Buoyed
by her secret, Mara padded toward the darkened door. Trance music pounded
behind it. A low, almost violent sound that matched her panicked heartbeat. She
imagined Derek pacing behind the door like a wolf. She knocked, her skin
burning with excitement. She hoped he wasn’t there. And then the door swung
open.
Derek
wore his dark suit with the inelegance of men who were more comfortable
bare-chested, but that only added to his power. He glowered at her like it was
her fault he was so gorgeously penned in. His tattoos curled over his collar and
cuffs, straining at his civility. His cologne smelled of wood fire and cherries
and as he watched her, his gaze locked on her breasts, Mara was sure he was
going to snap, tear her coat off and take her.
“Hi,”
she whispered.
“Nice
jacket.” He leaned against the doorway, looking her up and down. “What’s
underneath it?”
Mara’s
tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth.
He
laughed. “I guess I’ll find out, huh?”
She
moved to walk past him, but he pressed a hand to the other side of the door
frame. “Where’s my hello?”
“Hello?”
“Not
that.” He turned his face to the side tapping his cheek. He was throwing down
the gauntlet already.
She
looked around. No one was in the hall. Why did it matter if she kissed Derek on
the cheek? She stood on her toes, pressing her lips to him, and felt the
stubble beneath his skin. His cologne mixed with his raw, dizzying animal scent
and she exhaled, feeling dizzy. Then she caught a whiff of something she
couldn’t place. She inhaled.
“Are
you smelling me?”
She
grinned. “You still smoke.”
He
scowled. “Not all the time.”
“But
tonight?” She pointed to the balcony she could see behind him. “Out there
maybe?”
He
looked away.
“I
can’t believe it! You’re an athlete. You’re a role model.”
“That’s
enough,” he growled, sliding a hand around her. “Get in here, Little Miss.”
Mara
allowed herself to be bundled into the room. It was a lovely suite, white with
a cream carpet and floor-to-ceiling windows. Derek directed her to the living
room where a red velvet couch waited in front of a flat-screen TV. The coffee
table was laid with platters of fresh fruit, cupcakes, and cookies. The hostess
in Mara admired the effort, the girl wondered how much she was going to be
expected to eat. She hated wasting food. Maybe Derek had arranged a secret
orgy. Maybe seventeen other girls were due to arrive in matching bodysuits.
“Like
the room?”
She
could feel Derek staring at her ass, albeit through the coat. “It’s nice.”
A
small huff. “You think it’s too expensive, don’t you?”
“No,”
she lied.
“Glad
to hear it.” He strode to a standing ice bucket where a bottle of Dom Perignon waited. “Drink?”
Mara
swallowed. She wanted champagne, but not the time spent sitting around drinking
it. “Maybe we could just…?”
“Go
into the bedroom?”
She
nodded.
Derek
raised a dark brow. “You can’t even say it, but you want me to drop everything
and fuck you like you’re some whore I booked for the night?”
“I…
yes?”
Derek
shoved his hands in his suit pockets. “Lemme get this straight. We used to try
and grab fifteen minutes together before Maths
and now we’ve got all the time in the world and you want to be strangers
hammering away at each other again?”
Mara
plucked a strawberry from one of the platters. “Pretty much.”
“What
about what I want?”
Mara
nibbled the strawberry. Tart sweetness spread across her tongue. “What do you
want?”
“I
want us to spend some time together before I take you into the other room and
turn you out.” Derek’s jaw was set, his dark eyes unblinking. He had his game
face on, and God only knew what that meant for her body. She needed to shift
the vibe of this encounter, fast. She flashed him a smile. “But your card
said—”
“It
said to meet me here at 7. Not meet me here at 7 so you can get fucked and run
out on me again, little girl.”
Mara
ignored the surge of heat between her legs. “You sent me lingerie. You said
you’d wear a suit. We both know what that means.”
“What
does it mean?”
Damn
him. He knew she couldn’t say it. She picked up a gingerbread cookie and bit
into it, tasting spice and sugar. “Whatever. You lured me here under false
pretenses.”
“What
did I promise that I didn’t deliver?”
“You
sent me an eye mask and ropes.”
“And
I’ve yet to see either of them. Or the bodysuit. Where’s the proof you’ve got
it on?”
Mara
opened the coat, swishing it back and exposing the bodysuit beneath. A muscle
leaped in Derek’s jaw. “The ties?”
She
held out her Givenchy bag. “In here. Can we go to bed now?”
“Not
yet.” He moved toward her, letting his feet hover before each step. He was
teasing her, stalking her like a hungry animal. But she wouldn’t let him win.
She’d keep snacking until he gave up and took her to bed.
A
ghost of a smile passed over his face. “What am I going to do with you, Mara?”
She
took another small bite of the cookie. “You make a deal with me?”
“That
would set a bad precedent.”
“Why?”
He
looked her over, his gaze dragging across her nipples. “Anything I want from
you, I’ll take.”
She
swallowed, almost choking on her biscuit. “Okay, well, anytime you want to
start, I’m here.”
His
face softened and that was scarier than his hulking presence in the doorway.
“Mara… I know it’s been forever and a day, but come on. It’s me.”
He
said it as though she should know which ‘me’ he meant. As though he wasn’t
standing in front of her in a ten-thousand-dollar suit with a decade worth of
new tattoos and stories she didn’t know. It struck her, how much of a stranger
he was. The way he stood without slouching. The way he talked, saying
‘precedent’ and ‘forever and a day.’
So
much of what she remembered about Derek had frozen at the age of eighteen. To
have him moving and talking in front of her was unnerving. It had been so much
easier when he was screwing her brains out at the Sofitel. He’d been like a 3D printout of the man who’d driven her wild as
a teenager.
“Mara?”
She
saw him kneeling on her grandma’s couch, looking at her with the same imploring
eyes. ‘You’re
the only person who’s ever meant anything to me, baby.’
To
her horror, Mara found she was about one second away from crying. She stuffed
the rest of the gingerbread cookie in her mouth, casting a quick glance at
Derek. His face blurred between the boy she knew and the man everyone knew. She
recalled the famous photo of him, walking out of a Vegas Casino with a stunning
blonde on his arm. He’d a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and his sunglasses
on. She’d only been able to endure that photo because she knew he’d gone beyond
her. But now he was here, buying her underwear and strawberries and trying to
talk to her. That wasn’t okay. She had nothing to say to this uncanny blend of
man and myth. She wanted to exist in her own little world with minimal
brush-over from his.
She
squared her shoulders. “Derek, I’m wearing a bodysuit and heels. I came to your
hotel room at night. I know you have… feelings about us. But I didn’t come here to talk
about the past.”
His
jaw tensed. “Okay.”
“I
don’t want to sound rude. But I don’t want to go there.”
She
flinched as he strode toward her, but he merely grabbed the champagne from the
ice bucket. “So, you came here to get some dick, did you?”
Mara
tried to smile. “Something like that.”
“So
that’s all you want it to be between us? Just fucking?”
She
recalled the laughing blonde under his arm in Vegas. “Yes, I do.”
He stood motionless and Mara wondered if he was going to ask her to leave. Then he tore the foil from the neck of the champagne. “Fine. Start acting like this is about fucking.”
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