as she runs her hand over my face, cupping my cheek and caressing my hair. I run my hands up her thighs, slipping under her skirt until I find the lace of her panties. I tug at each side and she adjusts so I can slip them down. Her scent is there and my head rushes with arousal. Fuck. I want to taste her, to bury my face and tongue in her so deep she’ll tremble all over. I want to give her so much pleasure that she’ll forget the realities of her life and just be here in this place of fantasy with me. So that’s exactly what I do.
I spread open her legs as wide as I can and feast my eyes on her most private place. I use my finger to expose her clit and she shivers at that first touch. When I press my tongue where’s she’s hot and swollen she gasps and eventually, when I’ve got her so worked up her hips are writhing as she chases her orgasm, I push my fingers inside her and make her come. My hands tremble so hard. My legs ache from kneeling. I grip the side of the bed and haul myself to standing. Jessie gazes up at me. She looks dazed.
I sit beside her and grip my hands together. Fuck. I can’t stop them from shaking.
Jessie’s hand touches my back. “Why are you over there,” she says gently. She tugs at my elbow. “Come lie down here next to me.”
I want to. I want to tuck my face into her neck and breathe her in until I’m light headed but I can’t. Not until I’m back in control.
“Just give me a minute,” I say.
“Okay.” Her voice sounds small, as though I’ve hurt her feelings. I’m sitting right next to her but I feel a thousand miles away. Too many secrets. Too many years of history that we haven’t yet shared. Not enough days to ever be anything to each other than this.
What is this?
Sex? I’ve had sex that was just about physical release and this isn’t anything like that.
What does it mean that I want to please this woman more than I want to please myself?
I feel the bed move behind me and then Jessie is there sliding her arms around my middle and holding me close. She goes to take my hands in hers and for a second I flinch because I don’t want her to know, but then my body seems to relax and her fingers twine around mine.
“I’m not angry with you,” she says gently.
“I’m angry with myself.”
“You don’t have to be, Ryan.”
“I thought you’d left,” I tell her.
She goes still. “You thought I’d walked out on our arrangement.”
I nod my head. Fuck. I hate this shit. I need my walls up. I need to regain control.
Before she has a chance to say anything in response, I tug her arms from around me and stand.
“Take off your clothes, Jessie,” I order. My voice is perfectly even and cold. This is the me I am comfortable being.
This is the only way I can be.