Ava
I stood in the elevator, my heart fluttering in my chest and I couldn’t breathe. It felt like I was losing him all over again and I didn’t know why.
It wasn’t like I’d ever had him before.
On the ground floor, the doors opened again and I stepped onto the dark tiles. I walked to the door that led to the street.
“Ava!” someone called behind me and I turned. James came across the lobby out of breath and heaving like he’d been running. His cheeks were bright red and his tie was askew. He came right at me.
I looked from side to side. The few people present in the lobby were staring at him.
He stood in front of me and swallowed hard. He leaned forward a little.
“You have no idea how many stairs there are in this building,” he said. His throat rasped as he gasped for air.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Come to dinner with me,” he said without ceremony. “You can’t walk away from me again.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow. You’re seeing me every day.”
James shook his head. He was still trying to catch his breath.
“You know what I mean. Please, come to dinner with me. Tonight. Just you and me.”
His eyes were wide and an impossible green. I looked at his face, hopeful, unsure. The atmosphere was electric. We were caught in a bubble, just me and him. I didn’t care about everyone else, staring. I was suddenly back on that beach ages ago, with the boy I loved in front of me. He implored me with his eyes the way he’d done so many years ago.
And then he’d broken my heart.
I couldn’t do that again. I shook my head.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. As I said it, his eyes slid to my mouth. He watched me form the rejection on my lips. And he looked like he wanted to kiss me, anyway. God, what was it about him that was so damn irresistible? How many men had I been with in my life? None of them had had this effect on me.
“Please,” James said. “Just one dinner. If you still feel the same – that you want nothing to do with me – I’ll leave you alone.”
I shook my head. “I can’t have nothing to do with you. I work for you.”
James shook his head, glancing around. I had forgotten about the people. He hadn’t. This was how it would always be with him, wasn’t it? Image was everything.
“You know what I mean,” he said. “Please, Ava. Give me one more chance.”
Could I do this? Could I compete with a life that I didn’t belong in, money I would never have? Everything we’d had when we were kids was a fantasy. It had been a summer away from reality for the both of us and we had met in the middle, there. Everything was different now.
I’d been a fool to think it could be any different.
“James…”
“Just one dinner,” he said, not letting me finish. “I’ll come to the Meridien. They have a great restaurant right there and if you don’t like me you can run away to your room right away.”
I didn’t like that he insinuated I was the type to run away. He was the one that had dumped me, after all. But I had been running away from him since I’d seen him again. It was the only thing I’d known how to do. I’d been running from people ever since I’d been with him.
I looked around me. There were five people around us, a mailman included, and they were all waiting to hear my answer. They had been following the conversation. My heart was on display for everyone one to see.
Maybe rejecting him in public would do the trick, make him realize what I’d been through. But getting even was nothing – it wouldn’t make me feel any better – and I doubted James would care what any of them thought. Besides, he was working on convincing me with some success. I wanted to see him again. I wanted to spend time with him. The rejection for lunch had stung more than I’d thought it would.
“Okay,” I said, nodding. I was getting myself into trouble. “Dinner at the Bizou. Friday?”
“Tonight,” James said.
I blinked at him. This was more like the man I knew. Instant gratification. What did I have to lose? Besides my heart, my dignity…
I nodded. “I’ll be in the lobby at eight.”
“I’ll be there,” he said and turned away from me, walking to the elevator he hadn’t taken to get to the lobby. He pressed the button. I turned my back on him and walked through the doors.
The Bizou Brasserie was a classy place, a ritzy upmarket kind of place with a decidedly French feel. James led us into the restaurant.
“I have a reservation for Weber,” he said.
I glanced at him. He must have phoned straight after our conversation.
“This way,” the seating hostess with a smile that was a little too bright. Women reacted this way to James, didn’t they?
We followed her to our table. The restaurant with dark wood and turquoise furniture, iconic black and white photographs against the walls and subtle lighting creating atmosphere. Soft music played from invisible speakers.
“Your waiter will be with you in a moment,” the hostess said to James. He smiled at her and she hovered a moment before leaving.
“Well, you’re quite popular,” I said. It sounded bitter, I knew.
James smiled. “You can’t be jealous of a seating hostess,” he said.
And he was right. I shouldn’t have been. But she smiled at him like that and he was available to any woman. I couldn’t help it.
“Have I mentioned how beautiful you look tonight?” James asked.
I blushed. I couldn’t help myself. I’d put on black tights with high platform heels and a beige long halter top blouse. My hair was down and I wore gold jewelry with it – hoop earrings and a watch.
James looked good, too. He wore black suit pants with a mint green collared shirt and polished shoes. His sleeves were rolled up and his top button undone but he looked sexy and semi-formal. His blond hair had just enough product in it to make it stay in a stylish mess. When he smiled at me his teeth were whiter than white. It was hard to think that after so many years I was looking at the boy that had stolen my heart. Again.
“Tell me about you,” he said. “Tell me about your life after we stopped talking.”
Why should I, I wonder? He’d tapped out. I didn’t have to share anything with him.
“Look,” James said almost straight away. “I know you’re angry.” It was as if he was reading my mind. Was I that transparent? “I thought I was helping you.”
I frowned at him. “By making me feel like I was worth nothing?”
James shook his head. “I know that was how I made it come across. I didn’t know how else to get you to give up on me. I’m sorry about that.”
I folded my arms over my chest and leaned back in my chair. “So, saying you’re sorry makes it all go away?”
James shook his head. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“But you asked me out to dinner, assuming I would accept.”
“I hoped you would accept,” he said. “I didn’t know if you would. It’s different.”
I shrugged with one shoulder. How could he say that he was trying to help me by breaking a promise to me, by leaving me?
“It was my worst fear, you know,” I said. “That I wouldn’t be good enough for you and all your money.”
James looked down at the table, turning the fork over and over with his fingers.
“You were always good enough for me. You’re like a breath of fresh air in a life where everything is stale. You have this freedom to you that I envied since the first time I saw you. I was like a parrot with clipped wings, staring through my gilded cage at an eagle with the freedom to soar.”
His words were so damn poetic. A lump rose in my throat. I didn’t want to cry because of him. I’d cried over him a few short times when I was still a child, and then I’d grown up and never looked back. He didn’t deserve my tears.
“So, what happened?” I asked. “Parrots and Eagles don’t mix?”
James chuckled emotionlessly. “Not in my world. I was eighteen, Ava. I didn’t have any kind of say in my life and my dad would have smothered you. He would have killed that fire inside you. He did a good job with me and Charlie – we’re barely human now. I couldn’t let him do that to you. I was trying to save you.”
I shook my head, trying to understand.
“You pushed me away because you didn’t want me to get hurt?”
James nodded. “It doesn’t make sense when you say it like that, but yes.”
I took a deep breath. “What makes it so different, now?” I asked.
“I don’t know. My life is still something I would never suggest you get involved with. God, I’m not even the kind of man I think you deserve. But there’s something about you… I was hypnotized when I saw you the first time and it’s still like that. I can’t just disappear out of your life again and not have the privilege of knowing who you really are.”
I didn’t know what to say. He was being so kind, so gentle, so… real. I didn’t want to hear it. How could I not love a man who was so raw, so honest with me?
But I didn’t know if he was being honest, did I? I didn’t know if he was being sincere, telling me things that I wanted to hear.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I don’t know how to deal with this.”
James pushed back his chair and walked around the table. I looked up at his as he came toward me. He kneeled in front of me, his hands on my knees.
“Just give me one more chance,” he said.
“I’m leaving soon.” My voice sounded foreign. I was struggling to think straight. His hands on my knees were warm, his eyes were evergreen and the expression on his face said so much that his words hadn’t said yet.
“You’re here, now,” he said.
I shook my head and looked around the restaurant. James moved, faster than I could process. His hands were on my cheeks, his lips pressed against mine. He stood on his knees between my legs, kissing me.
I broke the kiss.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
James’s eyes were still on my lips.
“I can’t get you out of my mind.” His eyes rose to mine. I didn’t know what to do or what to think. My body responded to his advances even though my mind was screaming at me that this was a bad idea. This was James the Heartbreaker. This wasn’t some sexy one-night stand.
My hand rose to his face and I touched his bottom lip tenderly with my fingertips.
“If you drop me again, I’ll shatter,” I said so softly it was barely more than a whisper.
James stood up and held his hand out to me.
“Trust me,” he said. I hesitated. We hadn’t even had dinner yet. He’d fed me a whole speech about how he had done the right thing by breaking my heart – the wrong thing for the right reasons – and now he was asking me to jump with my eyes closed again and hope that this time he would be there to catch me.
It was a bad idea.
I put my hand in his. A voice at the back of my mind scolded me. James led me out of the restaurant, dismissing a waiter that had just arrived at our table with a wave of his hand. He led me to the elevator and pressed the button. We waited for the elevator to arrive. James was calm, his fingers wrapped around mine. I was reeling and he looked calm and collected. We could be heading up to my room for a serious conversation about his spreadsheets for all he was giving away.
That wasn’t what we were doing if the way he’d kissed me was anything to go by. And the way I’d responded. My body was on fire.
“Which floor?” he asked. I pushed the button for him and the doors slid closed.
The moment they did, James turned to me. He pushed his hand into my hair, holding me at the back of my neck. His lips landed on me, his tongue pushed into my mouth and he guided me gently backward until I was pressed against the elevator wall, pinned by his body. He was lean and muscular and I felt his eagerness through his pants. He was hard and ready for me, pressing against my hip bone.
“God, Ava,” he mumbled against my lips. “You can’t begin to understand.”
He didn’t have time to say anything else. The elevator pinged and the door slid open. James stepped away from me and tugged at his shirt to hide what was going on in his pants.
We stepped out of the elevator and I led to the way to my room, opening it with the keycard. The door was barely closed behind us when we were on top of each other again. I tugged at his collar, grabbed at his hair. His tongue was in my mouth, tasting, exploring. Everything about James was familiar and yet, at the same time, completely foreign. We had only slept together once before. He had been my first and we’d been careful – two kids that didn’t know what to do.
It was different now. James was confident and demanding, knowing exactly what he wanted. And me? I was more grown up and I knew what I had to offer.
I unbuttoned his shirt, my fingers fiddling with each individual button as his shirt opened. His chest was tanned with a splash of golden chest hair over his pecs. It was just enough to be sexy. I ran my hands through it before peeling the shirt off his shoulders. He stopped touching me just long enough to let the shirt fall to the floor.
His arm snaked around my waist and with his free hand he cupped my breast. He massaged me through the material of my shirt and I gasped into his mouth. James ground his hips against me, showing me how happy he was to see me as if I hadn’t felt him before.
His hands slid down to my hips and he held them in place while he rubbed himself against me. I was drunk with lust for him. Everything in me ached for his attention. I wanted him all over me, inside me.
As if he read my mind – he did that a lot – his fingers found the hem of my shirt and he pulled it up. I lifted my arms like a child to help him. My blouse joined his shirt on the floor. James moved his hands to my back and unclasped my bra without ceremony. He pulled it off my shoulders and down my arms, throwing it to the side. I stood before him, naked from the waist up.
James stopped kissing me and took half a step back, looking at me.
“You are breathtaking,” he said. How many women had he seen like this? Judging by his confidence and the ease with which he undressed me he had done this many times. His eyes slid over my body and he looked at me like he was committing the sight of me to memory. I doubted he used this on every one of them.
When he kissed me again he pressed his naked chest against my breasts and my breath hitched in my throat. His skin was searing hot. I wrapped my arms around his body, pressing them against his back. The muscles moved under his skin as he guided me toward the bed.
I kicked off my heels on the way. He laid me down on the bed and shuffled to get out of his own shoes. He pulled down his pants. His sex strained against the material of his jocks, eager to be let out.
James leaned over me and I opened my legs to make space for him. I was completely sober and yet, something about the way we were falling into a rhythm that belonged in a fantasy made me feel intoxicated. James hooked his fingers into the elastic of my tights and peeled them slowly down my legs. His eyes ate up what he was seeing, his pupils dilated, lust apparent in his features.
When he’d removed my clothes, I lay in front of him wearing nothing but a thong.
“I like this,” he said, fingering the lacy material on my hip bones. It was the first time he’d said anything since we’d gotten into the elevator. He dragged his finger down my pubic bone and I shivered when he touched me between my legs.
James crawled on the bed and lay down next to me. I turned my head to look at him. He lay against me, only partially putting his weight on me so we were pressed together.
His hand found a breast again and he thumbed my nipple. He tugged on it, tweaking it between his thumb and forefinger. I writhed on the bed. He had a direct line to my arousal and it was becoming unbearable.
As if he knew, again, what I was thinking, he moved his hand down over my ribs, my stomach and pushed his fingers into my panties. I gasped when he slid them between my legs. I jerked when he flicked my clitoris.
James groaned when he felt how ready I was for him. He kissed me, pushing his tongue into my mouth and moved his hand up and down. When I could barely hold it anymore, he removed his hand. He sat up on the bed and pulled down his jocks. His sex sprang free, hard and smooth. The tip was slick with lust.
After he got rid of his own underwear he pulled down my own panties. He rolled onto me, lifting his weight off me with his hands on either side of my head. My thighs fell open for him.
I was trembling slightly, suddenly nervous. We were back on Indian Pass Beach again, in the dunes, exploring each other as if it was the first time. I was about to give myself to him again. I was probably an idiot trusting that the outcome wouldn’t be the same.
James’s face was close to mine, his breathing quick and shallow. He looked me in the eye. His tip pressed against my entrance and I held my breath.
James slid into me. He was thick and hard, bigger than I’d thought. I gasped as he slid into me all the way to the hilt. He paused, letting me get used to his size for a moment before he slowly pulled out again.
He moved in and out of me, slowly at first. His eyes stayed on mine and I put my hands on his shoulders. The muscles rippled under the skin while he balanced himself over me.
James picked up the pace, pushing into me harder and faster and I forgot about everything, giving myself over to the feeling. The friction was delicious, my body responding to the stimulation and somewhere at my core, an orgasm started building. I closed my eyes and focused on what I was feeling.
James pushed into me harder still, his hips ramming against mine, rocking my body back and forth on the bed. My breasts jiggled with the motion and the room filled with the sounds of our sex. James lowered himself onto me, his chest pressing against mine and he grunted in my ear. His skin was slick with sweat where it touched mine and his breathing was hard.
The orgasm slowly grew. My knees became weak, my heart hammered against my chest and a warmth spread through my body. It was like I was filling with hot water and I would spill over, soon.
James seemed to know where I was at and he pounded into me. I cried out, my gasps in rhythm with his pumping now and I gave over to the feeling that had been creeping up on me. The muscles clenched at my core and heat washed over me in a wave of ecstasy. I wrapped my legs around his waist and my nails bit into his shoulders. He groaned, slowing his pace when my insides clamped down on him. I tipped my head back, closed my eyes. My mouth was open in a silent scream as my body convulsed with the orgasm.
When it finally faded I swallowed hard and gasped, opening my eyes. James’s eyes were on mine, a satisfied smile on his lips. I didn’t even have the energy to be shy about what my body had just gone through. I reeled with the aftermath of a mind-blowing orgasm.
James wasn’t done yet. We hadn’t orgasmed at the same time – it was rare for me when I never got into a rhythm with anyone – and he picked up the pace again. After the orgasm, my body was sensitive, wrapped tight around James’s erection and I was hyper aware of every movement in and on top of me. James kissed me, moving his hips faster again. His elbows were bent. He leaned on them on both sides of my head so that his body covered mine entirely.
He pumped into me again. Something primal took over and his pace quickened, even more, his strokes shortening. This was solely for his pleasure. I closed my eyes and it swept me along with him. The orgasm still echoed in my bones and I moaned and he hammered into me and pulled out again, building a rhythm. He built up another orgasm inside of me. My body responded to his onslaught and instead of retreating the way it usually did, the sex built me up again.
I felt it when James orgasmed. He buried himself deep inside me and jerked, releasing his load. He emptied himself inside me and the orgasm kick-started my second one. I fell apart beneath James, crying out and curling my body around his again. The orgasm had come out of nowhere and I shuddered and trembled beneath James when he finally relaxed on top of me.
“That was incredible,” he breathed in my ear. He lifted his head as if it weighed too much and kissed me, mashing his lips against mine. His face was wet with sweat, wetting my lips and my cheeks, too.
Usually, it bothered me. Not this time. Getting messy with James felt surreal.
Finally, James slid out of me, already softening. We lay side by side on my hotel bed, panting and gasping. James turned his head to me and I rolled onto my side.
“God, I missed you,” he said.
Did he understand how much I’d missed him, too? Did he know what he had just done to me?
He might have entered my body, but he was right back in there in my heart, too.
Now what?