Chapter 2
Jules
I’ve never been the kind of woman who noticed the color of a man’s eyes, but here I am, catching and keeping in my mind a startling shade of sterling gray I wasn’t even sure a person’s irises could hold.
As I disappear into the crowd, taking a sip of the champagne and letting the flavor roll around on my tongue, I tell myself that I didn’t just challenge Gray Eyes over there to pursue me.
But I know, deep down, that I did.
In my defense, I hadn’t expected to run into someone so…
intoxicating. I hadn’t expected to run into a man who could make being caged against the wall feel like a fucking treat.
His voice was deep, but tinged with a flat, Midwestern cadence that surprised me.
For some reason, given his height, the well-groomed, dark beard showing beneath his sparkling onyx black mask, I’d almost thought he was foreign.
Now, I glance over my shoulder and see him just a few feet away from me, in conversation with someone else but looking straight in my direction. It sends another trill of anticipation racing along my skin.
Though I can’t make out his full expression—only the steel gray of his eyes behind the mask—I get the sense that his eyebrows are drawn down, concentrating.
On me.
Around us, the ballroom is dim, candles winking in the gentle light, a jazz band up on the stage playing soft, luxe Christmas music as champagne flutes twinkle and clink.
The party is a mix between Christmas luxury and masquerade, faces covered by sparkling red, green, white, and black masks.
Most have opted for the kind that only cover your eyes, but the more dedicated—and the staff—are concealed down to their chins.
Mine is a sparkling ruby mask with a feather sprouting up on the side of my face, and I thought it might look ridiculous.
Then I arrived and realized this one is pretty tame compared to some of the spiraling, intricate designs here.
I think I even saw a mask in Tiffany blue—not festive, but a clear show of wealth, if every gem was actually a diamond.
Why did I tell him that I was here to network? That’s why Dax invited me originally, and even though I thought it might be kind of tacky, he’d convinced me that fundraising was just a front for the party. For the drinking and schmoozing.
I’m not so sure that’s true—not after Franklin Burch’s speech—but Dax isn’t here now, for me to curse him out. In fact, I already did that, and decided to come to the party on my own.
But I’m not thinking about Dax, or the fact that he turned out to be married. I’m not thinking about the fact that this is exactly the kind of thing my parents worried would happen when I made the decision to move to New York City.
Instead, I’m thinking about Gray as he moves ever closer to me, closing the distance and whittling down the number of people between us. I can practically smell his cologne. Something warm and almost sweet—amber?
Slowly, we make our way through the ballroom, and each time I glance over my shoulder, he’s there, gaze on me, making my heart pick up.
The back of my neck is hot, and I can’t deny how much I like the way his eyes travel over me, drinking me in all at once, rather than breaking me down into pieces as men so often do.
To many of them, I’m a quick equation of parts—ass, tits, hips—and a hasty deduction about whether or not I’m thick or fat. Desirable or not.
I have no problem with either word. I’m comfortable in my body, and I know what I have. Ozempic might be in right now, but I have no qualms with my curves. Strong, capable, and fucking gorgeous.
Growing up, my mom often said I was just like Marilyn Monroe—she didn’t love the way I filled out, often made comments about my swimsuits being provocative, even though they were just like what all the other girls wore—but when I search for Monroe online, I didn’t see the resemblance.
Marilyn Monroe was fat in the way that the un-skinniest Disney star is. That’s to say, not at all. She wasn’t even mid-size, curvy like me, but instead just a woman with a body that wasn’t emaciated like the models and hungry wives around her.
Maybe I don’t look like Monroe, but I definitely carry her spirit. I refuse to take up less space just because society wants me to.
And Gray looks at me like he likes exactly how much space I occupy.
Quickly, I move on from my conversation, steadily making my way across the room. In my mind’s eye, I hear his deep voice, feel the ghost of his lips over my ear.
What kind of favor?
I wouldn’t be pretending.
Normally, such forward flirting wouldn’t work on me, especially not with a man I just met. A stranger in a mask. But there’s something about the low timber of his voice, the gentle way it rolls over me, that keeps a frisson of energy moving the length of my spine.
There’s something delicious about him, my mouth watering to take a bite, and that’s dangerous. The last thing I need right now is to be distracted by some rich asshole. Even if he is exactly my type—built like a linebacker, tall and muscled, but quick and commanding like a quarterback.
My last internship was with a PR firm that focused on professional athletes, and I still haven’t shaken the sports metaphors.
That firm is where I met Dax—which is just a reminder that I should not be thinking about men.
Shouldn’t be focusing on Gray behind me, following me steadily through the room, his eyes seeming never to leave me, even as he talks to other people.
I’m certain I was right in the things I said about him.
Figuring people out is what I’m good at—you don’t get into public relations without being able to read someone.
Understanding them at a glance. Discovering motive and figuring out how to steer things the way you want.
Really, understanding public perception is all about understanding a million tiny perspectives.
Finally, I reach the other side of the ballroom and spot a tall wooden door half-buried behind a black velvet curtain. It strikes me as the kind of door that might not open at all. Or maybe it’s a favorite of the staff, who can slip out to smoke where the guests can’t see them.
Sliding between the curtain and the wall, my ass bumps against the wood around the panes of glass, and I eventually hit the door, turning the handle and grinning to myself when it opens and I can disappear into the night.
It’s cold. Not snowing, but the slight moisture in the air says it could start any second.
When I found the address earlier and rushed through the lobby, I hadn’t taken note of what this place is, but now I realize, looking back, that this is some sort of opera and arts building.
One with small balconies jutting out on the side, giving you a gorgeous view of the city sprawling out, stretching into the night, windows glancing with red and white and green Christmas lights.
From here, I can just make out the side of the tree in Rockefeller plaza.
“That dress can’t be too warm.”
I gasp—dramatically, I’ll admit—and spin around to find Gray standing there at the edge of the balcony, staring at me. The door is shut behind him, and the black curtain would conceal us from everyone inside even if I wasn’t in the far corner of the balcony, against the freezing stone.
Gray takes a step toward me, and I can sense something in the air between us, hanging there, a question that needs answering.
Was he right? Did I want him to follow me? To pursue me through that crowd like a fox following a rabbit?
My logical self says of course not. My reckless self, steps in toward him, looking up at him with eyes that might as well say kiss me.
And he does. My brain sputters out to a stop, like the first stick shift I ever tried to drive, just rolling slowly in the middle of the highway. Gray’s mouth is hot and sweet with champagne-soaked strawberries, the antithesis of the frigid, laden air around us.
His left-hand snakes around to the small of my back, his right sliding up over my hip, to the dip of my stomach, over my chest, until it rests, feather-light, against my neck.
I rock forward, smashing my tits against his chest, and he lets out a low noise from the back of his throat, drawing me in even closer. We move together, him pressing me back against the wall and me hitching up my knee, hooking it around him like I’m a tango dancer.
Except I’m not a dancer, and I don’t know this man, and I don’t usually do things like this.
But in in this moment it doesn’t fucking matter.
I’m in a gorgeous red dress that drapes around me, and his fingertips are pressing into my skin, and he smells like warm, oozing, golden light.
Plus, when he nips at my lip, it makes my core turn molten, my hips rolling into his and seeing that he’s just as excited as I am.
When he pulls away, I’m breathing hard, flushed from head to toe, not knowing or caring about the cold out here. Not even caring that anyone in the buildings around us might have seen that kiss just now, might have—even from a distance—seen how I completely and totally melted in his embrace.
I clear my throat, even as my core throbs, demanding more. Demanding I touch him again, ask if he’s staying in a hotel, or if he lives in an apartment near here, prompt him to take me there right away.
“I’ve got my own analysis for you,” he says, breathing hard, his own rasping breath an echo of my own.
I look up into those hard, exacting eyes and think of the glinting blade of a scalpel.
“You try to act nonchalant, and you hide behind your psychoanalysis of others. Back there,” he jerks his head in the direction of the ballroom, and I feel like his words and his voice are a tractor beam, and I’m stuck in them, unable to do anything but breathe and listen and feel the press of his chest against my own, the gentle feather of his breath over my cheek.
“You jumped to try and figure me out, to lead the conversation so you could be in control. You act like that’s what you want—control.
But I’m willing to bet it’s not, is it?”
He delivers this last line while whispering, dragging the tip of his nose up a straight line from my clavicle to the spot just under my ear, and I nearly orgasm from the feel of it alone. Who the hell is he?
Far in the annals of my mind, a voice is echoing in an empty room, the last brain cell of mine that’s hanging onto logic, reminding me that this is not the kind of networking we came here for. That I need a job far more than I need this dick.
Wait—I’m not thinking about his dick. Definitely not thinking about the weight and length of it, how stiff it is through his suit and my dress, the gentle pulse between my legs begging to find out just how good it might feel in this precise moment.
“Here’s what I think,” he says, and I realize he’s worked his hand up the length of my thigh, pulling my skirt up, his fingers massaging against the line of my panties. Teasing, touching. I move embarrassingly against that touch, mind narrowing to the spot I want it, where I need it most.
Pulling back, stopping all motion until I look him in the eyes, Gray smirks, and I realize that in all my nonchalance about playing a game, I’d never thought about what would happen when he won.
“I think, secretly, all you want is for someone else to take control. Isn’t that right, baby?”
And with that, I’m completely and totally gone.
We crash together again, his mouth hot and demanding over mine, and what he said just continues pulsing through my head.
All you want is for someone else to take control.
He is right. That much is obvious in the way I dissolve into him, his hands practically holding me up and against the building, the cold stone against my back barely registering in my mind as his mouth drops to my neck, the scruff of his beard rough and impossible against my skin.
I’m not that well-versed in public, clothes-still-on sex, but it doesn’t take much maneuvering for him to push my thong to the side, for me to unzip him and reach inside his boxers, finding the velvet heft of him there.
I gasp at the steady pulse just under the pad of my thumb, a strange sense of closeness. It’s like feeling the beating of his heart in my hand. He groans softly against my skin, and I drive my fingers into his hair, pushing back the darker locks around the back of his ear.
My eyes flash to that area, for just a second, and I spot a small, kidney-shaped birthmark you could only see if you looked. It makes me feel a flash of intimacy, of knowing something that not everyone can instantly know about this man.
Quickly, quietly, we exchange information—I’m on the pill, clean, tested in the last month. He’s clean, too, and he doesn’t have a condom on him. Right now, I can’t bring myself to summon the logical, responsible side of myself enough to care.
“Lift,” he orders, his strong hand hooking under my knee, and I do what he says, raising my leg. He grabs my calf, slides his hand down the length of it, then pins my leg to his side, opening me up. When he steps in close, his cock slides against me, the head catching on my clit and making me gasp.
With his other hand he covers my mouth, those gray eyes boring into mine.
It’s cold all around us, but searing between our bodies.
“You have to be quiet,” he whispers, lowering down and kissing my temple, then recapturing my eyes. “Can you do that?”
I nod, and he keeps his hand over my mouth anyway. It just compounds with the feeling of him trapping me against the wall, the total loss of control.
With him stifling my noises, I realize I can’t ask him for what I want—that I want him inside me now, but it turns out I don’t need to.
He lifts his hand from my leg briefly to guide himself to my entrance in one smooth move, his cock sliding fully inside me with such ease I’m sure I must be really, really fucking wet.
I almost cry out into his palm at the sensation, but at the last minute, I bite down on my tongue, closing my eyes and tipping my head to the stars.
And I’m rewarded with a low growl of satisfaction from him, a murmured good girl into my neck, two words I know will forever be seared into my mind.