Chapter 13
Lucy
Pain shoots in a tight bolt from my ass and along my spine just as the bathroom door bursts open, and Dane is standing there, breathing hard, looking down at me as I sit in a tangle, right in the center of the tub. “Lucy. Are you okay?”
I stare up at him, water flowing over my soaking hair and chest, dripping off my arms and into the tub. I managed to pull the shower curtain down with me when I fell.
Ridiculously, I’m actually somewhat covered—my hair over my nipples like a mermaid, my thighs together and knees up. It’s far—extremely far—from what a boss should ever be seeing, but it’s also not a full frontal.
Maybe I should be wondering about how in the world Dane managed to get in here so quickly after I fell, or what he’s doing back so soon.
Since we got to the convention, he’s been staying out every night, not returning to the room until after I’ve gone to bed.
Then, when I get up in the morning, he’s already awake, ready and dressed, with his guard up.
After seeing him in his reading glasses, I’d hoped to catch another glimpse of him like that—slightly undone, a little softer than he normally presents himself.
But with the exception of complimenting my drawing and looking at me the way he did when I was wearing Akela’s dress, he hasn’t been anything but absolutely professional.
So it’s confusing that he’s here now, when he’s supposed to be down at the hotel bar, schmoozing. Or flirting. Or whatever he’s been doing while I’m up here in the room, alone.
But I can’t think about that, because another jolt of pain is cutting through me, ricocheting from my ass up to my shoulders, tight and radiating out. To punctuate it, I use my new favorite word on a hiss. “Fuck.”
“Come here,” Dane demands, spurred to action by the swearing, reaching over and stopping the water.
The moment it’s gone, I’m suddenly freezing, but he’s already fetching the towel from the rack, staring at it in dismay, then turning to me as he promptly wraps me in it. “You didn’t turn on the towel warmer?”
I blink at him as he leans down, scooping one arm under my legs, and the other under my head. The towel is covering just the front of me, so the water from my hair and body drips down his arms and soaks the cuffs of his suit.
“Your suit,” I murmur, and then, squinting up as the bathroom lights above silhouette him like an angel, “and what warmer?”
I’ve never stayed at a hotel this nice in my life.
Actually, my few hotel stays have been limited to those for teen birthday parties—when we all thought it was fun to get reservations at the nearest Holiday Inn Express—and the aforementioned trip to the Mark Twain caves, where my family splurged for a single hotel room, all of us kids sprawled out in sleeping bags on the floor.
Dane just shakes his head at me, bringing me out to the main living room. The pain has already dissipated, the ache less pronounced than it was even a second ago. Maybe it’s the effect of Dane carrying me like this, or maybe I was just being dramatic about how bad it hurt when I fell.
He settles me down on the couch in the seating area, and the moment he straightens up, I can see him reverting back to his professional self, building up the wall between us that he’s kept in place from the moment we arrived in Amsterdam.
I might be woozy from the fall, or maybe I’m just good at making bad decisions, because I reach out for his hand, grabbing it like I did on the plane.
“Dane. Was it bad?” I ask, wincing at the delivery, and also at the impossible task I’ve just given him. Either be honest with me about the sex or lie to my face about it. Either way, we both know the truth.
He stops, turns, arches a brow, “Bad? What—on stage? Lucy, you know that you did a great job. Everybody told you so.”
Not you, I think, but don’t say, because I don’t want to change the subject to the stage, to the presentation. To work.
I don’t really care about what happened—mostly, I didn’t want him to have to go up there alone, though I’m sure he could have handled it.
He’s a CEO with tons of experience, a literal legend in the business world.
Even his worst probably would have been better than what anyone else could have delivered.
“Not on stage,” I clarify, dropping my gaze to our hands. He hasn’t flexed his fingers, hasn’t done anything to hold my hand back.
Which makes sense—he made it perfectly clear that this was inappropriate. Not happening. That he doesn’t date, anyway.
“Lucy,” he murmurs, realization settling over his features, and he turns, instantly, stepping close to me, then falters, as though questioning that decision.
I let go of him, not wanting to look any more desperate than I already do, and that seems to sway him into coming closer, kneeling down beside me.
“It was not bad,” he says, his voice somewhere south of choked. “I can promise you that.”
“You don’t have to lie,” I say, knowing I’m being petulant, but also thrilled with his closeness. “It’s okay—I figured that was the reason you didn’t want to—”
“Lucy. It was not bad—in a way, I’m not really sure women can be bad in bed—”
I suck in a breath, turning to look at him, wondering if I should be insulted. “But I’ve read about it online, like—star-fishing or whatever.”
He blinks, surprise and amusement on his face. Of course, it’s not like Dane Rourke is scrolling through Reddit threads offering advice and expertise to know if you’re bad at sex. Not like I’ve been doing the past few days.
“It’s my opinion,” he says, slowly, “that if a man is doing his job, a woman shouldn’t be able to be bad in bed. Whatever you said… star-fishing? That seems like something that can only happen when the man sucks at what he’s trying to do.”
My skin is hot again, breath coming a little quicker, and I don’t miss the position of Dane’s hand above my head, the fact that I’m laid out for him on this couch, nothing but the towel separating us.
The fact that Dane is certainly good enough. That I could never be apathetic with him.
“I want to be good, though.” What I don’t say is, I want to be the kind of woman who doesn’t hear “that shouldn’t have happened” right after the deed is done.
He looks pained, glances away from me, then back. Once more, decision moves over his features, and I feel his hand flexing from its position above my head.
“Lucy,” he murmurs again, his voice low, his hand trailing down, skirting over the bare skin of my side. I shiver, he swallows, and once more, I feel it building between us. I’m already soaked—from the shower, but also from my body’s reaction the moment he slid his arms under me. “Are you hurt?”
I blink at him, confused, then he clarifies, “From the fall. In the shower.”
“No.” I say it a little too hastily, a little too needy, but I don’t care anymore. Dane knows that I want him, and it looks like he wants me back, no matter how hard he’s been working to keep himself from doing anything about it. “I’m not hurt.”
“Well,” Dane finally says, his throat working, his gaze traveling down over my towel.
I want to fist my hands in his salt-and-pepper hair, want to feel his weight on top of me.
It feels infinite, the number of ways I want him to take me, to have me, and like we just don’t have enough time for it all. “I could teach you.”
I blink up at him, lust momentarily paused by confusion. “Teach me?”
Some of that professionalism slides back onto his face. A different wall, but a wall, nonetheless. “Yes. We could… continue this relationship. But not romantic, not dating. Just—lessons. Would you want that? If you knew it would never go any further?”
This might be wrong—it probably is.
But it feels right, and I want it, and if I spend too much time thinking about it, all I’m going to do is talk myself out of it.
Not for the first time, I think about Frankie, and what she might say. In all our trips and adventures together, we didn’t really talk much about sex. As she got sicker, she didn’t really seem to crave it, and I wasn’t that interested in the college guys around us, anyway.
But I have the feeling that if she were alive now, and I could call her, she would ask me what the hell I was waiting for.
“Yes,” I breathe, reaching for Dane’s collar and dragging his lips to mine.