Everything is perfect, in this moment. Her body and its response to me. Even the fact that I’m rock-hard and suffering beneath my suit cannot mar this.
Until her gaze snaps to mine, and everything changes.
All the fear rushes back, tenfold. I see it march in like a thousand pinpoints of darkness, blotting out her bright arousal. And then she bursts into tears.
Chapter Five
Like most boys in Tangier I ran wild in the streets while my mother worked twelve-hour shifts. I swiped fruit from the backs of donkeys on their way into the market and learned to pick pockets from the men with glittering women. Almost a million people live between the city walls, speaking ten languages as commonly as the national Arabic, but for the poor son of a hotel maid, there was only the dust and the clamor and the dry burn of the sun. It was a rough existence, but also a joyful one. I didn’t know anything else.
I knew early not to cry. There was no time with the caregiver with ten babies in the other room. And when I was older, there was always another boy to lash out. And so tears dried before they came out, even when my favorite street dog was run over in front of me, her leg twisted away, held to her only by flesh and tendon, part of her belly exposed. She lay whimpering in my arms until I used my pocket knife to end her suffering. And still I did not cry.
I don’t know what to do with the sobbing young woman on the bed.
My throat feels tight. I’ve made women moan and scream and beg. Never this. “Did I hurt you? Was I too rough? Forgive me, Bea. I never meant to—”
“It wasn’t that.” She shakes her head, glancing at me with tearstained eyes, pleading. She wants me to understand, but I don’t. Somehow my experience is failing me. My charm is failing me. If she wanted me to whisper to her in Italian on the rooftop, I could do that. If she wanted me to lick her pussy until her body went limp, I could do that. What is it she wants from me?
She buries her face in her hands, shoulders shaking, trying to muffle the sounds of her distress. “Just go. I’m okay. You can go.”
There is no way that I can leave her like this. For a moment I stand there, helpless, still fully dressed, my arms outstretched as if to hold her, my cock still uselessly hard in my slacks.
There’s a hard pit in my stomach that reminds me of that hot afternoon with the dog limp in my arms, frozen, frozen, the horror of knowing I could do nothing to help.
Except this isn’t a packed dirt street in Tangier.
And I’m not a powerless little boy.
I lift her body into my arms, hearing her startled little gasp, and climb into the bed. With gentle determination I cradle her body in my arms. After a frozen moment, she buries her face against my chest. Only then can I breathe fully, knowing she’s accepted my comfort, little though it is.
My words are useless now, all I have to offer her is my body. That’s all I ever have, really. I rock her slowly, back and forth, holding her tight as her sobs slow and then stop.
“This isn’t how you usually finish your dates?” she asks, her voice still thick from tears.
My heart squeezes that she’s going for humor, that she’s trying to make this more comfortable for me. “We finish with whatever you need.”
She shudders her way through a sigh. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me. It tears a strip of skin from me when you do.”
Her eyes meet mine, framed by damp lashes. “That makes me want to apologize more.”
From somewhere I find the strength to laugh, a light thing, to let her know this is normal, even though it’s not, it’s not, it’s not. I’ve never made a woman cry. I’ve never been with a virgin before, either. This was a terrible idea. What made me think I could do this? That because I can make a woman come, her body clench and convulse, that I should be trusted with her first time?
“Hey,” she says. “I see you blaming yourself. But it wasn’t you.”
“I’m sure you cry also when room service arrives.”
She gives a huff of laughter. “No, I’m sure that would freak Rene out.”
“Consider me freaked out,” I tell her, even though I’m relieved. Thirty seconds ago, she was bawling her eyes out. But this, a woman in need of laughter and reassurance, I can do.
She bites her lip. “I just didn’t expect it to feel good.”
“You must tell me where you learned these horrible ideas about sex.”
“I mean, I knew about orgasms. I’ve seen them on movies and read about them in books. And I’ve given them to myself. But this was completely different. Like all my life I’ve been seeing water through thick glass and then one day I dive in.”
“It makes you sad, this?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “It makes me sad, thinking of all those days I never dipped a toe in. Because I was too afraid. That’s the only reason.”
“And you wonder what else you’re missing.”
“I know what else I’m missing, but that doesn’t make the fear go away.”
“Then what does?”
Her green eyes meet mine, a little fearful, a little wry. “Apparently, you.”
Chapter Six
“And you just left her there?”
The question comes from Sutton Cooper, the roughneck of our little group. The censure in his voice leaves no doubt as to his opinion on the matter. He may be a hard-ass, with a background roping steer and raising hell, but he has a hard line about treating women well.
Even if that only means making her breakfast after a night of no-strings sex.
“She paid for the night,” I say blandly.
Christopher leans forward in the leather armchair, his eyes dark. They always see right through me. They see through everything. “Have you ever made a girl cry before?”
“But of course, that’s why I’m the highest-paid escort in Tanglewood. Because I say sharp and insulting things that make the women cry.”
Blue takes a sip of whatever new beer he’s drinking. “Has Hugo been sarcastic before?”
“Only when he’s upset,” says Christopher, the bastard.
We’re sitting at the Den, like we do almost every week. When we started there was only Blue and Sutton and me, starting with a handful of dollars in our pockets, determined to make something of ourselves. The Thieves Club, we called it, only half joking—our own Den of thieves. We weren’t planning on robbing any banks, but every dollar we earn means taking one away from someone else.
Christopher runs a hand through his blond curls, the ones that can make any woman swoon. Some of the women in the room glance at him as he does it, the light from the amber fixtures glancing off golden strands. He’s a veritable angel walking the earth—made hard from his fall.
“She must be something,” he says. “For you to get shaken up.”
“I’m not shaken up.”
“So she wasn’t something?” Blue says, crossing one booted foot over his knee. He wears only jeans and T-shirts and dusty black boots, in direct violation of the dress code. He wears enough suits running his security company, he says, when he would much rather be in army fatigues.