ELEVEN
ELLE
“Stop shaking or you’ll give yourself away when you go back out there and face your mother,” Graham warns. He backs away from me gradually, leaving me shuddering against the Parisian pink wallpaper.
Damn him for doing this to me, and piss on me for letting him. What’s gotten into me? Graham Delaney crooks his talented finger at me, and I’m hitting the big O in a ladies’ bathroom? “I can’t stop shaking.”
“Try harder. Remember what we agreed about being inconspicuous?”
“Yeah, well that sort of flew out the window when you followed me in here and shoved your hand in my underwear.”
He adjusts my clothes—turning it into a sexy romp all its own when he kneels in front of me to drag his strong fingers up my tights, stopping to trace the tear in the center. Since it’s impossible to speak, I simply hold my breath, as he hikes up the hem of my dress.
“When you go back out there...” Looking me in the eye, he kisses one of my thighs, then the other. I shudder, but he continues, “When you’re sitting there, with your blackberry drink and eating your dainty fucking salad...” His tongue darts out, and he licks me long and hard, tasting his handiwork. His tongue is a curse, and I dig my fingers in his dark hair as he hungrily laps at my sex for several more seconds before plucking my panties back in place. “When you’re doing all that, I want you to think of me. Sitting across the room from you with this in my pocket.”
Without warning, he rips a piece of my ruined tights. Pulling my dress back down, he stands and shoves the material deep into his pocket.
“Tearing them wasn’t enough for you?” I demand, and he presses my body up against his hard chest.
Gathering my string of black pearls in his hand, he shakes his head. Watching him, feeling his body heat crash into mine, knowing that the lips working into a smile had just tasted me, I feel drunk. And it doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the margarita. “And Elle?”
“Hmm?”
“When you’re home tonight, and I’m still fucking your head? I want to hear you come.”
“Phone sex?” I whisper, and he grins cockily, moving his head from side to side.
“I want to hear it whenever I’d like.”
“You want to hear me get off on your voicemail?” When he nods, I lick my lips, and his irises darken. “How do you know it’ll be real? How do you know I won’t be faking it?”
Dropping my pearls, he gives my ass a firm pump. It’s possessive, his touch, and it leaves me dizzy. “I’ve heard you. I’ve felt you. And when the time is right, I’ll fucking taste you again, too. I’ll know if it’s real. Now, run along, Ms. Courtney, before I decide to make it real right here and now and shock this entire city.”
But he has too much control for that. That much was obvious when he hadn’t tried to sleep with me the night I agreed to be his. And just now, when he had me pinned against the wall with his long fingers driving into my body. I’d felt him. Felt his erection. Felt his hammering heartbeat. Felt the lust radiating off him.
And now, for the second time, he’s sending me away.
“I’m guessing you’ll still call me when you’re ready?”
“As long as we don’t run into each other again. Apparently, D.C. is a very small town.”
Then, giving me one last look that undresses me, he drops his hand from my ass and tells me to enjoy my lunch.
Right before I open the door, he gives me a request that makes my throat go dry. “Keep the tights, Elle.”
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Blake says to me later that night while we talk during my bath. “You hooked up with some guy in a bathroom? Not just any bathroom, but at Monroe’s? While the queen of the Resting Bitch Face was in the place? You brave, amazing girl.”
For the second or third time since I foolishly told her the bare minimum of what had happened this afternoon, I repeat, “Yes. Can we talk about something else? Like Boston or your crazy grandma or anything?”
“Um, hell to the no.” She squeals into the phone, and I almost drop my phone in the bathtub. “Holy crap, Elle, I didn’t know you had it in you! So spill it, bitch, who is he? Why’ve you been hiding him from me? Where did you meet him?” She squeals again, but this time I have a firm, if not slightly soapy, grip on the phone. “God, I knew I should’ve called your ass sooner!”
I squeeze my eyes closed. “He’s nobody special.”
I’ve been telling myself that since lunch ended and I said goodbye to Zach and my mother, shaking violently when Graham’s dark eyes met mine over my brother’s shoulder as we hugged. He is nobody special, I thought, trying to force steel into my glare. He is a means to an end and nothing else.
Like he’d guessed precisely what I was thinking, he’d tilted his head so that his top-heavy “friend” and the other man couldn’t see what he was saying as he shoved his hand in his pocket and mouthed, “Mine.”
So, as soon as I was free of the restaurant and Graham’s predatory stare, I’d traded in my dress and ripped tights for workout clothes and had hit the gym a few blocks from my apartment. I was desperate to work him out of my system, even if that meant lifting heavy weights and letting a stair stepper beat the hell out of me.
Only, it hadn’t worked. As soon as Blake called—from a New York City area code—I’d answered the phone with, “Haven’t you had enough of me for today?”
Which is what got me here. Facing a million and one questions from my best friend.
“Nobody?” She snorts. “Okay, we both know you’re not the one to get finger-blasted in a public restroom by Nobody!”
I sit upright, sloshing water onto the black and white tile floor. “Gross, Blake. Really?”
She laughs. “Sorry, I’ve been spending way too much time with my cousin Colton. You know, the one that goes to NYU?”
I feel like I know the blond, gorgeous, rich frat boy who frequently updates his Instagram with photos and memes about his most recent conquests like the back of my hand, honestly. Blake had mentioned Colton on more than one occasion, usually trying to play matchmaker. Glancing down at the New York-based number on my phone, I groan. “Do not program my number into the phone of someone who uses the term finger-blasted.”
“Well, now I won’t. I’d never want to come between you and the Bathroom Bandit.”
“Blake,” I groan.
“All right, all right. Just promise me I’ll get the full scoop when I come home. Otherwise, I’ll spend the rest of my time here writhing in agony.”
Her theatre professor—the one who’d said her acting was a bland disservice to performance arts—was wrong. The girl can lay on the theatrics like no other.
I sigh. “We’ll talk when you get back, I promise.”
“Good, you’re not going to be stingy!” Then, she promises to erase my number from Colton’s phone before telling me she’ll be in touch before Christmas. Once I’m alone again, I sink down in the bubbles, hoping the hot bath will erase both my sore muscles, courtesy of the brutal workout, and the desperate ache that still lingers between my legs for Graham.
My phone rings.
Turning it on speaker, I answer with Blake’s name on my tongue, but the low, sophisticated chuckle is all male.
Think of the devil, and he shall call.
“Did you keep the stockings?” he demands.
Drying my hands on the towel hanging on the rack by the tub, I turn the volume louder. “Only because I haven’t had a chance to throw them away yet. And what happened to you not getting in touch with me until I’ve left you a voicemail screaming your name?”
“My plan changed. And if you throw those tights away, I’ll...”
He’s back to the trailing off, and because my body absolutely can’t handle it after today, I ask, “You’ll what?”
“I’ll turn you over my knee.”
“Spankings, Senator, really?” My stomach flutters. I’ve never been spanked in my life, but hearing Graham threaten to do it sends a shiver down my spine. I reach for my body wash. “Did you make it to New York?”
“Safe and sound. And you?”
“Bathing, which is why I have to go.”
He filters in a sharp breath through his teeth. “No. You don’t have to go, not after telling me something like that. Touch your clit.”
I freeze, dropping the bottle of soap in the water, splashing suds on my phone and in my face. “What?”
“You heard me. Touch your clit. Two fingers, slow circles. I want to hear you come again.”
“What if I don’t?”
“I’m looking for reasons to pound that little ass of yours, Elle. Do you really want this to be it?”
I drag my breath in so harshly, it blisters my lungs. Swallowing hard, I submerge one hand, clenching it a few centimeters from my center.
“Do it. Stop hovering your fingers over those creamy thighs and do it,” he encourages, and I gasp as soon as my index and middle fingers find the little nub he’d stroked and tweaked to a powerful orgasm just hours ago. “Now, is that so hard?”
“Are you?” I counter, and his laugh is raspy and subdued, vibrating through me, making the tempo of my fingers against my flesh pick up.
“Rock hard,” he admits. “Now, Elle, I want those two fingers in your cunt. No arguing, no bitching, just you fucking yourself.”
“Your phone could be tapped, you know.” But I push my hand farther down to tentatively edge the tips of my fingers inside my sex. I swallow my moan. “Somebody could be listening in on everything we say.”
“Yes, my dick. It’s listening, so keep going.”
“You’re an asshole,” I force out through my teeth. And then something hits me. “Are you ... Graham, are you—”
“If you’re stuttering because you want to ask whether or not I’m going to end this call by blowing my load in a towel, then the answer is yes.”
He’d called me to get off. For some reason, I’m insanely pleased by Graham, Senator Sexy-Ass—Mr. Sexual Control himself—pleasuring himself while he listens to my unsteady breathing. The panting that had resulted from my intense treadmill intervals has nothing on the sounds floating from my lips as I slide my fingers in and out my body.
More water ripples out of the tub, but I don’t care when I do a repeat of what Graham had done this afternoon, curving my fingers just slightly to hit a spot that makes me cry out.
“Fuck!” I half-sob.
“That’s what I want,” Graham breathes, “I want my perfect, sweet dove to say, want, and breathe fuck.”
“Fuck you!”
“And that too. Now shut up and touch your clit again.”
When I do, shocking myself at how swollen I am now, I let out a guttural noise and close my eyes. For a moment, it’s not my fingers working against my flesh, but Graham’s. Graham coaxing me toward the building orgasm. Graham’s thumb taking over, going faster, harder.
Graham’s full lips actually pressed against my ear, taunting me, releasing me, when he orders, “Back inside of you, Elle. Hurry.”
I shatter the second those two fingers glide past my opening, and I’m still shuddering and gasping when, moments later, he breaks. If I weren’t in my own little world right now, I’d have accidentally knocked the phone in the water at the growl that comes with his orgasm.
When he’s done, the voice that speaks to me is back in control. Confident. “Pack a bag.”
I open my eyes lazily, disappointed that I’m back in my tiny bathroom and alone. He’s wickedly turned my body into a trembling disaster, and I wish his hands were on me right now, finishing what he started. “What?”
“Pack a bag. That call I promised you? This is it. I’m flying you to New York tomorrow night.”