I watched Roth as he spoke. He seemed relaxed, the lines of tension and stress on his face smoothing away, his posture at ease. The wind ruffled his hair and snapped the edges of his blazer and the white cotton T-shirt underneath it, molding the fabric to his rock-hard body. He had one hand on the wheel, the other stretched out to grip the back of my chair, his knuckles brushing my shoulder blade.
We were silent for a long time, watching the sun rise higher in the sky, watching the cityscape to either side pass by and the open water in the distance grow closer. Eventually, we breasted the opening of the bay and left land behind. I could see why he loved this. The sense of freedom, the salt spray of the water on my face, the wind carrying us away from everything…I’d never felt anything like it. He seemed content to just sail without talking, and so was I. We chatted here and there, mostly me prompting him to tell me stories about himself. I learned he’d sold his fishing business for a profit and gotten into the import-export industry, and then eventually sold that business for an even bigger profit, which had led him, at the age of twenty-one, to Asia, where he’d gotten into real estate and urban development. I got a sense for Roth the man, how he’d made his way in the world by himself. He’d learned the hard way that he couldn’t trust anyone, having survived more than one betrayal in the business world. He’d learned to be ruthless and untrusting, depending on no one but himself, keeping his businesses small, with as few employees as possible. Eventually, he’d moved to New York and tried his hand at several business ventures, building his wealth bit by bit. I couldn’t glean from him what his primary business currently was, despite several leading questions.
I, in turn, told him about growing up in suburban Detroit, summers spent at a cabin on Lake Michigan, trips with Mom to Chicago. The fun and pleasant stories in my life all stopped cold when Dad was killed. We lapsed into silence when my stories reached that threshold, and Roth seemed content to let the silence stretch.
After a few hours, Roth loosened the mainsail and let us slow to a stop, then furled the sails and let down an anchor. We were in sight of land, but it was a ways out, providing a hazy and beautiful backdrop for a lunch at sea. Eliza had packed us cold cuts, cheese, fresh-baked bread, a bottle of wine, some Perrier, and fresh fruit. Roth assembled a sandwich for me, poured white wine into glasses, and then held out his glass for a toast.
“To a pleasant day and a long night.”
I smiled at him and clinked his glass with mine. “I’ll drink to that.”
Lunch finished, we lounged on the deck and soaked up the sun. It was oddly comfortable, hanging out with Roth. We didn’t need to fill every moment with idle chatter, both us seeming to be content to let silences stretch for long periods of time, enjoying the moment, enjoying each other’s company. Conversation would come and go, questions directed and answered, ebbing and flowing easily.
I was lying on my back on the deck, letting the sun bathe me, when I felt Roth rise to his feet beside me. I cracked one eye, watching him. He stared down at me as he shed his blazer, then his T-shirt, then his shoes. I sat up and felt my heart race when he set his sunglasses aside and reached for the zipper of his pants. “Time to swim,” he said.
I shoved my sunglasses up on my head. “I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”
He grinned. “Neither did I.” He dropped his pants and underwear, standing naked in front of me.
I swallowed hard, heart pounding, desire swelling. Roth naked was a sinfully glorious sight. My nipples hardened and my thighs tensed, my core going damp just looking at him. Six-pack abs leading to a sharp V-cut, a thick, proudly jutting erection, powerful thighs, broad, firm chest smattered with golden hair, bulging, toned arms. Holy shit. That man wants me. Me. His body, those hands, those abs, that cock…for me.
He winked at me, then turned and dove into the water, slicing the blue waves neatly. “Get naked and get in here, Kyrie.”
I stood up on shaky knees, set my sunglasses aside, unzipped my dress, and let it fall to the deck around my feet. I glanced around, but the sea was empty. We’d cut east once we hit open water, and I suspected the hazy-gray land in the distance was Long Beach. There was a ship way out at sea, a long, low tanker of some sort, but it was far enough out that even with binoculars I doubted they could see us clearly. And…I didn’t care.
I watched Roth’s reaction as I unhooked my bra and stepped out of my underwear. He was treading water, watching me intently, eyes hot and hooded. “Is the water cold?”
He shrugged. “A bit.” A hungry grin curled his lips. “Don’t worry, love, I’ll keep you warm.”
That was all I needed to hear. With a deep breath, I dove in. I came up spluttering. “A bit?” I screeched. “It’s f-f-f-freezing, you l-lunatic!”
He only laughed. “It’s the Atlantic Ocean, Kyrie, what’d you expect? Bathwater?” He did a breaststroke, pulling easily toward me. “Come here, you.”
I let him wrap his arms around me, feeling the hot, hard rod of his erection between our bodies. My arms went around his neck, my legs around his waist, and he flipped so he was floating on his back, spine arched to float, one hand caressing the length of my body, the other moving us through the water, legs kicking with powerful strokes.
“I’m not gonna drown you like this, am I?”
He gripped my ass in one kneading hand. “No way, love. You’re light as a feather.”
I shifted my hips, his erection nudging at my thigh. “You’re sure?”
He only smirked. “I’ve got you. No worries.”
“You’ve got me, huh?”
His gaze went serious. “Don’t I, though?”
A roll of my hips, and he’d be inside me. “Yeah. You do.” I kept still, at great effort.
Roth brought us around the boat, circling widely, kicking us through the frigid Atlantic water with easy grace. Eventually I rolled off him, and we swam beside each other. He was the first to make for the boat, and I followed him, shivering. He held on to the ladder at the stern of the boat and pushed rather unnecessarily at my butt to help me up. Scrambling up after me, he led me down into the cabin, wrapped a thick white towel around my shoulders, and rubbed me dry with it. I stood and let him dry me, then tucked the towel in place under my arms and used a clean towel to dry him. Roth was still hard, flinching slightly when I dried him there.
Locking my eyes on his, I ran a finger up his length. “This looks painful.”
“A bit.”
“You should let me take care of it for you.”
“No.”
“Just no?” I wrapped my fingers around him, but he caught my wrist and pulled my hand away.
“Just no.” He leaned in and kissed me, moving out of my reach. “I’ll let you do that as much as you wish…later. For now, I want to wait. I want to be inside you when I come next. If you touch me now, I’ll lose all control. I’ll throw you onto that bed there and be inside you before you could blink twice. And Kyrie, I made you a promise. I always keep my promises.”
“Then you better put some clothes on, because if you keep flaunting that big beautiful cock in front of me, I can’t be held responsible for what I do to it.”
“I’m not flaunting. I can’t help getting hard just looking at you.” He wrapped his towel around his waist, the front tented.
“Just by looking, huh?”
He shrugged. “There’s no such thing as just looking, Kyrie. Not with you. Not when I’ve got you naked. Even fully dressed, one look is all it takes. I see those lush tits of yours, barely hidden by the dress, and I fantasize about squeezing them together and fucking them.” His voice goes deep, growling and rasping. “I see that sweet round ass of yours moving under your dress, and I think of burying my cock into it. I watch your mouth move as you talk, and I think about your lips wrapping around me, taking me down your throat. So, no. Not just by looking. I take one look at you, and I think about all the things I’m going to do to you.”
I had to shut my eyes and clench my fists to keep from jumping
him right then and there. “You need to either shut the fuck up or do some of that right now.”
He growled, closing the inches left between us. “Yeah? Why? Are you wet, Kyrie? Is your tight little pussy dripping for me? Aching for me?”
I backed away, clutching the towel at my chest. “Yes. Now quit teasing me.”
He followed, catching my waist with one hand and pulling me flush against him. “I’m not teasing, love. Oh, no. I’ll make good on everything I say. But I want you crazy for me. I want you mad with need. I want you ready to explode from one touch.”
I couldn’t help grinding against him. “I already am.”
“Oh, love. You have no idea. I’m going to spend every moment from now until I have you in my bed making you crazier and crazier. You think you’re wet and aching now? Just you wait. I’ll have you soaked before I’m through.”
He crushed me against the wall, head bent to fit into the low cabin, his erection pressing through his towel and mine into my core, so close yet so far. I clawed at his shoulder and writhed against him, feeling just a hint of the friction I needed, feeling the round hardness of his cock and the soft fabric of the towels and the wetness of my desire spreading through me.
Roth’s hands slid under my ass, clutched my thighs, and lifted me. My towel hiked up, baring me to him, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, my head bumping on the ceiling. It was an uncomfortable, impossible position, but I didn’t care. If he’d just shift, just slightly, he’d be where I needed him. The edges of his towel parted, and I wriggled my hips and my legs, feeling his hot hard cock against my inner thigh, shifting to get it closer, desperate, at that point, to take what I wanted whether he was willing to give it or not. He bit my skin at the hollow of my shoulder, grinding his hips up, sliding the thick soft tip against my opening, crushing in to rub along my clit.
I gasped, clinging to him, wrapped around him, waiting, tensed, needing, hoping. A stroke, another, the pressure and heat of climax building inside me, and then, moments from exploding, he let me down and backed away, both of our towels falling into place, leaving me gasping and aching.
“You’re a bastard,” I growled at him.
He grinned. “I know.” He backed away another step, toward the steps leading to the deck. “Come on, let’s get dressed and head back.” I had my bra and underwear on when Roth’s voice stopped me. “Leave the dress off. Sunbathe. Give me something sexy to look at while I sail us back in.” He tossed me a tube of sunscreen, grinning at me.
I let Roth smear the sunscreen on my skin—including few places that probably didn’t technically need it—and then spread my towel on the deck by the bow and lay on my stomach, unhooking my bra. The hot sun and the relentless wind and the roll of the boat on the waves worked together to lull me to sleep, and I didn’t wake up until Roth called my name. I rolled to my back and sat up, holding my unhooked bra to my chest, blinking blearily at him.
He gave me a smile. “Put your dress on, babe. I don’t feel like sharing your beauty with everyone on the Hudson River.”
I fastened my bra and put on my dress, then ran my fingers through my hair. “I don’t suppose any of your ex-girlfriends left a hairbrush on board?”
Roth frowned at me. “Kyrie. Do you really think I’ve ever brought another person on board my boat?”
I used my stiffened fingers to get the worst of the snarls out of my hair as well as I could, and then swept it back into a tight ponytail. “You haven’t?”
“No. No one. Not Eliza, not Harris, not Robert. No one. And I wouldn’t say I’ve ever had ‘girlfriends.’”
It was my turn to frown. “Wow. I didn’t realize.” I sighed. “I don’t get it, Valentine. Why me? What’s so special about me?”
“Everything, Kyrie. You are special. Your strength of character, your beauty, your intelligence. The courage you’ve shown in playing my game. Being here with me, finding a way to fit into my life, despite the unfair demands I’ve made on you. I doubt another woman in all the world could do what you’ve done, in earning my trust as you have.”
“Oh.” I shrugged.
“So the short answer is no, I don’t have a hairbrush with me. But you don’t need one. You’re stunning, Kyrie. Whether you’re done up in Dior and jewels, or just woken up in a sundress and messy hair, you are, very honestly, the most lovely woman I’ve ever known. You don’t need fancy hair or makeup to take my breath away, Kyrie. You just have to be you.”
Good grief. How is a girl not gonna melt at words like that? I expected someone like Valentine Roth to be caught up in appearances, to expect me to look my best at all times. That impression was reinforced by the outfit for the opera, and the closet full of clothes in my room. He himself never looked anything less than spectacular, but then, I don’t think he could ever be unpleasant to look at. I mean, there I was, makeup washed off by the swim, hair a swim-tangled rat’s nest, tied back in a ponytail, wearing a simple sundress, and he thought I was lovely? I looked like shit. But the appreciation in his eyes, the sincerity in his voice…it erased my worries.
He made me feel beautiful. He made me feel safe. Even though he was playing a maddening game of sexual frustration and domination, he never made me feel like an object, or a piece of meat. It wasn’t about the sex. And that, more than anything, made me want him and appreciate him. All the guys I’d dated had made me feel, even unintentionally, as if the goal of our relationship was good sex. Dates were engineered to end up in bed. Even if there was a romantic element to the relationship, the romance was aimed at buttering me up so I’d fuck them.
Roth? He made sex blatant, up front. He told me what he wanted, what he was going to do. And on top of turning me on something fucking fierce, he made things honest. I knew what to expect. And when we were talking, or hanging out, that was all we were doing. Just spending time together. He wasn’t constantly angling to get me in the mood for sex. When I spoke, he listened. His attention was focused on me, and only on me. His gaze never wavered, he never interrupted, and his responses told me he was listening and actually hearing, and caring, rather than just waiting for his turn to talk. He wasn’t charming, a good thing in my book. Charm always smacked of flattery to me. It felt like false advertising. I didn’t trust guys who could charm me. I’d flirt with them, sure, and I might even hook up with them once in a while. But nothing real would ever happen with a guy who was charming.
Roth was a contradiction. He was reserved and untrusting. He had walls a mile high. Yet for all that, he was open and honest. He said it like it was, told me what he was thinking and told me what he expected, what he wanted. If he didn’t want to answer a question, he would say so. He wouldn’t skillfully change the topic or distract me, he would just tell me, “I’d rather not answer that.” I respected that in him.
All this ran through my head as I sat beside Roth on the ride up the Hudson River and back to his slip. I’d never met a man I’d respected before. I’d never met a man who’d really impressed me before. There had been guys I really liked, who were cool and fun and hot, decent guys from good families. But they didn’t leave me breathless. They didn’t make me sit up and take notice. They didn’t demand my attention, and they certainly couldn’t have commanded my respect, not like Roth did. He’d been kicked out of his home at eighteen, given what was, in his world, a small amount of money, and left to his own devices. To a girl living paycheck to paycheck, it was a fortune. In the world of business, a hundred grand wasn’t a lot. To a guy who’d grown up in the lap of luxury, it was barely enough to get started. If I scrimped and saved and ate sparingly and lived in the cheapest apartment I could find, I might be able to make a hundred last a couple of years. So the fact that Roth had turned it into billions? Or millions, or however much he was worth? Pretty amazing feat, I think.
Roth tied the boat up and held his hand out to help me to the dock. “You’re deep in thought,” he remarked.
I shrugged. “I guess.”
“What are you thinking about?”
How was I supposed to answer that? I just shrugged again. “Lots of things.”
We arrived at the Bentley, and Roth held my door for me as I slid in, then circled to take the driver’s seat. “Lots of things, hmm?” He brought the engine to life, and it rumbled with a smooth, powerful purr. “Such as?”
“You’re gonna drag this out of me, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “Obviously.”
“I was thinking….” I thought about deflecting or lying, but decided on the truth. Or at least a version of it. “I was thinking about you. You’re not what I expected, Valentine Roth. Not in the slightest.”
“No? What did you expect?”
I bobbled my head from side to side. “A lot of different things. At first, I expected some crusty, lonely old rich guy with nothing better to do than go around ‘collecting’ girls.”
Roth chuckled. “Well, you got one of those words right at least,” he said, more under his breath than to me. He shot a sideways glance at me. “You really take exception to being collected, don’t you?”
“Yes!” I glared at him. “I’m not a fucking paycheck, Roth. I’m a person. And when Harris showed up at my door to collect me, as he put it, I was pissed. And yes, I still get pissed off when I think about it.”
“Well, I apologize for the misunderstanding. But I couldn’t risk you refusing to accompany him, so I ordered him to leave you with no choice.” His expression darkened, hardened. “You’ve always had a choice, Kyrie. You still do. You can leave at any time. You know that, correct?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not going anywhere, Roth. Not yet. You’ve got my interest at this point.”