Late Call (Volume 1) (11 page)

He smirks. “Go and get ready, Dayton. We’re leaving soon.”

I show him my middle finger and stalk into the bedroom. There isn’t a chance in hell I’m about to let him know just how much I
did
love having him in my mouth.

It was the power, the knowledge that, for five minutes, Mr. I Don’t Ask, I Tell was completely under my control. He was at my mercy for as long as my lips were wrapped around him and his hips were jerking into my mouth. His actions were completely controlled by me until the moment his cock swelled and he filled my mouth with his release.

That was it. Not the way he groaned my name and tugged my hair. Or the way he kissed me after as if he were starving.

It was the power.

Yep. I’m going with that.

When I step back into the main room, he throws a beach tote at me. “Put a bikini in that.”

“So much for not taking off the lace,” I throw over my shoulder.

“You can take it off when I say you can take it off.”

Fuck that.

I pull my dress over my head and change from my underwear to my bikini, shoving the lace into my bag. I wonder how long I’ll get away with this one.

“Ready?”

I nod, and Aaron takes my hand in the elevator. Neither of us says a word on the way down, but I know when he curves his lips to one side. He pulls me close to him the in lobby.

“Nice try,” he whispers in my ear, reaching up to my neck. He tugs on the pink string, freeing my bikini tie, and I gasp. The top slips down, the halter neck of my dress not tight enough to keep it in place, and my nipples brush against the soft cotton of my dress.

“You…”

He grazes my earlobe with his teeth. “Asshole? I know. It’s a nice view from here though.”

I jab him in the side with my elbow. “How am I supposed to tie it back up?”

We step into the dry Australian heat and a black BMW pulls up. Aaron opens the passenger-side door.

“I suppose you can do it in here.”

I glare at him and get in the car. He pauses after getting in, his eyes focused on me.

“I’m not tying up the fucking bikini with the valet staring at me like he’s never seen a woman before.” I glance at the wide-eyed young guy with a tent forming in his pants.

“How awkward for him.” Aaron’s voice is amused, but I can sense the hint of annoyance he’s trying to hide behind a smirk.

I lick my lips. “How old do you think he is?”

“Don’t even go there.”

“He looks at least twenty. That’s totally in my age range.”

“Dayton,” Aaron growls, flexing his fingers in his lap. “Shut the fuck up.”

I sigh and maneuver my bikini back over my breasts to retie it. “I’ll keep my thoughts to myself in future.”

“You shouldn’t be having thoughts like that.”

“Why not? I’m single.”

He doesn’t need to know I don’t fuck for pleasure.

“Not on my bank account you’re not.”

I huff. “Pulling that again, are you?”

“I can have this car pulled over so I can take you on the side of the road if you’d prefer that as reminder.”

Oh my.
“Exhibitionist.”

His blue eyes cut to me. “In fact, I couldn’t do that.”

I shake my head. “Chicken.”

One of his eyebrows arches, and we pull into the harbor. “I could fuck you on the side of the road, Dayton, just as long as there aren’t people around. I’m much too possessive to let anyone else see the body I did last night.” He helps me from the car.

“Perhaps you should blindfold me next time I change then. Lest anyone other than
you
lays eyes on my body.”

A grin twitches his lips and he brings them close to mine. “Don’t be so fucking difficult.”

“Middle name,” I murmur against his coffee-flavored mouth.

“No, it’s not. It’s Lauren.” He takes my mouth in a delicious kiss that makes my knees tremble.

“You’re being very obvious today, Mr. Stone.”

“If you look to your left, you’ll see a man on a boat. Blue cap, no shirt, cargo shorts.” He ghosts his way to my ear so I can turn my head. “That boat belonged to my father, and now, me. The man is named Joseph, and he’s looked after this boat for the last five years. He’ll be sailing it today.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d have to say your dad is spying on us.”

“No, that’s my mother.” He grins and pulls me over to the boat. “Dad’s just the middle man keeping her happy.”

“Keeping her happy? You mean you Stone men can be tamed?”

“That’s what we like our women to think.”

He helps me onto the boat and introduces me to Joseph, a thirty-something man with a physique of a twenty-year-old and the charm of a man who’s been around. He brushes Aaron’s annoyed look off with a wink to me, telling us lunch will be served at midday.

“Nice guy,” I say, watching him go.

Aaron’s hand cups my jaw and he turns my face into him. His eyes are dark and his breath hot. “Stop provoking me, Dayton. You know it pisses me off and that’s why you do it. I told you before. You don’t get to look at other guys when you’re with me. You don’t get to look at them, think about them, or flirt with them. You still belong to me for a few more weeks.”

I want to argue. I want to fight back and tell him to shove his ‘you belong to me’ bullshit where the sun doesn’t shine. But I don’t.

“Okay.”

He blinks. “Okay?”

I shrug. “Okay.”

“No arguments? No fight? No insults through gritted teeth?”

“I can be agreeable sometimes. Not often,” I add at the disbelieving look that crosses his face, “but it’s been known to happen. And there’s no need to look so fucking surprised.”

“Do you have to swear so much?”

“Yes.” I knock his hand from me and sit back on a sun lounger as we leave the harbor.

“You never used to.”

My eyes trace the skyline of the city we’re slowly leaving behind. “I never
planned
to, but my job changes people. It pushes your limits and broadens your horizons in what is sometimes the most effed-up ways possible. That’s just how it is, and when you stand in front of enough men who only want you for one thing, you accept sex for what it is. Fucking.”

“You don’t need to talk about yourself in such a derogatory way.”

“Why? That’s what it is. I don’t have sex with these guys, Aaron. We don’t make love. We fuck. After a while, you accept your job for the blunt reality of what it is and it filters through into the rest of your life.”

“And it jades you.”

I glance at him. “No. It changes you and perhaps the way you see the world, but it doesn’t jade you. The person that jaded me is me.”

He leans back, folding his arms across his chest, and peers over the top of his Ray-Bans. “I don’t believe you. Something jaded you.”

A small, dry laugh leaves me and I look away. “Sleep with enough men who promise forever to a woman then go away on business while she’s sitting at home rocking a baby to sleep and you see how hollow love is. How easily promises can be broken.”

Nothing but the sound of the boat against the water surrounds us for an uncomfortable moment.

“Have you ever come between a marriage?”

“I don’t know. It’s not my job to know.”

“That sounds…cold.”

I smile wanly and meet his eyes. “Why people hire me is none of my business, unless a reason is explicitly asked for, like with you. Most of the time, the meeting is made and carried through with no questions or information provided to me. Call me cold, call me a bitch, but when I walk into an appointment with my clients, all I want to know is if they have my money and how they want me to fuck them. Not if their wife is sitting at home polishing the silver while he gets what he’s obviously being denied.”

“What he’s obviously being denied?”

The arch in his eyebrow pisses me off, and I raise my own in return.

“If he was getting it at home, he wouldn’t need to pay for it, now would he?”

Aaron snorts, and I shift in my seat.

“Are you telling me if you were married and weren’t getting it you wouldn’t go elsewhere?”

His eyes crash into mine with an intensity that makes my heart stutter. “No. No, I fucking wouldn’t. I’d grab my wife, sit her the fuck down, and work through that shit. Whatever it took. If I was committed to one woman, I’d be committed to her and her alone. And if, in the impossible event I was tempted to look elsewhere, I certainly wouldn’t pay for it.”

“That’s ironic, don’tcha think?” I stand and storm back to the cabin.

“Shit. Dayton! I didn’t mean it that way.” His footsteps are hard against the floor as he follows me.

I lock the door behind me and lean against it. It’s more than a bit goddamn ironic coming from the guy
paying
for someone to be by his side for six weeks. Try the absolute definition of the fucking word.

“What way did you mean it?” I yell through the door. “That you don’t need to pay for it because you could easily find it for free? That you’re too
good
to pay for a hooker?”

He bangs his fist against the door, making it vibrate against my back. “Don’t call yourself that. Jesus. Open the door!”

“Fuck no.” I cross my arms over my chest, a pang of hurt tightening my chest. I’m surprised by how bad that last sentence made me feel—especially given the situation we’re in.

“Bambi, please open the door.”

“If you don’t stop calling me that, I’m going to order a figurine off Amazon and shove it up your backside.”

A muffled sound rumbles through the door and I pause. Is he laughing? He is. What a jackass.

“I’d like to see you try. Now please open the door because I’m sick of shouting at you through it.”

I push off the wooden surface and throw myself on the sofa that curves the corner. This is one big-ass boat. “No. I’m mad at you and I don’t want to speak to you right now.”

He sighs loudly, and I can imagine him running his fingers through his hair. “Okay. I tried asking nicely. Open the door before I kick the fucking thing down.”

“You wouldn’t?” That sounded more uncertain than I’d hoped for.

“I’ll kick down anything that stops me from getting to you.”

“If that was supposed to soften me up, you failed!”

Now, if someone could tell that to the flutter in my stomach, that’d be great.

“Open the door.”

“No!”

He rams into the door, once, twice, three times. The lock snaps and the door splinters with the weight of his body against it, and he nearly falls into the cabin. I narrow my eyes and fold my arms across my body.

Aaron steadies himself and brushes off his shoulder. “That was unfortunate.”

“I’m sure you can afford a new one, what with all the sex you don’t have to buy.”

“That came out wrong and you know it.”

“Actually, you know what?” I stand. “I don’t. Do you know why I keep my job a secret? Why I have a second name? My safety aside, I do it because I don’t want to live with the stigma of being a call girl. I don’t want to be viewed as the kind of person you just made me feel like.”

“Day…” He reaches for me and I step back.

“I do it because sometimes, at the end of the day, I feel dirty and cheap enough that I don’t need anyone else to weigh in on it.”

Aaron grabs me quicker than I can move away and holds me to him. “You’re not dirty and you’re certainly not cheap.”

“Only because you know my price tag,” I hiss.

“Wrong,” he says firmly. “Because you did what you had to do to survive at a time when there weren’t any other options for you. When you were scared and lost and alone.”

“And now? What’s your excuse for now?”

“Monique became the family you’d lost, and no one likes to leave their family.”

And he’s right. He’s so, so fucking right that I’d probably cry into his chest if I weren’t still so pissed at him.

“Thank you for that evaluation, Dr. Phil, but I’m a big enough girl to know that the only opinion of you that matters is your own.” I shake his hands off my arms and cross to the kitchenette area.

Why the fuck is there a mini kitchen on a boat? I yank open the cupboards until I find a glass and pour myself a glass of water, draining it in one go.

“If my opinion of you doesn’t mean anything to you, tell me why you just stormed away from me.”

He’s right behind me. My skin is buzzing despite the fact that he’s not touching me. I’m completely alive at the mere feeling of his breath brushing across my shoulder.

“I’m a proud person. I don’t like to be put down.”

“You’re a stubborn person, sweetheart.” He runs his hands down my arms to my hands, where he slowly links his fingers through mine. “Don’t be proud with me. It doesn’t wash, and neither does your not-caring bullshit. You don’t get to be as in love as we once were and not care about what the other person thinks.”

“Seven years, Aaron. Things you care about change a lot in that time.”

“I still care about you. That never changed. It never will.”

“You care about the person you knew.”

“No, I care about the beautiful, stubborn, challenging, difficult woman standing in front of me.”

“I think I should be flattered by that, but you lost me at ‘stubborn, challenging, and difficult.’”

He chuckles lowly and steps into me. My back curves into his body in response to his touch, a response I neither want nor like. Automatic reactions are dangerous territory.

He runs his nose along my neck, his breath tracing below its path, making me shiver. “I’m calling it in, sweetheart. I know I said I wouldn’t, but I am.”

“So much for not paying for it.”

“I’m not. I pay for you to accompany me to dinners and functions and all the fancy shit. I’m not paying for your body because you’ll give it to me freely.”

“You sound real sure of yourself, Mr. Stone.”

“I can’t stand seeing you and not being able to have you the way I want.”

He creeps his finger to the hem of my dress and pulls it over my head then removes his own shirt. His bare skin burns against mine, and his hands flatten on my stomach, holding me flush against him. My breathing picks up slightly when his fingertips graze my bikini line.

“Like this. Do you know how hard it is to lie in bed next to you night after night, both of us in our underwear, and not pull you to me? Do you have any fucking idea how hard it is for me to not flip you onto your back and explore your body with my fingers or devour it with my mouth? It kills me, Dayton. I want you so badly my head is clouded with thoughts of you every second of the day, and just the mention of your name makes me hard.”