Tate
That look was far too fucking attitude-filled for my liking. And that smirk on her pink lips. Damn.
I leave my guitar leaning against my chair and get up, following her out the door. Having dinner alone my ass—there ain’t a chance in hell she’s gonna do that. I’m going to follow her ass through this hotel and up to her room because I want to. Besides, with the others not around, it’s the perfect chance to pull some of that past of hers out of her, to make her talk.
I wanna hear her talk.
You don’t run from one night of abuse. That much is painstakingly clear.
“Hey, sugar,” I drawl, leaning on the receptionist’s desk.
“Mr. Burke.” She glances up through her hair.
“C’mon, now, I’ve told you to call me Tate . . .” My eyes flick to her badge. “Stacey.”
She blushes. “How can I help you, Tate?”
“I can’t seem to get hold of my assistant on the phone, and she’s sick. I know she’s in her room. I’m real worried about her. What are the chances of you givin’ me her room key so I can check on her?”
“Oh—I don’t . . . I don’t think I can, sir, I’m sorry. It’s against policy.”
“Aw, Stace.” I lean forward fully and her eyes flick to where my arms are straining against my T-shirt. “Her room is booked in my name. Who’s gonna know, huh? It can be our little secret.” I wink.
Stacey’s eyes flick to her colleague and back to me. “I tell you what. Buy me a drink tomorrow after work and I’ll give you the key.”
Aw, fucknuts. “You drive a hard bargain, sugar, but I’ll agree. It can’t be too bad takin’ a girl such as yourself for a drink.” I give her my most charming smile and hold out my hand. “Room 218.”
Stacey gets up and programs a new key in less than a minute. She puts it in my hand, smiles, and lets her touch linger for a minute too long. I widen my smile and pull the key from her grip before heading to the elevator and dropping the grin.
Fucking hell. Ella better appreciate the effort I’m putting in for this room-service chat.
I exit the elevator and walk down the hall to her room. The key card slips into the door easily, and I knock twice, then push the door open.
“Tate! What the hell!” Ella shrieks, holding a fluffy white towel firmly around her body. Her dark hair is wet and falling about her shoulders, almost black against her porcelain skin.
“Well, damn.” My eyes trawl across her wet body of their own accord. From her long, curled eyelashes fluttering in shock to the droplets of water trailing down between her breasts to the way that towel barely skims the tops of her thighs. “Hello to you, too.”
“What are you doing here?” she squeaks, stepping back into her bedroom.
“Couldn’t stand the thought of a beautiful girl like you eatin’ dinner alone,” I say to her half-towel-covered tits.
“Me or my girls?”
“All of you, darlin’. Your ass and pussy, too.” And food isn’t the only thing I’d like to eat around her . . . or off of her . . . or on her. . . .
“You are so crude!” She shuts her bedroom door. The loud sound is followed by the click of a lock.
“Aw, fuck. There goes plan B.”
“Oh my God!” she cries through the door, banging in the room. “You’re unreal!”
I grin and drop onto her sofa. Fuck me—no girl should ever be seen in a tiny white towel like that. Especially not if that girl is Ella Dawson and I’m the guy seeing her.
My dick is throbbing in my pants, steadily growing harder with every passing second. So easy. It would have been so motherfucking easy to push her against a wall and rip away that pathetic excuse for a towel and show her exactly why she should be fully clothed around me at all times.
Fuck—no, she shouldn’t. She should be stark fucking naked and clean-shaven around me. Making coffee, ordering pizza, watching a movie. . . . This chick should not own a single fucking item of clothing.
Except panties. Panties are A-OK.
I fucking love panties.
I adjust my jeans over my rock-hard cock. Sweet fucking Jesus. If I’d have known she was practically naked I would have waited five minutes and saved myself the torture of seeing and not touching. But, shit, man. That was a quick-ass shower. I know for a fact Sofie takes at least fifteen minutes. Ella wasn’t even in there five. Or maybe she was—Stacey the Receptionist’s seduction attempt swallowed up several minutes of my time.
“What on earth are you doing here, Tate?”
I focus my attention from my boner to Ella. At least I try to. They’re pretty much fucking synonymous. “I already told you, Els. You can’t have dinner alone, so here I am, ready to wine and dine you.”
She licks her lips and fails to hide her smile. “Really? You’re going to wine and dine the assistant you’ve known for nine days?”
“Darlin’, I usually fuck girls without finding out their names after ten minutes in their presence.” I smirk. “You should count yourself lucky.”
“Oh, I do. As lucky as the kid that didn’t win the goldfish at the country fair when all his friends did.” She gives me a pointed look over the top of the room-service menu. “So what is this? A business meeting? A casual dinner? A lame and misguided attempt at a date?”
I choke on nothing at that last question. “A casual dinner. I don’t do dates, darlin’.”
Ella sits next to me and throws a menu onto my lap. “One would assume you’re not leaving, so there you go.”
“One would be correct,” I put on my best New York accent.
Ella looks over at me, her mouth tugging into a smile, her eyes sparkling. “Really? That’s the best you have? You’re way too country to nail it.”
“What?” I sit up straight. “I don’t believe you.”
“You are!”
“Do a Southern accent then, Ms. You Can’t Nail It. I dare ya.”
Ella rolls her eyes, sets her menu on her lap, and looks at me. “For real?”
“For fuckin’ real!”
“Fine!” She looks away a second then back to me. “Well bless your heart, sugar.”
I blink at her. What. The. Fuck. “What the fuck was that?”
“A Southern accent?”
“You sound like Sofie. How the fuck?”
“You seem to have forgotten I’ve spent a whole bunch of time with you all in the last nine days, mostly Sofie, and I also went to school with a few Southerners.” Ella shrugs, lifting her menu again.
“Damn. You’re hot as hell, sort my legal shit, love my music, and you can pull off a Southern accent? Marry me, Els.”
She throws her head back and laughs. “Tate Burke, the day you find a girl stupid enough to marry you, I’ll get your name tattooed on my butt cheek.”
I grin. “Better start lookin’ then, eh?”
“You better. It’s gonna take a while.” She giggles into her menu. “Okay. I know what I’m eating. What are you having?”
“I’m orderin’.”
“Not for me you’re not.”
“I never said that. I just said I’m orderin’. It’s polite and shit.”
“The add-on at the end of that sentence really rudened it up.”
“Rudened? What the fuck is that?”
“I made it up, all right? Lay off.”
I laugh and lean over her for the phone. I dial the code for room service, stutter out my order between chuckles, and then Ella says hers into the receiver. I order one bottle of Moscato for her and a few beers for me, to be brought up immediately, on ice.
“Moscato, hmm?” She looks at me questioningly.
“S’all you drink, darlin’.”
“I’m surprised you noticed.”
“Me, too.”
A few minutes later, there’s a knock at the door and I get up to answer it. A small cart is rolled in with our drinks, and the guy pops the cork on her wine and uncaps me a bottle of Budweiser. I thank him and take the glass and bottle.
Ella takes the glass from me with a contemplative expression. I smile as her fingers brush mine and drop down unceremoniously on the couch next to her. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes but she doesn’t say a word.
Our eyes meet several times over the next few minutes. I’m checking to see if she’s looking at me, and I’d bet she’s doing the exact same fucking thing. It’s dumb, because I’m always looking at her. Even if she is sans makeup, with wet, unruly hair.
The girl is unreal.
“Would you like me to dry my hair? You’re looking at me all confused,” Ella mumbles into her glass.
“That’s because I ain’t used to bein’ attracted to natural girls. Yet I find myself incredibly fuckin’ attracted to you.”
“Must be my stellar personality.”
“Or them killer tits.”
Her gaze snaps to mine. “God, Tate!”
“Now there’s a phrase I’m used to hearin’.”
“Oh my God!”
“That, too.”
“I’m just going to stop talking.”
“No, Els. Don’t. Your voice is pretty.”
She slaps my bicep with the back of her fingers. “My voice is pretty? For real, Casanova? That the best you got?”
I tug on a lock of her hair. “I’m tryin’ to be nice here, which is, again, somethin’ most chicks don’t get. Give me a chance, all right?”
“But if I did that, I’d be one of those dumb chicks you associate with.”
“True story that, darlin’. Although I ain’t doin’ that for now. I’m being good. Except for that chick at reception.” I brush my fingers down Ella’s jaw. “I had to agree to buy her a drink before she’d give me your room card.”
“Hmm,” she hums. “I wondered how you swindled that one.”
“I’m a regular Romeo.”
“Seems it. Are you sure this dinner isn’t getting in the way of meeting Ms. Receptionist?”
“Nah, I don’t have to grace her with my awesome presence until tomorrow evening.”
“What time?”
“She didn’t say.”
“Shame. You’re busy all evening, practicing, per your manager’s orders.” Ella smiles and sips her wine. “Part of his plan to keep you on the straight and narrow and away from kissing random girls.”
“What if I kiss you? Does that count?”
“As what?”
“A random girl.” I set my beer on the table in front of us and scoot along toward her.
Her chest heaves, and she swallows, holding her wine in front of her body. “I’m not a random girl.”
“So you don’t count,” I breathe, taking her glass from her and putting it on the table. “Right?”
“Um. I do count. I’m kind of random. And I’m a girl. So.”
“Ella?”
“What?”
I press my chest against hers and curl my fingers around the back of her neck. “Shut up.”
She inhales as I close the distance between our mouths. The taste of her wine is strong on her lips, and I run my tongue across her bottom lip, reveling in the silky sweetness of it. Despite her protests, she arches her body into me, wrapping her hand around the back of my neck.
Sweet fuck, she’s everything that’s bad and good. She’s temptation and resistance. Shit, she’s sin. She’s dark and light, a contradiction, a mystery to unravel. She’s every fucking thing I didn’t know existed.
She’s everything I never wanted to know existed.
I run my fingers through her half-damp hair to the ends, and hers go into the curls at the nape of my neck, holding me tightly to her. It’s nothing like I expect.
By rights, she should push me away, too afraid to blink at me. But every sweep of her lips, every kiss, every grasp at me tells me she trusts me. It could be smart or it could be dumb.
But I’ll never hurt her. Never. Fucking. Ever. Not the way she’s been hurt in the past. The thought of marring her beautifully white skin makes me fucking sick to my stomach. She’s not a goddamn punching bag—she’s a woman, formed and curved and gorgeous. More than that, Ella Dawson is the woman you respect, because she respects herself.
Knock, knock.
What is it with people knocking when I’m kissing her?
“Food,” I whisper against her soft mouth.
“Get off me,” she murmurs, but I can feel her smile against me.
I groan into her, but she shoves at me, and I get up and answer the door. Another server wheels a cart into the room, this time with two plates topped with those silver dome things. She uncovers each plate, my steak and Ella’s chili nachos. I thank the girl, shove a twenty into her hand, then grab Ella’s plate.
Damn, those nachos smell good.
I put her plate on the coffee table in front of her. Then I grab a nacho, dip it into the chili topping, and shove it into my mouth. She gasps as I back toward the cart and get my steak. It’s decorated with fries and salad, but hell, I shoulda gone for what she did.
Ella grabs a cheese-coated nacho from the side and dives it into the center of her plate. With a huge mound of ground beef on the chip, she forces it into her mouth quite spectacularly. Holy fuck, this girl can open her mouth wide.
And I mean. Wi. Hi. Hiiiiiide.
“See something you like?” she questions, doing it again.
“Darlin’, I see a lot of things I like.”
She rolls her eyes and eats another chip. “Of course you do. You’re drooling, Tate.”
“Els, you’re eating them like you’ve never had them before.”
She pauses, a chili-coated chip halfway to her mouth. Her eyes drop to it, and I stare at her, her silence anything but accidental. Or maybe it is—who fucking knows?
“I wasn’t allowed them,” she says in a quiet voice. “Only when I got to have a slumber party with the girls, which was way too infrequent.” She swallows, setting the chip down. “It didn’t matter if we had company or not. I had to eat with cutlery, because fingers were for uncivilized people.”
I can’t look away from her. Her words are no more than a whisper, but they cut right fucking through me. She couldn’t eat what she wanted? What the fuck?
“Pizza?” I ask softly.
“Had to be cut with a knife and fork,” she answers, trailing a nacho around in the chili. “I’m sure my friends knew something was up, because if we ever had it alone, I would eat it normally. But Matthew made sure I ate in a ‘sophisticated’ manner.”
Matthew. His name leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
“That was it. Perfection. Sophistication. There was no other option. If I tried something else . . .” her voice trails off, and she nibbles at the end of the chip.
“How long?”
Ella’s eyes move to mine but they leave just as quickly.
“How. Long?”
She shakes her head.
Rage swirls in my stomach, building and tightening and coiling. It spreads through me with every second of her silence, her denial, her protection of him.
“How fucking long was that motherfucker putting his hands on you, Els?”
“Too long,” she whispers, wiping her hands on a napkin.
“How fucking long?” My voice is harsher than I want, the growl deeper.
“Two years.”
That rage—it explodes. It consumes me. Drowns me. How the fuck could anyone hurt her? This sweet-as-fuck girl? How could anyone, for a single motherfucking second, think it’s okay to hurt her? To bruise her, to maim her, to put a blemish on her?
How the fuck is that right in any place in this world?
I envelope her body in my arms. Hold her—that’s what my body screams. Hold her so tightly she realizes the safety you’re offering her is stronger than the fear that’s threading through her veins.
“How?” I ask, my voice hoarse. “How did you do it?”
“I was afraid,” Ella whispers. Her fingers dig into my back tentatively, moving up and down, as if searching for their perfect landing spot. “I had nowhere to go, and to me, no real reason to go. I always thought he’d change. He promised it. Every time. He’d hurt me, then he’d hold me and promise he wouldn’t do it again. I believed him.”
I slide my hand up her back and into her hair. “What made you go, finally?”
“We were about to get married. My mom sent me a message reminding me that I was getting married in exactly four weeks, and it was scary.” She swallows. “I was getting dressed, and there was this bruise on my stomach from the day before, and I knew . . . I just knew. We’d been together for years, and if he was still hitting me weeks before our wedding, chances were, he’d be hitting me for weeks after, too. And I didn’t want to be that girl. Before him, I never feared more than spiders and rats, things that seem so trivial now. So I knew, no matter what, I was going to run. Anywhere. I applied for jobs everywhere, whenever I could get out of the house. Hell, I did my interview with Sofie over the phone at a nail salon in Brooklyn. Then you gave me this job. I took it and I ran without looking back.” Her fingers dig into my skin almost painfully, her voice a whisper. “I’m not a punching bag, Tate. I won’t be that. I’m more than that.”
Her words, they shake. Her voice, it’s weak. Like she needs to convince herself of it even as she says the words.
“Ella . . . Els . . . Shit.” I fold her into my body entirely, so her cheek is against my chest and her nose is against my shoulder. “You are, darlin’. You’re so much fuckin’ more than that. You’re everythin’ that isn’t that.”
“But I’m scared. I say I’m not, but I am. A little.”
I slide my hands to her face and look at her. Her dark hair sweeping across her forehead. Her dark eyes boring into mine, begging, pleading, sassing, confusing. And I brush my thumbs across her cheeks, right beneath her eyes, my thumbs swallowing up any type of wetness there.
“Don’t be afraid.” I cup Ella’s cheeks and bring her forehead close to mine. “As long as I’m near you, don’t be afraid, darlin’.”
“It’s not your job.” Her voice is so quiet it isn’t even a whisper.
“No. This kinda protection ain’t my job. It’s my will.” I touch my lips to hers. “If he ever gets past our boys, promise me you’ll call me, and you’ll keep trying until I answer and get to you.”
Ella pulls her knees to her chest. “I don’t want to think of that.”
“Neither do I. I don’t want to think about a situation where he can touch you.” I hold her tighter. Her breath against my skin, her fingers trailing my stomach, her eyes set on mine. “If he comes within ten feet of you, darlin’, you tell me. Els, you tell me, because I’ll snap his neck. You understand?”
“I’m scared.”
She’s trembling in my hold. Trembling. Quivering. Shaking. Whatever you call it.
“Of him,” I whisper into her ear. “Don’t fear me, baby. I’ll never be anythin’ but gentle toward you. Fear what I’ll do to him if he tries to come near you.”
She nods, her fingers grasping my shirt.
“I’ll never hurt you.”
Her trembling body is in my arms, pressed against me, held against me. Her hands are on me, her lips quivering, too.
“I know,” she breathes. The words are so fucking quiet I barely hear.
“Ever. Not the way he did. Trust me, darlin’. Believe me.”
“I do.” She takes a deep breath then sits up. Her hands fall away from me and I loosen my grip on her body when she tilts her head back to look at me. “Do you have multiple personalities?”
“What do you mean?” My lips quirk.
“One minute you’re storming in here being all rude, then the next you’re being sexy, then you’re being sweet.”
“Did you just call me sexy?”
“What? No. I said ‘being sexy,’ not ‘you are sexy.’ ”
“You said ‘you’re being sexy.’ ” I grin. “So you think I’m sexy?”
She knocks my arms away from her and pulls her plate from the table and onto her lap. “It doesn’t matter if I think you’re sexy. You think you’re sexy.”
“I am sexy. I just want to know if you agree.”
“And we’re on another personality—the stubborn-toddler one.”
I grab one of her nachos. “You’re naming my moods?”
“You don’t have mood swings, Tate. You really do have total personality flips. It makes no sense.”
“You want me to be an asshole all the time?”
“I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with any version of you.”
“You’re comfortable when I’m kissing you.” I wink and grab another chip.
“Will you stop eating my food?” She pushes my hand away with a sharp slap to my fingers, then freezes.
I stare at her. Her hand is poised in midair, her gaze focused on it like she can’t believe she just did that.
I flick my fingers against hers and grab another chip. “No. They’re good.”
Slowly, she draws her eyes upward. Her dark gaze, full of uncertainty, lingers on mine for a moment. Then—hell—then she drops her hand and smiles. “Then order another plate of them.”
“Pass the phone.”
“I’m not your slave, I’m your assistant.”
“I know.” I grin. “So you should be orderin’ them for me, darlin’.”
She purses her lips and reaches behind her for the phone. Dialing the number, she pulls it to her ear and says, “Can I get another plate of chili nachos to room 218? Extra-large size?” Pause. “That’s great. Thanks.”
“Extra-large size?” I question, grabbing one of hers.
“Yes. All your talking is making me hungry, and since you’ve already eaten half of mine and don’t intend to stop, I thought it was wise.”
“You’re a smart girl, Els.”
“The fact I’m eating dinner with you puts that up for debate,” she mutters, grabbing her wineglass and pushing her plate onto my lap.
“Hey, thanks.” I lean back and coat a chip in salsa.
She shoots her eyes toward me over the rim of her glass, twists her lips to the side, then drinks. “Idiot.”