Chapter Five
Entering the penthouse, this time knowing that Bea lives here, is a revelation. Minette greets us with a plaintive meow, winding around our ankles as if we both belong.
There is a coat rack beside the entrance, draped with a herringbone coat. A tightly wrapped umbrella sits in the base. I know without touching them that they won’t be damp, despite the weather, because Bea didn’t go outside today. She didn’t go outside yesterday. How long has it been since she stepped foot outside this hotel?
“Do you want some coffee?” she asks in that too-fast way. I’m not sure whether she’s asking as a kind of date etiquette or whether she wants a reprieve, but I say what I always tell my clients.
“Yes, please. I would love some.”
I follow her to the corner of the suite where a wet bar would be. It’s been expanded, I see, to include a small two-range stove top with a wardrobe beside it that I assume serves as a pantry. It’s still less than even a small apartment would offer, but much more utility than any ordinary penthouse suite. A gleaming mini-fridge must hold the meager contents of her food supply, when she doesn’t order down for baked camembert or oysters.
What a life she leads, both decadent and desolate.
Her hands are shaking. The mug trembles for a beat too long against the metal plate of the fancy machinery, revealing her weakness. I take it from her gently, setting it aside.
“Darling,” I say softly.
She gives a small shudder. It isn’t quite a sob. That’s the only warning I have before she crumples, not against anything, not on top of anything, it’s more like she becomes suddenly small. Tiny. Like she’s shoved herself behind a dresser in an effort to be invisible.
I wrap her in my arms before I can think better of it. That’s what I’m here for, isn’t it? To provide comfort with my body. That’s all I am—my hands or my mouth. My cock. And if that makes me feel cold and paper-thin, it does not matter.
This woman, though, she seems to like me for my arms.
I stroke her back softly, murmuring words of assurance. In French, I realize belatedly, but it doesn’t matter. She proved downstairs she could understand, and the language doesn’t matter. Not for what we’re doing here.
Her body feels impossibly slight in my grasp, like smoke that will disappear if I hold too hard. But her hair—God, her hair. It does not care that she is trying to make herself small; it’s a perfect bronze cloud, tickling my nose, curling gently into my skin.
Her shoulders shake against me. The sound of her worry and her grief carve themselves into my skin, leaving marks I’m not sure will be gone by morning.
“Bea.” I tilt her tear-stained face up with my thumb and forefinger. “Tell me what’s wrong. Why have you called me here tonight? Why are you hurting?”
“I’m embarrassed,” she says, her cheeks a deep red. “I mean, I know I should have gone downstairs to the bar. That makes way more sense than paying someone to have sex with me.”
“Why didn’t you?” I’m genuinely curious.
She speaks into my chest, her voice muffled. “I did. Five nights in a row, I wore this dress and went downstairs. Every night someone would send me a drink.”
My voice is softer now. “Did you accept?”
“I tried to. I took a sip and gave them a smile when they sat down at the stool next to me. But it was too real somehow. Like they would expect something more than… you know.”
“Sex,” I say with gentle encouragement.
“Sex,” she repeats.
The word sends a soft breath of heat into my cock. God, this woman. Even hearing her say the word is enough to make me hard. What will it feel like to peel the black dress from her body? To hear her moans and sighs and a thousand other sounds?
“I have no expectation,” I tell her. “Not even sex. If you want to sit with me and recite nursery rhymes, that is what we’ll do. Or if you’d like me to leave. However…”
She looks at me, hope in her green eyes. “However?”
“However, it would be an honor to take you to bed tonight.”
“Even though I haven’t done it before?”
Especially because of that.
So much that it terrified me before, when she first told me. But I’ve had time to consider it over dinner, and besides the caveman-like effect it has on my body, how hard she makes me, it makes sense that I should be the one to do this.
One of those assholes at the bar, what if they don’t make her come? What if they demand more from her than she wants to give? No, the way to make this good for her is to do it myself.
Even though I haven’t done it before?
“Even though,” I tell her, my voice grave.
She smiles, then, the parting of clouds. “My friend Harper said this would be a thousand times more awkward than a one-night stand, but it’s not. It’s easier. Is that wrong?”
“It’s perfectly right.”
I said it to reassure her, but I’m the one reassured when I stroke my thumb across her cheek. It feels perfectly right to bend my head and breathe in the faint smell of lavender. Perfectly right to press my mouth against her plush lips.
She opens her mouth with an acquiescent sigh, and I know she’s still finding this easier. The men downstairs, none of them could have given her this. There’s seduction in my movements, but confidence too. The kind of confidence that can only come from knowing I can please her.
An entire city of men who would have had her, who would have been happy for the privilege of a single night, no money exchanging hands, and she paid for me.
I wasn’t lying to her before. It will be an honor.