A Date to Remember (7 page)

“That’s it. That’s my girl.”

“Please,” she said then, her voice like a whip of desire curling around his cock.

“Tell me,” he said then.

She looked at him quizzically then, hand stopping. “What?”

“I told you not to stop. You want this cock, you’ll keep moving.”

She started moving again. “Tell you what?”

“What I want to know,” he answered, then kissed down her leg until he could smell the sweetness of her cream.

“I don’t know what you want.”

“I think you do,” he said and licked from her anus to the tips of her fingers that were working frantically at her clit.

“I don’t know,” she cried, body tensing.

“Stop,” he commanded roughly, and she stopped, body quivering.

“Please,” she begged again.

“You won’t come until you tell me what I need to know.”

“I don’t know what you want,” she shot back, her anger flaming.

“Too bad for you. Think about it…Natalie.” He purposely hesitated over her name as he lifted over her body, forcing one of her legs high. He kissed his way up her stomach and bit at the bottoms of her breasts. She sucked in her breath. “Tell me,” he said again before sucking a nipple into his mouth.

She moaned, her body shaking. Her hand moved between them, angling toward her clit, and he lowered his body, blocking her.

“Joel,” she cried.

“Try again,” he said. He sucked the other nipple into his mouth, tasting her candy. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of her taste.

“I don’t know!” she screamed, but he ignored her ire.

“Fine.” He lifted from her body. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them at her sides as he crawled up her body and straddled her chest. He used his thighs to push her breasts together around his cock.

“Suck me,” he said, angry. He wouldn’t give her satisfaction. He wouldn’t ease her pain until she told him. He didn’t want Natalie in his bed. He wanted Samantha, no barriers between them. He may walk away in the end, but he’d be damned if she got what she wanted.

She lifted her head off the bed and sucked the tip of his dick between her lips. She couldn’t reach much more than that unless he moved up. She licked at him. He pumped his body slowly between her breasts. She felt so good. He pressed harder, watching her nipples shudder as he moved. He slid forward a little so that she could take him further into her mouth. With each push, he could feel her tongue dancing over the head of his cock. He groaned, pleasure going through him.

“Yes. Just like that, baby.” He moved harder into her mouth. He let go of one of her hands and reached back to play with her clit. She moaned around his flesh, the sound vibrating over him. She shook beneath him. She sucked his cock harder, her cheeks hollowing out with each pull. He watched her, so amazed by her feel. She was like fire, and he was burning up. He flexed his hips, pushing into her mouth, but it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.

Joel pulled from her mouth and moved down her body. He lifted her legs until her ankles rested on his shoulders. Without a second’s warning, he pushed his cock into her. She cried out, body tensing. He held still, refusing to give her that last bit of pleasure. She was tight, so tight. He moved in her slowly, not wanting to ignite her too far. She clenched around him, her hands grasping his biceps. She tried to pull him closer, but he didn’t let her. Not now. He needed more than this.

“Tell me,” he demanded, sliding in and out of her one slow inch at a time. She panted as she gripped him, her body tightening.

“Joel, please. I don’t know what you need. Help me.” She looked at him with wide, pleading eyes, and he felt his heart stutter.

Give in. Tell me who you are
, he pleaded silently.

“Are you everything you seem?” he asked instead.

“What?”

“Answer the question,” he said, pushing into her harder and then grinding against her mons. She wailed when he stimulated her clit.

“I am who I am. I can’t be anyone else.”

“Are you sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Who are you?” he asked then.

“I am Natalie, the woman in your bed. The woman who wants you to fuck her with that big cock of yours,” she said finally with a seductive smile, and he felt something in him go cold. He didn’t want Natalie in his bed. He wanted Samantha. He pulled from the pleasure of her body, feeling lost when his cock slid from her.

“So be it,” he spat at her, and didn’t turn around to see what she looked like before he walked out. The only sound he heard was the resounding slam of the door.

Chapter Thirteen

Something had changed between them. Samantha didn’t know what it was, but she could feel it. Joel was kind and attentive, but the camaraderie of the first few nights was gone. As the days passed, he came to her bed every night. Sometimes he just went to sleep. Other nights he took her in his arms and made love to her like a desperate man, but he didn’t speak to her during sex, didn’t command her to do a thing. He just took her with his body, his face blank, his eyes guarded, until he came, and then what she saw there didn’t make sense. She saw pain, so raw she could barely breathe, and then it would be gone as if it were never there.

During the days, she shopped and was pampered. He called in house calls from spas that had her skin softer than she had ever felt it, and beauticians who made her hair look like she needed to be on a magazine cover. She didn’t have to lift a finger to do a thing. A chef was brought in to cook dinner. At times she would get in there before the chef could arrive and cook anyway, but after Joel had told her it wasn’t necessary, she’d stopped. Some fire was gone between them, and her very heart ached for what they had lost. She felt like he was done with her, that his heart was not as entrenched with her as hers was with him. She’d broken something, and she didn’t know what. Over and over again she thought of the fateful night when he’d asked his questions but she didn’t know the answers. He couldn’t possibly know she wasn’t Natalie, and so she didn’t know what he’d asked of her. She was herself with him. She basically wore only Natalie’s name, but she was herself. She watched movies with him, TV shows, learned they shared the same taste in music and art. When they discussed things they liked, she would see glimpses of the man she’d fallen in love with.

And that was the crux of the problem.

She’d fallen in love with Joel. Somewhere along the way, she’d lost the end goal. She hadn’t kept the end in her sight. She’d just fallen harder and harder for the man he sometimes showed her, the man who had touched her the first few days they’d met. She’d spent her time looking for him, and now she’d lost him, with only a couple of days left in their time together. He hadn’t said a thing about keeping her longer, about making this deal no longer about business but about feelings. He just went about his day as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

And that was what hurt most of all.

Staring at him now across the dinner table as they ate in silence was nerve-racking. He didn’t look her way. The chef had prepared veal, a meal that Samantha had never been partial to, no matter how someone cooked it. Joel didn’t seem to overly enjoy it either. For a man who ate with gusto, he’d left nearly half his meal on his plate. After a minute of pushing peas around, she finally spoke.

“What are we going to watch tonight?” she asked hesitantly.

“We aren’t going to watch anything. I have work to do,” he replied, still not looking at her.

“You worked until eight tonight. Surely you can’t have that much left,” she said.

“Maybe, maybe not, but I am going to go do it.”

“Is there something I’m missing here?” she fired at him, anger snapping through her. If he wanted her to leave, he just needed to say it. She didn’t feel in the mood to beg him.

“Entirely, but it doesn’t matter now,” he retorted.

“Should I just leave now then?”

He watched her for a moment, his gaze assessing. The fact that he was thinking about it made her stomach fall to her feet.

“You know, I think that would be best. I’ll call my driver to take you home, and get the doorman to pack your things. I will not remove the missing days from your pay. Do you want it in cash or check?”

“Go to hell.”

“I’m already there,” he growled, standing. “I’ll write you a check then.”

He went to the jacket he’d left lying over the couch as she watched him, stunned. She couldn’t speak. He pulled his checkbook out and wrote a check for a quarter of a million dollars. He didn’t say a word to her as he placed it on the table in front of her and walked away, dialing on his phone as he went.

She sat there, motionless, her heart breaking in her chest. So she’d lost him. This was how they ended. She felt the crushing blow as she rose to her feet. She didn’t remember how she had gotten to the room when she arrived. She slipped into the clothes she’d worn nearly a month before when she’d first arrived. They felt odd, almost unbelievable. Perhaps it was the memory they evoked, or the thought of the night that she had sealed her fate by agreeing to come with him. She loved him, and he was sending her away, like so much trash. It wasn’t about the money. It wasn’t about the clothes, jewels, or the fact that she could live happily with no work for a couple of years and not feel the pinch. She couldn’t imagine having Joel’s type of money, and now she couldn’t imagine being without him. Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t even have the strength to dash them away. The doorman came in and, thankfully, didn’t remark on her disheveled state as he efficiently packed her things with help from a maid. Just as quickly as Sam had come, she was now leaving.

She followed the doorman and maid out of Joel’s home and got into the elevator. The doorman told her that he would have to make a few trips for her belongings, but they would stow them for her quickly. Blinded by tears, she just nodded and walked with her head held high to the limo. The driver opened the door for her and ushered her in. Inside the darkness, alone in the place they had first made love, Sam cried. She cried for her lost heart, cried for the loss of Joel, and cried because she had known it would be like this if she slipped and she’d tripped anyway. She cried with everything she was as the limo took her to the airport. She didn’t stop as the plane reached altitude and she thought of her first flight with Joel.

By the time she crawled into another car, her belongings stowed by another quiet driver, she was worn out. She just was blank as the car stopped in front of her home. She hadn’t thought to give Natalie’s address. She didn’t want to see her friend. Maybe it was the green devil of envy, but she didn’t want to see her with her love, Maddox. Her pain was too fresh right now, and she needed time to veg out on ice cream and sappy music until she found the strength to pick up the pieces. The only thing she could be grateful for was that there was no child. She could already feel the pangs of her period beginning, the slight cramping she always felt the day before.

And then she cried harder because part of her wanted there to be a child. Some evidence of the love she’d felt for Joel. Some evidence that she’d take with her of their time together. Love was a wondrous and treacherous thing.

Chapter Fourteen

“That rat bastard!” Natalie cried for the third time since learning Samantha’s tale.

After a week of hiding, and no richer, as she’d left the check on the table where Joel had left it, she’d finally returned Natalie’s call. Sitting beside her was a quiet, and oddly comforting, Maddox. His blond hair was cocked slightly to the side as he watched Samantha blow her nose for the umpteenth time. His blue gaze was kind, and sad. He firmed his chiseled lips, lending a stark slant to his otherwise open features. Sam could see what Natalie saw in him. He was gorgeous, not like Joel, but nice to look at. He had to be at least six foot three inches tall. He towered over her much like Joel had when she’d stood next to him. Sam sighed. She was still comparing every man she saw to Joel. She just couldn’t break free of him.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t know what was going on. When I called to tell him that Natalie had come clean to me and he said he wanted to see you again, I thought it was harmless. Joel never sets out to hurt someone, and always lays the rules out up front,” Maddox explained.

Sam had learned from Maddox that he and Joel were childhood friends. When Maddox had expressed his feelings, and reservations, about Natalie, Joel had volunteered to see what he could find. His search had led him to the exclusive call girl line and a date with Natalie, or so he thought. Natalie had beaten him to the punch, and while Sam sat masquerading as her, she’d been pouring her heart out to Maddox. It had come too late for Sam, though. By that time, she’d already slept with Joel once and had stepped headlong into another date and a month-long assignment. It wasn’t Maddox’s fault that she was in her predicament now, but she appreciated his support nonetheless.

“It doesn’t matter now. He’s gone, and I have to move on,” Sam said then.

“But you love him, don’t you?” Maddox asked, and something in the way he watched her reminded her of Joel. Fresh tears slid down her face. She seemed to always be crying lately.

“It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t deserve her,” Natalie said then, all protective over her childhood friend.

“When you told me about what was going on, you swore that Joel wouldn’t hurt my friend,” she said to her husband. The two had eloped while Sam was gone, something that Sam was still a little sore about missing, but she understood their haste. It seemed that in a few months, they’d already be starting their family.

“I thought he wouldn’t. I didn’t think they’d fall for each other,” Maddox said.

“He didn’t fall for me. I fell for him. End of story,” Sam said with a groan.

“Do you want it to be?” Maddox questioned, ignoring her.

“What else can it be, Maddox? He sent me away. We haven’t had any contact at all, and he hasn’t even attempted to reach out to me through you,” Sam finished.

“I know my friend, and something just isn’t right. I think you did more damage than you thought when you didn’t tell him who you were. His mother carried on an affair for nearly ten years while she was married to his father. When it came out, it devastated his father. In the two years after their divorce, his father nearly drank himself into the grave. Only Joel’s support, and some intense therapy, turned things around for him. Joel sees lies between partners as the ultimate betrayal,” Maddox explained.