Kissed

Elizabeth Finn

Published: 2016

ISBN: 978-1-62210-355-3

Published by Liquid Silver Books. Copyright © 2016, Elizabeth Finn.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

Manufactured in the USA

Email support@liquidsilverbooks.com with questions, or inquiries about Liquid Silver Books.

Blurb

Reputation is everything, a fact Keegan Lauri knows all too well. A political PR strategist by trade, he makes his living creating and protecting the image of men, protecting them from women like Gabrielle Kitrick. She’s a threat to every man who falls for her. Beautiful, innocent, young, and available…for a price… Gabe is the shiny little trophy men of power seem to desire. But possessing her is a risk, a risk Keegan is responsible for removing from his client’s life.

He’s not above manipulating her for his own professional gain. He’s not even above seducing her and enjoying every second of it. But he finds out quickly her looks are a façade, and the more he comes to know Gabe, the more difficult it becomes to ignore her humanity. Because behind her beauty and crimson-lipped smile lies a young woman fighting for a better future, a future his very involvement with her jeopardizes.

When Keegan’s professional responsibilities threaten to expose her, will Keegan choose to do his job or protect the young woman he’s become so attached to?

Chapter 1

Keegan

“I just don’t understand what he was thinking with that hair piece,” I commented to the woman beside me as she laughed quietly.

I was leaning back against the bar, resting my elbows on the countertop as we killed time waiting for her drink by people watching.

“Is it a toupee or a dead cat?” I asked.

She laughed louder that time. “Dead cat. Pretty sure I can see the tail sticking out.”

It was my turn to laugh, and it was easy and genuine when I did. When our laughter finally trailed off, I looked down at her. “So you live in Chicago?”

I’d been making idle chitchat with her for the past five minutes. She wasn’t overtly flirting with me; hell, she wasn’t even sub-vertly flirting with me. But I’d very intentionally caught her eye earlier as she’d moved through the crowd of people, and if nothing else, she found me attractive. Striking up a conversation with her hadn’t been easy, though. She carried a subtle amount of suspicion with her, and though she hid it well with a beautiful smile, I’d had to work to engage her fully. But she had a good sense of humor, and within a few minutes, I’d managed to spark her interest enough that she’d humored me and let me perpetuate the conversation, which disintegrated quickly into people mocking.

She glanced away. “Yes,” she lied.

Her body language gave her away, but I couldn’t say there was any real surprise to that given who she was—what she was.

“And you?” She did her best to change the subject to something other than herself and her dishonesty.

“At the moment, yes.” I smiled.

She cocked her head to the side in curiosity but didn’t ask more.

“Keegan.” David clapped a hand on my shoulder as he approached, squeezing just a hair too hard. “I see you’ve met my date, Gabrielle.” He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her into his body. Her expression remained impassive until David looked down at her beside him. Then she smiled broadly, playing the part she was required to play with the man.

I’d had a vested interest in meeting David’s date from the moment I’d watched her walk in on his arm. But beyond even that, she was simply hard not to notice—for a number of reasons.

She was stunning, for starters.

Her hair was a dark auburn brown, pulled back loosely and knotted in a bun—something of an intentionally messy look. Wisps of hair had been blowing across her face in the light breeze for the entirety of my conversation with her, leaving me wanting to reach out and brush them away from her mouth. Her hair kept catching on her glossy crimson lips, which boldly set her mouth apart from the rest of her features. That mouth had pulled my focus from her eyes the entire time I’d spoken to her. But there was more to notice than just that. Her body was lithe with very subtle curves, and she was dressed shockingly appropriately for the event. Her evening gown was sterling silver, perfectly cut for her figure and swaying around her legs from the breeze on the terrace. Yes, there was indeed plenty of reason to notice her.

Sadly, her beauty was only reason number one for me.

David’s eyes were creased around the edges, and his temples were showing a fair amount of salt mixed in with his pepper-black hair. He was a handsome man whose power and prestige showed in everything from the suit he wore, to his gait, to his damn confident posture. But…he was too old for her—too old by a long shot. And powerful or no, there was no getting around the fact that he was pushing fifty and she was pushing…mid to late twenties at most, I was guessing. She might as well have LIABILITY stamped on her forehead.

And that was reason number two.

The problem with reason number two was that David was known far too well socially and politically to go unnoticed. This all meant I had the unenviable task of stalking every last newspaper and online article that mentioned him on a daily basis, just waiting for some tawdry photograph of him and the lovely Gabrielle to surface. Unfortunately, David didn’t seem to understand the risk she imposed on his reputation, or perhaps he simply didn’t care. Perhaps, and this was my suspicion, he craved what she was blessed with between her legs just a little too much—too much to allow himself to understand or care about the liability.

I glanced at David and smirked. “Of course I would make a point of meeting your date.” I enunciated the word slightly, and I caught Gabrielle’s eyes narrowing in my periphery. She was only just realizing our chance meeting at the bar might not have been that chance after all.

I turned my attention to Gabrielle then, studying her eyes for a moment. “I have to say you seem a little young for this crowd—a little young for David.” My words were pointed, my expression cool, and I held my focus on her for entirely too long as she stared back with parted lips and confusion etched on her brow. I glanced at David just to see his jaw clench tight in anger, but I ignored it and looked back at Gabrielle. “Are you even old enough to be out on a school night? It is only Wednesday after all.”

I watched as Gabrielle’s lips parted even more in shock, but she recovered quickly, closing her mouth and clenching her jaw. Her chin lifted ever so slightly in a show of defiance, her body remaining studiously erect and confident, even though her cheeks were blushing. David was less subtle in his reaction to my offensive remark, and as he cleared his throat uncomfortably, I looked back to him.

“I’ve known Gabrielle for a while now.” David’s brows shot up smugly as though he could sell the validity of the near child on his arm with that fact.

“She must be very”—I glanced at her once more, letting my attention drift down to her mouth again—“engaging,” I finished saying as her lips pursed.

Neither David nor Gabrielle responded to that.

“We’ll talk later, Chairman,” I finally said as I nodded at David. When I did the same to Gabrielle, she refused to meet my eyes altogether.

I didn’t look back at them as I wandered off through the crowd of wealthy Chicagoans milling around haughtily in their best couture. It was a glamorous affair—one of those spend-a-lot-of-money-to-make-a-little-money fundraisers for some random charity that would do little good to anyone but the rich men and women surrounding me who would use it as a nice little tax write-off. But worrying about the senseless spending habits of the wealthy wasn’t why I was here. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. Worrying about the senseless spending habits of one man was exactly why I was here.

David Edgerton. CEO and Chairman of the Board at Trion Technologies, as well as the alderman for Chicago’s forty-third district. My life was all about his life at the moment.

I wandered to the edge of the terrace, leaning my elbows on the balustrade. I let my attention be pulled away by the twinkling lights of the downtown Chicago skyline that surrounded me and towered over the terrace at The Peninsula. The hotel was stunning, the view from the terrace even more so.

“Don’t you find these things so tedious and boring?”

It was the most cliché question I’d ever been asked, and as I turned to look at the woman who’d uttered that disastrously predictable line, I smiled and feigned interest.

“I suppose,” I said quietly. “But you can’t beat this view.” I started to turn back toward my view of Michigan Avenue below but caught sight of Gabrielle standing alongside David no more than thirty feet from me. She was watching me with a blank expression on her face, but her attention flitted away quickly when we made eye contact. I had a very good idea what was behind that expression. Confusion. Offense. There was no denying I’d hurt her feelings.

“I’m Megan Wallace.”

“Hmm?” I mumbled, hearing little of what the woman was saying to me as I studied Gabrielle.

I glanced at the woman in front of me, but I looked back at Gabrielle quickly. She was now smiling graciously at the man David was introducing her to as she offered the man her hand to shake. I cringed inwardly. She didn’t belong here, and yet she was being introduced to and shaking hands with the people who did. Not that she wasn’t impressive. There was nothing at all—not in her dress, her manner, her posture—that gave away what she really was. And were she draped on the arm of a man twenty or so years younger than David, there would also be nothing visually alarming about her presence here.

“I said I’m Megan Wallace,” the woman whose shoulder I was looking over repeated in a rather annoyed tone. She was likely not used to being ignored.

“My apologies. I’m Keegan Lauri.”

I managed to simultaneously carry on a brainless conversation with Megan and keep Gabrielle in my line of sight for the next ten minutes. Gabrielle kept glancing at me, but she never smiled, and the moment I made eye contact, her focus would shift away. When she finally excused herself from the small group she and David were standing in, I cut Megan off abruptly and followed Gabrielle from the terrace into the hotel.

The doorman standing by the set of tall double doors nodded at me as I passed through. Gabrielle’s silver beaded slingbacks clicked on the hard floor as she walked, and when she entered the nearby restroom, I hung back in the hallway, checking a couple of nearby doors until I found one that was unlocked. I peeked inside. A small meeting room of some sort. It would work.

I returned to the hall and waited for her to reappear. The moment she did, she stopped still in her tracks, the final click of her heel hitting the floor and echoing through the hallway.

I held my focus on her startled and wide eyes as I pushed off the wall I’d leaned against. “I’d like a word in private if you don’t mind,” I said quietly.

She struggled to swallow for a moment. She surely knew at this point that I was not just some random guest.

“I told David I wouldn’t be long.”

I looked down at my watch as though it mattered what time it was. “This won’t take long.” I cocked my head toward the nearby door, and she followed me. I held the door open for her as she leered at me suspiciously.

“I really should get back—” she started to say the moment the door closed behind me.

I cut her off. “I’m going to need you to stop seeing Chairman Edgerton.”

She gaped at me, and I studied her eyes as her brain churned through what I’d just asked—strike that—demanded of her.

But she regained her composure quickly. “No.” Her face was calm as she spoke, irritatingly so, and her focus on me was suddenly unwavering.

“It really wasn’t a question.”

“And I really don’t need your permission to date whomever I wish.” Her voice was quiet and controlled.

I chuckled. “Date. Is that what you call this? A date?”

Her face remained impassive. She might well be young and beautiful, but her sweet innocent look was nothing more than an illusion. She was not of the world of normals—normal people, normal homes, normal jobs. And she had, without doubt, learned that not everyone in the normal world was there to be her friend. She’d certainly figured out I wasn’t.

“This is whatever David wants it to be. Tonight this is a date.” Her voice remained soft, but there was an adamancy to it that was impressive.

“And after you leave here? What will it be then?” I was silent for a moment as I waited for an answer I knew she wouldn’t give me. “At what point in the evening does he usually acknowledge what you really are?”

Her eyes flitted away for a moment, but she glanced back, crossing her arms on her chest. “And what’s that?”

“A prostitute,” I responded bluntly. “Or do you prefer high-priced escort? Call girl? I’ve seen David’s financial records. You’re clearly not some run-of-the-mill street walker.”

She stared. It was an impressively blank expression, but her shoulders were tense and her lips twitched as she pursed them. The silence between us stretched on uncomfortably, but I refused to say anything further, knowing her discomfort would compound with every passing second.

“You know nothing about me—”

“I’m paid to know everything about you.”

She was silent for a moment, nodding slightly as though coming to terms with what I’d just said. “Paid,” she repeated.

“Paid.” I focused on her, refusing to look away.

She moved toward the door then, and I stepped out of her way. But she didn’t reach for the door handle. Instead, she looked at me.

“Are you paid to be an asshole, too?”

I smirked. “Well, I’m not paid to be kind if that’s what you mean.” I crossed my arms on my chest and leaned casually against the wall beside me. “I’m not even paid to be kind to the chairman. I’m paid to make sure people like you don’t ruin the reputation of people like him.”

She scoffed, finally reaching for the door handle. “I don’t take responsibility for the ruined reputations of men,” she commented over her shoulder. “They tend to make the choices that ruin their reputations all on their own.”

I sure as hell couldn’t argue with that.

When she finally tugged on the door handle, I reached out, holding it shut. I closed in behind her body, leaning down to speak against her ear. Her head cocked slightly to the side, and I heard the subtlest of gasps escape her mouth.

“And that’s precisely why I have a job. I’m not protecting him from you. I’m protecting him from himself.”

I released my hold on the door, and she eyed me over her shoulder for a moment before yanking it open and walking briskly from the room.

I followed her down the hallway, and when I caught sight of the doorman again as we neared the doors that led back out to the terrace, I nodded in the direction of Gabrielle. The man stopped her quickly.

“One moment, miss.”

She stopped still, her shoulders rising and falling quickly in a huff of frustration.

I stepped up beside Gabrielle, but when I opened my mouth, I spoke to the doorman. “Please show Gabrielle safely out of the hotel. If she requires transportation, see that it’s arranged.”

“Excuse me,” she hissed as she wheeled toward me.

I watched her calmly. Calm was what I did best. And not even a stunning woman with a delicious-looking mouth could make me falter.

“It was good to meet you, Gabrielle, but I expect we won’t be seeing one another again.”

“How dare—”

But I was already walking through the doors to the terrace, ignoring her outburst. I could hear her arguing with the doorman, but the sound faded as the door closed behind me.

David was standing in another small group of people, laughing and tipping his drink in agreement to something that had been said, but it didn’t take more than thirty seconds before his eyes scanned the crowd, looking for Gabrielle. He found me instead.

“Have you seen Gabrielle?” he asked as he approached me.

“She’s no longer here.”

David cleared his throat. “And why not?” he asked quietly, lowering his head.

“You know why.”

“Dammit, Keegan,” he spat out through gritted teeth. “Her…employers are known for their discretion. She’s not a risk. Besides, I’ve already seen to it that she’s only dating me at the moment.”

I laughed, but it wasn’t humor. “They’re ‘known for their discretion’?” I rolled my eyes. “That’s an oxymoron, Chairman. If they’re known, they’re not discreet. You should know better. If you want a girlfriend, get one,” I hissed quietly, hiding the conversation from those around us. “Make sure she’s at least in the ballpark of your age, educated, with a clean background, and, for the love of fuck, make sure she’s not a goddamn prostitute.”

I cleared my throat as I looked around. There was no one near enough to us to hear the conversation, and beyond even that, no one was paying us any attention.

“I enjoy her. Is that such a crime?”

“It is when you pay for the enjoyment.”

David glared at me, and I stared right back.

“You won’t see her again. Do you understand?”

He hummed in response but failed to agree. “She’s already planning on attending an upcoming event in a few weeks.”

“I suggest you find a more suitable date. She’s been advised that her…relationship with you is over.” I nodded at David as I started walking away.

“I’m not going to stand for this.” David’s words chased angrily after me, and a few heads turned in our direction.

I walked slowly back to David again, smirking as I did. His fists were balled at his sides, and his lips were pursed angrily.

“Tell it to the Malcolms,” I said, referring to my current employers, Malcolm Trainor and Malcolm Leeks. “As long as you accept their support, you accept me dictating how you conduct yourself. It’s that simple.”

And then I did walk away. I walked all the way back through the hotel to the elevators and down to the large, lavish lobby. I passed the same doorman who’d assisted me with Gabrielle shortly before. I reached in my pocket, grabbing one of the folded hundred-dollar bills I’d tucked in there for just such occasion, and I reached my hand out to him, palming the money and passing it off to him as he shook my hand.

“I didn’t catch your name.”

“I’m Connor Gallahan.” He smiled at me broadly when he looked down and saw just what kind of bill was in his hand. “Thank you, sir.”

I shook my head. “Not at all. She was no trouble, I take it?”

“No. We staff a chauffeur, and he drove her home.”

“Very good. Thank you.”

And then I left.

One crisis averted. Countless more on the horizon if my suspicions were correct.

Chapter 2

Gabrielle

“HEY, Casey,” I groaned as I entered the kitchen early on Saturday afternoon, staggering in something close to a Z-line to the coffee maker. I’d made the mistake of taking a nap, and now…well, now it was going to take coffee, lots of coffee, to wake me back up.

Casey peered up at me from the magazine laid out on the table. “Gabrielle.” Her voice was curt, and she looked back down, scanning the page even as she opened her mouth to speak again. “Where were you Wednesday night? Thought you were going to be at Mission One for meal service.” The accusatory tone was unmistakable. I was used to this from Casey.

I paused as I reached up into the cupboard for a coffee mug. Admitting I was getting my ass handed to me by a handsome dick of a man rather than at the food shelter serving the homeless wasn’t exactly how this conversation was going to go. “Uh…library.”

“You spend more time at the library than anyone I know.”

I laughed quietly. Truth of the matter was I absolutely did not spend that much time in the library at all—it was the digital age after all—but it was one of my go-to excuses when I got called out for being missing in action yet again by Ms. Philanthropy herself. It was either that or my mysterious restaurant hostess gig in the city.

“Yeah, well…books.” I nodded, saying nothing else.

Casey smiled smugly at me but nodded as though my comment actually made sense. “You gonna go to mass with us this evening?”

I cringed.

“Most of the girls prefer Saturday evening to Sunday morning. Besides, you’ve missed twice in the past month alone.” And more accusation.

I tossed out an “Eh…” but nothing more.

“You know, it’s kind of your responsibility to set a good example—”

“Yeah,” I cut her off. “I’m aware. But Jessa and I were thinking of going to the movies tonight.”

That seemed to pacify Casey. “How is your sister? Starting her senior year of high school. That’s an exciting time for her, I bet.” There was little chance Casey actually gave a shit what was going on with Jessa.

I nodded. But Casey didn’t quite understand Jessa’s life or what any of it actually meant to her, so this really wasn’t a conversation I felt like having with her, not that I cared to converse with Casey about anything. Jessa wasn’t a typical seventeen-year-old. She couldn’t be. It simply wasn’t a luxury she had any more than being the typical older sister was for me. We just…managed.

I held my coffee cup up, yawning before I could speak again. “See you later.”

“Mm-hmm…” trailed after me.

I didn’t even make it to my room before the cell phone in my hand vibrated.

Forward From: DE.

Missed you Wed. night. Make it up to me tonight. Peninsula. 8 p.m.

End Message.

I set my coffee on the desk just inside my room and stared at the screen. The message was from David, but not directly. It was a relayed message through The Service. The Service being the middleman between my body and whatever man chose to pay for it. The Service wasn’t even something I fully understood, except to say they relayed messages from my clients, which I then agreed to, and a thousand dollars in cash miraculously showed up in a discreet manila envelope in my mail two days later. Shady? Yeah, most likely. Profitable? Yeah, most definitely. And it was all about the profits.

I sighed as I let my head drop back to stare at the ceiling. I finally swiped my finger across the screen of my phone, but it wasn’t David’s message I responded to. It was mine and Jessa’s long-ass string of text message history.

Rain check tonight? Matinee tomorrow? Offered a shift. We could use the money.

“Shift” was code for “meet a john,” but…I was the only one who actually knew that code. Jessa was just as convinced as the rest of the world that shift meant a hostess gig I had at an über fancy restaurant in Chicago. Like I would actually haul my ass all the way from Milwaukee to Chicago for some lousy restaurant job. No. I would not. I would, however, haul my ass all the way to Chicago for a thousand dollars a night. That I was very willing to do.

Whatevs. Guess I’ll just get drunk.

That was an easy response,

Guess I’ll freeze your bank account.

Two seconds later,

I’ll cutta bitch.

I smiled. Jessa tended to pull the smiles out of me easily when little else could. My final message,

I’ll talk to you tomorrow, kiddo.

For half a second I thought about the handsome asshole Keegan and his warning to stay away from David. Keegan had thrown me. There was no doubt about that. I’d noticed him watching me almost instantly upon David’s and my arrival.

He was handsome, very handsome. His hair was brown, his eyes blue, and the suit he wore was professional and well cut. But the perfect tailoring of his clothes didn’t hide the fitness of his body underneath. His expression had remained cool, and there was something very collected and calm about the way he carried himself.

I’d caught his focus on me regularly. He might be mid-sentence in a conversation with someone, but his eyes would land on me and stick for a moment. He never smiled, and he never nodded at me; his eyes would just stop for a moment too long before moving on.

And then he’d finally spoken to me. At first, he looked like every other penis-head man in the world. All men seemed to have a distinctive penis-shaped brain to me at this point, and I’d assumed Keegan did too. But the conversation had been casual, and after only a few minutes, I’d liked him. He’d been nice to me, he’d been interested in me, and he hadn’t used overt masculinity to try to impress me. Instead, he’d used an easy sense of humor and a genuine laugh. But then he’d taken that barside conversation he’d engaged me in and made me feel like an idiot seconds later when David approached. It was, near as I could tell, his way of emotionally slapping me in the face before he verbally did.

But for all the offense Keegan had caused me, not seeing David now wasn’t really an option. Because whatever David might be worth to the world, he was worth the vast majority of my income at the moment. I had only a few regular clients, and non-regulars were few and far between. I preferred it that way very much, and since meeting David six weeks prior, I’d learned quickly he didn’t like to share. I was convinced, at this point, I was being kept on…retainer…if such a thing existed in this industry.

When I finally responded to David’s message, I was already headed to the bathroom adjoined to my room to get ready.

I’ll see you at 8.

* * * *

I barely made the four-thirty bus for Chicago, and I stared out the window the entire two-hours it took. I hated this trip. It wasn’t as though I made it daily; hell, there were plenty of weeks I didn’t make it to Chicago even once, but this bus always took me somewhere I didn’t truly want to go.

It amazed me sometimes the things I was capable of ignoring, and how much I hated this trip and what awaited me on the other end of it was one of those things. It was strangely like sociopathy, as though there was a switch in my mind that could simply be flipped that turned off my ability to care about what I was doing. But every switch turned off could, and would, eventually be turned back on.

I took a cab the two miles from Union Station to The Peninsula. I was almost nervous to walk in, seeing as I’d been very politely escorted out the last time I’d been here. But I was dressed nicely in a red wrap dress that tied at the side of my waist, and as I walked toward the reception desk, not one person looked at me as though I was anything more than the typical guest checking in. They never did.

The Service always reserved a room at the hotel of the man’s choosing under a false name, Gabrielle Smith. Gabrielle was, in fact, my real first name; Smith, however, was not my last name. But it protected my true identity, and I suspected made it easier for The Service to disassociate themselves from me as well. I never went to a man’s home for security reasons, and I was required to send a text message to The Service once I left the hotel. The hotels were always nice, and I could safely say I’d been to more five-star hotels in my relatively short life than most people visited in a lifetime.

When the sweet young woman asked for my identification and credit card, I produced both easily. Both were mine, but I was never asked why the last names didn’t match. Women’s last names changed; it was just a part of life. And while I always provided my personal credit card, which matched the credit card number The Service used to reserve the room, I also always checked out in person and paid cash at the end of my stay with money the men were required to provide during their time with me for just such a purpose. It wasn’t foolproof, and my credit card information was, without doubt, stored in myriad hotel databases around town, but it was as secure as I could be.

Discretion was the name of the game, and there were very few men I dated who didn’t go to great lengths to hide what they were doing with me—from a girlfriend, a wife, a family, an employer, the world in general. Most of them, including David for that matter, couldn’t run the risk of being seen entering a hotel with me. That meant they needed to be able to walk straight into a hotel to the elevator, bypassing the check-in counter along the way and up to the room The Service told them I’d be waiting in. As such, men avoided requesting hotel rooms that required a key card to access the right floor because the cloak-and-dagger rigmarole that would have to ensue was simply not worth it. Fortunately, there were plenty of nice hotels that only required key card floor access to their penthouses.

Events were a different thing altogether, and David was really the only man who used me for those. Of course, he was very likely the only client of mine who didn’t have a wife waiting for him at home, so taking me to one charity gala or another, hell even out to dinner at some swanky restaurant, before fucking me was apparently an acceptable use of my time for him. But even he wouldn’t check into a hotel room with me after one of these dinners, fundraisers, etcetera for fear of being seen. I mean, why would a well-known man who lived in Chicago check into a hotel with a young woman unless the woman happened to be someone he probably wasn’t supposed to be sticking his cock in?

I’m pretty sure all the aforementioned bullshit had led me to hating men at this point. Of course I might hate myself just as much.

I entered room 511, flipping the security bar out and letting the door rest, slightly cracked, against it as I waited for David. I liked the Peninsula. David liked nice things, nice cars, nice clothes; he even fucked like a gentlemen, all nice and neat like.

I untied the dress and hung it on a hanger in the closet. I carried my small cosmetic pouch to the bathroom with me, and I stopped at the bathroom counter, staring at myself in the mirror. It was hard to play sociopath when faced with my image staring back at me. It was harder still as my eyes took in the skimpy, white low-rise underwear and matching demi-bra.

David liked white. Maybe it was the innocence of it, maybe not. He also liked red. I knew this about him—odd, it might be the only thing I knew about him. But I didn’t really care to know more. I pulled the dark red lipstick from my pouch and started to touch up my lips, using my fingertip to wipe it away from my cupid’s bow. This color always felt overdone to me. It was too bold for my taste. But this wasn’t about my taste. It rarely was.

My phone rang from beside me on the bathroom countertop. Jessa’s image, complete with her tongue sticking out, stared up at me, and I glanced at myself in the mirror as though worried she might see me and my garish red lips. My eyes shifted down to the countertop as I hit the speaker button, and then I returned to wiping the excess crimson from around my mouth, still refusing to make eye contact with myself.

“You swear we’re going to a movie tomorrow?” She rarely bothered with a “hello” or even a “hi.” We were casual that way.

“I swear.”

“You owe me, Gabe. I’m not kidding. You know I could be out doing all sorts of inappropriate things for a seventeen-year-old.”

“But you won’t,” I said dryly as I looked back up to my eyes in the mirror again—finally convinced she couldn’t see me. Or was I finally just able to tolerate seeing myself?

“Of course I won’t. Not with a responsible conservator like you as a sister.”

Responsible. What a joke. I looked back down at the countertop, avoiding the sight of myself again, and I listened as the door in the main suite opened. It was time.

“Listen, I have to go. Tomorrow. I promise.”

“Scout’s honor?”

“My honor,” I replied quietly. “Bye, kiddo.”

“Bye, Gabe.”

I hit the End button. I stared at myself in the mirror for another moment and brushed a few loose wisps of hair away from my eyes, and when I was finally ready to flip that switch and turn it all off for a while, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I could hear the approaching footsteps, and I forced my lips into a smile as I waited for David to peek his head in.

“Gabrielle.” Keegan’s deep voice was droll and warm as he stepped into the doorway. “Or is it Gabe?” He cocked his head to the side as his arms crossed on his chest.

That switch in my mind failed to extinguish anything, and as I took in the sight of him, I panicked. I gasped, and that sudden intake of breath turned to all-out panting as I watched him in the mirror. I could see my mouth hanging open in my periphery, but my focus was glued to him.

He smirked as his eyes locked on mine, and then he sauntered easily and casually toward me, closing the space between us and bringing his body up behind mine. He was close. He was too close, and when he reached out, placing his fingertips on the counter on either side of me, I gasped again. He leaned in closer, bringing his head next to mine and never once breaking eye contact as he watched me in the mirror.

“You know, things just ended so abruptly the other night without you ever really giving me your assurance that you wouldn’t see David again.” His voice was taunting, and his expression was easy. “So, I decided to test you—see if you would heed my good advice.” He harrumphed as he shook his head. “Well, I would call this an absolute fucking failure, wouldn’t you?”

His attention traveled down my body in the mirror, and my skin prickled everywhere his eyes touched. I couldn’t quite figure out where the prickle came from. He smelled good, he looked good, and he studied my eyes with the same intensity he had when he’d spoken with me at the bar. But that had been an act—all of it—and I’d still failed to wrap my head around why he’d done it.

When the crisp white of his dress shirt brushed the bare skin of my shoulder blades, I jerked as though his body had sent a jolt of heat through me. I inadvertently reached down with both hands, clasping at the countertop, but I didn’t touch the hard granite surface. Instead, my hands touched his. My hands trembled as I started to pull them away, but he fumbled with my fingers, wrapping his hands around mine and pinning them to the countertop.

“I should go,” I managed to get out.

The side of his lip pulled up slightly as he looked over my shoulder, and his eyes slowly moved over my body again, the smirk falling from his mouth slowly the more he studied.

Chapter 3

Keegan

“DON’T you want me to kiss it? Make it feel better?” I asked her.

She paused as though dumbfounded. “Make what feel better?”

I studied her eyes. “All those feelings I hurt the other night.”

She pulled her hands away from my hold on them, turning and gently pushing me farther away from her. She finally appeared to be coping with the shock of seeing me.

“You didn’t hurt my feelings,” she said defensively as she reached for the terry cloth robe folded neatly on the nearby shelf.

“Yes, I did. I intended to. But it doesn’t mean I enjoyed it.”

She stopped for a moment as she considered that, but after a few seconds, she shook her head and then proceeded to pull the robe on rather brusquely, tying the sash at her waist as though she intended to cut off the circulation to the lower half of her body.

I watched, making no attempt to stop her. I was standing between her and the door, and while I would never try to keep her there against her will, I wasn’t going to kowtow to her irritation by moving from my position.

“I want you for the night.” I said it simply, plainly, and as I did, I started unbuttoning my shirt. “And if I’m not mistaken, you’re being compensated for the evening.”

“And what do you think the chairman would think of that?” She crossed her arms, her tongue pushing into her cheek as though she thought perhaps that comment might just bring me up short.

“I’m pretty sure he’d be pissed as hell that I’m fucking you on his dime. But I’m also pretty sure I explained to you already that I don’t answer to him.” I pulled the bottom of my dress shirt from my slacks before I started unbuttoning the cuffs. “Using the pussy he seems so attached to right now for my own pleasure would do nothing but make a statement—one I’ve been trying to make with my big-boy words for a while now. I’m starting to understand he’s a stubborn bitch of a man who’s going to require”—I bobbled my head as I finally stripped my shirt off my shoulders—“a bit more persuasion than most.”

She leaned against the counter behind her, her arms still crossed, but her attention shifted to my pecs for a moment before she swallowed harshly over a lump. Her eyes returned defiantly to mine then, as though she could hide just how off kilter she was. “So this is just a calculated business strategy for you. Use me to make your point with him, even if it costs me my job.” She was offended.

I hung my shirt on the bathroom hook beside the door I was still blocking, but I didn’t respond right away. “No,” I lied as I turned back to her. I closed the space between us and leaned down to her eye level as I placed my hands on the countertop at her hips. “You think I’m going to torture him with the details of what we do together. Is that it?” I smirked.

“Am I wrong?”

She was absolutely not wrong.

“You’re the one who said it would make a statement,” she continued.

“It would make a statement. And I am ruthless enough to want to make that statement.” I paused, studying her eyes for a moment. “But I’m willing to forgo the statement.” Another lie. “The truth is this is very simply what I want, what I’ve wanted since the fundraiser, and what I’ve not been able to stop thinking about since then.” And that was likely the first thing I said to her that didn’t require a lie, and frankly, it felt incredibly good to say it out loud to her.

She said nothing, and I reached for her face, curling my fingers behind her jawline and running my thumb across her lower lip. I wanted to kiss those damn lips so much. I wanted to taste them, bite them, suck them, fuck them. Her lips were incredible, and I studied the way my thumb pulled at that puffy skin, smearing some of the red. I felt a huff of breath escape her mouth and touch the pad of my thumb, and when I used my other hand to tug at the sash of her robe, she didn’t stop me. But her chest rose and fell deeply. I slipped my hand past her robe, running my palm over her stomach and back to clasp at her hip, but when I leaned to her mouth, desperate to touch her lips with mine, she angled her head to the side, refusing to let me kiss her.

I paused, my mouth nearly touching her cheek, and then I stepped back from her, pulling my hands with me as I moved. I crossed an arm across my body, resting my other elbow on my forearm and worrying my lip with my middle finger.

She was staring at the floor between us, her robe now wide open. It wasn’t what I’d expected. I don’t know why I had it in my mind that she would be in some garish lingerie with a satin corset and G-string, but I was almost shocked at just how…normal she looked.

She had small breasts and the low cut of her white lace bra nearly showed her nipples. Her underwear, while a matching lace to her bra, even covered her bottom—I’d noticed that the moment I’d walked into the bathroom. They were low cut across her hips, showing the subtle jut of her hipbones. It all just looked so normal, as if she was any other woman in the world standing at a bathroom counter. Her eyes were a dark chocolate brown that matched the deep auburn of her hair, and her skin was pale and pristine.

She was incredible, and my cock was hard and pulsing with need. This might well be as calculated as she suggested, but it didn’t mean I didn’t want it.

I took a deep breath and tried to be something other than a dick. “I meant it when I said I didn’t enjoy what I did to you the other night.”

Her eyes were narrowed suspiciously, but she watched me, saying nothing.

“Men use you every day.” I shrugged as I bit my lower lip. “Use me. You have my permission. You want to degrade me, do it. You want to hurt me, I won’t stop you. Take what you want. I’ll give it to you.”

The silence at that point was agonizing. I was good at using silence to intimidate people, to make them uncomfortable, to rock them. Hell, I’d done it to her only a few nights before. But I was the one mentally grasping for a reprieve from it now.

“Please,” I finally begged quietly.

And then I waited…

Her eyes shifted around, flitting to mine occasionally as the gears in her mind worked to figure this out. The silence went on, and she gnawed on the inside of her lip. When she shrugged slightly and let the robe drop off her shoulders, she wasn’t looking at my eyes. She was studying my chest as though trying to come to terms with the decision she was making. I finally breathed again. She seemed almost confused at what was happening. Maybe she was. It wasn’t every day, I suspected, that she got to make the choice about who she intended to fuck and how she intended to do it.

I walked out of the bathroom, unbuttoning and unzipping my slacks as I moved, and I used my feet to step on the heel of my shoes, flipping them off. I paused by the chair that sat near the bed, stripping my pants and socks from my legs. I grabbed the couple of condoms in the pocket of my pants before folding the pants over the chair. I left my underwear on and tossed the condoms on the nightstand as I turned back around to see if she’d followed. And then I nearly choked.

She was naked.

She stood in the doorway of the bathroom, leaning against the doorframe. It wasn’t a casual stance though, and she looked unsure as her fingers gripped the wide white wood surrounding the door.

But she was naked.

Her body was slender, and her breasts were even smaller than they’d looked in the bathroom without the advantage of her bra pushing them up. But her nipples were pink, and her hips shapely. Her pussy was completely shaved, and her lips there were just as intriguing and beautiful as the ones on her mouth. And I wanted to kiss these lips just as much too.

For a woman who had sex for a living, she seemed incredibly shy, but then, this wasn’t quite how it usually went for her, I suspected. And her attraction to me was something I’d grabbed hold of days ago before either of us had acknowledged out loud what she was—that attraction was not something I’d paid for then, and she was just being a woman at that time—until I took away her dignity by calling her out on her profession.

I walked up to her, and her hands dropped to her sides as she put her back to the doorframe, but I could see her fingers wrapping around the wood of the frame behind her. She was holding her legs together as demurely as she could, and when I reached for her hip, her chest started heaving.

“Open your legs.” I studied her eyes, waiting for her to relax enough to comply.

The moment she did, I ran my hand over the smooth skin of her sex and slipped a finger between her lips. My mouth opened as I felt the wetness. She wasn’t a little wet. She wasn’t starting to get wet. She was full-on fucking drenched—so drenched I could hear the incredible sound of my finger smacking through her cum.

I slid my middle finger into her, and her muscles clenched tightly around me. I groaned quietly, and she finally released her hold on the doorframe and reached for my bicep to stabilize herself. I thrust slowly, pressing a second finger in with the first, and she started groaning then too. Her head dropped, staring down at what my fingers were doing between her legs, and I reached for her cheek with my free hand, pulling her face up to look at me.

I leaned to her mouth, wanting to kiss her lips at the same time I finger fucked the other ones. But she leaned away from my mouth again. I breathed against her neck instead as my fingers plunged through her wetness. Her muscles were strong, and the tightness was incredible. Stopping was difficult, but I managed to slow my strokes and eventually pull my hand away.

She watched me, breathing quietly but quickly as she focused on my eyes. I stepped back from her, finally pushing my underwear down and letting my cock spring free. Her attention moved down to my erection, which was high and hard, jutting up between my hips. I sat on the side of the bed, and when she approached me, I gripped her waist. I leaned forward to kiss her stomach, but she stepped back.

“Please don’t put your mouth on me.” Her voice was quiet.

I nodded slowly as I looked up at her. “Okay.” My voice was just as soft.

I scooted to the head of the bed, lying back and watching her. She climbed on the bed, grabbing one of the condoms I’d left on the nightstand. She tossed it on my stomach, and then she kneeled back on her feet, waiting for me. Clearly she had no real intention of touching me, and I suddenly wondered who the prostitute really was. Of course, I’d handed her the reins and told her to take what she needed, and perhaps she needed me to be nothing more than a cock she could fuck.

I tore the condom packet open, slipping it over the head of my dick, and she watched as I rolled it slowly down my erection. She finally moved again, straddling my thighs and hovering over my hips. Her tits were tauntingly close to my face when she leaned forward and braced her hand on the headboard.

“Can I touch your pussy, or do you want to put it in?”

She met my eyes, pausing for a moment. When she swallowed, it was a struggle. “You can touch me,” she whispered.

“Thank you,” I said as I reached between us.

I spread her pussy lips with one hand as I used my other to guide my cockhead between them. I brushed the tip of my dick back and forth against her wet slit, and I could feel her body give when I passed over her entry. I held myself there, waiting for her to make the next move.

She pushed back, impaling herself slowly on me, and I felt the pop as the bulbous head of my cock passed beyond that tight outer skin. I hissed as the warmth enveloped me, and the moment I did, she clenched, forcing my hiss to turn to a deep groan. She pushed harder, driving me deeper into her, and I pulled my hands from between us, tucking them under the back of my head so I could watch.

She couldn’t take me all on the first penetration, and she lifted her hips before she pushed down again, still sinking only halfway down. She rode shallowly, tentatively pushing down and pulling up.

“Come on, Gabe,” I grunted. “You can take me deeper than that.” I reached for her hips and clutched them tightly with my fingers.

“Don’t call me that.” She groaned the words out, but when I pulled her down harder to my groin, her mouth dropped open, and her eyelids fluttered. I sank deep into her, and she cried out, but she didn’t resist. I held her to my lap, feeling her weight pressing down on my balls, and her cum running down them too.

I ran my hands around from her hips to her buttocks, squeezing them and letting my fingers dig into her skin. Her cheeks were strong and round, and I used my grip to lift her bottom from my lap and yank her right back down again. She started moving then. Her hips rocked, and she pushed to my lap each and every time, her dance becoming more erratic and desperate with every passing second.

I pushed up to my elbows, trying to catch her nipple in my mouth as she humped. I caught my teeth on one and bit gently into it, sucking hard as she stilled for a moment and cried out. But she pushed me back and sat up straighter the moment I released the suction.

Her hips were still moving frantically, and she was close. She was also being damn stubborn. I sat up, bringing my face right up to hers and leaned to her lips, trying in vain again to kiss her. She turned away, even as she groaned and whimpered out her pleasure. I let her get close. I let her ride and fuck until she was standing at her edge, and at just the moment her breath caught in her throat and her muscles started to tighten around me, I lunged for her mouth, biting down on her lower lip.

I pulled at it, not letting up. She was too busy screaming out her orgasm into my mouth to care that my teeth were clamped into her lower lip at that point. I didn’t relax my bite until her release faded enough for her to think straight again, and as she panted on my lap, I finally let my body fall back to the bed. She stared down at me and reached up, touching her lower lip in the place I’d just had my teeth. Her eyes were wide, and I couldn’t tell if she was shocked I’d bitten her or shocked she’d come so hard.

I didn’t give her time to figure it out.

I rolled our bodies quickly, putting her under me as I slammed my cock hard and deep into her. She groaned and reached back for the headboard. I wedged my knees up under her thighs, forcing her legs out wider so I could push in deeper, and then I gripped the top of the headboard as I started stroking in and out, pulling completely from her before thrusting straight back to her core.

She was gasping, her breath coming in short little bursts, and her entire body was being jolted toward the headboard over and over again by the force of my thrusts. I watched her eyes as I fucked her, and my teeth gritted harder and harder the closer I came to my release, and when I finally reached it, I threw my head back as I roared loudly and my fingers dug into the top of the headboard.

I could barely breathe as I tried to regain myself, and I lowered my face, studying her eyes as I let the ripples and waves of pleasure radiate out through my body. She seemed nervous as she looked back at me, and her pussy tightened on my cock. I hissed, my breath catching in my throat at the nearly overwhelming sensation. I slowly pulled from her body, watching my length leave her, and then I fell to my back beside her. I was panting, I was sweating, and I stared up at the ceiling above us listening to her suck in her own calming breaths too.

“I should go,” she said, even as she still struggled to breathe.

I glanced over at her as she sat up to the side of the bed. Her shoulder blades were subtly protruding points, and I reached out, letting my finger trail down the crevice of one. She stood and walked away toward the bathroom. It was the first time I actually had a chance to study her bottom. I’d seen it clothed in her white lace underwear, hell, I’d gripped into it hard as she’d fucked me, but I hadn’t actually seen those cheeks yet.

All I could think about was how much I wanted to sink my teeth into that incredible flesh in the same way I had her nipple and her lower lip.

“I said I wanted you for the night, and I meant it. You get paid by the night, not the fuck, right?”

She stopped walking and turned back around to face me. “This isn’t a good idea.”

I shrugged. “I’m sure you’re right, but it’s a little too late to worry about that now. Don’t you think?”

Her eyes shifted around the room, and she eventually sighed. She disappeared into the bathroom moments later. I knew she didn’t want to leave in the same way I knew she’d enjoyed what we’d just done. I even knew she wanted to do it again. But I also knew she was confused, and she didn’t like it. She was doing everything in her power to push me away, even though every part of her wanted more.

I heard the shower start, and I grabbed my cell phone from my pants pocket. I pulled up David’s contact information, and I stared at it. I could end this right now, make the point I needed to make and be done with it. But as I listened to the shower run, I closed my eyes. I could still feel her slick wet need on my fingers. I could feel the tight gripping muscles around my cock. And I could hear the quiet moans and grunts that took her to her release.

And I wanted more too.

I turned my phone off, set it on the nightstand, and let myself drop back to the mattress. “Fuck,” I muttered.

I waited until the shower turned off, and then I followed her. She was just stepping out of the walk-in shower. She’d pulled her hair up in a high ponytail to keep it dry, and I watched as she toweled off and slipped back into the robe. She stood at the sink, letting her hair back down.

She’d not washed her face, and her makeup, while subtle, was still there, highlighting her eyes and flushing her cheeks. Her lips were still red, but the color was smeared slightly where I’d bit into the lower one. I watched as she scrubbed them clean with a tissue. She brushed a far more demure subtle pink gloss on her lips, and when she turned to face me, she leaned back against the countertop.

“Are you hungry?” I asked her.

“No.”

As if on cue, her stomach growled loudly. It was the type of growl that went on and on and on for an embarrassingly long time as I watched her. My forehead wrinkled, and I raised a brow, waiting for her clearly empty stomach to stop talking. Her cheeks reddened more by the second until she finally just shook her head and shrugged in exasperation.

I chuckled. “Get dressed.”

“Why?”

“We’re going down to—”

“Can’t we just order room—?”

“What’s wrong? Afraid people will notice that freshly fucked look on your face?”

She turned toward the mirror, studying her face for a moment. I stepped up behind her, meeting her eyes in the mirror.

“You look incredible.”

She stared blankly back at me. “What are you doing?” She looked confused, nervous even.

I didn’t respond. I just watched her.

“Why are you doing this?” She was practically pleading, and she turned, facing me straight on.

“Maybe I’m apologizing to you.” My voice was quiet.

“With your dick?” Hers was not.

I gaped at her, trying not to laugh at that one.

But she didn’t seem amused, and when she pushed past me, she snatched her underwear and bra up off the floor and muttered, “I’d hate to see what happens if you ever step on a nun’s foot,” as she walked out.

Chapter 4

Gabrielle

IT’S perhaps embarrassing to admit, but for someone whose…profession suggests she’s an expert at sex, I’m actually not, not at all not, just not. But here’s what I’ve figured out about men in the year or so I’ve been prostituting myself to them. Most don’t actually need an expert at sex to feel as though they’re getting an expert at sex, and my ability to carry myself confidently with a john went a long way in selling my supposed expertise. In addition to that, so much of a man’s desire is driven off a factor of some sort. The forbidden factor, the age factor, the face factor, the tits factor, the ass factor, hell if you’re lucky, even the sense of humor factor. Don’t get me wrong. Some men really do want a woman who can do a handstand while giving a man a blowjob, but in truth, those are few and far between, and there’s usually some factor other than experience driving his need and tripping his trigger.

But in all honesty, I couldn’t say I’d yet figured out what Keegan’s factor was. I certainly wasn’t selling my confidence with him, and I couldn’t imagine behaving as boldly with him as I typically did with my other clients. With other men, I could turn on the sultry, the slutty, the naughty. I might hate the act, but I could turn it on like a switch. With Keegan…I couldn’t turn on anything at all except, well, myself. I didn’t have any idea what it was he was looking for in me because I really wasn’t giving him anything I typically gave to men. And that…that was interesting. That was confusing. And frankly, that had just been plain incredible.

That was all about what I wanted. Except for the end when he’d bitten my lip, but then I had actually wanted him to kiss me, even if I hadn’t let him. That was something I couldn’t quite define.

He watched me as I started to dress, and my eyes stayed on him too. My skin was still flushed and warm, and I knew without looking that my cheeks were still pink. Of course, there was no chance the blush would be cooling if I couldn’t take my eyes off his body. He was in no hurry to put his clothes back on, and his cock was hard again by the time he pulled his gray boxer briefs up his legs.

His body was fit, toned, and perfectly proportioned, and his penis was surely the envy of every man in the world.

He sat on the side of the bed, watching me tie the sash of my red wrap dress and slip my feet into the black pointy-toe Mary Janes I’d worn, and only after I was fully clothed did he finish dressing.

He followed me from the room, and as we stood waiting at the elevator, he reached down and took my hand. I pulled back, refusing to give it to him.

“Are you always so stubborn?” he asked without looking at me.

“Are you always so…” But I hadn’t bothered figuring out how I was going to end that question before I opened my mouth, so my words trailed off pathetically.

“What?” He finally looked at me. “Good in bed?”

And the elevator dinged as it reached our floor and the doors opened.

“Apologetic,” I finally said as I walked into the elevator.

I turned to face him, and he was smiling at me. My lips pulled up slightly too even as I fought against it. As the doors started to close, he reached out, stopping them and finally following me in. He turned to face the doors as well, and when he reached down to take my hand again, I let him, even though every cell in my body was telling me not to.

This man was a threat.

“Good girl,” he said quietly, and my skin prickled with goosebumps.

The restaurant was just off the large lavish lobby of the hotel, and we were seated quickly. It was late at this point, nearly nine-thirty, and few of the tables were actually occupied. I’d not eaten since late morning, and my stomach was threatening to crawl up my throat, out my mouth, and jump to the table twenty or so odd feet away to devour what looked like the most succulent hamburger I’d ever seen. It was on a child’s plate, who was clearly too tired to care about the food sitting there. His parents were complaining rather loudly to one another about a delayed flight into O’Hare, and the boy yawned, sinking back into his seat farther.

Keegan ordered the poached salmon and a glass of wine, and I followed his lead. I would have preferred the burger but not when I was trying to act like an adult who belonged in this place. And as the waiter nodded and then moved on, Keegan leaned back in his seat, resting his elbow easily on the arm.

“So people call you Gabe, at least the woman you were speaking to on the phone earlier. Who was she?”

I bit my lower lip as I tried to decide if I wanted to get into this with him. I’d been holding him at arm’s length because that’s always what I did with the men I dated. However, it was proving more difficult with Keegan because, for some reason, his eyes just seemed to study me more intently than the average man’s.

Most men seemed to see through me, as though I was only partially there, but since the very moment I’d met Keegan, he’d treated me as though I was a solid thing. Given the interest in his eyes now, fucking me apparently hadn’t lessened that interest. That was almost odd. But the real kicker was that I was far more worried about Keegan’s agenda than I’d ever been with another man, and that meant he was the last person in the world who I should be letting any closer than that arm’s length of distance.

“Come on, Gabe, telling me who the woman you were speaking to can hardly be a matter of national security.” He smirked as he nodded at the waiter, who’d just set our glasses of wine on the table.

“My sister, Jessa. I canceled a movie date with her tonight to see you.”

“You mean to see David.”

“Look at my good fortune,” I said sarcastically, but it wasn’t a humored sarcasm, and it came out dry and bitter.

I wasn’t really permitted to turn down a “date,” at least not with a regular—not if I expected to get more dates in the future. My availability was paramount to my job, and this wasn’t the first time I’d canceled plans with Jessa just so I could go sleep with some man I had no real interest in sleeping with. I almost felt more guilt on this night for enjoying the man I’d had sex with.

Keegan didn’t seem to appreciate my dark humor, given his expression, but he eventually smirked anyway. “Do you enjoy the chairman?”

“I don’t want to talk about that.” I couldn’t imagine what would make him think I would.

“It’s just a little harmless conversation, Gabe.”

I glanced away for a moment. “No,” I said quietly. “I don’t.”

“But you enjoyed me.”

“What makes you think so?” I was pushing him back again.

But he chuckled quietly. “You came, didn’t you?” It wasn’t a question.

I shrugged. “That means nothing more than my nerve synapses are working appropriately and you’re not a complete idiot when it comes to female anatomy. It’s hardly impressive.” It was too impressive. It was the most incredible sex I’d ever had, and here I was staring at the man and refusing to acknowledge it.

He leaned forward, planting his elbows on the table. “Your pussy was wet when I fingered you. Did you think I didn’t notice? And I hate to break it to you, since you seem hell bent on pretending you didn’t enjoy what we did, but the cum that was practically dripping down the inside of your thighs wasn’t related to any nerve I touched, at least not physically touched.”

I could feel my cheeks warming, and I looked down at my lap. “Can we talk about something—?”

“I want to kiss you.”

My eyes shot back up to his. “No.”

He laughed. “How very Julia Roberts of you.”

“I wish,” I said quietly. “But that’s not real life, now is it?”

He smiled. “I don’t know. You get to fuck wealthy men in expensive hotel rooms and make a nice chunk of change for a few hours of work. I mean, I’m sure they’re not all Richard Gere, but…we can’t all be Richard, now can we?” He shrugged as his eyebrows shot up.

I wasn’t amused. “Don’t,” I said coldly.

“Don’t what?”

“Patronize me. Mock me.” I stared at him.

The smirk that had been on his lips moments before started to fall. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. He held my eyes for a moment before he glanced down at his lap and sat back in his seat.

The waiter arrived and set our plates in front of us, and we were silent for the next ten minutes as we ate. He watched me, but his expression and manner had changed. He’d lost the toying edge, and his focus on me seemed to have intensified in some way that wasn’t in the least related to sarcasm.

“You didn’t tell me why I can’t kiss you.”

I set my fork down and pulled my lower lip into my mouth as I thought about how to respond. When I glanced to his eyes, he was patiently waiting for me to answer. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to kiss someone you don’t want to kiss—to feel their tongue and mouth on your own? To put your mouth on theirs? It isn’t an intimacy issue. It’s completely disgusting.”

“I’m sure you put your mouth and tongue on all manner of body parts you may not want to, so I guess I’m wondering why kissing is such a big deal.” He watched me patiently.

I looked away, and I didn’t bother looking back when I responded. “I can’t seem to close my eyes tight enough or pretend my way through it in the same way as other things.” My voice was too quiet, and I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “Kissing is just somehow harder when there’s no real attraction.” I finally looked back at him.

He was silently studying me. “We already know attraction isn’t the issue here, so how about you tell me the real reason.”

I wiped my mouth with my napkin, dropping it on my plate. “Because I don’t like you.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Because I don’t trust you.”

He nodded. “Now that I believe.” He smiled. “So how much then?”

I cocked my head to the side, confused at what the hell he was talking about. “How much…?”

“For your lips.” It wasn’t an offensive remark. It could have been. But his eyes studied my mouth in such a way, as if mesmerized by it, that, regardless of the crassness of that question, it was clearly desire that drove it.

I’d noticed the way he looked at my mouth before. The first night we met at the open bar at the fundraiser, even in the small conference room moments before he had me escorted out of the same hotel I was now once more sitting in. I didn’t know quite what to make of it, except it sent a rush of warmth through me every time I caught him staring.

“They’re not for sale.”

He bit his lower lip, still watching mine.

“Can I ask you a question?”

He smiled. “Of course you can.”

“Do you work for criminals? Is that this whole”—I waved my hand around between us—“thing you’re involved in with David? Is he a criminal of some sort?” I’d never cared enough about David to actually ask or find out what he did. I knew he was wealthy, and people tended to address him as either chairman or councilman. Neither title made any sense to me in truth. Beyond that, I knew nothing else of the man.

Keegan laughed. “No, dear. I don’t work for criminals. You do.”

The waiter cleared our plates, and I reached for my glass of wine. “So I don’t need to worry about your…people offing my family or something along those lines?”

He laughed again, shaking his head in amusement. “Not at all. The people I work for are more politically motivated than that. David has aspirations that they’re helping him realize, but their support comes at a cost.” Keegan leaned forward, once again putting his elbows on the table as he spoke. “Here’s the high-level synopsis. David is the alderman of District 43.”

I cocked my head to the side, wondering if this was some weird masonic title.

“Alderman,” he repeated. “City councilman for all intents and purposes. Specifically the councilman who represents one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in Chicago—The Gold Coast District.”

I nodded.

“David comes from money. David comes from oil. David comes from an incredibly profitable company that designs, manufactures, and distributes very important things to do with oil.” He smiled again. “What this all means is that David could be well positioned to benefit certain political agendas if he ever made it to Washington. But there’s one big problem standing in his way.”

“And what’s that?”

“Pussy. Moreover, his inability to control his desire for it. He happens to be addicted to it. At the moment, it’s yours. Tomorrow it could be someone else’s. When it comes to politics, reputation is king.” He shrugged. “The fact he’s pushing fifty and isn’t married with children is a problem. Hell, I’d be happy if he was a widower, and if I could dredge up a dead spouse, I’d be tickled pink. But I can’t because the man has never wanted to get married or father children.” He shrugged. “Why would he when he can afford the best pussy in town?” He studied me for a moment as he smirked.

“That’s offensive.”

“No, that’s simply his mentality.” He was silent for a moment. “The fact he’s been seen and continues to be seen with a woman who’s young enough to be his daughter is a problem. He’s a public and political figure here in Chicago. Washington has a long memory, and what he does today could easily affect his political career five or even ten years from now. He’s got to be clean—on every level clean—for public consumption. If anyone ever found out he paid for you, paid for other women, it would be all over for him today, tomorrow, and even ten years from now. That’s just the way it is.”

“So why don’t these people who are helping him just find someone else to invest in?” I leaned forward, resting my arms on the table, too, and letting the intrigue pull me in.

“He’s their cash cow, from a political perspective at least. He has everything they need to make a run at it. He’s got ties to the political community, he’s got the money, he’s got the knowledge, the desire, the family connections, the business. He’s the perfect investment, barring a few flaws.”

“And that’s where you come in?”

He nodded. “Mmm-hmm.”

“So what do you do exactly? I mean other than chase off women like me.” I said it sarcastically, but something about those words and that concept gnawed at me when I heard them out loud.

“It’s my job to find those weaknesses that could harm his future career endeavors. I’m a strategist of sorts. I help create what the world is looking for. Sometimes it’s a man; sometimes it’s an entire campaign launch. I create the image people want to see. If my client can’t dress himself, I find him a tailor. If he can’t say the right thing, I teach him to shut up. If he’s a bumbling fucking idiot, I show him how to play it cool. Basically, I design the package, not from a political perspective but from a PR perspective.”

“Did you have to go to school for that?” I meant it as something of an insulting joke.

But he hummed in response. “Yes, actually. A lot of school.”

He must have seen the shock on my face. I was doing little to hide it.

“I came from D.C. myself. A politically connected family. I graduated high school at sixteen from my rather prestigious prep school. I graduated from an Ivy League college with a double major in political science and psychology. I picked up another degree in public relations a couple years later.”

The way he spoke lacked the pretentiousness I would expect to hear from a man rattling off an impressive background like that. He was clearly not trying to impress me at all. If anything, he was simply being blunt.

“I’ve been working very unassumedly in this field ever since. The political game is usually played by more seasoned men than me. Given my profession works best when I can stay in the shadows, my younger age has worked to my advantage. I’m not seen as a threat; I’m not seen as a player at all, and in fact, I’m not. I’m the most bi-partisan man in Washington D.C. In fact, it’s likely safer to say I’m non-partisan altogether.”

I nodded slowly. “And this is profitable for you?”

He smirked. “Very. And I stay busy. I already have more work on the back burner waiting for me in D.C.”

“Another man who can’t control his cock?”

He chuckled. “No. Believe it or not, David’s something of a unique case for me. PR I’m very used to. Babysitting a man’s cock, I’m not. Don’t get me wrong. There are plenty of men in politics who like to step out on their wives and family, just none so defiantly and recklessly as David.” He sighed. “When I return to D.C., I’ll be working with a special interest group on a campaign they’re getting ready to launch early next year. They’ll be endorsing a particular senatorial candidate, and they want some pre-emptive research and planning done.”

“How old are you?” I hadn’t actually thought of it before now. The men I was usually with didn’t pay me to care about their age, and I’d learned not to ask. Actually, what I’d learned was that men could be just as sensitive about their aging as women could be.

“I just turned thirty-three.”

The waiter arrived with our check, and I charged it to the room. Keegan offered me his hand and helped me from my chair, and as we walked back to the elevators, he kept that same hand on my lower back, gently touching and arousing me.

“I’m going to take a shower. Do I have to worry about you disappearing on me?” He glanced over his shoulder at me. We’d just entered the bedroom of the suite.

I said nothing for a moment, but I eventually shook my head. “No.”

He watched me as if deciding whether or not he believed me, but then he turned and walked into the bathroom. I listened to the shower as I took my clothes off. I hung the dress back up in the closet, and I dropped my bra and underwear on the chair beside the bed. I pulled the bedding back and climbed in. I lay on my stomach, staring out the large picture window to the Chicago lights twinkling around me, and not once during that time did I think of leaving—quite simply because I didn’t want to.

When I closed my eyes, I drifted off before I could stop myself.

In my dreams, I kissed him. I kissed him over and over again, and it wasn’t until I woke that I realized it wasn’t really a dream at all but something that fell somewhere between dreamland and the real world. His lips were on mine, pulling and sucking, and his hands were all over my body, moving, groping, caressing.

“Oh God,” I whimpered out, and he pulled his mouth from mine. I could feel his breath still touching my lips as he panted, but the room was too dark to see him. The lights of the city beyond the window cast a moving, dancing twinkle across the room, but it just wasn’t enough to capture the image of him.

When he kissed me again, it was slower, gentler, and there was a hesitance to it. He wasn’t asking my permission after all. He was simply taking something I’d already refused to give him.

His mouth moved off to my ear, and he nipped my earlobe as his hands trailed down to my breasts. He squeezed them, and then his mouth was descending, kissing and licking as it went until he pulled my nipple into his mouth. He sucked as his hands continued to squeeze, and he moaned quietly as his mouth moved from one breast to the other.

And then he descended farther. His hands always stayed a step ahead of his mouth, groping, massaging, exploring as he moved down my body, and when he pulled my legs apart, I started trembling. He kissed my stomach as his hands snaked under my thighs and his fingers gripped into my hips.

His mouth moved lower, and my sex warmed and pulsed. This wasn’t something I did. Most men didn’t want this from me, and on the rare occasion they did, I would distract them quickly and avoid it. But I was waiting desperately for Keegan’s mouth, to the point that my insides ached in need. When he slid his tongue between my lips, I cried out this strangled, gasping moan. He licked slowly and hummed against my skin, and my hips were moving, pressing my sex harder to him as I writhed. He pushed his tongue into me, his moan muffled as he thrust and licked, and when he moved up to my clit, he started to lash at those nerves.

I whimpered, I begged, I cried out as he pleasured me until one blinding moment when my core exploded around him and I came. I grabbed his hands, letting my nails dig into his skin as I twitched through my release. He climbed up my body, wedging his knees under my thighs as he leaned over to the nightstand and grabbed the condom there. I listened as he tore into the packet, and I closed my eyes, waiting for him as I caught my breath.

He brought his face to mine, and I caught the subtle scent of my arousal on his lips. He crushed my mouth with his the second he slammed hard into me, driving himself all the way to my core. He groaned through the kiss, and then he fucked, hard and fast, as his lips pulled on mine and his tongue thrust into my mouth. I sucked on it, and he moaned louder.

When he came, he cried out against my mouth, and I could feel the tremble in his lips as his body released the tension. His kisses became gentle again, but they didn’t stop, and he rolled our bodies to our sides as he clutched at my cheek and held my mouth to his. I’d never imagined kissing could be so amazing. I didn’t want to close my eyes tight against it and pretend it away because it was exactly what I wanted it to be. I’m pretty sure, when I fell asleep again, he was still licking and sucking on my lips.

I woke early the next morning, but I was alone. There was a note on the nightstand.

You’re right not to sell them. They’re priceless.

KL

His phone number was written below the message, and there was cash there to cover the cost of the hotel room. I held the note, staring at it for a moment. I dressed quickly and left, tossing the note in the garbage as I walked out.

Chapter 5

Keegan

“I fail to see why you take such issue with a single man acting like…well…a single man.”

I gaped at David as I sat across from him at his desk holding a stack of papers. “Single men don’t pay fifteen hundred dollars a night for a woman’s company.” I glared at him. I was holding his bank statement in my hand.

“I pay a hell of lot more than that,” he remarked under his breath.

I gaped at him. “What does that mean?”

David sighed as he looked at me scornfully. “Three thousand a week to keep her off the menu. And I still have to prefund an account to cover her costs when I do see her, which is once every week or two at most.” He propped his hands behind his head, lounging back in his chair smugly. The fact that he could discuss such things without batting an eye was disconcerting.

“Let me get this straight. You’re paying in excess of fifteen thousand dollars a month, the majority of which is paid simply to make sure she’s not fucking other men, and she’s getting paid…” I bobbled my head as I did the math. “What? Five thousand a month? I’m guessing she gets no share of that three-thousand-dollar retainer fee, right?”

He snorted. “She gets paid less than that. I pay fifteen hundred every night I spend with her. That doesn’t mean she gets that much. Her cut is two-thirds of that if I’m not mistaken.”

I nodded, clenching my jaw tight. “So she’s getting three thousand a month at the most, and you’re also costing her lost business by paying them to keep her unavailable, of which she gets no financial benefit. What part of this is fair to her?”

“Fair?” He actually laughed when he said it. “It’s really not my job to worry about her finances. She’s a big girl.” He glared at me for a moment. “You know I spend more on new suits in a month than I spend on her. And, by the way, this company is untraceable. I fund an account with them in cash, they debit the account as needed, and they send me an indecipherable text when my account runs low. I email them when I want to see her from a free email account under a false name. They pay her share to her…well, I don’t know how they pay her; it’s really not my problem at that point. They’re very discreet.”

I shook my head, staring up at the ceiling far above me. His office was in downtown, and like everything else in his life, it was opulent, extravagant, overdone. “Everything is traceable, David.” I stared back down, scanning the last couple months. “There are two twenty-thousand-dollar withdrawals in the last couple months. Is that what prefunding an account with them amounts to?”

David smirked. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I have a rather large surplus of funds in the account at the moment.”

I propped my hands on the back of my head as I glared at him. “What are you going to do when a picture of the two of you hits the society pages of the Chicago Sun Times? You think I don’t check every day to make sure your face doesn’t pop up alongside hers…or some other inappropriate woman, for that matter?”

David harrumphed smugly. “Gee, maybe I’ll tell them I have a lovely girlfriend, whom I’ll conveniently break up with in a few months when I’m tired of her. Is that justification enough for you?”

“And how exactly do you justify her age?”

“I don’t know. How about, ‘she looks older than she is’? Is that good enough for you? Better yet, how about, ‘I value the caliber of people I spend time with not based on their age alone but who they are as a person,’” he said mockingly. “Listen, I’m usually too busy fucking her to show her off at fundraisers and events. It’s not like I’m seen with her that often, so how about you stop being so paranoid and obsessing about the millions of things that will likely never go wrong? Because, guess what, it annoys the hell out of me.”

I gritted my teeth as I stared back at him. I wanted to punch him at the moment and not likely for the right reasons. He was being an ass. That I was used to. Hell, I could even handle that. But he’d also just planted a rather ugly image of himself plowing the hell out of her in my mind, and now, well, now I wanted to break his nose. Instead, I inhaled slowly and did my best to release the fury with the air in my lungs. “I'm paid to obsess about those things because you can’t be trusted to.”

He scoffed as he looked away dismissively. “I have a flight to catch in a few hours. Do you intend to accompany me to Dallas, or do you think my cock and I can be trusted for five days?” He stood, grabbing his suit jacket off the back of his chair and slipping it up his arms and over his shoulders. He eyed me coldly as I remained seated.

“I don’t know.” I leaned back in the chair I was sitting in. “I suppose it depends on how many hookers you intend to fuck or how many strip clubs you’ll be visiting.”

David laughed quietly. “You must be kidding, right? I would never go to a strip club.” He tugged the cuff of his shirt down below the wrist of his suit jacket. “The strip club would come to me.” He started to walk away, leaving me to stare at his desk and the mountain of paperwork sitting there. “Oh, I forgot to mention.” He stepped back to me. “I have a prostate exam next week when I get back in town. Should I expect you for that? I mean, that is tantamount to what you do for a living, isn’t it?” And then he did walk away.

“Fucking prick,” I said under my breath when his door closed.

I sat there motionless for a while, stewing in irritation. It was mid-week following the night I’d spent with Gabrielle, and every moment I spent with David made me want to retell every second of that night in vivid detail while David was tied up immobile to a chair. I very much wanted to teach him a lesson.

Yet, for some reason, I wasn’t willing to do it yet.

I had little patience for people who lacked self-control. Actually, that wasn’t true. I wouldn’t have a job if every man in the world understood restraint and self-control. What I had little patience for was a narcissistic man who wouldn’t take my good advice. David very clearly fell in that category.

When I stood, I rounded David’s desk, rapping my fingertips along the desktop as I moved. His computer screen was still awake, and I reached down, touching the mouse to ensure it would stay awake for a bit longer. I turned around, staring out the large office window behind the desk, and pulses of electric need surged through my body.

I sat at the desk, pulling up David’s browser history. When I found the “free” email service in the history, I clicked on it. A mailbox popped up. It was the same exact tactic I’d used last time I set up a “date” with Gabe. David was right, the email address he’d set up was an address and name as nondescript as the one I was getting ready to send an email to. The problem was it wouldn’t matter if anyone ever chose to trace the IP address. And if I was able to find the mailbox in his browser history, what’s to say someone else couldn’t as well?

None of those concerns stopped my cock from getting hard as I typed the message.

7PM with Gabrielle at Fresh on N. Green Street tomorrow night.

I hit Send.

I tried to work while I waited for a response, but it proved impossible, and I ended up staring at the email, waiting, drumming my fingertips on the desktop impatiently. When that became too much, I spun his chair around and gazed off at the city around me. It was expansive, it was tall, it was even overwhelming at times, and somewhere out there was a young woman with the most kissable lips I’d ever seen.

I wanted that mouth again.

When David’s email alert dinged, I swiveled the chair back around.

Forward From: G.

I’ll see you at 7.

End Message.

I ran my hand over my mouth, exhaling against my skin.

“What the fuck am I doing?” I whispered.

This wasn’t how I operated. My job description didn’t include sex, but I’d be damned if I could think of anything at all except the many different ways I wanted to fuck her.

When I left David’s office, I took the files I was in the middle of reviewing with me, and I turned the lights out. Waiting twenty-four hours to see her, now that I knew for sure I would actually see her again, was going to be difficult.

* * * *

I watched her enter the restaurant the next night. The maître d’ helped her out of the light grayish-brown jacket she wore. It covered an equally light peach dress. It was a slip dress made of satin or silk, and it shimmered slightly in the overhead light. She wore a long strand of pearls knotted around her neck and a long silver necklace too. She looked eclectic but nice, and the light brown ankle boots she wore highlighted her slender legs. Her hair was parted down the center, and it hung straight and long over her shoulders.

She scanned the small restaurant, and the maître d’ ushered her my way. She paused mid-stride the moment her eyes took me in. She looked around, seemingly confused, and when her focus returned to me, her brow furrowed and she shook her head. The poor maître d’ was watching her concernedly as he now stood beside our small table for two.

As she approached, he pulled her chair out for her. She paused yet again, clearly deciding whether she intended to sit or not.

“Come on, Gabe. I don’t bite.” I smiled at her.

She finally took the chair. “You do actually.”

I chuckled.

“And David is…?”

“Traveling. I was afraid you’d get lonely without him.”

She hummed. “Did you?” She cocked her head coolly to the side.

“No, not really.” I smirked. “I did, however, think we should get to know one another better.”

She scoffed as she leaned back in her chair. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Well, we have all night to decide whether it’s a good idea or not, so how about you reserve judgment for the time being.” I studied her for a moment. “Surely you thought there was a chance it might be me contacting you, and yet…you came anyway.”

She said nothing, but her eyes flitted away for a moment. Busted.

When the waiter arrived, I ordered a bottle of wine, and we both started scanning the menu. It was thoroughly confusing. Nothing much made sense on the menu, just random ingredients, most of which I couldn’t identify.

I’d chosen the restaurant on the recommendation of David’s secretary. She called it “divine art on a plate.”

Looking around, that’s exactly what I was seeing.

I pulled an audible and pointed randomly at the menu when the waiter returned, and from the looks of it, that’s exactly what Gabe did as well. I gawked once the waiter was gone. It was all a bit pretentious for my taste, but I was all about the pretense. Pretense was my life, after all.

Gabe was studying me when I finally looked back at her, but she wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t even frowning; she was just watching solemnly.

“Tell me about yourself.” I opened the conversation, expecting nothing whatsoever to be handed to me easily. But it was surprising what you could learn about a person when they were trying to keep you from learning.

“No.”

A small smile tugged at my lip. “Tell me about your sister. Jessa, isn’t it?” I knew it was Jessa because I didn’t forget names, and I didn’t forget details.

“No.”

“No, her name’s not Jessa, or no, you’re going to be a defiant brat and not answer any of my questions?”

She stared at me, saying nothing.

“You’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?”

“Very.”

“I’m not at all opposed to a power struggle, Gabe. I’m not even opposed to letting you have the power if that’s what you need. Of course, you already know that.” I smiled sweetly, lifting my glass of wine to my lips. “I’m just asking for a little conversation.”

She sighed, looking away for a moment.

“Do you have a job besides this?”

“What do you think?” She smiled tauntingly at me this time. She hadn’t said it sarcastically, though, and the intrigued expression on her face said she truly was inviting me to speculate. Of course, that look was sending a flush of heat through me that was making it hard to concentrate too.

“I’m guessing no. I suppose you wouldn’t be doing this if you had another job.”

She hummed as though interested in my response.

“How about an education?

Again she responded, “What do you think?” with a smile.

“Same answer. We wouldn’t be here if you did.”

Her smile froze for a moment, and her eyes narrowed. I couldn’t tell if I’d offended her or not.

“Where do you live?”

“Does it matter? I don’t take clients home with me.”

“I’m not your client.”

“Are you sure about that?” She bit her lower lip. She was being coy. At least she wasn’t refusing to converse with me anymore.

The waiter suddenly appeared and set our plates in front of us. Mine looked…well, interesting. Gabe’s, however, was far more unsettling. Her head turned to the side as she stared.

“Enjoy,” the waiter said with a nod.

That was debatable.

I watched Gabe as her brow furrowed and her mouth scrunched up. My lips were pulling up farther with every passing second until I was grinning like an idiot. She finally looked at me, and her mouth curved into the cutest smile too. It was small at first, but it widened as we looked at each other.

She leaned forward. “I think they accidentally served me a centerpiece.”

I laughed.

“Is this edible?” she whispered as she pointed to a pretty blue flower on her plate.

I shrugged. “From what I’m told, everything is supposed to be edible.” I reached over, snatching one of the flowers, and I popped it in my mouth as she grimaced. She waited patiently for my verdict as I chewed, and her teeth were gritted, her lips parted the entire time.

“Cucumberry.”

She looked shocked. “Really?”

“Mmm-hmm. You should try it.”

She reached down, plucking one of the flowers off her plate. She looked around as though she didn’t trust what she was getting ready to do. She apparently decided other patrons were eating their own weird-ass shit, so it must be okay. Her head bobbled, and then she popped it in her mouth.

We picked at our shockingly and impressively good food for a few minutes. She’d occasionally point at something she wasn’t sure of. I’d consequently taste it for her first, and then once I’d given her my seal of approval, she’d eat it. I offered her a bite of the Kingfish I’d ordered as well, and she hummed when she tasted it.

“So you were just getting ready to tell me all about the incredible greystone you have in Lincoln Park.”

“Nice try.” She winked at me. “No greystone for me.”

“Ah…high-rise then?”

She shook her head slowly. “Sorry.” She studied me. “Why are you so interested in knowing about me?” Her face was suddenly serious.

I dropped my napkin on my plate. “Just like to know who all the players are. You’re the unknown, and I don’t like unknowns.”

“I’m not a player. I’m a nobody.”

I watched her, saying nothing and hoping she’d say more.

“I’m the normal woman you walk by without ever guessing the secret life she leads.”

When she said nothing further, I leaned in, planting my elbows on the table and steepling my fingers under my chin. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell your secrets,” I whispered.

She leaned in too, copying my posture. “You are the secret,” she whispered back.

“Huh,” I responded. It was a completely involuntary response that had slipped out with my breath. But she’d brought me up short. I wasn’t real life for her. Real life for her was the thing that happened outside of all this.

And I was suddenly the one who was offended.

Chapter 6

Gabrielle

WHEN he helped me from my chair, my skin popped with goosebumps. My arms were bare, and his hands were warm as they touched my skin. I needed to leave. The message indicated a restaurant only, not a hotel, and while that would never stop David from following up dinner with a hotel if he so chose, there was no reason to think this needed or should go further than dinner with Keegan. That meant it was time to leave.

So why was I hoping for more?

He helped me into my coat, which was nothing more than a taffeta swing coat, dressy and simple. He slipped his hand under it at my lower back as we walked out of the restaurant together.

“Take a walk with me.”

I glanced at him. Now was when I was supposed to refuse. Now was when I could logically say I needed to go.

But I didn’t.

His hand remained low on my back, too low for polite acquaintances. We walked down a couple blocks, crossing over Interstate 90 on Randolph. He wasn’t in a hurry, and I was grateful at least my ankle boots were comfortable. When he stopped in front of an industrial-type building that had obviously been renovated into a hotel, my body stiffened.

“There was no mention of a hotel in the message. The service usually reserves the room if that’s—”

“Relax. There’s a local group playing in the bar. If you want to get a room later, we can. But it will be your choice if we do, not mine.”

The hand on my back moved slightly lower as he watched me, and his fingers gripped me gently. I stepped away from him when the doorman opened the door for us, and he followed me inside.

The lobby was vast and open. It was very industrial chic. The woodwork was thick, authentic, and worn. The wrought-iron fixtures were, without doubt, original, and the subtle variances and unevenness in the floor were charming. The room was tall, and a bar that was open to the lobby was off to the left.

People were congregating around the many groupings of shabby-looking furniture. A deep purple velvet loveseat was vacant near the stage that was set up, and Keegan led me there, helping me out of my coat before we sat.

He rested his arm casually behind me on the couch, and when a waitress came by to take our order, he just asked for water. I was already mildly tipsy, thanks to the wine from dinner, so when he looked at me and waited for my order, I asked for the same.

“This building is amazing.” He leaned down to my ear as he spoke.

I nodded. It was incredible. It was exactly the kind of style I would love to have some day.

“Far more my taste than where I’m staying,” he commented offhandedly as he looked around.

I turned to him, almost shocked to hear that, but not at all willing to admit it fit me too. He smiled at my intrigued expression. His expression faded, though, and it turned serious as he watched me.

“I need to know you’re not going to see David again.”

I nodded slowly, but I wasn’t responding to him. “So that’s why you set up this date. To try, yet again, to convince me to do your job for you.”

His eyes narrowed. “No, actually.”

The group, a small ensemble of horns, strings, and piano, took the stage, along with a man standing at the microphone. It all had a very flapper-era look to it, and when they broke into a rendition of Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night,” my skin prickled with a warm flush.

I angled myself toward the stage, which put Keegan’s body behind mine. His elbow remained on the back of the couch, but his fingers brushed the hair off my shoulder, and he leaned to my ear. His lips brushed my earlobe, and more goosebumps popped up along my arms.

“I asked to see you because I wanted to lick your pussy again.” His voice was quiet, his breath warm as it touched my skin, but I shivered anyway. “And I want those lips too.” He leaned back from me casually, returning his eyes to the stage, but I stared at him over my shoulder.

It became uncomfortable sitting beside him then. I was warm between my legs, wet and tingly with need. Every sound and every sensation sent a rush of blood through me in my hypersensitive state, and God forbid his skin brush mine. The few times that happened, my body would physically jolt and the breath would rush from my lungs.

I tried to listen to the music. It was beautiful, it was entertaining, it was an incredible atmosphere, and I absolutely wanted to stay longer and get a room with this man. I wanted his mouth on me. I wanted to feel his tongue gliding over my skin. I wanted him inside me, quietly grunting that deep warm sound he made when he fucked. I wanted to take exactly what he wanted to give.

But what I wanted was a fairytale, another fantasy.

The moment the band took a break and the crowd of people started conversing again, I turned to him. “I have to go.”

“Or we could go upstairs.” He studied my eyes.

“Please don’t ask me to do this tonight,” I said quietly.

He leaned in, keeping his eyes on mine as long as he could. “Why not? You enjoyed what we did together last time,” he said against my ear.

I stood, and he looked up at me calmly. I took a deep breath, steadying my resolve. “This life makes a lot more sense when I don’t.” I started to walk away, but his hand grabbed mine swiftly as he stood.

“Just give me your lips for a little while, and I won’t argue.” His eyes moved back and forth across mine.

“To do what with?”

He smiled, and then he tapped his own lower lip. “Nothing more.”

I glanced around, and the moment I nodded, his hand tightened on mine and he pulled me away toward the entrance. He helped me into my coat, which he was still holding, and the doorman held the door open for us.

He held my hand as we walked back toward the restaurant, and the closer we got, the more my fingers trembled until we were within sight of the place and I simply had to pull my hand away altogether. He approached a dark luxury-looking sedan and pulled his keys out of his pocket.

“Can I give you a ride?”

“No.”

“What? Afraid you might accidentally have sex with me?”

That’s actually exactly what I was afraid of, but I didn’t respond.

He chuckled, even as his fingers toyed with the keys. “You’re going to force me to make out with you here at the curb?”

“I’m not forcing you to do anything.” I sounded about a thousand times more confident than I actually felt. But if he could have seen the butterflies flapping their panicked wings in my stomach right now, he would have, without doubt, exploited it to his benefit.

He smiled and pushed me to the side of the driver’s door, pinning me in place with a hand on my hip. He leaned to my mouth, pausing. “I’m not forcing you to do anything either. You’re here of your own choosing, and you stayed of your own choosing as well.” And then he pressed his lips to mine.

I refused to return the kiss for a moment, but then he reached up, cupped my cheek, and used his thumb on my lower lip to pull my mouth open. “Kiss me,” he said into my mouth, and then he sucked on my lower lip.

I groaned quietly, and the moment I did, he pushed his body hard against mine. He was aroused, and I could feel it against my stomach. I wanted to touch, but I was having a hard enough time coping with my mouth at the moment.

He paused, and I felt his lips trembling against mine. I loved that sensation. I remembered it from the night I’d spent with him. It was a weakness of some sort, though I had no idea what that weakness actually meant. But what I did know was that it was a glimpse of something outside of his control, and I doubted very much there were many things in his world that he didn’t control.

He pulled back slightly, studying me.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered. “And just listen.” His voice was warm and seductive.

I closed my eyes, expecting him to say something more, but he said nothing at all. Instead, he kissed me gently. He kissed again, letting his lips quietly smack against mine.

And then I understood.

He kissed again and again, and I did exactly as he asked. I listened to the sound our mouths made together.

It was this universally powerful sound, more erotic than any other. It sounded wet, but not sloppy. It sounded sweet, but sexy at the same time. It sounded needy and desperate, even though he was taking his time, and when all that was coupled with the warmth of his lips, the taste of his mouth, and the subtle tickle of his breath, it turned into the most incredible moment of my life.

That wasn’t possible.

His head angled as he pressed his mouth harder to mine, and he groaned this breathy sound that caught in his throat when his groin pushed into me hard. It went on and on, sometimes slowing, sometimes speeding nearly out of control, and I closed my eyes tightly, letting the sensation take me someplace I had no business going.

“Whoa,” came a woman’s voice and the nearby click of heels on sidewalk.

Keegan finally parted from my lips, and he pressed his forehead to mine, breathing deeply and ignoring the source of the interruption for a moment. When he pulled back, he glanced at the approaching couple.

“Why don’t you kiss me like that?” the woman asked the man beside her.

The man chuckled. “Thanks for that, pal,” he said to Keegan with a smirk.

“Sorry,” Keegan responded quietly.

And the couple passed on by.

I ran my finger over my lower lip. It was sore, but it was the most pleasant soreness, much like I’d felt after having sex with Keegan, though a different part of my body.

“I have to go.” I put my palms on his chest, holding him at a distance.

He nodded. “I think I should give you a ride. I’m not comfortable—”

At just that moment, a cab rounded the corner with its light on. Fate was definitely telling me something. I stepped between the cars, holding my hand up to flag him down.

“No need,” I said over my shoulder as the cab came to a stop next to me. I opened the back door, standing there and looking at Keegan for a moment.

He was just watching me. He licked his lower lip thoughtlessly and pulled it into his mouth as though his mind were somewhere else, and then I climbed in the cab, refusing to look back.

Chapter 7

Keegan

SHE was dressed all in black, from the black ornate mask on her face to the long silk gown she wore. And though her eyes were obscured by the mask, there was no question it was her. I knew those lips, and while I much preferred them natural and kissable than painted crimson, as they were now, they were still her lips, and they were still very recognizable even from across the art gallery at the Renaissance Blackstone.

The Mystery Masquerade Ball was an annual event held in mid-October that raised money for…something. I was starting to think all I did was follow David around from one hotel event to another—of course it was more entertaining than sitting through one of his city council meetings. I had no opposition to fundraising events whatsoever. Putting his money in the right places that looked good on paper was never a bad idea.

But I was irritated.

I’d not seen her for nearly two weeks, and the most I could say was that she’d also not seen David, though David had been traveling for a good portion of that time, so I’m not sure it was any great accomplishment. When I asked David about this event and who he intended to take, he’d waved me away dismissively, as though I didn’t have a right to know. He’d given my employers the right to manage this part of his life, and yet the man didn’t seem to like anyone managing anything at all when it came to his personal life. That was not surprising in many ways. The man was a chairman and CEO of a massively successful company, not to mention he’d successfully campaigned his way into the position of alderman for District 43. He didn’t get to the place he was in this life by worrying about every opinion that came his way or bowing down to men significantly his junior who were trying to control what he did with his frisky fucking cock.

Gabe hadn’t called me once, even though I’d left her my number the first night I was with her. And I couldn’t decide, even now that I was watching her from across the room, if I was upset about that, happy about it, or relieved. When David approached me with Gabe, I finally figured it out. I was pissed the hell off. I clamped my teeth down hard as I looked at her. She wasn’t supposed to be here, and she damn well knew it.

Her mask was a simple filigree of woven black satin-wrapped wire. The deep brown of her eyes twinkled under the gallery’s lights, and every time she blinked, her long lashes drew my attention in. Of course her mouth had that ability too, and I found my eyes barely knew how to leave her once she was standing in front of me. It was odd how I could want to do nothing but look at her and yell at her at the same time—maybe touch her too.

“Keegan,” David said stiffly and without a shred of kindness.

David looked like an idiot with his mask on, and I harrumphed and shook my head in irritation. I, on the other hand, had refused to wear one, avoiding the schmuckery altogether. But Gabe made her mask look incredible, not that I wouldn’t prefer to see her entire face.

“Gabrielle, you look lovely.” I turned my attention to her, studying her eyes as she stared back defiantly.

“Careful now,” David said quietly. “We’re incognito tonight. She can be any completely appropriate date I want her to be, and no one will be the wiser. I think I’ll tell everyone she’s a forty-three-year-old genetic engineer specializing in agriculture who spends her time curing world hunger. Think anyone will believe me?”

Gabe’s chest rose and fell deeply, and her jaw was suddenly tense. He’d offended her, but she wasn’t going to say anything. She wasn’t paid to have opinions, after all, but God what I wouldn’t give to hear her voice her anger at David now.

I hummed, and when I stepped up to David to move past him, I angled my head toward his. “Watch yourself. My patience, as well as that of your sponsors, is wearing rather thin.” My focus shifted to Gabe standing next to him, and my heart sped for a moment. Her eyes were wide as she watched me. I nodded subtly before I forced myself to walk away.

I gave them space for nearly an hour. Gabe danced with him, she was introduced to others, and others still seemed to already know her, given the body language and the way they approached her. She’d been around him too long, and he’d kept her entirely too visible. It would be one thing if the damage were limited to what he did with her behind closed doors, but it wasn’t. And it all amounted to a bloody fucking nightmare for me.

This man was a train wreck of insubordination, and there was too much money riding on his ability to behave like the man he publically purported himself to be. And yet, oddly, I was still holding on to the truth of what had happened between Gabe and me weeks prior. Were I holding on to it for any logical, calculated reason that would be one thing, but…I wasn’t. It wasn’t my job to make this decision about Gabe, but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I was doing. I knew I could tell David I’d slept with her at any time; it would certainly make a statement. But I simply didn’t want to, not that I wouldn’t enjoy sucker-punching him in the balls.

Frankly, David had no business being a leader of any sort, and power was not something he would ever handle appropriately without completely losing whatever shred of humbleness he might still possess, but then Washington was quite full of those. He sure as hell was not a good investment, in my opinion.

He’d been too rich for too long, and after Mommy and Daddy died in a tragic car accident when he was still in his early twenties, his bad habits had simply been allowed to go unchecked. His father had known how to handle himself in the public world—at least I’d learned as much so far. But without the expectations of family keeping David in line, he’d devolved. And now I was supposed to fix the unfixable mess.

When Gabe walked up to the bar to get a drink, I followed.

“And I run into you at a bar yet again,” I said to her as I stepped up beside her. “I’m starting to think you’re a lush.”

She turned to me, but she didn’t smile. “I didn’t know to avoid you last time.”

I ignored the insult. “Dance with me.”

“I’m getting a drink.”

“It can wait. I can’t.”

I offered her my hand, and she looked around for a moment. When she finally placed her hand in mine, I folded my fingers around hers and pulled her away to the dance floor.

“You look stunning,” I said as I tugged her closer to my body and started moving her around the floor. “But out of curiosity, what the hell are you doing here?” My teeth were gritted as I spoke, barely allowing my jaw to work, and while my voice was quiet and my body language unassuming to those around us, there was no mistaking the irritation in my tone.

She let out a huff of breath. “I’m doing what I get paid to do. He booked me for this night weeks ago. I couldn’t back out without running the risk of pissing him off, and if he’s pissed, then my employer is pissed.” She was silent for a moment, and her focus shifted to my chest. “I was going to say I didn’t feel well and leave before the end of the eve—”

I cut her off. “What’s the point? There’s a room full of people who’ve already seen you. I’d say the damage is already done.” I regretted the words the moment they were out of my mouth, but it was too late.

She stopped moving and stared. Her lips were parted, and they trembled slightly as her eyelids fluttered. “I beg to differ,” she said quietly, and then she tried to pull away.

I wouldn’t let her. I held her close, closer than I should for a formal event, and my hand gripped her lower back rather than her shoulder.

“I wish my personal opinions on the topic mattered. I really do, Gabe. But I have a job to do.” I hated the sound of the excuse coming out of my mouth, even though it was the truest statement I’d likely made to her yet.

“Yeah? Well, so do I,” she retorted angrily.

I scoffed, but she was quick to fire back.

“I’m so sick and tired of hearing about what a threat I am to him—his reputation, his career, his future. Did it ever once occur to you that he’s as big a threat to me? You, too, for that matter. This is how I support myself. This is how I survive.”

“There are a hell of lot better ways to survive than this, Gabe.”

“Not for me. This”—she looked around as though searching for the explanation—“pays well and allows me time to deal with my other…responsibilities.”

I scoffed. “Well then you should be thrilled to know he’s paying three thousand dollars a week to keep all those other nuisance cocks away from you.”

She stopped moving then, staring up at me, clearly shocked to hear that.

“That’s right,” I continued. “He’s paying handsomely to keep your calendar nice and clear for you. Let me guess, though, you don’t see a penny of that money, do you?” It wasn’t a question. I already knew full well she didn’t.

Her lips pursed, and I could have sworn her eyes shimmered before she looked down at my chest instead of my eyes. And then she was silent. I moved her slowly around the floor in time with the music, and she let me steer her through the people. She also let me keep our bodies close; of course, I wasn’t really sure she was even aware of what we were doing. She seemed lost in her mind at the moment, and I let her stay there so she could soak up the insult of the situation.

“It doesn’t matter,” she finally said quietly.

“You don’t think so, huh? Then how come you’re so offended right now?” I leaned back, looking down at her face. “He throws down over fifteen K for your pussy a month, and you see a measly three thousand of that. Tell me that’s okay.”

“Three thousand isn’t so measly to me,” she retorted.

“I know that. They know that. That’s my point.”

She looked at me, and when she swallowed, it was a struggle.

“Don’t you get it? You’re always going to be the one left holding the short straw in all this because they’re always going to take advantage of you, knowing full well they can.”

“Just like you,” she said quietly. She stared at me, refusing to look away.

I opened my mouth to argue with that, but I couldn’t, and when I shut my mouth again, I pursed my lips.

“What happens when David finds out about us?”

I didn’t answer right away; I was still too hung up on the just like you statement. When her question finally registered, I shook my head to clear it. “I haven’t told him.”

“Come on, Keegan. You pretended to be him to set up a date with me…twice. And God only knows what your true intent was in doing so. He unknowingly paid for you to sleep with me. You think there’s not a chance he’s going to find out about that?” Her voice was getting louder.

I dug my fingers into her back, pressing hard to get her attention, and I leaned to her ear. “Quiet. You’re making a scene.”

She shook her head in frustration, but when she spoke again, her voice was softer. “Honestly, when you decided to…test me, did you even care if he discovered what you’d done?”

I didn’t even bother opening my mouth to respond to that one because whatever I could say or would say would ultimately be either a flat-out lie or the biggest dick statement ever uttered.

“Because I’ve been thinking about this a lot since the last time I saw you, and here’s what I’ve come up with,” she continued. “I don’t think you would have done it if you weren’t fully willing to let him find out—fully intending to let him find out. Am I right?”

I clenched my jaw tight, watching her but saying nothing.

“Don’t answer that question. I’m not sure I want to hear you lie to my face.” Her expression was disappointment.

When her already shimmering eyes glossed over completely, I suddenly felt sick to my stomach. “Gabe…” I started to respond, but what the hell could I say to that? Instead, I sighed, looking down at her neck rather than her eyes.

She shook her head angrily. “At what point did you decide not to use that as leverage against him? Hmm? When you came inside me? When you kissed me? When you spoke to me and realized I’m actually a human being regardless of what I do for a living?” Her eyes were still glassy, and she looked mere seconds from crying. “You know, my life may be small compared to his, and I may not have as much to lose, but what I do have is everything to me. At the end of the day, that measly three thousand I get may be nothing to him, but it’s really important to me. So just tell me, are you planning to tell him? Do I have to worry—?”

“No.” I actually meant it when I said it that time, though I’m not sure when the decision had actually been made in my mind. Perhaps in that very moment. I tugged her body closer to me, holding her chest tightly to mine as I lowered my mouth to her ear. “I decided not to tell him when I realized I wanted you more than I wanted leverage against him. I wanted—”

“May I cut in?”

My hands loosened on Gabe instantly, and I stood straight, pulling back from her body. I held my hands up as David stepped in.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to upset a lady when her makeup’s done all nice and pretty like?” David’s tone was mocking, and he eyed me venomously over his shoulder. He didn’t give a shit I’d upset Gabe. He just didn’t like that I was encroaching on the pretty, shiny toy he’d paid so much for.

David turned his back on me, pushing Gabe farther into the crowd of dancing people, and I caught sight of her subtly and swiftly brushing a tear from her cheek. Her eyes met mine for the briefest moment before David said something to her and she smiled up at him. And then he turned her, and I lost sight of her in the crowd. I cursed under my breath as I walked away.

Forty minutes later she was good to her word, and she left early. The relief was instantaneous but misplaced. I shouldn’t be relieved for personal reasons. I should be relieved for completely professional reasons. But I knew exactly where my relief came from, and it was absolutely personal.

I left shortly after she did, but I didn’t return to the condo I’d been living in since arriving in town. Instead, I drove to the Peninsula. I dumped my car off with the valet and ran inside. The woman at the check-in desk batted her eyes at me as I approached, but I ignored it.

“Can you tell me if Connor Gallahan is working tonight?”

She seemed surprised by my question for a moment, but then she picked up the phone. “Let me check, sir.”

I rapped the tips of my fingers against the desk as I waited for her to get off the phone. My throat was tight, and I was tense. Nothing felt normal at the moment, and I didn’t like it. My guts ached, my balls were throbbing, and my heart was hammering too hard. I resorted to gnawing on the inside of my cheek until she finally hung up.

“Connor is working an event upstairs. He’ll be down in a moment.”

I thanked her and wandered away, letting my teeth worry the inside of my cheek again.

“Mr. Lauri. How good to see you again.”

I turned to Connor, smiling kindly. “It’s good to see you as well.” And then I fell silent. What the hell was I doing?

“Is there anything I can help you with?” Connor cocked his head to the side concernedly.

“Uh…yeah. Um…the young lady who I had removed from…” I cleared my throat and shook my head.

“Yes, I remember her,” Connor finished for me since I clearly couldn’t act normal.

“You said a staff chauffeur drove her home.”

“Yes.”

“Do you keep records of the addresses your drivers take people to?” My heart pounded harder, and I could nearly hear it drumming in my ears.

Connor suddenly looked unsure, and he glanced around to make sure we were alone. “Uh…yes. We have logs.”

I nodded, saying nothing for a moment. “Can I get her address?” I held my breath.

Connor’s mouth hung open for a moment, and his eyes scanned the room around us again. “I’ll… Let me see what I can do.” He smiled, but it seemed forced, and when he walked away, I was certain he wouldn’t be providing me anything at all except perhaps an escort out of the hotel.

Five minutes passed, and my anxiety continued to build. I was fidgeting with the money in my pocket, and my hands were sweating as I flipped the folded-up bill over and over and over again in my fingers as I waited.

Connor finally returned and handed me a slip of paper. I handed him the tip I’d been fidgeting with in my pocket, but his smile was far less gracious than it had been a few weeks prior as he eyed the money.

I glanced down at the address. Milwaukee. Huh…

I thanked him quickly, collected my car, and left town. It was late enough that traffic was light, and I made it to Milwaukee in less than two hours. I wasn’t from Chicago, and in the six or so weeks I’d been staying here, I’d not once gone to Milwaukee or even thought about going. I let my navigation system guide me, and when I turned onto the street where her house was located, I started gawking. It was too dark to see much, but the homes were nearly all large and two-story. They looked old, mostly brick from what I could discern.

“Destination on right,” the monotone voice said to me.

I pulled over to the curb and checked the street number posted in large metallic characters on a brick retaining wall. I was in the right place. I climbed out of my car, finally looking up at the two-story house in front of me, and I froze.

The large Greek letters affixed to the front of the house above the wide front porch were impossible to miss.

Holy fucking shit.

I practically tripped over my feet as I started up the sidewalk to the house. The realization of exactly what Gabe was sank in with every footstep, and as it did, my steps became heavier and heavier.

I raised my hand to ring the bell, and then I paused. I could hear women, young women, talking, laughing, hollering and yelling at each other. She was one of them. I pressed the button, and I waited.

The door was pulled open by a blonde bubbly girl whose smile was almost infectious enough to force one from me were I not so panicked.

“Hi?” Why the hell did I put a question mark on it?

“Uh, hi.” When I didn’t say anything further, she smiled some more. “Can I help you?”

“Oh, uh…yeah. Does Gabrielle live here?” I started praying in my head that she’d say no. Surely I had the wrong address because there was no way I’d been carrying on with some barely legal sorority sister for the past three weeks.

“Um…well, which one? We have a Gabby Morrison or a Gabe Kitrick.” She bobbed her head to the side as she smiled once again.

“Oh…I guess it would be the latter.”

“The what? The ladder? I don’t get—”

“Gabe Kitrick.” I stifled the eye roll.

“She’s ups—”

“What are you doing here?” Gabe’s voice interrupted us. I glanced past the blonde girl in front of me to see Gabe coming down the stairs. She rushed past the girl. “I’ve got it, Cinda. Thanks.” She pushed past me too, pulling the door closed behind her.

“Who’s your friend, Gabe?” trailed after us until the door latched, leaving us outside alone on the porch.

“How did you find me?” She turned toward me.

I ignored her question. “How old are you?”

She crossed her arms on her chest, cocking her head to the side. “What? Afraid you slept with an underage girl?”

“Terrified, actually. Please answer the fucking question.”

She took her time. “Twenty-one. Almost twenty-two. I’m just starting my senior year at St. Mary’s.”

“You’re studying to be a nun?” I blurted out stupidly, still too shocked and confused to think straight.

Her brow scrunched. “It’s a Catholic university. Not a convent.”

I shook my head, dumbfounded. I stared down at the ground between us for a moment before looking back up to her. She was wearing yoga pants and a fitted V-neck college T-shirt, her hair was wet, and her face was clean without a stitch of makeup. And she absolutely looked twenty-one. How could this be the same woman who’d been dressed to a T, holding her own in a room full of Chicago socialites only hours earlier? She couldn’t be.

“You live here?”

She nodded.

“Can we go to your room?”

Her eyes searched around us as her brow wrinkled. Apparently that was literally the last thing she thought I’d have the nerve to ask.

“I need to talk to you in private, and I don’t think the porch is the place to do it.” When she failed to respond, I continued. “Listen, I know you’re upset with me—”

“Yeah.” She nodded, her lips pursed. “But hey, if you want to walk past a living room full of fifteen girls, all of whom, without doubt, know I have a man on the porch right now and will absolutely make it their business to find out what the hell you’re doing here, so be it.” She opened the door, staring me down as if daring me to cross that threshold.

“I’m willing to take my chances,” I muttered. “I can’t possibly be the first man under this roof.”

“No, but you might be the oldest.”

And that shut me the hell up in one second flat. I wanted to respond. I wasn’t even sure if I was pissed at her for saying it or damn impressed at the speed of her wit. Instead, I rocked on the outside of my shoes and shoved my hands in my pockets like an idiot. “Yeah,” I finally mumbled.

She walked inside, ignoring me, and I followed her. There was a large arched entryway into the living room just off the foyer, and as we passed, every eye, at least thirty of them all together, followed our every move. As I stepped up onto the stairs, the whispering started.

There were pictures lining the wide stairwell, and hers was one of the first I came to. I stopped and looked at it. There was a metal placard at the bottom that said “President.” I touched it, still looking at her smiling image. She was wearing a white button-up dress shirt. It was modest, and every last button was done. Her hair was straight and the sides pulled back neatly. Her makeup was understated, and her lips a very subtle pink.

Gabe walked back down to me, standing at my side as I studied her picture. I was still struggling to absorb the world I was standing in. “President, huh?”

“Hard to imagine, isn’t it?” She glanced at me before looking back at her picture on the wall.

I couldn’t say it was. I’d not once thought of Gabe as unintelligent. Quite the opposite in fact, and there was an innocence to her that made sense given her age, regardless of what she allowed men to do to her. Sex with her had been incredible for that very reason—kissing as well. She didn’t act jaded. She didn’t act like a woman going through the motions. Instead, she reacted. She reacted to everything I’d done to her, everything we’d done together. And it was an incredibly genuine reaction.

“Do they know?”

She looked at me and shook her head. “No.”

She continued up the stairs, and I trailed after.

Her room was small and smelled sweet, like the subtle perfume she wore. The quilt on her bed was a simple white, and the couple throw pillows were mismatched but charming. The gauzy off-white fabric of the bed skirt pooled slightly on the ground like some picture out of a French country décor magazine. Her desk had a few books stacked on it, and I scanned through the titles, largely psychology.

“Are you a good student?”

She sat on her bed, pulling her feet up to sit cross-legged. She shook her head. “Not always.”

“Psychology major, I take it?” I peered back at her over my shoulder as I flipped through the top book on the stack.

“Just like you.”

I nodded as a smile tugged at my lips. “Yeah.”

“A Catholic college in Milwaukee isn’t quite Ivy League I know, but…” She shrugged. “We can’t all be impressive.”

I chuckled as I leaned back against her desk and crossed my arms. “I find you very impressive.”

“In bed?” She smiled with mock sweetness.

“No. That’s not what I—I mean yes. You were incredible. That’s just not what I was talking about.”

She chuckled humorlessly. She was definitely primed for another battle.

“Why do you do this?”

The laugh died in her throat. “I thought we already discussed the measly three thousand a month I rely on.”

“I just don’t get it. There are other jobs—”

She took a deep breath and sighed. “I don’t have a valid excuse to justify my choices. I just don’t. You want me to give you some sob story? I don’t have it to give you, and even if I did, I don’t owe you an explanation. It’s just a choice.”

“You’re too young.”

She actually laughed at that. “What’s the right age, huh? If not twenty-one, when? Twenty-five?” She cocked her head to the side. “How old do you have to be to screw a prostitute?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been with one before you, and frankly, I didn’t pay for you.”

“No. You let David pick up the tab.”

“Your decision to have sex with me had nothing to do with money.”

“I’m sure you’d like to think that,” she said cruelly. “But I have a couple thousand dollars in my bank account that says otherwise thanks to you.” She watched me for a moment. “And I’m guessing you don’t work for free, and since we already know everything you do is somehow related to manipulating David into behaving, I think we can reasonably draw the conclusion that everything that happened between us had something to do with money.”

I looked down at the floor between us. There wasn’t much I could say to refute that, and I was silent for a moment. “Have you stopped to think about how much you’re jeopardizing your reputation?” I asked quietly as I looked back up to her. “It’s not just David’s reputation on the line here.”

She scoffed. “Oh, fuck you,” she muttered angrily under her breath. “You don’t give a shit about my—”

I ignored her. “What happens if you’re photographed together? Huh?”

She suddenly went silent, and her body looked unnaturally still and rigid. I’d brought her up short on that one.

“He’s connected, he’s known. Barely two weeks goes by without some mention of him in some random article. What?” I focused on her wide eyes that were staring back at me. “Think it can’t happen?”

She shook her head in disagreement, but her brow flinched. “No one has ever taken a picture of us together.”

I nodded slowly. I wasn’t agreeing. “You would never know if someone did. If it hasn’t happened already, I guarantee you it will at some point, and then what? You think they’ll let you keep that nice pretty picture hanging in the stairwell when they impeach your ass for selling it?”

Her lips pursed in anger. “Is that why you came here? To try to scare me straight?”

“If I thought it would work,” I muttered. She glared at me in response, but when she glanced away, she started gnawing on the inside of her lower lip. She really was scared. I finally shook my head. “Believe it or not, I don’t want to see you get hurt by all this. And I’m here because you were upset earlier. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Her eyes returned to me. “You wanted to make sure I was okay?” she mocked as her brow furrowed.

I clenched my jaw tightly as I watched her, refusing to play into her attitude.

She held her arms up as if proving she was in one piece. “Never better.” But her tone was mildly bitter. “You should probably leave.”

I ignored her and walked to the bed instead, sitting beside her. She let out a huff of frustration and started to stand, but I grabbed her by the wrist. She paused for a moment before she sank back down to sit on the side of the bed, but she wouldn’t look at me. I stared at her profile waiting to see if she’d meet my eyes. She didn’t. My fingers squeezed gently on her wrist, but she still refused. Instead, she turned her head away.

“I do know you’re a real person, Gabe. I’m not confused about that. The problem is…real people, decent people, don’t always fare so well in these situations.”

I watched her throat as she struggled to swallow, and I didn’t miss her farthest hand rising to her face. She was brushing away a tear and doing everything in her power to hide it from me.

That same feeling of nausea came over me again.

“I’m not going to use what we did to hurt you.”

“You were going to,” she admonished me quietly, still refusing to look at me.

I closed my eyes for a moment, shaking my head. I wasn’t disagreeing. There was a time I’d been more than willing, hell, I’d relished the idea of shoving Gabe and me down David’s throat to make my point, but then I’d touched her. I’d tasted her. I’d fucked her. I’d kissed her. She’d felt more real and human than most people in this world, including myself.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have had sex with you. It was a ruthless move, and it was wrong to put you in that position. I’m sorry.”

She finally looked at something other the wall behind her headboard—sadly, it wasn’t at me. She stared down at her legs, clasping her hands in her lap. She sighed and shook her head. “You were right. You didn’t force me to do anything I didn’t want to do.”

“Why did you?” I wasn’t sure why I needed to know, and I sure as hell didn’t deserve to know.

“You let me pretend to be something else for a while,” she whispered. “I liked it.” She finally glanced up at me, her eyes still shimmering.

I nodded. “I liked it too,” I said quietly.

We were silent then, sitting side by side on the bed.

“You really do have to go,” she finally said. “It’s getting late. Catholic school, house rules. No overnight guests of the opposite sex.”

I chuckled as I ran my hands over my face. How the hell could I possibly be here in this world of hers? “Wow,” was all I managed to say as I stood up.

I followed Gabe back downstairs, and when we passed the living room again on our way out, the eyes followed us once more. She closed the door behind us, wrapping her arms around herself as a cool breeze blew through the porch. It was pushing late October, and summer was most definitely over.

“I’ll see you later.”

It was supposed to just be the standard closing statement before I left. That’s what I’d intended it to be when I said it, at any rate. But she cocked her head to the side, her eyes narrowing slightly.

“Not if you have your way with David you won’t.”

I didn’t say anything at first. She was right. I didn’t even know how to call this woman, and there was certainly no good reason why I should. She deserved to be left alone and left out of this mess.

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Goodnight,” I finally said, but it came out as a whisper.

And then I walked away.

Chapter 8

Gabrielle

“I just think using the cramps excuse week after week as the reason you’re not participating in PE until the nurse calls you in to discuss possible uterine problems was perhaps poor planning on your part. Did you just not feel like being creative with your excuses?” I looked down my nose at Jessa as I pulled a scarf off the hook inside my closet.

“Stop being a beehive, G-Dog. Can I help it if my uterus is special?”

I glanced at Jessa again, pausing as I wrapped my scarf around my neck. She was sprawled out on her back on my bed, and I rolled my eyes. “Beehive?”

“Yeah.” She tossed my hat, which she’d been fiddling with for the past five minutes, up in the air while I lectured her about school, which was actually laughable, not to mention hypocritical, coming from me, and when the hat came back down, she smacked it across the room, making no move to pick it up. “That’s my code for bitch. I use it now to avoid getting detention.”

I sighed. “Please tell me you didn’t get in trouble for calling a student—”

“Ms. Pimple Face Plimpton.”

“A teacher?” I practically shrieked at her.

She sat up. “She told me I wasn’t investing enough of my heart in my writing. I said, ‘I’m all heart, bitch.’ It didn’t go over well.” She shrugged as though she failed to see what she’d done wrong.

“Jessa, you cannot keep doing this. You’re supposed to be mature enough to handle being on your own, remember?”

She sighed. “Yeah. I know.”

This was nothing new for us—Jessa misbehaving, me ragging on her. But Jessa struggled to conform to much of anything, including the wishes of her older sister. In truth, I likely trusted Jessa to manage herself without constant adult supervision because of her brazen personality. She wasn’t known for taking crap from pretty much anyone—like teachers, the principal, any person with an opinion that differed from hers.

I shook my head as I finished stuffing my wallet in my purse. I grabbed my fleece jacket off the back of my desk chair and pulled it on. Jessa crawled from the bed and followed me downstairs. Casey met us coming off the last step.

“You two be careful today in the big city.” Her nose wrinkled up as she smiled. I hated Casey’s smile. Actually I just hated Casey. Casey liked to passive aggressively disrespect me any chance she got. She didn’t like that I was president of our sorority. She actually cared far too much about the fact that I’d been voted in as president at the end of the last school year, which was odd because I cared very little about the honor.

Don’t get me wrong. There’d been a time when I lived and breathed sisterhood, but that seemed like a long time ago. It wasn’t. It had only been a year and a half since I’d traded being a normal college kid focusing on grades and social events to being…something else. But it felt like forever ago. It was odd the way time slowed down when all you really wanted to do was move forward. I wasn’t elected because I was the epitome of sisterly integrity and other such bullshit. Again, there was a time. No, I’m pretty sure I was elected out of sympathy. Sympathy.

I wanted the honor. I did in a sense at least. It’s probably more accurate to say I wanted to want the honor because I could remember a time when I truly did dream of it. So tossing my hat into the ring seemed like the thing to do. Smile until you’re happy. Fake it till you make it. I thought if I could thrust myself back into this thing I’d loved once, I could capture it again, I could be that person again, I could just get back to a place I’d once loved being.

The problem was…I couldn’t. I went through the motions, I sat through the committee meetings, I tried to pretend I gave a shit about rush week, philanthropy, mixers, all of it. But it was gone from me. There weren’t many college girls, and by many I mean none but me, who could literally leave a committee meeting to plan a charity meal for the homeless to go fuck a man who’d paid for her pussy. It, without doubt, made it difficult to concentrate on my duties.

But Casey, on the other hand, was all about duty, and she loved to rub my faults in my face every chance she got. This was why I hated Casey—because she saw every single shortcoming I already knew I had, and she exploited them to make herself feel good.

“We will,” I said with mock cheeriness over my shoulder, catching Jessa sticking her finger down her throat. Jessa was with me in the Let’s Hate Casey Fan Club, though for decidedly different reasons.

Jessa might not be in college yet, but there was no chance she’d ever choose a life of “organized lady lunacy,” as she called it. Alas, though, she was my little sister, and the sympathy others felt for me extended to her.

I pulled the door open and froze when I saw Keegan standing on the porch, his hand still lifted toward the doorbell. I gaped at him as Jessa walked into my backside, pushing me into Keegan’s front side. Keegan gripped my arms as he staggered back for a moment, and when he righted himself and me, he watched me with a wrinkled brow.

His attention shifted over my shoulder to Jessa. “You must be Gabe’s sister. You look a lot alike.”

“Yeah,” Jessa said rudely. “What of it?”

“Jessa,” I snapped as I looked over my shoulder at her.

Keegan chuckled quietly. I couldn’t say I was surprised to see him taking Jessa’s attitude in stride so quickly. He seemed to have the uncanny ability of taking pretty much everything in stride easily. When I turned back to Keegan, he was studying me again.

“Hi.”

I took a deep breath. “Barely been a week, and here you are on my doorstep on a Saturday morning. You just can’t seem to stay away from me,” I said sarcastically.

He nodded slowly, but his expression was serious. “I need to talk to you about something.”

I glanced at Jessa again. “Can you wait inside for a couple of minutes?”

“No.” She smirked. “Not until you tell me who the stiff is.”

I shook my head, releasing a huff of frustration. I turned back to Keegan, finally taking in his appearance. He was dressed casually in worn jeans and an oatmeal-colored cable-knit sweater. He looked as casual as I’d ever seen him—barring perhaps when he’d been naked. But Jessa thought he was a stiff. Of course she did.

Jessa, on the other hand, was wearing dark skinny-leg jeans, Converse hightops, an old dingy black T-shirt that had some faded logo on it which was indecipherable at this point, and a gray hoodie. Her hair was dyed entirely too dark, given she came from the same genetic makeup as me, and I wanted to take metal snippers to the nose ring in her nostril.

But she was still damn cute.

“I’m Keegan.” He held his hand out to her, not waiting for me to get my shit together and introduce them. “I’m a friend of your sister.”

She shook his hand, eyeing him suspiciously. “What kind of friend?”

He shook his head. “Uh…how do you mean?”

“I mean”—she drew out the word—“you dress like a yuppie,” she said pointedly in a mocking tone. “And we don’t run with that crowd, dude.”

He looked down at his clothes. “I dress like a yuppie, do I?” He didn’t look at all offended. “Well, you dress like a street bum. Your point?” He cocked his head to the side, but he was smirking.

I couldn’t help but smile. It was a very good analogy after all, though I preferred to call it her Fuck-the-World style.

Jessa busted out laughing. “Yeah… Okay…” She nodded as she opened the door again. “I’ll be inside. Hurry it up, Gabe. We’re going to be late for all the boring shit you have planned for us today.”

I waited for the door to close. “I really wasn’t sure I’d see you again.”

He hummed as he started wandering down the sidewalk, clearly expecting me to follow him. “Well, that would have been unfortunate for both of us,” he commented over his shoulder.

I wasn’t sure I could disagree with him. There’d been something oddly depressing about the notion that I might not see him again, even if it was likely for the best. I followed him, not sharing that bit of insight.

“David told me he’s cut off ties with you. Advised this”—he shook his head—“service you use that he’ll no longer be seeing you due to personal time constraints and commitments.”

I sucked in a quick breath. It was an odd thing hearing him say it. Odd because I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to feel. I didn’t care if I never saw David again. I didn’t. But it didn’t mean the message wasn’t strange coming from this man.

“Well, as long as he gives me a letter of recommendation and good references,” I finally resorted to saying.

“What?” Keegan stopped walking, turning to me.

“It was supposed to be a joke,” I muttered. “Well, I guess you won that match. Checkmate, huh?”

He cocked his head to the side and laughed quietly as he nodded, but there was something cool about his reaction, and he ended up looking down at the ground rather than at me. When he looked back up, his expression was even colder than it had been moments before.

“Yeah. It’s now open season on your pussy, Gabe. What man wouldn’t feel good about that?” His sarcasm was biting, his expression was intimidating, and he held his focus on me calmly, letting the words sink in.

I opened my mouth to respond, but then I closed it.

He finally started walking again. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know in case anyone mentions it to you.” He didn’t look at all happy about anything he was saying. In fact, he looked downright uncomfortable.

“Okay.” I watched him for a moment, and when he looked at me, he nodded.

At just that moment, Jessa walked out of the house. “We’re going to miss the ever-lovin’ bus if you don’t wrap up this nonsense with Mr. GQ soon.” She hurried down the sidewalk toward us.

We were standing near the curb at that point, just past the old brick retaining wall.

Keegan laughed, finally smiling at me. “You sure have your hands full with that little lady.”

“You have no idea,” I muttered. “She can be…special.”

“Where are you guys going?” he said as much to the approaching Jessa as to me.

“Chicago,” she responded. “Shopping.”

“I said museums. Not shopping.”

Jessa shrugged. “It’s not up to her,” she said to Keegan.

“It is up to me. I control your finances.”

Keegan’s eyes narrowed for a moment as he watched me. “Why don’t you let me drive you?”

“That’s not necessary,” I cut in quickly.

“Is that your piece-of-shit car there?” Jessa asked, pointing to the sleek black sedan at the curb.

“Yeah,” he said, chuckling. “You have something against Infiniti in general, or is it just the Q70?” Which happened to be parked five feet in front of Jessa’s 1992 Honda Accord.

Jessa ignored his question, turning to me instead. “Oh, come on, G-Dog?” Jessa begged.

Keegan was still chuckling. I looked at him, and he smirked. “Come on, G-Dog,” he repeated. “I’m going to Chicago. Why would you take the bus?”

“Why would anyone take the bus? Oh yeah, we would. Why? Because, according to Gabe, my car isn’t safe to take into the city because it’s going to die a fiery death at any time. And dumbass here”—she cocked her finger in my direction—“decided to sell her car a year ago.”

Keegan looked at Jessa’s car. “Your sister might have a point,” he said to Jessa.

“Whatever.” But then she turned to me, her eyes big and swimming in pools of desperation. “Please,” she pleaded.

I sighed. “Fine.”

“Shotgun!” she shouted, and I shrugged as Keegan started to laugh.

I climbed into the backseat behind Keegan when he opened the door for me, and Jessa started literally pushing every last button she could find, including the latch to the glove box, which she then proceeded to empty. She studied the owner’s manual as if it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen, and Keegan adjusted his rearview mirror, focusing on me when he found my reflection.

“Where to?” Keegan asked as he pulled away from the curb.

“Art Institute.”

Jessa groaned. “Boring,” she sang as her eyes still scanned the manual.

“You two should come to my place for dinner tonight once you’re done sightseeing.”

“No—” I started to say.

Jessa cut me off. “Where do you live?”

“Uh…Trump Tower. I’m staying in a condo there while I’m in town.”

“What?” Jessa whipped around to face me. “We have to.” And then, turning her attention back to Keegan, “Trump Tower?”

“Yep.”

I shook my head, even as Keegan still stared me down in the mirror.

“We have to,” Jessa repeated, looking back at me again. “It’s Trump Tower. Have you seen that place?”

I had actually. I had a regular I’d not seen since David entered my life who’d always been quite preferential to fucking me there.

“It’s just dinner, Gabe.” Keegan pulled to a stop sign, returning his eyes to me once again.

I sighed as I turned to look out the window. “Dinner,” I said.

“Yes!” Jessa squealed.

The remainder of the car ride was uncomfortable—at least for me. Jessa and Keegan made idle chitchat, and I spent the entire time worrying one of them would say something to the other that I didn’t want the other to actually know about. Essentially, it was one long-ass anxiety-riddled ride for me. Keegan kept meeting my eyes in the mirror, but his expression never really changed. It wasn’t flirtatious. It wasn’t even welcoming or nice. He just watched me for a moment before returning to whatever bizarre conversation Jessa had roped him into.

“Are you dating my sister?” Jessa didn’t shy away from much of anything.

We’d just hit the traffic of Chicago coming in on Interstate 94, and we were moving far slower now.

Keegan’s eyes glanced to me in the mirror before he turned to look at Jessa. “No. We’re just friends. I don’t actually live here. I’m from D.C.” And then he glanced at me again, his eyes flitting away quickly.

“That’s too bad. If you were my brother-in-law, you would have to let me drive your car.”

He hummed, playing along with Jessa. “I can guarantee you, if I was your brother-in-law, I would not feel the need to loan you my car.”

Jessa turned to look at me. “He’s pretty cool,” she said as though I was waiting for her blessing.

I smiled and looked out the window. Keegan was a number of things, and able to keep up with my little sister was definitely one of them. I supposed that did make him cool in some sense.

I thanked Keegan when he dropped us off right in front of the Art Institute, and he lowered his window, resting his arm there. “I’ll meet you in front of my building at five. Will that give you enough time?”

“Sure.” It was already pushing lunchtime, and not even I wanted to endure too many hours of Jessa complaining about being forced to expand her horizons.

Jessa and I didn’t make it any farther than the third floor of the museum, and that was after bypassing the first and second floors in search of the Terzo Piano. Jessa was starving. I couldn’t say I wasn’t hungry too, and seeing as we had dinner plans with Keegan that evening, getting lunch out of the way first seemed reasonable, even if I was fairly certain Jessa was just trying to avoid the museum.

The moment the maître d’ sat us, I started unwinding my scarf from around my neck and shrugged out of my fleece jacket.

“So…you’re having sex with him.” Jessa blurted out the statement as our waitress’s eyes bulged. The poor woman nearly spilled the water she was pouring for us.

I said nothing, but I glared at Jessa as I waited for the woman to leave.

“Oh, come on!” Jessa spat out the moment we were alone again. “I’m your sister. I’m literally your only living relative, and you won’t talk to me about this?”

“You’re seventeen. It would be inappropriate.”

“Oh bullshit.” Jessa was silent for a moment. “You used to talk to me.” The accusation in her tone was unmistakable, but the seriousness of it was too.

“I talk—”

“No. Like really talk to me. You don’t do that anymore.”

I looked away for a moment. She was right. Of course she was right.

“Don’t you remember when we were kids?”

I looked back at Jessa. Her expression was intense, concerned even. This was Jessa dropping the attitude, and when she did that, there was reason.

“You’d always tell me things when we were kids.”

“That’s different.”

“It is not. I’m still your sister, and I’m not a child.”

“You are actually,” I said sarcastically.

“Not according to the State of Wisconsin.”

I sighed, staring at her for a moment. “Fine. Yes, I did sleep with him. But it was a mistake.”

“Mistake,” Jessa repeated. “The man drives a Q70, is hot, clearly thinks I’m cool, and is obviously attracted to you.”

“Attraction really isn’t our problem.”

“Then what is?”

“Pretty much everything else.” There was no humor to my tone, no sarcasm whatsoever, and Jessa studied me seriously as I forced a smile to my face when our waitress returned to take our drink order.

We ate in silence, and Jessa didn’t try to perpetuate the conversation. She also didn’t bring it up as we wandered through the Art Institute Museum, the Field Museum, or even the Museum of Science and Industry. And by the time we were pulling up in front of Trump Tower, I’d spent a small fortune on cabs, and Jessa was near tears.

“Why do museums have to be so big? I can’t walk any farther,” she whined. “Carry me. I swear I don’t weigh that much.”

The cabbie eyed her strangely in the rearview mirror as I smiled apologetically.

Keegan was standing by the curb at the ridiculously grand entrance to the building, and the moment Jessa stepped out of the cab, her eyes went skyward.

“Whoa…” she exclaimed as she looked up along the tall glass spire that jutted up into the sky.

Keegan walked beside Jessa through the lobby as her eyes continued to bounce around.

“What floor are you on?” she asked excitedly.

“Uh…eighty-one.”

“How many bedrooms?” She was nearly tripping over her feet as she walked. I was following behind them.

“Two.”

“Square feet?”

Keegan cocked his head and looked over his shoulder at me as his brow arched.

“She’s going through an HGTV phase,” I offered.

“Ah…who hasn’t?” When he turned back to Jessa beside him, he humored her curiosity. “A little under two thousand I’m told. Keep in mind I don’t actually own this place. It’s on lease through the men I’m working for.”

“Where can I get a job like that?” Jessa asked emphatically.

He laughed.

“No, I’m serious, for real serious. Whatever you do, I’m sure I can do it too.”

I chuckled as I stepped up next to them at the elevators. “It requires the gift of persuasion, dear. You don’t possess that.” I smirked at her.

“Sure I do. I’m persuasive.”

“You’re demanding,” I corrected. “There’s a difference.”

Keegan leaned down to speak directly with her. “Don’t worry. I’m not that persuasive. I can’t get your sister to do anything I want her to do.” He glanced up at me, winking.

I rolled my eyes and then stepped into the arriving elevator.

He used his key fob to access the right floor, and once we’d made it all the way up to the eighty-first floor, he led us down the hall to his unit. I wasn’t quite prepared for what we walked into. Now, I’d been in one of the hotel units about a gazillion floors below this one, and they were, without doubt, very nice. But this? This was just plain bullshit.

I followed Jessa down the foyer hall. All I could see was sky through the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran along the angled exterior living room wall. I’d never been up this high, and it was every bit like the notion of being in the clouds that one could imagine. I stopped still when I entered the living room with its tall ceilings and open kitchen sitting off to the left, and I just stared.

Jessa made a beeline to the nearest door and disappeared. Keegan’s hand found my lower back as he stepped up beside me, but he cleared his throat and pulled his hand back just as quickly as he’d placed it there.

“Wow,” I whispered.

“Wow is what happens when you actually walk up to the windows.” He passed me, crossing the room to the long angled wall of glass. I followed him, stepping to his side and looking down.

“Wow,” I whispered again.

I could see the Chicago River far below. My eyes followed it eastward. Navy Pier was visible, stretching out into Lake Michigan, and dark storm clouds were building out over the horizon.

“Yes,” I heard Jessa say from the other room. “I like this. An office nook here. That’s a very good use of space.”

“Where is she?” I asked Keegan absently, still staring at the view.

“My bedroom.”

“Oh!” I said in alarm as I turned and headed toward the door. “I’m sorry. She shouldn’t—”

He stopped me still with a hand on my upper arm. “She’s fine.”

I looked up at him. We were standing entirely too close, and his fingers tightened as he studied me. But he stepped back moments later, politely giving me space. He seemed to be going out of his way not to cross any physical boundaries with me, and I wasn’t sure if that upset me or was a relief. I understood it, of course. We had come to some sort of truce the week before, and if nothing else, I did trust that he wasn’t going to use what had happened between us to influence David in some way, but being physically attracted to someone who was going out of their way not to touch me was, in many ways, offensive.

“Double walk-ins.” Jessa was still talking from the other room. “I love the angle of the exterior wall in here. And more floor-to-ceiling windows…”

“She’s probably going to go through your personal items too. Just so you know.”

He nodded as he smiled. When he turned and walked to the kitchen, I followed and stood at the large kitchen island.

“Can I help?”

“No. Everything’s done.”

He pulled a casserole dish out of the oven and set it on the counter. “Cherry-and-orange-stuffed pork loin.” He glanced up at me as he started slicing through the meat. “Please tell me you’re not Jewish.”

I smiled. “No.”

Jessa crossed the living room to the opposite side and entered another door. She didn’t even bother speaking to us.

“Now where’s she going—?”

“Guest bedroom.”

“Not as large, but the view is amazing,” drifted out to us from the guest bedroom. Clearly Jessa thought she was narrating her own Trump Tower TV special.

“I like her.” He smiled at me.

I nodded. “She can be a lot to handle sometimes. Stubborn to her core.”

He laughed. “Not unlike her big sister in that way.”

My cheeks warmed. “She’s a very strong girl.”

He studied me for a moment longer before he turned back to the stove, uncovering a pan of already sautéed carrots. He used tongs and tossed them in a small serving bowl, and I watched him move around the kitchen, unbagging a loaf of bread and slicing it.

When Jessa finally returned to the main living room, she was grinning ear to ear. “Just…” She stumbled over to the table as Keegan was setting the dishes down in the middle. “Just…wow.”

The table was already set, and I took the chair across from Jessa as Keegan grabbed a bottle of red wine from the counter and started screwing the corkscrew into the top. He smiled at Jessa as he returned to the table and sat at the head between us.

“Pretty incredible, right?”

“Uh…no.” She pretended to be unimpressed. She shrugged. “Doesn’t quite compare to my place. I mean, it’s okay.”

The clouds were rolling in, and the first pings of sleet were starting to hit the wall of windows.

“In Milwaukee? Is that where you go to school?”

Jessa snorted. “Yeah, right. I hate Milwaukee. We’re from Waterville.”

Keegan cocked his head to the side. “Which is…?”

“It’s like…a few hours from here. ’Bout an hour west of Milwaukee between Milwaukee and Madison.”

Keegan nodded. “Is it a big town?”

“Nah. Not at all.”

I shook my head in agreement.

“Tell me about your parents. Are they still together? Do you live with both of them?”

He tasted the small pour of wine in his glass and then reached for my glass too, filling it for me. I was a bit too busy gnawing on the inside of my lip to thank him. I did, however, reach for the glass the moment he set it down and took a big gulp.

When I glanced up at Jessa, she was already looking at me oddly, as though surprised he didn’t already know about this.

“Oh…” she finally responded. “Well, our dad’s never been around, not since I can remember anyway. Gabe remembers him though. Uh…Mom died like…a year ago?”

“A year and a half,” I corrected quietly. When I looked up to Keegan, he was already studying me.

“She had the C word,” Jessa said in a strange sing-songy voice that tapered off in a nervous laugh. “And I don’t mean cun—”

I cut her off. “He knows what you mean.”

Keegan’s lip barely pulled up at Jessa’s sarcasm. “I’m sorry.” His brow furrowed. “That couldn’t have been easy.”

Jessa shrugged. She was good at shrugging when it came to this topic. “No. But it could have been worse, ya know?”

“How?” I asked, instantly clearing my throat and regretting my interruption. I wasn’t upset with Jessa in the least. I simply disagreed, even if I knew she was largely trying to downplay the topic because it made her uncomfortable.

Jessa looked at me apologetically, but she turned back to Keegan. It was odd. Jessa hated talking about anything at all to do with our parents, but she was the one perpetuating this when I would do just about anything to shut her up.

“It’s just Gabe’s always been the one who took care of us. Mom was…”

“She was wonderful,” I finished with a quiet adamancy to my tone that was driven solely by my defensiveness.

“Yeah,” Jessa agreed, again looking at me as though she was sorry to even say it. Her eyes didn’t return to Keegan then, and she studied me instead. “But she was an only parent. She had to work two jobs just to afford the house, food, clothes…” She finally turned back to Keegan.

All I could do was grit my teeth.

“Anyway,” she continued, “Gabe was the one who always looked after me. But Mom was wonderful.”

I nodded as I stared at the table.

“And now? Who takes care of you? With Gabe in college I mean.”

Jessa smirked. “I’m emancipated, bitches.” She laughed awkwardly. “Well, technically at least. Gabe’s still up in my face about pretty much everything, so it doesn’t feel much different than before. She’s my conservator until I turn eighteen, so…”

Keegan’s brow was wrinkled, and his expression was dark. “So you get to just…live alone?”

“Yeah. I have an apartment. We don’t have any other family, so it’s not like there was anyone else to live with. Not like I could crash at her sorority house.” She laughed. “And who’d want to? Besides, I see Gabe every week, and I’m in school all week long, and I work a couple evenings too, so I’m busy.” She shrugged again.

“Couldn’t you have lived with a friend or…?”

I cleared my throat. “Jessa…”

“Nobody wanted me,” she said snidely.

“None of her friends’ parents readily offered,” I clarified. “Jessa’s always had a way of—”

“Pissing people off.”

I shook my head. “People don’t always know what an amazing person she is.” I tried to smile at him, but my lips were tight, and he was just staring blankly back at me.

“How do you afford an apartment?” He was asking Jessa, but he looked at me as he spoke.

“Well, I tried to pay for it myself…at first. You have to prove you can support yourself when you go through the emancipation process. I was working full time in the evenings at the grocery store, and I was going to school, but it was hard, and my grades were slipping. When Gabe found out, she said she was going to quit school and move home and get a job. But I knew she didn’t really want to.” She laughed, but it trailed off quickly when she saw the stoic look on Keegan’s face.

Jessa had no idea what was really behind his mood shift, but I certainly did. He was figuring things out. The pieces dropped into place pretty quickly once you got to this point.

“You should have moved her to Milwaukee.” He leveled his eyes on me.

“She wanted to stay in her own school. People look out for her there. It’s—”

“That’s not the point,” he said, cutting me off.

We were both silent then, staring at each other as Jessa continued to look back and forth between us.

“Listen, I don’t want to live in Milwaukee.” She was trying to pacify Keegan’s obvious disagreement on this. Jessa was silent as she watched him, waiting for his attention to return to her. It took many long seconds before he could, or would, pull his focus from me and shift his attention back to her. “My friends are in Waterville,” she continued. “I grew up there. That’s home.”

He didn’t respond to her.

“’Sides, Gabe’s got this great hostess gig at a really nice restaurant here in Chicago. They share tips, and ’cause it’s such a fancy restaurant, she makes a ton of money, and she doesn’t even have to work that much. She covers the rent, groceries, everything. I just pick up a couple of shifts a week at the grocery store to help out. It’s perfect.” She was still trying to justify her independence to Keegan, but she was failing to understand where the real root of his irritation lay. I wasn’t even sure I understood why this should matter to him.

Keegan’s jaw clenched tight as he leveled his stare on me again. In truth, it was more a glare at this point.

Jessa turned to me. “Hey, we should go there,” she said excitedly. “I’ve never seen the restaurant you work at.” And then she turned back to Keegan. “Gabe says it’s really fancy too.”

I glanced at Keegan, but I could barely hold the eye contact, and I looked away quickly.

I forced myself to smile at Jessa. “Uh…I kinda try to avoid it when I’m not working.”

Jessa looked at me for a moment. “Oh…”

I reached for my glass of wine, taking another large gulp. We were silent as we ate, and Jessa looked back and forth between Keegan and me as though she could tell something was off. Keegan’s jaw looked tight, and he pushed his plate away long before he’d made much of a dent.

When Jessa was finished eating, she stood. “The food was so good I have to pee.” She shrugged as though the sense of that statement should be obvious.

Keegan barely looked up at her as he nodded. He cocked his head to the side as he listened to her walk away, and the moment the bathroom door latched, he turned back to me. “No sob story to tell, huh?” He ran his hands over his face. “Jesus, Gabe,” he muttered.

I didn’t say anything. I just stared at my plate.

He stood abruptly, leaning down and bracing his hands on the chair back as he looked down at me. “You have no business trying to support a teenager.” He was keeping his voice quiet, but his expression was fierce.

I scoffed and shook my head. “That’s my little sister. It’s my job to look after—”

“No, it’s not!” he hissed. “It’s not, Gabe!” He ran his hands over his face again in frustration before pointing in the direction Jessa had gone. “She has no idea what you’re doing to yourself!”

The roof of my mouth ached as I tried to stifle the tears, but my eyes glossed anyway, and I brushed a tear angrily from my cheek as it trickled down. I stood up. “It’s none of your business.” I walked to the kitchen with my plate, but he followed me, standing behind me at the sink with his hand on the counter next to me. He was waiting for me to turn around and face him.

“She’ll be in college next year.” The fact that I was willing to justify myself to him pissed even me off. I shook my head, starting to rinse the plate in my hand.

“Yeah, and then what? Next year she’s a college student in debt up to her eyeballs just…like…you,” he said pointedly. “And that’s your new existence for the next four years. When does it end for you, Gabe?”

I finally spun toward him. “Stop pretending you give a shit. It just doesn’t suit you.” I glared at him. “And by the way, you lost the right to have an opinion on this topic the moment you decided fucking me would be an acceptable way to advance your career.”

His mouth dropped open as a huff of breath left his lungs. His eyelids fluttered for a half second as my comment registered, but then his mouth closed, his jaw clenched tight, his nostrils flared, and his eyes narrowed furiously. He finally turned and walked back to the table, grabbing more plates and angrily stacking them, letting them clank together loudly.

At that moment Jessa re-entered the room. “Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I lied.

“Yep,” Keegan agreed, nodding slowly as he looked at me.

When a wall of pelting sleet came down outside, he glanced out the window.

“We should probably just go.” I started walking toward the table, where my jacket was hung over my chair.

Jessa’s shoulders slumped.

“We have to catch the bus—”

“You should stay. I can take you both home in the morning or get you to the bus if you prefer.” His voice was flat, and he didn’t bother looking at me.

“We don’t need you to—”

“You don’t have a clue what you need, dear,” he said coolly, and then he finally met my eyes as he picked up the stack of dishes and carried them to the kitchen.

“Yowza.” Jessa stood there, her eyes wide as she commented on our interaction.

Keegan set the dishes down on the counter and turned back to Jessa. “Sorry, Jessa. Convince your sister to stay, and we’ll find a movie to watch.” He smiled at her, but it was strained.

Chapter 9

Keegan

IT was a minor miracle she agreed to stay, but Jessa certainly had a way of pleading with Gabe that even stubborn Gabe couldn’t refuse. We’d watched a movie just as I’d promised, but Gabe and I ignored each other the entire time. That’s not to say I didn’t keep my eyes on her. I’d watch her until she’d catch me watching her, and then she’d do the same to me.

They went to bed in the guest room at eleven-thirty, and I’d waited up for another half-hour to see if Gabe would come back out. Surely she was crying out for me to talk some sense into her thick-ass skull. Or maybe that was just my wishful thinking.

But when she didn’t come back out by midnight, I went to bed. The sleet was finally tapering off. It was cold and windy outside, the first real sign that winter was going to be here soon. But sleep was impossible, and after I tossed and turned for two hours straight and nearly strangled myself in the twisted-up mess of sheets on my bed, I finally got up. I stood at the wall of windows looking out toward Lake Michigan for a while, but the air was thick with clouds, and there was little to see.

I imagined her. I couldn’t rationalize why I was drawn to her the way I was. She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her beauty that made my heart race or my balls ache when I thought about her. It wasn’t her looks that made me angry at her either. Her beauty actually seemed to be the last thing I saw anymore when I was near her.

I’d grown up understanding that the world was all about perception—and not my own but that of others. If I had done something that embarrassed my family in some way—failed an important test, not gotten accepted to some club or organization that my family deemed important, hell, dressed inappropriately for an event—I’d paid for it with endless amounts of disappointment and shame. It was as if I’d been trained from an early age to fear the opinion of the world. I didn’t actually like that about myself. I simply understood it. And yet, I built my life around the very concept of image, which I, by my own admission, despised.

Gabe lived her life hiding something so shameful it would destroy her if people found out. Hell, if my family found out I was willingly associating myself with a prostitute, I couldn’t say they wouldn’t fully disassociate themselves from me. But maybe that was it. Perhaps I didn’t want to watch her live her life in fear of her mistakes in the same way I’d become so accustomed to growing up.

But none of that actually explained why the hell I gave a shit. I didn’t know this girl. At the very least I didn’t know her well enough to justify my involvement in her life. And yet, I felt so fucking immersed in it.

I finally resorted to work when I failed to reconcile the mess that was happening in my mind. I sat at my desk, flipping through page after page of records, forcing myself to focus on something other than her. And I managed it for a good thirty minutes. But when there was a light rap on my bedroom door, I dropped the papers to my desktop and turned to face the interruption.

“Come in.”

Gabe pushed the door open, and my heart sped; it seemed to happen every time I was near her. She was wearing the T-shirt I’d given her to sleep in, and when I looked up at her, I took my reading glasses off and tossed them on the stack of reports sitting on the desk. I lounged back in my chair, clasping my hands in my lap casually. I didn’t feel at all casual at the moment, nor had I for the majority of the day.

She seemed nervous, and she lingered at the door rather than entering.

“You can come in.”

She walked slowly toward me, looking at my computer monitor just over my shoulder. “What are you doing?” Her eyes glanced past my desk and into my bedroom where my bed was still a mess of tangled-up sheets.

“I’m working.”

“What does that entail for you?”

I considered making a snide remark about the differences in our professions. I wanted to because I was still irritated with her, but I chose instead to be honest. “A lot of research. Reviewing financials, legal records, tax filings, pretty much anything anyone can get a hold of. David may hold the majority share in his company, but it’s still publicly held, so there’s a lot of information out there. He also holds a municipal office, so there’s a long voting record history as well, city budgets, press releases, you name it.”

She nodded as she bit into her lower lip. “You’re upset with me.” Her eyes trailed away to my bedroom again.

“Why does it matter?”

She nodded again, her eyes still focusing on the bed. “Yeah, why does it?” she asked. She looked back at me, her face confusingly expressionless as she threw my question right back in my face.

I sighed. “We may have met under…unique circumstances, but that doesn’t mean I’m not human enough to appreciate the disaster you’ve gotten yourself into.”

Her eyelids fluttered as she fought to maintain eye contact with me, and they glossed over.

“What?” I continued. “You want to remind me again that I traded my right to be decent with you when I stuck my cock in you?”

She blinked, and a tear ran down her cheek. She didn’t bother trying to hide it the way she had earlier. “I still don’t understand why you care.”

I shook my head, glancing at the floor between us. “I don’t either,” I whispered.

She studied me for a moment before she finally dashed the tear away from her cheek. Her eyes shimmered beautifully. All I wanted to do was touch her. When she glanced at the door as if to leave, my guts clenched tight. It was this strange desperation that wanted to reach out to her, even though I felt tethered to my place. When she let out a frustrated sigh and walked to the door, that tether finally snapped, and I pounced, reaching the door just as she was pulling it open. I reached over her shoulder, slamming it shut and holding it shut.

“Why did you come in here?”

She turned to me, staring up at me, her eyes wide and startled. She shook her head. “I don’t—”

“Don’t do that,” I snapped at her. “Don’t shake your head as though you don’t know. You do too fucking know. Tell me.”

Her attention shifted to my chest as her eyes filled with tears again.

“You want to play make-believe again? You want me to remind you what it feels like to be a woman instead of a whore? Is that it?”

The tears on her lower lids were building, and her lips trembled as I watched.

“We were incredibly good at pretending, weren’t we? Is that what you need? You need to feel good, so you can forget for a while?”

She closed her eyes as her tears fell, and her chest started hitching and heaving as silent sobs worked through her.

“You want me to kiss it and make it feel better again, all those feelings you have bottled up inside, torturing you? Our lips sure do know how to make the world disappear, don’t they? Is that what you need from me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

A rush of breath left me. I stared at her face, finally shutting up. And when she opened her eyes, she bit her lower lip. It was nervousness, not seductiveness, but it was damn effective.

My eyes searched the room stupidly as though there was a sign on one of these walls that would tell me what to do. I hadn’t actually thought she’d agree with my accusations. I thought I’d been right, not that she’d admit it. I breathed in deeply, trying to step away from the edge of this proverbial cliff.

I sighed and crossed my arms, tucking my hands under them as I struggled to swallow for a moment. “I’m too old for you.” My brow flinched at the sound of those words. I didn’t want to be, but I’d been struggling with it since the moment I saw the fucking Greek letters above her porch.

She was silent for a moment, staring at the ground between us. When she looked up at me her eyes were still pooled with tears, but she wasn’t crying. “You don’t feel too old.” Her voice was soft, and she looked back down to the floor.

My chest was rising and falling deeply as I watched her. I’d like to say I was deciding, or struggling to decide, what I was going to do, but the moment she’d let me off the hook for my age the decision had been made. I’d wanted her since the moment I’d last had her, and making her feel good when I suspected little in this world could was an incredible rush. I wanted to feel that rush again.

I let my forehead drop to hers. My hands trailed down her arms, meeting hers and twining our fingers together. I brought my lips closer to hers, breathing against her mouth and letting her lips tremble a sweet vibration against mine. Her breath was ragged and laced with the quietest stilted moan that caught in her throat every time she inhaled or exhaled.

When I pushed my lips against hers, she didn’t hesitate. It was a gentle, sweet kiss, and her lips smacked quietly against mine.

“Put your tongue in my mouth,” I whispered. I let my lips part, and I waited.

I felt the warmth enter me and touch my tongue, and she started exploring my mouth. I reached behind her, letting my fingers find the lock on the bedroom door. I clicked it into place, and then I closed my lips around her tongue and sucked.

When she broke away from my mouth, she reached for the waist of the navy sweatpants I was wearing. I stopped her, clasping my hands on the tops of hers. I pulled her toward the bedroom, crossing the room to the occasional chair that sat along the exterior wall of glass. I sat in the chair, and she sank to kneel on the floor at my feet. She kneeled up between my legs, reaching again for the waist of my sweatpants.

There was a desperation to her—the tremble in her fingers, the haste in touching me, the fact that she was so willing to show her desire for me right now when she usually tried so hard to hide it. Maybe she really did need to disappear from this world for a while.

I stopped her hands once more as she tried to pull my sweatpants down. “Slow down.”

I reached to her hips and pulled my T-shirt off over her head. She was braless and wearing only underwear. Her nipples were hard and erect, and when I leaned down, she arched her back and let me capture one between my lips. I sucked, lashing the hardened peak with my tongue, even as I pulled against her skin.

Her hands stroked through my hair, and she moaned. When I bit her nipple, her moan caught in her throat. I kissed my way up to her mouth, but I stopped just short, reaching for her face and cupping her cheek.

I ran my thumb along her lips. “I want to slide my cock between these.” Then I pushed my thumb between her lips, hooking it over her lower jaw and pulling down to open her mouth a little. “And I want to come here.”

She whimpered around my thumb.

When she reached for the waist of my pants again, I let her, and I watched. She pulled my pants down along my groin, and my erection sprang free. My fingers dug into the arms of the chair as she leaned down. She gripped my cock, and the moment I felt the wet warmth of her tongue as it licked around the head, I cursed. When her lips parted and slid down my erection, all I could say was her name.

“Gabe,” I grunted. I kept repeating her name over and over as she slowly sucked, moving up and down. Her lips stretched taut around my breadth, and she kept her eyes focused on mine. I watched every second of it, and within five minutes, I was panting and desperate for my release. When I came, she held still, letting me sink into her throat as my hips thrust upward. I cried out loudly, and her eyes opened wide.

She pulled back, slowly letting her lips drag along my over-sensitized skin. She took her time, and my entire body lurched and my stomach muscles seized. Her lips finally left me, and the second I saw her swallow my cum, I grabbed her neck, pushing her body back to the floor behind her and coming down on top of her.

“Keegan,” she whimpered. My hold on her neck was gentle, and my thumb traced her jawline. I pushed my free hand down between our bodies and under the waist of her panties. Her back arched, and her tits pushed hard into my chest when I sank two fingers into her pussy.

She was as wet as she’d been the first time I’d touched her weeks before, and her hips started moving, writhing against my hand. I thrust my fingers into her as she pressed her pussy hard against my palm. I descended along her body, kissing my way down. I nipped, sucked, licked every ounce of flesh I could find until I was hovering over her pussy, my fingers still embedded inside her.

She pulled her head up, looking down at me, and I slowly pulled my fingers from her as she whimpered. I stripped her underwear off her legs quickly and tossed them aside. And then I ran my palms under the backs of her thighs, up and over to grip her hips. But I didn’t lick her. I wanted to. The bedside lamp illuminated the shimmering wet cum between the lips of her pussy, and I wanted it on my tongue and covering my lips. But I just watched her as she looked down at me.

I squeezed her hips, rolling over and pulling her with me until she was on her hands and knees, straddling my face. She gasped and pushed herself upright, looking down on me from above. The lips of her sex were mere millimeters from my mouth, and I waited to see what she’d do.

She bit her lower lip, and then she pushed forward, bringing her sex to my mouth. I moaned when I felt the wetness touch my lips, and I licked it as she cried out. She mewled sweetly as her hips started to move. I could feel her muscles tensing under my palms, and as I looked up along her body, it was to see her stomach muscles curl in and then stretch again as she humped.

I licked and sucked, kissing and slurping on her clit, and her breath came out on a trembling exhalation. She gripped my forearms as her hips worked, and I watched her face. I knew she was falling apart when her stomach muscles started to twitch and she started to crumple forward. She came down, bracing her hands on the floor as she cried out loudly. She stayed that way, whimpering her way through her orgasm.

She crawled off me quickly, rolling toward the wall of windows beside us, and as she rested on her hip, she planted her hands on the floor and panted. I was panting too, and I sat up, pulling myself up behind her and planting my foot on the floor next to her. I slung my elbow over my knee, and she sank back into the crook of my arm, still breathing heavily.

She was sitting close to the window, and she reached out, touching the glass with her fingertips as she leaned forward and looked down. It was definitely vertigo inducing, and I leaned over her shoulder, taking in the view too. I kissed the top of her shoulder, and then I kissed across the back of her neck as I moved her long hair out of the way. I took my time, and her breathing eventually slowed, and her head dropped forward.

“Come to bed with me.”

She sighed. “I should get back to Jessa.”

“She’ll know where to find you.”

She inhaled deeply, but she eventually nodded. “Okay.”

I pulled her up from the floor and led her to bed. She helped me straighten the mess of bedding and then crawled in next to me. I looked down on her, and she reached up, pulling my mouth to hers. When she gently bit my lower lip, my breath caught in my throat and I moaned. The moment she released it, I kissed her. I spent the next ten minutes with my mouth on hers, and then I pulled her into my arms, and she snuggled up under my chin. This felt good. She’d not once tried to push me away. She’d not pretended she didn’t want what she so clearly did. And she felt so fucking real.

I held her until she fell asleep, and then I rose and left my bedroom. I poured a glass of water and stood at the large kitchen island as I gulped it down.

“Yo.”

I spit my mouthful of water out as Jessa walked in and scared the shit out of me.

She laughed, scooting onto the bar stool across the island from me.

“She”—Jessa cocked her thumb toward my bedroom door—“with you?”

I watched her for a moment. “Yeah. She’s sleeping.”

Jessa smirked. “You know you’re too old for her, right?”

I paused with my lips parted as I watched her. “I’ve raised that concern with her already, but objection noted.”

“I didn’t say I objected.” She smirked. “I mean she kind of acts like she’s eighty, so…you know…balance.”

I nodded.

“So, you clearly apologized for being a douche nugget earlier.”

“A what?” My face scrunched up at that one, and I shook my head in confusion. “That isn’t a thing. That doesn’t make—”

She snapped her fingers a couple times, silencing me. “You gonna roll with me, you’re gonna have to learn to keep up, old man.”

I chuckled. She was indeed quite the character.

“You two were mad at each other because of me.” Her voice was more serious now.

I sighed. “It’s not because of you.”

“You sure? Most people think I’m a bit too maladjusted to take care of myself. You wouldn’t be the first.”

I chuckled. “You’re not maladjusted. You’re just fine.”

She smiled at me almost appreciatively. “So…what’s going on with you two then?”

I smirked. “I just think she’s taking on a lot. Too much maybe.” That was the most I could say to Jessa.

She nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

She watched me for a moment, and I could tell she was contemplating saying something further.

“What is it?” I finally asked.

She glanced away for a second. “She’s depressed. She’s…” Jessa shrugged. “I don’t know. She looks fine on the outside, but she’s not the same Gabe I knew before Mom died.”

I nodded slowly, listening to what Jessa was saying but not offering anything more. This entire evening had been a Gabe Kitrick 101 crash course, and I was still processing everything I’d learned.

“I don’t know. I guess I just thought it was supposed to get better. I mean it has for me. I miss Mom, but…it’s gotten easier.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I think it’s just gotten harder for her. Time’s supposed to heal this shit, but it isn’t for her. I don’t understand.” Her eyes shimmered in the dim kitchen light.

I took a deep breath, still nodding slightly.

“You’re her boyfriend. I just—”

“I’m not her boyfriend, Jessa,” I corrected.

“Then why are you sleeping with her?”

I didn’t know how to respond to that. I looked down at the countertop between us, and I gritted my teeth. “It’s complicated.” It was a pathetic response.

“I just… I’m worried. Has she said anything to you? Or…” She shrugged.

I shook my head. “She’ll be okay.”

“Really? I’ve been telling myself that for over a year now. You haven’t known her that long, but she actually does know how to smile,” she said sarcastically. “Something isn’t right, but she won’t talk to me anymore—about anything.”

She snatched my glass of water off the counter and took a big gulp.

She scowled at me disappointedly. “Couldn’t you at least put some gin in this? I thought all rich people spiked their water.”

I shook my head. “Sorry.”

Jessa slid off the chair. “I’m going to give her hell for being a slut tomorrow.”

“No, you’re not,” I said without a shred of humor.

Jessa stopped, staring at me as her brow wrinkled.

“No, you’re not,” I repeated. I studied her until she nodded in agreement. “Goodnight, Jessa.”

“Yeah,” she responded, and then she headed back for the guest bedroom.

I dumped the rest of the water in the sink and returned to bed, slipping my sweatpants off. Gabe was lying on her stomach with one leg pulled up. The sheets were down to her lower back, showing the top of her bottom. Her long hair was splayed out around her, and she’d tucked her hands under the pillow.

I pulled myself up behind her, resting my hand on her hip, and she moaned quietly in her sleep when she felt my lips on her shoulder.

Chapter 10

Gabrielle

I watched him while he slept. He had a kind face, but it was also one that could cool very quickly. He knew how to use his expression, his tone, his body language to move in and out of the part he was playing. I supposed it was his job, a requirement for the type of work he did. He was a master manipulator, after all.

I had no doubt he was, at least if he chose to be. But I didn’t feel like a puppet on a string at the moment. I had a difficult time understanding men, understanding their intent and motivation. They were strange, suspicious creatures to me. But there’d been an authenticity to Keegan’s anger at dinner that felt outside of his control, and for whatever reason, that was incredibly comforting.

He moaned quietly in his sleep as he shifted closer to me. I was lying on my stomach beside him, pushed up on my elbows as I looked down at him. He’d left his desk light on, and while it was far enough away to cast only a faint glow in the bedroom, it was enough to see him.

I touched his mouth, running my finger across his lip and down over his chin. He was stubbly, and the hairs prickled against the pad of my index finger. He stretched as he inhaled deeply, and then his eyes opened.

He watched me for a long time, just staring up at me as I looked right back down at him. He rolled away from me and climbed out of bed, and I watched him walk across the room to the bathroom off the office nook. My blood warmed in my veins as I watched his body move.

I rolled from bed too, walking to the window and staring out at the vast dark lake beyond. I listened to his footsteps getting closer to me, and when I looked at his darkened reflection in the window, I saw the glint of a foil packet in his fingers. The bedside lamp clicked on, and the room around me lit up. I could now see his reflection in the window nearly as clearly as if it were a mirror, and I watched as he walked toward me and stepped up behind me.

His hand clasped my hip, and his other reached around me. He braced himself with his palm to the glass, but he held a condom between his first and second fingers, taunting me at eye level.

He leaned down, kissing my shoulder and then up to my ear. “Use me,” he whispered. “I know you need to.”

My shoulders rose and fell slowly as I took a deep breath and let it out. I nodded, and he pushed off the window, taking a couple steps back to the side of the bed. I watched him in the reflection rather than turning to see him. He didn’t sit on the side of the bed. Rather, he lowered himself to sit on the floor, and he leaned back against the side of the bed.

I could see his eyes roving over the backside of my body, and he stroked his cock, which was hard and large. I continued to watch as he tore into the condom packet, pulled it out and slipped it over the tip of his dick. My breath was coming in short, quick pants as I watched, and when he rolled the condom down the length of his cock, I bit my lower lip as a rush of warmth and wetness surged to my groin.

His eyes lifted to meet mine in the glass, and I finally turned to face him. His composure was so casual—his strong legs stretched out in front of him, his body leaned back against the bed. Even his hand that was lightly stroking his erection seemed mindless and easy.

“Come here.”

I stepped to his side, and he ran his hand up the back of my leg from my calf to my thigh. He was looking up at me, waiting for me to do something. I stepped across his thighs, straddling his legs, but rather than facing him, I faced away. He instantly sat up, gripped my buttocks and bit into one as I cried out.

I stepped out wider and bent over. A flush ran through my body and my heart sped as I moved. It was hard to be confident with him, so incredibly hard in comparison to the other men I’d been with. It was so easy to pretend to be assertive with those men, pretend to lead, when, in truth, it turned me the hell on when Keegan led.

I reached back with a trembling hand and gripped that place just between the top of my thigh and the bottom of my ass. I pulled, parting the lips of my pussy slightly. I closed my eyes when I heard him moan, and when he said, “Fuck,” quietly, I bit my lip.

“You better tell me what you want me to lick or I might get carried away and end up somewhere you’re not comfortable with.” His voice was warm and deep, and it prickled my skin.

“My pussy,” I whispered.

“Yes, dear,” he whispered right back.

He gripped my hips as he leaned to my pussy. He hummed as he licked me, and his tongue ran between the lips of my sex, thrusting into me. He was sloppy, and I was practically dripping by the time I reached between my legs and pushed his chin away from me with my finger.

He leaned back against the bed again, and I sank to my knees over his lap. I ran my palm down the length of his erection, letting my fingers trail down over his testicles. They tightened at my touch, and he cursed in response. When I gripped the shaft, holding him erect from his body, he slid farther down, lying back more.

I lowered myself over him, and when his cockhead touched my sex, I sank farther, letting my body be impaled by his thickness. He groaned, and I cried out as he stretched me open. I let go of his erection then, reaching for his knees and steadying myself.

I lifted my hips and pushed back down, careful to keep him within me, and I listened to the sounds he made. His moan was quiet and sexy as hell, but the best were the soft grunts that would catch in his throat when I would constrict on him and sink over his cock at the same time. I made it torturously slow at first, but when I touched my clit and stroked that tight knot of nerves, my hips sped.

I moved up and down, panting and groaning, my finger still stroking me closer and closer to my end, and when I finally lost it, I fell forward, digging my nails into his legs. He grabbed my hips, pulling me hard to his lap and holding himself inside me as I shook and twitched through my orgasm. I lay panting across his legs after my release passed and closed my eyes.

His hands were still on my hips, and his thumbs pulled my butt cheeks farther apart. His fingers started to trace the place where our bodies met, and I shivered when he brushed over the sensitive skin at the very back of my opening. I let him touch and toy and play for a while, and he hummed as his fingers moved.

Once I’d regained my composure, I pushed up to my hands and lifted my hips, letting his cock pop free from my body. He pulled his legs back from between mine, and he quickly leaned up and over my body, pressing down on my back between my shoulder blades as he rose to his knees. I let my chest rest on the floor, keeping my bottom high and pushed up, and I watched him kneel up behind me in the reflection.

He met my eyes in the reflection moments before he thrust hard into my pussy, filling me in one painful, smooth invasion and nearly throwing me into the window in front of me. His hips smacked my bottom as he seated himself at my core. I reached out to the window, bracing myself with a hand to the glass, and when he pulled back, it was only for a second before he slammed hard into me again.

His fingers gripped my hips, and he worked them harshly and roughly back and forth. I was jolted with each thrust, and my legs started trembling. Every muscle felt as if it was liquefying as he pounded into me, one swift penetration after another, and I watched it all in the reflection.

He looked so strong. His arms were well defined, and tracing the line of those muscles down to his hands that gripped my hips and yanked me over his cock was intense. His torso was just as impressive, his pecs hard and chiseled, just like his stomach. Focusing on the way those muscles moved as he fucked me was the most arousing thing I’d ever seen.

My knees slipped farther apart as I started to collapse to the floor, but I ignored it, staring at his body as if mesmerized by the sight. By the time I was finally lying sprawled on the floor, he was humping me harder than even before, pinning me to the ground. He gripped my hair with his hand, pulling my head back, and I stared out the window as I listened to him grunt with every thrust of his hips.

I cried out, and he reached down, gripped the inside of my thigh, and pulled my leg up, opening the space between them so he could go deeper.

“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, and it trailed off in another grunt. He bit my earlobe, and then he nipped his way down my neck to the top of my shoulder. His mouth stayed there as he pistoned almost violently between my legs. The smacking of our skin intensified, and I felt the burn of it on my bottom.

He came loudly, holding himself deep as he pulsed within me. His forehead dropped to the back of my neck, and he gasped and panted against my skin. He finally collapsed against me, and I could feel his heart hammering against my back. I panted as I started to relax again, and I stared down at the city far below, my fingers still pressed to the glass.

When he lifted himself from me, he reached down and helped me to stand. He snapped the condom off his dick, tossing it into the small waste can next to the nightstand, and then he pulled me into bed with him.

I drifted off to sleep, listening as his breathing slowed.

* * * *

I woke when he did. His cell phone was ringing quietly from his desk, and he darted from the bed toward his office nook. I closed my eyes, listening to him. I could hear his fingers drumming on the desktop as he stood there, but he didn’t answer the phone, as if he was dreading it for some reason. He finally sighed.

“Hello.”

He was silent as he listened to something the caller was saying, and the only sound in the room was the soft creak the chair made as he sat down.

“I’m not too worried about that at this point.” His voice was quiet, and I could tell when he’d swiveled the chair away from me by the way his voice moved and quieted even more.

I opened my eyes then. The room was dim, and only the faintest light was coming from the windows behind me. I watched him as he leaned back in his desk chair.

“Because I have reasonable assurance he won’t be seeing—”

And more silence.

“You don’t need to worry about it,” he practically whispered, but there was an irritation that made the words sound strained.

I heard his chair creak as he stood up and walked toward his bathroom. But he thought I was still sleeping, and when he pushed the door shut behind him, it failed to latch.

“Because she’s too busy fucking me to care about him, that’s why,” he hissed out angrily. “You sent me in here to do a job. Let me do it.” And then silence for a moment. “Fine. Send me the itinerary.”

His words echoed around the marble bathroom, and when the shower was turned on, I finally sat up to the side of the bed. My lips quivered pathetically, and I shook my head as the hurt socked me in the stomach like a fist.

He was using me. He was using me again. He was using me still. He was just…using me. How could I have been so stupid to think he was doing anything other than his job?

I stood quickly, throwing his T-shirt over my head, and then I walked from the room, crossing over to the guest bedroom. Jessa was still sound asleep, and I shook her until she was cussing and groaning about the end of the world.

“Get up. We’re leaving.”

“What?” She rolled toward me, scowling up at me as I redressed in my own clothes.

“Now.”

She grumbled as she rolled toward the alarm clock on the nightstand. “It’s only six o’clock. What is wrong with you? The bus doesn’t even leave until nine.”

“I’m not kidding. We have to go. Now.”

She finally threw the sheets back angrily, grabbed her jeans, and tugged them up her legs. “You fighting with lover boy again?” she asked rudely.

I paused for a moment. “No. I’m ending it with him.”

She paused for a half a second, her eyes shifting to the floor as that registered. I walked back out to the living room and stood at the kitchen island fidgeting. I could hear exactly when Keegan turned the shower off, and my heart started racing as I waited for Jessa.

“You better at least buy me breakfast,” she mumbled as she finally walked out, tugging her hoodie on.

“Let’s go.” I walked hastily down the foyer, and when I pulled the door open, I held it for Jessa, ushering her out to the hallway and closing the door as silently as I could behind us.

We stood at the elevators and Jessa yawned as I rocked on the outside of my shoes, impatiently, desperately waiting for the doors to open.

“Gabe.” Keegan’s voice came from down the hallway. “Where are you going?” He sounded one part confused, two parts just plain angry.

“We’re going home,” I muttered, refusing to look at him as he came jogging up to us.

“What’d you do now, asshat?” Jessa asked him as she crossed her arms on her chest.

He looked at her for a moment but then turned his attention to me. “What…? Why are you…?” He shook his head, his eyes wide and confused.

The elevator doors finally opened. When I stepped forward, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back. “What are you—?”

“I heard you,” I spit out as I shook his hand off my wrist.

A rush of breath left his lungs, and he just stared at me.

I finally shook my head and followed Jessa into the elevator. When I turned around and faced him again, he was staring at the floor.

“You don’t understand what you heard,” he said quietly.

“Oh, no. I do,” I said coldly. “I just got too busy fucking you to remember what an asshole you are. Don’t worry. I remember now.”

He stared at me as the doors closed. The last thing I caught was his lips snarling and a curse erupting loudly from his mouth. I heard what I can only assume was his fist as it hit what I could also assume was the wall. I inhaled and exhaled slowly, closing my eyes as the elevator descended.

Jessa said nothing to me, and her silence uncharacteristically remained for the thirty or so odd minutes it took us to get a cab, find a diner that was open near our bus station, and be seated. She even remained remarkably silent as we scanned our menus. Or I should say she scanned her menu. I stared at mine without actually seeing anything.

I finally looked up at her. “I shouldn’t have dragged you through all this, Jessa. This weekend kind of went off the rails, and I’m sorry. I had no business letting us stay there last night—”

“Whoa…” She held her hands up as if slowing me down. “Just hold up, G-Dog. Dragged me through this? Your friend shows up and offers us a ride to Chicago in his nice-ass car. He then cooks us a damn good meal and lets us stay in his posh-ass condo.”

“Jessa—” I started to say.

“I’m not finished.” She held her finger up, silencing me. “I’ll give you that things seemed to go wonky from there. I mean”—she scratched her head—“you two end up having some sort of weird Jedi mind fight at the dinner table, and then you sleep walked”—she used her finger quote on that one—“into his room in the middle of the night. And then this morning you wake up and decide to hate him because of something you heard.” More finger quotes. “So, yeah, it got weird. But this has actually been the most interesting weekend I’ve had in a long time.” She smirked. “Oh… Oh, wait! Are you worried that I’ll find out you’re not a virgin?” She looked around the restaurant.

I cringed. She was going to humiliate me now.

“Hold the press, folks,” she said entirely too loudly. Eyes glanced in our direction, honing in on the sound of her announcement.

“Shut it,” I hissed.

Jessa leaned down, cupping her hands around her mouth and whispering, “My nearly twenty-two-year-old sister isn’t chaste, ladies and gents. Nobody panic. Your seatback can be used as a flotation device.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but I was so confused by the last part that I closed my mouth again and shook my head. When I finally got my shit together, I cleared my throat. “So, you’re saying I didn’t emotionally destroy you this weekend. Is that it?”

She snorted. “The past year and a half of my life emotionally destroyed me. You, dear Gabe, are the only thing that’s helped me keep it together.” When she reached across the table, she took my hand. “Okay. Listen. I am more than willing to hate him for you.” She nodded quickly, even as she pursed her lips sarcastically. “In fact, I will steal his car and drive it as though it were my own just to show him how much I hate him. I would do that for you,” she said emphatically. “Because I love you.”

My lip twitched as it tried to pull up slightly, but then my throat tightened, and my chest did too.

Jessa sighed sadly as she cocked her head to the side. “But maybe you could tell me why I hate him. Because I kind of actually liked him.”

I kind of had too.

“I can’t—”

She let out a frustrated sigh.

“—talk to you about this.” I studied her face. “I’m sorry. I just can’t. I’m not trying to push you away, Jessa. I’m not.”

“For someone who’s not trying to push, you sure push really hard.”

Jessa and I ended up at the laundromat that afternoon, Jessa using the laundry carts as her own personal inter-laundromat transportation device and me actually folding our laundry. I hugged her when she dropped me back off at home, and I ran upstairs quickly to avoid being seen by any of my housemates.

I was getting entirely too good at avoiding them. So good that most of them eyed me suspiciously when I walked by, not holding much hope I’d actually be stopping to speak with them. It made me a shitty person. I knew that. A lot of things made me a shitty person, and my behavior toward my friends was probably the least of them.

Someone had shoved a letter under my door when I’d been out, and as I entered the room, I stooped to pick it up. It was from the school. I tossed it on my desk as I started pulling my clothes off. I dressed in a pair of jogging pants and a sweatshirt and then flopped down on my bed.

I stared at my ceiling for a while and then finally pulled myself up and grabbed a couple of textbooks from the stack on my desk, along with the letter. I was behind in pretty much everything, and when I was behind, I tended to skip class because I didn’t want to confront my behindness. I spent the next few hours trying desperately to immerse myself in the reading I needed to do. I tried so hard, in fact, that I could regularly be heard saying such things as: “Hold it together, G-Dog” and “Come on. You can do this.”

Sadly, I didn’t hold it together, nor did I actually prove I could do anything other than stare into space for exceptionally long periods of time. Like many things in life, being a productive student had fallen disastrously by the wayside, much like being moral, being social, being decent in any manner whatsoever.

I finally grabbed the letter I’d tossed on my bed. I’d been avoiding it. There was a time when I’d expected letters like this to be good news. I’d received the hey-you’re-a-rock-star-and-made-the-Dean’s-List letter a few times, the wanna-be-a-mentor-to-other-students-cause-we-think-you’re-swell letter, and even the we’re-doing-a-spread-on-highly-productive-students-in-the-St.-Mary’s-Monthly-and-we’d-like-to-interview-you letter.

My letters didn’t look quite the same at this point, and after receiving the we-regret-to-inform-you-that-you’re-being-placed-on-academic-probation letter at the end of last year, preceded the semester before by the congratulations-you-just-lost-your-scholarship letter, I’d stopped holding out much hope these letters would make me smile anymore.

Half the time, I didn’t even bother opening them. But I was feeling a bit self-destructive—hell, it could likely be reasoned that my entire life was self-destructive—and I tore into the envelope, bracing for the news.

It was a we’re-concerned-about-your-emotional-wellbeing letter with a nice little invitation to come into the student counseling office to “chat” about how life is going.

That would be one hell of a chat.

I’m well. Thanks for asking, I thought sarcastically. I’m struggling to keep up with my workload right now because I’ve been spending a fair amount of time prostituting myself to wealthy Chicago businessmen for the past year. As it turns out, hating yourself and being disgusted by yourself makes it really hard to focus on important things like reading text books. No, I don’t expect it to get any better anytime soon because I no longer actually believe life “gets better,” and thanks for offering to listen, but maybe you could wipe that look of shock and disgust off your face now before I punch it.

My lips actually pulled up when I thought about that chat, and I even started to laugh quietly, but then the laugh died in my throat, and I returned to staring at the ceiling.

I finally shoved my books and the letter off the bed and closed my eyes, slipping away to sleep. When my phone buzzed at me, I woke in a start. My heart hammered for a moment when I thought about Keegan. I almost wanted it to be him. But I also really didn’t want it to be him. I’d been stupid to let myself think he might be different than all the other penises I’d met. He was different, but in an altogether dangerous way. He was different because he could make me feel things that other men couldn’t. He could make me feel human in a way I hadn’t felt for a long time, but that’s exactly why he was a threat to me. Because none of it was real, and placing even an ounce of trust in him would burn me in the end.

None of that really mattered, though, because if he wanted to reach out to me, he couldn’t. He didn’t have my phone number, and when I realized that, I was devastated…and relieved.

I sat up, grabbed my phone, and swiped my thumb across the screen. It was a text message.

Forward From: WD.

Haven’t seen you in a while. Wed. night. The Drake. 7 p.m.

End Message.

I closed my eyes and let my chin drop to my chest. William Drake liked to fuck at the Drake, because…why the hell wouldn’t he? Good ol’ William.

I’ll see you at 7.

I curled up on my side and stared at the wall in front of me. It was time to stop pretending. I was too old to be playing make-believe after all, and that’s all Keegan had really been. He was a kiss, he was a feeling, he was an act, he was a distraction. He was just so good at making me forget about the mess I’d created.

But it was all just pretend.

Chapter 11

Keegan

MONDAYS were, without doubt, the shittiest day of the week. Everyone knew that. But this Monday was particularly heinous. I didn’t want to be in D.C. I especially didn’t want to be in D.C. after the shit way my Sunday morning ended. Flying in the opposite direction of the woman I couldn’t seem to stop sticking my dick in when she was clearly pissed at me was nearly painful. I couldn’t solve anything when I wasn’t there, and let’s face it, I was a problem solver by nature. The fact that my trip to D.C. was to meet the Malcolms, who I was irrationally pissed at, wasn’t helping matters.

I called my mom the moment before I boarded my flight mid-afternoon and let her know I was on my way home. She naturally decided this was cause for celebration, and after promising I’d be there for dinner, I finally managed to hang up. By the time I was disembarking two hours later, I was seriously regretting agreeing to the invitation.

My parents were pickers, and not the kind you saw on the History Chanel digging through junkyards for priceless antiques. The kind who would pick away layer after layer of my brain, trying to find my secrets and weaknesses so they could fix every last one of them, lest my shortcomings bring them shame. The funny thing was I wasn’t regarded professionally as a man with many faults. I was seen as top of my game, and I knew that, and yet I never felt an ounce of confidence for it when I was in the presence of my parents.

I just wanted to go home to my own place and go back to bed until the next afternoon when I had to meet with the Malcolms. I needed this trip to be over.

Of course I should go to dinner. Of course I had to go. They were my parents. I really did love my parents, but it was not unusual for our meals to end up with all of us irritated at each other, my parents disappointed in my behavior, my choices, my lack of choices, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. They may have ruled my world and everything in it when I was growing up, but they didn’t anymore, and I spared no feelings when making sure that was understood. It led to some disagreements.

My parents were not bad people. They simply cared so much for me that they worried incessantly about every facet of my life, perhaps something to do with my being an only child. Their worry translated into a very micro-managed upbringing with painfully daunting expectations, but it really was all based on their wants for my future and, by extension of that, their own. I could see that now. And I couldn’t even resent them for who they were because, at the end of the day, I was lucky to have such family in comparison to what others had.

Gabe, for instance, would likely kill to have her mother back. Were her mother as overbearing as mine, I’m guessing she’d still do about anything to see her one more time. I understood that.

I just wasn’t sure I was in the mood for it.

“Keegan.” My mother came toward me when I finally entered the front door. Her arms were extended as though I was some long-lost friend from another time. “Your father and I are just thrilled you’re here.” She pulled me into a tight hug, apparently caring not at all that I might wrinkle her perfectly tailored pantsuit. “I only just got home from the office an hour ago.”

My mother, Patrice Lauri-Hensburg, was a policy and compliance analyst for an oversight committee, whose sole goal in life was to regulate, monitor, and observe credit union activity and practices. I didn’t even understand what she did, and for someone who fancied himself capable of understanding pretty much anything I chose to understand, that was saying something.

My father, Gerald Lauri, was a legislative director on Capitol Hill. He’d started out his career—much like I had—becoming involved in campaigns and being noticed for his efforts, effectiveness, and capabilities. He’d become staunchly aligned with his political party of choice, while I had become staunchly unaligned with any and all parties, hence my choice to stay out of the spotlight and focus on the man himself rather than overthinking his policy. The “man” being any man or campaign backed by enough money to afford me.

“Your father’s in the study, dear.”

“No, no I’m not.” I glanced past my mom to see my dad walking out of his study door and down the long main hallway toward us. It was a classic Georgetown row house, and my mom and I were still standing in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second story.

I reached my hand out, shaking his firmly, and he clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Keegan, you look well. Enjoying Chicago? Been years since your mother and I have been there.” He glanced at my mom. “Should take a quick a trip out there to see him. Hmm?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

Saying no in my head wasn’t nearly as effective as it would be were I willing to say it out loud, but some things you just didn’t say to your parents.

My mom started moving down the hall, and my father and I followed her. “How long are you staying?” she asked over her shoulder.

“I have a meeting tomorrow afternoon, and then I’m heading back to Chicago first thing Wednesday morning.”

“That’s too bad. Will you be staying with us tonight?”

I shook my head. “No. I’m going to go home for a while, check on things. I haven’t slept in my own bed for nearly two months.” I chuckled.

I sat at the kitchen table, and my mom pulled a casserole of some sort out of the oven, and that’s when the countdown began. It wouldn’t take long now for the picking to begin. Three…two…one…

“So, have you met any interesting people in Chicago?” She set the dish in the middle of the table as she sat down.

I smirked. “Wow. I haven’t taken a bite, and you’re already grilling me on whether I’m getting married anytime soon.”

She pursed her lips for a moment as she took my plate, scooped some kind of bland, sad-looking chicken breast smothered in something unidentifiable onto my plate. When she set my plate back down in front of me, she smiled. “There.”

I chuckled as I reached for my fork but then I stopped. I knew manners like an etiquette school graduate, but I had also gotten very used to eating alone most nights, sitting at the kitchen island in the condo with the living room TV on. Picking my fork up before my mother’s or father’s plates were filled, even if it was only a casual casserole, would, without doubt, earn me a disdainful scowl that my mom would then try to hide with a completely fake smile.

It was actually much like the look I was hiding every time I glanced down at the food on my plate. No one could credit my mother with being a good cook.

I watched my father eye his food in trepidation. His brow was furrowed, and when my mom set his plate in front of him, he actually leaned back in his chair as though it were safer to maintain some distance.

The moment my mom sat down, she started staring at me. She’d not forgotten the question I’d conveniently sidestepped. “I was asking about Chicago,” she reminded me.

I glanced at my father, who was picking something off his plate, his mouth now scrunched up in a scowl of repulsion.

“I’m there for work, Mom, not to socialize.”

“That’s unfortunate,” she said curtly. “There are some lovely, well-established families in Chicago. Very prominent… Why, your father and I were just talking the other day about—”

“Mom…” I tried to warn her.

“—the Paulson family.”

“Mmm… Yes, that’s right. Frank Paulson,” my father continued. “I worked alongside him during the Reagan administration. You know, his involvement—”

“Dad…” I tried again.

“—in the Wedtech investigation alone garnered him quite the name on the Hill.”

“And he has a lovely daughter about your age.” My mother eyed me with a slow nod. “What was her name, dear? Lovely, lovely girl…”

“Stephanie…I think.”

“I’m seeing someone,” I blurted out. I shook my head. “I mean, I’m spending time with someone already.” And then I shook my head some more, letting my focus drop to the unsightly mound of gray on my plate.

When I finally glanced up again, it was just to see my parents staring at me.

“Oh?” My mother’s response of choice when she just couldn’t come up with any other invasive question to ask me. “Well, tell us about her.”

I shrugged. “It’s casual.”

“What does that mean?” My mother’s eyes were narrowed.

“You know what that means.”

Her lips pursed angrily, and I focused on her, refusing to look away. She was doing it. The judging, the scorning, she was laying the disappointment on as thick as she could to try to bend me to her will.

“Careful, Mom. That glare might just stick one of these days. Oh, wait. It already has—”

“Keegan,” my dad snapped at me.

I sighed, propping my hands on the top of my head. “Her name’s Gabe, Gabrielle. She’s a college student. She has—”

“What kind of student? A doctoral student? Is she on a research grant, or…?” Well, that one had certainly thrown my mom for a loop.

My dad cocked his head to the side, waiting for me to respond.

“No. Just an undergraduate student.”

My mom’s breath left her in a rush, and her attention dropped to her lap for a moment. She was terrified. This wasn’t what she wanted to hear.

“Son, how old is she?” My father’s eyes were stern. He was just as concerned as my mom about this revelation.

My hands dropped to my sides, and I drummed my fingers on the chair legs in feigned casualness. “Almost twenty-two.”

My mom’s gasp was loud.

“Keegan,” my father admonished. “That’s more than ten years…”

“Jesus Christ, Dad. Don’t you think I can do the math?” I stared at him for a moment. “Listen, I have a lot to do tomorrow, so I should just go.”

“No,” my mother continued in a rush as she held her hands up. “We’ll…just talk about something else.” She looked at my dad, and when he nodded, she finally smiled. “Well, eat up, everyone.” Her voice was too cheery, and she and my dad looked at each other nervously.

When my dad looked down at his plate, he offered her a weak smile, and then he quickly shifted gears to work instead.

“So David Edgerton, huh?” My father’s expression was disapproving, but not in any way related to me. It was entirely related to politics this time. “District 6 is up in the next senatorial election, and rumor has it he might try to unseat McGill. Hence your presence in Chicago, I take it?”

I shrugged. It was actually my way of saying yeah, you nailed that one, but I’m not going to be discussing the details. My discretion was what made me good at my job. It didn’t do any would-be future politician any good if their PR analyst outed why exactly they needed a PR analyst.

He nodded, clearly understanding my non-response response.

“And I can only assume Malcolm Trainor is somehow involved with this one.”

I smiled. “You know I’m not going to discuss it.”

My dad chuckled. “The Malcolms have entirely too much money. And their lack of moral integrity—”

“Dear…” My mother placed her hand on top of his, quieting his rapidly building bravado. My dad was certainly passionate, far more so than I was.

My father pulled on the collar of his shirt, loosening it as he nodded at my mother. “Well, what’s up next after Edgerton? Didn’t you mention you were in talks with Hale about some consulting work?”

I nodded. “Consumer Alliance. He just reached out to me last week in fact for a time frame.”

“What are their expectations?”

“Within the next one to two months. It’s a campaign launch in conjunction with an endorsement that they’re rolling out toward the end of Q1 next year.”

“Sounds interesting. And you won’t have to work away from home.”

“Yeah.” I stared down at my plate then. I didn’t have a clue how I felt about it actually. I knew how I was supposed to feel. But I was no more thrilled thinking about it now than I had been last week when I’d gotten the phone call.

I’d known Hale for years. I liked Hale. This was supposed to be a no-brainer. Work from D.C. with a man who I actually enjoyed working with and get paid a shitload of money to do what I was good at doing—designing a campaign launch.

Conversation died down altogether after that, and we all picked at our food, which fortunately didn’t taste like baby vomit, even if it did look like it. When I was finished eating, I dropped my napkin on my plate and stood.

“Thank you for dinner. It was wonderful.”

My mom nodded and stood. My father stood as well, and they followed me down the hallway to the front door.

My mom hugged me, but she just couldn’t resist one last pick. “You know we just worry, son. I mean…an age gap of more than ten years…”

“It looks bad,” my father finished for her. “You know that, son.”

I cleared my throat, nodding as I looked back and forth between them. “Looks bad,” I repeated. I reached for the doorknob but paused before my hand ever touched it. “You know, you didn’t even bother asking what she’s like. What she looks like. If she’s kind.” I faced them again.

They were both looking at me stoically, silently watching me.

“She’s stunning, by the way, not that it’s the most important thing about her. She’s smart. She’s strong. She’s so sweet. She had to grow up really fast when her mom died so that she could care for her little sister, and yet she’s fighting through it, making a shitload of mistakes on the way, but fighting.” I shrugged. “I wish those things mattered to you. I wish those were the things you worried about.” I reached for the doorknob once more, taking a deep breath. “I wish those were the things I’d thought of, too, the first time I met her.” I sighed. “I love you both, and I’ll talk to you soon.”

And I walked out.

I had a rental car, given I’d driven my car to Chicago when I relocated there temporarily, and now that I was home, I drove through the recognizable streets, barely looking around. I wasn’t sure if I missed this place. I’d always loved the energy of this city. Win, lose, or draw, it always felt like things were happening here, things were being accomplished.

I had friends I should be calling. I was going to be in town for one more night, and there was very little reason I shouldn’t reach out to my friends who lived and worked in D.C. But I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to see my parents again either. I very especially didn’t want to see either Malcolm One or Malcolm Two. I wanted to see one person, one person who likely did not want to see me. Unfortunately, she was halfway across the country, hating me from afar.

I ran up the three levels to my condo. I’d bought it years ago. I’d never wanted a home like my parents, at least not right now. I didn’t have time for the upkeep, and I traveled so much for one consulting job or another that there just seemed little point to have more than a two-bedroom condo. But it was still mine, and I still loved it.

I stood inside my door and closed my eyes, inhaling deeply. It smelled like my world, the world I remembered living in up until a couple months ago, but something felt very foreign about it to me. I didn’t bother delving into a self-examination of why that was because I didn’t really want to deal with it.

Instead, I turned the heat up, tossed my bag on the bedroom floor, and climbed into a hot shower. I stroked my cock as I stood under the hot jets of water. She was in my head, and I couldn’t let go of her. So I didn’t. I let myself feel her as my hand moved. It was her passion that got to me. She shouldn’t have it. She was supposed to be jaded, and I had no doubt she was.

But she wasn’t for me.

I got off on her passion as though it was some physical attribute in a skin magazine. It was as arousing as the sight of her body, and when I closed my eyes and imagined it was her hand running over my erection, I let that arousal drive me higher.

I came with my fist braced on the tile wall and my other hand still pumping hard and fast.

“Fuck,” I whispered as I let my chin sink to my chest.

I crawled in bed after that, and I fell asleep quickly.

* * * *

The two Malcolms watched me from across the table. We were meeting for lunch on Tuesday afternoon at an always-busy Italian restaurant in DuPont Circle. It was too loud, and after a morning of cleaning my condo, entertaining a plumber’s ass crack who was long overdue for a visit with my always problematic kitchen sink, and then getting mildly drunk with my downstairs neighbors, who were just as pushy as my parents when it came to planning my future, I was not in the mood for a crowd.

Trainor instantly pulled a large eight-by-ten piece of paper out of his portfolio and slid it face down across the table to me. My brows rose as I picked up the paper and flipped it over, but when I saw a candid image of Gabe and David at the recent performing arts benefit at The Peninsula, I froze.

It was the very night I’d met Gabe. My jaw tightened as I studied the image. It was taken on the terrace at the hotel where the event had been held, and David’s arm was around her waist as they stood side by side in a small group of people.

“Who took this?” I was bristling with irritation. I already knew the answer to that question, and the answer was staring right back at me smugly. Meanwhile I was struggling to wrap my head around it.

The Malcolms glanced at each other before looking back at me.

“You had this taken.” My heart was pounding as I accused them of doing something that made no sense to me but that I knew was true. It was a struggle to keep my voice level and my expression calm as the gears in my brain turned desperately, trying to figure it out.

Leeks smiled tauntingly. “Now what would make you think we’d do a thing like that?”

“I’ve monitored every news outlet and online article daily since accepting this job to ensure pictures like this didn’t pop up without my knowledge. If it was a reporter digging for a story, it would have been published by now and I’d have damn well seen it.” My eyes narrowed as I glared back and forth between the men. “Why the hell would you do this?” I asked through gritted teeth.

This was bad, even if I didn’t know what it meant. What I did know was that they shouldn’t have this picture—not before me at least, and that meant they had a motive that I knew nothing about.

The waiter arrived, and Trainor waved him away dismissively. “Tell us more about Gabrielle. Or Gabe, as she apparently goes by.”

I held the picture up. “You seem to already know plenty about her. You didn’t answer my question. I want to know why you had this picture taken,” I said pointedly.

Leeks shrugged. “That’s not really your business to know at this time.” He pointed to the picture and chuckled. “You know, I’ve never really envied this”—he waved his hand around disdainfully—“business you’re in. Wouldn’t suit me. But her…” He nodded to the paper I still held. “I’m starting to wonder if you should be paying us.”

My jaw tightened more, to the point that my teeth ached.

“You haven’t told David yet, have you? About the fact that you’re fucking her?” Trainor was looking at me suspiciously. “We’d have heard from David if you had, calling for your dismissal no doubt. We’d refuse, of course, but still…” He shrugged as he glanced away.

I said nothing.

“Here’s the thing,” Trainor continued as his attention returned to me. “You’re a smart man. You’re good at what you do, and you know perfectly well that your personal business can’t intersect in any way with David’s personal business.” He pointed to the picture. “So letting David find out you’re fucking her must be the plan, right? Because you’re too smart to let things get personal with her, aren’t you?” His expression was smug and mean. “You’re all about the agenda, the job, the tactic that will best bend David to your will, so surely she’s just a means to an end for you?” He cocked his head to the side as if waiting for me to confirm his theory.

“How I choose to do my work doesn’t concern you.” I sounded angry, but in truth, I was panicking. “So how about you stay out of my fucking way and let me do my job,” I seethed quietly.

“If you’d have done your job, son,” Trainor snapped back, his voice too loud for public, “David would already know about you and the girl because you’d have already told him!” He cleared his throat. “Things aren’t quite adding up with this gal.” He scratched the side of his head in mock confusion and laughed. It was a gravelly sounding chortle that rattled his lungs. He wasn’t a young man, nearing sixty himself, and he also wasn’t a nice man. That had never bothered me because I knew how to keep up with assholes, and I sure as hell knew how to hold my own with them.

“You don’t get to have an opinion on this,” I snapped back. “Because it was never part of my job description to fuck David’s mistress.”

“And yet…ya did.” Leeks, always the calmer one, cocked his head coolly to the side. “It certainly wasn’t our expectation, but hey, we admire your tenacity.” He smiled mockingly.

I gritted my teeth, refusing to respond. I shook my head, biting down hard into my lower lip, wanting desperately to yell some more. But giving these men even the smallest measure of my personal life scared the shit out of me. I knew how to manipulate people. I knew how to work the game. It was all about finding weaknesses and then exploiting them in the most advantageous way.

I had no doubt the Malcolms knew how to do this just as well as me.

Gabe was absolutely a weakness for me. And I wasn’t going to give them that.

When I glanced away, it was for the sole purpose of composing myself, and when I looked back, I took my time focusing on each of them in turn, keeping my expression calm. “Of course it’s my intention to let him find out, but I intend to do it when it benefits me most.”

I hated the sound of the lie coming out of my mouth. I despised everything about it. The words disgusted me not because they were appalling now, which they most certainly were, but because there’d been a time when they weren’t appalling at all. I’d been more than willing to use Gabe to get what I wanted from David. And these men damn well knew it. Hell, they expected it.

My lips trembled, and I bit my tongue to keep myself from reacting to the words I’d just said.

“Is that so?” Trainor asked coolly.

“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?” I said sarcastically.

Leeks hummed. “I have some…concerns about the good chairman.”

“And let me guess, that picture is insurance for you?”

Trainor smiled but didn’t answer me. “You see to it he understands the importance of behaving like a gentleman.” He snatched the picture from my hand. “I’d hate to see this cute little thing become more involved than she already is.” He was threatening her. He was actually threatening me.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I sneered.

He shrugged, his lips pursing for a moment dismissively. “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”

I stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the chair I’d been sitting in. “She has nothing to do with this.”

“Your…agenda…suggests she has everything to do with this, remember?” Leeks’ grin was cruel and ugly.

I started to walk away.

“You’ll keep us updated, now won’t you?”

I ignored Trainor’s words and walked out.

I drove straight back to my condo, packed my bag, drank a bottle of wine to calm myself down, and finally, blessedly, passed out. I was hung over the next morning when I woke up. I showered quickly, feeling as though I might lose my stomach at any moment. I dropped my rental car off at Dulles before checking in, and then I finally stopped moving for long enough to get a coffee.

All I wanted to do was get home…back to Chicago so I could see her.

Chapter 12

Gabrielle

I walked with a few of the girls from the sorority house to campus on Wednesday morning. Most were younger than me, which was fortunate because that also meant none of them were aware of what a brilliantly accomplished student I wasn’t.

I sat in the back of my advanced developmental psychology class. This was, as the name suggested, an advanced class. This also meant the class was not large. It wasn’t even accessible to any student who hadn’t successfully completed a few semesters worth of preparatory psych classes.

When Professor Carmichael walked in, I sank lower in my seat. He looked around, smiling at the good students who showed up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to his class, none the wiser that a student of ill-repute lurked in the back row—none the wiser, that is, until his eyes met mine.

His smile froze as his brow wrinkled for a moment, but then his eyes continued to move. He was a nice man. He’d been my professor for two other classes in fact—Introduction to Psychology and Abnormal Psychology. In many ways I could credit the man with sparking my interest in the field.

He was middle aged, perhaps forty-five. He was a good man, a sarcastic and entertaining instructor, and he was handsome, though clearly married, given the ring on his finger. He’d never regarded me in any way that made me uncomfortable or suggested he saw me as anything other than a student. And yet, he was nothing more than a penis to me now.

I hated that. I’m sure that somewhere in one of these books I was supposed to be reading some theorist had outlined how dehumanizing what I was doing with men was. Surely they could make sense of what it meant that no man was just a man to me anymore. They were an appendage, an enigma, something I couldn’t understand, something I didn’t want to understand, frankly something that terrified me, though I hid it well with a crimson-lipped smile.

I sat through his hour-and-fifteen-minute lecture feeling lost, feeling helpless, feeling panicked, and when the class was over, I was nearly in tears. I skirted out of my seat quickly, ready to run.

“Gabe, do you have a moment?”

I froze.

When I looked up at Carmichael, I tried to smile, but it didn’t work. I nodded, and then I shuffled around uncomfortably as the other students left. He smiled at them, nodded, and even shook a few hands. When the room was empty aside from the two of us, I glanced at him. His expression was concerned as he leaned against his desk casually. I knew what he was doing. He was trying to make me comfortable so I’d talk to him.

“I’m kind of late for—”

“We need to talk about this, Gabe.”

I nodded.

“You’ve always been a good student. I’m really struggling to understand—”

“I’m sorry,” I said, cutting him off. “I’m working to get caught up, and…”

It was his turn to nod, but his pursed lips suggested he didn’t believe a word I said. “You’re three writing assignments behind, and you didn’t even show up to take the last test. I’m concerned that getting caught up might be…difficult. I can’t help you if you’re not willing to talk to me.”

He pushed off his desk, approaching me and standing a reasonable foot from me. But when he reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder, I sucked in a quick breath before I could stop myself and took a step back.

He looked shocked for a moment. “I wasn’t trying to make you uncomfortable,” he said quietly.

I shook my head. “It’s okay. I just… I really have to go.”

I bolted from the room then, ignoring his pleas to stay.

I didn’t bother going to my second class. I’m not really sure why I’d bothered going to my first, except that I sometimes felt the need to at least try to be something more than what I was. It never went well.

I walked back to the house, hugging my fleece jacket tightly around me as I stared at the ground.

“You’re home from class early,” Casey commented as I walked through the door.

“And you’re not at class altogether,” I retorted rudely.

She smirked. “I don’t have class until the afternoon on Wednesdays.” She shook her head as though I was an idiot for not having her schedule memorized. “Aren’t you supposed to be in your psychopharmacology class right now?”

I’d just taken the first step up the stairs, but I paused, turning back to her. “Why exactly do you know my schedule?”

“I’m just trying to look out for you. We’re sisters, remember?”

I rolled my eyes as I scoffed. “Right,” I muttered.

She squeaked this mousy sound that made me want to punch her, and I turned and ran up the stairs rather than deal with her any longer.

I let my hair down once I was in my bathroom. It was still damp from the shower I’d taken just before class that morning, and I combed through it before blowing it dry. I ran a straightener through it, and once it was hanging sleekly without a wrinkle down my back, I tossed the straightener in my sink and started putting my makeup on. I saved the red lipstick for last, hating the sight of it as I ran it over my lips.

I stood in my closet trying to remember what dresses William had likely seen me in. A small portion of my pay always went to buying bargain, sale, clearance, discounted dresses for one client or another. Of course, if anyone ever asked, I told them the restaurant I worked at was exceptionally nice and expected me to dress up.

I chose a sleeveless emerald-green dress with a pleated knee-length skirt and a thin black belt. I paired it with black heels and a black swing coat. When I was coming off the last step at one o’clock, I ran into another one of my housemates, one who didn’t feel the need to stalk my class schedule.

“Working tonight?” Molly asked as she passed through the foyer from the kitchen to the living room.

“Yeah.”

“You always look so mature and sophisticated when you go to work,” she said with a huge and completely genuine smile. “I keep asking you to get me an application when you’re there.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t seem to know how to say anything except that one word, so I walked out.

Within two and a half hours, I was disembarking the bus in Chicago. I was entirely too early, but the idea of sitting in my house for any longer than was absolutely necessary just wasn’t something I was interested in doing on this day.

Instead, I walked to a nearby bar. It was a nice Irish pub-style joint. I didn’t bother sitting at the bar because I didn’t want to run the risk of being hit on. Instead, I took a booth, and I pulled out one of the textbooks I’d stashed in my purse. But I didn’t really want to read. I wanted to drink.

I ordered an Irish coffee with a double shot of Bailey’s, largely because it was a cold day out and largely because I was just in the right place for such a drink. After drinking three in under an hour, my head was swimming comfortably in a mild state of euphoria. My eyes roamed around dreamily, landing on the bar and sticking.

It was an old, well-polished wood bar, and it was occupied by only a few men in suits at the moment. A couple of them had checked me out a few times, but I would look down at the book the moment they did, and neither had taken it upon themselves to approach me.

This bar was not unlike the one I’d been in when I’d first been introduced to this life. It had been five or six months after my mom had died, and it was my twenty-first birthday. My sorority sisters were dragging me out for a night in the city. I didn’t really want to go. I was depressed, and I was stressed. I’d only just that afternoon been called by Jessa’s school to discuss her declining grades, and I’d spent the rest of the afternoon on the phone arguing with Jessa about how we were going make ends meet without her working as much as she was. I’d escaped into a glass of something strong that night just as I was doing right now. I drank too much and too quickly, and one unlikely conversation with a stunning, tall woman I’d run into at the bar changed the course of my life forever—and I’d been too sad and too desperate to stop it. I’d also just been too stupid.

I stared at the bar now, my eyes glossing over and obscuring my vision. I was too tipsy to be taking a walk down memory lane, and I stood at five o’clock, shaking off the emotion and dropping my money on the table.

It wasn’t too far to the Drake from the pub, and I chose to walk, regardless of the fact that my shoes weren’t made for this. But there was something very satisfying about the pain. It cut into the backs of my ankles as I listened to the monotonous click of my heels on the sidewalk. My toes hurt, my calves ached too, and I let the discomfort build, pushing forward one step after another, one breath after the next, until I was standing at the entrance.

I stared up at the retro neon sign above the door, swaying slightly in my drunken dizziness.

“Miss,” came a voice from nearby. “Miss, are you okay?”

I looked at the doorman, who was walking toward me. Apparently my sway was quite visible. When I blinked, a tear ran down my cheek, which seemed strange because I, oddly, hadn’t realized I was crying.

I tried to smile, but another tear leaked from my other eye. “No, I’m fine.”

He stopped in front of me, taking my forearm as though he didn’t really believe I was fine at all.

I shook my head as I studied his kind eyes. “I don’t want to be here.” It came out nearly a whisper.

He looked terribly confused by my behavior. “We can get you a cab,” he offered.

I stared at him blankly. When I turned to look down the street, my focus became blurry as I tried to see through the tears. I turned, looking in the other direction then too, and my breath came out in a defeated sigh. I closed my eyes, feeling my warm tears turn cool on my cheeks as a breeze brushed my skin.

And I imagined walking away.

I imagined walking down the block, around the corner, across Lakeshore Drive. I could be at Oak Street Beach in less than ten minutes. I could be on the dark, deserted beach away from this life, and I could keep walking straight out into the water if I wanted. I could let it carry me away into the dark, far, far away from this place. I could even let it drown me altogether, and I wasn’t really sure I cared either way because the fantasy made me feel powerful regardless.

“Miss,” he said again.

“Hmm?” I turned back to face him.

“Shall I call for a cab?”

I glanced down the block again, staring at the path my fantasy went and knowing I wouldn’t take it. I finally shook my head. “No.”

He studied me concernedly, his brow still furrowed.

“I have a reservation.”

Chapter 13

Keegan

“WHAT do you mean she’s working in Chicago?” I barked at the poor girl who’d made the mistake of answering the phone at Gabe’s sorority house. I didn’t have Gabe’s number, and I’d resorted to looking up the number for her house.

“I mean she’s working at her restaurant job,” the girl bit back. Her tone said she thought I was the world’s biggest fucking idiot. “She’s been gone for hours.”

I glanced down at my watch. It was seven-thirty. Fuck.

“Not sure when she’ll be back.” Her voice was taunting me now.

I was staring out the large living room window of my Trump Tower loaner, and my eyes suddenly lost focus on my view of Navy Pier in the distance. My breath left my lungs. I tried to hide it. But my lips were twitching, my throat was constricting, and I couldn’t seem to remember how to breathe. I cleared my throat, trying to keep my shit together.

“Do you have her phone number? I really need to get in touch with her.” I clenched my hands, my palms getting sweaty.

There was no way this woman who didn’t know me but seemed to dislike me regardless was going to give me her number, and just as expected… “Sorry. Can’t do that.”

I forced my eyes to refocus as I struggled to regroup. “Can you…can you just call her for me? You can give her my number. Can you just…?” I was panicking. I pressed my fist to the window, closing my eyes and inhaling deeply.

She didn’t answer for a moment.

“Please,” I begged. “This is really important.”

She inhaled deeply. “Fine.” She sounded angry.

I was silent as I waited.

“Gabrielle, it’s Casey. So, there’s some…guy…”

“Thank God,” I muttered quietly under my breath. She was clearly calling Gabe from her cell phone, and my heart hammered as I waited for more.

“What’s your name?” she suddenly asked me, her tone all annoyance.

“Keegan Lauri.” My voice was rushed, nearly chasing after the girl in desperation.

“Keegan.” Her voice was more distant when she was talking to Gabe.

I nodded stupidly, finally calming down marginally.

“He says he really needs to speak with you. His phone number…” She was silent for a second. “Dammit,” she cursed angrily. “What’s your phone number?” She was talking louder in my ear again. She repeated the numbers as I gave them to her. “Okay. So bye.” She didn’t actually seem to like talking to Gabe any more than she liked talking to me. “You still there?”

“Yeah…yeah. So she’s going to call me?”

“How should I know? It was her voicemail.” And then she hung up on me.

“Fuck!” I yelled, gripping my cell phone so hard my fingers ached.

I don’t really recall walking back to the shower, stripping out of my clothes, or stepping into the large walk-in. I stood under the water, my hands fisted and braced against the wall. I couldn’t seem to uncurl my fingers, and my jaw was as tight as the tension in my hands, my arms, my stomach, damn near everything in my body.

I stared at the tile in front of me and tried to control my breathing, but when the anxiety built too high, I finally hit the wall, letting the pain radiating out from my knuckles distract me from the panic. I didn’t have a clue what to do with myself. I wasn’t even sure I could handle driving myself to Milwaukee to wait for her, but the idea of being in the city, knowing she was there somewhere with another man, was going to drive me insane.

I dressed quickly, running my hands through my hair, and five minutes later, I walked out my door. I knew it was stupid. It was absolutely irrational. But what I also knew was that finding her here in Chicago was impossible, and I needed to be somewhere that I knew she eventually would be.

I drove north toward Milwaukee.

The drive was as maddening as the last two hours of my life had been, and when I pulled up to the curb in front of her house, it was nearing eleven. The lights in her house were all on, and I bounded up the steps, ignoring the tremor in my fingers. This was hands-down the stupidest, most pointless thing I’d ever done, but I paused for only half a second when I reached the front door before ringing the bell.

The door was pulled open by a dark-haired girl who smiled at me flirtatiously for a moment.

“Is Gabe here?” I knew she wasn’t, but I still had to check.

The smile didn’t fall from her lips as much as it morphed into a scowl, and the wide eyes narrowed in apparent hatred for me.

“Let me guess. Keegan? So you’re stalking her I take it?”

I sighed as I shook my head in annoyance. “Is she here or not?”

“No,” she spat out angrily. “Just like I told you on the phone.” And then she slammed the door in my face.

I stared at the door for a minute before walking back to my car. It was the most helpless feeling in the world. And driving here had proved to be just as pointless as I knew it would be. Oddly, when I sank back down to sit in my driver’s seat, it never occurred to me to leave.

I just sat there.

People walked by, a few heading up the steps to Gabe’s sorority, a few others passing on by to another one of the large Greek houses on this street. All of them eyed me suspiciously. I didn’t really care. My hands just gripped the steering wheel. I’d glance at every person passing, hoping it would be her, but it never was, and after a while, I even accepted that it wouldn’t be her. But I still looked at every passing face. It went on and on endlessly, second after second, minute after minute, until it turned into hours and the street quieted down and the rest of the world fell asleep.

My mind was pricking with images of men—men like David, men like any man in the world, nameless, faceless men—doing things to her, things I didn’t want any man to do to her but me. I didn’t have the right to be her only man, her only kiss, her only touch, her only anything. But the fact that I wasn’t felt so incredibly and disturbingly wrong at the moment.

It was a strange feeling, this notion that I was dying even while I was doing nothing. And that notion didn’t pass. My mind kept snapping back to this reality as if it was somehow attached to me by a rubber band. It pummeled me over and over and over, rising up like a wave of pain and then calming for the briefest moment before cycling through my mind again.

The torture went on, and I just sat there.

And the entire time it felt as though something inside me was dying.

It was nearly three in the morning before something caught my attention again—emerald green. The fabric swished as the woman walked. The large trees overhead shadowed the woman’s face from the light of the streetlamps, but the green of the skirt kept swishing back and forth, catching in the brisk night breeze. The gait was lazy, exhausted, maybe just defeated, and I focused on the figure growing closer with every step.

It wasn’t until she stepped out from underneath the shadow of a tree and I saw the red of her lips that I knew for sure it was her. Her hair was bone straight, blowing across her face. She was moving too slowly, as though she was in no hurry to get where she was going or perhaps even dreading to get there. I knew something about that feeling.

My hands shook as I reached for the door handle, and when I stepped out of the car, I inhaled deeply. I’d been going insane for hours, and in that moment, I blamed her for every last second of my insanity. There was no sugarcoating just how close to snapping I was. I rounded my car, stepping up on the sidewalk, and I stared at her. I couldn’t possibly look inviting.

She stopped walking when she saw me, pausing thirty or so feet down the sidewalk. Her eyes flitted away, and her hand rose to her mouth, hiding the red. She didn’t seem to like it; I’d noticed that before. Or perhaps she just didn’t want me to see it now because we both knew what it meant.

She straightened her shoulders before she started walking again. I watched every step she took to close the space between us until she was standing in front of me, staring at my neck. Her face was expressionless, but her shoulders were defiantly straight.

“Hard day at the office, dear?” I said it quietly, but my tone was cold and loaded with every ounce of pain the last eight hours had inflicted on me. After sitting in my car half the night with a long fucking loop of images in my mind of what Gabe was doing, I couldn’t muster much more than cruelty.

I stared at her lips and watched them tremble and twist into a sneer, and before my mind could even register what had happened, I felt the sting of her hand on my cheek. The pain seared into me, even as the hurt, if not devastated, expression on her face burned into me too.

My breath escaped me as my hand lifted to my cheek.

I scoffed, but it was shock more than frustration, and the moment she turned and started to walk away, I panicked, reached out, grabbed her wrist, and stopped her still. She pulled her wrist angrily away, shaking and twisting her arm to rid herself of me. But she didn’t leave once she was free of my hold. She stood in front of me, staring at me as if I was a monster, and her lips quivered as her eyes filled with tears.

“You know,” her voice trembled out, “sometimes I think it’s easier to be with those men than it is to be with you.”

My jaw clenched tightly as I stared at her.

“They’re so simple, uncomplicated. They can’t hurt me. They can’t make some cruel off-the-cuff remark like you and cut me to the bone.” Her lips continued to quiver as she studied me. “They don’t get to make me cry.” She brushed a tear from her cheek as it fell. “They can’t truly touch any part of me that really matters. You”—It came out on a rush of breath, trailing off into nothing for a moment—“hurt.”

My chest was tight as I looked at her. “Yeah, well you do too.” My voice was quiet.

Her brow flinched in confusion, and she gaped at me, shaking her head subtly. She really didn’t get it. I’m not sure why I was shocked by that revelation, but I was. She just didn’t fucking get it. She couldn’t get it because, in her mind, there wasn’t enough worth left in her to matter to anyone, including me.

“Do you have any idea what it feels like to sit for hours imagining all the ways you’re being fucked by another man?” I reached into my pocket, pulling the two condoms out, and I threw them at the ground between us. “Imagine for a moment how pathetic it feels to be the man carrying these around because, at the end of the day, I’m willing to take pretty much anything I can get from you—a look, a touch, a kiss…God, a kiss.” My voice was the one breaking then. “I came here knowing you’d been with another man. But I was desperate to be inside you anyway because being close to you is the only way I know how to cope with this.” I shook my head, letting out a huff of breath. “Don’t think for a moment you’re the only one who gets to hurt.”

Tears were running down her cheeks as she looked at me, and the sight was agonizing, agonizing and satisfying at the same time.

“Wanting you”—I shook my head, my throat constricting as my eyes glossed over—“hurts,” I choked out. “It’s one of the most painful things I’ve ever endured.” My lips trembled pathetically. “It hurts like hell. So if you need to hit me again, go ahead because it pales in comparison to what this feels like—knowing I’ll stay and watch you do it again and again and again like a broken record. God, you’re so fucking broken.” I was silent for a moment, but then I shrugged. “But I’m still here.”

She covered her eyes with her hand, and her shoulders shook as she cried. I watched her, feeling her pain, her sadness, her shame, her disappointment. But I couldn’t take this away from her, and I finally looked down at the ground, shaking my head.

“If you want me to go…if it’s easier for you…then I’ll go,” I whispered. “Because I don’t want to be the thing that makes this life harder for you than it already is.”

I stooped over, picking up the condoms and shoving them back in my pocket. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the ground between us. Her lips still quivered as though the tears were going to fall again at any moment. I didn’t know what to do. There were things I likely still needed to say, and I’d, without doubt, said things I shouldn’t have said.

But I didn’t know what else to say at this point.

“I’ll be here if you need me.” I nodded, wishing, if nothing else, that she’d look at me. But her eyes remained focused on the sidewalk. “I’m sorry about what you heard Sunday morning. I wish I could make you understand why I said it, but it doesn’t matter.” I shook my head, giving up. “I don’t want to hurt you, Gabe.”

I turned and walked toward my car. It was the most awful feeling in the world, knowing I was walking away from her when I didn’t want to, watching her give up when I wanted to fight. I pulled my keys from my pocket, and I stepped off the curb to round my car.

“I didn’t,” she said quietly.

I froze in place, my brow furrowing as I tried to process those words. I knew what I thought she might be saying, but I was afraid to let myself believe it. I stared away from her, unable to turn back until I knew for sure.

“I couldn’t.”

My breath left me in a rush, and I reached over, steadying myself with my hand on the car.

“I walked away.”

I finally turned. My legs were shaking, my eyes were wide, and I was in a near panic. But it was a good panic. She was still looking at the ground, and she shrugged mildly as she looked up at me. I just stood there, unable to figure out how to move.

When I finally got my feet to work again, I walked up to her. I cupped her cheeks in my hands, my fingers trembling against her skin. “It wouldn’t matter if you did.” I brushed a tear from her cheek with my thumb. “But I’m really happy you didn’t.”

She nodded tersely.

“I’m sorry I made you cry,” I whispered.

Her features twisted as she fought the tears, but she kept nodding, even as she struggled not to fall apart. Her fingers clutched at the front of my shirt, twisting the fabric as she pulled on it. She stepped closer, and I slipped my hand to the back of her neck, pulling her against me. She sank into my chest, and she nuzzled into my neck. We stood there for a long time.

“Come home with me.”

She nodded.

Chapter 14

Gabrielle

HIS hand was warm as it held mine, and I started to doze off as we drove south toward Chicago.

“I didn’t think about your classes,” he said quietly. “We don’t have to go to Chicago if you need to be in class today.”

I stretched as I sat up straighter and looked at him. He looked exhausted, wiped out. He looked exactly how I felt, and just seeing his tired eyes and feeling the warmth of his hand on mine made me want to curl up next to him and sleep.

I looked away before I could stop myself. “I’m not going to class today.”

He glanced at me quickly, but his eyes narrowed as if seeing through my response. “Is everything okay at school?”

I looked down at my lap, and I shook my head. “No.”

“Gabe—”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now.” I bit into my lower lip. “I kind of feel like I barely survived this night as it is.” I shook my head. “I just… Not right now.”

He took a deep breath, glancing at me quickly again before returning his eyes to the road. “Okay.”

I watched him as I lounged back in my seat comfortably and tried not to drift off again. He was beautiful. He had a strong jaw, and his features were all man, but his lips… Those were almost pretty. They were soft, and when he smirked or bit on his lower lip, it would set off a chain reaction in my gut that sent warmth from one cell to another until my entire body was tingling with arousal.

I’d had that reaction to him from nearly the moment I’d met him. His lips made my mouth water, but it wasn’t the physical beauty of them; it was the connection, the feel, the…kiss. His kiss had touched me in some way, that emotional kind of touch that imprints itself on you when a person reaches you in some way that others can’t. None others ever had.

He was right. I’d been entirely too young to be a prostitute. I’d laughed at him when he’d said it to me, but I was starting to think there was an important point there. What did I know about relationships, love, intimacy? Nothing really. I was too young to understand it fully, too inexperienced and naïve. I sure as hell wasn’t mature and self-aware enough to handle the decisions I’d made.

So it wasn’t at all surprising that no man before Keegan had ever…kissed my soul in the way he had.

“What are you thinking about?”

I sucked in a quick breath when his voice startled me.

“You’re eyeing my lips the way I usually eye yours.” He smirked that devilish smirk of his, and even the tiredness of his eyes couldn’t stifle the raw sexuality of that expression.

I smiled weakly, even as I still focused on his mouth. “Well, I must be thinking about kissing you then.”

He hummed. “Don’t worry. We’re almost home.”

“Why did you say I didn’t understand what I heard Sunday morning?”

Keegan looked worried when he glanced at me, and I almost regretted asking the question, but it was one that deserved an answer, and I needed to hear it.

He took a deep breath. “The men I work for know who you are—at least to some extent. They asked about you, and I…panicked. I didn’t want them to see you as a threat, to see you as anything at all. I wanted to make them understand you have nothing to do with David at this point.” He pulled up to a stoplight, and he placed his hands in his lap as he fully turned to look at me. “They don’t trust David to stay away from you, but as much as they don’t trust David, I don’t trust them. Before I”—He gnawed on the inside of his lower lip as his focus shifted away—“became involved with you, I told them about you.” He looked back at me, his lips pursed. It was guilt. “It’s my fault they know who you are. It’s my fault they see you as a threat. All of it…” He glanced up, sighing when he saw that the light had turned green again. He shook his head as he drove through the intersection. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

He was silent for the remainder of the drive, and I was too. I stared out the window or at my lap as I tried to process what he’d said. It wasn’t a surprise; it wasn’t even necessarily something I didn’t already suspect. It was just hard to hear the words, accept the words, know the words were brutally honest and true. I wasn’t sure what I meant to this man at the moment, but what I did know for certain was that I’d been nothing to him once, less than nothing. I’d been a threat to his agenda, I’d been a thorn in his side, I’d been a player in his game, the kind you sacrifice easily with not much thought for the greater goal.

He pulled into the valet lane when we reached Trump Tower, and he put his car in park as he waited for the valet to open my door.

“I have used you,” he said quietly.

My eyes bounced around uncomfortably as he studied me. I hated the feeling that welled up inside me when I thought about those words.

“But Sunday morning was different. I used…us to remove you from this.”

I looked at him then, and he studied my eyes for a moment.

“Though after spending the last couple days in Washington, I’m not sure how much I actually accomplished in that regard,” he muttered, but he smiled weakly as he reached out and ran his thumb across my chin.

My door was suddenly pulled open, and I pulled my attention away from him as I stepped out of the car, peering over the roof as he climbed out too. “You were out of town?”

He nodded as he rounded the car. “Yeah. They called me to D.C. to discuss David.” He opened his mouth to say something further, but he stopped, closing his mouth. He took my hand, pulling me toward the doorman, who was patiently waiting for us.

I walked with him through the lobby to the elevators. “David hasn’t called me, and I won’t answer if he does. And he can’t set up time with me either now, so…”

His brow furrowed as he turned toward me. “What do you mean he hasn’t called you? Doesn’t he have to go through The Service to reach you?”

“I gave him my phone number once.”

Keegan’s jaw clenched tightly, and his nostrils flared, but he didn’t respond.

“I was seeing him regularly. It just became easier in case he was running late or something. He still had to go through them to set up time with me. My point is he can’t do that now anyway because I no longer have a job. I stood up a client and refused to answer every single text message The Service sent me after that.”

He squeezed my hand, offering me a small smile as we stepped into the elevator. He stood across from me in the elevator, watching me. His eyes traveled up and down my body, his expression calm, but his jaw tight and his nostrils flaring. I knew this look. I liked this look entirely too much.

“Can’t you tell your bosses that…that he can’t see me anymore? That I don’t work for The Service anymore?” I asked him once we’d stepped off the elevator and his eyes had something to look at other than me.

“I intend to. I’m just not sure it will matter.” He opened the door to his condo, holding it open for me.

“But why wouldn’t it mat—” I actually forgot what I was going to ask him in that very moment because his palm met the front of my neck as he swiftly pushed me up to the wall just inside the door. He held me there gently with one hand as his other pushed swiftly up under my skirt to cup my sex through my underwear. He squeezed, leaning in close to me. His breath touched my lips, and his eyes studied them, but he didn’t kiss me.

“We’re done talking.”

His fingers stroked my neck, and his breath touched my skin, and the hand between my legs warmed me. He licked his lips as he stared at mine, and then he abruptly released his hold on me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me toward his bedroom.

His room was dark, but the drapes were fully open, letting in only a muted, barely-there light. I walked up to the wall of windows, my eyes straining to see much of anything. It was cloudy and foggy, and the lights below were blurred and dulled by the clouds that lingered around the top of the tower. It made the world seem distant outside these windows, dark and cold.

Keegan turned on the bedside lamp, and my reflection was suddenly staring back at me. When he turned on the floor lamp that sat behind the occasional chair, my reflection became practically mirror clear.

I looked tired. I was tired. It was early morning, and I’d yet to sleep. I didn’t want to sleep, though. I wanted this.

Keegan stepped up behind me, focusing on my face in the glass. His hands touched my shoulders, and he slipped my coat off, laying it on the chair. When he returned to me, he lowered the zipper that ran down my back, still studying my eyes. He undid my black lace bra before he’d even pushed my dress off my shoulders, and he lowered both down my arms, letting my bra fall off and my dress pool at my feet.

I was naked aside from my black lace underwear, and he kneeled behind me, peeling them down and kissing my bottom at the same time. He gripped my buttocks, pulling my cheeks apart, and when the pad of his thumb brushed over my anus, I gasped. But he didn’t linger. He stood again, standing behind me as he undressed and still watched me.

I loved the way he looked at me. It was different than other men, or maybe I just felt different about him. But there was always an intensity to it, and his eyes always lingered as though he wasn’t ready to be done with me. He tossed his shirt aside, and after he pulled a condom from his pants pocket, he dropped the pants to his ankles and kicked them away too. When he stripped his socks off his feet, he leaned down and helped me clear my dress and underwear from around my ankles too.

I listened to him tear into the condom packet, and his fingers brushed my back as he worked to put it on. When his palm ran down my bottom, he hummed.

“Put those hands on the glass and lean forward a little bit.”

He reached for my hip and pulled my bottom back farther. He slid his hand between my thighs and pushed them apart, and then his fingers started prodding and caressing the lips of my sex. He spread them and stroked the wet skin gently as my breath fogged the glass in front of me. When his cockhead nudged against me, I whimpered. And then he thrust, piercing straight to my core as he grunted.

His eyes never left mine in the reflection of the window, and I focused on him as he started fucking me. The position put him deep, almost painfully deep, and my high heels kept me at the perfect height for his thrusts.

He reached over my shoulder, wrapping his hand around the front of my throat, gently pulling back and keeping me upright. His other hand ran over my bottom, and when I felt the tip of his finger slide into my anus, I froze. He thrust his cock hard into me, stilling himself and staying buried to the hilt inside me, and my fingers trembled against the glass.

He pushed his finger ever so slightly deeper, and my muscles seized around him as a groan escaped my lips.

“Do you like that?” he whispered as he leaned to my ear.

“I don’t know.” I was panting, and there was this part of me that wanted him to keep going—every part of me in truth—but coupled with that desire was absolute terror.

I focused on the feel of his breath as it touched the top of my shoulder.

“You don’t know?” He repeated my words. “You haven’t done this?” His voice was gentle and soothing.

I shook my head. “It wasn’t required, and I always refused.”

“Huh…” His voice came out on a breath. “What does it feel like?” He pushed deeper before he slowly pulled back out, and then he thrust again, penetrating me shallowly with just one finger.

“Strange. It tickles.”

“Tickles?” He pushed all the way in then, and I groaned.

This definitely felt good.

He studied my eyes, and when he brought his lips to my ear, he smirked. “My cock won’t tickle, sweetie.”

He started thrusting his finger slowly in and out, sinking knuckle deep every time, and I whimpered, even as he hummed warmly, seductively.

“Will it hurt?”

His free hand, which was still gently clasping the front of my throat, slid up and over my chin to my mouth. Two fingers passed between my lips. He kept thrusting into my bottom, even as his fingers in my mouth ran over my tongue. I sucked on them, and his breath caught in his throat.

“A little bit,” he finally responded. His fingers left my mouth, and he ran his palm down my body and between my legs. He toyed with my clit, and I cursed.

“But I’ll be gentle with you,” he whispered against my ear.

He was still fully imbedded in my pussy, and I desperately wanted to move, wanted him to move, wanted him to fuck, but he didn’t. Instead, his finger penetrated my anus as his others stroked my clit. My muscles were tight, my legs rigid, and my toes curled as though I needed to keep my grip on something lest I float away.

When he pushed a second finger in with the first, I cried out, and my head dropped back.

“You feel so soft,” he murmured against my ear. “So wet. So fucking warm. Let me inside your body. I won’t hurt you.” His fingers moved faster, harder, pushing, pulling, forcing and stretching me.

“Yes,” I breathed out.

When I came, I could see my thighs trembling, and my eyelids fluttered.

He slipped his fingers from my bottom, his cock from my pussy, and the hand that was toying with my sex moved up to my stomach. He pulled me back to his body, resting his chin on my shoulder. He bit his lower lip as he watched me. My breath was still shuddering past my lips as I inhaled and exhaled deeply.

“Lie on the floor on your stomach.”

I glanced at the image of the bed in the background of the reflection. “Do you have something against sex in bed?” I asked him.

He chuckled. “Not at all. But I want you to see what I’m doing to you.” He tapped the window in front of me, and he smirked. “You think I didn’t notice how much you enjoyed watching me fuck you in the reflection last time?”

He sat down on the floor, holding his hand up to me and pulling me down to the floor too. I lay on my stomach, parallel to the window, and he lay down on his side, his knee up as he lounged on the floor. I rested my head on my upstretched hands, facing the window and watching his reflection behind me.

He smiled at me as he touched my spine just below my neck with his index finger.

“Do you see this line?” he asked as his finger trailed down my back toward my bottom.

I nodded as I watched him.

“I love this profile,” he whispered. “Right here.” He stroked my lower back, dipping down as it swayed in and then up and over my bottom. “This is my favorite part of that line. It turns me on so fucking much.”

He leaned down, kissing my back just between my shoulder blades, and I watched as his mouth moved lower—kissing, licking, sucking against my skin. I watched every kiss, and he kept his eyes on me too, studying me as I studied him. He didn’t stop when he reached my lower back. His mouth moved lower, and he pushed up, straddling my legs and hovering over me. He moved lower, still kissing, and when he turned his head toward the window, he rested his cheek to my bottom.

“Don’t be nervous.”

“Okay.” But I was nervous. I was terrified.

He gripped my butt cheeks, squeezing and using his thumbs to pull them apart. I started panting when I watched him lean down, and I closed my eyes tight when his mouth touched me.

“Oh God,” I gasped out.

His tongue licked and laved, and he hummed as he wet me. It went on and on, and I listened to that incredible wet-on-wet sound his tongue made as it met my skin again and again. I eventually opened my eyes. His fingers were gripped hard into the side of my visible buttock, and his eyes watched me as his mouth worked. I whimpered when he finally pulled back and ran his thumb along his lower lip.

He pulled himself up to sit, straddling me just below my bottom, and he gripped my cheeks again, spreading them as he leaned forward and used his thumbs to press the head of his cock to my anus.

“Relax.” He glanced at me, returning his attention to his dick and my bottom quickly. And then I felt it. At first it was pressure, a soft nudge, but the nudge became insistent, and the pressure built. My body wanted to tighten, but his hands pulling my cheeks apart wouldn’t let it.

The first penetration was shallow, and he pulled back quickly as pain bit into me and burned for a moment before subsiding. The second thrust went deeper. It was a strange sensation, like being too full inside, but the feel of his flesh moving against mine, sliding in and out, was still arousing in an altogether strange way.

My brow flinched every time he moved deeper as the pain seared me and then dissipated over and over. But with every penetration, my body accepted more of him. I groaned, closing my eyes and turning my head to the floor as my insides throbbed from the fullness.

“I’m almost there, baby.” His voice was deep and warm, and I turned my head back to look at the window, meeting his eyes as his hips rocked back and forth.

He was restraining himself. I knew how he fucked. It was hard, it was rough, but at the moment, it was so controlled, and he was watching every penetration, studying the way he slid into me.

“Can you take a little bit more?”

My hands were under my head, and my nails sank into the carpet as I nodded. I wasn’t actually sure I could, but the sight of him in the reflection pushed me forward. I could see how far he was sinking into me, his hips nearly touching my bottom with every controlled thrust, and I wanted to feel his body hitting mine when he sank in all the way.

He pushed harder, and I cried out when I finally felt his front side smack into my back side.

“Oh God…” I gasped out through trembling lips.

He stilled, and his head fell back as he sat there, fully within me. I just stared at him, thinking he was the most incredible thing I’d ever seen.

“You feel absolutely amazing.” He lowered his head, and his hands tightened on my bottom as he pulled nearly all the way out. When he slid back in, it was with one swift, smooth move, and I groaned. His knees were on the ground, but he was sitting with his weight on the backs of my thighs, and he started humping back and forth, in and out. I could see his thick length disappearing between my cheeks every time. I stared at the sight, shocked it was even possible for my body to do this and mesmerized by the image of it.

He was lean and strong, and I was just far enough from the window to take in the full view of what we were doing. He rocked rhythmically back and forth, and his muscles worked as he moved. His face alone was killing me. It was the need, the desire, the nearly agonized look of desperation as he humped. His stomach muscles were tightening, and he was grunting with every thrust.

When he started falling apart, he came down with his hands planted on the floor just at my armpits. His hips were moving faster, but my body had figured out how to relax against the over-full sensation, and there was nothing but pleasure left at this point, even if it was the most unusual pleasure I’d ever felt.

“Gabe… Oh God, Gabe…” He was gasping out my name. His groin smacked my bottom every time he thrust. I could see his back rounding over me as he rolled his hips under and pushed his cock deep inside me. He hit hard into my bottom, stilling deep within me and spasming as he came, and then his body crumpled around me. He ended up on his elbows, his chest heaving against my back as he struggled to regain his breath.

He kissed the back of my neck, letting his lips stay there, trembling against my skin. “Did I hurt you?” His voice was gentle.

“No.”

He pushed up to sit on the backs of my thighs again, and he gripped my bottom and parted my cheeks as he slowly pulled his hips back. He focused on what he was doing, and his mouth was open as he watched every inch of himself leave me.

He glanced at me, smiling even as a huff of exhausted breath escaped him. He collapsed beside me on the floor, and I turned my head to face him, finally detracting my claws from the carpet and resting easy again. He stared up at the ceiling, still breathing heavily.

“Holy fuck,” he finally muttered.

We were silent for a minute as he breathed deeply.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired before.” He looked beyond me out the window. The slightest tinge of pink was visible, and it would be daylight soon. He smiled at me. “Come take a bath with me. Then we can close those drapes and go to bed for the day.”

I nodded as I pushed up to kneel on the floor. My back ached, and I stretched. He sat up, swiftly pulling my nipple into his mouth and sucking hard. I ran my hands through his hair and sighed as I let my head drop back. His palm ran slowly down my back to my bottom, and he caressed gently, even as his mouth still sucked.

He had me in the bathtub within five minutes, and I was curled up against his chest, listening to his heart beat as he stroked my back.

“Will you tell me what’s going on at school?” His voice was warm, and he sounded too tired to be having this conversation, but when I lifted my head, he was studying me intently.

I sat up, moving to the opposite end of the large soaker tub and leaning against the back as he pulled my feet onto his lap.

“I’m really behind in…everything.” I looked away, gnawing on the inside of my lip for a moment. “My reading, assignments, papers, tests, all of it. I rarely go to class anymore. I lost my scholarship last year. I’m on academic probation, and I…” My voice cracked, and I blew out a calming breath. “I don’t know how to fix it anymore.” I shook my head. “I just can’t seem to do the things I know I’m supposed to do.” I glanced at him and then looked away again. “I used to be able to…” My voice trailed off.

His fingers gently kneaded the bottoms of my feet. “I think you’re punishing yourself,” he said quietly.

“I don’t…” But then I realized I couldn’t argue with that.

He smiled gently as he cocked his head to the side. “You don’t think you deserve what’s best, so you destroy it to hurt yourself. It’s funny how much a person can want to escape pain but be the cause of it. You hurt yourself, even as you crave happiness.” He shrugged. “It’s the cyclical nature of self-destructive tendencies.”

I smiled weakly. “That’s probably in one of those text books I’m supposed to be reading.”

He chuckled. “Yeah.” He watched me for a moment before he pulled my feet apart and moved toward me. He spread my legs, and I wrapped them around him as he lowered his head to my shoulder. He kissed the side of my neck. “It’s going to be okay,” he whispered. “We’ll get you back on track.”

I nodded. I wasn’t really sure that was possible at this point, but it was still nice to hear. I closed my eyes, ignoring the tear that ran down my cheek.

He gave me a toothbrush to use once we were finished bathing, and he stood at the sink next to me brushing his teeth as I did too. I followed him back to the bedroom, and the sky had lightened to a dusky blue. He closed the thick curtains, thrusting us back into darkness, and he pulled me into his arms once we were in bed.

His hand traveled down my back to my bottom, and his fingers delved between my cheeks. His fingertips gently ran over the spot that was aching, and he stroked that skin softly.

“Are you sore?”

“Yes.”

“Final verdict?”

I laughed quietly. “Strangely incredible.”

He hummed, and his arms tightened around me.

I closed my eyes, and I was out.

* * * *

“Wake up.” He ran his finger down the side of my ear.

I closed my eyes tightly. He’d been up for nearly thirty minutes. I knew that; I was just refusing to acknowledge it was time to wake up. I’d listened to the shower run when he was in the bathroom, and I’d closed my eyes tightly when he pulled the curtains open, and now I was ignoring his warm, deep voice and the touch of his finger.

“Wake up,” he said again, and this time it was his tongue traveling the side of my ear.

I whimpered. “I don’t want to. It’s too early.”

“It’s noon.”

“I hate noon.” I pulled the pillow over my head as he laughed at me.

“Your ostrich-style defenses are impressive, Gabe, but we really do need to talk about school some more.”

I finally peeked out from under the pillow. He was lying on his back beside me, staring up at the ceiling. When he glanced over and caught me looking at him, he pushed up to lounge on his elbow.

I finally sat up, kneeling and settling back on my calves. He was naked and already fully aroused. He glanced between my legs, and his nostrils flared.

“Flash that sweet little pussy at me like that and I might have to stick my cock in it, and then where would we be?”

“Um…having more fun than we’ll be having talking about school.”

He cocked his head to the side, and I sighed as I closed my legs.

“So you’re too far behind to get caught up on your own?”

I nodded, looking down at my lap to hide the warmth in my cheeks. “It’s beyond that point.”

“It’s okay.” He reached for my chin, tilting my face up to look at him. “It’s okay,” he said again. “Do you have online access to your school? Can you get to your professors’ phone numbers and email addresses?”

I nodded, already biting my lip nervously. “Yes. Everything is posted out there.”

“Syllabi too?”

“Yes.”

“How many classes?”

“Four. Three of them are three credit hours, and one is four.”

He nodded, sitting up and slinging his arms casually across his knees. “I think you need to start by reaching out to each of your professors. By phone preferably. I would only use email if you absolutely have to. I would explain the situation as honestly as you can without going into too much detail. They don’t need to fully understand what’s been going on in your life, only that you’ve been going through a difficult time and you’re trying very hard to get back on track.”

I nodded, but my heart was racing.

“Can you do that?”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

He smiled at me, sitting up closer and brushing my hair away from my forehead. “Call the first professor, and I’ll suck on your nipples for a while.”

My lips pulled up at that, and I hummed.

“Call the second and I’ll fuck you with my fingers.”

I bit my lip in response to that one.

“Call the third, and I’ll lick your clit until you come.” He leaned down to my shoulder, biting me, and then he kissed his way up to my ear. “Call the fourth, and I’ll slide my hard cock deep into that tight little pussy of yours and I’ll fuck you until you come again.” He leaned back, studying my face.

My cheeks were still warm, but at least it wasn’t embarrassment now. “Out of curiosity, what happens if I don’t call any of them?”

He chuckled, even as he ran his hand over his erection. I glanced down, watching as he stroked.

“I’ll shove my cock up your ass again.” He hopped up before I could respond and walked toward the bathroom.

“I don’t think I could handle that again just yet,” I called after him. I knew I couldn’t. I was still sore from that bit of fun.

“Precisely,” he said just as he walked through the door, leaving it open so I could follow.

I sat there for a couple minutes, trying to work up the nerve he expected me to have. I was terrified of calling my professors. I’d fucked up. Not a little bit, a lot bit, big-time bit. I wasn’t actually used to being the screw-up. It didn’t come naturally or easily to me, and admitting I’d screwed the pooch on pretty much my entire future was…hard.

I finally followed him and found him standing at the bathroom sink shaving. I picked up the toothbrush he’d given me earlier that morning.

“Okay.” I started brushing my teeth as he smiled at me.

I spent the next few hours either on the phone as he watched patiently from the sidelines or engaged in some sort of sex act that he’d promised. I was nervous as hell every time I picked up the phone, and my fingers trembled as I dialed. I’d walk around as the phone rang, and I’d even gnaw on my thumbnail. The relief I felt the moment I hung up was instantaneous. I had to wait for a couple of them to call me back when I reached their voice mail, but in the end, not a one of my professors refused to help me, and by four-thirty, my legs were over his shoulders and he was inside me, fucking hard and fast. I looked down, watching as he sank into me over and over, and my mouth hung open as I focused on the sight of him sliding into me. I was wet, and every time he pulled out, the condom was glistening with my cum.

By the time it was over, we were both panting, our legs were twisted and twined together in a tangle of sheets, and we’d both come. We were silent as we caught our breath. I needed to go home, but I didn’t want to. No part of me wanted to go back to Milwaukee where I would have to deal with my life.

When I sat up to the side of the bed, I stared out the window. His finger trailed slowly over my back, and I let my chin drop to my chest.

“Why are you still here?” My voice was quiet.

“You’re visiting me,” he said accusingly. “I happen to live here, at least at the moment.”

I didn’t bother turning to look at him, but my lips pulled up slightly. “That’s not what I was asking. I mean…why are you still…here? Spending time with me? Willingly?”

“Wantonly even.” The bed shifted as he moved closer to me, and then his legs straddled me and his mouth touched the side of my neck. “I like what we do. I like how we do it. I like how it feels. I like how we fit.” He exhaled deeply against my skin. “It’s hard to walk away from something that feels so good and that I like so much.”

“Not for you.” I shook my head. “You’re all about self-control, thinking about the consequences of your actions, setting up the dominoes to run up the stairs to the top, not setting them up to fall apart into nothingness.”

“Dominoes, huh?”

“Dominoes.”

His arms encircled me, and his hands covered my breasts, gently squeezing even as he kept his mouth against my neck. “I used to spend hours playing with dominoes as a child. And yes, you can make them climb, you can make them go in all sorts of directions and sometimes even down into nothingness.” He was silent for a moment, and his hands moved down my body, resting on my stomach. “But you know what the real tragedy is with dominoes?”

“Hmm?”

“When they fail to go anywhere. When they fail to even start.”

I angled my head back, pulling away just far enough that I could see him.

“I wouldn’t be here with you right now if we’d failed to start. You’re not something I can strategize, Gabe.” He reached out, brushing my long hair away from my forehead. “And thinking about the endgame with us is…confusing.” He looked out the window for a moment. “Right now I’m just letting the dominoes run because stopping them when they’re moving so perfectly and beautifully would be tragic.”

I nodded slowly, but I wasn’t sure I agreed. “I need to go,” I finally said.

“Are you upset?”

“No.” But of course I was. I just wasn’t upset at him.

“Then tell me what you’re thinking.”

I didn’t respond right away. “I can’t help but wonder if stopping the run is the most humane thing to do.”

His jaw tensed, and his brow flinched. “Why?”

“Because I’m pretty sure there’s pain at the end of it.” I tried to turn away, but he gripped my chin with his hand. I was trying hard not to swallow, not to breathe, not to do anything at all, because I knew it wouldn’t take much to make me cry right now.

“You can’t know that,” he whispered.

We looked at one another, saying nothing for a long time, and when he leaned forward, he paused just moments before he kissed me. “Everything about you feels so good.”

He kissed me, and I turned farther toward him as he leaned into it. His strong arms pulled me closer to him, and he lifted me, laying me down under him as he came down on top of me. His body was pressed into mine, and I wrapped my legs around his hips as he kissed me. I would never get tired of kissing this man. He made it exceptional every time, and it was never just some random thing for him.

“Come back for the weekend. Bring your school work with you.” He’d just pulled back from my lips, and he was studying me.

I nodded because, at the end of the day, I was no better at walking away from something that felt so good than he was. “When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon. That’ll give me time to get some stuff done during the day, and then I’ll be yours for the weekend.”

“Okay.”

He pushed off of me, and I stood from the bed and reached for my dress, which was slung neatly over the occasional chair. I slipped it on, ignoring my bra, and he watched as I inched my black underwear up under my dress. Neither of us had bothered dressing since getting up, but as he rose too, he grabbed a pair of sweatpants from the dresser drawer and pulled them on quickly.

He followed me to the door. I was being too quiet. So was he for that matter.

“Thank you,” I said quietly when we reached the door.

He smiled. “Trading sexual favors for difficult phone calls was definitely a first, but it had to be done.”

I smiled. “I appreciate you”—I shook my head, looking around—“just being here.”

“You’re welcome.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed the top of my head. “May I have your phone, please?”

I looked up at him, fishing in my purse for it as he smirked down at me.

When I handed it to him, he walked away as his fingers worked.

“What are you doing?”

He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Something that’s long overdue.” He winked.

His phone started ringing from the kitchen, and he ignored it. “There,” he said as he handed my phone back to me. “I’m in your contacts, and you’re now in my call history. Now I can stop being offended that David has your phone number and I don’t.” He smirked. “And no more conversations with your bitchy housemates when I have no other way to reach you.”

I cringed. “Which one?”

“Casey.”

My cringe twisted up even more. “She hates me.”

He nodded. “It would certainly seem so.”

He watched me walk down the hall away from him, and when I finally stepped into the elevator, I sank back against the back wall and sighed as the doors closed.

Chapter 15

Keegan

MY week ended with a bang. Many, many bangs, in fact, that came in rather quick succession one after another, building momentum and compounding as they went like a snowball down a mountainside. I will never understand exactly how it is that life can go along seemingly simply and smoothly and then just shit on you in a second flat, but by the end of Friday, everything in my world had been turned upside down, and I felt very much like I was sitting in life’s toilet bowl.

Bang number one came quite literally with a jolting painful crack to the side of my eye as David’s rather effective left hook caught me on the side of my face.

Bang number two crushed my balls up into my guts as David brought his knee up into my groin. It was a dick move that had started with his hand held out as though to shake mine. Moments later my head was splitting and my balls had taken up residence in my abdomen.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he asked as he cracked his neck and pulled the cuff of his dress shirt out from the arm of his suit jacket. He picked up a glass from his desk. Knowing his habits as I did, I was guessing it was scotch.

This wasn’t how Friday was supposed to go. This was actually supposed to be a good day. Gabe was going to arrive on the four-fifteen bus from Milwaukee and then meet me in the lobby of Trump Tower at four forty-five. Then I was supposed to have an entire weekend alone with her. That was something I’d not yet had—time, lots and lots of uninterrupted time with the woman I couldn’t seem to get enough of. That and a fucking hand job, which I was irrationally desperate for. She’d not touched me enough, and I fully intended to get her hands and fingers on every last ounce of my skin this weekend. That was the agenda, not this.

I held my palm up to the spot that was throbbing on the side of my eye, and I pressed against it, coughing as I tried to dislodge my testicles from my innards. “Fuck,” I spat out loudly.

“You want me to be squeaky clean, huh?” David said as he lifted his glass to his mouth. He took a swig, gritting as he swallowed. “You get paid to sweep up after my messes, and instead, you start fucking my leftovers?” He waved the glass around, nearly sloshing some of the liquid on the marble floor.

My jaw clenched tightly as I watched him. He was pacing in his office, back and forth with his glass in his hand. We were alone, and it was Friday afternoon at four o’clock. I’d only just walked into the grandiose space that overlooked the city, and I really didn’t have time to get beaten up at the moment.

“How did you find out?” I gasped as I braced myself on the edge of his desk. I wasn’t really sure I needed him to answer that question, but I had to say something as I waited for the nausea to pass. I felt like vomiting, and my breath left me in a grunt as my body tried not to die from the pain coursing through my balls.

David scoffed. “Trainor called me.” He laughed cruelly. “What? Thought they’d keep your secret?”

I shook my head. I had actually expected the Malcolms to keep it silent because I’d made it clear I had an agenda with that bit of information—a completely fake agenda that I had no intention of ever executing, but still…

“I’m going to take that slut down.” David was muttering as he still paced. When he downed the rest of his drink, he walked to the serving tray on the coffee table that sat in the sitting area of his office. He lifted the crystal decanter, pouring more of the clear brown liquid into his glass.

My lips pulled back in a snarl. “You will do no such thing.” My words came out through gritted teeth.

I’d built my life around this—analyzing every last detail of a person’s life and history. I didn’t give a shit about the politics. Better men than me could deal with that aspect of the game. I was all about the package, the presentation. I could make a man look good if he let me, and there’d always been something deeply powerful about that to me. Without doubt it was my Freudian way of pleasing my parents as well as telling them to suck it at the same time.

But I didn’t want this. My world was encroaching on hers, and her world was too fragile to withstand it right now.

David smirked. “What’s wrong, Keegan? You haven’t become attached to that whore’s pussy, now have you?” He was mocking me, throwing the same line in my face I’d thrown in his plenty of times before.

My jaw was so tight it ached, and I focused on that pain. I wanted to tell him I’d kill him if he ever called her that again. I wanted to tear his balls off and shove them down his throat. I wanted to do so many things I simply couldn’t do.

Instead, I did the only thing I could do—my fucking job. “She’s no longer associated with The Service, which means you have no access to her.”

He snorted. “I have her fucking phone number, asshole—”

“If you do anything to hurt her, it will hurt you too,” I snapped back at him. “You expose her, you expose yourself.” Reasoning with the man I’d rather be killing felt very much like getting kicked in the balls all over again. “I told you she was a liability from the beginning. I meant it for more reasons than just her age and profession.”

“All the more reason to discredit her now in my opinion,” he muttered, turning to look out the windows to the expansive view beyond. He was pouting like a child.

“Be careful, David. She may know a thing or two about discretion, but every person has their limit. If you push her, if you threaten her reputation, her livelihood, she’ll push back. Everyone does eventually. You stay away from her and out of contact with her. Do you understand?” I sat on the edge of his desk, finally finding my composure again.

David turned toward me, his face cold and his expression tight. “Yes. Well, I’m sure you’ll have plenty of contact with her for both of us.”

“Whatever my contact with her is, it is none of your business. You can accept that, or you can shoot yourself in the foot and destroy your political career at the same time.”

I walked toward the door, ready to be done with him, ready to be done with all of it.

“Why her?” David asked quietly.

When I turned toward him, he was staring out the window again. I didn’t bother answering largely because I didn’t feel as though I owed the man even one ounce of an explanation. But I also couldn’t say I knew the answer either.

I walked past the receptionist, whose eyes followed me. I couldn’t imagine our altercation had gone unnoticed or unheard. I ignored everyone I passed, and when I stepped into the elevator, I held my breath until the doors closed, leaving me blessedly alone inside. I didn’t speak to a single person as I walked to my car, and it was only after I was safely sitting in my driver’s seat that I finally said anything.

“Goddamn it,” I yelled, ramming the heel of my palm into the dashboard.

I grabbed my phone, dialing Trainor.

“Trainor here,” came the deep baritone I’d come to recognize and hate.

“Care to tell me what the hell you were thinking talking to David about…” And then I couldn’t figure out how to finish.

“What? The whore? You can’t say it, can you?” He was mocking me.

Of course I wouldn’t say it, but I also couldn’t say, “my personal business,” “my personal relationship,” “my” anything because I wasn’t allowed to have a “my” clause in all this.

“I told you I had this under control. It was my decision how and when this went down. Do you understand the risk of leaking information like this in an uncontrolled manner to a man known for his careless and reckless decisions?”

“Oh, we understand the risks, my boy. We were counting on them.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but I suddenly realized I was at a complete loss, and I had no idea what was happening. What I did know was that the game had changed on me somehow, and I didn’t have a clue what the hell was going on. I clamped my mouth shut, my jaw tightening as I waited for something more.

“We’ve had a change of plans,” Trainor said coolly. “We’re no longer convinced David is a good investment for us.”

I tried to hide the rush of breath that left me. “What?” I spat out.

“Our only question for you at this point is, can we count on you to wrap things up neatly for us?”

“What does that mean?” My jaw was tight. I was confused. It didn’t work like this. It literally never worked like this. I wasn’t brought in to consult on possible investments. I was brought in to consult on definitive players with high stakes attached to them.

“We want you to end him. Shouldn’t be too hard for a man like you. We’ve gotten the ball rolling for you. All you have to do is use those reckless tendencies of David’s to your advantage.”

I scoffed, but it was more an involuntary shock response. Every hair on my body was standing on end. “I didn’t spend the last two months in Chicago so you could pull the plug on me now, and you didn’t invest this much time in David to walk away either.”

“Malcolm and I don’t like investments that aren’t…pliable. You’ve done shit to get this man in line, and we’re not in the habit of being patient. David has enough financial backing to make a go of this alone, and we don’t want to see him pitted against future investments of ours. So he needs to go away—for good. A decent scandal ought to do the trick. So I’m going to ask you again if you’re prepared to wrap this up for us.”

“And in so doing…?”

Trainor hummed for a moment as though contemplating. “Toss that little hooker of his to the wolves.”

Bang number three.

“Shouldn’t take much more than that I shouldn’t think.” Trainor’s voice was so casual and conversational it made my blood run cold. He was talking about using Gabe to destroy a man’s reputation in the same way someone might talk about tossing out leftovers.

“You will stay away from Gabe and leave her out of this.” My jaw was tight, and my words were seethed through gritted teeth.

Trainor was silent for a moment. “I was afraid you might say that.” And he hung up.

I sat there for a moment, staring at my dashboard. I’m pretty sure I’d just gotten fired, though I hardly cared if I ever worked for those men again, but I was also pretty sure Gabe was in trouble.

I took a deep breath, starting my car and backing out of my parking space. I tried to focus as I drove, but my mind was trying to move in a hundred different directions at once. I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next. I was the man who always knew what was coming around the next bend because I was the man who orchestrated not only what was coming next but also where the bloody fucking bend would be in the road.

This could be bad.

I was almost shocked I managed to drive myself all the way to Trump Tower, and when I pulled into the valet lane, I glanced at my watch. I was late. Gabe was supposed to meet me in the lobby at four forty-five, and it was nearly five at this point. I quickly climbed out of my car and half jogged through the door as the doormen held it open for me.

Gabe looked up at me from the seating area just inside the doors. She was dressed in worn jeans that were distressed and frayed. Her fleece pullover was gray, and her shoes were black flats. Her book bag was at her feet and a duffel bag sat beside her chair. She looked absolutely adorable, even if out of place in the lobby of Trump Tower—most likely why she looked so nervous at the moment.

She glanced around, setting the magazine she’d been flipping through back on the coffee table.

She stood as I approached, and I leaned down to kiss her.

“You look incredible.” I cupped her cheek, staring at her.

She looked down at her clothes and then sheepishly around the large lobby. “I didn’t realize I’d be waiting. I’m feeling a little underdressed.”

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

She shook her head. “It’s okay.” Her eyes narrowed as her hand lifted to the side of my left eye. “What happened?”

I’d forgotten all about the fist to my face. I covered her hand with mine. “I’m fine. But we need to talk—”

“Keegan. Oh, there he is. Honestly, I didn’t think we’d ever get any assistance…”

I looked toward the sudden sound of that very recognizable voice, and I stopped breathing.

“Mom? Dad?”

Bang number four.

My parents walked away from the lobby desk toward us, the poor attendant watching after them in exasperation. Gabe’s hand that was inside my suit jacket clutching the side of my waist started to tighten.

My parents took in the sight of the young woman in my arms, and their eyes seemed to move in tandem down to the tattered and worn book bag at her feet. Their gaits slowed, and when their eyes moved back up, they settled on Gabe, narrowing suspiciously.

Gabe’s breath left her in a rush as her fingers started to tremble against my side.

“Surprise,” my mom said as they finally reached us, but her completely contrived smile fell from her lips, and she started eyeing Gabe again. Her lips were pursed, and her features frozen. I knew this look. I hated this look.

I had the sudden urge to take Gabe’s hand, drag her back out to my car, and drive off—away from the city, away from my parents, away from everything in this world. But I didn’t. Instead, I let my mom pull me away from Gabe and into a hug. My father shook my hand once my mother was finished with me, and when I turned back to Gabe, she was standing nervously by, rocking on the outsides of her feet.

I grabbed Gabe’s duffel bag and slung it over my shoulder. I picked up her book bag as well and started walking toward the elevators without another word. I was in shock, or I was angry, or…something. I ignored my parents, and they followed Gabe and me into the elevator.

I stood beside Gabe, facing my parents. They kept staring at her, her book bag that I’d set on the floor, the duffel bag that was rumpling my suit jacket—everything. They couldn’t seem to stop staring, and the expressions on their faces weren’t the least kind.

I finally cleared my throat. “Gabe, this is my mother, Patrice, and my father, Gerald. Mom, Dad, this is Gabrielle.” I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly and trying to calm myself down.

My parents nodded at Gabe, but they didn’t offer her a hand to shake.

“But you go by Gabe?” My mother’s head was cocked to the side as though curious, but it was bullshit.

Gabe started to nod.

“You know she does,” I snapped quickly. “I’ve already told you that.” My voice was cold.

Gabe looked nervously up at me.

“Where are you two staying?”

My mom managed to pull her eyes from Gabe, and she smiled. “Why, here of course. Our room is on the thirty-fourth floor.”

I took another deep breath. “I see.”

“Well, we asked the lobby receptionist to call your condo, but she acted like she’d never heard of you—”

“It’s not my condo, Mom. It’s being leased through my client. Furthermore, it’s not her job to track me down.”

“Perhaps if you’d returned my message…” my mother bit back.

“We didn’t realize you’d have company,” my father interjected, glancing at Gabe coolly.

“Really?” I reached for Gabe’s hand, squeezing it gently. “Because I’m pretty sure I told you I was dating Gabe when I was in D.C. last week, so I can’t imagine who you expected me to be spending my time with.”

Gabe glanced up at me, her eyes wide.

My mom looked at the bag slung over my shoulder, and then her eyes moved to Gabe. “I’m certain you said it was casual.” It was a cruel thing to say in front of Gabe, and I wasn’t the least surprised she’d be willing to say it.

I shook my head as my jaw clenched tightly, and I looked down at the floor to keep myself from saying something I’d regret. I glanced at Gabe beside me to see her lips pursed uncomfortably and her eyes staring at the ground. When the elevator doors opened, I leaned over, grabbing Gabe’s book bag from the floor. I walked out, pulling Gabe with me and ignoring my parents, who were following us down the hall.

This could not be happening. There was no way my parents would be able to stifle their opinion of my relationship with Gabe any better now than they had a few days prior, and there was also no chance they’d be pulling any punches just because Gabe was there. In fact, it was likely safer to say they’d be pushing the envelope because, well, that’s simply what they did.

My parents admired the view from the living room window once we were inside. Gabe seemed so uncomfortable, as though she had no business being there when, in truth, she had my every blessing to be there. It was my parents who did not.

My parents watched me over their shoulders as I carried Gabe’s bags into my bedroom, and when I returned to the large great room, I caught them staring coldly at Gabe for a moment before they returned their view out the window.

I touched Gabe’s lower back when I stepped up beside her. “I need to talk to you about something,” I said quietly because, despite the disaster of my parents showing up unannounced, I still had a potential crisis on my hands with Gabe. I stepped in front of Gabe, leaning back against the side of the dining room table and blocking her view of my parents. “But I need to wrap things up with—” I cocked my head over my shoulder toward my parents.

She nodded, but she was only barely looking at me and her expression was blank.

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head dismissively, but she looked down quickly.

I studied her for a moment. She was being too quiet. Of course she was. She’d just heard my mom say I’d regarded her as “casual” mere days before, and I couldn’t refute that, nor had I said a damn thing to the contrary. I couldn’t. Not with them here because anything I might say they would somehow twist and use to their benefit. I needed them gone so I could deal with this mess. I leaned forward and kissed her forehead, and when I pulled back, I finally turned toward my parents, who were already watching us.

My dad walked around the living room couch, picking up the TV remote. He tuned into CNN, and then he glanced at me. I knew what he wanted before he even opened his mouth. “Do you have picture-in-picture?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t know—”

“Need to see what’s on Fox too.” My father’s attention returned to the remote in his hand.

“You know I called you yesterday morning.” My mom walked slowly toward us, her arms crossed.

“I’m sure I was sleeping.”

“At ten o’clock?”

“We had a late night the night before, so yes, actually.”

“We?” Her eyes moved to Gabe, appraising her appearance judgmentally, and when she glanced down to Gabe’s jeans, her lips pursed haughtily as though she’d never seen anything quite like them.

Gabe glanced down at her clothes, and I died a little inside. They were going to emotionally torture her the way they did me, and that wasn’t something I was going to allow.

“Yes, we,” I finally responded. “Listen, is there a reason why you’re here? I mean, I did just see you four days ago.”

“I take it you didn’t listen to my message either. If you had, you’d have known we were coming for a visit.”

I shrugged but didn’t respond. I hadn’t listened to the message. I often ignored what my parents said to me because most of what they said pissed me the hell off.

“How are things going with David?” My father was still staring at the TV, even as he asked the question.

I said nothing for a moment, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from looking at Gabe. I needed to have this conversation alone with her, but that wasn’t going to happen with my parents around. “I think things are pretty much…done with David.”

Gabe’s lips parted, and she instantly looked down to hide her shock.

“Oh?” My father meandered toward the dining room table where my mother, Gabe, and I were standing, though he kept glancing over his shoulder at the television. He didn’t like to be too far away from D.C. if he could help it.

“Yeah.” I turned my focus back to Gabe. “Things have gotten a little complicated with that.” I didn’t elaborate.

“Just as well,” my father continued. “I’m sure Consumer Alliance is anxious to get you back to D.C. and put you to work.”

Bang number five.

“Oh, that’s right,” my mother added with a smile.

“I spoke to Hale from Consumer Alliance just yesterday,” my father continued. “And he filled me in on the job. They’re endorsing McHenry, who supports their new finance-in-energy-security campaign. It’s a wonderful project for you to be involved in, Keegan,” he said as though I needed nothing else in the world but his approval.

Gabe’s focus snapped to me, and her eyes were wide as she stared. My chest tightened painfully.

“It’ll be wonderful to have you home.” My mother’s smile was too cruel, and her eyes flit smugly to Gabe, who was now staring at the top of the dining room table. “You’ve been here entirely too long. You belong in D.C. where your work is.”

I glared at my mother from the corner of my eye, and she shut up instantly. “I need to speak with Gabe. You and Dad should go. I’ll call you in a while.”

My mom looked at Gabe, her eyes narrowing as she focused on her, but then she shrugged mildly. “Very well. You two should come to dinner with Gerald and me tonight. I hear they have a Michelin two-star-rated restaurant downstairs.”

“I really didn’t bring anything appropriate to wear.” Gabe’s voice was quiet. “I wasn’t planning—”

“Nonsense. I’m sure we can find you something at a nearby shop.” My mother’s smile was cool.

My father was wandering toward the living room area again, staring at the TV and changing over to a local newscast, clearly oblivious to what we were discussing at this point, much less the agonizing tension between my mother and Gabe.

“Not tonight. Gabe and I have some things to discuss. It’s just not a good night for us.”

My mom smiled at Gabe. “Your upcoming departure from Chicago, no doubt.”

I slammed my fist on the table. “Goddamn it, Mom!” I yelled before I could control my fury.

Gabe jumped where she stood, gasping, and my mother looked at me, her expression aghast.

But at just that moment, my dad turned toward the table, his mouth open, his eyes wide. For a moment I thought it was shock at my sudden outburst. Hell, I half expected him to lay into me for speaking so harshly to my mother. But then my focus shifted past him to the television, where the very same picture I’d been shown in D.C. was on the screen. It was Gabe and David, side by side at The Peninsula, his arm wrapped lovingly around her waist as they talked to someone. The headline read, Chairman Edgerton Photographed with Prostitute.

Bang number six.

“Dear God,” my father muttered as his attention shifted to Gabe.

My breath left me in a rush, and I reached out to grip the top of the dining room chair sitting in front of me. When I glanced at Gabe, her hand was covering her mouth as she stared wide-eyed at the television screen.

“We bring you a late-breaking exclusive from District 43 today, where political hopeful David Edgerton has just found himself in the midst of a sex scandal. Sources close to the chairman report that Edgerton has been involved with a prostitute for the past couple of months. Images just obtained by KLTV reportedly show the chairman at the recent benefit for performing arts held at The Peninsula hotel alongside the woman he’s alleged to be involved with.

“Sources report the woman in these photographs is St. Mary’s University senior and president of Delta Sigma Epsilon, Gabrielle Kitrick.”

“Oh my God,” Gabe choked out, and then she walked away from us toward my bedroom.

“Chairman Edgerton was seen by many as a strong contender in next year’s senatorial election. Many believed Edgerton had the votes to upset incumbent Bill Rienhardt…”

I turned from the table, following Gabe. When my mom clasped my arm, I stopped still.

“Let go of me.” My lips were pulled back in a snarl, and my mother straightened her shoulders as she released my arm.

I entered my bedroom and shut the door behind me. Gabe was kneeling on the ground, trying desperately to pick up her textbooks, which had clearly spilled from her bag. Her fingers were trembling, and she couldn’t seem to get her hands to function.

I knelt down next to her, reaching for her hands. I held mine over hers, trying to calm her down, and it worked for a moment. She stopped fighting with the bag, and she started to cry. But then, just as quickly as her panic had quieted, fury took over. She shook my hands angrily off hers, and she threw her book bag across the room, screaming through gritted teeth as she did.

“Gabe—”

She shoved me hard, throwing me off balance as I fell, landing on my ass.

“Did you do this?” she yelled, her lips snarling ferociously. “Did you do this to me? Did you?” She was starting to sob out the words, even as she still yelled them. “Did you? Did you?” she shrieked as she hit me on the side of the arm. But her shoulders were starting to shake as the sobs took over again.

“Gabe, I wouldn’t do this to you. You know this wasn’t me. The men I work for did this to discredit David.” I reached for her, but she shoved me away again, and I held my hands up.

She sat on the floor, her chest heaving as she stared at the carpet between us. I could see the gears turning in her mind. Her brain was spinning right now, and she didn’t know up from down. She was falling apart.

“I can’t be here.” She suddenly pushed up from the ground. “You knew,” she said almost absently as she looked around for her purse. She grabbed it off the back of my desk chair where I’d hung it. “You knew.” Her eyes were moving around wildly, bouncing from one thing to another as her brain tried to wrap around what had happened. “You did.” She finally stopped long enough to look at me.

I was pushing myself up from the floor, and I froze in place the moment I was on my feet.

“You said things had gotten complicated with David, so you knew something was going to happen. You said…” She shook her head. “Did you know they were going to do this? Did you know they had that picture?” She pointed toward the living room. Her eyes were huge saucers of panic.

“I…” My mouth tried to work. It trembled, it twitched, and I opened it and closed it, struggling to find the right words. I’d never been at such a loss.

She shook her head in exasperation as she glared at me. “Did you?” she asked incredulously.

I nodded.

“Oh my God.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. “You did know.”

I shook my head. “No. I mean, yes. They showed me the picture, but it was only earlier this week—”

“It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, shoving my hands away from her again as she walked toward the door. “I’m just a casual fuck for you anyway.” And then she made a beeline down the hallway toward the front door.

“That’s not true!” I yelled after her, and then I followed. “Please don’t go. Please…”

She ignored me, even as I pled with her to stay.

“Keegan,” my mother called after me.

“Mom, not now!” I snapped.

“Keegan,” she said louder. “You need to let her go. God willing she’ll get out of this building without being recognized. The last thing you need is to be associated with…with…” My mother was eyeing Gabe venomously, even as Gabe reached for the doorknob.

Gabe stopped, turning back and brushing the tears from her cheeks. “With what?” she asked my mom. “Say it!” she demanded.

My mom remained silent, staring viciously back at Gabe, knowing she didn’t need to say a thing to make clear what she thought of Gabe.

“Hooker?” Gabe asked. “Slut? Prostitute?” Gabe’s lips pulled up in a disturbing smile, even as more tears ran down her cheeks. “How about a good old-fashioned whore? Huh?” She stared at my mom. “At least I’m not a bitch.” Gabe lifted her chin defiantly.

“Now listen here, young lady.” My dad stepped up beside my mother.

Gabe scoffed, yanking open the door angrily and storming out.

I followed, narrowly missing getting my fingers slammed in the door as she yanked it shut behind her.

“Gabe,” I called after her.

She didn’t slow until she’d reached the elevators. Then she had no choice but to deal with me. She slammed her hand on the button, standing back and waiting.

“Damn it, Gabe. Please, listen to me.” My hands were clasped together as I begged her. “I didn’t do this. My bosses did. They—”

She cut me off. “Stop!” She was choking back the tears when she spoke, and she finally looked at me. “You said it yourself. They know about me because of you. It’s you. Don’t you get that? Meeting you…knowing you…becoming involved with you…just destroyed me.” She shrugged in defeat. “I’m pretty sure I knew that was going to happen.” And then she looked at the ground, shaking her head.

I froze, and my mouth dropped open as I stared at her. My eyelids fluttered as I tried to focus, and I just stood there like an ass, saying nothing for entirely too long. “Yeah,” I finally admitted, but my voice was so quiet I wasn’t sure she even heard me.

“I want you to stay away from me.” She stared at me, and when the elevator doors opened, she stepped in and dropped her purse to set at her feet.

The doors started to close, and for half a second, I contemplated ignoring her demand, putting my arm out, stepping in with her, pleading with her, anything at all to stop this. But then I met her eyes. They were blank, and as the doors closed, she shifted her focus to the ground, refusing to look at me.

Bang.

I stood at the elevator for far longer than it likely took her to descend, exit the building, and hail a taxi. I just stood there.

She was right. This was my fault. In some way this entire disaster had somehow been set off because of me. My relationship with Gabe wasn’t the only domino run set up, and the moment we’d started, another run had begun—a run that tipped over into my job duties, bumping them into the Malcolms, who, in turn, hit David. A perfectly destructive run that was always going to happen thanks to what I’d started with Gabe.

I staggered back to the condo, and before I entered, I took a deep breath. I pushed the door open, my jaw tight and my anger a tightly wound rubber band ready to snap. I was all sorts of furious right now.

When I entered the kitchen, my parents were standing at the table.

“Well, I’m glad to see you let her go. Keegan, you have to be mindful of your reputation.”

I let her spew her toxic bullshit, glaring at her coldly.

“You may not be as visible as Chairman Edgerton.” My father sneered as he said the name. “But that does not mean you can afford to be so careless with your image.”

They both looked at me, waiting for a reaction. I couldn’t imagine what reaction they were expecting, certainly not the one I intended to give them.

“Get out,” I said quietly as I stared at the top of the dining room table.

My father gaped at me. “Excuse me?” his voice bellowed out.

I glanced up to see my mom’s hand on his arm, her way of calming him when she thought he was getting too worked up. “Son, we only worry…”

I nodded, my lips pursing for a moment in mock consideration. “Yes, you do. You always have. Sadly, you’ve never actually worried about the right things. Just once I wish your concern could have been for something that truly mattered to me, like…my happiness, my peace of mind, my wants, my wishes, my interests, my…” I shook my head. “Gabe. Because, while you spend your time thinking about all those things that don’t truly matter”—my voice was breaking over the words—“I’m going to be thinking about her and all the damage I’m responsible for. I mean it. I want you out.”

I walked toward the door, and when I reached it, I stood there patiently waiting for them to follow. They eventually did. My mom was pulling her coat on as she walked, and my father was helping her into it. They weren’t looking at me. They were ignoring me completely actually, and when they reached the door, I pulled it open for them. The moment they walked through, I shut it behind them.

I walked to my bedroom, and I stood at the windows for a long time staring out. I finally sank to the floor, sitting in the exact place I’d made love to Gabe the morning before. Hell, I’d had her twice on this floor. What I hadn’t had was anywhere close to enough of her. I no longer actually thought there was enough with us.

I let my forehead sink to the glass, and I closed my eyes as the cool hard surface touched my skin. She’d been nothing but a beautiful little toy the first time I’d met her. I hadn’t stopped for even one moment to consider that there might be something beneath the pretty surface. I’d used her like a prop, a tool, a toy, a thing I could play with and benefit from. It was no wonder her world had fallen apart on her when she’d made the decision to subject herself to men like me.

I was as much a threat to her as anyone. She’d told me that once. She’d been right. I simply hadn’t listened.

Chapter 16

Gabrielle

KEEGAN started calling me within minutes of my climbing onto the bus. I ignored my phone, letting it vibrate in my hand over and over, and I stared out the window. I was a mess, and the only thing I could think to be thankful for at the moment was the fact I’d not worn mascara or eyeliner. Of course I hadn’t. I was pretending to be something other than a whore today, and the only time I ever cared to wear makeup was when I was working. Shame on me.

The lady sitting next to me handed me a tissue, smiling sweetly at me. I thanked her, trying to smile, but tears just ended up falling instead. I looked back out the window. I waited for the tears to pass and the constant waves of emotion to settle down, and I called Jessa.

“Whatup, shithead.”

My lips flinched. It was as close to a smile as I could get, but even the sound of Jessa’s oh-so-familiar attitude made my throat constrict again and more tears well up in my eyes.

“Hey, kiddo. Is there any way you can pick me up? I’m on my way back from Chicago, and I need to run home and get some clothes, but I was thinking maybe I could come home for the weekend.”

Jessa snorted. “You said you were spending the weekend with Keegan, so wha’d shit dick do to screw it up this time?”

I sniffed my nose. “I just really want to come home.” I bit into my thumbnail, my lips already trembling again. “I’ll talk to you about it when I see you.”

Jessa was quiet for a moment. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll leave now. I should get there about the same time as you. I’ll just meet you at the house.”

“Great. Thanks.” I disconnected after that and settled back in my seat, resting the side of my head against the back of the seat and angling my face toward the window. I closed my eyes.

“You’ve always been so good with her.” My mom’s voice was weak, but her lips were still pulled up in a smile. “I know you’ll look after her. You always have.” Her hand clasped on mine, her grip just as weak as her voice was. “Just don’t forget to take care of yourself too.” She nodded.

I nodded too.

I sucked in a quick, panicked breath as I sat bolt upright. I looked around, confused for a moment as I tried to wake up. My phone was vibrating in my hand. I looked down, and my heart raced when I saw Keegan’s name pop up.

But I didn’t answer.

“Are you all right?” I turned toward the woman who’d given me a tissue earlier. I was still clutching it in my hands even now.

“Oh, yes.” I nodded, turning back toward the window again.

Just don’t forget to take care of yourself too.

How had I forgotten that part?

My phone started vibrating in my hand again, and I turned it off.

And then I stared out the window some more.

By the time the cab was pulling up outside my sorority house, I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t typically take a cab from the bus station, not when the number 12 bus would take me within three blocks of my house, but I didn’t want to wait thirty-five minutes for the next bus.

I paid the cab driver, who was watching me concernedly, and he smiled nervously as I stepped out. I took a deep breath, staring up at my house. It was pushing seven-thirty, and it was dark out. With any luck, most of the girls would be out for the night, doing all those things college girls liked to do on a Friday night. I wasn’t one of those girls anymore. I hadn’t been for a very long time.

When I entered, I didn’t bother looking into the living room to see who was there. The TV was on, so clearly someone was. I just didn’t want to see who, nor did I want to see what they were watching. I hopped the steps two at a time, and when I entered my room, I shut the door and locked it.

I knew in that moment that this wasn’t going to be my home anymore. I had no idea what was going to happen when I walked out those doors, but for whatever reason, I knew this couldn’t be my life any longer.

I turned slowly in a circle as my brain tried to wrap around the notion that something big in my life was ending. And when the roof of my mouth started to ache as though the tears weren’t far away, I shook my head and inhaled deeply. “Fuck it,” I muttered, and I quickly walked to my closet, grabbing a bag.

I crammed clothes into the bag. It had been stupid to leave my duffel bag at Keegan’s. It had been stupid to leave my books there too. But when one was panicking in the way I was, it just didn’t serve to do so with bags over your shoulders. Having a meltdown and running out on Keegan would have been almost comically ridiculous with a duffel bag over my shoulder.

When there was a knock on my door, I paused, saying nothing.

“It’s me.”

I opened the door, peeking out at Jessa. Her face was grim, her brow furrowed, and when her eyes shifted to stare at my neck, there was no question in my mind. She knew.

I pulled the door open farther, unable to look at her any better than she was able to look at me.

“I got a call from Desi’s mom when I was on my way here talking about some fucking news story. What the hell, Gabe?” she hissed as she pushed past me. She was suddenly moving fast. “A van from one of the news stations just pulled up out front.” She moved to my window, peeking between the blinds. “We have to get you out of here.”

My heart was racing again, and the panic was creeping into my blood once more. God, was this day ever going to end?

I ran into my bathroom, grabbing my toothbrush and deodorant, and when I returned to my room, I narrowly managed to get them into the bag before Jessa zipped it up, and before I knew what was happening, she was opening my bedroom door. I wasn’t ready for this.

I could hear Casey talking to someone from the entryway, and there was only one stairway down, and it happened to take us to that very entryway. Jessa grabbed my hand, pulling me down the stairs. Every part of me wanted to put on the brakes.

“Fuck,” she muttered as we walked. “Put your coat over your head.”

Casey’s voice was suddenly cut off when the reporter spotted us. It was a blonde woman, beautiful and tall, and she pushed past Casey with her microphone out in front of her when we hit the bottom of the stairs.

It’s odd that in the pandemonium that ensued I can actually recall thinking how stupid people looked with coats draped over their heads. It was this strange image that anyone in contemporary times knew. The criminal, the crook, the accused just loved to hide behind a coat, and they always, always, looked ridiculous. And yet, when the microphone was thrust in my face as I followed Jessa through the small crowd of girls gathered inside the entryway, I instantly pulled my arms from my coat and draped it straight the fuck over my head, joining the ranks of those disreputable people who had come before me.

I stared down, watching my feet and the heels of Jessa’s sneakers in front of me. We stepped over the threshold to the large porch, and the activity around us followed. The voices were too many to sort out.

“Ms. Kitrick… Ms. Kitrick… Will you comment on the allegations…” and then the voice was muffled by more clamor.

“It’s so cool…” one of my housemates started to say.

“I just can’t believe…”

“Eh… Not surprising in the least,” Casey added to the jumble of voices.

When Jessa suddenly stopped, I ran into the back of her, and I reached out, clutching the back of her coat.

“Shut the fuck up, you stupid cow,” Jessa snapped at Casey.

It was a chorus of gasps I heard then, and I shut my eyes. I nudged her, prodding her forward.

“God, what the hell is wrong with you fucking people?” Jessa was losing her cool, but her feet started moving again. “And get that goddamned camera out of my face.”

Oh yes, I indeed understood why people hid under their coats. This was horrifying. This was like being naked. This was worse than being naked. It was like being naked while the world laughed at you. I gritted my teeth, wanting to fall apart again, but I clung to Jessa’s jacket instead, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other as she led the way to her car.

She helped me climb in, and I didn’t bother pulling the coat from over my head until I could feel the tires moving. And then I sat there, my mouth hanging open as I stared out the front window. I was more relieved than I realized I could be, and yet, I was devastated too.

Jessa glanced at me as she drove us toward Waterville. “Are you going to talk to me now?”

I nodded. I was starting to feel numb, blessedly numb. I needed to be numb.

“I made a mistake.” I didn’t bother looking at her when I spoke, but when she reached over and took my hand, I covered my eyes with my free hand and I wept. I cried as if I’d been holding back the tears since the day I embarked on this disaster, and in truth, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I’d been doing—stifling the feelings, stifling the pain of what I was doing. Keegan had been right. Life had become this pretend thing to me, and I’d used him to make it go away for a while.

But there were no more coping mechanisms left.

When the tears finally dried up, I opened my mouth, and I talked. I talked, and I talked, and kept talking until we were within a mile of Waterville.

“You mean that douche nugget piece of shit was your client?”

“I… Jessa, I think there’s a bigger story here than—”

“That piece of shit,” she muttered. “I mean, yeah. You’re right.” She shook her head. “But that piece of shit.”

“No. I don’t think he is actually. Or maybe he is…” My brow scrunched as I tried to work through the details. I had no idea what Keegan was at this point.

Jessa glanced at me, rolling her eyes.

“He didn’t leak the picture. It wouldn’t serve his purpose.”

“Serve his purpose?” She practically yelled the question at me. “His purpose should have been you.”

I sighed. “Yeah.”

I looked around as we drove. It was just a small place. A simple place. There wasn’t much prettiness to it. You couldn’t find an evening gown in this whole town I bet, aside from the old prom dresses hanging in the closets. I liked it here. But I also hated it here.

The small hospital we were passing was the very one where I’d said goodbye to our mother. The school we passed next was the one I’d attended from the time I was in kindergarten to twelfth grade. I was a good student, one of the best. But that was just a memory now of some other girl. That other girl had different dreams than I had. The most I wanted out of life was to survive it. But she’d had real dreams. She wanted to help people when she grew up; she wanted to get married; she wanted to have children, a nice home, a decent car, a good job.

There was living, and there was surviving. That girl with her simple dreams wanted to live. I just wanted to survive, and if asked why I cared to, I’m not sure I could answer. Keegan was right. I was so broken.

“Can you forgive me?”

Jessa had just pulled into her parking spot. It was just a small fourplex that she lived in—simple, basic. She looked at me, and she shrugged. “I don’t know, Gabe.” She shook her head. “See…” She looked away and sighed. “I just feel like…like you’re stealing my thunder.”

Sometimes her sarcasm could sneak up on even me. “Uh…”

“I was going to open a brothel in the basement, like…two weeks from now. And”—she shook her head again—“now I just feel like folks are gonna know prostitution is illegal. It’s going to be bad for my business.” Her tone was so serious and concerned.

“Prostitution has always been illegal.”

“Yeah, but people didn’t know it was,” she said defensively. Jessa was damn good at this.

“No, they did actually. Everyone knows…”

“Eh.” She shrugged dismissively. She finally smiled at me, letting go of the bullshit. “You don’t have to be perfect for me to love you any more than I’ve ever had to be perfect for you to love me.”

“I’m sorry. People are going to…talk.”

“Uh, you mean like Casey? Yeah. I swear to God that bitch was pulling lipstick out of her pocket, readying her ugly-ass face for the camera.”

“Oh God…” I sighed. “I’m gonna be one of those weirdos on TV with a coat over my head.”

“Are you kidding? They can’t air that shit. I dropped enough F-bombs it would be one long beeeeeeeeeep.”

“Yeah. We need to talk about your language, by the way.” I actually managed to smile at her.

“Sure. Me and my bad language will get in line after you and your prostitution. We’ll see which of us comes out…” But then her words trailed of, and she looked at me. “So…could you be arrested for this?”

I sighed. “Yeah. I suppose maybe I could be. I don’t know what to expect. Expulsion from school, from my sorority for sure. Maybe arrest. I really don’t know.”

I figured out at least part of those questions soon after we walked inside. I didn’t really want to turn my phone back on because I didn’t want to have to deal with Keegan. I didn’t want to hear his voice in my messages. He was right. I was the queen of ostrich-style defenses. I preferred to walk the other way, hide under the covers, pretend my problems didn’t exist, hell, pretend he didn’t exist.

I suspected Keegan was the opposite. I’d liked that about him. He didn’t seem afraid of the world in the way I was. Of course, I still thought like a child in many ways in that regard. Oh, the big bad grownups might catch me being naughty. But not Keegan. Not even his parents could intimidate him. It hadn’t escaped my attention that his sole reaction to the news story had related to me, not his parents, not what they would or could think of either him or me. He just thought about me, and yet, this all somehow stemmed from him too. It was entirely too confusing.

Regardless, my phone had messages, and a few of them were not from him. There were three messages from numbers I didn’t recognize that had Milwaukee prefixes, and I was guessing they were going to be important. I sank down to sit on the side of Jessa’s bed, and I held my breath when I hit play on the first one.

“This message is for Gabrielle Kitrick. This is St. Mary’s University President Donna Lang. In light of the allegations of grievous misconduct that have been brought to our attention, the student conduct board will be holding a disciplinary hearing next Tuesday at eight-thirty in the morning. Your attendance is mandatory, and should you fail to appear, the board will be forced to recommend immediate dismissal. You are welcome to bring a student or faculty advisor with you if you choose. While we understand that the…issue is ongoing and, to my understanding, no criminal charges have yet been filed, the university has chosen to act swiftly for the benefit of our entire student body. The panel will be making their recommendations based on their findings after the disciplinary hearing. Should additional information come to light after that decision has been made, you will have the right of appeal. Please contact the school before the end of the day Monday if you have any questions related to the disciplinary hearing process. Additional information on the process can be found in your student handbook.”

My heart was pounding by the time the message ended, and moments later, when I hit play on the second message from another unknown Milwaukee prefix, it sped up again.

“Hi, Gabe. This is Professor Carmichael. I hope I’m not being too intrusive to reach out to you during this difficult time, but I was just made aware of your disciplinary hearing next Tuesday morning. I’d like to offer to be your advisor during the hearing if that would be okay with you. I’m not able to direct you in any way or interfere with the questions the panel asks you, but I am allowed to make a statement in support of you, and I’d really like the opportunity to do so. Please call or email me. I will plan to attend on Tuesday morning, but the hearing is closed, so you’ll need to notify the school prior to Tuesday if you accept my offer, or I won’t be granted admittance. Please let me know if you need anything.”

And the final message.

“This is Candace Evers, Membership Committee Chairperson of Delta Sigma Epsilon. I’m calling to inform you that the membership committee has decided to place you on interim suspension due to recently discovered information linking you to behaviors that are non-compliant with our member code of conduct. You will receive an official letter from the charter outlining the reasons and additional information about your membership options, including the documentation you will need to complete and return to us should you choose to resign your membership and office during the course of our investigation into this matter. District Representative Carla Klein will be monitoring the progress and outcome of your upcoming disciplinary hearing, at which point she will make her recommendation to the committee regarding any possible disciplinary action up to and including permanent expulsion. You are expected to surrender your official membership certificate, card, and all insignia items. You must also remove yourself and your personal possessions from the Delta Sigma Epsilon property before the end of the month. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.”

I stared around at Jessa’s disastrously messy room, clueless as to what I was supposed to do with myself. There were too many moving parts, too many pieces to a puzzle I wasn’t sure were even supposed to fit together. And it felt exhausting just thinking at this point.

Jessa came in, sitting beside me and putting her arm around my shoulder.

“Disciplinary hearing on Tuesday morning, kicked out of my sorority, but hey, Professor Carmichael offered to be my advisor for the hearing, so at least I have his support I suppose.”

“Well, you have my support too. I’ll go with you to the hearing, and I’ll tell them they’re making a mistake if they—”

I chuckled mirthlessly. “No, you won’t. You’ll go to school just as you would any other day.”

“You need me there, Gabe.”

I smiled at her, tucking her stringy dark hair behind her ear. “I will always need you. I will need you for the rest of my life. But right now, I need your life to keep moving forward, even though mine is not.”

Her shoulders slumped. She was sulking.

“Besides”—I nudged her—“your sort of support would likely come off threateningly.” I smirked at her, and then I sighed. This day was almost over. It had to be. No day had ever been longer, and I almost felt happy, or perhaps just relieved, that it was dark out and I was somewhere safe and loved.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” Jessa said defensively.

“Oh, you don’t?”

She shrugged.

“It’s a closed hearing anyway. You’d just be waiting.” I stood from the bed, and after rooting around in my bag and pulling out a pair of leggings and a T-shirt, I headed toward the bathroom to take a shower.

I stood under the hot water, and I closed my eyes as I yawned. I showered quickly, craving a warm bed above all else, and I pulled my clean clothes on over still-damp skin before pulling my hair up. Jessa was in bed when I walked back into her room.

“I still can’t believe how fast the good news has traveled,” I commented as I crawled into bed next to her. I laughed quietly, even though it wasn’t in the least funny.

Jessa rolled toward me. “Your picture was on the news…with your name…with a damn near complete bio, at least according to Desi’s mom, who called me in a panic. And…uh…Casey-the-Cunt now knows too, so you can’t be that surprised the news is traveling.”

“Yeah. You’re right,” I agreed. I closed my eyes, not really intending to fall asleep, but not at all opposed to it at the moment either.

“You’re…not going to do it again, are you?”

I opened my eyes. “Do what?”

“You know, sleep with men for money?”

I shook my head as I yawned. “No. Believe it or not, I already quit. Earlier this week actually. And I haven’t slept with any clients since…well, since I met Keegan.”

“But Keegan was a client, so weren’t you sleeping with a client this whole time?”

“No. Not really, no. He was…” I shrugged. “He was interference. He wanted me to stay away from David Edgerton because he was concerned about David’s image and what could happen if…well, if this happened.”

“So he was using you.” Her expression looked nearly venomous. She definitely did not like Mr. Keegan Lauri at this point, nice car or not.

I took a deep breath. “Yes. At first, but then…things changed. At least I thought they did. Maybe they did.” I shook my head. “I’m so confused about him at this point. What he did, what he didn’t do, what he knew, what he didn’t know. I swear I can’t keep up with it all.”

“But you’re upset with him, right?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but then I closed it again, trying to put my thoughts into words before sharing them. “I’m not really sure I am. Part of me thinks none of this would have happened if it weren’t for him. But then part of me worries none of this would have happened if it weren’t for him.”

Jessa nodded.

“At the end of the day…it doesn’t matter. He has a job based out of Washington—a very profitable one. He has a home there. He has a life. Edgerton was just”—I shrugged—“a job to him. That job’s over, and I’m now as much a liability to Keegan’s reputation as he was to my livelihood. Trust me, his parents made that perfectly clear.”

Jessa’s faced scrunched up. “Parents?”

“Yeah. It was bad.”

She nodded slowly, but I could tell she had more to say.

“What?”

“What, what?”

“What are you not saying?”

“Just curious if Keegan would agree with that. You know, that you’re a liability to him.”

“But you’re mad at Keegan, right?” My words came out slowly as my eyes narrowed. I had no real idea where she was going with this.

“Of course I am. I hate him.” She was silent for a moment. “You know I was going through your phone when you were in the shower—”

“What? Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m a total snoop,” she said bluntly. “I mean I’m nosy as hell.”

“Jessa, do you have no respect for my privacy?”

“Uh…I’m seventeen. So to answer your question…no. Like none whatsoever. Duh.” She shook her head as though exasperated with me. “Anyway, I saw how many messages he left you.”

I rolled my eyes.

“And then…well, then I listened to them.”

“Jessa!” I snapped loudly at her.

“What?”

“You’re incorrigible!”

She smiled. “I know, right? Thank you for noticing. But here’s the thing…” She pushed up to her elbow as though just a bit too worked up about something to be lying down. “He seemed really upset. So, like, I wanna cut his balls off, but at the same time, I kind of feel sorry for the loser, you know?” She hummed as she stared off for a second in contemplation. Her contemplation was really just deciding what kind of ridiculousness she was going to say next. “I think he cares about you.” Her voice was hesitant, as though she was not entirely sure she liked the words she was saying.

Well, I’d pegged that one wrong. Her contemplation was actually real contemplation. Maybe my sister was capable of having a normal conversation. What the hell was the world coming to?

“But I don’t know.” She flopped back down beside me. “Maybe he was just constipated, and that’s why he sounded so serious.”

Never mind.

I rolled my eyes. In truth, I was relieved. My sister was being my sister, sarcastic and ridiculous to a fault. I was rolling my eyes just the way I was required as her older sister to do. The world was clearly just as it should be.

I rolled away from her, curling up on my side and pulling the blankets up to my chin. “What did he say?” I closed my eyes.

“Well, he clearly has an unhealthy fascination with your lips or maybe it’s kissing you in general.”

I smiled. “Yes,” I said quietly.

“Basically, he just begged you to call him and apologized profusely for what was happening. He also said he was worried about you, and he needed to know you were okay.” She sighed. “And then he asked you to tell me that I can have his car.”

I chuckled. “Sure he did.”

Chapter 17

Keegan

IF you’d told me that I’d find myself driving slowly through the streets of Waterville, Wisconsin, on a Saturday evening two months ago, I’d have laughed at you and asked what you were smoking. If you’d have told me that little trip was going to be preceded with me packing up all my clothes and office equipment from my condo because my contract with the illusive Malcolms had been prematurely terminated, I’d have likely gotten offended and, once again, asked what you were smoking. And finally, if you’d have told me that I’d be doing all of this because I’d become overly attached to a college student who liked to moonlight as a call girl, I might have finally been done with your bullshit and punched you in the face. And I’d have likely still asked you what you were smoking.

What I wouldn’t have done was believe you.

Waterville. There wasn’t a whole lot to say about Waterville except…no, there was really just nothing at all to say about it. I turned up and down the streets one after another. It wasn’t a large town, and yes, I was just desperate enough that I was willing to drive every street like a psychopath until I found Jessa’s car. It was an older model Honda Accord made out of rust and a bit of white paint. It couldn’t possibly be that hard to find, but I was still freaking out thanks to the fast setting sun.

It took me less than twenty minutes to find the car, and I pulled up in front of a small building that looked more like a house than an apartment building, but it was definitely the place. There were four parking spots in total and a sign indicating that parking was for tenants only. This had to be it. I grabbed Gabe’s duffel bag and book bag from the backseat of my car, and then I jogged up to the front door.

When I entered, I found a half-flight of stairs going up and another going down. It was a fourplex. The mailboxes were labeled with nothing more than the unit numbers. I ran down the stairs first, staring at the doors. There were no names there either, and I ran upstairs next, hoping for a clue as to what door Gabe would be behind. And that’s when I saw it.

BEWARE OF GUARD FISH

The sign was displayed prominently on the door of unit three. I knocked, knowing full well whose door I was knocking on.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in.” Jessa smirked at me. “You’re not our favorite person anymore.”

I sighed. “I need to see her.”

“She’s not in great shape right now. After getting a call from David Edgerton earlier today, more or less threatening her to keep her mouth shut and telling her what a dumb fuck you are, followed by more news coverage showing Casey-the-Cunt shaming her on the five o’clock news, I’d say her threshold for bullshit is wearing thin.”

I looked down at the floor and nodded. “David called her?”

Jessa shrugged mildly and then walked away, leaving the door open. I set Gabe’s bags down just inside the door and followed Jessa down a short hallway to the small living room. Gabe was sitting on the sofa with a glass of red wine in her hand. Her eyes were lazy, and she looked too relaxed as she looked up at me. She was wearing a light yellow floral sundress, a thick cardigan, and equally thick wool socks on her feet. Her hair was up in a messy bun, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her eyes were puffy and her skin splotchy. Pretty much, she looked stunningly beautiful and sweet in that hellish sort of way.

Jessa collapsed at the opposite end of the couch, grabbing an open carton of ice cream that had the handle of a spoon sticking out of it from the side table. “We’re just sitting here celebrating this amazing thing called life,” Jessa said sarcastically. “I’m binge eating ice cream ’cause, let’s face it, my seventeen-year-old metabolism can handle it. Fatty here”—she cocked a thumb in Gabe’s direction—“is hitting the wine ’cause, ya know, it’s heart healthy, and we’re all about clean living around here.” She tipped her ice cream spoon toward me.

I didn’t say anything. I just stared at Gabe, who was watching me calmly—too calmly. This wasn’t my Gabe. When my Gabe was pissed at me, she didn’t fail to show it. I might not have known her that long, but that did not mean I didn’t know her. And this wasn’t the Gabe I’d come to know. This Gabe appeared too drunk to give a shit. I wasn’t quite sure how to handle this Gabe.

Jessa nodded slowly as she stared awkwardly between Gabe and me. “Okay…well, I’m going to take the dog for a walk.” She stood back up, looking around absently. “Well, shit,” she muttered. “I don’t have a dog.”

When she took my keys from my hand, I let her. “I’ll just be outside sitting in your car.”

I moved to an old brown armchair nearby and sat down. “Are you drunk?” I studied the way her eyes watched me. They weren’t bright, wide, and vibrant the way they usually were.

She nodded lazily. “Yep.” She let the “P” pop off her lips.

“Has the press reached out to you?”

“Ah…that’s what you really want to know, isn’t it?” she said coldly. “What I’ve said—”

“I couldn’t care less,” I snapped back. “You can tell them anything you want. I just want to know how you’re doing. They can be ruthless and—”

She laughed. “Ruthless,” she repeated. “Some would say the same of you.”

“Like you?”

She nodded slowly. “I was thinking more along the lines of David.” She was silent for a moment as she watched me. “You know he reached out to me this morning.” Her eyebrows shot up. “He didn’t paint the most flattering picture of you.”

“Of course he didn’t. He’s jealous.”

“Oh, I think he has more important things on his mind than jealously at this point. He’s convinced you’re the one who leaked the photograph.” Her eyes narrowed. “Would you do that, I wonder?” Her head cocked to the side as she focused on me. “You said it was your bosses, but”—she shrugged—“who knows?”

“You know I wouldn’t.”

She hummed, and her lips pulled up in a sly, almost cruel smile. When she stood, she set the glass of wine on the coffee table. She walked toward me slowly, her gait languid and loose. My heart started racing the closer she got to me, and when she was standing in front of me, looking down on me, my chest started rising and falling quickly.

“Why are you here?” She bit into the side of her lower lip seductively. And when she planted her knee at my hip, I gripped the wide upholstered arms of the chair, bearing down on them as my muscles tensed.

“Gabe…” I could barely get her name out, and when she planted her other knee beside my other hip, I stopped breathing. She sank to sit on my lap.

“Are you going to let me use you? Is that why you came?” She leaned forward, bringing her face closer to mine. “Of course it is. You like to be used, don’t you?” Her voice was sing-songy and cool. “You like to use me too, don’t you?” Her hips moved as she ground her pussy against the front of my jeans.

I didn’t want my body to respond. I truly wanted to refuse what she was doing, but I moaned as I felt her heat through my clothes.

“We’re beyond this, Gabe.” I reached for her hips, stopping the slow, sultry motion.

Her lips pulled up slightly in a haunting, barely-there smile. “Maybe you are. But I need my whore. Be my whore,” she whispered.

My breath left me in a rush, and my hold on her hips loosened. The pressure against my body started building again as she moved once more, and with it, my need for release escalated too.

“Don’t you want to touch me?” Her eyes glistened.

“You know I do,” I said quietly.

“Don’t you want to put your fingers inside me?” When her hand clasped mine, which was still holding her hip, I let her pull it away. She pushed my hand between her legs, and I felt the warmth on my fingers as they brushed and touched her underwear. “Please.” Her hand held mine in place, tightening on my wrist as if desperate.

“Gabe—”

“Please,” she said again as a tear slipped from her eye and trickled down her cheek.

I slipped my hand over the top of her underwear. I was screaming inside my head—screaming at the top of my lungs at myself to stop. But my fingers moved, giving her what she wanted. Her cum covered my fingers, and I sank two all the way inside as her back arched and she groaned.

Her hips moved as she ground herself on my fingers, and I watched her, knowing I was doing something wrong, knowing this wasn’t right. I used my free hand to pull her cardigan and the thin strap of her sundress off her shoulder. I yanked them down until her breast was visible. Her back was still arched, and her tit was a small round mound of flesh, her nipple a tightened, aroused bud. I bit it, letting my teeth press into her flesh, and she cried out as her hips still moved.

I sucked hard, and I pulled my fingers from her pussy for a moment, forcing three inside with the next penetration. It was tight, damn near too tight, but she still ground herself against my hand, groaning as her hips moved. When she finally lowered her head to look at me, she released her grip on my wrist and clutched the chair back. I pulled back too, leaving her breast glistening from my mouth. Her hips moved faster, and she brought her face closer to mine.

I tried to kiss her, but she angled away from my mouth. When I tried again, she dodged it once more. Her hips moved faster still, her pussy tightening on my fingers as she rode my body hard. This was so fucking wrong, and the fact that she wouldn’t let me kiss her was all the proof I needed that this wasn’t okay. When I tried and failed yet again to get my lips on hers, I started to panic.

“Stop,” I hissed, but her hips didn’t slow. I pulled my hand from between her legs, and she cried out as my fingers left her. “Goddamn it, Gabe.”

I reached for her cheek, cupping it and letting my wet fingers brush her soft skin. I pulled her mouth to mine, and I kissed her gently. The recognizable fit of our lips calmed the panic that had been racing through me, and for a moment, I thought maybe this was okay. But then her shoulders started to shake, and she began to cry. She struggled, pushing against my chest until her lips were torn from mine. She pushed so hard she toppled to the floor, her legs splayed apart, her dress barely hiding her underwear. She sat there panting as she stared at my chest, and I leaned forward, planting my elbows on my knees and covering my mouth as I watched her.

“You fucking whore,” she hissed.

“Gabe—”

“No!” she snapped furiously. “Why are you here?” She sneered at me. “Don’t you know you’re willingly jeopardizing that precious reputation of yours?” she spat out.

“Wantonly,” I whispered.

She nodded, even as more tears glossed over her eyes. “Your fucking dominoes,” she murmured, her anger from moments before seemingly deflated and defeated.

I shrugged, biting the inside of my lip to keep them from trembling. She looked as though she was in hell, drowning her sorrow in a bottle of cheap red, bouncing from one emotional peak to another in mere seconds, and coming on to me in some desperate attempt to…to do what? Objectify me? Hurt me? Maybe just use me. But she was hurting. I knew what her pain looked like, and I could nearly feel it now.

“Yep.” I barely got the word out. “Such a beautiful run.”

Her lips pulled up slightly for a moment before falling into a grim, unreadable line. “Fell apart in the end.”

“I don’t think so—”

“I do,” she said flatly, and she stared up at me as if challenging me to disagree with her. She touched her lower lip, her attention shifting away from me. “You were right.” Her focus was distant, and her voice nearly whimsical as she spoke. “Our lips could make the world disappear.” A tear ran down her cheek again, and when she looked back at me, she brushed it away. “But it was just pretend. The world didn’t go anywhere,” she whispered.

She sat there in a stupor. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to hold her, talk to her, comfort her, kiss her. I wanted to do all the things she thought were so pretend, but she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to understand the realness of those things right now.

“Get out,” she finally said, her voice dead and cold.

I shook my head.

“Go home,” she tried again. When I still didn’t move, she continued. “Don’t you get it? This little run of ours should never have started.” She shook her head as she watched me.

My throat was tight. “I don’t believe that.”

“Go home, Keegan.”

I shook my head.

“Please,” she begged. “Just let me get over you.” Tears fell down her cheeks, and her lips trembled as much as mine. “Please,” she said again, her face twisted in pain.

I just stared at her. I wanted to argue. I wanted to fight. I wanted to flat-out tell her no. The last thing in the world I wanted her to do was get over me because there was no chance I could get over her. But her light was as dead on this day as it had been on the day before. The world had run her through a meat grinder, and what was left couldn’t handle me anymore.

She sat slack on the floor, and after a while, I nodded. “I’m sorry,” I croaked out as my voice broke over the words. I watched her for an incredibly long time, saying nothing. “Your heart is a fragile thing.” I sniffed my nose, brushing a tear from my cheek. “I wasn’t gentle enough with it. I know that now.”

Her shoulders shook as she started to cry again, and she covered her eyes.

I took a deep breath and stood up. She wasn’t going to stop me from walking away this time. I knew that. She’d been through too much to try again. And I was linked to every last awful thing she’d endured in the past couple months. It didn’t really matter anymore that I was linked to the good things too. I’d entered her life too thoughtlessly, too callously, too selfishly, and try as I might to undo that, I’d just never succeeded.

I walked out, and when the door closed behind me, I heard her break down in sobs. I reached to the wall beside me, clutching at it as every muscle in my body tensed painfully. I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth and trying to breathe, even though my lungs wouldn’t move. She wanted to get over me because I was synonymous with pain in her eyes. At the end of the day I was no better and no worse than the Davids of the world. Talk about painful.

I found Jessa sitting in the passenger seat of my car, with the engine running and the radio on. I climbed in next to her, and she looked over at me. “Did you screw that up?”

I nodded. “Afraid so.”

“She doesn’t trust you. You know that, right?”

My brow flinched. Yes. I knew that. She likely never had.

“She doesn’t trust any of you.”

“Any of us? What does that—?”

“You know. You folk with dangly bits.”

I scowled at her. “Dangly bits?”

She nodded. “A penis,” she said as though I was an idiot. “I mean, penai…you know, the plural form of the…you probably don’t know that though ’cause you’re not really very smart.”

“That’s not…true. That’s not the plural…”

“It is,” she said plainly. “But it’s not the point.” She was silent for a moment. “You know, since Mom died, she’s had…no one.” She looked at me, her face serious as she studied me. “Maybe even before that,” she said distantly. “I mean, she has me, but I’m not enough. I’m just a kid. I can’t…fix things for her, help her, fight for her. I can’t do anything for her.” She took a deep breath as her focus shifted out the window. “I used to tell her she was old beyond her years.” The corner of Jessa’s lip pulled up. “She was too. Always so serious, so concerned, worried about…everything—me, Mom, the bills, grades. She was never a kid like me. She couldn’t be. And then Mom died, and her one source of support, the one person who was supposed to take care of her and tell her everything was going to be okay, was gone.” She shook her head when she looked back at me. “And things weren’t okay. Not for her at least. You know I never worried about life because I knew Gabe would take care of me.” Her lips pursed as her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t suppose she ever had anyone there to take care of her, to make her feel safe like that.” She tried to smile, but her lips trembled, and her tears fell. It was a strange thing seeing Jessa cry.

“I want to take care of her, Jessa.” I glanced at her beside me. “But I don’t think she’s going to let me do that.”

“So, that’s it, huh?” She brushed a tear away as she studied me. She wasn’t being sarcastic. She wasn’t even disagreeing. She just needed to hear me say it.

I didn’t want to say it.

I sighed and stared down at my lap. “At some point, I have to accept that I bring her more pain than comfort.” My throat constricted around the words. “I can’t continue to ignore her when she tells me to stay away from her.” I finally looked up, glancing at Jessa but looking away quickly.

She nodded as she sat there silently for a few moments, and then she reached for the door handle. “So you know she has a disciplinary hearing Tuesday morning at school?”

I shook my head. “When?”

“Eight-thirty. And she got shit-canned from her sorority, not that that’s the worst thing that could ever happen,” she muttered. “I mean, who gives a shit, right?”

“I’m guessing she does.” I ran my hand through my hair. “Fuck.”

“It’s a closed hearing, so no one can go with her, but one of her professors has asked to be her advisor, so she won’t be there alone.” Jessa started to climb out.

I nodded. “What professor?” I was curious if it was the one Gabe liked so much. She’d mentioned him a time or two a few days before when we’d reviewed her syllabi, and I couldn’t help but hope it was him.

“I don’t know… Carbunkle, Caramel, Carpet, Carport. His name has a car in it.”

“Carmichael. That’s good. She likes him.”

“Listen, I gotta go. My ice cream is melting.”

“Yeah. She’s not doing so well. She probably shouldn’t be alone. I should give you my number in case you need to reach—”

“Don’t bother. I already took it out of Gabe’s phone so I could send you text messages telling you how much I hate you.”

“Ah…I look forward to it.” I glanced around. “Will you please call me if you’re worried about her?”

“I’m always worried about her.”

“I mean it, Jessa.”

“Yes, I’ll call you if I need to.”

I nodded. Jessa ran toward the front door and disappeared inside. I sat there for a few minutes. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to be more than a few feet from Gabe right now. But something about being close to me was driving her insane.

I drove the three and a half hours back to Chicago, arriving well after midnight. I didn’t go to Trump Tower because, when I’d left earlier in the day, I’d left with all my belongings neatly packed in my suitcases or tucked away in a couple of boxes. The only remaining items in the condo were those things that had simply come with the lease and two sealed boxes of documents that were going to be couriered to David’s office on Monday.

I checked into the Peninsula, and as the desk clerk clacked away on her keyboard, I looked around the open lobby, getting swept away by my memories.

“Is room 511 vacant?” I asked on a whim.

The woman’s clacking paused, and I stared at her as she looked back. She was annoyed with me. I could tell by the flaring nostrils and overly firm smile stuck on her mouth.

Her fingers started clacking again. “Mmm-hmm,” she said through her tight lips.

When the elevator was ascending, my phone dinged out that I had an email. I contemplated not reading it. I wasn’t sure I cared at all who it was from and what it might be about, but I swiped my finger across the screen.

It was from Hale, who apparently kept just as poor hours as I did.

Spoke with your father earlier this evening. He mentioned you were going to be headed back to D.C. soon. He actually called me. Must be excited to get his son home.

I chuckled mirthlessly as I read. That was likely not at all the case. I wasn’t sure my parents would care to see me for a good long while after the night before. But my reputation was, without doubt, linked to theirs, or so they would see it, and damage control was probably high on their priority list at the moment.

I know you’re in Chicago, and I can’t help but assume that you’ve got the inside track on some of the excitement surrounding David Edgerton. Trust me, I’m not asking for details, and I know you wouldn’t give them to me anyway, but as your friend, Keegan, I think it might be time for you to distance yourself from that town.

We’re ready to hit the ground running with the new finance campaign, and there’s a lot of work to be done between now and the Q1 launch, so I think I can speak for everyone here at Consumer Alliance when I say we’re anxious to get you home.

I stepped out of the elevator, and I hit Reply even as I walked. My heart started racing as I typed.

I have a few loose ends…

And then it dawned on me. No I didn’t. I had no loose ends whatsoever. Gabe had made that perfectly clear to me. I didn’t have anything. I had a woman here who wanted nothing at all to do with me, I had no job, and I had no place to live. I was simply here, floundering around trying desperately to hold on to something, so much so that I’d been pathetic enough to request the very room I’d first made love to Gabe in out of some misguided notion that I could capture her for a moment longer before losing her altogether.

That’s what I had; that’s all I had—a feeling, an emotion, a pain, a sadness, a need for more, a need for something I couldn’t have, the lingering taste of her kiss on my lips. A fucking memory. I hadn’t captured anything at all because I’d already lost her.

I cleared my throat, feeling the ache of all the emotion I didn’t know how to handle, and I paused at the door to my room, staring at the screen of my phone. I erased what I’d typed and started again.

I’ll be heading home this morning. I’ll see you very soon. Perhaps we can meet for drinks late tonight when I get back into town?

I finally opened the door, and I stood in the doorway, looking around and instantly regretting my decision to ask for this room. I remembered every second of my night here with Gabe. It had been a rush. I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing, and I damn well knew I was crossing all sorts of professional, ethical, and personal lines with her. But I’d done it anyway. I’d rationalized the decision to fuck Gabe as a strategic maneuver, something I could use to my benefit.

But that had only ever been part of it for me.

Because, in addition to being fully willing to use her for purely professional reasons, I’d also just wanted her for purely personal reasons. It was that simple. I might well have made an impression on her at the benefit the first night I met her, but she’d made an impression on me too. She’d watched me, she’d responded to me, she’d smiled at me, she’d laughed with me, and after I’d offended the hell out of her, she’d been hurt by me. I’d seen it all. I’d watched it unfold. And, for whatever reason, I’d been unable to wash my hands of her the way I was supposed to.

I left my laptop bag in the living room of the suite, and I dropped my suitcase on the bedroom floor before collapsing onto the bed. I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, and then I rolled over, kicking my shoes off my feet and tucking my hands under my cheek as I stared out the window.

I knew what I was expected to do now.

I was going to wake up early the next morning and drive my ass back to D.C. I’d pull in sometime well after dark tomorrow night, and I’d meet Hale for drinks. I’d likely meet with his group Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning, and by Wednesday, I’d be knee-deep in all things related to finance in energy security. It was a noble campaign, one I could feel good about. It had been awhile since I’d been involved in something that actually felt good from an ethical perspective. Of course, I never set the expectation that my work be ethical.

Brian McHenry, the senatorial candidate Hale and company would be endorsing, was a far cry more stable than David. There was little chance I’d be finding prostitutes in his closet. Instead, I would work hard to make the launch successful, and I’d make money doing it. I would be home. I would see my friends. I would fuck one of my casual flings on a regular basis. I would smooth things over with my parents, at least eventually. And after Consumer Alliance, another job and then another and another.

Gabe’s life would move on, and she’d get over me just as she wanted to. It would perhaps be a good life, but perhaps it wouldn’t. Maybe she’d fall in love with some other man, but perhaps she’d be done with us men and our dangly bits altogether. However her life moved on, it would be without me, and I wouldn’t get to know if she was okay, if she was happy, if she was sad, if she was hurting. It simply wouldn’t be my right to know or care anymore.

That’s what was supposed to happen now. That’s what was going to happen now. Because that’s what she needed now.

I picked up my phone, only just realizing I’d failed to hit Send on my response to Hale. I reread it, knowing I was sealing my fate in some way. And then I did it.

I hit Send.

I fell asleep trying not to think about her but failing miserably, and when I woke up in a start, it was three in the morning, and I was sweating and panicking. I climbed from bed and stared out the window. There was no sense delaying the inevitable. If I left now, I could escape the traffic of Chicago before the city woke up, and I could be home by early evening. And I could be far away from her, where she wanted me to be, within a few hours.

I hopped in the shower quickly, almost desperate to get out of here. I’d asked for this room to be close to my memories. They were killing me now, stabbing my brain over and over every time I turned around, every time I closed my eyes, every time I let myself think about her for even a second. I needed to put space between myself and these memories, but how do you escape something that is everywhere?

When I brushed my teeth, all I could think about was standing behind her at this very countertop. When I walked out of the bathroom, I stopped and touched the wide white woodwork surrounding the door. She’d gripped it nervously as she’d stood there naked in front of me, and when my eyes lit on the bed, my breath left my lungs. It was painfully arousing to remember gripping that headboard as I’d thrust into her.

I snatched up the phone, calling downstairs and requesting my car, and I spent the next five minutes cramming my clothes into my bag. I was practically gasping when I made it to the elevator. It was a desperate feeling, being constantly pummeled by the memories I’d so clearly set myself up to experience. I could see her standing in the elevator facing me and waiting for me to join her. She’d smiled at me, albeit sardonically, as she stood there, and thinking about that smile now was like being stabbed in the gut with the same knife that kept stabbing my brain.

“Fuck,” I muttered as I climbed in and hit the button for the lobby before I stood back, lowered my head, and closed my eyes. I had to get out of here. I was starting to panic in the strangest way imaginable. I nearly sprinted to the front door, and when the valet smiled at me, his smile fell when he took in my expression. I handed him a tip and climbed in, pulling out quickly. I listened to my breathing as I drove toward Interstate 90. It was a ragged, stuttering sound that seemed to fill the space around me and echo in my ears.

I was on Ontario, and I could see the interchange just ahead. The farthest right lane would loop me back around and deposit me on Interstate 90 southbound. That was my path out of town and toward D.C.

But there was another option. An option I shouldn’t consider. An option that didn’t make sense. An option that lacked all rational thought. An option with no certainty whatsoever. An option that, quite frankly, could destroy me.

I could stay farther to the left and head northbound on the interstate toward O’Hare, toward a different path, toward a different future.

“What the fuck,” I muttered to myself, almost angry at my own brain for forcing me to consider it. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” I gripped my steering wheel as the panic took over again. It was dark; the streets were as dark as I’d ever seen them, and my mind was coming apart at the seams, pulling like a tug of war was being waged in my head.

“What am I doing? What am I doing? What am I doing?” I was acting like a lunatic; that’s what I was doing. But I couldn’t stop saying it. “What the fuck am I doing?”

And then I was doing it. I merged left, and I headed toward O’Hare.

“Goddamn it,” I said as a rush of breath left my lungs.

It might seem as though O’Hare would take me away from her even faster than I’d originally intended, but there was no denying I was moving toward her at top speed.

Chapter 18

Gabrielle

BY the end of the day Monday, I’d spent hours on the phone. The school called to walk me through what to expect the next day. That was horrifying, and I’m pretty sure I had high blood pressure by the time I hung up. Essentially, I would sit in a room with the disciplinary panel and Professor Carmichael. They could, if they wished, ask me questions. I could, if I wished, decline to answer them. Professor Carmichael could make a statement on my behalf at the close of the session, but he wasn’t allowed to intercede during the questioning in any way. The panel would then take as long as they wanted to make a decision about what to do with my ass.

But here’s the catch.

They weren’t necessarily going to be deciding whether to expel me or not. That threw me for a loop. Apparently there was every chance they’d wait to see if more concrete information came out about my involvement with David. It made sense, I supposed. For instance, if I were charged with a crime in relation to this mess, expulsion would likely be a no-brainer for the committee. But what if I wasn’t charged and the story fizzled? How would the committee backpedal after essentially destroying my academic career? From the sounds of it, the committee was likely…well, deciding what to do with the naughty little student in the meantime.

There was no guarantee anything more than reputation-shattering allegations would ever surface. But until that was known for sure, the school had to “act in the best interest of the entire student body.” I was getting a little tired of hearing that phrase, but it seemed to pop up constantly.

What the hell did that mean? Did they think I was going to start handing out flyers advertising prostitution as a great after-school job? Were they concerned I was going to start screwing the faculty, blowjobs for good grades, what? Apparently I was some indefinable threat, and until they could see where this whole mess was going to go, they just plain didn’t know what to do with me.

I hung up with Barbara, the sweet disciplinary hearing coordinator who made the whole process sound like an exciting adventure into hell with the kindest voice I’d ever heard. She actually made me smile…twice.

The second hour of my phone time on Monday was spent with Professor Carmichael, who filled me in on a few more details and, more or less, scared the shit out of me while telling me it was going to be okay.

“It’s important that you don’t admit fault, Gabe. Do you understand? The panel has no real right to try what could end up being a criminal matter, and you’re under no obligation to help them build a case based on supposition and facts that haven’t yet come to light. This is not a criminal trial, even if it feels like one.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding and instantly gnawing on my thumbnail.

“If you don’t admit fault, then they’re stuck deciding what to do with you until more information comes to light. They may very well make the decision to expel you later based on criminal filings, but right now, it’s all about the interim period of time.”

I was still nodding. “Yes. I got that impression when I spoke to the school earlier.”

“But keep in mind, and this is very important, Gabe, if you admit culpability, they will have no choice but to rule in favor of expulsion.”

“Okay.”

“As long as you don’t give them any ammunition to use against you, they will either allow you to remain in school, due to a lack of sufficient proof that you’ve violated the student code of conduct, or they will give you an interim suspension pending further investigation. They could possibly expel you outright, but they’d have a lot of explaining to do later on if nothing ever comes of this from a criminal standpoint, so I would find it highly unlikely they’ll choose expulsion at this point.”

“But what about this ‘interim suspension pending further investigation’? What does that mean?”

“In truth, nothing. It means you’re on suspension, and the school sits back and waits for further developments. That’s what we’re trying to avoid because that could severely impact your ability to graduate on time, or even graduate at all. But the school gets pressure from uptight, paranoid parents in these instances, and they end up being pushed to do something just to make the parents feel more secure.” He chuckled. “It’s ridiculous when you think about it. Parents have no legal rights in these matters because their children are adults, and yet the school will nearly always bow to their expectations because parents often control the purse strings.”

“Ah, the ‘act in the best interest of the entire student body’ clause.”

Professor Carmichael hummed. “You’ve clearly gotten the party line from administration.”

“Yes, I’m afraid.”

“Well, expulsion is by far the very worst thing that could happen, and it may well happen at some point before we can get you graduated, but the real hurdle tomorrow is getting them to allow you to remain an active student. Innocent until proven guilty needs to be your party line.”

“Okay.”

“So when they ask you questions, you need to focus not on the allegations against you but your desire to be a productive student and complete your education. I would simply state that you’re not willing to discuss the allegations that have been lodged against you in the media and the court of public opinion and that you urge the panel to see you as a young woman trying her best to complete her education so you can move on from this chapter of your life.”

“Right. Okay.” I was nodding stupidly again. “Yes. Can you…can you repeat that?”

He chuckled for a moment. “You understand the gist. Just use your own words. The point is you’re neither denying nor admitting guilt here.”

“Got it.”

“You’re going to get through this, Gabe.” Professor Carmichael’s voice had lost the driven, direct sound, and he was back to his usual calm, supportive tone. “You know I’ve been worried about you for a while. You don’t have to tell me anything. You certainly don’t owe me an explanation, but you know you can talk to me if you ever need to.”

I bit my nail again, staring out Jessa’s bedroom window. “No offense, but talking about this mess to…I don’t know…men in general, just…” I shook my head. “Sorry.”

“I get it. We’re the enemy, huh? That’s a hard mentality for a woman to recover from.”

I nodded, knowing he couldn’t see me.

“But it’s a mentality, Gabe. Not a truth. You won’t be better for it if you hold people at arm’s length, and that’s what you’ve been doing for a while now.”

“Not everybody,” I said quietly.

Professor Carmichael hummed thoughtfully but was then silent for a moment. “Sometimes it takes a leaky roof collapsing on you before you’ll finally fix the leak. But the leak gets fixed all the same. This may not be ideal, but at least you have the opportunity to get back on track.”

“Well…maybe. I guess we’ll see how it goes tomorrow morning.”

He chuckled. “Yes, we will. But either way, you will get through it.”

“Thank you.”

I crawled into bed at midnight. Jessa was already asleep. My phone vibrated, telling me I had a text message. I picked it up from the nightstand, glancing at the screen.

I know you don’t want to talk to me right now, and that’s okay. I’ll be happy if you just read my words.

I sighed, curling up on my side, watching the three little circles move and waiting for more.

I know you’re worried about tomorrow but try not to. New doors will open if this one closes. I promise.

And then two seconds later.

Cliché, right? ;-)

I smiled even as the backs of my eyes pricked with tears.

I can’t stop thinking about your lips. God, to make the world disappear with you… It’s such a thing, isn’t it? But I need you to understand something.

And a few more seconds passed.

It wasn’t a pretend thing. Nothing we did was pretend to me. You…could never be pretend to me.

“Barf.”

I looked over my shoulder to see Jessa propped up on her elbow looking at the screen of my phone.

“I told you he has a weird obsession with your mouth.”

“Go back to sleep,” I hissed.

“What? I’m not the one having weird text sex.”

“It’s called sexting, and I haven’t even responded.”

Jessa flopped back down, grumbling.

When my phone vibrated again, I looked.

I miss you, Gabe. I’ll be thinking about you tomorrow. Good night.

I set my phone down, running my finger under my eye and brushing away the tear. I rolled to my back, staring up at the dark ceiling above. I was guessing he was in D.C. by now. Nothing left to keep him here. I’d made sure of it. It was the right thing to do. I wasn’t sure how to trust him, and I wasn’t sure that was his fault at this point or that he even deserved it. The odd thing was, trust or no trust, I cared enough about him to want better for him than some broken-down old train wreck of a woman who was likely irreparable at this point.

Jessa had rolled away from me, and I could see her shoulder rising and falling slowly.

“I like him, Gabe,” Jessa whispered.

I didn’t say anything, but my lips pulled up. I had too. I might have actually loved him.

“And I literally hate everyone. Like I imagine punching most people in the face at least once a day, twice sometimes.”

“I know, sweetie,” I said as I reached back and patted her arm. “You’re just a little psycho like that.”

Jessa was silent after that, and when she started snoring quietly, I shook my head and smiled. I stared at the ceiling for the rest of the night.

* * * *

Jessa had to drop me off in Milwaukee the next morning. I offered to drop her off at school and take her car, but she insisted on driving me. She likely just wanted to get out of biology and composition, but I was infinitely glad she was sitting beside me on the hour-long drive to Milwaukee nonetheless.

When she pulled up in front of the administration building, she put her car into park and just sat there staring at me.

“I’m going to be fine,” I reassured her as I reached for the door handle. “Really.” I smiled and pulled her into a quick hug.

“I should be going with you.”

“Nope. You shouldn’t.” I stared at her, forcing myself to smile.

“You’re sure you’re going to be okay today? I mean, I can’t get back to Milwaukee until four-thirty this afternoon.”

“Yep.” I was actually dreading being stuck in this town for the day. “I think I’m going to go to the house and get my stuff packed up while most of the girls are in class.” I stared at her a moment longer. “I hate your nose ring.”

“I know you do,” she said sympathetically.

“But you’re still so stinking cute.”

“Yeah, I am.” She nodded. “I love you, Gabe.”

“I love you too, kiddo.”

I held the smile a bit longer, but then I hopped out, and the moment my back was toward her, my smile fell. I’d never been more terrified in my entire life.

I was dressed in a button-up gray shirtdress that fell to my knees. Sadly, all of my dresses—in fact the vast majority of my wardrobe—was still at the sorority house, and I’d been damn lucky to find something appropriate in Jessa’s closet. I’d wrapped a wide black belt around my waist, and I was wearing simple black flats. I’d blown my hair out straight, running a flat iron through it before pinning the sides back. It was as demure as I could be. I was guessing that needed to be my aim.

Professor Carmichael met me moments later when he waltzed casually up to the front of the building.

He smiled at me. “Nervous?”

I scoffed. “No. Not at all. I mean, my heart hasn’t worked right all morning, and I’m pretty sure there’s something wrong with my deodorant because it doesn’t seem to be working, but…no. I’m good.” I nodded awkwardly, willing myself to shut up. I had a tendency to ramble when I got nervous, and in a pathetic attempt to stifle it, I started to rock on the outside of my shoes.

Carmichael chuckled. “It’s going to be fine. This will probably go pretty quickly today.”

I followed him into the building, and after we checked in with the receptionist, we sat in a small waiting room. A woman came out a few minutes later, introducing herself as Barbara. She shook my hand, smiling at me as though she wasn’t part and parcel of the people who wanted to ruin my life.

“Hi… I’m Gabe…err…ielle.” It came out awkwardly. “Gabrielle. That’s…me.”

Barbara smiled at me cheerily. “Well, come on back.”

I imagined telling her no. I imagined just turning around and walking back out. They couldn’t stop me, could they? Of course they couldn’t. I was a grown-ass adult, even if I didn’t always make very adult-like decisions.

Professor Carmichael nudged me forward when I failed to immediately follow Barbara, and I scampered to catch up with the woman as she headed down a long hallway. My palms were sweating, and my legs felt as if they were going to give out at any moment, and when Barbara turned into an open door, I suddenly froze, turning back toward Carmichael, who was walking closely behind me.

“You can do this, Gabe,” he said quietly.

I shook my head. “I can’t,” I whispered. “These people…are going to hate me. The things I’ve done… I just… I don’t deserve a second chance.” My heart was racing. I was near panic, and I looked beyond Carmichael’s shoulder, suddenly certain I needed to flee, suddenly certain my very presence here was an insult to the college, an insult to education in general.

Carmichael clutched my shoulders in his hands, leaning forward. “You do,” he said forcefully as he gave me a gentle shake. “We all do.” His eyes moved back and forth across mine, searching for my understanding. “You have to believe that.”

I nodded, staring at Carmichael’s chest rather than his eyes.

“Ms. Kitrick? Are you ready?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Barbara. “Yes,” I whispered.

I followed Barbara into the room. It was nothing more than a small conference room with a long table in it. Four people already sat along the far side of the table, and Barbara indicated the two chairs on the nearest side to us before taking her own seat next to the other four. There were two men and three women in total, and they all smiled at me kindly.

Carmichael pulled my chair out for me and then took the one beside me. I rested my hands on the polished wooden tabletop in front of me for a moment, but when I looked down and saw the very visible tremble, I pulled them back, leaving sweaty spots where my palms had been.

The five individuals all introduced themselves, and I tried to pay attention, I tried to remember names, I even tried to smile at them as they each reached across the table and shook my hand. There was a balding man of fifty or so who was a faculty member in the sciences. There was another man, handsome and far younger than Baldy, and he was from the mathematics department. There was a redhead with bright blue eyeglasses, and I’m pretty sure she said she was in a design program of some sort, and then there was a tall blonde woman who was in social sciences. It was as if they’d chosen faculty members from nearly every major department, and perhaps that’s exactly what they’d done. Barbara was a student services administrator and the only member of the panel not on the faculty.

“Ms. Kitrick, thank you for coming in today.” Baldy was the type of man you looked at and instantly knew he must be a grandfather. He made me want to like him. But then his eyes inadvertently looked down along my torso. It didn’t appear to be lascivious; it wasn’t sexual in any way really. It appeared more an inadvertent reaction to being face to face with a prostitute who likely didn’t look at all like what he expected me to look like. And then I didn’t like him anymore.

I looked down at my lap, staring at my fingers that were twisted together for a moment. “You’re welcome.” It came out too quiet, and I cleared my throat when I looked back up.

“You’ve been advised of the disciplinary hearing process, correct?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Then we’ll jump right in.” Baldy smiled at me quickly before looking back down at his notes. “Would you care to comment on the recent news story alleging that you’re involved with an escort service in the Chicago area? The news story named you, specifically, as being employed by this escort service and having ties to Chairman Edgerton.”

I’d lain awake all night, staring at the ceiling and rehearsing my answers to every conceivable question I could come up with. But in this moment, my mind went blank. I could feel warmth flushing and flooding my body as I started to panic, and my ears started to buzz, the sound getting louder and louder as I sat there. They were staring at me, calmly waiting for me to speak, but I couldn’t seem to remember how.

“Ms. Kitrick,” Baldy said again.

Professor Carmichael reached for a pitcher of water sitting in the center of the table, and he poured me a glass. I cleared my throat again, accepting the glass Professor Carmichael was handing me.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked out. “I’m just a little nervous.”

Barbara beamed at me. Her ridiculous good mood was disconcerting, but I could feel my lips pulling up awkwardly as I looked at her, even as my forehead scrunched up.

“Umm…I’m sure…a lot of people have questions…related to that particular story, but…” I shook my head, trying hard to focus. “I can’t speak to the political agenda behind the piece.” My words were coming out in a stilted progression, and I had no idea if I was making sense. “I’m just a…a”—prostitute—“a college student who’s very anxious to focus on my education.” I’d rehearsed this response to include something about the obvious political motivation of the news story that was meant to discredit a public and political figure and related to me only loosely. But I ended up inhaling deeply as though I’d been holding my breath and saying nothing more.

“You mention you’re anxious to get back to your studies…” The redheaded woman with her eccentric blue-framed glasses wasn’t smiling at me the way Barbara had. In fact, she was looking down at a manila folder with a small stack of papers in it. “And yet your grades have been significantly slipping over the past year. You came to St. Mary’s with an academic scholarship after graduating from high school in the top three percent of your class.” She continued to look down at the pages in the folder, only looking up to me briefly and periodically as she spoke. “You were a stand-out student for your first two years at St. Mary’s, multiple semesters you were included on the Dean’s List, and there was every chance you would have graduated with honors had you maintained your performance.” She looked up at me, watching me expressionlessly for a moment. “Since that time”—she looked down, shifting her pages around—“you’ve lost your scholarship and been placed on academic probation. I think I can speak for all of us here when I ask you, how anxious to return to your studies are you?”

And then they were staring at me again, waiting for me to dislodge the giant ball of cotton that seemed to be stuck in my throat. “My mother passed away,” I said shamelessly. In truth, I’d very consciously avoided saying “mother” in every last rehearsed answer I’d gone through in my mind because it made me feel guilty to blame her death for my poor choices. I looked down at my lap, feeling that guilt now and praying the pricks of tears at the back of my eyes would go away before turning into something more.

“We’re aware of your mother’s passing, and we’re very sorry for your loss.” I looked up to see the blonde speaking to me now. Her expression was all sympathy, genuine by all accounts. “But you have to understand that student counseling has made numerous attempts to reach out to you during the course of your decline. Their attempts have gone ignored.”

“We understand that accepting help during a time of need and crisis can be difficult.” The handsome man’s eyes were just as sympathetic as Blondie’s, but his expression seemed false, and it made me uncomfortable. It was likely that broken part of my brain that found it hard to see him as something other than a cock. I hated this part of myself. “But as an institution, we can only do so much to help someone who’s not willing to accept our help. We’ve made the effort many times, but you’ve failed to meet us halfway.”

I nodded tersely, struggling to get my neck to work.

“You’re asking us to set aside the concerns of students and parents alike by allowing you to remain in active student status.” It was Redhead again. “We’re asking you to give us a good reason why we should because your academic record isn’t making that statement to us.”

I froze, at least externally. Internally, my brain was spinning, searching through the answers I’d rehearsed. I knew it was somewhere in my head. But grasping ahold of it when I was panicking was like searching through a file cabinet in the dark. “I…I reached out to my professors just last week, before this news story was released. I asked them for guidance in getting caught up and back on top of my studies.” I stared back and forth between each of them, forcing myself to hold the eye contact. “I didn’t do that…pre-emptively. I did it because I knew I needed help but also because I knew I didn’t want to give up.”

The balding man’s attention shifted to Professor Carmichael beside me, and I caught the subtle nod of Carmichael’s head in my periphery.

My fingers twisted harder in my lap. “All of my professors agreed to work with me.” My brow flinched as I watched them. This was, hands-down, one of the most painful experiences of my life, which might sound odd but it was. Every time I opened my mouth to say something, I instantly regretted it because I couldn’t seem to stop second-guessing every word I uttered. Nothing I was saying felt like the right thing, and the eyes staring back at me, while kind and calm, were unyielding and hard to read. “I…” But that sentence failed to go anywhere, and I looked down at my lap again as I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes and imagined Keegan sitting beside me instead of Carmichael for a moment.

I wanted Keegan here. If he were here, he’d be snapping back. He’d be fighting the battle with me. I’d seen him do it just days before with his own parents—his parents. He had an incredible kind of strength that was calm and calculated and yet felt physically imposing and intimidating. God, I needed that strength right now.

When the handsome man pulled a newspaper from his own manila folder, he set it down on the table between us. It was folded to show an article somewhere on one of the interior pages. I suppose I should be glad it wasn’t the first page at any rate.

The same picture of David and me was featured on the page, and next to it was another picture of me. It was the very one that hung in the stairwell of my sorority. I hadn’t seen this article, and I sucked in a shocked breath as my eyes scanned the headline.

PROSTITUTION: INFILTRATING OUR COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES?

“Are you the woman featured in the picture next to David Edgerton?” the man asked me. His voice was gentle, but he was leaning forward with his finger on the article. I glanced at him quickly, but I looked back down at the page. I inhaled deeply when I forced my eyes to return to his. I didn’t like the feel of his attention, and his focus was too invasive, even though his eyes never strayed inappropriately to my chest. I could see it as if it was written on his face.

Lust. Hidden, but there nonetheless.

I had no idea what it was he was imagining behind those intense eyes of his, but I knew it was playing out in vivid detail in his mind as he looked at me. Was he undressing me? Was he touching me? Was I on my knees, sucking his cock? Or was he fucking me already? Was it gentle when he imagined it? Was it rough? Maybe it was violent even. I couldn’t possibly know, but it was there in his mind, and I hated him for it.

I wondered sometimes if this inappropriate lust lurked in the back of all men’s minds, hidden perfectly behind professionalism, manners, hell, a good suit. Of course it didn’t. It couldn’t, right? My brain just had a tendency of telling me I was right about these things because my brain was a broken, twisted thing.

I leaned back in my chair as though those few extra inches were enough to save me from him, and I glanced at the wedding ring on the hand still touching the newspaper. The man’s jaw clenched tightly when he saw my focus shift from the paper up to the ring, and I caught Carmichael glancing at me in my periphery.

“Are you the woman in the picture with David Edgerton?” Mr. Penis repeated the question, his voice colder and his eyes searing hotly into me.

My answers were gone.

I stared at him. “I…” I looked down at the picture again. Was I supposed to lie? “I…” Tears welled up in my eyes, and my lips trembled as I looked desperately around. The freakishly exuberant smile on Barbara’s face was finally faltering, and her expression looked concerned. “It’s just…” Fucking concentrate, G-dog. I shook my head, and then I looked back at Mr. Penis, locking my eyes on his as his cool, calm gaze continued to fuck my brain mercilessly.

And then I nodded, brushing a tear from my cheek before it could fall. When I opened my mouth to breathe, the air shuddered as it passed my lips.

“Yes, but—”

“Thank you,” Mr. Penis said, sitting back in his chair and not letting me finish whatever pathetic excuse I might have been able to come up with.

“Why were you photographed with Chairman Edgerton?” the blonde woman asked me.

I was too busy staring at the penis with my mouth open to respond at first. When I finally looked at the blonde, I took a deep breath. “I’m not going to discuss how I know the chairman.” My tone was biting, and when I brushed another tear from my cheek, it was angrily this time. I was off my game, not that I’d actually been on it to begin with, but I was lost at this point.

The redhead’s brows shot up for a moment, and her lips pursed in what looked like disappointment. “I think we’ve heard all we need to—”

I cut the redhead off. “No, please.” I stared at the five individuals across from me, avoiding the handsome man’s gaze. “You don’t know me. I’m not a bad person.” I was rambling, emphatically trying to convince them I wasn’t a monster. “I’m just a college kid.” My lips started trembling again as my eyes searched theirs for understanding. I shook my head, letting out a frustrated huff of breath. “Please don’t take this away from me.” I was leaning forward, my hands clasped in my lap. “Please…”

Carmichael’s hand touched my forearm gently, and I took a deep breath, sitting back in my chair.

“We appreciate your comments, Gabrielle, but we’re required to consider the welfare of—”

“The welfare?” I asked before I could stop myself.

Carmichael’s hand clamped down harder on my arm.

I shook my head. “I’ve not hurt anyone. I’m not… What threat do you think I pose?” I just kept shaking my head. “I’m not the frat guy who hazed a kid nearly to death with a bottle of Everclear last year. I’m not a thief, I’m not violent, I’m…just…” I looked around again, desperately grasping for a way to fix this. “I’m just the girl who wants to take care of her sister. I’m the girl who’s desperate for a better life.” A tear ran down my cheek, but I was too busy clutching my stomach as I spoke to care. “I’m just…” I covered my mouth for a moment, closing my eyes and lowering my head as I composed myself. I exhaled slowly when I looked back up, and I tried to smile even through my glossy, blurry vision. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. My lips pulled up again. “It’s just…this is all I have left. Please don’t take this away from me.” It was a struggle to swallow.

Barbara brushed a tear from her cheek and smiled at me kindly. Red watched me with pursed lips through blue spectacles, but her nose twitched, and she sniffed back some small ounce of empathy. Blondie watched me impassively, and Baldy studied me sadly, his head cocked to the side. I didn’t bother looking at the handsome cock because I knew he was still fucking my brains out in his mind.

Carmichael’s touch on my arm eased.

“Professor Carmichael, do you have anything you’d like to add?” Barbara asked.

“I do. Yes.” He took a folded-up piece of paper from the inside breast pocket of his jacket, unfolding it. He looked up, smiling. “I asked Gabe if I could sit as her advisor today of my own choosing. I’ve known her since she was a freshman in my intro to psych course. She was, as you said, a remarkable student.” He nodded, glancing down at the table. “And I was thrilled when I found out she’d chosen psychology as her major.” He looked over at me, and his lips pulled up in a sad smile. “But things changed for Gabe when her mom passed away. And you’re right; as an institution we reached out to her.” He nodded again as he looked at the five members of the panel. “But grief is a tricky thing, and it doesn’t always manifest in the way we expect it to.”

“Are you saying the choices that led her here today are simply a symptom of…?” Baldy bobbled his head as he searched for the word.

“I’m not speaking about the incident in question at all because I don’t think it’s our business to discuss it.” He reached forward, picking up Mr. Penis’s newspaper. “This is media tripe. This is sensationalism at its finest, and this”—he poked at the image of David and me—“is conjecture at most, damaging, irresponsible, and frankly, it doesn’t belong in here. We should be outraged that one of our students is being used as media fodder in a political smear campaign.” He studied the group for many more long seconds, focusing on Mr. Penis for just a hair too long. “You speak about the concerns of our students, but let’s face it, the concern comes from the parents. Does it not?” He waited for an answer, though I suspected he didn’t really expect one.

Blondie’s lips pursed, and a subtle nod of Baldy’s shiny head as he looked down at the table was as much confirmation as he got.

“So you have parents voicing their concern. I get it!” he exclaimed. “I do. They care.” He shrugged. “We should expect nothing less. I guess I’m just wondering who there is to care for Gabe.” His smile was almost smug as he watched the panel. “She deserves better from us. We are an institution of learning, of betterment, of advancement. It’s not our job to condemn her for unfounded accusations. It just isn’t.”

I was staring at the table, glancing up occasionally as Carmichael spoke. He’d not once referenced the piece of paper in his hand, which seemed odd…until he finally looked down at it.

“You know, I was going to spend my time convincing you of the caliber of person Gabe is, making sure you fully understood just how deserving she is of our time and consideration. But someone else summed it up far better than me, and from a far more personal perspective than I can. So I’m going to share a few words from someone else.”

My focus snapped to him, my eyes wide as I stared. Carmichael smoothed the folds out of the paper as he studied the words for a moment, and he glanced up quickly moments before he started to speak. “The tragedy with Gabe will never be the mistakes she makes because those things will never define her. The tragedy will be watching the world deny her a second chance because there are none more deserving than her.”

I tried to swallow as I watched Carmichael read, but my throat was constricting.

“If you want to truly see Gabe, you need look no further than her one remaining relative. You can’t imagine what it is to watch her love her little sister. There is no purer thing in the world; it is devoid of any expectation. It is that pure.” Carmichael glanced at me, smiling warmly before he looked back at the paper in his hand. “Gabe’s patience will astound you, her strength to endure is enviable, and her passion to keep moving forward in the midst of loss and heartache is the very thing we should all strive for. The fact she is all of these things, despite also being utterly alone, amazes me. Her strength and endurance amaze me every day.”

I knew whose words these were. They belonged to a man I’d rejected because I was too afraid of what would happen if I held on to him.

Carmichael looked at the group again for a moment and then looked back down and continued reading. “I’ve come to understand something very important about Gabe, something I didn’t see at first, something that was so easy to miss. She craves safety and security. She needs someone to tell her it’s all going to be okay at the end of the day. I find it odd, not to mention completely and utterly hypocritical, that the university is so concerned with the safety and security of their student body—which is in no way impacted by this situation—and yet, they’re woefully willing to overlook the needs of Gabe, who needs and deserves their support like no other.”

I brushed a tear from my cheek, wondering if I was ever going to get them under control.

“I can’t be with her right now, but you are. I can’t support her when I want to most, but you can. I can’t make sure she sees and knows her value in the midst of all of this, but you have that opportunity. I’m begging you to see her worth because I’m not sure she’ll see it if we don’t show her first. If I could give her all of those things, I would. I’m asking you to give them to her for me.”

Carmichael folded the paper, handing it to me. I wanted to open it. I wanted to read Keegan’s words again and again until this room and these people went away, but I clutched it in my hands instead.

“Can you tell us who wrote that?” Mr. Penis asked Carmichael.

He shook his head. “No. It’s really not relevant or important to anyone but Gabe. What I can tell you is that these words weren’t meant for you. They were meant for me, to make sure I understood the importance of my presence here today. I do understand, though I get it far more after reading this than I did before. I want to make sure you get it too. This is her life, this is her future, this is…everything to her.” He shrugged. “I see it as our responsibility to protect her future. That’s all I have to say.”

Barbara raised her hands above the table, clasping them together quickly, and for half a second, I thought she was stifling the urge to clap.

God, please make it be over.

“Thank you for coming in today, Gabrielle.” Barbara was beaming again. “I will call you with our decision before the end of the week.”

I nodded, standing as Carmichael did the same, and I didn’t look back when he led me out of the conference room, down the long hallway and finally out into the cool fall air. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes and letting my head fall back. I could feel the sun warming my face, even as a cool breeze rustled the leaves along the ground. I didn’t want to open my eyes again. I just wanted to savor the relief for a while.

It was over.

When I finally opened my eyes, I exhaled deeply as I lowered my head. Carmichael was chuckling, and he smiled at me. “You survived. You can breathe now.”

I started to laugh quietly, but then my laugh dropped off into thin air as my heart fluttered. I gasped as I caught sight of Keegan’s car over Carmichael’s shoulder, sitting at the curb. Keegan was standing there, leaning casually against the passenger door, his arms crossed as he waited. He was watching me, his face expressionless. My face was not. I couldn’t seem to keep my mouth closed, and I could feel the strain of my facial muscles as they scrunched and contorted. I was so tired of crying, but I’ll be damned if my throat didn’t instantly constrict and ache as the wave of emotion passed through me.

“Oh God,” I gasped out in an airy sigh, and Carmichael looked over his shoulder toward Keegan, who was now walking toward us.

I hurried toward him too, meeting him halfway. He stared down at me, and I stared back, neither of us saying anything.

“You must be Keegan.” Carmichael stepped up next to me, holding his hand out for Keegan to shake.

Keegan cleared his throat, still looking at me for a moment longer. “Yes,” he finally said. “And I’m guessing you’re Professor Carmichael?” He shook Carmichael’s hand.

“I am. Thank you for the email. I’m glad you reached out to me. I hope you don’t mind, but I gave a copy to Gabe.” He nodded to my hand, where I still clutched the paper.

Keegan studied me for a moment, his eyes drifting down to my death grip on the paper. “No. I don’t mind.” He looked back at Professor Carmichael, his brow flinching. “Uh…” He seemed nervous. “How did it go?”

Carmichael shrugged. “We’ll know by the end of the week.” He looked between Keegan and me for a moment. “Well, I have class in a while, so I’ll let you two get back to it.”

I nodded. “Thank you…very much. I appreciate everything.”

“Of course.” He started walking away, but he paused and turned back. “Keep working on getting caught up on your school work. I don’t want to see you fall further behind while you’re waiting for a response from the panel.”

“Okay.” I watched after Carmichael as he walked away for a moment, and when I looked back at Keegan, he was already studying me.

“I need you to come somewhere with me.” His voice was quiet. He’d not touched me once, and given his body language and the space between us, he didn’t intend to at the moment.

“Where?”

“Chicago.”

Chapter 19

Keegan

SHE was silent as we drove, and she still held tightly to the piece of paper in her hand. Her focus shifted slowly around at the passing scenery, always returning to me. I eventually reached over and took her hand, and her lips pulled up subtly when she glanced at me.

I’d made a decision not to touch her yet, at least not until she understood what was happening. I certainly wasn’t going to be kissing her. Things could get out of control quickly with us when they got physical, and I needed this to be a bit more simple and straightforward than that.

But I needed at least this—her hand in mine as I drove.

“I’m sorry.” We’d made it halfway to Chicago when she said it, and her voice was quiet.

“About what?” I glanced at her, even as my jaw tightened. “Running out on me last Friday and telling me to stay away from you? Or drunkenly coming on to me a few days ago and then kicking me out and telling me not to come back yet again?”

She stared at me, her mouth opening as though to speak before closing again for a moment. “I guess for everything.” She shook her head, looking out the window. “I was wrong to blame you…”

I squeezed her hand. “I made the lion’s share of mistakes early on with us. You’re entitled to a few errors in judgment.”

“I think I’ve made more than a few,” she commented, still looking out the window.

“I’m still here,” I said quietly.

I didn’t miss her farthest hand lifting to her cheek and brushing away a stray tear. She sniffed her nose. “I expected you to be back in D.C. by now,” she commented.

“I have been in D.C.” I didn’t elaborate, and I could see her looking at me in my periphery.

We were silent for the remainder of the trip, but my hand never left hers. We had time to kill when we reached town, and I pulled into a coffee shop. She looked around for a moment.

“This is where you wanted to take me?” Her brow was furrowed.

I climbed out of the car, and she followed. “No, but we have about forty-five minutes until our appointment, and I need caffeine.” I winked at her and then walked inside.

We sat across from each other as we drank coffee. She was being quiet, and she seemed nervous as she looked around and chewed on the inside of her lip.

“Appointment?” she asked after being silent for a long time.

I smirked subtly at her. “Appointment.”

She studied me, still gnawing nervously on the inside of her lip, but she didn’t ask me anything further, and when I stood to leave twenty minutes later, she followed without hesitation. We drove for another fifteen minutes before I pulled to the curb in front of a large old Lincoln Park greystone, and I put the car in park before turning it off. I looked around, scanning the street for the white SUV I’d been told to look for, but we were alone at the moment.

I glanced at Gabe, and she looked over at me. Her eyes were shifting back and forth across mine, trying to figure out what we were doing.

The white SUV pulled up to the curb nearby, and I reached for the door handle, ignoring Gabe’s confusion as I climbed out. I walked toward the woman climbing from her white SUV, and I listened as Gabe closed the car door behind her when she followed me.

“I’m Keegan,” I said to the woman as I held my hand out to her.

She smiled radiantly, and she straightened her shoulders and stuck her tits out. She obviously hadn’t seen the entire reason we were here yet, who happened to be approaching behind me.

“I’m Darla.” She shook my hand, and when Gabe stepped up beside me looking confused as hell, Darla’s attention shifted to her, and she stopped trying to be a sexy woman and started being the competent realtor I expected her to be.

“This is Gabe,” I said to Darla as I placed my hand on the back of Gabe’s neck, letting my thumb stroke down her skin for a moment before I pulled away.

The whole not-touching-her thing was starting to piss me off already.

I started following Darla as she walked toward the house, and Gabe caught up to us, her brow furrowed in confusion.

“As you can see, this is a classic Chicago greystone. Three bedrooms upstairs and a non-conforming fourth in the finished base—”

“Keegan?” Gabe clutched at my hand.

I lifted my finger to my lips, silencing her, and her eyes bulged. “Darla’s trying to tell you about the house,” I chastised her seriously. I wasn’t really being serious, and surely Gabe would figure that out, but Gabe was also clearly perplexed by what was happening.

“I think the porch is simply amazing, personally.” Darla was still talking, and I was doing no better than Gabe at paying attention to her.

We followed her through the front door to the foyer, and I tugged on Gabe’s hand as I headed for the stairs. “We’re going upstairs,” I said to Darla.

“Great,” she responded. “Working our way from the top to the bottom.”

She started to follow us, and I paused, turning back to her. “We’ll be okay on our own. Thanks.”

She stared at me, stunned for a moment, but then she forced a smile to her mouth and nodded awkwardly. I walked up the steps, listening to them creak as I moved, and I released Gabe’s hand, bounding up the last few without her. When I reached the landing, I started peeking into the doors until I found the large master with its tall ceilings and thick original crown molding.

I walked across the room, peering out through the window to the street below, and when Gabe entered moments later, I turned back to face her, leaning against the wide, sturdy window ledge.

She looked around, her focus shifting upward to the same molding and tall ceilings, and when her eyes returned to me, she bit her lower lip. She looked so uneasy, so tense, frightened almost.

“I’m falling in love with you.” I said it simply, and I didn’t even smile. Outwardly I was as calm as could be. Inside was a whole other story. Pulses of electricity started radiating out from my core the moment I’d gotten the “I” out of my mouth, and in truth, I was panicking. She’d pushed me away days before. She’d told me to go home and not come back, and while she’d apologized for that, I had no real proof this was what she wanted. But I thought she did. God, I hoped she did.

Her lips parted, and a quiet rush of breath left her. Her eyes, which had been narrow moments before, suddenly widened until the whites nearly radiated from across the room, and she stared at me as if in shock.

I looked around the room for a moment, and I took a deep breath. “You need to be here for Jessa. I know that.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and her lips trembled. She nodded, and when a tear fell, my throat constricted, and my eyes pricked with warmth and glossed over. No woman had ever seen my emotion the way she had, but then, I’d never shared it so freely as I did with her.

I shrugged. “I need to be here for you.” My voice cracked over my words. “Trust isn’t something I can show you in an email to your professor. It’s not something I can convince you of with words. I’ve tried. The past year of your life has…hurt you emotionally.”

She nodded, her eyes twinkling and her lips pursed in the sweetest small smile.

“Not even our lips can undo the damage of that, not to mention the shit way I started this relationship with you.” I smiled at her. “I almost let you push me away because I didn’t want to hurt you anymore, and…I was hurting you.”

She shook her head. “No. That’s not—”

I cut her off. “Yes I was. I let you use me. That was our thing, right? But…” I shook my head, glancing away for a moment. “I was using you. I loved the way you made me feel, so I kept taking it from you, disguising it as this power I was giving to you. But I wasn’t giving you anything. I wasn’t giving you…me, not my life, not my future, not my support and commitment, all the things I’ve come to understand you need to feel safe.”

She watched me, her eyes glossy and beautiful, but she was happy. I knew she was. I could see it in how tightly she clasped her hands together as though barely containing it, barely able to believe it maybe. I was absolutely going to give her what she needed to stay content like this.

“You know, Jessa really made me think about that—your needs. She said she’s always felt safe and secure knowing she has you.”

Gabe’s lips trembled, and she nodded, even as she tried to swallow.

“You’ve done such a good job with her. She looks up to you so much, and she knows you’ll always take care of her. But she made me realize that you don’t have that. You’re all alone. Using my body was the least of what you truly needed from me. You needed so much more from me, and I didn’t give it to you. I’m sorry for that.”

She bit her lip, walking toward me, and when she was standing in front of me, I reached out and pulled her closer. She clutched at the front of my shirt, letting her forehead sink to my chest as her shoulders started to shake and she cried. I lowered my mouth to the top of her head, and I kissed gently.

“I want you to have what you need, and I don’t want you to be alone in this life,” I whispered with my lips still touching her hair. “I want to do life together with you.”

She lifted her head, looking at me.

I shrugged. “So I flew to D.C., I met with a realtor, put my condo on the market, and then came home—home being a fairly loose term at the moment since I don’t actually have anywhere to live, and I happen to be jobless.” I smirked, reaching up and brushing a tear away that had almost fallen.

She smiled at me, her eyes shimmering and wet like mine.

“But I am home.”

She nodded.

“You’re safe with me.”

She kept nodding.

“And regardless of what happens, I’m going to be here.” I turned her, lifting her to sit on the wide window ledge that hit at my hip height. She parted her knees, and I ran my hands up her bare legs, resting my palms on the tops of her thighs under her dress.

She reached up, running her thumb along my lower lip. Her fingers gripped me behind my jaw line, and she pulled my mouth to hers, pausing before our lips touched. I felt her breath tickling me, and I waited for it.

“Listen,” she whispered.

When her mouth touched mine, I closed my eyes, and I did. I listened. I loved the sound of it—the smacking, the sucking, the subtle wetness of it. I loved everything about the way we kissed. I reached for her, clutching at her cheeks, holding her lips tight to mine as I slipped my tongue into her mouth. I tasted and licked, and she moaned quietly.

When her hands pushed into my pockets, my lips pulled up into a smile, even as I still tried to kiss her. I knew what she was looking for, and I stopped kissing her and leaned back when she pulled the condom out of my pocket.

She bit her lower lip as she looked up at me. “You should own stock in Trojan,” she commented quietly as she brushed a tear from her cheek.

I chuckled. “Being unprepared when I’m with you would be entirely too devastating.”

She laughed then, her eyes sparkling with glossiness and swollen from crying. She was so beautiful.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure we were still alone, and I took the condom from her, turning it over and over in my fingers as I considered what I knew she wanted. She was watching me expectantly.

“Okay,” I whispered.

I reached under the skirt of her dress, stripping her underwear from her legs and stuffing them in my pocket, and then my fingers fumbled with the button and fly of my jeans. I shoved my pants and underwear down, tearing into the condom packet with my teeth. I slipped it over the head of my cock, and the very moment I’d finished rolling it down my erection, I pulled her legs open wider and tugged her hips toward me until she was teetering on the edge of the window ledge.

I filled her body with one deep penetration, and I grunted quietly when I was fully seated within her.

“Until those stairs creak, it’s just the two of us. Now hang on. This is going to be fast and rough.”

She grabbed the back of my neck as I slammed into her again, and she cried out, clapping her free hand over her mouth as her eyes widened. I set a harsh and pounding pace, jolting her body with every deep thrust over and over again. I braced my hand on the windowpane behind her shoulder. The fuck was furiously fast, incredibly deep, and maddeningly erotic, and within minutes, she came hard. She was still covering her mouth, and I listened as she groaned and cried out loudly into the palm of her hand. Her other hand was still gripping the back of my neck, and her fingernails dug into my skin. I let loose the very second she finished, throwing my head back and staring at the ceiling as I focused on coming without screaming.

And then I collapsed against her, my head to her shoulder and her legs wrapped around my waist. I panted against her neck, and her chest rose and fell quickly under my weight.

And then the stairs creaked.

“Shit,” I muttered as I pulled away from her. I snapped the condom off my dick, pinching it closed as I quickly pulled my pants back up and fastened them. She slid off the window ledge, watching me as her lips pulled up into a mischievous smile. I shook my head as I rounded toward the sound of the approaching footsteps.

“Wait,” Gabe hissed. “I need my underwear.”

I reached back, grabbing her hand and passing off the condom I was still holding. “Have a spent condom instead.” I glanced at her over my shoulder. “I’m keeping your underwear.” I winked and turned back around just as Darla entered.

Gabe and I stood there panting, sweating, and looking completely guilty as Darla eyed us suspiciously.

“We were just looking at…” My eyes searched the room, trying desperately to get my brain to work. “Crown—”

Gabe cut me off. “The view.”

“—molding.” I gasped for breath. “And…uh…the view.” I nodded stupidly. “Can we look at the…uh…” I pointed at the door behind Darla as she still watched us.

“Toilet,” Gabe said.

I looked back at her, my eyes popping open wide.

She shrugged as her brows shot up. “You know, in case the plumbing…you know”—she started searching around desperately just like I’d been doing—“isn’t—”

“Working,” I supplied.

“—there,” she finished.

Fucking hell, this wasn’t going well.

“Uh…this way.” Darla turned and walked toward the door to the en suite bathroom. She definitely hated us.

We followed her, and it was only after Darla gave us a moment of privacy in the bathroom that I figured out why Gabe wanted to see the toilet. She flushed the condom just as Darla peeked back into the large bathroom, clearly not trusting us to be alone.

“It works,” Gabe said as she smiled.

“Yay,” Darla said with mock excitement, and then she turned and walked back out once again as Gabe rolled her eyes.

“Did you really just ask our realtor to see the toilet to make sure the plumbing was there?” I whispered.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I panicked,” she whispered back.

I reached for her hand. “We have two more houses to see today.” I tugged her out the door, following Darla back downstairs. “We’re going to have to behave.”

“Oh dear God,” Gabe groaned dramatically.

I chuckled as we walked out of the house.

“So, what did you think?” Darla turned toward us, smiling skeptically.

“Uh…stairs were a little creaky. Next house?”

Darla cleared her throat and nodded.

When Gabe was seated next to me in my car again, I leaned over and cupped her cheek. “You’re worth all of this. Do you know that?”

Her brow flinched momentarily as she looked at me. She wouldn’t argue with me. I knew that. But I also knew she wouldn’t likely agree with me either.

“You deserve to be kissed every day by a man who loves you. This kiss,” I whispered as I ran my thumb across her lower lip. “This kiss,” I said again as my other hand reached out and covered her heart.

Her lips pursed into a sweet smile, and her eyes shimmered with the best kind of tears.

“I can’t stop crying today,” she said even as she laughed.

I smiled at her. “It’s been a good day. A really good day.”

She nodded, and I leaned forward, pressing my lips to hers. I captured her lower lip between mine, and she moaned quietly.

“Are you really moving here?” she said in an almost dreamy tone once I’d given her mouth back to her and I was buckling my seat belt.

“I listed my condo at ten percent under market value. My D.C. realtor has already shown it six times since I signed the paperwork yesterday morning, and she’s pretty sure she’ll have multiple offers on the table before the end of the day, so yeah, I’m really buying a home here.” I winked at her quickly before starting my car.

I pulled away from the curb and glanced at her. “Do you suppose we could get you on birth control soon so I can stop being so prepared all the time?”

She smiled at me. “Yes.”

Chapter 20

Gabrielle

I rolled, quite literally, out of bed and onto the floor the next morning when my phone started ringing from my purse. The drapes in our hotel room were pulled tightly closed, and it was dark, even though the alarm clock said it was nearly nine. I smacked my knees on the floor as I fell.

“Ow,” I grunted out as I tried to stumble toward the ring coming from across the room.

Keegan started chuckling, and then I heard the click of the lamp and the bedroom lit up around me. He was propped up on his elbows watching me, his eyes squinted as he tried to wake up.

I’d woken up in the middle of the night with his fingers inside me. It was hands-down the best sensation ever. I’d gone from dreaming the most erotic dream about being touched to slowly coming to the realization that I was actually being touched. It was slow, damn near melodic, the way he penetrated and twisted his fingers. I’d listened to his quiet moans and grunts, and after he made me come with his fingers, he’d replaced them with his far larger cock and made me come again.

Now I was pleasantly sore and experiencing what I could only explain as a brain-numbing sex hangover while trying desperately to find my phone in the bottom of my purse.

“Hello… Hello—”

“Hi, Gabrielle. This is Barbara from St. Mary’s College.”

I shot upright, suddenly standing at attention and whipping around to face Keegan. He pushed up to sit, the sheets barely covering his lap. His brow was suddenly furrowed.

“Well, I know you’re working very hard to get caught up in some of your classes, so I wanted to let you know as soon as possible that the panel voted four to one to keep you in regular student status for the time being.”

“What?” I practically shrieked. “Really?”

Barbara laughed sweetly. “Yes, dear. Of course this could change if there are any developments related to the allegations in question, and the school will have to act accordingly if there are, but for the time being, this panel has concluded that there is no reason to place you on interim suspension. Your professors are all being notified today, and you’re expected to return to class next week and contact them yet this week to ensure you’re keeping up on your workload.”

I nodded my head stupidly as though Barbara could actually see me.

“Congratulations, Gabrielle. I’m really very happy for you.”

“Yes. Yes, thank you. Thank you. I just…thank you.” A huff of overexcited breath left my lungs in a rush.

I disconnected moments later, and when I lifted my eyes to meet Keegan’s, he smirked.

“Think we can plan this life of ours now?” he asked with a wry smile.

Epilogue

Two Years Later

Keegan

JESSA glanced at me as she reached for the coffee pot. She scowled, and her shoulders curled forward. This was Jessa pretty much every Saturday morning.

“You look like you died last night and came back as a zombie this morning,” I commented as I sipped my coffee and flipped through the newspaper that sat on the kitchen island in front of me.

She turned to me, waving the creamer spoon in the air. “For your information, Keegan, I was hanging out with some classmates, being a cool college kid last night. I know you don’t know anything about that because you’re uneducated.”

I scoffed, even as my lips pulled up. “I have three degrees.”

She shrugged as though I was missing the point.

“So you’re hung over?”

“No. We stayed up late watching The Walking Dead reruns.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the living room. “Where’s G-Dog? We just made it to season four, episode eight, and I wanted to spoil it for her before I go to class.”

“Uh…no you’re not. I’m binge-watching it with her, and if you spoil it for her, she’ll spoil it for me.”

“Well, you know that one guy we love so much—”

“Zip it,” I said, cutting her off.

“He gets—”

I cut her off again. “No.”

She gave me the finger across her throat gesture along with a scritching sound. “Just sayin’.”

I rolled my eyes.

She screwed the lid on her travel mug, sighing dramatically.

“Tell me again why you decided to take a Saturday class?”

She shook her head, groaning. “I don’t know. It sounded like a good idea at the time.” She looked back at me. “You didn’t answer me. Where is Gabe?”

“Still in bed. She’s not feeling well.”

Her eyes narrowed. “She’s been not feeling well a lot lately.” She cocked her head to the side. “Wait a minute…” She hummed. “You’re poisoning her, aren’t you?” she accused. “If I find out you’re poisoning her, I will kill you and take your car.”

I chuckled but didn’t respond.

Jessa looked at me again, her eyes narrow slits of suspicion at this point, and then she harrumphed. She was on to me.

She walked from the room, bounding up the stairs two at a time, and I followed at a more reasonable pace. When I walked into Gabe’s and my bedroom, I glanced toward the en suite bathroom. Jessa was standing in the doorway, staring down at Gabe, who was sitting on the floor in front of the toilet. Gabe looked exhausted, and her face was flushed. This was fairly typical of her mornings right now—hell, afternoons, too, on occasion.

“Just tell me. Do you feel like your husband might have poisoned you?”

Gabe gaped at her sister for a moment, shaking her head as though dumbfounded. Gabe glanced past Jessa to me, and her forehead scrunched up in confusion. “Uh…no?” she finally responded, and then her focus shifted to me. “Remind me why you told her she could live with us?”

I chuckled. “Because she’s a poor college kid, and the University of Chicago is expensive.” I winked at Gabe. “Besides, she’s free entertainment.”

Jessa rolled her eyes at me before looking back at Gabe. “Think hard,” Jessa continued in her completely serious tone. “Has he ever tried to kill you before?” She said the words slowly, and her head rose and fell as though maybe it would all come back to Gabe if Jessa was just patient enough. “You know, left the toilet seat up so you’d fall in and break your back, conveniently left his toy cars on the stairs so you’d slip and fall, accidentally bumped into you when you were hiking along the rim of the Grand Canyon?”

Gabe shook her head. Her lips were pulling up but not very far at the moment. She was clearly not feeling well.

“Those are just some examples.”

Gabe started nodding slowly then. “Now that you mention it. He did…he did poison me.”

Jessa gasped dramatically, looking over her shoulder at me with a feigned look of viciousness that looked oddly like the real version. Jessa turned back to Gabe. “Tell me. What did that bastard do to my poor dying sister?” She held the back of her hand to her forehead as she leaned back against the doorframe.

“He poisoned me with his seed,” Gabe groaned as she clutched her stomach.

I started laughing then. I’d come to realize my wife was actually just as capable of being silly and ridiculous as her younger sister, a side of her that didn’t come out until our relationship and life together settled down a couple years ago, but it certainly didn’t happen all at once or overnight.

Within days of finding out the disciplinary panel had voted to keep Gabe in school, we moved into a vacation home in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee. We spent the next six weeks finding a house in Chicago and then buying it, me applying for advertising jobs and Gabe working her ass off day and night to get caught up with her classes. She landed an internship in Chicago for her final semester of school, working for a non-profit organization that designed, developed, and executed after-school programs targeting at-risk youths in the Chicago area, and she started her job there only days after we moved into our new home. The organization she interned with loved her so much she was now on their payroll full time.

Gabe had been brought in for questioning a couple of times in regards to her possible involvement in criminal activity, and she didn’t let go of the worry that her mistakes might someday bite her in the ass until David Edgerton relocated to Dallas, Texas. Once he was gone, there seemed to be little remaining interest in the controversy, and that was when the stress slowly started slipping away, the last of it dissipating the very day she graduated from college. I could literally feel the shift in her. She’d practically jumped in my arms when I met her after the ceremony, and I swear I could feel every ounce of stress and worry draining from her body as I held her. It was the most incredible thing in the world.

Jessa had been right. My wife did know how to smile, and she did it well and often now—even as her head hung over a toilet bowl on a Saturday morning in fact.

“You mean…you mean…” Jessa turned to me, smiling broadly. She ran at me, throwing her arms around me in a tight hug. When she let me go, she walked back to the bathroom, approaching Gabe and rubbing the top of her head as if she was a dog and leaning down and kissing the crown of her head.

“Oh God…” Gabe croaked out, her face turning green as the motion sickened her.

“I can’t believe you have morning sickness just for some”—Jessa sighed whimsically—“elaborate scheme to surprise me with this news.” She shook her head as she looked back and forth between us.

I nodded. “Yeah, you know we didn’t actually plan the morning sickness as a means of breaking the news to you, right?”

“Ah shucks. You’re just saying that.”

I cocked my head to the side. “Mmm-hmm,” I responded. I did that a lot with Jessa when I had no idea what she was saying.

“I mean, congratulations to me, right, guys?” She smiled exuberantly at us.

Gabe lifted her head from the toilet where she’d been resting her cheek. “Yeah,” she said weakly. “Congratulations, kiddo. I’m so, so happy for you. Could you guys…I don’t know…get out so I can finish puking up my guts? That would be…” She gave us a thumbs-up, even as she reached out with her foot and pushed the door closed in our faces.

“This is going to be a girl, do you understand?” Jessa commented as we walked back downstairs.

I nodded. “Yeah. I’m all over it.”

We stopped at the foot of the stairs.

“I’m serious, Keegan. Girls rule, and boys drool. Everyone knows that.”

I kept nodding. “I know,” I agreed. “I was just hating myself the other day for being a man.”

“See? You understand.” She smiled, looking up the stairs. But her brow creased, and she looked back at me. “But she’s okay, right?”

“She’s fine. Almost through the first trimester, so the morning sickness should ease up soon.”

“Okay. Yeah…” She glanced upstairs one last time.

“Get out of here. You’re going to be late.”

She gave me a quick hug, grabbed her bag on the floor, and ran outside.

I ran to the kitchen and made Gabe some peppermint tea. We’d discovered that peppermint was literally the only thing that staved off the nausea. I grabbed my newspaper and coffee and her tea and walked back upstairs. I found her curled up against the headboard of our bed, watching the morning newscast.

She held her hands out, taking her mug from me.

“Careful. It’s still hot.”

She nodded, holding it under her mouth and blowing on it.

I rounded the bed and crawled in next to her, setting my coffee cup on the nightstand and scooting closer. I rested my hand on her lower belly, touching my lips to her shoulder.

“This baby is kicking your ass, G-Dog,” I murmured.

She laughed quietly. “Can I tell you something?”

I sat up straighter. “You know you can.”

She glanced at me. Her cheeks were blushing. “I used to not be very excited about this life.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“I thought I’d made too many mistakes to find happiness, to deserve it, to keep it.”

I caressed slowly across her belly, slipping my hand under the bottom of her T-shirt and splaying my fingers over her still-flat belly. “I know you did.”

“But I found it with you,” she whispered.

I smiled at her. “And you’ll keep it with me.”

The End

Publisher’s Note

Please help this author's career by posting an honest review wherever you purchased this book.

About Elizabeth Finn

Elizabeth Finn is a multi-published contemporary romance author. Her passion is creating stories packed full of believable conflicts, characters who leave you rooting for them, and romance that might just short-circuit your e-reader. She likes her characters flawed and fallible, but they always find the best part of themselves on their journey, and her readers find themselves devoted to her honest and heartfelt voice.

Connect with Elizabeth Finn:

Visit my Website

Find me online at:

Facebook

Twitter

Other Titles by Elizabeth Finn

The Devil’s Pawn

Brother’s Keeper

Restoring Jordan

The Immortal Series

Immortal Protector

Immortal Distraction

Immortal Healer

Table of Contents

Kissed

Blurb

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Table of Contents

Kissed

Blurb

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue