For long moments, they stared at each other in the city-lit dark, its shimmer a ghostly sheen as though their time together was already slipping into the past. Emma could almost imagine that she was somewhere else, someone else. A woman worthy of a good guy like Brody Kane.
He must have recognized some yearning inside her, because he pulled her close to his body. But before he could let loose with something nice, she spoke first.
“Take what you need, Brody.
“If I were to do that, there’d be nothing left of you.”
She sensed every muscle in his hard, strong body straining to retain his control. She felt the seething beast in him, the one she needed inside her now.
I’m not her, that bitch who couldn’t handle you, she wanted to say. Assure him that she could take everything he had to give because her surrender was power of a kind. “You can fuck me sixty-nine ways from Sunday and I’d still be begging for more.”
His eyes widened, reflected in the light spilling from the penthouse onto the balcony. “Then we have a problem.”
“We do?”
He removed Kevin from her arms, opened the sliding door, and deposited the cat inside. “He’s far too young to see what’s coming next.”
Laughter erupted from her at how cute Brody was with Kevin, but quickly faded at the roughness of his next words.
“On your knees.”
She swallowed. Hard. Without hesitation, she jackknifed to the ground, her knees scraping the hard surface. She didn’t mind—or maybe she did, because she sure appreciated it when he dropped a lounger cushion before her.
“Take my cock out, Emma.”
She rearranged the cushion under her knees and moved her fingers to his belt. A shake started up in her entire body, which was so odd. Nothing should faze her, but Brody’s dominance and his trust that she accepted him for who he was unnerved her. Perhaps he’d see it as an act, the virginal innocent who didn’t know how to handle a man’s equipment.
Or perhaps, he’d see it for what it really was. A wish that she was that innocent.
He didn’t assist, just watched, his nostrils flared with desire. Freed from the restraint of his briefs, his hard shaft pulsed in her hands. A two-hander. She was rather in love with this cock of his and how good it made her feel. She took a moment to enjoy the weight of it, the power and pleasure and life it represented.
Her panties dampened, her mouth watered, and a bead of precome at the tip made it three-for-three.
“Oh God,” she moaned. Her eyes flickered upward to see his chest heaving, his mouth slack with desire. He grasped her hair and tugged hard.
“You want it?”
“Yes.”
“Then take it. This belongs to you, baby.”
She ran her tongue along the sensitive vein on the underside, a teasing lick, and then, she took. Swirled her tongue around the swollen head and sucked what was hers. His cock, his essence, all of him. Inch by magnificent inch, she stole down his length, wishing she could take more without gagging. Arousal pulsated through her in an inexorable build.
“That’s it,” he groaned, his fist controlling the angle of her head. “Suck it good. All for you.”
She loved his salty-musky taste, the solidity in her hands, the thick, erotic slide of him between her lips. Lifting her gaze, she found him watching this beautiful thing they were creating. Power and surrender thrummed through her equally.
He pulled his hips back, slipping his cock from her mouth. She moaned in protest, but he had already dragged her up and spun her around so she faced the city at twilight.
His erection pressed against her ass and she wiggled. His growl against her neck prompted a flood of pleasure between her thighs.
“Need to be inside you when I come. Need to give you this.”
It sounded like he was offering her the world: the glory of the city spread out before her, the glory of the man wrapping her in his arms. A future that didn’t belong to her.
The condom wrapper’s crinkle hauled her back to the present. He yanked her skirt up, her panties down, and with one smooth thrust, filled her. Ah, heaven. A single grunt, and he remained still inside her, their worlds suspended in this moment of perfection.
The dusky glow over the city made the streetlamps look like dancing orbs, particles of energy. This dream world she wanted to live in. They were high up, but an enterprising perv in another building could spot them. The thought thrilled her, not merely because it was a turn-on, but because she wanted someone else to know they were together, if only like this.
She was tired of secrets.
A drumbeat in his chest echoed against her back, its rhythm matching the tempo of her own thundering heart and pulse between her legs. His breath whispered against her neck again, hot and insistent. “Love how you feel surrounding me with your heat. Could stay like this forever.”
A tear fell down her cheek, and she thanked her stars he was blind to it. She squeezed around his thick, gorgeous shaft, urging him to continue now, because there could be no forever.
“Fuck, Emma,” he gritted out, and then he bit her shoulder gently, but hard enough to make a mark. His hips rolled back, and he slammed into her, holding her in place so the terrace walls wouldn’t bruise her. That would be his job.
She arched her back to increase the angle and heighten the pleasure. She didn’t want it gentle. She wanted to be punished for the crimes he didn’t know about, for the bad girl she truly was.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she chanted as her orgasm threatened and climbed and blissfully rolled through her. Her vision blurred, likely because of the city lights and the force of her release, not because her emotion got the better of her. The clamp of her inner walls triggered Brody’s orgasm and he came with a roar before burying his face in her neck.
They stayed like that for a while, and she pretended it was the forever he mentioned.
She’d always been good at pretending.
Chapter Seventeen
Regrets, I’ve had a few…
As Emma rode the elevator to the top floor of the Peninsula hotel on Michigan Avenue, the lyrics to “My Way” installed as her latest earworm and pulled double duty as a pricking of her conscience. Sinatra might have had regrets on the path to doing it his way, but that was a helluva lot easier to reconcile when you had a voice worth millions (and mob connections).
She glanced over at her elevator companion. Katerina returned her look with a knowing one of her own.
“Why you worry? I do private parties all the time. A little of the grind, a little of the hump, five hundred dollars in my bra.”
This was shaping up to be the worst idea since New Coke. When Olivia had asked if Chardonnay wanted to make a few dollars with a pole dancing demonstration for the out-of-towners in Olivia’s hotel room, Emma should have dismissed it out of hand. Instead she’d suggested Kat’s services, thinking the lissome blonde would jump at the chance to make money and cut Ray out of a slice of the profits. Emma’s “finder’s fee” would go toward her getaway fund.
Now, regret hung like a dark angel on her shoulder. Brody would not approve.
Awesome use of your brainpower, Ems.
“Please don’t hump and grind on these girls. They want some fun, a bit of a show, not a porn flick.”
Katerina shrugged. So Romanian. “That is what they all say. Three shots of tequila later and they are asking if I am waxed everywhere.” She raised a sultry eyebrow. “I am.”
The elevator door opened and Emma exited, scanning the hotel room numbers as she forged ahead.
“You look different, Emma,” Kat announced behind her. “You look like you are having the regular sexual relations. And in interesting places.”
Heat rushed to Emma’s cheeks, which would have been fine if it stayed there. Instead, it chose to spread to the back of her neck and pronounce her guilty as sin.
Katerina made a sound that might be interpreted as a laugh in Communist cultures circa 1982. “Yes, you are being serviced well. That is good. All women need this.”
Emma balled her fist to knock on the door to Olivia’s hotel suite. “Remember, I’m Chardonnay.”
“Is good name for stripper,” Katerina said with no trace of irony whatsoever.
“And don’t get too porny. Just show them some dance moves they can take home to get their boyfriends off.”
The door flew open and Olivia grinned broadly. “Oh my God, you’re here! We are so excited, I can’t tell you.” Her gaze fell on Katerina. “You. Are. Gorgeous.”
Katerina answered with an “I know” shrug. She waltzed past Olivia and took stock of the suite, assessing her new environment with the efficiency of a pro. “I set up now.”
Olivia nodded, clearly impressed with her work ethic. “Come in, Chardonnay. Meet the girls.” She shaded her mouth with her hand, though she didn’t lower the volume of her voice. “The F-Troop.”
The former F-Troop, she thought, fighting a snarl. With one eye on Katerina as she unpacked her pole, Emma let herself be led to the suite’s sofa, where the Texas princesses were camped out with half-full martini glasses. A pitcher of something fruity sat on the coffee table. Beside it, a gigantic, penis-shaped cake emblazoned with blue icing read, The Best Is Yet to Come!
“So, girls, this is Chardonnay, my brother’s…” Olivia looked to her for assistance.