Chapter 8 Andrej #2
Cartier spots the car waiting on the side of the road and starts walking in the opposite direction. I grab her arm and spin her around to face me.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.” She stares at my hand until I release her arm. “Don’t even think about following me.”
“Cartier, I’m not letting you walk the streets alone.”
She shakes her head and studies me as if seeing me properly for the first time. “Why? Because you won’t be able to protect me from all the psychos who prowl the city at night?”
The jibe isn’t lost on me.
“I warned him to back off. He didn’t listen.”
Her shoulders slump, but the rage is still there simmering beneath the surface. “You broke his jaw.”
“What do you think would’ve happened if I’d stepped back and let him get close to you?”
“He wanted to dance.”
She works with vulnerable women. She knows what men are capable of. She can’t possibly believe this.
“He wanted to touch you, Cartier. He thought that because you’re wearing a sexy dress and you were dancing on a podium, it was an invitation for any fucking sleaze to get close and ignore your personal boundaries.”
I can’t believe I’m having to spell this out for her. I can’t believe that this still fucking happens to women. Where the fuck was the security team when the guy was trying to touch my woman? Where the fuck was every other guy in the nightclub while this was happening right in front of them?
She averts her eyes, peers down at the dress and folds her arms across her chest.
“You bought the dress. What did you think would happen?”
I step closer, and she doesn’t back away. “I thought that you could play out at least a small part of your fantasy. You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever met, Cartier. But you’re mine, and that asshole needed a lesson in common fucking decency.”
She shivers. It’s the comedown from the tequila and the situation with the dick in the paisley shirt. I fold her into my arms and guide her towards my waiting car, and she doesn’t resist.
We don’t speak during the journey back to my apartment.
She rests her head against my shoulder, eyes closed, her clothes still in a heap on the floor.
When we reach my building, I carry her into the penthouse elevator with her arms around my neck. I’m acutely aware that she’s naked underneath the dress, but her vulnerability outweighs it by a million miles right now.
My woman needs to be worshipped.
She needs to feel special.
She needs to understand that no matter what happens, I will do everything in my power to protect her from the beasts and fucking monsters out there.
Even if she hates me for it.
Especially if she hates me for it. Because who else is going to look out for her?
I carry her into my apartment and look at it through Cartier’s eyes.
The aesthetics are perfect, designed to draw the eye to the view beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.
My housekeeper makes sure that it’s immaculate.
The living room is decorated in soothing colors chosen by the interior designer; the kitchen has everything that I need to make a gourmet three-course meal if I’m in the mood for entertaining; there’s a gym, guest rooms with walk-in closets and ensuite bathrooms, a sauna, a massage salon.
But there isn’t a single fucking thing that makes it home.
Because until now, it has been a place to crash when I’m not working. Cartier is the only woman I’ve ever fucked in my apartment—that’s what hotel rooms are for—and right now, with her head resting against my shoulder, I want her to want to be here.
I stride through the open-plan living area and along the hallway to my bedroom, opening the door with my elbow and entering the room sideways.
The sensory activated lights sunk into the ceiling like stars come on.
“Dim,” I mutter as I carry her to my Alaskan King-sized bed in the middle of the room.
The lights obey, casting a hazy glow across the room.
The ceiling is painted midnight blue to resemble the night sky.
I had a fixation on space and planets and black holes as a kid which I guess I never outgrew.
The comforter on the bed is the same shade as the ceiling and walls, and there are no curtains or blinds at the window that spans the entire rear wall.
Cartier peers around the room, soaking it all up.
“It’s … beautiful.” Her voice is little more than a whisper. Perhaps that’s because all I can hear is the thump-thump-thump of my own heartbeat.
I don’t speak. I lost my words when she got angry with me outside the nightclub.
What the fuck was I thinking, forcing her to live out her fantasies? She was right when she said that they’re not real; the only place for them is inside the head. Because like a fucking idiot, rather than giving her an experience to remember, I set a bomb underneath it and pressed the detonator.
And now I have a shitload of groveling to do.
We bypass the bed for the ensuite shower room. I need to cleanse us both of what happened in the nightclub, scrub away the memory of the paisley slimeball, and start over.
The shower room is tiled in the same gleaming midnight blue as the bedroom.
The walk-in shower is large enough to hold a small party in, and the mirror spans an entire wall.
It’s been a while since I’ve taken notice of my personal space, since I’ve opened my eyes and looked at it as anything other than somewhere to sleep and wash, and I feel like a kid again, staring out the window at the night sky and wondering how it would feel to catch a star in my hands.
I set Cartier down on the floor and turn on the rainfall shower, setting it to rainforest temperature.
Then I raise her arms above her head and slide the dress up over her hips and her naked breasts and toss it onto the floor. She watches me, wide-eyed, her expression unfathomable as I slide her feet out of the cowboy boots, resisting the urge to kiss her legs all the way up to her sexy pussy.
I remove my own clothes and discard them in a heap beside the flimsy dress, aware that I forced her to enter a nightclub virtually naked. I wasn’t helping her to live out her fantasy. I did it to satisfy my own selfish fucking needs.
Taking her hand, I lead her into the steaming shower.
My cock is already like a metal rod knocking against her belly and begging to come inside.
Cartier stands with her arms by her sides, water dripping down her face and onto her beautiful body. Her nipples are hard. Her lips are parted, moist, a glimpse of perfect white teeth so irresistible that I dip my head and kiss her gently, no tongues.
I pour lavender-scented bodywash onto a sponge and lather her neck, turning her around, covering her back and shoulders in foamy white bubbles.
Under her arms, back around to her breasts, my cock twitching at the vision of her erect nipples peeking out at me from the foam.
I crouch in front of her and soap her legs, easing them gently apart, and avoiding her sex.
For now.
I wash her feet, lifting them one at a time, resting them on my thigh so that I can get the sponge between her toes.
When I stand, my blood is pumping around my veins, and my balls are throbbing. I soap myself until our bodies are slippery.
Then I crush her against my chest and kiss her directly beneath the rainfall.
She stands on tiptoes and wraps her arms around the back of my neck, pulling me to her. Her kisses are fierce and demanding. My intention to take this slowly, to woo Cartier the old-fashioned way, dissolves along with the soap being washed from our bodies.
I can’t be restrained where Cartier is concerned.
I can’t be this close to her without wanting to fuck her till she begs me to stop.
“Cartier,” I pull away long enough to murmur against her lips, “you have every part of me.”
“Every part?” She presses her hips into mine, my erection trapped between us.
“You have no fucking clue what you do to me.”
“Why don’t you show me?” She lowers her arms and stands back so that I can see every beautiful inch of her.
I drop to my knees in front of her, water spilling over my head and shoulders, and spread her legs a little wider. I peer up at her. “I wish you could see what I see.”
She smiles, and something flutters inside my closed-off heart.
I lick her sex, gently at first, sliding the tip of my tongue between her folds and grazing her clit. “You taste like fucking honey.”
Cartier twirls my hair around her fingers and pulls my face into her sex. “I want you, Andrej.”
The sound of my name rolling off her tongue sets my balls on fire. “You’re gonna get me, baby. You’re gonna get me until you beg me to stop.”
I open her sex and her clit winks at me.
Holding her hips still, I start licking, flicking it with my tongue, back and forth, listening to Cartier’s breathing growing shallow.
When she grips my hair, and her legs are trembling, I slide two fingers inside her and suck on her clit while I work her inside.
Her orgasm explodes almost immediately. Her body folds. Her legs barely hold her up, but I don’t stop sucking and pumping my fingers inside her until she cries out my name.
“Andrej!”
I stand up, move Cartier back against the shower wall, and slide my cock inside her. “You’re dripping for me, baby.” I crush her lips with mine, smothering her gasp as my length fills her up.
Then I wrap her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck and support my weight with my hands against the wall. “Come for me,” I breathe into her mouth.
“Harder, Andrej.”
“Baby, you know how to fucking turn me on.”
“Do I?” she teases.
I grind my shaft deep inside her. “Hard enough for you?”
She slants her eyes, our breaths mingling, the rainfall spilling over our heads. “Harder.”
I let go of the wall and pull her hips down hard onto me to match my thrusts. Cartier arches her spine and tilts her head backwards, exposing her neck to my kisses. I suck on the spot beneath her left ear and fuck her until we both explode.