Chapter EighteenTannerWe sit on the balcony, overlooking the city with the night air pricking coolly. I feel my manhood stir as I wrap my arms around Tess’s waist and hug her tighter, her ass cheeks grinding against my crotch, her thighs too tempting not to grab and massage as we watch the stars and the star like lights of the city below.
“I feel like we’re on top of the world,” Tess whispers, wriggling enticingly in my lap.
“That’s because we are,” I say, drawing patterns on her bare thighs with my fingertips.
We’re wearing the bathrobes supplied by the hotel, the material plush and indulgent, but nothing’s as indulgent as the absolute captivation I feel every time I touch my queen.
“So, how was I?” she asks a moment later.
“Pfft,” I mutter, laughing grimly. “Now you’re just fishing for compliments, Tess. You know how you fucking were. Mind boggling. Fucking enthralling. You’re everything I ever dreamed of and more.”
She glows endearingly and then traces her finger down my chest, over my scar, and she doesn’t even have to say anything for me to understand what she’s asking with the gesture.
Aren’t you going to tell me how you got it? You promised.
“You’ve read Promenade in the Rain,” I murmur.
She tilts her head at me as though I’ve stated something beyond obvious.
“Okay,” I chuckle. “Fair enough. But you know how everybody says that book is autobiographical, based on what happened to my parents?”
She nods. “Yeah, it was how they advertised it, wasn’t it?”
I nod darkly. “Yeah, and that pissed me off pretty badly. I was too young and unknown to do anything about it then, but you’ll notice that no book after that ever used my personal tragedy for advertising. Anyway, the main character in Promenade, he hides when they break into his house and—Shit, I might need to get a beer for this.”
“Wait here,” she says, hopping to her feet, her robe opening slightly to show an impossible-to-resist nipple, red and sore looking from our sex.
I lean forward and take it in my mouth, sucking and feeling the tremors move through her body.
“Nah uh,” she moans, taking a step back with visible effort. “You’re not getting away that easy.”
“Hurry up with that beer, then,” I joke, giving her a spank on her round, juicy, fuck-me-hard ass.
She giggles and swats at me – it’s all in fun and always will be – and then walks into the hotel suite in a way that glues my eyes to the swishing motion of her hips.
I turn back to the night, a dark feeling creeping into my gut.
Am I really going to tell her this?
I’ve never spoken about it aloud to anyone, not even to my agent.
The police at the time knew, of course, but they weren’t about to release what really happened to the public. As far as my readers are concerned, I was just like the protagonist in Promenade, hiding in my bedroom when the attackers tormented and eventually killed my family.
She returns with the beer and I can’t help but let myself greedily devour the image of her standing there at the open balcony door, her robe fastened in the middle so that it blooms out with the curvature of her hips and her breasts, a perfect figure that sends imperative lust deep into my core.
And always will.
I’ll never stop being attracted to her.
But there’s more, too.
It’s the goddamn domestic way she stands there, just so maternal and womanly it makes me ache.
She places the beer in front
“What’s wrong with my lap?” I banter.
“Nothing’s wrong with it,” she says, become sassier and feistier by the minute. “It’s just that you seem to be under the impression that I’m irresistible—”
“That’s because you are—”
“And the last thing I want is to distract you so much that you break your promise.”
Right.
My promise of telling her what I’ve never told anyone else.
I take the cold beer and take a long sip, letting it settle in my belly.
And then I turn back to the city.
Looking at her right now is too difficult, the openness of her expression, the understanding sparking across her lovely features.
“The protagonist in the novel – Jamie – he hears the commotion downstairs, hears the home invaders attacking his parents, and he’s so terrified that he hides.”
“He knew that he had to fight. There was an instinct inside of him, a primal howling, a call to the wild—to be a savage, to protect. But there was something else, too, a child, and that screamed at him to stay where he was and wait for some other to handle it for him.”
I can’t help but smirk, shaking my head in disbelief.
“Jesus, Tess, you really are a fan, eh?”
“Guilty as charged,” she says sweetly, reaching across to take my hand. “So what really happened?”
I feel myself tensing up, as though any moment my self-protective instincts are going to force me to stand up and just walk away, telling her nothing.