Let It Snow (68 page)

Her voice caught at the end, and she grimaced. If she were any more pathetic her grandmamma would probably crawl out of her burial vault, shamble across town, and smack some sense into her.

She risked a glance up in time to see Mr. Beaudelaire’s expression transition from its usual blank to a pained one. She was staring astounded at his parted lips when Max put himself between her gaze and Mr. Beaudelaire’s desk. “In love with me?” His voice dripped with incredulity, and forehead furrowed, but then—as if a revelation had suddenly been bestowed on him—his eyes darkened with anger. “You do mean
me
, right, G? Or are you fucking someone else?”

She had one mind not to answer.
How dare he act all possessive when he’s probably had his dick in half the kink-inclined women in the parish?

She crossed her legs, squared her shoulders, and lifted her hand to study her cuticles. No way was she going to let him spin her out of control again.

“Yes, Max, I’m talking about you. Congratulations. I love you.” She buffed her nails against her shirt. “Although, on days like today, I wish I could turn it off.”

Max’s mouth hung open for a few long beats before he shook his head and growled at her. “You tell me nearly every goddamned time you see me that you hate me, and that
that’s
why the sex is so good.”

She took a deep breath and let it sputter back out through her lips.
Yeah, that sounds like something I would say.

“Well, it would seem this is more than just a personnel issue for Ms. Gibson to shake out,” Mr. Beaudelaire said. He leaned sideways so Giselle could see him around Max’s big body. “Perhaps you’d like to claim a room and work things out upstairs. We can speak later when…
tensions
have ebbed.”

“I think that sounds like a super fucking idea,” Max said.

“Max, are you smoking crack? Did you hear what I said? The
can’t be with you
part?”

Ugh
.

She scooted her chair to the right and fixed Mr. Beaudelaire in her stare. “What I’ve been trying to tell you is that the missing rings were my fault. Not just that, but also, the broken doors in that room on the white wing and the shredded curtains—I did that last night. And the ice sculpture.” She closed her eyes and groaned.
Fuck…the dickless ice sculpture.
He was going to think she was deranged. Maybe she
was
.

“What about the ice sculpture, Miss Burke? And which one?”

“The one near the ballroom,” she said softly. “One moment I was wondering how many people had checked in so far because I heard someone wailing in one of the VIP rooms as I walked back toward the kitchen, and the next moment, I opened my eyes and there was a ice pecker in my hand and eight fingers on the floor.”

“Wailing?” He sat back. The wrinkles of his forehead deepened and he canted his head to the side. “That’s…interesting. So, you don’t remember arriving at the sculpture?”

“It’s hard to explain.” Even after years of recognizing the episodes, she hadn’t gotten any better at describing them. “Have you ever gotten yourself home from work, but didn’t remember leaving it?”

“I believe that happens to most people on occasion.”

“It happens to me a lot. I lose time. Usually, I’m okay, but sometimes…” Sometimes, she did stupid shit and had to pay the piper for it. She knew that element of her personality existed—that she lashed out when she was angry and upset. When she was wakeful, she was conscious of it. Tamped it down. She couldn’t control what she did when she wasn’t in the driver’s seat, though.

She smoothed nonexistent creases from her skirt. “Not that this makes it any better, but it happens to other people in my family, too. My mother is like this. So was my grandmother. We just lose time.”

“Do you have recollection of shredding the curtains and defacing the other things?”

“It’s there, but it’s in pieces.” She touched the side of her head and shook it. “I just—”

A gentle knock made them all face the door.

“Yes?” Mr. Beaudelaire said in a tight voice. Odd as hell for a man she’d never seen flustered.

Ms. Gibson poked her impeccably styled head in, scanned the room’s inhabitants, and stepped through the doorway. “Excuse me for interrupting, but I wanted to give you a status report. Should I come back?”

Max took the seat beside Giselle again, but seemed no less irritated. He kept his disbelieving stare on her.

They were overdue for a very uncomfortable conversation, and she doubted he’d let her avoid it for much longer.

Add another dark spot to this already fucked-up day.

“No,” Mr. Beaudelaire said to Ms. Gibson. “It’s good that you’re here. What’s the occupancy for tonight?”

“Nearly one hundred percent.”

“So, there is a room available?”

“I would guess one room
exactly
. May I ask why?”

Mr. Beaudelaire leaned his elbows on his desktop and tapped his fingers together. “Hold it for Mr. Fletcher, please. He neglected to book a room for the event.”

“I’ll arrange that. Is there anything else?”

“Yes. Pull someone from catering to run room service orders today and tomorrow. Ms. Burke will be unavailable.”

Ms. Gibson opened her mouth as if to rebut, but apparently changed her mind after looking down at Max. His agitation would have been evident to a blind man.

“I’ll also need the itemized invoices from the curtain replacements and the door repair.”

“I can get you those. They’ve already been paid and filed, although the carpenter is still working on the door.”

“That’s fine, and thank you for handling them so efficiently. I’ll still need them. Before you go, could I trouble you for one more thing, Ms. Gibson?”

Her nod was slow. Giselle obviously wasn’t the only one perplexed by the man’s behavior.

He pushed back from his desk and picked up his winter white suit coat from the credenza. He shrugged into it and buttoned it slowly. “Did I ever tell you about the wailing ghost?”

Ms. Gibson’s eyes widened for a brief moment—not too quickly for Giselle to have missed, it though. “The
ghost
?”

“Yes. In the library, there’s a volume containing the history of The Beaudelaire. There’s a chapter about each of our ghosts, and trust me, there are several. I believe the one I’m thinking of is profiled in chapter four or five. Read it.”

“I will certainly do that when I get the chance, but may I ask how that’s relevant?”

“I believe the ghost is a guest this weekend.”

“I see.” Ms. Gibson did that slow nod again. “And how do you know about this…
guest
?”

He straightened his signet ring. “Humor me.”

“Certainly. Um, is there…anyone you’d like me to call about that? A priest, or psychic, or…someone?”

“You may think this is in jest, Ms. Gibson, but New Orleans is a city of ghosts. Perhaps you haven’t lived here long enough to have encountered one. I don’t wish to be rid of ours. Only for you to be aware of her tricks. The legend is that she was a woman scorned. She pops up every now and then to remind us.”

He left his office.

Ms. Gibson looked beseechingly at Giselle and Max, but they gave her nothing. There were no words. “I’ll…see about that room for you,” she said to Max, and left.

Giselle shook her head. “Seems like I’m not the only person who needs sleep. Apparently, Mr. Beaudelaire is running on fumes, too. I’m surprised he didn’t fire me. Maybe he forgot.”

She stood, intending to head to the break room to get her bag and go home, but Max wouldn’t let her pass.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“There’s nothing to talk about.” She tried to ease around him, but he pulled her in close and tilted her chin up.

“Eyes up here.”

Shit.
She locked her gaze onto his. He generally didn’t try that Dom shit in the real world, but he’d guessed right that she’d respond to it. Her participation in his kinky schemes may have always been casual, but he’d somehow managed to train her anyway.

“Good girl. Now, unless you have no memory of the conversation that just occurred—and your memory is something else we need to talk about, by the way—then you’re a liar. You don’t want to lie to me, do you, G?” Those blue-green eyes said,
go ahead and lie and I’ll know it
.

“No.”

“Then upstairs we go. You going to be nice?”

“No.”
And that’s not a lie, either.
After twelve years, he should have known whom he was dealing with.

“So, that’s the game we’re playing, huh?” He grazed his thumb over the line of her jaw and studied her intently.

She knew that scrutinizing look. He had a plan bubbling in that dark mind of his, and experience had taught her that she’d have the most fun if she just held on for the ride and let Max be Max.

That didn’t mean she had to make it easy, though. After all, she wasn’t his submissive. He obviously needed a reminder of that.

Max grabbed the crook of Giselle’s arm before she could scamper out of Henri’s office. She’d been avoiding confrontation with him for longer than he cared to put a precise figure on, and he was through with her dodging him. Giselle Burke wasn’t the kind of woman who’d hide from tough conversations. For fuck’s sake, she’d just confessed to a string of pretty damning petty crimes around The Beaudelaire and was prepared to take her lumps. But she couldn’t pick up a phone? Face him for an adult conversation?

Fuck that. She was the reason he’d become a Dom in the first place—so he could learn to navigate her brand of fierceness instead of being bowled over by it like he had been when they were eighteen. Like hell if she was going to shake him off so easily.

“You can’t solve things by running,” he said.

She squirmed in his grasp, but he held firm and unyielding. Growling, she plucked at the knuckles on every finger on his left hand. With her sharp nails, it hurt in the way bee stings hurt, but he didn’t let go. That’d be giving her tacit permission to leave, and fuck that, too. Maybe she wouldn’t submit to him, but at the very least, she was going to listen to him talk.

He pulled her through the hallway, following in Ms. Gibson’s footsteps to the front desk.

Giselle resisted him all the while, sometimes digging her heels in and standing still, other times yanking her arm back.

“Nice try,” he said through clenched teeth. He outweighed her by at least fifty pounds and had the advantage of height. Never before had he seen fit to
handle
her, but maybe that’d been his mistake all along. Maybe she’d needed it and their history had blinded him to it.

Ms. Gibson held out the room when they made it to the front desk. She eyed Giselle, and Max didn’t need to be a psychic to know what was churning through the upright woman’s mind. She ran a tight ship, and technically, Giselle being with him at The Beaudelaire was breaking one of the Den of Sin’s longstanding rules:
don’t fuck the guests
.

What she hadn’t known was that, technically, Max was a contractor for The Beaudelaire with guest privileges. She wouldn’t have gotten in trouble, but he liked her a little bit stressed when they played. It made bringing her to release so much more fulfilling.

“The only room open at the moment is on the white level,” Ms. Gibson said. “But, I can still get you a key to a BDSM suite. You just can’t sleep in it.”

He loosened his grip on Giselle’s arm, but before she could worm away, pressed her against the counter, and planted one palm on either side of her. He tucked his chin over her shoulder, and grinned at her frustrated sigh.

“Don’t need it,” he said. “If I need some toys, I’ll call down.” He ground his crotch against Giselle’s bodacious backside and easily dodged the resultant
attempted
kick to his shin. She wanted to play rough? So be it.

He pocketed the key and looped his arm around Giselle’s. After a couple of tugs, he got her moving towards the lesser-used south staircase.

“I should kill you,” she muttered.

“Why be ashamed
now
? So what if the staff knows we’re fucking. Big deal.”

“It is a big deal, because you and I both knew it was against the rules.”

“I would have told you about the loophole if only you’d been a little sweeter.”

She turned on him at the stair landing, hands balled into tight fists at her sides, and screamed wordlessly.

He palmed her ass and pulled her hard against him. Her breath caught and eyes widened as he wrapped her ponytail around his fist and tugged back her head.

A pair of guests stepped carefully around them, trying, but failing, to mask their curiosity. He kept his gaze locked on Giselle’s wide brown eyes and focused on the sound of her ragged breaths.

When he made no further moves, the looky-loos went on their way.

He moved Giselle against the wall with his hand still tangled in her hair, and dragged his free hand up her side. He fisted the bottom of her skirt and yanked it up to her hips. Palming her ass, he cursed her hosiery. If it weren’t for that one obstacle, he may very well fuck her right there in the landing, and obviously she needed it.

“Maybe I’ve always been too gentle with you,” he whispered. “Maybe you took that for granted and I let you get away with behavior I wouldn’t have allowed from anyone else.”

“I’m not one of your submissives, Max.”

“You keep telling me that, but I’m starting to wonder if the lady doth protest too much.” He eased his hand beneath her pantyhose elastic and skimmed his fingers down the valley between her cheeks.

Her ass flexed under his touch as if her body was preparing to flee.

He wouldn’t let her flee. Knew she didn’t really want to, even if she said she did. He’d let her lie to him in the past. He’d let her play the game because he wasn’t certain if Giselle was the kind of woman he wanted to tame. He liked her wild and uninhibited, but far too often, she was hands-off. She put him at arm’s length to keep herself from getting attached, and that wasn’t fair. Not to him, not to her.

He wasn’t going to let her get away with that anymore.