by Vi Keeland
She doesn’t answer right away. Just takes a drink, fiddles with her napkin.
“I want to get to know you,” I say and run a finger along her arm. “That’s all.”
She looks afraid. She looks lost. But she parts her lips and sighs. “I’m not a virgin, but I haven’t been with anyone in a long time,” she says quietly, as if it’s the first time she’s said that out loud.
I want to reassure her that whatever her history is, it’s all fine with me. “That’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I haven’t been with anyone since my high school boyfriend. I mean, I kissed a few guys in college. And please don’t go all protective caveman and get upset that I’ve kissed people. Because I’m not the Virgin Mary and don’t want to be treated as such.” She holds up a hand, dropping her vulnerable self to return to her tough-as-nails one.
“Duly noted.”
“It’s just that…”
“It’s just what? There’s nothing wrong with that. Unless it’s for a particular reason?” I ask, carefully, because we’re treading on sensitive terrain here for her.
She simply shrugs.
“Jill,” I say, keeping my voice low but steady. I don’t want to scare her. I don’t want to let on exactly what I’d do to someone who hurt her. But I need to know. “Did this guy hurt you?”
“No,” she says quickly, and she looks away from me. She swallows then looks back at me. “The opposite. I hurt him.”
Her eyes are wet, and she looks like she’s about to cry, and all my instincts in reading people’s emotions are turned upside down right now because she’s so hard to figure out. But I also know she’ll only let me in so far at a time. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I think that’s all I can manage for now.”
“Well, whatever it was, I think you have to forgive yourself for hurting him. I’m sure even if you did break his heart, or whatever happened, that he’s managed to move on. I did after Madeline. She’s the reason I didn’t want to go out with an actress again. We were very serious about each other, and then she left me in the lurch when her career took off.”
“Would you think it’s terrible that I’m glad she left you?” Then she moves in and silences any more conversation with a kiss. I can taste the Belvedere on her lips, and I can taste her, and it’s the most delirious sensation in the world to have her here with me. She pulls apart for a moment. “I know I said I didn’t want anyone to see us kissing, but I’m just going to hope there’s no one here who knows us because I’ve been wanting to do that since I walked in the door,” she says, and it’s one of the first times she’s talked to me like this. As if she’s shedding all the ways she protects herself. “I’ve been wanting to do that since my roommate helped me pick out this dress this afternoon. I’ve been wanting to do that since I thought about you on the way over in the car, like you wanted me to.”
For a moment I feel as if the ground is swaying, as if we’re being rocked by unexpected waves. I thought I could protect myself. I once stupidly thought I could stay away from her. I even toyed with the idea that I could keep this strictly physical. Those days are long gone. The more I get to know her, the deeper I fall. She is the most complicated and sexy and beautiful and vulnerable woman I’ve ever met. Maybe she’s hurt someone in the past, and maybe I’m next in line, but there’s a part of me that is willing to sign up for it because it’s impossible to stay away from her.
Especially when she gives me a very sexy grin. “Do you want to know what I’m wearing under this dress?”
“Now that you mention it, I think I’d like to find out.” I slide my hand below the hem of the dress, feeling the soft naked skin of her legs under my calloused fingers. Then I move my hand to the underside of her thigh, taking my time as I explore, enjoying her invitation to find out what she has in store for me. I watch the expression on her face change as she hitches in her breath and parts her legs the slightest bit. She makes an audible gasp when I reach that delicious part on a woman’s body when her leg meets her ass. Then I cup her between her legs, and she’s naked against my hand, her body already hot and wet.
“Now you’ll really see why I picked this table,” I tell her.
Jill
I wonder if he knows I’ve shared more with him than with anyone else. That I give him more glimpses than anyone before. Maybe it’s because he’s asked. Maybe it’s because sometimes I feel as if he can see inside me, as if he senses things about me, as if he knows that there’s more than what I let on. I’ve kept the past with Aaron hidden—literally hidden, under lock and key—but he alone seems to be able to see through all my defenses, all the ways I’ve built up this persona, and he can gently pull back the curtain, bit by bit, in a way that doesn’t rip me apart. Because he’s so patently open with me.
No faking, no pretending. Only truth.
Which makes me wonder if that’s why my body responds like it belongs to him. If there’s more to this thing between us than just his amazing hands, or the way he kisses me both rough and tender, or how he talks dirty in one moment and then romantic the next. If I’m feeling things for him that go beyond these sensations that send me to another world with him.
But right now, I let go of all those questions because he’s learning that I wore nothing for him, so he could do just this, so he could touch me under the table.
Then he removes his hand from under my dress and shoots me a mischievous grin.
“Um, hello,” I say playfully. “Maybe you could put your hand back there. Not sure if you got the memo, but I kinda want you.”
“I know,” he says, leaning back against the gray leather and reaching for his scotch. “And I want something too. I want to know what you look like when you make yourself come.”
A shiver runs through me. Is there anything this man can say that won’t make my body high on him? “You’re going to torture me.”
“And you’re going to torture me. But I know you like to touch yourself. And I bet you can do it quietly too.”
“Why do you say that?”
He leans into me, twines his fingers into my hair once more, and I melt into his touch. “Because you have a roommate. Because you told me you read erotic novels. Because I bet you’ve learned how to make yourself come quietly.”
My breath stills, and heat spreads through my body. “How do you do that? How do you just know things about me?”
“Because it’s my job to understand people and emotions, and secrets, and the things we do in the dark and the things we tell others and don’t tell others. That’s why I do what I do. And I know you’re absolutely turned on right now.”
“How do you know?” I ask in a challenging voice, even though I’m sure I’m an open book.
He brushes my hair away from my shoulder, trails his tongue from my collarbone to my earlobe. “Because your cheeks have this pink glow when you get turned on and your eyes go all hazy, and you part your lips, and I know it means you’re aching for me to touch you,” he says, and I can’t help myself. I breathe harder and gasp out, “Oh God.” Neither one of us is touching me right now, but I can feel how hot I’m getting between my legs, how I’m aching for pressure, for touch, for release. “Touch yourself,” he commands. “I want you to come from your own hand.”
I nod, close my eyes, and slip my hand under my dress until my fingers reach my wetness.
“Tell me how wet you are now.”
“More than I’ve ever been,” I say as a low moan escapes my lips.
He brings my face closer to his, so he’s wrapped an arm around me, as if he’s shielding me from anyone who might see or hear. “And how does it feel to have your fingers on your clit while I’m right here next to you, and I can smell how turned on you are?”
“Oh God,” I gasp, and he’s sending me to another plane of pleasure already with the way he strips me bare. I am burning all over, my whole body is lit up from how he talks to me. “I’m so turned on by you.”
“And h
ave you masturbated to me fucking you?”
“Yes,” I say, as sparks of pleasure careen through my body with every dirty word from his mouth.
“And how do I do it?”
“Any way. You do it any and every way.”
“Do I fuck you from behind? With you bent over the bed?”
“Yes.”
“And do I fuck you up against the wall, with your legs wrapped around me?”
“Yes.”
“And do I fuck you on a table?”
“Yes.”
“And are you on all fours, so I can run my hand down your gorgeous back before I slide into you and you beg me to take you harder?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” I answer in heavy pants, my breathing growing wildly erratic as electric heat ripples through my veins.
“And do you take me in your mouth?”
“God yes. I want to do that to you. I want you to let me,” I whisper to him in a hungry, needy voice, because he’s driving me absolutely insane and to the far edge of pleasure. I’m an expert at self-love, this is my specialty, this is what I do, but the way he talks to me as I touch myself makes it seem as if he’s the one doing it.
He traces my top lip with his finger. “You think you’d like having my cock in your mouth?”
“Yes. I want to. I want to taste you,” I say, then he slips his finger into my mouth and I close my lips around it.
“You’re so close now to coming, aren’t you?”
I breathe out a strangled yes, as he takes his finger away.
“I don’t want anyone else to hear you,” he says in a firm voice. “You’re so loud when you come. Do you have any idea how loud you are?”
“I know I’m loud,” I say, in between muffled moans against his skin.
“And I love it. I love it when you can’t hold back. And when you moan, and scream and grab my hair hard. But you need to be quiet right now. Do you know why?”
“Why?” I manage to ask, as I touch myself more.
“Because no one else can know what you sound like coming. I don’t want anyone in this restaurant to hear you. I don’t want anyone else to know how fucking sexy you sound when you come. I want you to be quiet, and whenever you want to scream out, you need to moan in my ear, so I’m the only one who can hear you. The noises you make are only for me.”
“Yes.” I’m barely in this restaurant anymore. I’m some place else with him, a dark and desperate place, as he cups the back of my head, and brings my face to his neck, so my mouth is near his ear. “Now pretend you’re home, and you have to be quiet, but it’s so fucking hard to be quiet, because you’re picturing my cock in your mouth, and your beautiful lips wrapped around me.”
“You’re killing me,” I pant out. “I want you so badly. I want to do that to you.”
“And I want to see your gorgeous mouth on me. I want to thread my hands into your hair and feel you take me in. I want you to know what you do to me.”
It’s all I can see, all I can picture, and I want to touch him, to know how hard he is, if he’s as turned on as I am right now, because I’m well past caring about anything except the way my body screams for him. I could hike up my dress, unzip his pants, and slide on top of him right now. I could ride him right here in the far back corner of this too-cool-for-school restaurant and I honestly wouldn’t care if anyone saw me, because I am mindless with my desire for him. I am adrift in lust, and all I want is release, and I start to cry out because it feels so good. But he silences me quickly, rasping his knuckles against my lips. “Bite down when you come.”
And I do, as my fingers fly and an orgasm starts deep in my belly and then spreads through my body, making me quiver and shake and want to shout and moan and thrash, but instead I bite down on him to muffle my sounds as I shudder and come for him in the restaurant where we’ll be eating dinner any minute.
Finally, when I can breathe and speak and make contact with reality, I look at him, and he has the most satisfied grin on his face when he shows me the bite marks I left on his knuckles.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
“Don’t ever be sorry for that.” Then he takes my hand, and he presses it against his pants so I can feel his cock straining against the fabric. He unzips the fly, locks my fingers into his, and brings my hand inside his pants, then down his boxer briefs, and I nearly combust when I touch him for the first time. He’s so hard and big and velvety smooth. He’s throbbing in my hands, and I can tell how much he wants me to touch him.
“Let me,” I plead.
He gives me a smirk, then shakes his head playfully as if I’ve been naughty.
“God, when are you going to sleep with me?” I ask because I’m so keyed up and so frustrated. “I want you inside me.”
He removes my hand from his pants, then zips them up and fastens the button.
“When I can fuck you and make love to you at the same time, Jill. Like I want to. Because that’s what I want from you,” he says, so matter-of-factly he could be giving me a note on how to do a scene better in the show. This is what he wants. This is what he expects from me. This is what I’ll have to deliver. “That’s how I want to have you. Now it looks like our food is here and I’m hungry.”
The waiter serves our fish, and Davis says thank you, and all I can do is mumble a thanks. He is so cool and collected and yet I’m the one who got off. This man vexes me with the way he takes care of me so thoroughly, and protects his own heart so fiercely.
But then, I suppose I know what that’s like. I’ve been doing it for years.
He slices his fish and spears a forkful. “Now, I want to ask you to go out with me again.”
“A second date?” I ask, as he takes a bite of his dinner.
“Yes. Come with me to the Broadway Cares event.”
“It’s one thing for me to be at a restaurant with you. But there will be people there we know.”
He huffs out a sigh. “Fine. You’ll come in a restaurant for me, but you won’t attend a formal event where I have to say a few words about the fundraising,” he teases, shaking his head.
“It’s not the same,” I try to point out, but my argument seems invalid, even to me.
“You’re right, Jill,” he says, playing along, as he places his fork and knife down to take a drink. “That’s why it’s a good thing I have access to extra tickets. Perhaps you can go with Shelby, and I can look at you across the room and pretend I don’t know what you look like and sound like and feel like when you come for me.”
A charge races through me, and I’m about ready to grab him, pull him into the bathroom and insist on what I want right now. Him. But instead, I try my hand at negotiation. “I’m pretty good at acting. Maybe I’ll go and act as if I’m not dying to have you. Maybe then you’ll finally let me.”
The gauntlet is thrown.
Chapter 18
Davis
Clay calls as I’m leaving the Times Square subway station, heading up the steps to the street.
“Are you emailing me that new route to work? Because I’m walking precariously close to the Belasco in about thirty seconds when I cross Forty-Fourth Street,” I say, and the funny thing is it wouldn’t bother me if I bumped into Madeline.
“Man, you are just a tough bastard, aren’t you? But that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Ah, you missed me even though I saw you an hour ago at the gym,” I joke, as the smell of pretzels wafts past me from a nearby street vendor.
“Yeah, exactly. So, I’m calling with a heads up.”
I groan. A heads up is never good.
“Don is at the St. James already. He’s got some film producers there to check out Patrick.”
My shoulders tighten. “What? Nobody told me about this.”
“It’s the Pinkertons,” he says, mentioning the names of a pair of British brothers who bankroll films. “For the second picture in Escorted Lives.”
“The first hasn’t even started shooting yet. They’re turning that into a trilogy alre
ady?”
“Books were so damn popular, the Pinkertons are doing all three. And there’s a new-guy-in-town role for the second film, so they want to consider Patrick for it. You know his Crash The Moon contract is for ten months, so his agent brought in the producers since they’re in town for a few days.”
“Do they think they’re going to watch the rehearsal? Because that’s not how it works,” I say firmly, my muscles tensing all over. “It’s not a god damn open rehearsal. If the film producers want to see him play Paolo, they buy a ticket to the show when it opens in two weeks.”
“I know,” Clay says, heaving a sigh. “I said the same thing to Don. But you know Don.”
“Yeah, he’s an ass. What’s the deal? Is he in bed with the film producers? Is he getting a cut?”
“I think he’s vying for some small producer credit on the film. That’s why he brought them in. It should only be a few more minutes. He’s got that understudy with him.”
I stop in my tracks. Like I’ve been punched in the ribs. A woman in a suit and heels bumps into me, and I mutter an apology, then step into the doorway of Sardi’s to get out of the way.
“That understudy?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“McCormick? Is that her name?”
“Jill McCormick.” I shut my eyes. My blood feels like it’s boiling and I don’t know what pisses me off more—Don commandeering the stage or Jill not mentioning she’d be doing a scene with Patrick for the producers of a romantic movie.
Rationally, I know she’ll play many romantic roles throughout her career. Logically, I would never do anything to stop her. But seeing as she’s auditioning for all intents and purposes with him I would have appreciated a heads up from her. I don’t know why she wouldn’t tell me she was reading with him, but the omission sends a hot rush of jealousy through my veins.
“Patrick likes working with her, so he wanted to do a scene with her for the producers. Not from Crash the Moon though. Don’t worry about that. They’re just running lines from the next book.”