It felt like an amazingly great dream scenario for someone like me. But also, exactly that—a dream scenario. Because it was too much to ever ask of a partner. How would you propose that to someone? I like you, why don’t you live near me, but not too close. Be part of my world, but not too much a part of it. Yes, I’d love to meet your mother. She’s going to completely understand what we’re doing here.
“It sounds like a great story, Nate,” I said gently. “But it also sounds a little bit too much of a fairytale, don’t you think?”
“Fairytales, by definition, are stories. They aren’t real. But this isn’t just a great story. Susan and Annie were real people. Not only did they do this, but they were happy doing it. If you ever have the chance, A Photographer’s Life is a great book—”
I was waiting for him to finish, ready to spout out all the reasons why it wouldn’t work out in a non-artistic situation with people who weren’t celebrities, why no one would ever actually commit to that kind of arrangement, why it was shitty he was even offering the idea up when it wasn’t what he wanted, when he abruptly changed his tone.
“You hear that?” he asked.
I listened, straining to locate what he was hearing. “What?”
He pointed at the wall next to us. “In there. It sounds like someone struggling.”
I put my ear against the wall and listened. Sure enough, it sounded like there was a woman in there with a man. Like she was possibly being attacked. She kept saying no, and it sounded like they were fighting.
I looked at Nate, my eyes wide. “What room is that?” We weren’t on a floor with actual rooms, at least not the kind you could sleep in.
“It’s one of the event spaces. I’m pretty sure it was rented for the wedding. The whole floor was. Hell, half the hotel maybe, considering all of the guests. It has to be a member of the party in there, someone with a key.” He listened again.
A muffled but clear voice came through the wall. “And now we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”
“That sounds kind of like Donovan,” Nate said, eyes wide. “He’s one of the owners of Reach.”
Oh, fuck. One of Nate’s friends was attacking a woman. I didn’t know what we should do, but we had to do something. Being part of a “we” was so easy when the right decision was so clear-cut.
“Should we get help?” I asked.
“I’ll deal with it,” he offered, pushing off from the wall with a grim expression. I was nervous and impressed at once that this millionaire advertising executive would be willing to physically take on a threat like this. To slay a metaphorical dragon, even though a man in his position could simply have called the front desk and had the situation dealt with in less than a minute.
I kept my ear to the spot where Donovan’s voice had sounded loudest a moment ago, monitoring what was happening. It was quieter inside now. Then the grunts and moans began.
I realized very quickly that they were familiar grunts and moans.
“Wait, Nathan.” I pulled his arm, stopping him from going in like an avenging hero. “They’re having sex. It’s rough, but it’s consensual.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded for him to listen again, and he did. We both did, locking eyes.
It was obvious now. Not only were they clearly having sex, but it was also hot sex. Very hot sex. Dirty, filthy, kinky, hot sex. In the few seconds we were eavesdropping, Donovan gave his partner what sounded like an earth-shaking orgasm, and immediately had her on the way to another.
As addicted to fucking as I already was, combined with the denied orgasm from earlier, witnessing somebody else have kinky-hot sex was not reminding my libido I was trying to have a breakup conversation. That had been what we’d been having, wasn’t it? In fact, it was very difficult to remember the point I was trying to make when all I could imagine was Nate making me come as hard as the woman inside the room just had.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nate asked, bringing me back to myself. If it had been anybody else asking the question—particularly anybody I’d only met within the last month—I might have doubted that we were on the same page.
But one glance down at his pants was all it took to assure me that he was thinking exactly the same thing I was.
“Is there a bathroom around here? Or a closet?” I looked frantically for a place we could slip away, my hand already easing under my skirt, already finding the bare, swollen bundle of nerves. I let out a moan when my fingers brushed across the sensitive head of my clit.
Nate echoed my moan. “Fuck, baby. This is private enough here. Everyone’s in there watching the first dance and cake-cutting, and I can’t fucking wait another minute to be inside you.”
“It’s a good thing you restocked your condoms when we were at your apartment,” I panted, hiking my knee onto the water fountain as he took the condom out and stuffed the wallet back in his jacket pocket. Then he pulled his cock out of his pants, just far enough to roll the condom on.
I gathered the skirt of my dress up around my waist and sighed in pure relief as he pushed his blunt crown inside. Simultaneously, we groaned in ecstasy when he completed the first perfect thrust, and again in anguish as he reversed before filling me all over again. Over and over, he beat into me with a rapid tempo, our languid moans interweaving with staccato gasps, and I wondered if the people on the other side of the wall could hear us, or if they were too wrapped up in their own fantasy and pleasure to notice anyone around them.
Just thinking about someone listening, or—oh God—someone watching while I rubbed myself with Nate’s cock inside me, made me ready to detonate.
“Hurry,” I begged, even though he was already driving into me at a frenetic pace. “Hurry, I’m coming. I’m coming now!”
“Show off.” He took a step closer into me and braced a hand on my shoulder and another at my hip and let himself go, savagely bucking into me. Holding on to me like he was riding a wild bull, even though he was the one who was frenzied and out of control.
Though maybe I was too, because I was still exploding. I was shaking and trembling and no sooner had one orgasm taken me over then another came crashing right afterward. It was some of the most intense, amazing sex of my life, and I knew it, even while I was still having it, while I was still deep in it. While I was still clenching around him. While I was still drowning. While I was still afraid that I might not survive, I was telling myself this this this. I knew that it was some of the dirtiest, no, the filthiest sex I had ever had. And I knew that I would always compare the sex I had later to the sex I was having right this second.
Nate came a moment later, biting into my shoulder to stifle his groan while he rutted into me, spilling everything inside him.
When he was done, he cleaned us both up with his pocket square, straightened my dress, threw away the condom.
He was perfect. The perfect guy.
I looked at him, realized this, and I still wanted to go home alone.
Yeah. Like my mother always said—I was impossible.
Chapter Nine
Another workweek started, and again, Nathan Sinclair was on my mind.