She was tired of secrets.
A drumbeat in his chest echoed against her back, its rhythm matching the tempo of her own thundering heart and pulse between her legs. His breath whispered against her neck again, hot and insistent. “Love how you feel surrounding me with your heat. Could stay like this forever.”
A tear fell down her cheek, and she thanked her stars he was blind to it. She squeezed around his thick, gorgeous shaft, urging him to continue now, because there could be no forever.
“f*ck
, Emma,” he gritted out, and then he bit her shoulder gently, but hard enough to make a mark. His hips rolled back, and he slammed into her, holding her in place so the terrace walls wouldn’t bruise her. That would be his job.
She arched her back to increase the angle and heighten the pleasure. She didn’t want it gentle. She wanted to be punished for the crimes he didn’t know about, for the bad girl she truly was.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she chanted as her orgasm threatened and climbed and blissfully rolled through her. Her vision blurred, likely because of the city lights and the force of her release, not because her emotion got the better of her. The clamp of her inner walls triggered Brody’s orgasm and he came with a roar before burying his face in her neck.
They stayed like that for a while, and she pretended it was the forever he mentioned.
She’d always been good at pretending.
Chapter Seventeen
Regrets, I’ve had a few…
As Emma rode the elevator to the top floor of the Peninsula hotel on Michigan Avenue, the lyrics to “My Way” installed as her latest earworm and pulled double duty as a pricking of her conscience. Sinatra might have had regrets on the path to doing it his way, but that was a helluva lot easier to reconcile when you had a voice worth millions (and mob connections).
She glanced over at her elevator companion. Katerina returned her look with a knowing one of her own.
“Why you worry? I do private parties all the time. A little of the grind, a little of the hump, five hundred dollars in my bra.”
This was shaping up to be the worst idea since New Coke. When Olivia had asked if Chardonnay wanted to make a few dollars with a pole dancing demonstration for the out-of-towners in Olivia’s hotel room, Emma should have dismissed it out of hand. Instead she’d suggested Kat’s services, thinking the lissome blonde would jump at the chance to make money and cut Ray out of a slice of the profits. Emma’s “finder’s fee” would go toward her getaway fund.
Now, regret hung like a dark angel on her shoulder. Brody would not approve.
Awesome use of your brainpower, Ems.
“Please don’t hump and grind on these girls. They want some fun, a bit of a show, not a porn flick.”
Katerina shrugged. So Romanian. “That is what they all say. Three shots of tequila later and they are asking if I am waxed everywhere.” She raised a sultry eyebrow. “I am.”
The elevator door opened and Emma exited, scanning the hotel room numbers as she forged ahead.
“You look different, Emma,” Kat announced behind her. “You look like you are having the regular sexual relations. And in interesting places.”
Heat rushed to Emma’s cheeks, which would have been fine if it stayed there. Instead, it chose to spread to the back of her neck and pronounce her guilty as sin.
Katerina made a sound that might be interpreted as a laugh in Communist cultures circa 1982. “Yes, you are being serviced well. That is good. All women need this.”
Emma balled her fist to knock on the door to Olivia’s hotel suite. “Remember, I’m Chardonnay.”
“Is good name for stripper,” Katerina said with no trace of irony whatsoever.
“And don’t get too porny. Just show them some dance moves they can take home to get their boyfriends off.”
The door flew open and Olivia grinned broadly. “Oh my God, you’re here! We are so excited, I can’t tell you.” Her gaze fell on Katerina. “You. Are. Gorgeous.”
Katerina answered with an “I know” shrug. She waltzed past Olivia and took stock of the suite, assessing her new environment with the efficiency of a pro. “I set up now.”
Olivia nodded, clearly impressed with her work ethic. “Come in, Chardonnay. Meet the girls.” She shaded her mouth with her hand, though she didn’t lower the volume of her voice. “The F-Troop.”
The former F-Troop, she thought, fighting a snarl. With one eye on Katerina as she unpacked her pole, Emma let herself be led to the suite’s sofa, where the Texas princesses were camped out with half-full martini glasses. A pitcher of something fruity sat on the coffee table. Beside it, a gigantic, penis-shaped cake emblazoned with blue icing read, The Best Is Yet to Come!
“So, girls, this is Chardonnay, my brother’s…” Olivia looked to her for assistance.