One night only, p.12
One Night Only, page 12
Her warm mouth engulfed him, stretching her pink lips around his head. He grunted, an animal sound he was certain he’d never made before, and then he cupped her face, tangling his fingers in her wild, wet hair. An anchor.
She sucked hard and swirled the tip of her tongue over the sensitive crown, lingering on the spot that left him growling out her name and clamping his jaw so tight he worried for his enamel.
The minx had the audacity to smile around him, her mouth full, and then she bobbed her head, her eyes locked with his, full of challenge while she moaned and mumbled. He surrendered. He was always going to lose this fight. The sight of her on her knees with his cock in her mouth one he’d remember for ever. She worked him higher until every muscle screamed.
She was fantastic. Why had he battled so hard to fight this attraction? His balls tightened and boiled and fire flickered at the base of his spine.
‘Essie...’ The warning clear, no doubt by the look of twisted agony on his face.
Humming encouragement against him, she nodded her head, giving her permission. The flames licked along his shaft, lightning striking the tip at the moment he erupted on her tongue with a harsh yell and a slap of his hand on the tile.
She swallowed him down, releasing him with a pop and satisfied grin. He hauled her to her feet and crushed her close while she gripped his ass cheeks in both hands.
He pulled back, smacking kisses on her swollen, grinning lips.
‘Best.’
Kiss.
‘Fun.’
Kiss.
‘Ever.’
* * *
Essie pointed her phone at the majestic gothic spires of Notre Dame and snapped some pictures. The private pleasure cruise Ash had booked took them down the Seine from the Eiffel Tower to the Pont de Sully and back. A perfect way to see so many of the city’s iconic landmarks and to fully appreciate Paris’s endless stunning architecture.
After they’d dressed, they’d spilled out of the hotel and found a charming Parisian café where they’d sat on the pavement at a gingham-covered table for two and feasted on warm crumbly croissants that melted in the mouth. This new experiences game they were playing left her floating on air. She’d even forgone posting on her blog for that day and switched off her phone in reverence to her first orally delivered orgasm and her first visit to the French capital.
Ash approached with two flutes of what was probably real champagne—she was too scared to ask, because today had already had enough of a fairy-tale quality to leave her both swooning and restless.
Because she’d woken up in Paris next to a gorgeous man, any woman’s dream, who lived a lifestyle she couldn’t comprehend—one perhaps, had her parents been married, had she and Ben grown up together, she might have glimpsed. But that wasn’t her reality.
Her reality had been the role of odd kid out—not quite like many other kids from single-parent families but not quite like the whole families, either. Her reality had been years of loneliness, confusion and pining for an absent father. Yes, he’d sent endless gifts and she’d never gone hungry, but her reality had been an illusion. Just as her and Ash cruising the Seine drinking champagne was an illusion.
‘You look sad—Paris not what you expected?’ He sat next to her.
She shook her head. ‘It’s beautiful.’ Her lip took a severe nibbling while she tried to marshal her conflicted thoughts. ‘Your parents’ divorce... Was it while you were growing up?’
Ash sniffed as if the warm summer air offended him. ‘They’re in the process of it right now, actually. Turns out my mother could tolerate one affair, but not two. Why?’
She took the glass of champagne he offered and sipped. ‘Just imagining what your childhood was like.’
He looked away. ‘Pretty normal, I guess.’ He shrugged and slid his arm along the back of the seat.
‘Did you come here with your family?’ She picked at the scab, imagining fun-packed but rowdy Jacob holidays. All five of them together.
He nodded, eyes wary.
Essie’s glazed-over stare found the view again. ‘I only remember one holiday with Mum and my father. I was ten.’ The memories rushed in like a tidal wave, stealing the last of her high. ‘I’d begged and begged to accompany him on one of his business trips to New York, promised I’d be so good he wouldn’t know I was there. He appeased me with a trip to Chester Zoo.’ She picked at a sliver of peeling paint from the seat. ‘I didn’t mind—it was the best trip ever. He bought me a stuffed elephant, we got our faces painted and he taught me to play chess back at the hotel.’
Ash’s hand slid to her back, his palm warm between her shoulder blades, the rhythmic sweep of his thumb strangely unbearable.
‘So you didn’t see much of Frank?’
She shook her head, her face hot. Why had she even confided such a deeply personal moment with the power to shrivel her insides? The memory of what she’d done to that beloved stuffed elephant five years later when she’d finally discovered her father’s deception still brought heat to her face.
‘When I discovered the truth, that he’d lied to me and to Mum and his real family...’ She met Ash’s stare, shame and defiance warring inside. ‘I...I built a bonfire in the back garden. It didn’t end well for the elephant.’
Ash pulled her close and pressed his mouth to the top of her head, the gesture more than that of fuck buddy. But she wasn’t naive enough to see Ash’s display of romantic, even comforting, touches as anything but good manners and an attempt to keep their insatiable chemistry on the fun track where it belonged.
She sipped the frigid wine, pushing dark, dangerous thoughts away, and focussed on the view to stop the dangerous slide towards obsessing. It wasn’t just the fact that Ash was way out of her league. He possessed a quick wit and was sexy personified. He had a dry sense of humour and regularly called her out on her more outrageous bullshit. A very addictive combination for a girl sadly lacking in healthy, long-lasting relationships, either in her own life, or displayed by her parental role models. A girl who’d spent two years in a dysfunctional, emotionally abusive relationship because she was so desperate to be the opposite of her parents.
She’d promised Ash she didn’t want more than sex.
But if she ever changed her mind, ever considered herself capable of maintaining the kind of trust and commitment she frequently wrote about from a theoretical point of view, Ash represented exactly the kind of man she’d want.
Pity it was never going to happen. Not because he couldn’t be sweet and romantic as he’d just proved, as well as an astounding lover. But because he’d meant what he’d said.
The ex Ben mentioned had clearly hurt him badly enough that he’d sworn off anything beyond casual for good. Those closest had the most power to cause lifelong pain.
She shuddered. She’d certainly never been back to a zoo.
‘Oh, look.’ She latched onto a distraction and pointed at a couple on the walkway lining the riverbanks. A bride and groom, having their picture taken.
Ash followed the direction she indicated, and they stared for several stilted, silent seconds. Essie squirmed, covering the awkward moment with a blast of verbal diarrhoea to put him at ease.
‘Ah, the city of love... Oh, fun fact. Did you know that falling in love has the same effect on your brain as snorting cocaine?’ She wasn’t fishing for a proposal, but she wasn’t carved from stone like the gargoyles atop Notre Dame. Just because love hadn’t worked out for her parents, for her, perhaps for Ash, didn’t mean others couldn’t find it.
Ash looked away from the beaming couple, his stare skittering anywhere but on Essie.
‘Did you know the divorce rate in the Western world averages fifty per cent?’ He curled his lip and sipped his wine.
She gaped. She wasn’t wholly surprised—if more men were like her father and her ex...and his father... His cynicism was more than a hardened lawyer thing—it must be the woman...
The set of Ash’s mouth told her now wasn’t the right time to pry. Time to drag the conversation back to fun town. ‘I didn’t. But you’re ruining the ambience, counsellor.’
He shrugged, a smile on his face, but his shoulders didn’t drop to pre-shrug levels.
She rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not hinting.’ She nudged him with her elbow, trying to lighten the mood. ‘From a scientific standpoint, I find it fascinating that something as nebulous as—’ she made air quotes ‘—“love” is powerful enough to induce such a rush of euphoria on a neurological level.’
He stared for long silent seconds.
Essie brazened it out, but inside she wanted to roll into a ball and protect her soft parts.
‘Do you really believe all that relationship babble?’
She bristled. Had he just ridiculed the basis of her entire research doctorate? The foundation of her precious and increasingly popular blog? The very doctrine she hoped to live the rest of her happy and contented life by, next time she was brave enough to dip a toe back into relationship waters? At least next time she met someone, she’d also have a sexual standard to measure them against, thanks to Ash.
For the first time in her life, she knew what all the fuss was about.
‘I don’t need to believe it. Just because we’ve never experienced it—it’s science.’
‘It’s bullshit.’ He flushed and then winced. ‘It may be science, but science isn’t for everyone. It isn’t for me.’
Essie’s heart rate accelerated. He was opening up. Had her earlier confessional mood infected him?
‘Without changing my plea, I meant what I said last night—just fun—why the hefty dose of cynicism?’ She glugged more champagne in case this conversation blew up in her face. The psychologist in her couldn’t help but pry. And the woman who’d had fantastic sex with him was pretty interested, too.
She couldn’t look too closely at why, preferring to believe her interest was a side effect of the spectacular orgasms, professional curiosity or her constant need to help her fellow man.
With his eyes shielded behind sunglasses, she had no non-verbal cues to help—Ash sat as still as a statue.
‘I had a fiancée. Years ago. I thought myself in love, the kind you think exists, scientifically.’
Essie’s throat tightened until she expected to hear choking sounds when she breathed. She clamped her lips shut, desperate for him to continue. To learn more about this closed-off man who had so much to offer and what had shaped him.
‘Right up to the week before the wedding, when I discovered she was cheating on me.’
Essie stared, mouth agape.
Who would cheat on Ash?
A splash of icy champagne spilled on her dress, soaking through the fabric. She looked down, busying herself with wiping at the spill with the hem of her dress, to both gather her own scattered thoughts and give Ash some time to recover from his shocking confession.
But what did she say to a temporary lover on discovering he had indeed had his heart broken, something that had tainted all his future relationships? She knew what psychologist Essie would say. She even had an idea how relationship blogger Essie would handle it. But the woman who’d spent the night in his bed and was already struggling with the boundaries she’d agreed to Essie? She was all over the place.
‘Have you...had anyone serious since then?’
He shook his head, confirming her theories. ‘Casual works best for me.’
While part of her was happy that she and Ash were on the same page in their personal reasons for avoiding relationships at this stage in their lives, his confirmation came with an unpleasant hollowness in her stomach.
He’d really meant what he’d said.
‘I’m sorry you were hurt. Your ex sounds a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic, if you ask me.’ Humour seemed the safest option to claw back the light-hearted, Parisian vibe they’d had earlier. But it didn’t banish the gnawing inside, or the restlessness of earlier. Or the urge to comfort Ash. But he’d hate that. She sat on her free hand.
Ash shrugged. ‘I’m well over it. As I said, it was years ago.’ He didn’t appear over it. In fact, a greenish hue tinged his skin. ‘I just think that whatever that emotion is—that drug-like high—it passes pretty quickly, and then what do you have?’
She had plenty of answers, but none she thought he’d want to hear. And perhaps he was right. What did she really know? Everything she’d learned about men came from her ex, a pathetic excuse for a man who’d needed to put her down to make himself feel like a man, and her waste-of-space father—a man who was only in her life thirty per cent of the time and never at the important moments. If she’d grown up with Ben, at least she’d have had a stable male role model, an older brother to fight her corner, vet her boyfriends and tell her she was worthy. But Frank had robbed her of that, too.
‘Love didn’t work out for you and the lazy, critical, controlling jerk-off...’ He toyed with a strand of her hair, his stare searching.
‘No.’ As far as romantic relationships went, she’d proved her judgment was seriously lacking. She’d accepted meagre scraps, just like her mother. ‘But that was my fault. People treat you the way you allow yourself to be treated, right?’ Yes, she knew the theory down to the last detail, but putting it into practice for yourself... That was another matter.
Ash nodded in agreement, his stare fixed on the horizon.
‘But, you’re right. I haven’t found it, yet. But I do know that as humans we’re destined to strive for a meaningful connection, an interaction with other humans. We can’t avoid it. It’s evolutionary. A survival tactic.’
‘Is that why your relationship with Ben is so important?’
Essie shrugged, feigning indifference while her insides shrivelled. ‘You don’t have to be a psychologist to see I have daddy issues. I grew up thinking I was an only child. I loved my father, idolised him as a little girl, but his betrayal ruined our relationship.’ She shrugged, playing down the impact of her rolling stomach. ‘I feel cheated—Ben’s a great guy, as you know.’
Ash nodded.
And Ash? Another great guy who’d been hurt in the past, who she’d objectified on her blog in order to feel validated. Well, that ended today. No more Illegally Hot. And no more crazy ideas about Ash being anything more than a temporary fling.
Several beats passed.
‘Hungry?’ said Ash.
Essie nodded, despite her swirling stomach.
‘Let’s go to Montmartre for lunch. They have a street market today.’
And just like that they successfully hurdled the invisible barrier—with good, old-fashioned denial.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY night Ash emerged from The Yard’s offices to find the bar awash with smart, glamorous opening-night customers. Cocktails and good times flowed. Essie and Josh had organised a happy hour to bring in office workers, and the online social media buzz she’d created had ensured it was standing room only. Their brand-new cocktail menu was inscribed in elegant script on the oversized contemporary chalkboard behind the bar. Every glass sparkled. The bar’s state-of-the-art lighting created pockets of ambience, certain nooks and crannies of the chic space becoming intimate, dimly lit corners.
But instead of the satisfaction he’d anticipated, his body was strung taut, every muscle twitchy. Ash scanned the bar for Essie. He knew she wore the same slinky black dress she’d had on at La Voute a week ago, because just before they’d opened The Yard’s door for the first time, she’d strode into his office with that slightly feral gleam in her eyes, locked the door behind her and perched her delectable derrière on his desk.
When she’d slowly bared her thighs, revealing that she’d removed her underwear, he’d been powerless to resist what had followed—him fucking her on his desk, a new experience she’d requested with a cheeky, ‘For luck...?’
The restlessness dissipated as he recalled the past week of fantastic sex. They’d spent practically every spare minute screwing—starting with the flight back from Paris to London, where she’d ridden him in one of the wide leather seats at thirty-thousand feet, successfully earning herself a mile-high experience, and continuing at work, at his apartment and anywhere else they could get away with. The intense, couldn’t-keep-their-hands-off-each-other phase was lasting well beyond the arbitrary time limit he’d set. Any day now, he expected the bubble to burst, the novelty to wear off, the fun to end and his life to return to normality.
But the desire was far from abating and Ash found himself in new territory.
Perhaps the out-of-body feelings rattling him were a symptom of having allowed the insatiable, enthusiastic Essie too much time in the driving seat? Time to wrestle back some of the control, dictate the...fun, suggest the next experience. His mind whirred with endless pornographic possibilities. Yes, that was just the right tactic to steer things back on track.
He spotted her at the far end of the bar and discreetly adjusted himself. She still carried the radiant glow her earlier orgasm had delivered to her translucent skin. She’d retamed her hair, twisting it into some messy topknot that left only a few wisps tickling her elegant neck. Just knowing that the halter dress she wore prevented her wearing a bra, and that her perfect tits were bare under the scrap of silk, flooded his groin with fresh heat. Heat that should have dissipated after their quick but thoroughly satisfying desk session. But no. It was as if the more he had, the more he knew about her, the more he wanted.
A very dangerous combination.
Ash set off towards the object of his disgruntlement, weaving his way through the throng. She chatted with Josh, who smiled at her and touched her arm. Essie laughed at something he said as she leaned close to speak over the general din of a hundred conversations and the vibratingly loud music.
