Chapter Eighteen
We feast on cheeses and fruit, not quite acknowledging the buildings that peak around us like mountains. She trusted me enough to stay on the roof, and for now that will be enough.
The sun sets in a glory of golden blue while she sips champagne, her gaze studiously on my own. I fill my own glass and take a drink, because I need the courage more than her. She’s already the bravest woman I know. I’m the one wondering how I care about her so much after so little time. Wondering what I’ll do when she’s done with me.
I may have decided not to use her for revenge, tonight, but that does not mean I’ll ask no questions. In fact I’m brimming with questions. Running over with them. I set the glass down carefully, wondering how much to ask. Needing to know the answers.
“Will you tell me now why you wanted to lose your virginity in this way? I know there’s more you aren’t telling me. More than loneliness.” I suspected that from the very first night, a secret motivation that drives her, something close to desperation. It would have stopped a moral man from touching her.
Unfortunately for her I gave up any semblance of morality long ago.
She sighs, looking out at the city. Has she ever seen it without a panel of glass blocking it? A cool wind touches my skin. It gives her hair a sense of ceaseless motion, as if it’s alive. “There is a reason. I mean, I was curious. I’ve always been curious, but when I turned twenty…”
At her pause I force myself to stay silent. This is her story; I have to let her tell it. But I do take her hand in mine, because that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? My body and the comfort it can bring. It’s all I have to offer.
Her hand squeezes back. “Someone proposed to me.”
Shock tightens my stomach, though I don’t know why I should be surprised. She’s a beautiful, smart, extremely desirable young woman. Even trapped in her castle, she has suitors. There’s a churning inside me, a strange mixture of jealousy and loss. She was never mine.
“What was your answer?” I’m pleased that my tone comes out light.
“I said I’d think about it, but I don’t want to marry him.”
Worry furrows her expression, and I feel myself grow hot from anger. “Are you afraid to tell him no?”
If there is someone threatening her, I have no problem standing up to this faceless, nameless asshole. I may live a life of ease and luxury these days, in high-rise hotels and satin sheets, but I was a street mongrel once. I fought and scraped and clawed my way through Tangier’s back alleys. A rich frat boy in Tanglewood will not stand a chance.
She looks away with a slight shake of her head, not quite agreeing but not refuting it either. “This is going to sound weird, but I had this feeling that he only wanted me because…”
The final piece falls into place, making acid rise in my throat. “Because you’re a virgin.”
“I mean, he didn’t say that, but it felt like that was part of the reason. There’s never been anything romantic between us. He’s been with lots of women in the papers. So why would he propose to me unless there was something different about me.”
There are many different things about Beatrix Cartwright, and they have nothing to do with the hymen that I took from her. But I do not point that out. If she doubts the motives of this man, then he is not worthy of her. “Have you told him that you are no longer a virgin?”
If he wanted her innocence, he might become angry when she tells him.
She seems to sense my concern. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”
“Then why not simply tell him no?”
“Our relationship is… complicated. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.”
A sudden suspicion makes my blood pressure spike. “This man who proposed. Is he perhaps the same person who became your guardian when you were a child?”
She looks stricken. “How do you know about that?”
I force myself not to growl in frustration. “Someone must have done so. You were underage.”
“Yes, he was my dad’s business partner. And he became my guardian.”
“And he wants to marry you?” This time I do not manage to sound light or calm. I’m furious.
“It’s not like we were ever close. He didn’t become a parent to me. He was more like… the money person. He was the custodian of my trust. And he made sure I had everything I needed.”
If he had really done that, Bea would be able to leave this hotel. “He must be older than you.”
A miserable shrug. “I suppose. That’s not the reason I don’t want to marry him, though. I just don’t love him, you know? Not even as a guardian, really. And definitely not as a husband.”
It’s almost impossible to control my breathing. I’m like a bull, snorting and pawing at the ground. The image of anyone hurting Bea, coercing her, making her feel small—the red cape. “You don’t need a reason to tell him no.”
“I know that I can say no. That I should say no, but I think… once he finds out I’m not a virgin anymore, he’ll lose interest. And that will be easier. That’s why I called the service that first night. Why I wanted sex without the pleasure.”
My stomach drops. “Who owns the penthouse suite, Bea?”
“He owns the hotel.”
“So you have to marry him or he’ll kick you out?” For any other heiress that wouldn’t be a hardship, but for a scared young woman with anxiety and agoraphobia? Yes, that’s a sufficient threat.
My blood runs hot because only a bastard would give her that choice.
“He didn’t say that,” she says, defensive.
“But you’re worried that would happen.”
“I’d rather avoid the problem.”
And that sums up the reason she’s still in the penthouse, why the biggest step she’s taken in ten years is onto this rooftop. Because she wants to avoid fear instead of facing it. In some ways she’s incredibly strong—the music she makes, the empire she’s built from it.
Even hiring me, a stranger, to do intimate things with her, fighting years of isolation, took a strength most people don’t have. In other ways she’s still a scared little girl, trapped by her grief.
I brush the backs of my fingers against her cheek, pushing aside the idea of this man trying to marry Bea, letting go for a few blissful moments the idea of revenge. Ignoring the knowledge that at some point, I’ll be the problem Bea wants to avoid. Dread forms knots in my stomach, but it can’t touch the immediacy of feeling her skin against mine.
She turns her face, pressing a kiss against my knuckles.
“Here?” I ask softly, giving her the option to retreat. It’s the better part of valor, after all, and she’s shown plenty of valor tonight. Being here on the roof is a new place to her, even if it’s technically part of the building she’s called home for over a decade.
She does not look away from my eyes, her green ones dark as emeralds in the final glory of dusk. “Something to remember this night.”
Even she can feel the sands of time slipping away.
I lean close to her, pressing a kiss to the constellations across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are closed, so I kiss one eyelid and then the other. She blows out a soft breath, still not looking at me but feeling me. She’s so attuned to me in this moment that she knows when my gaze lowers to her mouth. Her lips part, and I make her wait. Cruel, this. I make her wait while I study those plush pink lips. There’s even the faintest spray of freckles over her lips.
When I kiss her, I imagine I can taste them, these stars. They taste like woman and salt and something elemental to the universe, as if I’m taking sustenance from her. Nourishing myself with her flavor.
“Look up, Bea.”
She looks at me, and that should be gratifying to me. It’s not quite an accident that I ended up in a profession that amounts to exhibitionism with a different woman every night. They like to look at me, and I enjoy being looked at. But I want something different for her. Something better.
“Up,” I say, giving her a tap on the chin.
Obediently her lashes lift. She looks up at the stars and lets out a shuddery breath. “How do people do this every day? They walk outside and they don’t even worry? It seems impossible.”
“You do things that are impossible,” I tell her, tracing a finger lazily down her jaw. “You make beautiful music that millions of people want to watch.”
And you make me dream of a different life than this.
Her eyes become wet with tears, but she does not look away from the dark sky. “Anything could happen. We’re not protected out here.”
And then despite my best efforts I cannot help but to think of her. Of my mother who could not even find safety in the small rooms we rented. “Safety isn’t real, Bea. It’s a dream.”
A tear runs down her cheek. “Why would you say that?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, immediately contrite. That isn’t for her. That’s only for me, the sense that I will never be safe, that I will never be enough. That I can never make up for being a scared little boy in the closet.
She shakes her head. “No, don’t be. You’re right. Oh God, you’re right.”
I can’t convey to her all I wish to say—that she should be free, that she should be mine. Only one of those will come true. “No, I was foolish. But of course safety is real.”
Except that I’m lying, and we both know it. Safety is a dream that only children have. Both of us grew up too soon, aware that everything we knew before would never come true.
Her eyes are as wide and as mysterious as the universe itself. She is a galaxy and a black hole, creation and destruction in one female-shaped body. “Dream with me,” she says.
That’s the only invitation I need. I lay her back on the picnic blanket, resting her head on my folded-up jacket. Unveiling her body to the moonlight has a sense of rightness, as if I’ve been waiting all my life to see her pale curves made luminescent, as if she’s been waiting forever to be bared.
Sailors used the night sky to guide their path. That’s what I become this night, finding my way over the slope of her breast to the tight point of her nipple, following down the flat of her stomach. They are signposts along the way, but my direction is the North Star. For this I must spread her legs, push her thighs apart and part the copper-colored curls.
The feel of her clit against my tongue is almost enough to burn. Too bright for mere mortals. I curl myself around her, letting her feel my desire, my devotion. She’s the one who moves first, finding friction against my tongue. Yes, mon ami. Take what you need. Fuck me.
I don’t have to say the words, because she’s finding freedom underneath the stars. Finding safety in this shared dream, where she can rock her hips against my face, pulling her own orgasm to the surface.
Two fingers slide in easily. It’s a little harder to fit the third, because she’s still tight. Still untried, so I move her softly—easy, easy. I twist my fingers inside her to the same rhythm she’s given me, because she is the one playing me. I may have arrived with my bedroom tricks and my sexual experience, but they were only an ordinary song. She’s the one who turned it into something new, something beautiful. Something uniquely her own, the way she does at the piano every day.
She comes with a wild sound at the sky, her head thrown back.
There’s something animalistic about her like this, naked and primal. It calls to something primal in me, and I tear off my clothes with an urgency that causes the bespoke shirt to rip. And I don’t fucking care. All I need is to feel her against me, around me, underneath me. Nothing else matters.
I mount her with a need unlike anything I’ve ever known, barely tugging on a condom before I press inside her, expecting to find relief, surcease in the wet heat of her pussy. It only drives me higher, the swollen pressure, only makes me need more, feeling her dampness at the base of my cock.
She doesn’t watch the night sky anymore. She’s looking into my eyes, but her expression holds the same wonder, the same wariness. What does she see inside me? There’s a vast emptiness there, too. Only she has the stars. Only with her is there ever any light.
“Once more,” I tell her. “Come again, so I can feel you on my cock. That’s how I want to come, Bea. Against my will, with your beautiful body forcing it out of me.”
Her eyelids lower. “Make me.”
So I angle her hips to receive my thrust in the right place and then drive home. It only takes a single thrust before she’s panting, squealing, squirming to get away. It’s too acute, this kind of pleasure, but the challenge can only be answered this way. Again and again. I fuck her until she comes with an almost guttural sound, grasping at my shoulders, clawing at them as if we’ll never get close enough.
The pain would be enough to wake me from a dream, so I relish the red marks she leaves on my skin, proof that I must be awake even as an orgasm rips through me like a shooting star, too fierce to be contained by my skin, rushing out of me like a thousand fiery sparks. I convulse over Bea’s body, collapsing onto her because she’s the only relief I’ve found in a wide-open universe, the only light in a too-dark sky.