Madison

I should tell him right away, but I can't. I need this one last dance just for me. The feel of him in my arms. The way he steers me so gracefully around the floor. Not every rock singer studies dance— some of them think it undermines their credibility— but I've never been in any doubt Noah Hammond spends a lot of time working out his moves.

So smooth. So perfect.

I want to live in this dream as long as I can. Once he knows I'm pregnant, once he gets it into his head that I somehow did this deliberately to trap him, it's over. I need this magic moment just for myself.

“What is this place?” We're dancing cheek to cheek so that his voice tickles into my ear. For a minute his words don't register. Sexy Noah. Silly Noah. So distracting the way his firm crotch grinds into my belly during the slow dance...

“I mean, even a billionaire doesn't build a cathedral and a wedding rehearsal hall out in the middle of nowhere for just one wedding. This complex has been here for a while.”

Really? He's going to ask about the property?

Now?

I stop and step back and look him dead in the eye.

“Hey, it's a logical question,” he says.

It is, actually, so I decide to forgive him. “According to Brecka, this place was originally built in the 1950s. Lane bought it and repurposed it for the twenty-first century. The cathedral was never a real cathedral. The complex was built to conceal an entire underground city. A sort of bomb shelter. Lane has some extra millions floating around, and apparently he decided to renovate it for the wedding, as a curiosity, and so on. Eventually, it's going to be open to the public as a high-end spa, but there's still some work being done on the lower levels.”

“Crazy kind of spa,” he says. “So the theme is billionaire's post-apocalyptic bunker.”

“Actually, the theme is sort of a simulated space theme. Because the underground portion is supposed to simulate the way life will be when people are living in fancy spaceships. It's a space age theme.”

“OK.” He shakes his head. “I guess everybody needs a hobby.”

We've stopped pretending to dance, but now I have an excuse to get him away from the crowd. “I know the code if you'd like me to show you around.”

Of course, he does. And so we slip away, the wedding music fading, as I lead him toward the secret door Brecka showed us girls in Club Sugar Daddy after making us swear on a stack of Bibles to never, ever tell anybody who would leak gossip about the upcoming hotel to the press. Noah won't be leaking crap about Lane Darnelle. He's got bigger things on his plate.

Two guards break away to follow, and Noah feels obligated to stare them down. “Come on, guys. We're all friends here.”

“Sorry, sir.” Which means the two guards are going to keep following us.

“It's OK.” I slip my hand into Noah's elbow. “You're a big rich rock star. You're used to having a shadow.”

He kisses the side of my mouth, a tender gesture. “Yeah. It's just... this life we lead. You're a private person. I gave up being a private person when I was fourteen, and I think I didn't know what I gave up. Until now.”

Until now? Does he mean... until he met me? The way he looks into my eyes...

I shiver.

It seems so real. So direct and true. Can he possibly mean it?

The first level, the lobby level, is a jeweled box complete with gold leaf on the wall. There's no whiff of 1950s era bomb shelter here. It's a snooty hotel down to the special fragrance Lane has already started having wafted into the ventilation system.

“There aren't a ton of rooms.” I inspect the selection of old-fashioned metal keys hanging from a row of hooks behind the desk. “But I know for a fact at least a few of them are already fully furnished. Care to check it out? Maybe the presidential suite?” Plucking a golden key, I hold it high until it catches the rainbow light from the hundred-crystal chandelier overhead.

“The President's nuclear bunker isn't this well-appointed,” he says. “I picture grimdark secret service guys gunning down vampires while wearing suit and tie. White shirts. Maybe light blue. Pink shirts strictly verboten. All the suits are dark navy.”

“The interior walls are 1960s era wall-to-ceiling gray steel boxes full of computers. Green text on black screens. ‘Would you like to play a game?’”

“Then everything goes dark, and it's all stale crackers on tuna fish.”

“Meanwhile, Lane and Brecka are doing laps in the underground infinity pool.”

“Is there an infinity pool?”

“So she says.”

I have a vague idea of where we're going, and so I lead, although it probably isn't obvious that I lead, because Noah is at my side, matching me step for step. He can feel in the way I move where we're going almost before I do move— a dancer's sensitivity. It probably looks to our shadows like he knows exactly where we're going.

“You sound sad,” I say. “Are you sorry?”

“I would do it all over again. For my music, to get it heard...” His voice trails off. “It's one thing for me to make that sacrifice and another thing for me to ask somebody else to make that sacrifice.”

It would be no sacrifice at all for Barbie Strange, who is already a far bigger star than Noah. Her privacy was sacrificed a long, long time ago.

Is it me he's thinking of asking? Can it be?

He came back for you. He didn't have to do that. Do you really think he comes back for every easy hookup? He could have a new girl every night.

The shadows drop further and further back. They know perfectly well we represent no danger to Lane Darnelle's precious bunker, and they can tell it's a moment they don't need to listen in on. Tactful shadows, at least.

A glass door allows a peep into a steamy conservatory filled with flowering orchids of every color. Of course, they can't all be in bloom at once, but they've been arranged to make it seem that way. “Through here,” I say, and Noah lifts his right hand to push the door open.

It retracts into the walls before he can touch.

“Nice,” I say.

Noah looks up and spots one of the many, many cameras. “Isn't that enough?” he asks the guards, who have come up too close again. “Isn't someone watching?”

“Someone's watching everything, sir, but we're still required to be at close at hand.”

“Worse than prison.” Noah's a little flustered, the front of his pants a little too tight. I'm getting pretty overworked myself, but at least I don't show it.

“Come on.” I lead him through the banks of orchids. Most of them have only a faint scent because they're all about the showy colors and the appeal to the visual. Their size suggests their jungle origins— they're pollinated not by bees or even moths but by bats and hummingbirds.

No bats in a Lane Darnelle mountain bunker, but I am not particularly surprised when a pair of long-beaked, long-tailed birds dart past, one spitting angry curses at the other.

“How many millions of dollars are in this room alone?” Noah asks.

“Only Lane Darnelle knows that,” I say.

Another glass door glides open to spit us into the next room which is, indeed, a different kind of tropical garden complete with the infinity pool in question. Beyond the pool, we can see the changing stations.

Noah's eyes twinkle, and my eyes twinkle back.

“The lady and I are going to enjoy a swim if you boys have no objection,” he says to our shadows.

“That's fine, sir. You'll find a selection of clean swimwear inside the changing room.”

If they notice that Noah accompanies me into the one with the silhouette of a person in a skirt on the door, they have no comment.

“Fuck.” He takes a deep breath as we walk in. “Alone at last.”

“Yeah.”

A light comes on automatically as we walk in. There is, in fact, a rack of robes and swimsuits. A stack of towels. A selection of flip-flops. There is a huge urn of fresh flowers in one corner which must have been set out this morning, because they're at the peak of bloom. Not orchids but not something I can recognize. Something exotic with a pineapple scent. Beachy.

“Oh fuck.” He's got his hands all over me. “I thought we'd never lose those guys.”

“They're right outside, though.”

“Mmmm. We'll have to be very quiet.”

“That could be very difficult.”

“I'll say.” He's dancing with me again until I'm backed right up against the nearest wall. “Dear God, Madison, how do you get off looking so fucking delicious? I want to eat you up. Just gobble you up.”

How I've missed him. How I've missed this.

His hands around back to undo my zipper. The bodice of my dress flops forward to expose the skimpy lace of a pink bra that was fitted two weeks ago and now, somehow, is a little too small. My creamy cups are overflowing, and he brushes his thumbs across my nipples to feel the spikes through the flimsy fabric. One-handed, he pops the clasp in back, and then my bra has flopped forward too.

“So beautiful. So round and perfect.”

His tongue sweeps around and around my aureoles, focusing on all the little surrounding pinpoints before he presses directly on my nipple. His lips suck to pull one nip out long and then the other. “I forgot how perfect.” His breath tickles my cleavage. “I forgot how curvy.”

“Mmmm.” My boobs are more sensitive now, and suddenly I tremble up against the wall. Am I giving myself too easily? Is my trembling a confession of weakness?

He doesn't seem to notice anything wrong. If he's aching as much as I am, he must be desperate to get to the main event. Yet somehow he has the self-control to take his time. “I bet I can make you come like this.”

“You can't. Nobody can. I've never heard of boob Os.”

He chuckles, and his chuckle is raw heat penetrating my curvy globes. “I can, and you can. Boob Os are a thing, my sweet boob virgin. Let me introduce you to a whole new world of pleasure.”

How did I get to be eighteen and pregnant and not know that a girl can reach climax in her titties?

“They have to be natural,” Noah's saying. “I can't make implants climax. But you're my sweet nature girl. All real. So real.”

“Yesssss.” My toes are curling. I don't even know what my titties are doing. I would have said my nips were rock-hard already. Now? Every pinpoint on my aureole is poking out a mile. I'm on fire.

While he sucks and licks on one boob, he's simultaneously squeezing and caressing the other with his rough guitarist's fingers. The contrast of sugar-sweet mouth and workmanlike hands... it's doing crazy things to my body and soul. He's all man, and I can't forget it.

“Mmmm.” He's got too much boob in his mouth to keep talking, but he has a way of humming low in his throat that's doing crazy things to me.

I look down at his head bouncing so close to me, the hair parting over his shoulders that way it does to show his nape. I smell the pineapple scent of the flowers mixed with the faint musk of some men's cologne he likes. I feel...

Dear fuck. What I feel.

There are no words.

Boob Os are definitely a thing.

Screaming when I come in my boobs is definitely a thing.

The guards outside are well-trained. They know how to distinguish a sex scream from a “somebody needs help, stat!” scream. I know this because, dear fuck, I really am screaming and there's no way to hold it back. I'm clutching at his shoulder and neck to hold him there while I wobble and jiggle my way through a convulsive release the likes of which I've never experienced.

Eventually, I slide down and down the wall, and my hands slide down too, and I'm needing to get his pants open so damn bad.