The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5) (14 page)

I didn’t. My heart beat a little faster. As stupid as it was, I
wanted
him to kiss me.

Our lips met. His other hand settled on my hip, pulling me closer. I melted against him, safe and warm and happy, against my better judgment, and wanting nothing more than to keep kissing him forever.

But he released me all too soon and pulled away.

“Mm,” I said. “Why did you stop?”

“Otherwise I’m going to try to take your shirt off right now,” he said, “and I don’t imagine you’d be too happy with me.”

I rolled my eyes and tried not to smile, because it wouldn’t do me any good to encourage him. “Can you do things like that in public here?”

“It’s San Francisco,” he said. “You could probably walk around naked and the worst that would happen is some tourists might take pictures of you. People smoke weed on the bus and put their dogs on gluten-free diets. A little public sex is nothing.”

“I think you’re exaggerating,” I said. I had smelled some weed downtown, but I hadn’t seen any signs that San Francisco was a counterculture hotbed. Plenty of people in New York ate gluten-free. “People don’t really have sex in public here.”

“That’s what
you
think,” he said, and had the audacity to laugh at my disapproving look.

“I want to go see the flowers,” I said, very dignified.

“Whatever you’d like to do,” he said. He kissed my cheek and stood up, offering his hand for assistance. I hesitated before I took it, knowing that he would press his advantage, and sure enough he didn’t release me after we stood. But I didn’t shake him off. We walked toward the other end of the building, hand in hand.

I was giddy. I was a foolish child. I was going to let him do whatever he wanted, whisper sweet nothings in my ear, take me to bed. It was inevitable. He was trying to woo me, and it was working.

After looking at the flowers, we went back into the rain. “I want to take you to the Japanese tea garden,” Max said. “And then we can go get lunch and spend the rest of the day indoors.”

“Okay,” I said. “I hope I get a lot of brownie points for going along with this.”

He took my hand again and squeezed it. “You do.”

We walked together through the deserted park. A few cars passed us on the road, tires hissing across the wet asphalt. A woman jogged by, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes. But other than that we were alone. The clouds hung low and heavy, fat with rain. We climbed a path up a hill and then down the other side to a large, grassy plaza bordered by two large buildings. We walked along the road until we came to a pagoda gate, and then we passed through, sheltered briefly by the flaring roof overhead.

Max bought tickets, and we strolled slowly through the garden, following the meandering path over short bridges connecting small islands. The garden was a landscape in miniature: low hills to represent mountains, gnarled waist-high trees to represent forests. Fat, multi-colored koi swam at our feet, their round mouths breaking the surface into ripples that intersected the ripples from the falling rain. Near the wall, a man dressed head-to-toe in rubber raingear raked leaves into a pile.

Quiet lay over the garden, thick as a blanket. Aside from the rain, the only sound was our feet crunching on the gravel path. We wound our way through the garden, pausing now and again to read a placard at the base of a stone lantern, a towering orange pagoda. I could hardly believe that my life had led me to this moment, this magical time outside of time, an unasked-for second chance that I never dared to dream of. Max, somehow, had shown me the way.

There was a small teahouse near the entrance to the garden, with a covered patio and a nice view of the pond. We ordered green tea and sat at the wooden stools along an outdoor counter, periodically spattered by rain. The tea was rich and bitter, and served in pottery bowls. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but I sipped at it anyway. It was warm, at least.

“I used to come here a lot,” Max said. “When I was having a problem at work. I would bring a notebook and sit here for hours. I spent more time staring out at the garden than I spent working, but I usually solved my problem before I left.”

“It’s really nice,” I said. “Peaceful. I would probably come here a lot if I lived here.”

“I thought you might like it,” Max said, and drained his tea. “Come on. There’s one more thing I want to show you here before we leave.”

He led me behind the teahouse and to the right, along a path we hadn’t taken before. The path curved around behind a stand of trees to a secluded rock garden, raked into furrows and halfway covered in leaves. A stone bench situated across the pathway from the garden provided the perfect spot to sit and contemplate. Max rummaged around in his backpack and pulled out a microfiber towel, because he was clearly an insane person, and mopped the water from the bench. Then he sat down, and motioned for me to join him.

“I can’t believe you brought a towel with you,” I said, both disgusted and impressed, and sat beside him.

“I like to be prepared,” he said. “Beth, I want to talk to you.”

I drew in a long breath. Those words had never once in history led to anything good. “I don’t think this is really the time—”

“When else?” he asked. “You keep squirming away from me, slippery as a fish. There’s no one else here. We have nothing on our schedule. We might as well do it now.”

“Fine,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “Say whatever you want to.”

“I will,” he said. “Beth. I know you think I betrayed you, and I did. All I can say is that I’m sorry. I was a stupid kid. I’m not much smarter now, and I don’t deserve a second chance, but I’m asking you to give me one anyway. Forgive me. Put the past behind you. I want to build a future with you. And that won’t ever happen as long as you’re still angry with me.
Please
.” He raised my hand to his mouth and kissed my knuckles, again and again, cupping my hand in both of his. “Forgive me.”

“Oh, Max,” I said, my throat knotting. I didn’t know what to think, or what to say. He was right, of course: I
was
holding a grudge. But it was hard to keep my distance from him. Bitterness was exhausting. I wanted to stop fighting. I wanted to go back to what we’d had, once upon a time, our sweet and easy rapport, the way we could communicate with a single glance. He had known every part of me, every ruined and terrible and frightened part, and he had loved me anyway. I wanted that back.

I was human. That was all. I was weak. I wanted love. I craved it. And Max was offering it to me, so plainly and honestly, and I didn’t have it in me to keep turning him away.

So I said, “Okay.”

He blinked. “Okay?”

“Okay,” I said. I felt a smile spread across my face, bright and jubilant. Liberated. “I want that, too. I forgive you.”

“Beth,” he said, and held my hand to his chest, against his beating heart.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I said. “I want to—well. You know.”

He laughed. “Oh, I know.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Beth

We managed, somehow, to more or less keep our hands off each other in the cab ride back to the hotel. We even behaved ourselves in the elevator, and in the hallway outside our room.

But once that door closed behind us, all bets were off.

We stumbled into the bedroom, kissing and pulling at each other’s clothes. We were both wrapped up in bulky rain gear—not especially sexy, or easy to remove. Max fumbled with the zipper on my jacket, cursed, tugged harder, couldn’t get it to open, laughed. “You’re too well-protected,” he said.

“Poor Max, defeated by a single zipper,” I said. “You had better sit down and let me take care of this.”

“Mm, a strip-tease?” he asked, and sat on the edge of the bed. “Don’t mind if I do.”

I rolled my eyes, but I was pleased by his forthright interest, and the way he looked me up and down as I unzipped my rain jacket. I was wearing knee-high rubber boots, and I bent to tug them off, feeling awkward and self-conscious, but the look on his face when I straightened up eliminated all of my fears. My body had changed a lot since the last time he’d seen me naked, but as long as he kept looking at me like that, I didn’t have anything to worry about.

I stripped off my sweater. Underneath it I wore a button-down shirt, and I unbuttoned it from the bottom, going slowly, making him wait for the gradual reveal of my lacy bra. He watched intently. My breath came fast and shallow. As much as I wanted to already be naked and under him, the anticipation was its own reward.

“Look at you, wearing fancy lingerie for a stroll in the park,” Max said, when I finally undid the last button.

“It makes me feel pretty,” I said. I drew one hand down my belly. I wasn’t particularly embarrassed by the way I looked, but I watched his face carefully for any signs of unease or disgust. I didn’t see any. His pupils were dilated, and if the bulge in his pants was any indication, he was pretty eager to have sex with me.

Good. I decided I wouldn’t worry about it anymore.

“It makes you
look
pretty,” he said. “Jesus. Come over here and let me take off your pants.”

“I thought you wanted a strip-tease,” I said, running my thumb over the button on my jeans.

“I changed my mind,” he said. He held out one hand and crooked his fingers at me, beckoning me toward him.

I went, because I had no reason not to, and because I thought I would combust if I spent another second without feeling his hands on my skin. I’d waited for eight years; I wasn’t willing to wait any longer. He settled his hands on my hips just above the waistband of my jeans, his palms big and hot and a little callused, and I could have melted into the floor right then. I could have died happy.

“You look incredible,” he said, and leaned forward to kiss my bare belly, just above and to the right of my navel. The feeling of his lips and the light scratch of his beard stubble sent tingles running through my body. “You’re a wet dream. Holy shit, Beth. Did you always look this good?”

I laughed, my hands on his shoulders. The damp fabric of his rain jacket crinkled at my touch. “You’re laying it on a little thick.”

“No such thing,” he said. “Women love being told how glorious they are.”

“Did you read that on the back of a cereal box?” I teased. I felt giddy. My cheeks hurt from smiling. I was with him again—with him for
real
, not the fake togetherness we’d been miming so far, distrustful and suspicious.

This, now, was so much better. He kissed my belly as he unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans, and I felt every brush of his lips kindle a fire in me. I had expected to feel cautious with him, but it wasn’t like that at all. Our bodies remembered each other.

“Hmm,” he said, dipping his fingers inside my jeans and tracing along the elastic edge of my underpants. “What’s this? Matching panties? I thought women only wore matching lingerie when they expected to get laid.”

“Who says I didn’t?” I asked. “You have a lot of strange ideas about women. If things didn’t work out with you, there’s always the bellhop.”

“Big talk from a small woman,” he said. “Let’s get you out of these jeans.”

We worked together to peel my jeans down my legs. Skinny jeans made my butt look good, but they were difficult to remove gracefully. Once I was naked aside from my underwear, Max reached for the clasp of my bra.

I took a step back. I didn’t want to be the only one who was naked. “Now you,” I said.

He grinned. “My pleasure,” he said, and immediately began squirming out of his raincoat. He tossed it on the floor, and then stripped off his sweater and T-shirt and added them to the pile. I watched eagerly as his bare torso was revealed, lightly tanned and muscular. He bent down to remove his socks, and then lay on his back on the bed to shove off his pants. He wore dark boxer-briefs underneath, made of soft cotton that clung to the shape of his erection.

I blushed and looked away. How ridiculous, to be embarrassed now. It wasn’t like I had never seen his dick before.

“Shy?” he asked me, the word dripping with amusement.

I folded my arms. I needed to defend myself. “I just think it’s obscene. Men shouldn’t be allowed to wear boxer-briefs like that. It’s so—so—”

“Erotic?” he asked. “Why, Beth. I had no idea you liked my shorts that much.” He was still lying on his back. He ran one hand down his chest, over his defined abs, and cupped his hand over the bulge in his briefs. He closed his eyes for a moment, either overwhelmed by the sensation or feigning it perfectly, and then looked at me again and winked. “Want to give it a try?”

Oh, he was so full of himself. It would have served him right if I put my clothes back on and left the room, but that would be cutting off my own nose to spite my face. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to climb on that bed with him and put my hand over his and feel the heat and life of his body.

So I did it. I lay beside him on the mattress and touched his shoulders, his chest, his abs. “I don’t remember you looking like this,” I said.

“I didn’t,” he said. “I was a skinny bastard. I had a college roommate who was an amateur bodybuilder, and he got me into working out.”