Three Hard Lessons (10 page)

“Wow,” was all Logan could get out, his gaze drifting from Dominic to me. The longer he considered it, though, the more he seemed to like the idea. A pleasant smile filled his face. “That’s going to be interesting.”

“Yeah,” Dominic said.

“It’s just two weeks.” I tore off a piece of garlic bread and set it on my plate, ignoring Evie’s wide stare from across the table.

“Is he paying for it?” she asked quietly.

I smirked. “Just the trip.”

On the car ride to my place, Dominic gave me his go-to ‘Can I be honest?’ line.

“I’m not offering this trip,” he said, “because I have plans of . . . keeping your services on retainer.”

While we were stopped at a light, I faked shock. “You won’t be paying for this pussy again?” He struggled to find words, but I laughed lightly. “Keep in mind, free pussy usually costs more.”

Turned out it cost just a little less. My last minute business class ticket came in at nine grand. He’d pulled out his credit card and typed those numbers in like it was nothing.

Evie pulled me aside as we finished in the bathroom.

“What is happening?” Her expression was nervous. “You want this?”

“Go to a kick-ass city, all expenses paid, with a guy who’s sexy as fuck? Yeah, I want this.”

“Have you thought about it seriously?” Her face skewed into an unreadable look. “I don’t really know him all that well, but Logan says he’s a good guy. But he’s not . . . like you.”

I gave her a plain look, silently asking her to get to the point.

“He’s going to get attached. Logan said he’s lonely. You’re going to hurt him – not on purpose, but it’s going to happen.”

She didn’t say it mean. We’d known each other for a while now. She, like Joseph, knew I didn’t do attachments. But I knew something about Dominic both she and Logan didn’t. He’d never been in love. It stood to reason he could survive two weeks with me. He was going to be at work a large percentage of the time I was there anyway.

“I’ve made it clear that’s not allowed to happen.” Not technically true yet, but I had a thirteen-hour flight to explain it.

Her look was skeptical, but I was confident. I was good looking, but really. My personality was an acquired taste, and few found it all that appealing. The chances of that happening were slim.

chapter

NINE

After dinner we hit the clubs with more of Logan and Dominic’s friends. He’d spent most of the evening discussing inside jokes with them and catching up, and Evie and I talked wedding.

At one point I went to the bar to get another cosmo, and a hand touched my shoulder.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

The guy looked like a younger version of Paul Rudd. Kind of goofy, but friendly cute. I’m always interested when a guy like this hits on me. I like the confidence and ambition. He knows, solely based on looks, I’m probably out of his league. But maybe he also knows most guys are too intimidated to hit on me. So I should have liked this guy right away because he’s not a pussy.

But something foreign sprung up in me instead of my usual flirting smile. A shocking response, “Oh, thanks, but I’m here with someone.”

Again, something was definitely wrong with me. Why did I turn down a free drink? I wasn’t taken.

The guy nodded and he tried not to appear disappointed, but a look flashed in his eyes. Rejection. I latched a hand on his arm.

“I’m not blowing you off,” I said. He had the balls to try, and I didn’t want him to be discouraged in the future. I let my gaze linger over him with a bit of exaggerated hunger. “Yesterday I would have definitely said yes.”

He blinked, stunned. A faint, teasing smile rose on his face. “Well, where were you yesterday then?” When he left and a new cosmo appeared on the bar, I returned to the table. Dominic’s questioning gaze was locked on me.

“Friend of yours?”

Oh, shit. That wasn’t a questioning look in his eyes. That was possessiveness. Which should have made me angry, but instead, it sort of turned me on. He’d spent serious bank on me. I was okay with him demanding a little loyalty.

“No, just a guy who thought I looked thirsty.”

“Yeah, he looked real
concerned
about you.”

Conversation at the table ceased at Dominic’s dark tone and every head swiveled toward me. Evie’s eyes went so wide they were almost completely white. She expected me to raise hell at this.

Instead I calmly took a sip of my drink, enjoying the bite of the vodka. “You’re going to have to do something about that tone, Mr. Ward, or you won’t be enjoying my company for very long.”

He pushed back from the table and stood, looming over me. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” He gestured to the back.

I slammed my drink and followed him toward the bathrooms, weaving my way through the throng of people until we were past them and in a quiet, dark corner of the deserted game room, wedged between two pinball machines that had seen less action than Dominic had in the last year.

He pressed me up against the wood paneled wall and brought his face in close so I could hear his rough voice over the loud, jovial bar atmosphere in the next room over.

“This ass is mine for the next two weeks. I thought I made that clear.”

There was a rush of heat between my legs. I looped a hand behind his neck and yanked him in to my kiss. Yeah. My kiss. The more dominating he got, the more I responded to it.

“You made it crystal clear. But let me make something clear, Dominic. Don’t get attached to me.” I took one of his hands and shoved it between my legs. “Or this. Two weeks, and I’m moving on.”

The hand massaged me through the skinny jeans I was wearing. He took one of my hands and put it on his crotch, where he was already half-hard.

“Better not get attached to this, then.”

Normally over-the-clothes bullshit wouldn’t do a thing for me, but I fucking loved being an exhibitionist. The idea of someone catching us groping each other back here was arousing. I used both hands to undo his belt buckle and drop his zipper so I could wrap my hands around his cock, which was now at full attention.

To my delight, he didn’t protest this new level of naughtiness. I was against the wall, between the two pinball machines, and his large back was to the door, blocking the view of anyone who might come in.

“Yeah,” he said, his gaze watching my hands stroke him. “Harder.”

He blew out a breath through his teeth when I did as told, and his hand went to undo my pants, but I shifted away. “Uh, uh. This ass isn’t officially yours until we’re over international water. Right now,” I tightened my grip further, “you’re mine.”

Heat flashed in his eyes, and he allowed it. He set his hands on the glass tops of the machines at our sides and submitted to me. Oh, god. It was so hot.

Switch, I believe is the term. Even though I worked at a BDSM club for about a year, I still felt new to the lifestyle. I’d never gotten into a real relationship or role with a partner, other than the occasional scene with Joseph. But I knew enough to know what I was. Sometimes I wanted the control, and sometimes I want to surrender it. Tonight, I was the top.

I pumped faster on the pulsing cock in my hands, spreading the drops of wetness around when he started to get close. In the dimly lit game room, his strikingly blue eyes looked less like the deep ocean and more like shallow, sandy waters.

“Are you going to come for me?” I demanded.

Alarm filled his face. “In your hands?”

“Worried you’ll make a mess?” I knelt before him and tugged the sides of his open fly out of my way.

“You’re going to blow me right here?” He glanced around.

Yeah, I was. I licked the crown of his cock and held it steady as he twitched in reaction. I closed my mouth around him and sank down, taking him as deep as I could. The power this gave me, the command over him, I got drunk off of it in an instant. I slipped him between my tight lips. My tongue did somersaults. I sucked as hard as I could and steadied one hand on his hip, controlling the pace.

“You dirty, little slut. You like the way that cock tastes?”

I froze, the filthy talk from him was so unexpected I momentarily forgot what I was doing. I looked up.

His face was red. “I’ve watched way too much porn in the last year. I’ll be quiet.”

I pulled back off of him, keeping my grip firm around the base. “No, don’t fucking do that.” My breathing was rapid and I could feel my soaked panties clinging to me. “You’re making me so wet. I love the way you taste.” I leaned back and swirled my tongue over his saliva-drenched flesh. “I’ve been wanting to suck you off all damn day.”

I attacked him and he groaned with pleasure. Hands threaded into my hair and held my head still as he battled me for control to build a tempo, sawing his cock in and out of my mouth. Rough and unapologetic, just the way I like it. But I pushed his hands away and paused.

“Put them back on the glass. No touching.”

He must have done as instructed because I heard skin slap down on the glass.

I pumped him twice more and scraped him with my teeth on the last pass. “Are you going to come for me, Dominic? I don’t like waiting.”

“Stop teasing me and I fucking will.” The gravel voice was almost threatening and nuclear hot.

I used my hands. One formed a tight circle that followed my lips as they slid up and down, and the other hand cupped him. He was panting for air above me. He was so close. I held him there on the brink for a moment, slowing my rapid tempo down and the noise he made was like anguish.

Then I surged forward and pushed him through to the other side of his pleasure.

“Fuck,” he whispered. “Here it comes. Take it.”

I did, gladly. The thick, hot liquid leaped into my mouth as he shuddered and groaned, and the thick slab of flesh pulsed on my tongue, flexing with every spurt until there was nothing left.

I swallowed him down and gave him a moment to rest without movement. Truthfully, I needed a moment to catch my breath. I don’t think I’d ever been this turned on from giving head in my life. I was a mess. He fell out of my mouth and I helped him zip, and then stood back up on my heels. With them on, I wasn’t much shorter than him, which I liked.

“Are you still thirsty, or did I take care of that for you?”

My mouth hung open at his crude statement but slowly I twisted it into a smile. “You say the most shocking things sometimes. It’d help if you weren’t blushing like a schoolgirl when you did it.”

A hand settled in the small of my back and he leaned in, tipping his forehead against mine. “You have some weird effect over me.”

My pulse raced at this confession, and faster still when he closed the last inch of distance between our lips and brought them together. Sparks. Tingles. All the mushy stuff I thought I was supposed to have felt the first time I’d kissed a boy growing up, but didn’t. Why now? Why with him? As the kiss deepened, his effect over me did too. My legs went weak.

“I kind of like the Payton effect,” he whispered.

Two weeks of this could be dangerous, and I was no longer sure for which one of us.

The downside to the Jag was that I usually wound up the DD. It was close to two in the morning when Dominic, Logan, and Evie got in and I drove them to Dominic’s apartment that he leased to Logan. After we said our goodbyes, I drove my sexy travel companion to his hotel and pulled in front of the door.

“I don’t think the valet’s on this late,” he said.

“I’m not staying tonight.”

The aqua eyes focus on me with confusion. “Why not?”

Because I needed to get my head on about this. But I told him the other reason. “Because if I go upstairs with you, you’re going to want to go slow and I want to get some sleep tonight.”

“We don’t have to fool around, we could just sleep.”

My grip tightened on the steering wheel. “I don’t do that, remember?”

His triumphant look was annoying. He thought he could get me to disregard that rule again easily, but he was mistaken. I was deadly serious. I wanted to sleep in my own bed tonight. I was exhausted. His gaze left mine and drifted to the clock in the dash and disappointment washed over him.