“Is that a picture of me?” he asked, looking directly at the poster of him on my wall.
“Oh my God!” I shrieked, rushing over to try to shield the incriminating poster from view.
“Ana! Are you upstairs?” My father’s voice called up the stairwell. A minute longer and we’d be in trouble.
“We’ve got to head down.” I rushed over, grabbing his hand and pulling him out of my childhood bedroom.
“So, I’m your teenage dream, huh?” he whispered as we started down the stairs.
“Shut up!” I blushed, trying to pretend that he hadn’t seen the evidence of my history of infatuation.
“Me and Robert Pattinson. I didn’t know you had a thing for vampires.”
“Every teenage girl liked Twilight,” I hissed.
“There you two are.” My mother stood in the kitchen, surveying us as if looking for evidence of out-of-wedlock sex.
“OK, I’ll get out of your hair,” Ash declared. “Thank you so much Mr. and Mrs. Ivanov for letting me crash your Christmas.”
“Crash?” My mother asked, but seemed pleased as he took her hand and gave it a quick kiss, formal and polite.
“We’re pleased you could join us,” my father said, actually looking it.
“Oh, and I almost forgot.” Ash collected two gifts from beside the door and handed them to my parents. “Something for you both.” He thanked them again, wishing them a great holiday, and I walked him outside to his car. A rusty old pickup truck.
“This is what you drove here in?” I asked, surprised.
“It’s my brother Heath’s. He’s kind of a mountain man. He let me borrow it so no one would know it was me driving up here.”
I kissed him goodbye, quick so my parents wouldn’t worry. Plus I bet my aunt and uncle and cousins all had their noses pressed up against the window watching us.
Back in the kitchen, my amazement didn’t fade. It grew. Ash had given my mother two tickets to the New York Philharmonic, a night featuring the Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov. And for my father, a signed score of Shostakovich’s fifth symphony.
Wow. And tomorrow he was taking me to Paris. I felt like I was walking on air.
§
The limo came to pick me up at 7:30 the following night. Our flight didn’t leave until 11:30, but Ash said he wanted to take me somewhere first.
“Dress for a party,” he suggested, like I had any say in it. A stylist dropped off a tiny silver dress and high heels, and insisted on doing a few touches to my hair and make up. After all, this was a job and I had to look just right for the cameras.
I’d packed myself for Paris, though. We still hadn’t let the PR team know about our plans.
“How do we have time for a party?” I’d asked Ash. I’d been on a few flights before, always with my parents. To them, preparing for a plane flight involved weeks of discussions and planning, culminating in arriving hours early to navigate the frightening and ominous passage through ticketing and security.
“Baby, I’m a rock star,” Ash had answered. “There’s always time for a party.”
The car took me to a club in Nolita, north of Little Italy, and dropped me off in front where I faced cameras by myself for the first time.
“It’s Ash’s girl!” one of them yelled and then all of them were on me, snapping pictures and shouting comments and questions.
“How you liking your walk on the wild side?”
“Are you worried he’s going to break your heart, too?”
“Ash is a good person,” I found myself defending him. “You should back off.” A bouncer reached out, took my arm and helped me wade through to the door. Inside, Ash stood waiting for me.
“You should have texted me you were here!” He reached out to welcome me with a hug. “Were they awful?”
I shrugged. They had been, but now I was inside and it looked cool as hell. I could already spot a couple of celebrities I recognized, musicians and actresses. Ash introduced me around, keeping his arm around me the whole time, steering conversation to topics I could join in on.
He offered me a glass of champagne. “Here’s to Paris!” He clinked my glass. “You haven’t posted to Facebook about it, have you?”
I laughed. “No.”
“I know they’ll find us, but we might grab a day without anyone knowing we’re there.” He gave me a mischievous smile that sent a thrill through my entire body. A humming dance floor called out, throngs of well-dressed partiers moving to the beat.
“The day after Christmas? Who knew?”
“There’s always a party somewhere,” Ash explained. “You just have to know the right people.”
“And you do?”
“I’m Ash Black.” He winked at me.
“Then show me how you dance.” It might have been the champagne, it might have been just feeling drunk off his nearness, but I shook my booty off on that dance floor. Not a care in the world, having the time of my life, I waved my hands in the air like I just didn’t care. The man could move, working those legendary hips and thrusting to the beat. He’d be amazing in bed. Every woman and probably some of the men at that party were thinking it, too. I knew that. Maybe some of them knew it for sure? I didn’t like thinking of that, all the people he’d been with before. Maybe even during our two weeks together?
But then Ash brought his hands to my waist, pressing up against me, moving with me to the rhythm and beat. How could I worry with the feel of him in the darkness, the smell of him right there next to me, so close but not close enough? The party was fun, but I wanted to get him alone.
“Let’s get out of here.” He read my mind. The driver who’d taken me over waited for us outside, now with Ash’s bags in the trunk as well. I loved how things just came together for Ash. I wondered if he realized it, or if he’d become so used to puzzle pieces simply falling together for him he didn’t notice anymore. I’d enjoy it while I could.
In the dark of the limo, the privacy screen drawn all the way up, Ash and I sank into each other. Lips, hands, tongues, we kissed and touched and took our flirting from the dance floor to a new, heated level. His hand on my bare inner thigh, he eased up my skirt.
Breathing heavy, he whispered into my ear, “I want you so much, Ana.”
“I do, too.” I couldn’t help grinding against him, my leg up over his, my sex pressed into the muscle of his thigh.
“We could,” he murmured, kissing my neck, his hand grabbing my ass, firm, pressing me up aga
inst him. “No one has to know.”
I exhaled into him, nearly passing out at the thought of him sinking into me. The feel of him long and hard, entering into my slick heat. He’d be rough with me and I’d love it.
But I was already hanging by a thread, a thin, flimsy thread. The gifts and the orgasms and the fun we had together, I was falling fast for this man. But I couldn’t do that. I was hired to fake date him and break up with him, not fall deeply in love in that crushing, complete way you dreamed of one day happening with Mr. Right. He wasn’t Mr. Right, he was Mr. Right Now, and it would be a lot easier to remember that if we didn’t have sex. Somehow I knew that if we did, I’d never be able to turn back.
“You know how I fall asleep each night?” Ash whispered to me in the dark, his hand now wrapped around my thigh. “I think of you. How you smell.” He drew his tongue along my neck, taking in my scent. “How you taste.” He drew his finger up against my panties, pressing against the damp lace, stroking my sex. My lips parted in a soft moan. “I think of what you sound like when you come.”
“You do seem to like making me come,” I gasped. God, did he ever. He did it so well. And so often.
“I’m addicted to it,” he whispered, his finger pushing my panties to the side, plunging into my slick folds. “You’re my new drug. You make me so hard.”
“Ash.” I placed my hands on his shoulders, trying to slow down the roller coaster. Really, I only succeeded in feeling his hard muscles and thinking how good it would feel with his shirt off, digging my nails into his flesh while he drove into me again and again.
“Yes, Ana?” he asked quietly, wickedly, his finger slow and leisurely circling around my clit.
“Ash!” I had to think of something to snap me out of this. “Have you slept with anyone in the last couple weeks? You know, since we’ve been pretending—?”
“There’s been no one but you, Ana,” he assured me with passion. “I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re driving me crazy.”
He took my hand and brought it to his jeans. Wow, he was huge. His long, rock hard shaft pressed against the soft, fitted denim. I ran my fingers along its length. I wanted to unbutton, unzip his jeans. I swallowed with fierce need.