ARROGANT PLAYBOY (63 page)

“The sex,” she says, her voice
a mere whisper. “It wasn’t how I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I thought it would be rough.
Cold. Painful even.” She shivers against me, pressing her warm cheek against my
bare chest. “You were gentle. It was…sweet almost.”

Shit
.

“You were a virgin. I wasn’t
going to rough you up. Anything beyond blindfolds and restraints would’ve
traumatized you.”

She pulls away. “Yeah. You’re
right. I was just reading into things. I’m sorry.”

I take her chin, pointing her
gaze in my direction until our eyes meet.

“Don’t be sorry, Bellamy. It
was a beautiful experience. You did very well. In fact, I think we can graduate
you to the next level next time.” I kiss her forehead and immediately miss her
warmth when she pulls away.

“What time is it?” She glances
around the dark room until her eyes settle on the soft glow of a bedside clock.
“It’s two in the morning. I have to go.”

Bellamy scans the room in
search of something.

“Looking for your clothes?” I
ask.

I had Mathilde fetch them from
the changing suite and bring them in here. “They’re folded on the chair behind
you.”

She dresses and I fetch a pair
of navy satin pajama bottoms and a clean white t-shirt from a nearby chest of drawers.

“Don’t you ever get lonely in
this big house all by yourself?” She gazes up to the vault in my ceiling and
back down to me.

“I’m rarely alone, Bellamy. I
have a staff of eight, friends who visit, that sort of thing.”

“I mean, like, in your bed.”
Her eyes veer past me, landing on the spot in which I’d just claimed her.

“I don’t think that way.” I
step toward her, running my hands down her arm and gently taking her by the
elbow to lead her to the hall. “I’ll walk you out. Your car should be waiting
in the porte-cochere. Are you okay to drive? You’re more than welcomed to stay
at the estate tonight if you’re too tired to drive. I have eleven guest
bedrooms, and you may have your pick of any.”

“I appreciate it.” She pulls in
a sigh, her shoulders rising and falling. “I have to get home before anyone
knows I was gone.”

“One of these days soon, you
will be staying the night.”

She offers a half-smile, and I
follow her down the winding stairs and out the French doors to the circle drive
where the Discovery is parked exactly where I told valet to leave it.

“Thank you for tonight.” She
brushes her hair behind her shoulders and wraps the strap around her small
purse before tucking it under her arm. “At the risk of sounding cliché, it was
pretty magical.”

The full moon illuminates her
creamy complexion, and her lips are begging to be kissed goodnight. But I
refuse to send the wrong message over an impulsive desire. The tension between
us needs to be severed before it gets out of control.

“I bet Randy Mutchler doesn’t
throw parties like this.”

She smirks, tucking her chin
against her chest but keeping her crystal eyes on me. “Ah, he has jokes.”

Bellamy steps away, her heels
clicking on the brick pavers, and I stand back as she climbs in and drives
away. I head inside, trudging up to my room and climbing in my cold bed,
running my palm against the indentation our bodies left against the covers.

The room was warmer with her in
it.

BELLAMY

I pull up at precisely 2:55
A.M.

Curtains are pulled and all
three houses are dark as can be.

Did I really pull that off?

I shut my engine off and climb
out of my car, shutting the door with a soft shoulder push and not a slam. My
heels come off, and I carry them as I tiptoe across the grass. With my key
ready, I insert it centimeter by centimeter until it’s all the way in, and then
I slowly twist it to the right until I hear a faint pop.

I’m in.

My heart pounds. I’m an
intruder on a mission. I lean against the door, shutting it gently, and slick
my feet across the tile foyer until I reach the bottom of the stairs. I take
the first step.

Creak
.

My breath suspends for a second
before I take the second.

Creak
.

For living in this house all my
life, I never realized just how noisy it was in the middle of the night.

I cross my fingers and take the
rest of the steps two at a time and at a snail’s pace. When I reach the top of
the steps, I count ten more to reach my bedroom. It feels like five minutes has
gone by when I finally reach my door, and the slick silver of the handle has
never felt so good in my hand.

I made it.

***

“How was your Sunday?” I bring
Dane a hot tea from the break room Monday morning though really I’m looking for
an excuse to talk to him. I hadn’t heard from him Sunday, not that I expected to,
but the tiniest part of me hoped he’d send me some kind of message.
Reassurance. Anything.

I’d never admit that to him.
He’d laugh or accuse me of being ridiculous or worse: getting emotionally
vested in something that’s not there.

“I had a lovely Sunday,
Bellamy,” he says. “Thank you for bringing me coffee.”

“It’s tea.”

“Right.” He’s focused on his
computer screen. Distracted. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” My hands
clasp across my waist, and I wait for his next command.

Dane releases his computer mouse
and leans back in his seat, his stare washing over me as his lips straighten.
“You may leave now.”

“Oh.”

“I haven’t got time to play
this morning,” he says.

“Oh. Okay.” I couldn’t hide the
disappointment in my voice if I tried. Is this what it means to get ‘bagged and
tagged?’ Is he done with me? Maybe the thrill and the chase is gone, and this
is all that remains. “But you always want to play first thing in the morning.”

“I’m going to New York this
weekend,” he says. “On business. I’d invite you, but I’m not going to have a
spare moment, and I refuse to leave you all by yourself in a big city or I’d
take you along.”

My heart sinks. I’ve always
wanted to see New York. “I understand.”

“Trying to get my presentation
completed.” He lifts a stack of handwritten notes. “I can hardly read my own
writing.”

I glance down at the yellow
legal pad covered in black scribbles. “Why don’t I take this and type it out
for you? I’d like to do some real work around here.”

I reach for the pad, but his
hand covers mine.

“Please. I’d be happy to,” I
offer once more.

The warmth of his hand leaves
mine, and he blows a loud breath past his lips.

“Fine, Bellamy. Yes. Type those
up. But I need them in a few hours. They want to see a copy of my notes before
I present, and I need to go over everything with Beckham before that.”

“Not a problem.” I press the
legal pad against my chest. “My father’s a pharmacist. I’m well-versed in
reading doctor handwriting. When I was younger, I used to help him at the
store, and he’d make it into a game for me. If I could read what they wrote,
I’d get so many points, and-”

“Adorable.” He stands up,
flattening his tie. “Two o’clock, Bellamy.”

Maybe I’m imagining this.

Yes.

I’m imagining that Dane’s
pushing me away.

He’s stressed. Preoccupied with
his impending business trip.

I slink back to my room and
pull up a Word document, typing his notes up as fast as humanly possible.

My desperation to please him is
disconcerting.

Two hours later, I email him a
beautifully formatted Word document complete with bullet points and headers.

He doesn’t respond. Not even a
“Very good, Bellamy” or so much as a “Thank you.”

I allow myself to stew for a
few minutes before marching into his office and striding up to his desk. But
when I get there, I’m not sure how I’m going to say what I want to say without
coming across like some psychotic girlfriend, which I’m pretty certain is
exactly the kind of thing Dane’s trying to avoid.

His dark brows lift. “Yes?”

“Did you get my email?”

He squints at his computer
monitor and scrolls down his screen. “Looks like I did. Yes.”

“Did you see it?”

He double clicks, his brows
rising again like he’s impressed.

Good.

He should be.

“Is it okay?” I hate that I’m
craving his approval.

“This will work.”

“I can change it if you’d
like.”

“I said it’ll work.” He clears
his throat, tilting his head to the side. “This insecure thing, it’s not a good
look for you.”

“Insecure?” I scrunch my nose.

“I knew better than to take
your virginity.” His fist clenches around a pen and then he releases it, dropping
it in the center of his desk. “I had a feeling this would happen.”

“What? What are you talking
about?”

“You told me you were okay with
it being just sex,” he says carefully. “You weren’t looking for a meaningful
experience. Those were your words.”

“And I still stand by them.”

“Then why are you flitting
around here acting like you need reassurance that I still find you completely
and utterly fuckable?”

I swallow the lump in my throat
and hold my breath. He’s spot on.

“Do you?” I ask. “Do you still think
I’m…fuckable?”

His full lips arch, flashing
the dimples I’ve yet to have the opportunity to worship the way I want to.

“Yes, Bellamy. Even more so.”
He rises and walks around his desk, perching on the ledge in front of me. “I
told you, I’m busy today. I don’t have time to play. I’m insulted you’d take
that so personally. You should know by now I’m a man of my word.”

“Yes, I’m sorry.” Relief fills
me from head to toe in the form of warm tingles.

“I have an assignment for you
today.” He reaches back, pulling his drawer and sliding out a small,
caramel-colored notebook wrapped in leather and hands it to me. “This notebook,
by the time you’re finished, will contain your deepest, darkest, wildest sexual
fantasy. The one you’re afraid to tell anyone. The one that scares you. You’re
going to write it down for me. Every last detail.”

My face burns at the thought.
“I don’t even know what that is. I don’t think I have any fantasies…”

“Bullshit.” He folds his arms.
“Everyone has fantasies. Yours are probably so deep and so repressed it’s going
to take a little time before you find them. But they’re there. Trust me. The
thing you want most, the thing that heats you from the inside out and pushes
every last button you have, you’re going to share that with me. And your
reward, Bellamy? Is that I’m going to make it come true.”

The dimples of the soft leather
cover tickle my palms, and I flip the empty notebook open, fanning the pages.

“I don’t know if I can do this.
Not that I don’t want to. I’ve just never–”

“I won’t give you an
unreasonable due date,” he interrupts. “Set it aside. Think about it. Dig deep
into the darkest corners of your mind. A day will come when I’ll ask you for
this notebook, and I’ll know if you just wrote some bullshit, plagiarized
fantasy.”

I nod, agreeing but racking my
empty mind for some kind of a sign that I even have a deep, dark fantasy.

“This is an exercise in both
trust and submission,” he says. “Trust me with this, submit to my request, and
you’ll be rewarded.”

***

Dane stays busy the rest of
Monday. Tuesday I see him once in the morning and again in the afternoon in
passing. He’s colder than before, and I don’t care what he says, I’m blaming it
on Saturday night.

I spent most of Wednesday in a
daze, avoiding him in order to avoid the sting of him avoiding me.

My notebook sits empty, the
pages naked as the day I first saw them. It’s tucked in my top drawer at work,
waiting for inspiration to strike.

Wednesday night I head to Bible
study and walk my younger siblings to their respective classrooms. Here I’m
just the “nanny,” and they’re just children from my neighborhood. That’s what
I’m supposed to say if anyone asks why we always come together. Most of the
time people leave us alone. They all think we’re LDS here, obviously, since it’s
an LDS church.

By the time I head to the
chapel for the adult study group, I catch the back of a blue checked shirt that
can only belong to one person.

“Cortland,” I yell. “Wait up.”

It’s been over a week now since
I last heard from him, and I haven’t seen him since two Saturdays ago. I’m not
complaining, and I’m definitely not trying to rock the boat, but my ego is
feeling dangerously curious for reasons even my mind can’t fully comprehend
right now.

He turns around. We make eye
contact. He keeps going.

“Hey.” I walk faster, grabbing
the back of his shirt. “What’s going on?”

Cortland turns to face me,
jutting his lips together and shrugging his shoulders.

“You’re not going to talk to
me?”

He shakes his head.

“Did you meet someone else?”

He lifts a brow like he wants
me to think he did and then shakes his head again.

“Can you just talk to me? I’m
not mad. I’m just curious. You were obsessed with me, and then you went radio
silent.”

Cort’s hands fly in the air in
protest, and just when I’m positive I’m going to get a word out of him, he
walks backward into the temple, disappearing behind a set of stained glass
windows.

The entire thing has Dane
written all over it.

There’s no other explanation.

I’d love nothing more than to
thank him first thing in the morning, but apparently I’ve had a bad case of the
plague all week.

With my Bible tucked neatly
under my arm, I head into the temple, securing a spot in the far back, away
from my former suitor, and spend the entirety of the hour with one thing on my
mind.

No, one man.

Dane.