Indecent Proposal (5 page)

He smiled, then propped up on his elbows, his legs still spread, his ruddy cock lying against his abdomen.

“I like you northern girls.”

Feeling like some kind of swashbuckling female pirate, she leapt on the bed and straddled him while ripping open the wrapper with her teeth.

“Your tattoo—?”

“Really?” she asked, holding the tip of the condom with one hand while sliding the rest of it over him. “You want to talk about my ink, now?”

Mesmerized, he stared like he’d never seen someone roll a condom on with such panache. Willing to give him more of a show, she hiked herself up his body, holding his cock still while she slowly, with breath-stealing, excruciating deliberateness, eased herself down him.

Despite her eagerness, despite the wetness he had inspired between her legs, there was still the small pinch and sting of taking this man inside of her. The strange reality that no matter what, sex was a matter of submission for her. Of accepting what on some level seemed unacceptable.

She was not and had never been very good at compliance.

“Oh … God, Ryan.”

“Good?”

“Sublime. Fucking … perfect. You are perfect.”

Let’s not go overboard
, she thought. But once he was inside all the way and she was seated hard in the cradle of his hips, she shook her hair out of the way and raised herself up over him, holding onto the headboard, nearly wild with a surge of power and sex and something old and womanly, and began to ride him.

Most men didn’t know how to be on the bottom. They either held themselves still, letting her do it all, or they grabbed her hips, keeping her still while jackhammering into her from underneath

But not Harry. No, Harry understood. Making this work for both of them meant meeting her downward slide with his upward push. When she jerked forward against him, he pushed back until she felt the pressure of his body against her clit. He held her breasts, hard, his fingers careful but insistent vises against her flesh.

“Look at you,” he breathed. “Fuck, look at you.”

She was too busy looking at him, watching his face turn from pleasure-stoned to demanding. To animal. The pressure built from her clit and from deep inside where she was clenched so hard around him.

He reached up to hold her shoulder, pushing her against him, adding force to the incendiary grind they’d worked up. And it worked; pleasure spiked and she fell back slightly, holding herself up against his leg.

But then, predictably, she hit a wall—her pleasure built but went no higher. No matter what she did, it leveled off into a plateau.

She jerked and circled her hips, trying to wring every bit of pleasure from their bodies. But it didn’t work. Between her legs she was growing numb.

The frustration moaned out of her.

“You need more?”

Stunned that he seemed to know, her eyes flew open, but he did know. Of course he did.

Words were about five minutes behind her and all she could really do was nod and twitch and want to come so bad she could taste it.

She dropped herself onto him, prepared for him to heave up and over her and end this, but he kept her there, one hand on her hip and the other slipping between her legs. His fingers found her clit and he pressed his thumb hard against her and she felt sparks drift outward from her skin, as if she were a torch held up against the night sky.

“Make yourself come,” he breathed. “I want to see it.”

With his thumb against her she smashed through the plateau; pleasure was a force living inside of her, ready to break through her bones and muscles and skin, ready to take her over and she couldn’t stop it, didn’t want to. She sobbed, sweat running down her back as she shook over him, no coordination left in her body. Nothing left in her body but this one stubborn strand keeping her on earth.

He surged up, wrapping one arm around her waist, and she felt his palm against her back, imagined it against Ophelia’s body. Ducking his head, he caught her nipple in his mouth and sucked hard and the points of contact—the nipple, clit, tattoo—severed the strand and she was shattered. Simply shattered.

He held her while she shook, stroking her back, murmuring nonsensical things, her hair sticking to both of them, trapping them in a web. A cocoon.

I like it here
, she thought, her face pressed to his chest. His deodorant smelled good.

He was still hard inside of her and there was no urgency
on his part to finish, at least it didn’t feel that way, and she nearly laughed.

Honest-to-God, who
is
this guy?

What were the chances that the best lover she’d ever had would stumble into her bar on a Tuesday night?

And be named Harry.

She leaned back, untangling her hair from around them so she could see him.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

His smile was drawn tight; the poor guy was barely holding on.

Such a gentleman
, she thought, lifting herself off of him so she could lie down on her back across the king-size bed. His eyes burned their way across her body, leaving trails of cinder and ash from her breasts to her waist, down the long length of her legs.

The boots.

Whatever remained of the polite southern gentleman in this man left town at the sight of those boots, because he growled and pounced. His body, hard and heavy, over hers, his cock, hard and hot, sliding right back inside of her. Deep. And then deeper. So deep she had to shift her head back to breathe.

His body slammed into hers, and she embraced the violence of it, the deeply erotic sound of flesh hitting flesh. The growling, grumbling roar in the back of his throat.

Yes. Yes, it should always be like this
, she thought just before mindlessness slipped over her. Just before she was reduced to animal in his animal arms.

“Ryan,” he growled. “God. Come on. Fuck. Come—”

He roared through four more hard, heavy strokes, so bruising, so punishing, she fell apart again under their lovely brutality.

And he collapsed against her, boneless and sweet.

It took a few moments for her heartbeat not to thunder
in her ears. For the world not to sparkle in the corner of her eyes.

“Wow,” he breathed.

She laughed, lifting boneless arms to wrap them around his neck.

“Yeah, wow.”

After a long, delicious moment he shifted to the side to take care of the messy reality of the condom, and she began the slightly excruciating process of getting up and getting dressed and getting gone. But he stopped her with an arm around her waist, pulling her back into the muscular curve of his body.

“Stay,” he breathed, and she could sense him starting to drift away on sleep. So she turned around, facing him, running fingers through his pretty blond hair with the slight curl. She touched his cheek, tickling him until the dimple made an appearance and his eyelids fluttered open.

“Hi,” she breathed.

“Tell me another story,” he breathed, shifting against the sheets, burrowing into the bed. “About your entrepreneurial sister. And your brother who would tear down the world for you.”

“Why?” She laughed.

“It sounds nice.” He yawned so hard his jaw popped. “Sounds like a nice way to grow up.”

“It was,” she whispered. “How did you grow up?”

“In a bowl. Without air,” he whispered, but before she could ask him what he meant, he gave way to dreams.

Just a few more minutes
, she thought, and closed her eyes to better enjoy the astronomical thread count and his strong arms and the rare illusion of care.

Chapter 3

She woke to a room thick with shadow. Alone. The white duvet pulled up to her chin. Her boots were gone—he must have taken them off her sometime in the night, because she didn’t remember doing that. She stretched her toes in the soft, sleep-warm sheets.

Dawn
, she thought, and listened for the sound of the shower, or of Harry quietly getting ready for the trip to find the man who would get his sister out of trouble. But then she realized the sunlight coming in under the blackout shades on the window was knife bright and she rolled over to see the clock on the bedside table.

Nine thirty.

Beyond the table, the closet was open and empty. The bathroom was dark. The sink counter empty of toiletries. Next to the TV were her bag and her clothes, folded and stacked.

Harry was gone.

The slice of pain was embarrassing and awful. And totally unexpected.

She sat up, clutching the sheet to her chest, trying to staunch the slow bleed of startling emotion.

It was a hookup at a bar. You can’t go falling in infatuation just because he was sad and provided expert cunnilingus
.

Though the truth was she’d fallen in love for far worse reasons before.

But there was a flash of white paper on top of her clothing, and she flushed with a sort of seventh-grade thrill.

A note!

She managed not to leap out of bed like the woman in a rom-com movie, but she couldn’t stop the hard chug of her heart as she picked up the note, the dark scrawl of his handwriting not quite legible in the shadowy room.

She flicked on the light and sat down on the foot of the bed.

Ryan Kaminski
. His handwriting was like the way he moved—no flourishes, but graceful in its economy.
I watched you for a few moments before leaving, debating whether to wake you up. But in the end I decided to let you sleep, because you are simply lovely and while sleeping you are only more so. Also I was in no great hurry to start a conversation about why I cannot see you again, or call you. Why anything more than this amazing night between us would be an impossibility. I arranged a late checkout, and breakfast will be arriving around ten. I hope you can stay to enjoy it
.

Thank you
.

Harry

That had to be one of the most lovely kiss-off letters she’d ever seen. Really quite masterful.

Her stomach full of a weird kind of regret and morning-after melancholy, she made a quick call down to the front desk to cancel the breakfast. She would shower at home; the #7 train to Sunnyside would remove some of Harry’s fairy-tale dust that still lingered on her skin.

She dressed, and after a moment of painful consideration, folded the note and tucked it into her purse.

The door clicked shut behind her and she checked her phone as she walked down the hallway toward the elevators. Luckily, she still had some juice left.

A text Lindsey had sent last night bloomed on her screen.

So? Did you make Ken Doll happy?

I gave it my best shot
, she texted back hours after Lindsey’s original note.

Atta girl
, came the response fairly quickly. She imagined Lindsey in bed with her phone.

How was the rest of the night?

Gary asked some questions about you and Ken Doll. I threw him off the scent
.

For some strange reason, that made her feel almost weepy. Talking to Harry last night about his sister when it had been years since she’d talked to her own.
Years
. She talked to her brother more often because he was pushy that way, but that she was closer to Lindsey, whom she’d known for only two months, than to her sisters, well, it hurt on this weird morning when she felt all raw and turned inside out.

Thanks, Linds
.

The elevator doors opened and she turned left out of them, tucking her phone back into her bag, which was why she didn’t see the men’s bathroom door open and Gary come stepping out.

“Ryan?” His familiar voice made her stop in her tracks, her stomach slipping down into her boots.

“Gary.” He really was a nice guy and if the bar were unaffiliated, what had happened between her and Harry probably wouldn’t even get her hand slapped. But The Cobalt Hotel was a part of a conglomerate and there were rules about this stuff.

“What are you doing here this morning?” he asked, pretending to be casual, clearly trying to give her a chance to lie.

There was no point in pretending. That wasn’t quite her style.

She smiled and shrugged. “What do you think?”

“Christ, Ryan,” he said, stepping alongside of her and pulling her into motion, down the stairs toward the bar. “Couldn’t you have taken him to your place? Why the hell did you have to stay here?”

“Because I’m a sucker for the free shampoo in the rooms.” She had swiped it. She might be too proud for a free breakfast, but she wasn’t too proud for travel-size luxury toiletries.

He paused in front of The Cobalt Bar’s locked doors.

“Do you even know who he is?” Gary asked.

“You’re not my father, Gary.”

“No. I’m not asking do you know his name and sexual history. I’m asking do you know
who he is
?”

“He’s … someone?” She’d known that, of course. The gravitas. The way other people in the bar watched him from the corner of their eyes. She just chose to ignore it.

“Oh, Christ, doesn’t anyone read the newspaper anymore? I thought you were smarter than the rest of the idiots who work here. He’s Har—”

Some remnant of self-preservation made her hold up her hand. “Don’t tell me. Don’t. It’s over. It won’t happen again.”

“But you did it here. And now you told me about it.” He lifted his hands as if to show her how they were tied.
Poor Gary. Stupid Ryan
. “I have to fire you.”

“Don’t bother, Gary,” she said. “I quit.”

She patted his shoulder, because he was better than most, and headed out into the full summer reality of July in New York City. It was hot and close, though the smell of the garbage hadn’t taken over yet.

The sun had heft to it and it fell over her bare shoulders like a lover’s arm.

Instead of heading toward the subway, she turned east toward Central Park. A hike in heels that pinched her toes, but such was life.

In Ryan’s reality, everything had a price. No pleasure came without its sorrow. No joy without its despair. And perhaps losing her job on top of the vague despondence she felt over the letter in her bag was overkill, but karma was a bitch, and sometimes she took more than her due.