Chapter 18
Dane
I stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist. I walked out of the bathroom and through my penthouse toward the kitchen, where I caught the smell of coffee.
“Do I dare drink any of this?” I asked.
“Very funny,” Ava said from the sofa. “My coffee skills have improved, thank you very much.”
I grabbed a mug, pausing to look at her. She was relaxed on the sofa cushions, wearing an X-Men T-shirt of mine. Her blonde hair was down and tousled and she wore no makeup. She was staring at her phone, and one bare, perfect leg was propped on the sofa back, her ankle turned and elegant, her toes pink. This was how I’d kept her—tousled, freshly orgasmed, and nearly naked—for the past three days.
Three freaking days. We’d spent the first day in her hotel room, and when I’d needed to come back here to get some clothes and a toothbrush, she’d come with me. Before I could pack a bag we’d ended up on the kitchen counter, Ava’s skirt pushed up and me between her sexy legs.
We hadn’t bothered leaving after that. I’d had the concierge send up food and some essential supplies, and we hadn’t left the penthouse. Actually, we’d barely left the bed, except to do it in the shower. Twice.
It wasn’t nearly enough. I’d never get enough of Ava—I had years to make up for. And judging by the way she went soft and hot every time I touched her, she hadn’t had enough of me. But it was the last day of her assignment, and Kaito Okada was scheduled to arrive in town in four hours. According to the schedule I’d received from one of his underlings, our first meeting was to happen at seven o’clock tonight in the lobby bar of the Four Seasons, where Okada had booked the entire top floor. I had suits. I had shirts and ties. I even had shoes and underwear. I had manners and I knew how to eat sushi. I was ready.
So what would happen next?
I didn’t fucking know. I tried not to think about it, and three days buried deep in Ava Winters was helping me forget that we weren’t really a thing. That she lived in New York and had her own life. That she’d given no hint she wanted me for anything except a few days of sex before she went her own way again.
Except Ava wasn’t on the pill. If there was a baby, she wasn’t getting rid of me. Hell, even if there wasn’t a baby she wasn’t getting rid of me.
But first, I had to meet with Okada and do the job my partners expected me to do.
“Okay, nerd,” Ava said, tapping something on her phone. “Let’s test your knowledge. What is Kaito Okada’s birthplace?’
“Osaka,” I said, sipping my coffee. She was right—her coffee skills had improved. When she was nineteen, you took your life in your hands if you let Ava anywhere near a coffee maker.
“His first business?”
“Sushi restaurants in Tokyo train stations.”
“And then?”
This one I knew. “He invented a program for air traffic control systems. It speeds up the delivery of data and provides comparative analysis so air traffic controllers can make better on-the-spot decisions without their network slowing down. It’s fucking brilliant, and it was adopted by nearly every air traffic control system in the world. Okada programmed the entire thing himself, working on a single computer in a rented apartment. They estimate he made four hundred million dollars on it the first year.”
There was a pause, and Ava stared at me. She bit her bottom lip. “Okay, first of all I didn’t really understand that. Secondly, I think you like him more than you like me. And third, even though it was nerd-speak, that was kind of hot.”
I put my coffee cup down. “I don’t like him more than I like you. I just admire his programming skills.”
“And he admires yours.” Ava rolled her eyes. “So it’s going to be a nerd bromance. Great.”
“Next question.”
She looked at her phone. “Um, what’s the new thing Okada is working on?”
“No one knows,” I said. “It’s been kept so far under wraps, even my contacts can’t tell. And I know a lot of hackers. All I have are theories.”
Now she looked curious. “What do you think it is?”
I scrubbed a hand through my damp hair. “Well, Okada never does any press, but one of my contacts found out that Okada’s mother died of cancer a year ago. He wrote the aviation program after taking a flight that had to get rerouted because of an error, so he tends to invent things he has personal experience with. There was no coverage of his mother’s death at all, so it’s personal to him. I think whatever he’s doing next has something to do with cancer treatment.”
Ava blinked. “So you think your nerd brother might actually be working on curing cancer.”
I shrugged. “It’s just a theory.” I walked to the sofa and sat down next to her. I didn’t miss noticing how her gaze stuck to me like glue as I walked, since I was only wearing a towel. We’d had sex just this morning, and Ava already looked like a hungry woman being shown a steak.
She lifted her feet, making room for me as I sat down. “Okay,” she said, sitting up and putting down her phone. “If you’re going to meet the man curing cancer, you should definitely cut your hair.”
“No.”
She got on her knees and moved closer to me. Her gaze dropped to my chest, my shoulders, and she made it move back up to my face. “How can I convince you?”
“You can’t.”
“I can.” She swung a leg over and landed in my lap, her hands on my shoulders. “I can convince you of anything, Dane Scotland.” She leaned in close to my ear, so close I could smell the sweet scent of her skin. “I’m not wearing any underwear,” she whispered.
And just like that, my pulse sped up. This was the effect she had on me. I may be thirty-four, but in the past three days I’d outdone even my most vigorous sessions as a newly devirginized twenty-three-year-old. Apparently, it was all about motivation.
Ava lowered her ass—bare under the T-shirt—onto my thighs, rubbing her bare skin over the towel. Undoubtedly she could feel me getting hard under there, since by now she’d felt it enough times. “Cut your hair,” she said again. “I could call Tyrell and he’d take you if I begged him. He’s the best in town.”
“You like the long hair,” I said, putting my hands on her waist over the tee and running them over her curves. “Admit it. You think it’s sexy. You always put your hands in it when I fuck you.” I moved my hands to her belly. “Besides, you’re not going to beg anyone but me.”
“You’re an animal,” she said, and I knew she intended it to sound critical. Instead, she sounded turned on.
This was how it was with us: a few words and we were ready to go again. I moved my hands up and cupped her breasts over the tee, covering up the X-Men graphic. “Your turn for a quiz,” I said. “Name one of the X-Men. No looking and cheating.”
She tried to look annoyed, but it wasn’t working. Her eyes were going hazy with lust as I cupped her. Ava’s tits were her kryptonite—which was a coincidence, because they were also mine. “Um,” she said, the word coming out slowly and sounding like porn. “Claw-hand guy.”
“Close,” I said, trying not to laugh at her description of Wolverine. “Who else?”
“Um… there’s a blue guy and a guy who goes really fast. I win.” She lifted her perfect ass, reached down, and yanked my towel open.
Four hours. This was over in four hours. The thought hurt, an ache deep in my chest. “Let’s go out tonight,” I said.
Ava shook her head, rubbing her pussy deliciously up the length of my cock. “The meeting.”
“Fuck the meeting. I’ll stand him up.”
“You’ll be fine,” she said, distracted because I was moving my hands again, rubbing her breasts and then dipping my hands under the T-shirt. “Everything will be—oh, do that.”
I was stroking her pussy now, moving my fingertips over it. My voice was choked when I spoke because I wanted her so bad. “Do what?”
“That.” She squirmed. “Do more, Dane. More.”
“How much?” Though I already knew the answer.
“All of it.”
So I did. I put my hands on her hips and moved her onto my cock, and she sunk down with a moan. I did it because I couldn’t stand to be without her for another second. I did it because I would do anything she fucking asked, and she had no idea.
She moved her hips, tangling her hands in my hair like she always did, and I already knew I was going to lose her. Somehow I knew. This was a fantasy, Ava and me holed up in my penthouse with the world far away. The real world was messy. Ava was messy, and so was I. In the real world, Ava was going to panic, and then she was going to run.
I pulled her down to me and kissed her deep as I flexed my hips, making her gasp. “Say you’re mine,” I said, knowing it was futile but trying anyway.
“Nice try, Dane Scotland,” she said, and her eyes closed in bliss as I moved again. “How do you do that? It feels so good.”
“Say it,” I said again.
“It’s like some kind of black magic or something.” She arched her back, lost in the sensation, and I took a second to admire the view. It was pretty gratifying, especially for my ego. “We shouldn’t be doing this at all, and yet you’re about to make me come. Again.”
“I’m good at it,” I said.
Ava was gasping, but she still had to one-up me. “That’s because… I taught you. Don’t stop.”
I didn’t. Because she asked me. I stroked her until she came, and then I came. Then, even though it was the middle of the day, we went to bed.
When I woke up, the bed was empty. So was my penthouse. Ava was gone.
She’d left a note on my kitchen counter, written on a torn piece of paper. It said only four words: Sorry. I need time.
I stared at those four words for a long moment, feeling them go through me. Sink into me. Become part of me. I knew that her mother had damaged her, that life had damaged her, that she couldn’t always control her reactions to things. I knew that she was trying to defend herself because everything hurt too much. I knew she had to put up walls. I knew she’d do this, but it didn’t hurt any less.
I looked around: at the mussed sofa, the remnants of the coffee on the counter, the rack of suits hanging pristinely next to my desk, at the boxes and bags that were the evidence Ava had been here. That even for a little while she’d been in my space, turning everything crazy and messing me up.
I picked up my phone, pulled up her number, and sent her a single text.
Then I searched the name she’d said: Tyrell. He had some kind of top secret ultra-private phone number, but I hacked it in less than four minutes. When he answered I said, “My name is Dane Scotland, and I need a haircut.”
The magic hour was over, and it was time for real life to start again.