She’d been gone for hours. I knew she’d gone to dinner with friends. Or at least that’s what she’d said. How people were supposed to blindly trust the person they were with was beyond me. Funny thing was, I’d never cared before.
I only did with her.
And I knew I was spiraling, because I’d considered calling every restaurant of mine to see which one she was at. I’d already informed them all that she wasn’t to be paying for anything but now I wanted them to keep damn tabs on her? I hated to feel my control slipping, hated that I wanted to pull up the damn cameras and check. And I’d almost done so more than once. Instead, I’d been mature. I’d texted. Then, I’d threatened.
And she’d ignored me.
Thankfully, I got an alert for her spending over ten thousand dollars on my tab at one restaurant and I knew then where she was. It still didn’t stop me from watching the hallway cameras while waiting for her ass to show.
It had taken hours.
“Have you been waiting up for me?” She stepped past me in her little black dress. The fabric was so thin I could see her nipples raised underneath it immediately. When I followed her to the kitchen where she set down her little clutch, her ass swayed so fluidly. It was like she didn’t have a damn dress on at all.
“I was working.”
She hummed and bent at the waist so she could put her elbow on the counter and rest her chin in her hand while she stared at me. “Do you work literally twenty-four-seven?” Her eyes sparkled with a hazy glaze, and I knew from how she questioned me, she’d drunk more than enough.
“A Vegas resort and casino won’t run itself,” I reminded her. “I can’t go around mingling with friends every night. I need to make sure HEAT members feel safe and secure. Guessing you did if you were out there drinking fifty thousand dollars’ worth of booze, right?”
Her eyes widened. “Fifty thousand? What? There’s absolutely no way. We need to go down to the restaurant right now.”
She turned toward the door but I stopped her. “What were you drinking?”
She spun back around. “Well, I just said the most expensive bottle…” Her eyes narrowed on me now. “Do not tell me you have bottles worth over fifty thousand dollars here, Dex. Do not.”
“Of course I do.”
“That’s ridiculous!” She threw up her hands theatrically, wobbling on her heels. Then, she crossed her arms over her chest and bit her lip before she started giggling. “Well, I’d say sorry but it’s your fault for having such a ridiculously priced bottle in your restaurant.”
Her giggle turned to a laugh and I had to stop myself from joining in. She was obviously tipsy and felt liberated enough to give me some of that snark she used to always have with me long ago. “We have important guests here—”
“Not that important.” She took a deep breath and tried to sober, wiping tears from her eyes from her laughing fit. “Fine. Maybe you do have important guests. Should I apologize for drinking their bubbly? As for the bill, you can take it out of my salary if you need it.”
“Need it?” Who the hell did she think I was? Did she even get why I was upset? “You think I need fifty thousand? Jesus, it’s not expensive for me and who is a more important guest than my fiancée? Spend what you want. I don’t give a shit. But I do give a shit when you don’t text me back.”
I saw how she straightened her spine. “Well, I was too busy having fun while you were too busy to come down because you needed to work all night to keep us safe, I guess.”
“And did you feel safe?” I don’t know why I even cared to ask at this point.
She squinted at me, like this was some sort of quiz. “I felt somewhat safe.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted praise and trust like I would have gotten from her fifteen years ago. “You do realize people have to scan IDs just to walk the premises, right?”
She shrugged like it was nothing.
“The camera system has facial recognition embedded, a software I patented, just to be able to play the slots.”
“I played the penny slots the other night.”
“You think your face isn’t in my system?” I scoffed. “It’s been in my system since the damn moment I built it.”
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because, Kee, if you were going to walk into one of my resorts or my buildings, I was going to be informed, but they weren’t going to stop you. They would have left that job to me.”
She rolled her eyes and her whole body swayed with the movement. “Of course you built a system just to make sure you could spite me. How does it feel holding on to that hate from so long ago?”
“Feels like I’m moving toward getting over it.” I didn’t offer more because I was sure I wasn’t moving in the right direction.
“Well.” She waved off the tension between us and straightened so she wasn’t leaning against the counter anymore. “With you saying all that, I guess I feel a little safer in your resort then.”
“Then I have more work to do because ‘a little’ isn’t good enough.”
“That’s my—” She stopped like she was working through her tipsy haze to tell me something. “I get paranoid sometimes, you know? That has nothing to do with you.”
I’d already seen her the other night in the hallway checking her surroundings. “Want to explain that further?”
“Your hotel is secure.” Her eyes drifted to stare out the window at the city. “You have it all figured out, I’m sure.”
I wanted to think so, but Bane and I were dealing with glitches that shouldn’t have been happening, and they were too coincidental—which meant they weren’t coincidental at all. I rubbed at my temples because the day had been much too long already. “What I don’t have figured out is how you’d like to release the statement of us together. It’s why I texted you tonight.”
“Of course there’s no other reason you’d have texted,” she grumbled, and her bottom lip pouted out.
“Should there be another reason?” I had a million reasons. I’d flipped through them all mentally before I’d landed on that one for texting her tonight.
I wanted her home at the time she’d come home every night this week, I’d made a mental note she should be walking through the door then. I didn’t want her with anyone else but me. She was my fiancée, and my fiancée should be having dinner with me. None of them were logical, considering she wasn’t really mine anymore.
“Nope. We need to think through the media angle, sure, but it’s probably best for the PR teams to handle it.” She seemed resigned to it.
“It’s your brand.” He lifted a brow. “You don’t want a say?”
“Dex, normally what I say is passed over by layers and layers of public relations and—”
“I’m asking you now. What do you want the statement to be? How would you like us to be seen?”
“You want me to make the choice? We’re not capable of running the data points on how it will be received and—”
Normally, I’d agree with her. It was a systematic good marketing approach, but suddenly my ass was willing to veer in a different direction just to hear her opinion. “What data points are needed when you get what you want?”
“Dex, as much as most girls would love to go wave around an engagement ring from a Hardy brother…” She glanced over at the nightstand where the box still sat. “Not that it’s the one I want.” She giggled with her declaration and then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”
“You don’t like your engagement ring?”
“I drank too much. I’m just being ridiculous. The ring is beautiful.”
“But it’s not you.” I knew that. I’d told Penelope to go out and get the gaudiest piece of jewelry for this reason.
“I have picky taste.”
She didn’t. I knew what her preference would be had this been real. “You probably want purple stones around the diamond. The wedding band would be solid gold because I know you hate flashy, gaudy things. You’d probably barely wear the other even if it was your favorite.”
The smile that spread across her face was lazy and genuine, relaxed. We were back to us for a second as she said, “Ah, my Dex Hardy is still in there. The guy who knows every single thing about me.”
“Unfortunately,” I grumbled.
She blinked once and then twice before she nodded and glanced away. I was creating the barrier between us, and I knew that. I had to, or I’d be lost to her again. She’d inevitably follow the fame. I’d be thoroughly destroyed. It wasn’t a cycle I would repeat.
“Right.” She took a deep breath. “The media needs a story, and they need to see we’re in love, that we’re engaged, and that my music has changed because we’ve grown and matured together—”
“That statement seems perfect,” I cut her off. “Let the PR teams do with it what they will. They can release it in a week or two.”
Kee frowned and then paced the living room in her high heels. “Do you just do all this”—she waved out at the city—“and not think about the blowback or the repercussions? How they’ll spin it for the next few months? If something doesn’t work, how we’ll navigate it?”
I crossed my arms over my chest and watched her wear down the carpet. Her legs were so damn long, and the dress bunched higher and higher with every stride she took. And she’d been out with my brother, having fun, talking, letting him learn more about her when I knew nothing about who she was now. Letting him watch her in that damn dress.
“I consider what’s necessary, like the security of this resort. I don’t care what they write in the papers, and the press having a field day isn’t part of my job.”
“Well, this isn’t about security. It’s about presenting a mirage to my fans and hoping they believe it.”
“It’s not a mirage if it’s true. You’ve changed. You want your real sound out there.”
“We’re not true, though!” She threw up her hands and then placed them on her hips as she stopped to stare at me. “We aren’t engaged, and no one has seen us together. We can’t act in love. You barely talk to me except, well…”
“Except when?” I wanted to hear her say it.
The pink blush on her cheeks turned almost red before she lifted her chin. Then she stepped up to the plate I’d baited her to. “Except for the other night when we slept together. This is going to be a disaster. It’s not like we’re doing that anymore. Obviously. You don’t even eat dinner with me!”
“I don’t need to eat dinner with you to fuck you, heartbreaker. We both know that.”
“You do if you think you have a chance of fucking me.” She turned and started to walk without her stride even faltering. She was ready to fight fire with fire now.
“If that’s the case, you should have asked me to come home.”
She whirled to face me and continued pacing right up to me to glare into my eyes. “Why? So you can work through your emotions and muddle mine? So you can wrap up the ends of our past into a neat bow and throw it away while my career and life unravel in the process?”
Her breath came fast, and her eyes looked wild, like she was barreling toward a disaster and didn’t know how to stop. Kee was scared, probably about as scared as I was.
“Your career and life aren’t my problem,” I blurted out as I processed everything else. It was the wrong thing to say. It was a knee-jerk reaction to how I’d compartmentalized her over the years, how I’d compartmentalized everything.
She nodded and combed a tiny hand through her hair before she stormed off to her bedroom. Well, my bedroom.
Fuck.
I went after her and found her in there untying the back of her dress with jerky movements and a blotchy face. I knew she’d wiped the tears away, and I didn’t know if I should apologize right then or act as if I didn’t see them. I stepped up behind her and murmured, “You and these damn strings for tops. Let me help you.”
“I don’t need help,” she grumbled as she looked in the long mirror to the left of my closet. I’d stood there so many times on my own, straightening a tie, looking at myself, or looking at me and another woman.
Most days, I didn’t feel a damn thing when I stood there. With her, that feeling of missing someone and them coming back walloped me hard enough that the tears probably should have been in my eyes too. “I’m not used to having someone else in my life, Kee.”
I let my fingers thread around the string and brushed them over her back. She gasped, and I saw the goose bumps form immediately on her skin. Still, she responded, “You had a girlfriend for two years.”
I loosely played with the strings rather than untying them and watched how her lips parted at my touch, watched how her nipples tightened. “I told you, my ex wasn’t so much of a girlfriend as she was a plaything. Our commitment to each other never spanned a certain amount of time, and she didn’t expect anything from me. I don’t help people for no reason. It’s not who I am.”
Kee gulped and murmured, “I’m as good as your plaything now. You getting over me is essentially fucking me out of your system, correct?”
Her words grated me in the wrong way, made me out to be the monster and not the victim when she’d actually left me to rot first. “You sound so against it now when you were on board the other night, Kee. You enjoyed it.”
Chewing at her cheek, I saw the ideas running through her head. “I guess we can both benefit from it. Like I said, I need more experience for—”
“I’m not helping you sell our sexual experience—”
“It’s not just sex. It’s just…living. I haven’t lived, Dex. I do whatever they want me to. It’s my experience that I’ll be writing about. My heart, my soul. You’re essentially teaching me how to tap into it. Plus, we’ll be all over each other for the cameras anyway.”
Fuck the cameras.
That’s what I wanted to say but she leaned back into me then. My cock rubbed against her and I strained to find some damn control. I’d been hard for her for days now, trying to avoid the inevitable of wanting her again so soon after taking her virginity.
She turned suddenly and looked at me with those vivid violet eyes. Then, she pushed her dress down to her hips, letting her breasts spill out. “So teach me.”
“Fuck me,” I whispered out as I stared at her standing next to my bed. “Kee…”
“Don’t make me beg.”
“You’ve had way too much to drink tonight.”
“I’m practically sober. I’ll beg if you want.”
She stepped closer to me, but I took a step back. “Jesus, I want to say you should beg, Kee. But it’s not the time.”
“I do deserve it,” she murmured. Then she grabbed my wrist and brought it to her cheek. “You had me once.” She took a step closer and dragged my hand down to her collarbone, to her chest, down, down, down to the peak of her breast. I indulged because I couldn’t stop myself. I was lost to the feeling of her soft skin. She whimpered as I circled her nipple with my thumb and her hands went to grip my shirt. “Have me again.”
I shook my head. “I’m doing too many favors and not getting any in return.”
“What do you want in return?” she whispered, and my cock jumped in my trousers.
“You know, a couple nights ago, I should have been yelling at you for taking over my room and letting my brother practically undress you. Tonight, I still can’t believe you went and hung out with him.” I was almost hypnotized by her, admitting all I was frustrated with.
She pulled me closer, and her eyes were hooded. “Does it bother you that I was out with my friends instead of being in bed with you?”
I didn’t answer her right away.
“Punish me for it. Show me what you’d do to me. I want it, Dex.”
I dipped a finger into the dress that was bunched at her waist to pull her close so she could feel what she did to me. “You wear underwear with this flimsy of a dress?”
“Check and see.” Her breath came faster now. She was pouring gasoline on my already brittle and dry reserves, goading me. It was like she lit and threw the match.
“Knowing you, probably not.” I bunched up the fabric and saw I was right. Her pussy was bare and dripping arousal down her thigh. “Kee, you can’t even be a good fiancée for our very first week together?”
Chastising her was like stoking the flames that were already burning. She whispered out, “I don’t want to be good.”
I already knew that about her. She wanted to be free, and being free didn’t consider good or bad. Being free meant you weren’t worrying about any of the moralities.
I brushed my finger over her sex and told her, “This is my bedroom.”
“You sure?” She shook her head. “It’s filled with all my things. It’s mine.”
“How do you intend to live in harmony with me if you can’t take one step in the right direction away from taunting me?”
“You need a little disruption in your perfect life anyway.” She whimpered and bucked her hips over my hand while I worked her slow. This wasn’t a gift of pleasure to her. She’d learn that pleasure could be pain, could be frustrating, could be downright infuriating.
Her pussy coated my knuckles as I rubbed them slowly over her clit then over her entrance, not giving her what she wanted. “You being in my home is disruption enough. You being here, drunk, begging for me is pushing the limit of what I’m capable of enduring.”
“It’s what you wanted. You asked me to live here. Demanded it.”
“I don’t want you here. I need you here. There’s a difference.”
“What’s the difference, then? What do you need me for?”
“So I can get you out of my system forever once and for all.” I only answered one question but not the other. Then, I pulled my hand away and said, “Take your dress off.”
“But you’re fully clothed still,” she pouted.
“Baby, I’m making you feel good right now. I don’t need my clothes off for it.”
She glanced at my cock. “How is that helping you work out your need for me? Don’t you want to screw until you’ve had enough of me?”
“I fucked the virginity out of you already, heartbreaker. Now, I want to hear you scream my name over and over. It turns me on. Take your dress off and lie on the bed.”
First, she licked her lips and stared at me as she slipped the dress off. Then, she murmured, “You take your shirt off too?”
She’d tried last time to take my shirt off, but I’d avoided it. I hid what I knew she’d understand on my ribs from her now too. I’d told myself I’d get the tattoo redone over the years but never was able to bring myself to. I shook my head at her and said, “Get on the bed, first.”
When she listened and scooted onto the bed slowly, I barely restrained myself from unbuckling my pants to fuck her sideways. “Hands against the headboard, babe.”
“For what?”
“Brace for what it’s going to feel like to have me between your legs. The man you left behind.”
“Dex—”
I stepped over to the bottom of the bed and pushed her legs apart to see her pussy glistening, pink and swollen for me. “Make sure when I make you come, you yell your fiancé’s name. Loud.”
I didn’t wait for her to tell me she would. I was confident enough to know that our bodies worked well together. She’d scream for me and only me. I tasted the salty-sweet mix of her arousal and groaned into her pussy. I loved how she shuddered, how her legs instantly clamped around my ears like she was going to hold me hostage all night.
I sucked on her clit and felt how it swelled in my mouth as she got closer and closer to coming undone. Even still, she kept her hands above her, pushing against the large wood posts of the headboard. I’d wanted a solid bed, one that could withstand the force of passion, and it had done well so far.
I had a feeling, though, these six months would put it to the test because Kee didn’t just enjoy this, I could see she would crave it. I could tell in the way she leveraged against the headboard to push her sex down harder against my tongue. I loved hearing how wet she was as I lapped roughly at the most sensitive part of her. I gripped her ass cheeks and thrust my tongue in. I wanted to taste the parts of her no one else had. I wanted to live in the space no one else got to. I came up for air just to say, “This pussy is only going to want, isn’t it?”
Her eyes were wild as she opened them in fury that I’d stopped. “Whatever, Dex. Just, please.”
“Say it.”
She whimpered, her head thrashing back and forth like she was jonesing for a release. I loved that her hair was sprawled out around her, making her look perfectly unraveled.
“Say you only want me, Kee. I need to hear it.”
She practically growled as she repeated it back to me, and I dove in again to suck her clit while I thrust a finger slowly into her sex, testing if she could take anything firmer and longer than my tongue today. When I did, she moaned rather than winced. “Such a greedy pussy. Look how you want it even after being sore a couple days ago.”
“Dexton Hardy, please. Just let me have this. Give me what I want.”
“I should. Shouldn’t I? Pretty girl like you in my bed. It’s mine, you know that right? Even with your purple bedspread on it and with you inviting your friends into my bedroom, it’s still mine.”
“Fine. I don’t care. Have the room. Just please.”
I slid another finger in and rolled her clit around in my mouth. “I like how you listen, Kee. It’s what we need to make this relationship work.”
“Faster, Dex. I need more. I need you.”
Hearing her say she needed me after all these years was too much. “You don’t need me. You only need something to take the edge off.”
“No, I need you,” she moaned.
“Do you know me, Kee? You don’t even know what I like anymore.”
“I know that. I want you to show me. Show me now. Show me everything.”
My hand was already gripping her thigh too hard, showcasing I was losing control. We were only a week in, and I wasn’t sure I could handle her, handle this.
“You want me, then you’re going to see. And I don’t know if you’re going to like what you see at all.”
She looked down at me, determination sparkling in her pretty eyes. “Show me.”
