Nights With Parker (11 page)

“Oh, God.” I moan. The sensations building in the pit of my stomach are indescribable. I don’t know how he does this to me. How he makes me forget everything except how good he is at turning my body against me. I’m so close to the edge when he pulls his fingers out of me, again running his finger through my folds as my breathing slows. When he’s satisfied that I’ve fully recovered from my nearly there experience, he once again begins circling my clit, gently rubbing it and building me up again. But this time, he moves with an increased sense of urgency.

“Oliver.” I whimper, afraid that my knees are about to buckle. “Please. I’m going to fall.”

He ignores my plea, tautening his hold on me and increasing his rhythm.

“I’ve got you,” he says, and I know he means it. I’m starting to lose all control as he’s relentlessly working my clit. Whispering in my ear, he tells me that I sound so good and how he wants to hear me come for him. At the sound of his words, I fall over the edge, crying out his name while my body convulses.

“That’s it, baby,” I vaguely hear him say while I breathe through the aftershocks of my orgasm. He gently removes his hand from my now drenched pussy and slides the material of my dress back into place. He never lets go of me, not even for a second. He turns me in his arms and tugs my body against him. My body stiffens when I feel his hardness against my belly, but I relax as he splays a hand along the small of my back.

“Hi,” he whispers, softly brushing his lips along my jaw. I want to return the greeting, but his lips make me forget what I was going to say. There’s no time for me to recover when he crushes his mouth over mine. I hesitate, I swear I try to pull away, but it’s no use. The battle is lost when his tongue tangles with mine, not because he overpowers me, but because I completely surrender, angling my head so he can take the kiss deeper.

My hands explore his chest, loving the feel of him and not caring that this is wrong on so many levels. Not caring that this man has basically blackmailed me into being his glorified whore.

So wrong …

I’m dazed and sated by the time he finally breaks the kiss, looking at me through liquid eyes. A strange sense of warmth washes over me, but I still manage to detach my hands from their comfortable resting place.

“I ordered dinner. Are you hungry?” he asks me, and I notice the table set for dinner in the corner of the room. Turning my attention back to Oliver and staring at him with obvious confusion in my eyes, I feel like I’ve entered some sort of alternate universe.

“You ordered dinner?”

“Well, I have to eat, and I assumed that you might not have eaten yet,” he says, placing a hand on the small of my back and leading me over to the table. He holds out a chair for me and pushes it in as I take my seat. My eyes never leave him as I watch him sit in the chair across from me. I thought he’d have me in bed by now after how the evening started, but astonishingly, I was wrong. He wants to feed me. He reaches over and pulls the cover off my plate.

“Butternut squash ravioli with spinach, grape tomatoes, and toasted pine nuts.”

I look from my plate to him, again unable to hide my confusion.

“I ordered steak if you’d rather have that. I just presumed you’d like pasta.”

“I-It’s fine. It looks great.” I stutter a thank you before placing a napkin over my lap and picking up my fork. I avoid making eye contact, and instead, I concentrate on the meal he’s so accurately picked out for me. I stab a piece of ravioli with my fork, and I can feel his eyes on me as I take a bite. It’s unnerving.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I truly am sorry for the way things happened the other night.”

“Why are you sorry?” I murmur, still avoiding eye contact. “You didn’t know. I should have said something.”

I place all the blame on myself, and I hate that I do that. I should be blaming him for his part too, but at this point, keeping the peace is my main priority. Besides, he’s already apologized twice, so I’m pretty sure he’s accepted his part in this.

“Yes, you should have, but given the situation, I can see why you didn’t. I didn’t exactly make it easy for you to trust me.”

“Is that what this dinner is? An apology?”

“It’s just dinner.” He says it casually, and I almost believe him, but I’m quickly learning that nothing about Oliver is what it seems. There’s always something else, something more, an ulterior motive. Even still, that insane attraction I feel toward him won’t go away, and with the way he started the evening, I’m not sure it ever will. I put my fork down, place my hands on my lap, and finally make eye contact.

“Do you think we can just start over? Forget about what happened the other night and move on?”

“Kind of a hard night to forget,” he comments with a smirk that seriously does
something
to me. “But we can try.”

His voice is smooth and rich, and it goes through me like a drink of whiskey, warming me from the inside. Doing my best to ignore what I’m feeling, I drop my gaze back to the plate, pick up my fork, and continue to eat my meal. He allows this, even though I can tell he’d like to stay on the topic of conversation. He takes my plate once I’ve finished my meal and places it on a nearby tray. I thank him and watch his eyes land on me. My heart rate speeds up when he walks toward me, stopping only a few feet away.

“Are you up for taking a walk?” he asks quietly. Again, he throws me for a loop. He’s asking me to take a walk when he probably should be leading me to the bed and stripping me out of my dress. I mean, that’s what I’m here for, isn’t it?

I arch a brow in confusion. “You want to take a walk?”

“Yeah, it’s a nice night. I haven’t really gotten to explore the town since we went on our tour.”

I sit there and stare at him for a moment, wondering what’s going on in his head. Why would he lead me out of his hotel room when he has me conveniently here? His behavior doesn’t make sense, but rather than spend any more time trying to decipher what his motives might be, I agree to take a walk with him. We walk together out of the room, and I try not to tense or think too much about how my entire body tingles when he grabs my hand. He leads me onto the empty elevator, and though there’s plenty of room to spread out, he keeps me close. Very close.

A warm breeze blows the hair off my shoulder as we walk out into the clear night. The streets are unusually quiet, and he keeps hold of me as we stroll down the path, heading closer to the riverfront.

“You’ll be happy to know that your mother is getting along nicely. She’s fitting in and seems to be doing a good job. A definite improvement from the previous employee,” he says, breaking into my thoughts.

“Good. She really likes it; she’s happy.” It’s true. I haven't seen her this happy since before my dad died. Back when we didn’t have to worry so much about where the next mortgage payment was coming from. Things were a lot easier then, a lot simpler; it almost seems like a lifetime ago. It makes me sad to think about it now … Memories that should make me feel happy are just bittersweet.

“How’s the hotel coming along?” I ask trying to shake the hint of melancholy that has crept in. He gives my hand a squeeze and looks down at me with the faintest hint of a teasing smile.

“Miss Sims, am I actually supposed to believe that you care about my work?”

“Believe what you want,” I reply with more sass than normal.

“All right, then I believe you do care. Maybe just a little bit.”

Oh God, is he flirting with me? Would Oliver actually know how to flirt? I doubt the word even exists in his vocabulary.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I say, hoping that he can’t see the unwanted smile on my face.

“Right.” He gives me a gentle bump with his shoulder, and I wish he would stop being so unlike the Oliver I’ve come to know. More importantly, I wish he would stop touching me so maybe my body would stop betraying me every single time.

“Do you want to stop for a drink?” he asks, the cocky grin still on his face.

“I’m not really in a drinking mood.” Because I can barely keep my wits around him when I’m sober. Oliver and alcohol are absolutely not a good combination for me.

“Yeah. Me neither. I’m kind of in a dessert mood, I think.”

Yeah, I wonder what kind of “dessert” he has in mind. Is that his way of telling me he wants to take me back to his room and screw my brains out? I find myself starting to tense up again, while at the same time feeling stupid and mad at myself for buying into his nice act, when he breaks into my inner tirade.

“Riley?”

“What?” I clip, as we come to a stop because he’s come to stand in front of me.

“I asked if you wanted ice cream.”

And now, I feel like a jerk for jumping to conclusions when he actually did just want dessert. I do my best to school my features and to keep the blush of embarrassment from creeping up to my cheeks. Forcing my best smile, I look up at him and reply.

“Sure, ice cream would be great.”

He nods and smirks at me as if he knows what I was just thinking and finds it amusing. I’m unwittingly providing all sorts of entertainment for him tonight. I look away from him, focusing instead on his shirt, which, by the way, does amazing things for his chest. With a gentle tug, he pulls us into motion, leading us inside the ice-cream shop where we both order cones. We stroll down the riverfront in companionable silence, and I can’t help but think that this feels more like a date than it should. Further proof that Oliver exists solely to mess with my head.

“I think it’s going to be really beautiful.”

“What?” I question, feeling like I’ve just missed something.

“You asked earlier about the hotel. I think it’s going to turn out really well. It’s coming along nicely.”

“When will it be done?”

“Not soon enough,” he mutters with a hint of contempt, and I don’t know why, but it hurts me. I know. Deep down, I know that I mean nothing to him, that finishing this job and going back to New York are the most important things to him, but it still hurts to have it confirmed.

“Is it that horrible for you here?” I ask quietly, trying to disguise any emotion that may be lingering in my tone.

“No.” He responds immediately, coming to a stop and pulling me down to sit next to him on an empty bench. “I didn’t mean it like that, Riley.”

“It’s okay; you don’t need to explain anything to me.”

“What I meant,” he begins, “is that it’s not soon enough for my family. My father and brother wanted me in and out of Savannah and onto the next project in a matter of weeks. Anything outside of that timeframe is unacceptable to them, but they don’t realize what this job is like. They don’t actually see the shitholes that they send me to, or the extent of the work that has to be done to get them up to standard. It’s a high-pressure, thankless job.”

His openness and honesty floor me. Having him sit here next to me and tell me something real—share something about his life, his work, his family that obviously bothers him—is unexpected. But hearing him talk about how they make him feel makes me sad for him. I’m sad that he doesn’t have the support he needs from the people who should give it unconditionally.

“Have you talked to them about it? Showed them what it takes to do your job?”

“They don’t care.” He shakes his head at me. “They only see the bottom line, Riley. The money they could be making by charging Parker Hotel prices but aren’t because I haven’t done my job fast enough.”

I cross my leg in his direction, causing our knees to brush. Any onlooker would think that we were just a normal couple out for a stroll.

“Well, you can’t make miracles happen. It takes a lot of work to remodel an entire hotel.”

“Yeah,”—he shrugs his shoulders—“
you
tell them that.”

“How’d you end up doing this job anyway?”

“My brother is next in line to take over the family business that was never mine to have. I could have been VP of something or another, but the thought of sitting in an office in New York doing some mundane job every day held no appeal to me. At least, this way I get to travel, and the added bonus is that I get away from the family drama.”

“Well, they sound awful, and that’s saying something because you’re already pretty awful.” I smirk, trying to lighten the mood.

“Ohhh, really?” he says with a chuckle. “I’m awful, huh?”

“Little bit.”

“Yeah,” he agrees with a tug of my hair. “I guess I have been pretty awful to you.”

I stare into his eyes, and for a moment, I think that it would be so easy to get lost in them forever. Awful or not, there’s just something about him.

“I’ll try not to be so awful from now on,” he says, just as his lips connect with mine and he begins to kiss me soft, slow, and sensually. It catches me off guard, but it takes no time at all for me to respond to him. It might very well be the best kiss I’ve ever had. Before long, he pulls away, breaking the kiss and leaving me wanting more.
Why do I want more?

“What are you thinking?” he asks, tipping my chin up with his thumb and forefinger. I almost tell him; I almost blurt out that my emotions and feelings for him are all over the place. I almost tell him that I equally want and despise him, but in the end, I think better of it. In the end, I decide it’s much safer to keep the contents of my heart and mind to myself. He’s already gotten too much of me. I’ve given him pieces of me that I can never get back, and I’m hesitant to give him any more. He already has just about enough of me to break me down.