3. Nova
3
NOVA
M y flirt game was strong, stronger than I’d actually realized. David always made me feel awkward and like I didn’t know how to talk to men because I didn’t know how to talk to him.
But this wasn’t David.
This man’s name was Bryan, and it rolled off my tongue in a delightful way that could have been the drinks that I desperately needed after receiving my Christmas bonus from Wentworth Academy.
I honestly didn’t know what the other teachers were so excited about, but my bonus wasn’t going to cover anything. I had rent to pay. I had bills to pay, and well, I didn’t have to buy groceries because my Christmas bonus was a grocery voucher that would cover the cost for about one and a half big trips to the grocery store. If I were frugal and I planned my menu carefully, the voucher would cover my grocery expenses through the end of the month. That would mean I was eating plain oatmeal and ramen noodles on Christmas day.
They couldn’t even have been bothered enough to give me a discount coupon for pizza delivery? At least that would have felt, I don’t know, more like a gift. There was no Christmas bonus. There was no money to buy a ticket home. There was no reimbursement for the rent I had to pay.
There was this beautiful man sitting in front of me, so I really needed to stop thinking about all the useless crap that David and Wentworth Academy had put me through.
I needed to compartmentalize and in a hurry or I might miss out on something good with this man. Mentally, I took all of the bullshit from the dinner party and the past semester, wadded it up into a ball of crumpled paper, and threw it away into an imaginary dumpster that was on fire. Let it all burn.
I didn’t care.
This man was smiling at me, and he had the most amazing sculpted features. A beautiful smile, and his voice was like the purr of a leopard. I just wanted to crawl up into his lap and lick his jawline.
“What do you say we get out of here?” he asked.
My glass hit the bar a little too hard as I practically dropped it.
“That’s the first acceptable plan I’ve heard all day.” Then my voice got stuck.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I can’t take you back to my place,” I admitted. I hadn’t cleaned in a while, and the place was entirely too small. He’d take one look at the single, fold-out futon I used as a bed and laugh as he ran away.
“No worries.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist. “We are in a hotel.”
My jaw dropped open ever so slightly. I hadn’t thought about that.
“We are, aren’t we?” I purred.
He was as smart as he was handsome.
“Why don’t we take this conversation upstairs?”
And by conversation, I really hoped he didn’t mean that we were going to keep talking, because I didn’t have a care in the world about anything he could say to me other than ‘Take your clothes off.’
Which is what I really wanted him to say to me.
My brain was getting a little bit fuzzy around the edges with my drink. I was fully aware of the situation. He wasn’t coercing me into anything I didn’t want because what I wanted for Christmas was a little bit of joy and a little bit of happiness.
Right now, I was feeling all the disappointment and all the anger and all the resentment. To have someone who looked like him smile with a little bit of lust, a little bit of danger, and a lot of promise was something I desperately needed. I wanted all of it.
It took everything in me not to grab his arm and drag him off to the bank of elevators, other than the fact that I didn’t have a room and I couldn’t afford one in this place.
“Are you staying here?” I managed to ask.
“I will be in a minute,” he said.
He flicked his wrist at the bartender in some silent form of sign language that I never understood. As he signed the tab, I slid off my chair. When he was ready, he stood and placed his hand on the small of my back. I felt the heat from his palm through the thick velvet of my dress as if my dress weren’t there.
We strolled to the front desk. My cheeks should have been burning with embarrassment. This felt gratuitously obvious as to what our plans were. Bryan didn’t seem to care, and bless the desk clerk, they completely ignored the obvious. Neither of us had luggage. We had clearly walked out of the bar and straight to the check-in counter.
Moments later, Bryan was tucking a card key into the breast pocket of his suit jacket. His hand was on my back, a little bit lower than the small of my back this time, resting on that area that wasn’t really hip but definitely the top of my butt.
We didn’t say anything in the elevator on the ride up to the fourth floor. He found our room and opened the door. I strode straight past him and sat on the edge of the bed. I didn’t see any reason for us to waste any time. I leaned over and pulled my shoes off, one at a time.
“Are you wearing stockings?” he asked in a low grumble.
My dress was not formal full length, but it was long enough to hit mid-calf. Overall, I felt it was a little too matronly looking on me. I had called my mother in a panic saying I needed a formal winter dress. This green velvet monstrosity is what she had sent. I was fairly certain it came out of the back of her closet, and she would have thought it was quite lovely. The school librarian had mentioned she liked my vintage style. The dress had puffy sleeves, but no sexy slit.
I reached down and lifted the hem of my dress, exposing my leg all the way to my upper thigh, where the top of my stocking was exposed. My dress may have been a little old-fashioned and matronly, but I was not. I wanted to at least feel pretty, so I wore the fancy underwear that I never got a chance to show David. He didn’t deserve it, anyway.
Now this man was going to get an eyeful of me in thin lace and satin undies.
“Leave the stockings on,” he said as he loosened his necktie and dropped it to the floor as he stalked toward me.
His suit jacket went next, and then his shirt came off. Holy crap, the man was jacked. He had muscles and definition… He pushed his mouth against mine. His lips gloriously shut my brain off. He pushed me back against the mattress, and his hand skimmed up my leg and toyed with the tops of the stockings before he gripped the exposed skin of my hip.
I may have gasped, but there was no sound made, because he was too busy consuming my kisses and I was in heaven. It didn’t matter that there was no conversation because I wasn’t here to talk. It didn’t matter that there was not going to be a tomorrow with us because the here and the now, and the…
“Oh, my God,” I gasped as his fingers found the thin bit of lace that was my panties.
My brain shut down even more as his fingers slid underneath and found my clit. I arched my hips up to meet his touch. My entire being was on fire and I was still fully clothed. Good God, what would this man do to me once I managed to get this dress off?
I garbled something to that effect, and he pulled away.
“Dress off,” I managed to finally say.
He lifted me up into a sitting position. He reached around behind my neck and found the zipper. As he lowered it down to my waist, the sleeves of the dress slipped from my shoulders, exposing long inches of cleavage and more lacy bra.
“Aren’t you just an early Christmas present? What more surprises do you have underneath there?”
I fluttered my eyelashes at him, unable to answer. I wanted to say something sassy, but all that really came out was more needy panting.
He made a low growling sound in his throat as I wiggled completely out of the dress. With frantic movements, he unfastened his belt and dropped his pants. He pushed and kicked out of the rest of his clothing. If I hadn’t already been struggling to catch my breath, I would have been now. The man was gorgeous. It was a shame that clothing was a big part of modern society. Hiding his physique was practically a crime.
“If I told you that you had a beautiful body…” I started.
“I would most definitely hold it against you.” He finished the saying as he climbed back next to me.
His arms were firm as he crushed me against his chest. My fingers danced over his shoulders and up the back of his neck and into his hair as our lips slid together. He was all hard muscle under suede soft skin. The crisp hairs on his chest tickled my fingertips.
I was lost to time and reason. Nothing mattered but the way he touched me and how he felt against my skin. His mouth trailed over my skin, leaving a burning trail. I clutched him tightly to me when he sucked a breast and teased my nipple with his tongue.
And when he slid into me, I felt whole. All the pieces of myself that had been struggling with one thing or another coalesced into a single ball of fire and nerves. With him there was no conflict. There was only this, and this was the most amazing experience of my life.
As my body tightened around him, I thought I might break, or cry, or both. Instead, I exploded. I became shooting stars and fireworks, all because this man knew exactly what I needed.