Chapter 33
Jameson
When we arrive back at our hotel suite, I release Megan’s hand.
She wanders around the room, checking out the view from the windows. Seeing her struggle with what to do with herself, alone with me in this hotel room, is about as depressing as watching her struggle with how to touch me in the restaurant.
I’ve become accustomed to avoiding her touch while restraining myself from touching her at the same time. It happened very quickly, adjusting to this delicate dance. I hate that I’ve put up this barrier to force distance between us. But obviously, I had to.
Getting closer to her in any way just makes this whole situation harder.
I feel raw enough about the things I told her as we walked hand in hand through the streets of Paris. Because they were painfully true.
And I keep thinking about what she said in the limo today. I long for a happy ending in a world where there shouldn’t be one.
Like I told her, I’ve never witnessed a happy ending in real life. Those are things in movies and books and fairy tales. My grandparents’ marriage, my parents’ marriage, Graysen’s engagement, and now even my own; they’re all lies.
But I don’t want to live a lie.
I spent my teenage years grieving my father’s untimely death, only to find out that he’d betrayed us. It wasn’t just Mom he betrayed with his affairs. It was our whole sense of family. He’d lied to us about who we were to each other, and it broke my heart.
That was when I got the dagger tattoo over my heart: when I swore to myself that I would never lie to those I love like that.
I do love. I love my family, fiercely.
And of course, I want to be loved.
Maybe much more than I’ve always feared falling in love, I want it. Badly.
I want to be the kind of man who leads with his heart, like Savannah advised me to. But how can I connect with Megan in the ways that matter, when what matters to me most is honesty, and I can’t be fully honest with her, because of the stupid challenge?
This fucking challenge that’s taking over my life.
“Did you enjoy yourself at dinner?” I loosen my tie, struggling for something safe to talk about as the nightly tension that always surrounds getting ready for bed presses in.
“I did.” She looks at me from where she stands by the open doors to the balcony, the long curtains billowing in. The sparkly dress shimmers over her curves, the skirt showing the exact right amount of her legs to appear seductive, to make a man hunger for what he can’t see.
My chest feels tight, my cock so swollen… I’m half-hard already, just looking at her across the room. I turn away. “I barely got a word with you. You were so popular with the men at the table.”
She doesn’t say anything as I pour us each a glass of the Cristal I had delivered for us just before we got here. I hand her a crystal coupe of champagne.
“Thank you.” She touches her glass lightly to mine, and we both take a sip.
As we stand here in silence, my senses flood with the awareness of her. I always feel her when she’s near, my attraction to her overwhelming me. And all the way here, holding hands in the streets, her soft, warm touch sent rivulets of lust streaming up my veins, heady and intoxicating. I can still feel it.
I crave touching her like that, skin to skin.
I can’t believe how erotic it is, just holding her hand, or brushing against her in public. It feels like I’ve been starving for her for long, aching years. So much longer than I’ve actually known her.
“Do you want to shower? Or take a bath?” I put my champagne down to unbutton the collar of my shirt, and go over to where my open suitcase is spread on a luggage rack, avoiding that look in her eyes.
“You can go first,” she says softly. “I’ll just enjoy the view.”
I look at her like she’s zapped me with an electric current. My pulse beats in my cock like a ticking bomb about to go off. I couldn’t be harder if she dropped her dress right now.
I know, when she smiles wryly, that I’ve mistaken her meaning. “The view from the balcony,” she clarifies.
Heat floods me as her cheeks grow pink.
I head stiffly into the bathroom, and start running her a bath. Maybe I want to do nice things for her to make up for what’s missing. And somehow, it’s getting more difficult to read her, to know what she wants, to figure out how to make her happy, instead of easier.
No. That’s not true.
She wants sex, asshole.
She wants you to take her in your arms and kiss her.
You’ve seen the way she looks at you.
You’ve read her books…
She wants you to be her goddamn hero.
She told my siblings I was some kind of superhero. I think half of her believes it. And the other half desperately wants it to be true.
I drag my hands over my face. I feel like a fucking fraud.
The idea of sleeping next to her in the hotel bed…
My heart is racing just thinking about it.
At home, I’ve taken to hanging out in the living room when she goes to bed, passing out on the couch. I set an alarm to wake me before she gets up in the morning so I can slip in next to her.
Because going to bed with her at night, and sleeping next to her, is impossible.
I’m way too aroused for that.
You’d think I’d be jerking off on the hour.
Instead, I’ve stopped masturbating at all. When I realized there was no way I could do it without picturing her, and picturing her while I did it was only making it harder to resist touching her, I decided it would be a better idea to stick with cold showers and abstinence.
Just avoid sex of any kind, all together, until the challenge ends.
Stupid.
In the hotel room, what excuse do I have to avoid sleeping in the bed with her?
I’ll have to sleep with her. And maybe I won’t get a minute of sleep because I’ll be picturing her in that glittering dress, looking at me over dinner all night like she wanted me to be her dessert.
Thirteen more days.
I walk back into the room, and when I tell her that her bath is ready, she looks sweetly surprised.
“Come here.” I hold out my hand to her.
She comes to me and slips her hand into mine, and I lead her into the bathroom, where the tub is nearly full.
“Take your time,” I tell her, and leave her alone.
* * *
While Megan has her bath, I pace the length of the hotel suite. I’d be suspicious as hell about me, if I were her. My evasive answers. The fact that I barely touch her.
I wasn’t lying about the way my business associates were all over her at dinner. In Vancouver or Paris, it’s all the same. Men stare at her. Doors are opened for her. She could have her pick of men, if she wanted it.
I live with her, and I’ve barely even kissed her.
And when I did, on the jet… I jerked away from her as if I realized I was allergic to her halfway through.
At this rate, she’ll start thinking I’m nuts.
Or secretly gay.
Or fucking someone else.
And lying to her about whichever of the above.
I blow out a breath, flopping back on the couch.
Faintly, I hear the water in the bath slosh, and my head immediately goes to her stripping off that dress. I picture her naked in there, the water sliding over her luscious curves as she washes herself.
This is killing me. I’m fairly sure it’s starting to kill her, too.
I lie sprawled on the couch, listening to the faint sounds of her bathing, going out of my mind.
Eventually, I pick up my phone and stare at it for a moment, debating. Then I call one of my brothers before I can stop myself.
It’s getting that desperate.
I hold the phone to my ear, bury my other hand in my hair and squeeze. While I wait for him to pick up, the look on Megan’s face when she asked me if we could hold hands tortures me. So hopeful, and yet devoid of hope at the same time.
She was afraid I was going to say no. And yet she’d had the courage to ask me anyway.
“Aren’t you in Paris?” is my brother’s greeting. I can hear the amusement in Damian’s voice. “It’s after midnight there.”
“Can I watch her touch herself?” I keep my voice low, so she won’t hear me. My tone is desperate, like a dying man begging for water. “If I don’t touch myself at the same time or get any gratification from it?”
Damian gives a low chuckle. “Tell me you’d get no gratification from it. I want to hear you lie to me for the first time in your life.”
I groan as I claw my hand through my hair.
“Are you grasping for some loophole because you already screwed up?”
“No.”
“Did you have sex with your fiancée? Or someone else? How bad is it? Be honest, Jamie. I won’t even tell the others.”
I believe him. Damian has never been one to play by the rules. I doubt he’d seriously want me to lose my inheritance over the rules of this game. And what does he really care if I cheat? He doesn’t, probably.
But I have nothing to hide.
“I promise you, I haven’t had sex with her.” As those words come out of my mouth, the bathroom door opens and my eyes meet Megan’s.
She stops abruptly in the doorway. She heard those last words.
“I have to go.” I hang up on Damian and sit up.
Megan steps out of the bathroom, wrapped in a hotel robe. Her hair is twisted up, not wet.
“You’re finished your bath?” I state the obvious. “You want another drink? Or should we get some sleep?”
She blinks at me. “When I said I was going to enjoy the view,” she says hesitantly, “if I’d actually meant that I wanted to enjoy the view of you in the shower, would you have said yes?”
I clear my throat, which suddenly has an entire day-old croissant jammed in it. “Uh… I don’t think that’s a good idea right now.”
And now she’s probably thinking there’s something wrong with me. If I don’t even want her to see me naked in the shower, what am I hiding? Some ghastly rash? A tiny dick?
“Why not?”
Fuck me.
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Megan.” I swipe my hand through my hair. “We just need to wait a bit.”
“Until you’re comfortable,” she says softly.
I don’t answer that, just grit my teeth. Because I’ve never been able to come up with an answer for this. Unless I make up a lie, I have no reason to delay putting my hands all over her body. Even telling her that I won’t touch her because of Cole would be a lie at this point.
So I just say nothing.
“Are you into me that way? Physically?”
Shit.I’ve really fucked this up.
“Megan… of course I am.”
“So, if you were ready for something to happen between us… it would happen?”
“Yes. If you wanted it to.”
She studies me for a long minute, like she isn’t sure if she believes me.
It fucking slays me.
“Tell me the truth, okay?” She glances at the phone in my hand and takes a little breath. “Was that a woman?”
“No.” I stand and slip my phone into my pocket, closing the distance between us, wanting to reassure her.
“I heard you. You were telling someone on the phone that you haven’t had sex with me.” Before I can respond, she adds quietly, “How do I know you’re not going to sleep with someone else?”
Fuck. How can I assure her that if I could have sex with anyone, it would be her?
Not being able to tell her why I can’t is becoming a worse problem than I ever anticipated.
“I’m not sleeping with anyone else,” I try to reassure her. “Other than what you’ve seen when we’ve been socializing publicly and I’m with you, I’m not even spending time with any other women, personally or professionally, right now.” Thanks to Graysen basically ordering me to stay away from womankind.
She gives a short, weary sigh. “It was my brother on the phone, wasn’t it? He’s still having a hard time with this. And you’re trying to cover for him.”
My mouth opens and shuts as I struggle with what to say to her. I decide to go with the truth, while avoiding actually answering the first part of her question. “Whatever your brother thinks about this, about us, even if he’s having a hard time with it, that’s not our responsibility either. We both care about Cole. But he doesn’t get to choose your partner or mine.”
Megan’s tension seems to dissolve as she takes that in. I only feel worse when my evasive answer puts her at ease.
She’s trusting me, even when I’m not being fully trustworthy.
“I agree.” She glances over at the Cristal on ice. “Why don’t we finish that champagne? I’m in love with the balcony. We can see the Eiffel Tower from here. It’s all lit up.”
I know that. That’s why I picked this room. For her. “I’ll meet you out there.”
“Okay.” She gives me a small smile that I don’t deserve and steps out onto the balcony.
I refill our glasses for us, my chest constricting with the fear that all this evading the truth—lying; I’m lying to her, at least by omission—is going to kill our relationship before it even gets started.
Thirteen days.
I just have to usher us around this landmine that I can’t acknowledge for thirteen more days. Then I won’t have to work around this ridiculous secret anymore.
I can finally have sex with my fiancée without my life blowing up. And everything will fall into place.