“You’re mistaken.”
He swallows around the pain. “Okay. Okay.”
“Say it. You’re mistaken.”
“I’m mistaken.”
It doesn’t feel like enough, this admission. I want him to beg for forgiveness at Ashleigh’s feet. I want her to refuse. I want her to give me permission to rip his sorry head from his body.
There are a handful of Mayfair bastards in Tanglewood.
Some of them had good childhoods. Some of them didn’t.
Some of them are good men. Some of them aren’t.
Only one of them do I hate—and that’s Mason Smith. When I look at him, I can only see my father. It’s wild to think that in some alternate universe we might have been brothers. Real brothers who grow up together, who fight and support and love each other.
Out of hundreds of thousands of men in the city, she had to get him as her first customer.
Mason’s always had a cruel streak. It came out when we were in school together. Ironically he had a good mother and a clueless father. He resented me, my existence, and he made my life hell. Not with fists. He always knew I’d beat him in a fair fight. No, he turned his rich friends against me. The teachers. Anyone would believe a good straight A kid over the dirty, angry Sutton Mayfair.
When I leave the closet I wash my hands, because I need to clean them of the bastard stink. The scent of violence and desperation and liquor that never quite leaves, no matter how hard I scrub.
Ashleigh’s waiting for me by my car, while the valet chats her up, clearly interested. Anyone would be. I have no doubt that the man in the BMW getting out of his car, the old guy in a tux with his wife—they’ve all noticed her. The gold dress highlights her smoking body, but her smile is enough to make even the most hardened man believe in a higher power.
The valet says something, and Ashleigh laughs.
Her fear pulsed from the closet. The only thing I felt when I saw her with Mason was rage. Now that I see her with another man, though, I know how easy it would be for her to find someone good for her. Jealousy. That’s the name of the seething mass in my chest. Which is fucking stupid, because I have no claims on her. I don’t want any claims on her. I don’t need to care about someone else who doesn’t care about me.
Chapter Fifteen
Ashleigh
The ride home is quiet. I see the red marks on his knuckles. It’s easy enough to guess some kind of altercation went down. Maybe he sees it as some man poaching in his territory, even if we’re only doing this for pretend. For some strange reason it actually makes me excited to think about him fighting for me. It must be an evolutionary instinct that makes me want him to fight a saber-toothed tiger.
At his house, he comes around to open the door for me. That’s the thing about Sutton. He’s still a gentleman, even when other people aren’t watching. A gentleman, even with reddened knuckles.
When he helps me down I keep hold of his hand. I lean down to kiss the bruises and marks, gently. I want to say thank you. He probably didn’t do it for me. It was his own pride, but the primal cavewoman inside me doesn’t care.
His eyes turn to ocean as he looks down at me, deep and full of secrets.
I walk inside the house and pause, uncertain where to go from here. He probably should have dropped me off on the street corner, but I’m glad he didn’t. Besides, he should keep the dress.
When he comes inside, he takes my hand and leads me to the bedroom.
Here. Here. It feels right.
I get on my knees, where he wanted me last night, but he stops me this time. He bends his head and presses a kiss to my mouth. I start to turn away—it’s too intimate, even though I’d use my tongue on his cock. Our mouths together is the most painfully acute thing.
He coaxes me to bear it, using slow, soft, gentle kisses.
He lays me down on the bed, so careful with me, all of our clothes still on, lying beside me, and I realize this is how it would be if I were with a man in a regular way. The man in the closet used the words the girlfriend experience. I think he meant the experience of the man—but this is my experience, pretending to be Sutton’s girlfriend, the one who gets his tenderness.
Part of me doesn’t want to do this. I’ll feel too much. Not fear anymore. It will be other things. Pleasure feelings. Need feelings. Hope feelings. Every brush of his lips on mine destroys my defenses. He’ll reach the exposed-nerve heart of me, and then what? There won’t be anything to protect me from wanting more. I’ll want more than he’s able to give, and I’ll be smaller for it.
His lips are merciless, brushing away every doubt and fear. Until I’m exposed to him. This gold dress does nothing to hide me. There are my body and my dreams. He looks down at both with grave concern. “We don’t have to do this,” he says.
He’s paying hundreds of dollars for this. Thousands of dollars.
That’s not why I want it. I want it for myself, to know what it would be like.
I turn him over on the bed until I’m leaning over him. The bow tie and jacket are long gone. I move aside the placket hiding the buttons and undo them one at a time. I kiss the hollow of his throat. And lower, to the mat of hair at this chest. And lower, to his sternum, to the place where bone turns to muscle. And lower, to the ridge of his abs.
In the girlfriend experience I can do whatever I want. I can give him a blowjob—but I don’t have to. So I kiss my way back up, finding rough patches of skin where he scarred over, finding sensitive shadows in the valleys of his body. When I get back to the top I kiss him full on the mouth.
He groans. “Ashleigh.”
“What should I do?” I whisper.
Large hands span my hips, and then I’m perched on top of him. “Ride me.”
My whole body flushes hot when I realize what he’s asking, when I think about how exposed I’ll be. I’ve never done that before. Maybe that’s the point. There won’t be any memories attached to it. Looking down at his sapphire blue eyes I think he knows that.
I unbuckle his belt and unzip his pants. There’s nothing underneath except hot flesh. No boxers or briefs. The contact of his cock to my hand makes me jump.
“Easy,” he says. “It’s not going to hurt you. It just wants to make you feel good.”
He’s the one who reaches for the bedside table and finds a condom. He hands it over and watches as I fumble open the package. I check the label, but there’s no directions. The curl of his lips says he finds that amusing. So I do the obvious thing and roll it over the tip. His cock jumps as I stroke my way down, and I realize why women like this. I have power in this position. He’s on his back, looking up, at my mercy. It may only be an illusion; lord knows he’s strong enough to overpower me in a second if he wants to. Here’s this big strong man with bruised knuckles lying still for me. It’s like having a wild animal roll over so I can scratch his belly. The impulse overwhelms me, and I run my fingernails over his abs—only lightly, not hard enough to hurt. He hisses a breath. “Yes,” he grunts. “More.”
It’s the encouragement that I need to lower myself onto his waiting cock. I kneel high enough to fit myself over his cock, which looks massive when it’s standing up. It feels massive when it’s notched at my entrance. I shiver a little, but he does absolutely nothing—he doesn’t move his hips up, he doesn’t pull mine down. He reaches up to hold the bars of the bed, as if to prove he’ll go at my pace. The sight of him like that, stretched out and at my mercy, makes my pussy clench around him. He feels it; he groans.