CHAPTER 25
EMILY
I didn’t know what I was trying to prove by working on lifts with him. I wanted to trust him, but his ability to pick me up without dropping me had nothing to do with how much of my heart I could give him. Being able to read each other in a dance didn’t mean we’d be able to follow along emotionally.
I needed to know it was possible. I needed to know if he’d respect what I did, if he’d help without calling it girlie. I needed to know if we could talk with our bodies. I wanted his hands on me.
And I had work to do.
He didn’t have a lick of talent. Not for dancing. But for predicting what I needed and giving 100 percent commitment to listening? He was a prodigy. He even kept his hands where they belonged.
This helped less than I’d hoped, because over the course of that first hour, his hands weren’t where I wanted them. He was so close, and his touch was so firm and masculine, that I had to make a concerted effort to keep my mind on the job.
“Do I have a future in dance?” he asked during the first break.
“Not really.” I tossed him a water bottle. He cracked it open and drank, squeezing the bottle with his huge hand. “Lifts are hard, but these are easy. Darlene’s not much of a dancer either.”
“Ouch.” He wiped his lip with his wrist, looking at me as if he were burrowing inside me. In that moment, the usually poised and in-control gentleman looked like an animal.
“She knows it.” I sipped my water and looked away from his feral gaze.
His phone beeped and he looked at it. His brow furrowed, and the spell was broken for a moment.
“Bathroom break,” I said. “Give me five minutes.”
He nodded without looking at me.
I slipped into the studio bathroom and breathed. He’d been touching me for an hour, and I’d been such a good girl. But once I was alone, the cumulative effect of his hands hit me all at once. My pelvis felt heavy, as if everything from my heart down had gone pure liquid and succumbed to gravity, landing with a splash at the lowest point. Between my legs. I leaned on the sink, off balance, throbbing where my legs met. When I pressed them together, the ache was satisfied and inflamed at the same time.
I heard him talking outside but couldn’t make out the words. He seemed agitated. Probably needed to be left alone for now. A minute. Two. I could stay in the bathroom the entire five-minute break, and he’d be grateful.
That was all I needed.
I got my hand under my waistband, around the crotch of my elastic shorts, and unceremoniously rubbed my soaked pussy. Jesus, he could get his dick in me so easily. It would slide in. Stretch me wide. Pull my clit with the force of it. And the feral man with the sweat on his T-shirt would fuck me. He’d be on top. He’d hold me down and drive into me like an animal. Push my hips against the bed so his thick root would rub my clit.
When his imaginary hand went into my imaginary mouth, I lost my mind.
I was barely through my orgasm when a crack yanked me back to reality. Another one came right after, and my bathroom door was yanked off the hinges.
Carter stood on the other side, back in his suit, panting.
My hand was down my pants.
“Can you knock?” I pulled out my hand.
“You yelled.”
I realized my right hand was slick with pussy. I hid it behind my back.
He laughed, but it wasn’t humor. It was relief and realization. It was threatening, in a way, because it threatened pleasure.
“You made yourself come so hard you yelled.” He came into the bathroom. I held my ground. “I made you come an hour ago, and you were quiet.”
“We were outside. But anyway, you should knock.”
Another step toward me. He was an inch away.
“What were you thinking about?”
I swallowed. Best to admit it, right?
“You.”
“How? What was I doing?” Finally, he touched me, drawing his hand from my right shoulder to the elbow. “Was I fucking you?”
“Yes.”
With gentle pressure he pulled my arm from behind my back.
“What position?”
“You were on top, but—” He raised my wet fingers to his lips, and I had to stop for a second to get control of another wave of arousal. “It wasn’t like missionary.”
“What was it like?”
He put one finger in his mouth.
“You were going very hard. So you held me down to keep me still so you could . . .” Two fingers went into his mouth, and he sucked them on the way out. It was so hot half my brain shut down. I had to stop talking.
“So I could? What?” His eyes closed when he kissed my palm.
“Pound me.” I smirked a little, then averted my gaze. I didn’t talk like that. “It was like you wanted to crawl inside me.”
“I do,” he said.
He lowered my hand and put it against his crotch. His cock stretched his pants, and when I pressed it, he sucked in air. I wanted it. My mouth watered for it. I’d never actually wanted to suck a man’s dick before. I’d done it out of obligation.
“You gave me two,” I said. “Technically.”
He looked at the ceiling as if asking God for the resolution to the conflict. I made it as difficult as possible by rubbing his erection through his pants.
“You’re too perfect,” he murmured.
“Is that a bad thing?”
He moved my hand away and kissed the palm again before he spoke into it.
“I promise to get my cock deep inside you. I promise to hold you down when you come. Soon. I can’t take much more of this.”
“We have half an hour. We can lock the door.”
Was I standing in the studio bathroom begging to suck his dick? What had come over me?
Past the busted door, in the studio, his phone beeped. He dropped my hand.
“You’re in for the night?”
“Why?”
“Fabian’s on the west side. If you want to go out, it’s going to take him more than an hour to get here.”
“Stay,” I said. Stupidly. Impulsively.
“I have somewhere to be.”
“Where?”
Before the word was out of my mouth, I realized he wasn’t going to tell me. He was going to get so deep inside me he had to hold me down to do it, and he wasn’t going to tell me where he was going with my erection?
Because yeah—that erection was mine.
“Just call one of us if you’re going anywhere. Carlos will make sure you’re accompanied.”
“But you’ll be somewhere?” I crossed my arms. Two minutes after an orgasm that was so strong I had to yell, and I was so sexually frustrated I couldn’t hide my aggravation.
“Fabian will pick you up in the morning. I’ll be in the studio tomorrow for Darlene. Then it’s Saturday. Can we go out Saturday? A full date, with dinner, then the screw of a lifetime.”
I should have been grateful that he was being such a gentleman. What woman didn’t dream of a man willing to forgo his own immediate gratification for the sake of chivalry and safety?
“Sure,” I said without agreeing to anything. Not in my mind. In my mind I was agreeing only to the date, not the spirit of the offer. I knew I was being dishonest, and I didn’t care.
“I’ll fix your door,” he said as he crossed the threshold back into the studio.
“Don’t worry about it.” I smiled, but in my mind I was recalling the location of my keys and calculating the distance between the front door and the side driveway. “I’m getting in the shower. No peeking.”
“Okay.” He moved from the bathroom backward, hands up, smiling with the mouth that had just sucked my pussy off my fingers. He couldn’t possibly kiss another woman with that mouth.
I reached for the shower knob, tinkling my fingers good-bye when water flowed.
He smiled and waved. Made the thumb-and-pinkie calling gesture.
I pulled my shirt up at the hem but slowly, so he could decide what to do. He left before he got an eyeful of tit.
When I heard the studio door shut, I pulled the strap back on, shut the shower, and ran to get my keys. Put on my clogs. Went outside. The door locked automatically behind me. I got in my car, pulling out before I’d finished buckling in, and tapped the wheel with impatience as the driveway gate slid open. My only hope was that he was going east on Olympic. If he was, he’d be stuck at the light long enough for me to catch him, and he wouldn’t be going past the driveway where he’d see my open gate.
The black Audi was at the corner of my small street, waiting for a light that heavily favored Olympic Boulevard. If he wanted to make a right, he could have already done it. He wouldn’t see me. I’d be stuck at a light for a second, but the light just east was poorly synchronized. I could catch up.
It worked out perfectly. His light went green. I pulled out in the camouflage of stopped cars. I caught up with him in three blocks. In rush hour, my Volvo looked like every other Volvo on the road.
“That’s right, fucker. I got you. You can’t keep secrets from me.”
Left on Crenshaw. Right on Wilshire. Left on Lorraine.
Shit shit shit. He was stopping. In this neighborhood? The mayor’s mansion was three blocks away. What were they paying the guy?
I ducked low and passed as he pulled up to a house that already had a crossover SUV in it. I parked at the end of the block.
Another car in the drive meant another adult in the house, and a crossover meant one thing and one thing only. Kids.
That fucking fucker.
For all his talk of security, his house didn’t have a gate or a hedge in front. None of the houses did. It was getting dark, and I was still in my tight black shorts and clogs.
I scrolled through my phone. I needed someone to tell me I was being crazy. I couldn’t call Darlene. She was probably busy. She was always busy. Simon should just be getting out of rehearsals. I could call him and tell him I figured out the steps to “Make Him Yours.” Then I could blithely mention I was stalking my bodyguard.
Yeah.
No.
I should go home. I should put in a movie and just trust him. I should be a grown-up and ask him the way I asked Vince to lay off and expected him to just do it. Because being a grown-up had worked so well. Now I was the one living in a fortress because people were liars and couldn’t be trusted.
Which reminded me. I was out of the house. On the street. By myself. At night.
To hell with it. I just wanted to know. I had a right to know. I didn’t want to disturb or disrupt him. I just wanted to be sure I wasn’t getting involved with a lying, cheating douchebag.
I walked down the block. The streetlights were old school, casting a warm, pleasant glow onto the tops of the old-growth trees. My clogs crunched against dropped leaves and pods. The houses I passed were set back. Wide porches. Big front windows. I felt perfectly comfortable and safe until I got to his house.
What are you doing?
“Just looking,” I said to myself, believing it. I was just going to look, then I was going to head home and watch a movie.
There were high gates at the driveway. I couldn’t get to the back of the house. I intended to look into the one side window accessible from the street. I’d have to be on the neighbor’s property, and I didn’t want to get caught, so I bent over and hustled to the house.
He has to have a security system.
I approached, waiting for an alarm to go off.
Nothing. No motion-sensor lights.
Maybe he didn’t have it on when he was home.
Maybe it’s not his house.
The side window looked lower from the street. When I got there, it was over my head.
Damn.
Quickly and with as much stealth as I’d ever done anything, I went around the front and up the steps to the porch. There were two mountain bikes against the brick rail. One was grown-up size; the other had wheels built for a kid. A boy, if I was guessing correctly. A third racing bike was pink. Grown-up size.
A deep rage built inside me. It came from the same place as the sexual arousal. It was base and instinctual. If it turned out he was a lying, cheating philanderer, none of it would matter anyway.
Crouching by the front window, I looked through.
No one. Lights on but not a person in sight.
There was a mantelpiece, and his life was on it.
Carter and a woman. He held her shoulders and kissed her forehead. Carter and a little boy. Carter and the woman and the boy. Boy and woman. Just boy.
His house.
His family.
Son of a fucking bitch.
A quick squeal and a bright light cut the air at the same time. The light turned blue-red-blue, and the sound of engines rose with it.
“Don’t move!” More lights right on me. “Hands up! LAPD!”