Three Hard Lessons (5 page)

He went rigid as I positioned myself over him. Shit, was I moving too fast again? Did he want me some other way?

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He had one hand on my hip and the other slipped behind my neck. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m trying to remember this.” He let me lower myself down on him so he was right at my entrance. “Tonight’s got to get me through the next sexless year.”

I slid down, welcomed him inside my body, one fraction at a time. God, his cock was thick. My eyes fell closed as I descended further. The realization that this was it for him was powerful and struck me like a fist to my chest.

At last he was buried as deep as he could go. “Oh, god,” I cried out, my voice wrapped in pleasure. He silenced anything else I would have said when he took my mouth with his.

Now I was the only woman he’d been with in a year; the only woman he’d be with in two years if things continued the way he assumed they would. He’d chosen me for this.

The first hesitant move I made sent us both into panic.

“Stop,” he said. His hand was firm in its grasp on the nape of my neck. “It feels too good already.”

Something tightened in my chest painfully. It was some emotion I couldn’t put a label on, or refused to. A need that was scary and thrilling. This connection with him was too powerful to stop.

“I’ll do whatever you want, just please don’t make me stop,” I said. It sounded like I was begging, because I was. My arms crossed behind his back and I leaned forward, kissing him in the crook of his neck.

“Slow,” he ordered.

“I can do slow.” It was a lie, but I’d do my best. I moved again, shifting up in his lap and back down. The slow, slick slide of his cock inside me was amazing. Holy shit, I think I could come just from riding him like this. Slow and steady.

I began at a torturous pace, so much slower than I was used to, yet it was unbelievably arousing. In response, strong hands peeled the edge of the jacket down past my shoulders, letting the collar bunch at my elbows. As the silk lining fell away, Dom set his warm mouth on my exposed skin, the spot where my neck met my shoulder. His tongue traced a line and left goosebumps in its trail.

He had me encased in his arms and held me tight when his hips hinted I could increase my tempo. So I did. How the fuck did it feel so good?

“Look at me.” That rough voice turned my insides into liquid. His hands splayed over my body but his gaze was unrelenting and filled with passion. What we were doing? It didn’t feel like fucking. This was something different, something I hadn’t done before. The unfamiliar newness left my head spinning.

“I’m going to be thinking about this,” he said, “every night for the next year. Every night it will be you.”

I gasped loudly and the muscles of my pussy clenched. “Oh my god.”

He could have doused me in gasoline and lit me on fire, and it wouldn’t have compared to how hot his words made me burn. My self-control was obliterated and I hungered for his kiss. I wanted to sink into his skin as the fire inside me raged brighter and brighter. The need for release came at me like a tornado. Fast, and unpredictable.

Our mouths melded into one. Beads of sweat flowered over our skin since the cold room felt like a sauna. Beneath me, his thrusts were powerful, hitting exactly where they needed to, scratching the itch that would send me over the edge. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t slow down, or look away from the aqua eyes gazing back at me. His ragged breath was warm on my face when he set his forehead against mine.

I was going to come. Any second now. The climb kept going higher, and higher, and higher . . . My toes curled into points and my eyes slammed shut. The pleasure welled up, ready to erupt –

His arms were locked around my body, and this prison began to close in, stilling me. Denying the pleasure that was about to set me free.

“No, no!” I cried, my eyes fluttering open. “I’m so close. Please don’t stop.”

The tortured look on his face was heartbreaking, and gone a second later, as was the tension in his arm. Oh shit, oh shit . . .

Hands clench my hips and drove me on him. These fast, hard thrusts were each tiny orgasms, teasing the big finish that loomed. “Please,” I begged him on every thrust. “Please . . . please . . .”

I crested and screamed all the way down. When I lose control, I really fucking lose control of everything, including my voice. My heart slammed against my chest as ecstasy erupted from my core, deafening my mind. Only sensation remained. So much pleasure, it reached beyond bliss, and it lasted an eternity.

The sensation morphed into something new as he lost control after me. The pulsing inside my body narrowly avoided crossing over into pain since I was on total overload. He gasped and dug in his fingers, holding me while my body milked his orgasm from him. I moaned with each throb of his cock, clamping down on it with the muscles on my walls surrounding him.

He groaned. It was so sexy. Heat drenched us both and pressed us together as we slowly returned to earth. That was when it hit me.

Oh, holy, fucking shit. I’d been so selfish.

He’d wanted to go slow and make a long memory to hold him through the next year, and in my greediness, that memory was now less than ten minutes. Maybe less than five. I’d lost all track of everything.

He clutched me tightly to his heaving chest. I shrugged out of the jacket so I could touch him with my skin completely unhindered. My naked body wrapped around his and I gripped him fiercely. “Dom.” My voice was a ghost. “I’m sorry.”

He lifted his head and blinked his disoriented eyes. “Sorry?”

“I didn’t go slow.”

He’d said it himself. No way was he going to be able to recover for a third round anytime soon. My stomach was in knots. I couldn’t do this to him. I’d wanted to feel something, and now I fucking did. Crushing guilt. This night was supposed to be about him, not me. I’d stolen what he wanted.

In the quiet, there was only the sound of our breathing slowing, and I knew what I had to do. I climbed off of him.

“Wait,” he said, but I ignored it.

I picked his jacket up off of the floor and went to the table so I could set it beside his shirt.

“Come back,” he said.

Unsteady feet carried me to the silk robe hanging on the hook. My hand shook when I pulled it down and slipped it on, and turned to finally face him. He was devastatingly handsome, even when his face was full of confusion.

“Please get dressed.” My voice was hollow since I was terrified by what I was about to do. “I have to talk to my manager.”

He already had the condom off and knotted it, and dropped it into the trash. My eyes were fixed on him as he stood and pulled up his pants. I watched the muscles in his lean arms flex as he did the zipper and then the button, his gaze pinned on me.

My whole body shook. My stomach was lined with lead.

“Why do you have to talk to your manager?”

“Because the deal’s off.”

chapter

FIVE

Dom froze mid-buckle of his belt. “What?”

I took a hesitant step toward him, then another as my nervous hands tightened the sash at the waist of my robe. “Stay in the room, don’t leave until I get back.”

Because if he stepped out into the hall, that was it. The transaction was complete and Marquis would escort Dom to the payment room, where I’d never see him again.

The disorientation was clear on Dom’s face. “Why is the deal off?”

“Because I didn’t do what I was supposed to.”

I watched the confusion grow larger in his magnetic eyes. “Which was what? Give me the best sex I’ve ever had? Believe me, Paige, you delivered. And then some.”

My goddamn knees turned to mush. He stormed at me, a blur of skin stretch over muscle and pulled me roughly into his arms.

“What is this?” he asked.

Maybe he thought this was some sort of ploy. A shake-down for more money. I wasn’t anywhere near a good enough actress to pull off the fractured feeling I was sure to be displaying.

“I don’t want your money,” I gasped. “It will make what just happened . . . not real.”

My brain scrambled, desperate to find a way to come out the other side of this. I’d rather have this night as whatever the fuck it was, than my percentage of his thirty grand. I’d have to drive myself to the ER after I left here, because something was very, very wrong with me.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I have the money. I mean, I got a huge bonus last month. I can pay–”

“Don’t, just wait. I don’t know what I’m doing.” I shook in his arms. “All I know is I don’t want you to be another client. Don’t take what we did away from me.”

Oh, god, I wanted these foreign emotions to get the fuck out. It helped that Dom looked at me now like I had two heads.

His voice was barely a whisper. “Real?”

“Terrifyingly real.” How was Joseph going to react when I told him what I wanted? How was I going to pull this off?

His arms were tight, crushing me to his sweat-damp chest. Beneath it, his heart was racing as fast as my own. A tight laugh rumbled in him, shuddering his shoulders.

“Well,” he said finally, “tonight did not go how I thought it would.”

“No fucking kidding. I wasn’t even supposed to be here,” I muttered, distracted with thoughts of the man upstairs with the bank of monitors behind his desk and an earpiece to alert him to any situations. Did Joseph know how big of a situation was brewing in Room One?

“Me, neither,” Dom said. “I was supposed to go out with my friend tonight, the one that got engaged, but apparently he’s sick.”

Any sound in the room faded from my ears.

It wasn’t coincidence. The man who leased Logan and Evie’s fabulous apartment, he lived temporarily overseas Evie had told me once. He was a friend of Logan’s, she’d said. This explained how Dom, who lived in Tokyo, knew about this exclusive and secret blindfold club. Dom’s referral had come from Logan.

Like I needed any more bullshit to think about kicking around in my head.

There was a sharp rap on the door and Nina’s husky voice rang out. “Everything all right? Can I get you two something?”

I had to go, time was running out. “Stay,” I ordered him.

Dom nodded.

Nina startled when I pulled the door open, stepped out into the hall, and closed the door swiftly behind me.

“Oh. Should I let Marques know?” she asked, eying my robe.

“No. I have to talk to Joseph immediately.”

There were three other girls on tonight, and two of them had already finished seeing their clients. Only Chantel was on the flickering bank of monitors behind Joseph. She was getting it in the ass with a ball-gag in her mouth. Joseph’s indifferent gaze swung away from the screen to land on me and his eyebrows peaked.

My manager was young and attractive. Thin, broad shouldered, and omni-sexual. He had a warm smile when needed, but otherwise maintained a professional veneer.

“This has been an interesting client for you,” he commented.

Tell me about it.
“I need to ask a favor.” My heart beat so loudly, surely Joseph could hear it. “You have to cancel his contract.”

He laughed lightly, then sobered. “Payton, you can’t be serious.”

“Like a fucking heart attack.”

Joseph didn’t look angry, he looked completely lost. “On what grounds? Seems to me the guy had a good time. He came twice.”

The tightness was back in my chest. It was hard to speak, to think, to breathe.

“Please, I know this is crazy but I can’t take his money. I’ll make it up to you.”

Concern flooded Joseph’s face. “Why can’t you take his money?”

“I don’t know if I can do this anymore. It’ll make me feel,” I gasped, “like a whore.”

That was yet another reason why I didn’t want Dom to pay. I’d spent my life dealing with assholes calling me all sorts of things that I let roll off my back. Slut. Bitch. Cunt. I didn’t care about those, but for some reason, when someone called a spade a spade, it cut deep inside me.
Take the money, whore.
The phrase repeated, over and over in my mind.

“Honey, no.” Joseph rose from his desk with alarm. “That’s not what you are.” He knew how damaging that word was to me. It was to all of his girls. “Don’t ever say that, but you know I can’t turn him away. If it got out, I’d have everyone demanding a refund.”

He had a point. “All right, I need my payment in full. Tonight.”

“Payton, that’s not possible. Maybe if I had some warning I could have made arrangements, but not at one thirty in the morning.”

“Bullshit. You can do it.” The profanity and tone wasn’t helpful, but I was coming apart.

I wasn’t about to screw Joseph out of his three thousand because I’d made this drastic and reckless decision. All I could do was give Dom back the rest, and consider the three grand as payment for the use of the room. That thought quieted the
whore
looping in my brain somewhat.

Joseph’s deep-set eyes hardened. “Yeah, maybe I could pull it together, but I won’t.”