The Beauty Series Bundle (12 page)

W
e’re driving back
to Avalon with the top down and Lachlan is exceptionally sexy behind his sunglasses. I can’t resist taking out the phone he gave me and snapping a picture of him. He briefly takes his eyes away from the road as he glances in my direction. I take the opportunity to snap a frontal shot. Oh, my. He is so good-looking.

“No pictures with your personal phone. Ever.” His words are rigid and I wonder what the big deal is.

I innocently hold up the phone he gave me. “It’s not my personal phone. It’s the booty-call device you sent me and I want your picture on here so I can see your handsome face pop up when you call me.”

I realize it’s the first time I’ve called it that in front of him. “Booty-call device?”

“Yeah. If we’re being honest, that’s what it is. You’re the only person who knows the number and when you call, it’s always to make arrangements to get together. We both know what we’re going to do, so that’s what it is.”

He glances at me again. “Laurelyn, you’re not a booty call.”

“When I agreed to this relationship, you told me there would be no pretending. Please don’t go back on your word now and try to act like this is more than it really is. It’s unnecessary.”

He pulls the convertible over on the side of the rural road. “I’m not pretending this is anything more than a short-term relationship, but I like being with you even when there’s no sex involved. That means you’re not a booty call.”

I melt into a puddle in the passenger seat when he says he likes being with me. Damn, I like being with him too, even if I know it’s only temporary. It’s too bad we don’t live closer and I only get three months with him.

He reaches over and caresses my cheek with his hand. “You got it, babe?”

I love to hear him call me that. I don’t say anything, but nod instead. I’m rewarded when he leans over to gently kiss my lips. “Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

After he pulls back onto the road, he reaches for my hand and rests it against his thigh. I lean my head back against the seat and let my hair go without trying to keep it wrangled. I savor this time with Lachlan. These moments will eventually come to an end. But not today.

The ride, however, does come to an end when we’re back at the vineyard. Lachlan takes my hand and places a kiss against it before we get out of the car. It helps make this arrangement feel more like a relationship. But as sweet as it is, it doesn’t change the fact that all of this will be short-lived.

I notice a white truck in the drive and I wonder if one of the vineyard employees has returned early or if Lachlan has company. “Someone’s here.”

“That’s Mike’s truck. He’s the handyman, so I guess he had a maintenance job. Wait here.”

Wait here in the car? That’s a little on the weird side, but I do it anyway. A few minutes later I see Lachlan walking out of the house with a man. They shake hands and he gets into his truck to leave.

Lachlan walks over to the car and opens my door for me, but says nothing about the man or why he’s at the vineyard the day after Christmas when all of the other employees are still off for the holidays. Of course, it’s not my business, so I don’t ask.

When we’re inside, Lachlan grabs a coldie (his name for beer), and we go into the living room to hang out. “Today is Boxing Day. If we were in Sydney, I’d take you to the harbor to watch the start of the yacht race to Hobart.”

“I’ve never heard of that before,” I reply.

It’s a big day for hitting the after-Christmas sales. And there’s a lot of sporting events planned for today. Australia’s National Cricket team had a test match scheduled this morning, which is a big deal around here.”

He grabs the remote for what he refers to as the idiot box. “I need to see if we won.”

After he sees the results of the game, he turns the television off. “That’s enough of that. Will you play something for me?”

I can’t resist his request or the urge to play since I haven’t touched it today. I play several of Lachlan’s requests, but he gets that wrinkle in his brow and I know he’s thinking hard about something. “What’s on your mind?”

He watches me a second before he says anything. “I was just wondering if, when you’re back home and you’ve become a huge success, if you’ll write a number-one hit about us?”

“I really hope not.”

“Why not?” He sounds offended. Or disappointed.

I watch my fingers strum the strings so my eyes don’t have to meet his. I don’t want to see them when I explain. “Because the best songs are written from the heart and the emotions you feel must be one extreme or the other. I’d have to be desperately in love or devastatingly hurt by you.”

Lachlan settles back onto the couch and kicks off his shoes, casually propping his feet on the coffee table. “Have you ever experienced either of those things?”

“I’ve never been desperately in love.”

“Does that mean you’ve been devastatingly hurt?”

I think of Blake and the way I felt when I found out he was married. “I’ve been hurt and it felt shattering at the time.”

“I don’t think you can’t have one without the other, so the two must coincide.”

He sounds like he knows a little something about love and pain. “Is that your opinion because you’ve experienced both?”

He laughs loudly and I look up from my guitar. “Hell, no. I’ve never been in love, so no one has ever hurt me.”

How is it possible that someone as beautiful as Lachlan has never had that experience? “You’ve never even thought you might be in love?”

“Never. What about you?”

Blake is in my thoughts again, reminding me just how wrong a person can be when it comes to love. “I thought I was in love once, but I was dead wrong.”

“I’m guessing he’s the one you were telling me about last night?”

I almost forgot about that. “Yeah, that would be him.”

“Did you ever dance for him?”

That came out of left field. “No. I never even told him I did it.”

Lachlan gets up from the couch. He grabs my wrist, pulling me to his side, and sets my guitar in its case. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

He leads me to the gym and stops outside the door. “This is why Mike was here. He was installing this for you.” He opens the door and I see a shiny new pole toward the back wall. I cross the room and touch it before I look at Lachlan and smile.

Damn, he wasn’t kidding. He freakin’ installed a pole for me. Or for him.

“I want you to dance for me.” He opens one of the cabinet doors and takes out a box. “And I want you to wear this while you do it.”

I lift the top to find a black one-piece romper inside. The sides of the waist are cut out, leaving only a thin strip to cover me down the middle between the top and bottom. It’s hot and not like anything I’ve worn while dancing. When I take it out of the box, I have another surprise underneath: a pair of red fuck-me pumps. I hold one up—they look like they’ll fit me perfectly.

He swallows hard. “Will you do it for me?”

I know in that moment that I’ll never be able to tell him no to anything. I want to be the woman to make his fantasies real. “Yes, I’ll do it.”

He leans forward to kiss me and catches my bottom lip between his. “Now?”

“If it’s what you want.”

“Oh, it’s what I want.”

“But I need a minute to get ready.”

“Absolutely.”

I take the box from his hands and go to his bedroom. I quickly line my eyes with black kohl and make them smoky with gray and black eyeshadow before adding a fresh coat of mascara to make my lashes extra lush. My hair is windblown from riding in the convertible, so I brush it out before I flip my head over and fluff it with the hair dryer. I leave it down because I like it to cascade when I’m upside down on the pole.

I slip into the romper and damn, is it ever skimpy. There’s way less of it covering me once I get into it because it’s stretched so taunt from my shoulders to my crotch. I put the pumps on and give them a test drive as I walk circles in the bathroom. I wouldn’t want to walk too many blocks in these tall-ass things, but they’ll be fine for what I’m going to do.

I inspect myself in the mirror. I’m hot as hell and it boosts my confidence to an all-time high. I’m about to make Lachlan’s fantasy a reality.

I go to the gym and wonder where he is. I ease the door open and see him sitting in a chair facing the pole. He’s waiting for me with all the lights off except the ones over the area where I’ll be dancing. I walk up behind him and lean around to whisper in his ear. “Close your eyes.”

I connect my phone to the receiver in the cabinet by Bluetooth because I need to use my own music. The deep, dark thumping bass of “Angel” by Massive Attack begins and I put it on repeat because I expect this performance to run long.

I take my place by the pole and inhale deeply before I start my performance. “You can open your eyes now.”

When he sees me, he begins to smile. Big time.

I turn my back to him and reach over my head to grasp the pole. I slowly bend my knees and slide my bottom down it and then back up again as I peer over my shoulder at him. I circle with slow agility and hold the post with one hand as I step out and whirl around a few times. It’s total amateur stuff until I kick my leg up and over to lock the pole behind my knee and climb the brass staff while swiveling upward.

I do a series of elaborate spins and stunts that took years to master. When I finish the lengthy routine, I’m upside down. I reach for the floor with my palms and spin several times before dismounting. I look at Lachlan when I stand and I’m not sure he has even blinked since I started.

The music is still playing and I walk to where he is sitting. The song playing is one of my favorites to dance to because it’s bizarre and almost hypnotic. I love the way it makes me feel, like I want to lose control and do strange things.

“Baby, you’ve fucked my mind without touching my body.”

I turn my back and smile as I lower my bottom to give him a lap dance. He grabs my hips and I swat his hands away. “You know the rules. You can’t touch the dancer.”

He sits all the way back in the chair and I take a seat on his lap with my legs spread on each side of his thighs. I put my hands into my hair and lift it from my neck. I lean against him with my back to his chest and let it fall into his face. I’m torturing him. I know this, but it’s all part of the fantasy.

“You’re my private dancer.”

I lean forward and spread my legs further apart as I put my hands on his knees. I begin a steady rhythm of stroking my bottom against his groin and I can feel how hard he is beneath me. “Oh, I’m much more than that.”

He groans and I know I’m pushing him to his brink. And I love it.

I get up from his lap and then lower myself to straddle him. I take his face in my hands and search his intense blue eyes. They’re different, darker. And fixated on me.

I feel him tremble under me and then his fingers slide into the crotch of my romper. But he doesn’t touch me. I feel a sudden jerk downward and I realize he has ripped the bottom of my romper and pushed it up over my hips. “Laurelyn, I need to fuck you right now. Don’t make me beg.”

I reach for his fly, but my hands miss it because he almost bucks me off trying to get his pants shoved out of the way. He’s feral and demanding and I know there won’t be anything gentle about what’s going to happen. I’d be disappointed if there was.

When his pants and boxer briefs are out of the way, he jerks me down onto him as he thrusts up into me. I cry out because it’s so much deeper in this position. It feels like he’s pounding against my womb and I can’t decide if it’s pleasure or pain. He continues to thrust upward as he grasps my hips tightly to slam me down against him. There’s no doubt I’ll have bruises on my hips tomorrow from where his fingers are digging into my skin, but I don’t care. I wouldn’t have him stop for anything in the world right now.

I feel my explosion building and I don’t know how or why, but my mind registers the fact that Lachlan didn’t put a condom on. After all that grief over the busted rubber the night before, I can’t believe he doesn’t wear one tonight.

Dammit. I’m about to ruin the best sex I’ve ever had.

I lean back to see him and he thrusts deeper than ever. “Lachlan, you didn’t put a condom on.”

He grabs my hips painfully and thrusts deeply one last time as he groans loudly and then hisses through his teeth. “Ooh, Laurelyn.”

Shit. He just came inside me, no doubt at the door of my womb since he’s been knocking on it so hard. My immediate instinct is to get off him, but he’s holding me so tightly, there’s no way I can budge an inch.

When he’s finished, I’m still straddling him. We’re face to face. I fist a handful of hair and bring our foreheads together. I’m staring him directly in the eyes, about to chastise him for the missing rubber, when he grabs me around the neck to pull me down for a kiss.

When he stops, our foreheads are still touching and we’re both gasping for breath. “You are fan-fucking-tastic. I’ve never seen anything like that. When you told me you pole danced, that is not what I thought you did.”

“What did you think I meant?”

“I thought you’d hold on to the pole and spin around, maybe climb it a little if I was lucky, but damn, baby … you’re bewitching on that pole.”

I kiss him because I’m pleased by his praises, but I’m still going to bring up the absentee condom. “Was it my dancing or the hypnotic music that made you go crazy and forget to put on a condom?”

“I didn’t forget. I put it on when you started dancing.”

Oh. He slipped that one on without me knowing. “I should have known you wouldn’t forget after the huge deal you made about it last night.”

“It’s a good thing I put it on while you were dancing because there’s no way I could have stopped to do it once you straddled me.” He’s shaking his head like he’s in disbelief and pulls me into a tight hug. “I don’t want you to dance for anyone but me.”

I’m confused by that. Does he mean he doesn’t want me to dance for anyone else for the next three months?

As I’m catching my breath, the thought fades and my mind moves on to other things I don’t understand. I have to know if he felt the same unexplainable energy I did. “Did you feel different?”