Chapter Three
This is how we end up at the hotel restaurant downstairs. I offered to take her out, would have preferred it, after the strangeness of our meeting. To text a friend of mine at the hottest restaurant in Tanglewood and secure a table for us.
It would have given me a sense of normalcy. Most of the women I see prefer to be courted before I take them to bed. And I enjoy courting them.
Beau Ciel has, predictably, a pretentious matre d’. Less predictably, Bea greets him with the smile of an old friend. “I’m sorry I didn’t make reservations, Pierre.”
Of course not, he tells her. She needn’t ever, he tells her.
Then we are led to a private table, tucked behind heavy velvet curtains. The ceiling has been painted with a thousand stars on a dark background. It feels like looking up in a dream.
“You come here often?” I ask, keeping my voice casual.
She studies the menu like it holds the answer if she can only find it. I would bet that she knows every single item listed there. That she’s tried them all. “Mostly by room service. I don’t usually come down.”
I warn myself not to ask how long she’s lived in the hotel. It’s too personal of a question, even for two individuals who are going to have sex. The only purpose would be to assuage my curiosity. It would not set her at ease. It would not seduce her. I must not ask.
“How long have you lived in L’Etoile?”
Damn.
The words are out before I can even comprehend them. I have only ever been charming with women. It is my one skill in life, discovered before I knew what I was doing, honed over the years. How has this one slip of a woman reduced me to a bumbling first date?
A faint flush touches her cheeks.
“You don’t have to answer,” I tell her because she shouldn’t answer.
“Twelve years,” she says so softly I barely hear it. Then her eyes meet mine, the soft green of them like a fog I don’t want to clear. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”
It’s very, very weird. “Of course not. You must love it here.”
She lifts one slender shoulder in a shrug. “It’s safe,” she says.
I swallow down every other question that comes to mind. She can’t be much older than twenty. Twenty-one, perhaps. Twelve years means she’s lived here since she was a child. There was no sign of a parent in that hotel suite. So who raised her there?
An image flashes through my mind, of the princess locked in a tower, her hair dropped out of the window for a prince to climb up. I have always been dramatic, mind. This isn’t anything new. Un rêveur, my mother called me. Anyway, this girl could never be the princess from the story. Her hair is a wild mass of curls, completely unsuitable for climbing rope.
“Where do you live?” she asks, a challenge in her voice.
I understand that she’s turning the tables, attempting to make me feel uncomfortable the way that she is uncomfortable. There is nothing personal about my living space, however. “A loft in a recent development on the east side. Beige carpet. Granite counters. It is also safe.”
Her lips twist as if she’s fighting a smile. “That sounds very…”
“Boring?”
“I was going to say normal.”
I lean back in the chair, crossing one ankle over my knee. This is a conversation I’m comfortable with. The woman’s curiosity about the life of a high-priced male escort. It doesn’t bother me. It isn’t even about me. They aren’t asking about Hugo Bellmont, the man. They want the persona. That’s all I have to give them, anyway.
“Did you expect me to have shag carpets and a mirror on the ceiling?”
She pauses as if fighting with herself. In the end her curiosity must get the better of her because she blurts out, “Why would you have a mirror on the ceiling?”
“To watch you,” I tell her, my voice low and blunt. “While you ride me. To see your beautiful ass move as you make yourself come. To turn you over so that you can see mine.”
Her mouth is open, eyes wide. I’ve shocked her. “Oh.”
“But we aren’t going to have sex in my boring loft with its boring walls. After we’ve eaten and enjoyed each other’s company, I’m going to ask you to take me upstairs.”
She makes a sound, like a squeak. I want her to make it again when I’m inside her.
“And you will say yes, Bea, won’t you?”
“Maybe not,” she says, but it’s a thin rebellion. I can hear the arousal in her voice.
“You will, because you were curious about the pleasure. You didn’t want it, which is interesting. Maybe sex without orgasms seems to you like your penthouse—safe. But I won’t be safe, sweetheart. I will make you come so hard you cannot breathe.”
Her pretty breasts rise and fall under the black dress. “That is—that is—”
Before she can tell me what that is, the waiter arrives. He unveils an expensive Bordeaux, which is on the house. I order the steak au poivre, medium rare, to give her time to get her bearings. She does not even glance at the menu as she orders for herself a blanquette de veau, in an accent more Parisian than my own. Interesting.
When the waiter takes our menus away, I busy myself with my cuff link. I have learned the art of foreplay, which extends outside of the bedroom. It starts right now, when I make her feel something only to retreat. The absence makes it sweeter.
Except she takes me by surprise. “Hugo,” she says, almost tasting the name.
I look up at her, this fairy creature, at her wildfire hair and sea-moss eyes. Her smile is all the more devastating because it’s pointed at herself.
“You aren’t even hungry, are you?”
My eyebrows go up. That isn’t what I expected her to say. “Hungry? No. But I’m always willing to eat, especially food that is delicious and rare.”
We aren’t talking about food. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?” she asks.
“Well, if you hadn’t already told me, I would know now that you haven’t had sex by the question alone. At least not good sex. If you had, you would know the answer to that. We could eat all night, and I would never tire.”