How was it possible to miss someone I’d only been “official” with for a week as much as I had over the past seven days?
That dull ache of separation didn’t take a single break my whole trip to Paris. Even when I slept, I’d wake up to the same heaviness. It was only one week, but it didn’t feel like it. I’d be leaving again for Paris in a couple of days, and that would be the trend for the next long while. The colossal client was in Paris, which meant most of my work life was now in Paris. Halfway across the planet practically—and here I thought I’d moved to the fashion capital of the world.
Of course I’d get booked by a client based internationally.
Soren had to hit the road later tonight with his team for an away game in the morning. Which meant we had a couple hours of overlap. Two hours in a week. I wasn’t experienced in relationships, but I knew that wasn’t a good way to start a new one.
My flight had come in late, so instead of swinging by the apartment to drop off my suitcase and link up with Soren before we headed to whatever he had planned for us, I told him I’d meet him there. I didn’t want to waste time since, in our case, each minute was precious.
When the cab pulled in front of the restaurant Soren had picked, I realized I was slightly underdressed. Leggings, a tunic, and flats weren’t cocktail dresses and designer heels.
Grabbing the small suitcase I’d carried on, I moved out of the cab after paying the driver. I felt jet-lagged from the time changes, tired from working twelve-hour days, and exhausted from missing him.
The instant I saw Soren moving through the restaurant’s door toward me, all signs of fatigue disappeared.
He didn’t say anything; he just wound his arms around me and pulled me close. The suitcase fell from my hands so I could wind mine around him. We stood like that for a minute, holding each other in the diffused light of a streetlamp on a dark street, until our breathing had synced.
“God, I missed you,” he said.
My body felt like it was melting into his from how close he was holding me. “Missed you more.”
His lips touched my temple before he stepped back. “Impossible.” His arm draped behind my back as he lifted my carry-on in his other hand to head back inside.
“I don’t think I’m dressed for the occasion.” I glanced at Soren, who was wearing dark slacks and a button-down shirt. “Maybe I should change,” I suggested as we moved by the restrooms stationed up front. I had a dress and heels in my carry-on that would suit this place better than my international flight attire.
“Don’t be crazy. You look perfect.” Soren wove us through the crowd of customers staggered through the waiting area, moving toward the hostess.
“Says the man who’s probably so desperate to get laid, he’d say that if I came in wearing a paper sack and galoshes.”
“You know me so well.” He winked at me before turning to the hostess. “Decker. Reservation for seven o’clock.”
The hostess ran a pencil down the clipboard she was holding, her forehead creasing when she reached the bottom. She started at the top again. “I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t have a reservation for Decker at seven.”
Soren’s head shook. “I called last week and made the reservation. I know I made one.”
She read through the reservation list again, her gaze drifting into the busy waiting area right after. “Is there any chance you could have given a different name?”
His neck rolled. “No.”
“Soren, it’s okay. We can go somewhere else.”
He scooted closer so he could see the reservation list. “No. I made reservations here, because I read they were one of the best restaurants in the city to have a romantic dinner.”
“We can go to that burger joint by the apartment and bring a candle and a rose to set on the table.”
My suggestion didn’t draw the response I was going for. His hand raked through his hair as he waved into the restaurant. “I made a reservation. If you want to see the call on my phone, I can show you. There’s just two of us. Can’t you squeeze us in?”
I hadn’t noticed out on the street how tired he looked as well. He’d shaved and his hair, usually hidden by a cap, had been combed, but there were dark shadows under his eyes. From the calls and texts we’d exchanged this week, he’d probably put in sixteen-hour days to my twelves.
“I’m sorry, sir. We’re fully booked tonight. If you like, I can suggest a few other options close by, or I’d be happy to make a reservation for you for a later date—”
“A later date won’t work,” Soren didn’t quite but almost snapped. “I leave tonight. She leaves again on Monday.”
The hostess was getting flustered, Soren already was, so I slid in front of him in an attempt to convince him we could go somewhere else. Anywhere else. I didn’t care, because we were together. I would have been in bliss if we grabbed a couple of hot dogs and sodas from a street vendor and parked it on a curb, because after the longest week on record, we were together again.
The annoying roommate I used to make a point of keeping my distance from was now the one I wanted to be as close to as possible.
“Hayden?” a familiar voice called right before Ellis appeared over Soren’s shoulder. “What are you doing here?”
Soren’s jaw worked before he turned.
“What did you think of Paris? I already know how much the client loved you.” Ellis didn’t seem to care how close Soren was hovering beside me. He leaned in and gave me a quick hug. It wasn’t anything outside the realm of casual friends, but from the look on Soren’s face, Ellis might as well have shoved me up against a wall and stuck his tongue in my mouth.
“Paris was good. I’m glad to be home though.” I leaned out of the embrace before he was ready to let me go.
A blonde woman in a couture gown waited behind him, but Ellis made no effort to introduce her.
“From the sounds of the shows and campaigns they want to use you for, Paris is going to become your home away from home soon.”
Soren’s head twisted toward me. He knew I’d be back and forth to Paris for a while. I just might have left out how frequently, and how long of a duration, that would be. I’d really only just found out this past week that the client wanted to keep things open until they had a chance to work with me. From the sounds of it, I’d impressed them. Some awkward girl from Nebraska was going to be the face of an iconic international fashion brand. The news was still sinking in.
“Did you just finish dinner or are you just about to sit down?” Ellis asked after his prior statement remained unaddressed.
“Actually—”
Soren’s hand dropped onto my back, moving me away. “We’re just leaving.”
“Did you have a nice dinner? This is one of my favorite places.”
I sealed my lips, letting Soren answer however he wanted to. Even if that meant walking us out the door.
“They don’t have the reservation I made. So we’re heading somewhere else.”
Ellis chuckled, moving up to the hostess table. “Yeah, sometimes they do that when certain people arrive.”
I hoped Soren had missed the way Ellis said certain people like it was an affliction. He hadn’t.
After having a short conversation with the hostess, Ellis leaned in to press a quick kiss to her cheek. “You’re all set. Melanie here has a table ready for you.”
Again, I waited for Soren’s lead. He wasn’t exactly fond of Ellis, so if he wanted to leave instead of accept some favor, I was good with that. Instead, he took my hand and moved up to where the hostess was waiting for us with menus in hand.
“Are you sure?” I whispered to him.
His head moved. “I wanted to take you somewhere nice. I’m sure.”
Ellis clapped Soren’s shoulder as we passed. “Be sure to add their bill to mine. Let the server know, would you?”
Soren stopped. “I’ve got it. Thanks.”
Ellis waved that off. “Please. Don’t spend a month’s paycheck on one dinner. Let me take care of it. Hayden is my top girl right now. I have to make sure she gets treated right.”
Soren’s shoulders stiffened beneath his dress shirt. “I’ll take care of our bill,” he said, his eyes having no problem holding Ellis’s unyielding stare. “I’ll take care of her, too.”
Ellis shrugged, stepping aside so we could follow the hostess. Soren’s hand felt rigid and hot in mine. This wasn’t how I’d been hoping to spend our two hours together.
“This is a really nice place, Soren.”
By the time I was sliding into my chair, the hard lines on his face had started to disappear. He made sure I was settled in my chair before moving toward his. “I’m glad you like it.”
My eyes about fell out of their sockets when I saw the menu. To be exact, the prices listed beside the menu items. I was rolling in some good money now, a six-figure income I’d only dreamed of one day making. Still, that didn’t change who I was or how I felt about a prawn cocktail costing fifty dollars. My mom used to feed four of us for two weeks on fifty bucks.
“I’m paying for dinner tonight, okay?” I kept my eyes on the menu, knowing this wasn’t going to go over well.
“No. Not okay.”
“Soren—”
He leaned across the table. “Hayden, I’m paying.”
Half of my face pulled up when I saw the three-digit prices besides the entrees. “Dutch?”
A groan echoed across the table. “You can’t take one more manly thing away from me. No way. You insist on wearing stilts whenever we go out in public together—most of the time,” he added, when I flashed my flats outside of the table. “You’re not picking up the dinner tab too.”
My teeth worked over my lip, doing a rough tally of how steep the bill would run tonight, even if we only ordered dinners. I knew roughly how much he brought home every month, and this one dinner would tear through almost a quarter of it.
“Please. I wanted to do something special for you. To celebrate this big deal you just landed. To celebrate you being on the fast-track to supermodel status.” He lifted his water cup at me, toasting.
I lifted mine and clinked it against his. “We should be celebrating you being on the fast-track to the pros too, right?”
“It’s way early to assume any of that—to even hope”—his eyes sparkled across the table at me—“but I played one hell of a game when those scouts were in the stands watching.”
“You always play one hell of a game.” My hand stretched across the table when he held out his. “How was the ankle injury?”
“What ankle injury?” he asked, straight-faced. Then he chuckled. “The ankle was great. Didn’t feel a thing. Your healing touch worked wonders.”
My legs squeezed together from the look he gave me. It was the same one I’d stared at the night he’d taken me on the table in the apartment. Penetrating. Domineering.
“Speaking of healing touches . . .” I leaned across the table and lowered my voice. There was a dull roar in the restaurant and the tables were spaced generously, but still. “I figured you’d have other plans for us to spend our two hours together. Plans that didn’t include dinner.” I wetted my lips then whispered, “Or clothes.”
His neck stiffened, looking like he was in physical pain from what I was suggesting. “Yeah, I just wanted to prove to you—to show you—that that’s not all I want from you. That I value more than just that kind of intimacy with you.”
The menu lowered from my hands. “That’s pretty much the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Thank god.” A loud breath blew from his mouth. “Because you have no idea how hard it was to say. Or do. Or, you know.”
I took a sip of my water, trying to cool the heat swelling inside me. I wanted Soren’s body so badly I felt nauseous from it. I wanted him, all of him, even more. Maybe he was right—maybe it was a good idea for us not to spend those few coveted hours we got together only one way. Our bodies worked like a damn dream together—we’d already figured that out. We needed to get the rest of the relationship components to fuse just as cohesively.
“So . . .” I leaned farther across the table. “No sex?”
He winced. “You make that sound so bad.” The lines of his face creased deeper. “But yeah, no sex. Not tonight. Let’s just . . . be together. Like this.” His hand turned mine over so he could caress the underside of my wrist.
I’d never known how erotic a thumb touching my wrist could be until right then. Especially when it was matched with the glint in his eyes appraising me.
“I’m sorry about Ellis back there. I know he’s not your favorite person, and he can come off as an arrogant ass. What he said to you, that was rude.”
Soren shrugged it off, though his eyes didn’t come across so dismissively. “People are always going to try to put you in your place. I know exactly where I stand.”
My feet slid against his, every part of my body feeling drawn to him. The only thing keeping the rest of my body separated from his was the table between us. “And where do you stand?
“In the very spot every guy on the planet wants to be.” He lifted my hand and kissed my knuckles. “Right beside the most stunning creature in creation.”
Paris again. Another microscopic hotel room with thin walls and unique smells. For as glamorous of a life most people seemed to think models had, the opposite was true. The early morning shoots, the hours spent being pulled on, prodded, brushed, and styled in a chair, the long days where a bathroom break was considered generous. It wasn’t a glamorous lifestyle, not even as a model who was supposedly “rising to the top.” That was okay. I’d known that going in. I wasn’t a diva and was familiar with hard work.
The hard part was being away from him. Another couple of weeks had passed, and the time we had spent together had been through the filter of a phone. His season was at its peak, so he was traveling a ton too. Combine that with the time difference, and it made squeezing in a few minutes to catch up a scheduling nightmare.
He always told me just to call him whenever and not to worry about what time it was where he was. He’d happily wake up to hear my voice. But I knew how little sleep he was getting, and I didn’t want a selfish whim to be the reason he approached the next morning like a zombie.
The silver lining to all of this was that he and his team were having a great season and everything was going great with my new client. In fact, my career was going so great, Ellis was having to turn down offers from other fashion designers and companies thanks to my schedule being too full.
Both of our dreams seemed to be on the cusp of fruition, but sometimes it felt like the cost of being apart was too great. Especially at night. When I was alone, stuffed inside some small, foreign hotel room, trying to tune out the voices and shouts spoken in a language I didn’t know.
I’d be flying back to New York in a couple of days, and Soren and I’d have one whole day together before he was back on the road for a game. Two days. I could make it.
I could . . .
My hand grabbed my phone and punched in his number before I’d made a voluntary decision. It was almost one at night here, which meant it was dinnertime’ish there. I thought.
“I was just thinking about you,” Soren answered.
“You always say that.” My mouth turned up as I rolled onto my side in bed.
“That’s because I’m always thinking about you. So it’s always true.”
Hearing his voice made everything better. Everything. Two days suddenly didn’t feel so far away. Two weeks didn’t feel like it had been forever.
“Are you at the apartment?” I asked.
“I’m at school still, actually. Had to come in early to make up a lab I missed last week from being on the road.”
“What time is it there?”
“A little after seven. Which means it’s . . . one o’clock there? Hayden, you should be asleep. You need to take care of yourself.” In the background, I heard voices, noises.
“I can’t sleep.” I twisted onto my other side, unable to find a comfortable position on the bed. I was used to sleeping on some unpleasant surfaces, but this bed was bad. I probably would have been better off on the floor.
“Want me to sing you a lullaby or something?” Soren whispered something to someone before it sounded like he was moving away from the noise.
“I’m beyond the reach of a lullaby. Or a glass of warm milk. Or even one of those sleep pills all of the girls keep telling me to get a prescription for.” I groaned, turning back over again. The less sleep I got, the less willing to fall asleep my body seemed. It was a vicious cycle.
“I can think of something else that always seems to put you right to sleep.” Soren’s tone had changed, his voice quieter.
“What’s that?” When he stayed quiet, I realized what he was talking about. “How’s that supposed to help me when you’re thousands of miles away?”
“Physically, yeah, but I’m talking to you right this very moment. You’ve got a good imagination, right?”
His voice and what he was suggesting had me sitting up in bed. “Are you implying . . .?”
“Don’t play coy with me. I know what you’re capable of, and reserved isn’t part of it.”
Crap. I could already feel my body responding to him. Half a world away. “You’re in a lab filled with other people. Not the ideal time to pop our phone sex cherry.”
“Was,” he replied, the sound of a door whining open following. “I was in a lab full of students.”
“Where are you going now?” My heart was hammering—so much for sleep. Although he did have a point—there was nothing like an orgasm to knock me out.
“The teacher’s lounge.”
“The teacher’s lounge?”
“Nobody’s in here this late anyway.”
My head shook. “You’re going to have phone sex in the teacher’s lounge?”
“Hey, another boyhood fantasy about to get checked off the list.”
I made sure to sigh loud enough he heard it. “The depths of your perversion know no end.”
“Oh, yeah?” The sound of another door creaking open came through the phone. “Then why don’t you slide that pretty hand of yours inside those panties and tell me whose perversion knows no end too.”
“Soren,” I hissed.
“Time to close your mouth now, girlie. Time to open your legs.”
My throat went dry.
“Touch yourself. I want to know how wet you are.” There was some noise in the background, rustling, and then I heard the telltale sound of a zipper being lowered. “I want to know how bad you want me right now.”
“Did you seriously just unzip your pants in the teacher’s lounge, Soren Decker?”
“I seriously just did. But don’t worry, I locked the door.” His voice hitched, followed by a low rumble I was familiar with.
“Are you . . .?” I swallowed.
“Mm-hmm,” he answered on speaker now. “Are you?”
Holy everything unholy. He was touching himself right this very second. He was stroking himself, thinking of me, imagining moving inside me . . .
My hand dropped to my stomach and slid beneath my underwear as I turned on the speakerphone. I’d barely touched myself and could feel that familiar spiral of release. He didn’t miss the whimper that crested from my lips.
“How bad do you want me right now, Hayden? Tell me how bad you want it.”
My nipples pressed through the cotton of my nightgown as my hand moved lower. I was so wet, my finger slipped right inside, sending my back off the mattress when I imagined him moving inside me instead.
“I want you so badly, Soren.” I whispered his name the way he liked to hear me say it when we came together. As my reward, I heard his rough growl. “I’m fucking myself with my finger right now, pretending it’s your cock.”
“Shit,” he grunted. “I love that filthy mouth. We should have given this phone sex thing a try weeks ago.”
“Enjoying yourself?” My other hand slid around my breast, squeezing it as my finger continued to shuttle inside my body.
“You have no idea. I am so close to coming; I’m going to ease off until you’re close.”
My legs fell open wider as I pictured him above me, holding them open as he pushed inside. “Even when it’s over the phone, you insist on us coming together?”
“Twice the fun, Hayden.”
If I really focused, I could hear him moving. I could hear his hand thrusting down his cock, the sound of his uneven breaths. The picture of him became so vivid, I could see him inside the teacher’s lounge, stretched out on a couch, his zipper undone, his body ready for mine.
I imagined going to him, stripping as I went, sheathing his body inside of mine the moment I covered his lap. It would only take a few strokes before I’d feel him kick inside me, his release filling me as he held himself deep inside, his eyes demanding my own.
A cry rose from my chest, his name right after.
“Come for me, Hayden. Let me hear it,” he ordered.
I didn’t hold my cries back. I didn’t hold anything back as my orgasm surged through me. I wasn’t thinking about thin walls or anyone listening in. All I thought about was him. Giving me what I needed, exactly when I needed it.
Soren’s release tangled with mine, his groans of pleasure more subdued. For a few minutes after, there was only the sounds of our breaths. Hard and heavy at first, tapering into a more level balance.
“Suddenly, this long distance thing doesn’t seem so impossible.” Soren’s voice was low and hoarse, his chuckle the same.
My body was still buzzing from my orgasm as a wave of sleepiness came over me. Curling into my pillow, I pulled the blankets around me.
“Nothing’s impossible. Especially you and me.” As I closed my eyes, I realized I’d said that more to convince myself than to agree with him.