“Another beautiful difference between men and women. Anyway, I’ll grab a new one at home before we head to the airport. I need to swing by my house anyway. I forgot to bring my suitcase.” Nate popped open the top of the ice cream container and dug in. He brought the spoon to his mouth and was about to take a bite when he stopped and handed a utensil to Casey. “Ladies first.”
She took a spoonful of the ice cream then she froze, holding the spoon in midair. “I just had an idea,” she said, unfreezing as she snapped her head to look at him, her eyes practically glittering with excitement.
“No, Casey,” he chided. “We are not going to do it on my sister’s kitchen counter. You’re insatiable, woman.”
Admittedly there was a bit of truth to that. They’d been together a few times since the ballpark, but then they’d had to take a break mid-week when he travelled to Vegas where he met with Brent Nichols, a wildly successful late-night comedian who was also prepping to open a new nightclub in the city of sin. The club was on the outskirts of town, and Nate had been talking to him about the prospect of relocating it inside The Luxe on the Strip. That trip had cut into his time with Casey, but in the few nights he’d seen her before, they’d made the most of the shortened hours, and she’d passed his spanking course with flying colors. She’d also discovered that she was particularly fond of having her hair pulled when he took her from behind, with her bent over the bathroom sink. He’d told her to look in the mirror as he gripped her hair tight in his fist. My God, the sight of her wild abandon reflected back at him was branded on his brain forever. In fact, the image had proven quite useful one late night alone in Las Vegas when he’d taken matters into his own hands.
“No. That’s not what I mean,” she said, talking quickly. He recognized the tone instantly—she had entered the idea zone. “I was just thinking back to the night in New Orleans, when we shared the cake.”
“The night it all began,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows as she finally ate the ice cream on the spoon she was holding, then set the spoon on the table.
“No, seriously. What was I doing beforehand?”
“Do we really need to go there?” he muttered, as he took a bite. “Grant, obviously.” He didn’t want to admit that there was a Grant. In his world, Grant had ceased to exist. It seemed that way for her too. She hadn’t brought him up once in the last week. She hadn’t brought up anyone else, come to think of it. She had barely breathed the word lessons.
“I meant, why I was even meeting with Grant in the first place? A partnership,” she said, answering her own question.
“The deal for the LolaRing. You practiced the pitch in the car, and that toy sounded pretty fucking awesome if you ask me,” he said, covering Cara’s ears, even though the baby was sound asleep.
“Yeah, it is pretty awesome,” she said. “And why should Joy Delivered limit itself to only striking partnerships with lingerie companies and retail boutiques?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Go on.”
She sat up straighter, her arms still wrapped around the baby as he took another spoonful of gelato. “What if the LolaRing was carried in a classy, unmarked black box with our silvery J on the top? Or perhaps a silvery L for The Luxe?”
“And why would it say The Luxe?” He knew what she was getting at. His business instincts had kicked in too, but he wanted to hear the proposal from her.
“Let’s be honest here. Your hotel is very high-end. And while you serve a lot of business clients, you also serve lovers. The top floor has fully-stocked bars, the walls have mirrors, and there’s mood lighting in each room because your hotels are absolutely designed for making love,” she said, locking eyes with him as she spoke.
He shifted the baby higher on his chest, away from his lap. He couldn’t help it—hearing those words fall from her lips turned him on. “I’ll admit that many hotels, especially mine, are known for being a great backdrop for great sex.”
“They are,” she said enthusiastically. “That’s why I could see The Luxe offering a very discreet pleasure box in some rooms. Imagine walking into the room you reserve for your lover and finding an inviting box on the bed. A velvet lined box, perhaps. If you use it, you pay for it. If you don’t open it, you don’t pay. It’s no different than a bottle of champagne chilling in the mini bar. Think of this as the minibar for sexual pleasure. Inside, you would find the classier toys. A blindfold, a red feather tickler, perhaps even a small silver bullet vibrator. But maybe in certain locations, perhaps the hotel that catered to the newly married in Vegas or in the Maldives, you would carry The LolaRing.”