“You’re killing me,” he rasps. He sinks to the floor and has me flat on my back in seconds. “I need to be inside you.”
I missed this, I think, as he pulls off my jeans. I suppose I sort of missed him too.
The days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve are quiet. Most of the staff have taken the week off, and even Ben and I aren’t working our normal hours. In the morning we take our time, sharing the paper and sipping our coffee, my feet entwined with his beneath the table. We leave work each night at a reasonable hour. The little Christmas tree is still flourishing, which is either a miracle or Ben’s watering it.
We’re in bed when he mentions New Year’s Eve.
“We should go away this weekend,” he says.
I roll toward him. Suggesting a weekend away seems like a big step for someone who won’t even invite me to his house.
“I’m surprised Drew isn’t hosting some magnificent gala on a yacht or flying you all to a private island somewhere.”
He grins. “She is, but I’d prefer to spend it with you.”
He’s missing out on a night with his friends because I’m the asshole who won’t go to HR. I refuse to feel guilty about that. He’s never even invited me into his home. I tip my chin up to look at him. “You know where we could go? Your place.”
“It’s a disaster,” he says, though he could have built an entirely new house in the amount of time it’s taken. “How about one night? We’ll go somewhere nearby for New Year’s Eve and come back the next morning. Catalina, maybe.”
My breath stutters. Kyle booked us a room on Catalina Island for my twenty-third birthday. We’d already chosen a ring by then—I assumed he was going to propose and spent money I didn’t have on a new dress. Then Josie flaked out, as always, and he canceled. I’d seen so little of my friends by then that going out with them wasn’t even an option. I spent my birthday sitting in my apartment alone.
“I’m not really a fan of Catalina,” I reply.
His tongue glides along his bottom lip for a moment, observing me, as if he knows there’s more here. I’m scared he’s going to ask for details, and the time is coming when he will. Eventually he’ll push a little harder to know what happened at Stadler and why I’m prickly about so many things. “I’ll figure something out,” he says, and I’m so relieved I don’t even argue.
We leave work on Saturday just after lunch and drive up the coast to a cottage in Santa Barbara. A porter unlocks the door for us, and while Ben sees him out, I just…stare. I’d expected he’d choose something nice— king-sized bed, room service—but this is another level entirely. It’s got two rooms, both with French-glass doors that open wide to a terrace larger than my apartment. A fire blazes in the hearth already, several bottles of wine waiting for us on the mantel. I step outside, passing a pergola to my left, and go to the railing, staring out at the Pacific, ethereal in the distance.
“It’s where John and Jackie Kennedy spent their honeymoon,” Ben says, walking up behind me and pulling my back to his chest. “It seemed like the kind of thing you’d like.”
I can’t put into words how much I love it, so naturally I don’t admit it all.
“It’s less terrible than I anticipated,” I say with a grin.
He swoops me up, throwing me over his shoulder as he starts to carry me inside. “Admit it’s the coolest overnight trip you’ve ever taken.”
“Top twenty this year, for sure,” I reply, laughing as he throws me down on the bed. I try to crab crawl away from him and he grabs my ankles, pulling me back down the mattress.
“Gemma,” he says, pinning me with ease, “we both know I can force you to admit anything I want.”
I’m breathless, eager. “Coerced confessions are inadmissible.”
His finger trails down my sternum and over my stomach. “Ah, but we’re not in court, are we?”
He pulls my t-shirt overhead, then tugs my jeans to the floor in one long pull. I squirm in anticipation. I love how determined he gets when I won’t give him what he wants.
“I slept in an ice hotel once in Sweden,” I tell him as he grabs his shirt by the neck and pulls it overhead. “That was amazing.”
He stops suddenly. His eyes narrow, his nostrils flare… and he reaches for his belt.
My breathing grows uneven as he grabs my wrists in one hand and wraps the belt around them, securing it to the headboard. He’s held my wrists overhead before—always just before he comes, when his restraint is nearly gone. There’s something desperate in his face in those moments, as if a part of him he won’t acknowledge just wants to make sure I stay.
Goose bumps crawl over my skin as his hot breath grazes a nipple. His fingers slide over my panties but don’t venture inside them. My skin starts to heat everywhere. Having no control—no way to push him to do what I want, no way to stop him—has my heart beating hard. The ache between my thighs is unbearable.
His fingers continue to torture me, and when I try to arch my hips for more contact, his free hand pins me in place.
“Fine,” I gasp. “It’s cool. It’s the coolest place I’ve ever stayed.”
His teeth skim over my skin. “Better than the ice hotel?”
“The ice hotel sucked,” I tell him. “I was so cold.”
He laughs. “I’d have fucked you even if you hadn’t admitted it.”
I smile. “Does that mean you’re going to untie my wrists?”
He pushes my thighs apart and slides lower on the bed. “No, Gemma. Not a chance.”
Good.
Later, we curl up on the terrace with a bottle of wine, watching the sun set over the Channel Islands in the distance.
“Did you come here, growing up?” I ask. “I mean, not this hotel, but the area?”
He laughs. “No. Your family is more likely to have come here than mine, rich DC girl.”
I shake my head. “My whole life was ballet, and a vacation like this would have meant a week away. My parents would have had to drag me kicking and screaming, and it wasn’t worth the effort.”
“Ballet?” His mouth curves slightly, as if he’s just solved a puzzle. “What happened to that?”
“My mom had to move out of the city after the divorce, and she was killing herself trying to work school and all my activities around an entry-level job. So I quit.”
He pulls me closer. “You’re still upset about it.”
I give the tiniest shake of my head. “That was almost fifteen years ago. It just makes me mad.”
I can’t imagine having to work for my father’s firm after everything he did, and my God but he’d use it to his advantage. It wouldn’t simply mean doing work I hate—it would mean having him as my boss, demanding I appear by his side at charity functions, sending me out of town on Mother’s Day or my mom’s birthday.
“He—” I take a deep breath and start over. “My dad used to call my mom all the time when it was going on—God, the shit he said to her. He’d just left her penniless so he could shack up with a twenty-four-year-old, but anytime he didn’t get what he wanted, he was telling her she was a loser and worthless, and a terrible mother. And you know…he’s good at what he does. He’s convincing. A part of her believed every word of it.”