3. Lavender
Sanity.Sanity, return to me because what the hecking hell am I doing?
“I don’t—” I begin, my voice a bare rasp. “I mean, I don’t ever…” do this. One-night stands. Sex with virtual strangers. Hell, I can’t ever remember the last time I had sex. But I want. God, do I want.
This is just not me. Not that I owe him an explanation. Not that he waits for one as his big hand curls around my hip. Squeezes. Glides up my rib cage. I bite back a moan as his thumb draws a teasing circle against my nipple.
“Can I?” From under his lashes, his eyes meet mine. His question sounds so earnest. If only he knew I was on the verge of insisting on it.
I realize he’s still waiting, so I nod. His thumb dips into the low neckline, sliding the fabric across my shoulder. It falls like a dropped purse strap to my elbow.
“So pretty,” he murmurs, fully exposing my breast. Taking the weight into his hand, he brushes his thumb across its pert center. Once, twice. “You like that.”
“If you have to ask—”
His fingers are firm, and my brain cells explode as he tugs.
“Oh!” Air leaves my lungs in a short, hot burst.
The light makes his hair shine like an oil slick as his head dips. His mouth is hot, wet, and magic as it closes over my now hyper-sensative nipple. My soft moan is an approval, the way I press myself to him, a demand. He circles. Flicks. Gives a sucking pull that resonates deep between my legs.
“Can I taste you?” His whisper feathers across my damp flesh.
The question feels like a detonation deep inside. My back bows, and I feel myself growing so wet. “I don’t think—” this has ever happened before.
“Thinking is overrated.” His arm slides around me as his gaze lifts. Those eyes, dark and sincere, make him seem as desperate for this as I feel myself. Using his arm as a brace for my body, he gently lowers me back. “Feeling. Now, that’s the way to go.”
“Is that so?” I push up onto my forearms and watch his hand slide out of sight. It lazily loops around my ankle.
“Trust me.” His touch burns a path upward. As he reaches behind my knee, my gaze meets his sinful one as he widens the space between my legs.
“So, so pretty.” Dropping to his heels, he presses his mouth over the silk of my underwear.
I whimper. Tremble. Gasp as his tongue presses against the fabric, parting my sensitive flesh. There isn’t one part of me not aching for him.
My head drops back with a moan when he begins to kiss me there—kiss my pussy as though there were no barrier.
“You smell so good. I’m so fucking hard for you.” I just about melt, and though I don’t need the visual, I appreciate it the way he reaches down, and the taut groan as he grips himself. “Let me taste you, Lavender.”
The desperate heat of his words makes my thoughts unspool.
“I’ll make you feel so good.”
What even is my life? When in the history of Lavender has a man begged to go down on me?
“Yes.” My response is a throaty plea. It’s been a while, but disuse isn’t the reason I’m panting and twisting under him. Oh, sweet Jesus, to be wanted. Craved. “Yes, please.”
His finger hooks into the side of my underwear. My body jolts at the lightest flick of his tongue.
“So fucking perfect,” he whispers as he opens me to paint a wet stripe across my clit.
I swallow back a moan and temper the urge to rock into his face. I need this so much. I ache to be filled. A swipe, a stoke, and I begin to levitate when he circles my clit with a groan.
“Fuck, princess. You melt like sugar on my tongue.”
Maybe I’m perverse. Here I lie, spread out on the desk, being eaten to oblivion by a stranger, and it’s a compliment that makes me blush?
I drop my head back—and my cheeks burning—surrender to the flat of his tongue.
“Ho-ly!” He could teach a class with his perfect rhythm and pace as the finger he pushes deep inside me sends a throb of pleasure radiating out from my core. One finger, then two, he curls them as he drives them harder, faster. Drives me higher. As I glance down my body, his eyes meet mine, hot and intense, before his lids flutter closed like I’m a dish he’s savoring.
“I could fucking drown in you.”
Skill, steamy eye contact, and a dirty talker? That’s like the pussy-eating trifecta.
And he’s not even done.
“Yeah, like that. I can feel you, beautiful. So close. Come for me, Lavender. Come on my fucking tongue.”
I don’t stand a chance as every inch of me pulls inward only to burst pure sensation. My right shoe drops to the floor as (I’m pretty sure) my leg spasms. To be honest, I’m not at all certain what’s going on. The experience is so intense that tears begin to build behind my closed eyes. And I never cry. But I’m crying now. Crying and calling out for divine intervention. Pulsing, throbbing, twisting, my hands pulling his hair as…
Worlds align. Stars burst. Universes implode.
I cry out.
Then I die.
Or maybe I pass out.
Seconds, eons later, the air turns over, rushing from the ceiling vent. I shiver, the cooling breeze another layer of sensation as he kisses me through my aftershocks of pleasure. Kisses me like he can’t get enough.
“Oh my Lord.” My words are a tremulous chuckle as I begin to seep back into my skin.
“What’s funny?” he asks as he moves my underwear back in place.
“Oh, just life.” I moan softly as he presses one final kiss there.
I have been busy. Too busy to neglect my needs. Like most things in my life, I tend to these needs myself. I haven’t been involved with a man in longer than I like to admit. Longer than I like to think back on, at any rate. Maybe if I’d known there were men like this out there, I might have broken the seal, so to speak, a little sooner.
You know, while waiting for Tod to fall for me.
It’s not as though he’s been celibate.
“Life does have a way of surprising a person.” His breath is hot through the fine fabric, his thumbs stroking the insides of my thighs. “Thank you,” he adds softly.
“You’re… welcome?” Shut up! Kill me now! “But I think you have that the wrong way around,” I waffle as he straightens and offers me his hand, pulling me upright.
Maybe I already thanked him. Lots—loudly. My throat is a bit sore.
His index finger loops the strap of my dress, gently lifting it back onto my shoulder. I force myself not to shiver as it slips over my sternum, sliding away my breast.
“It was…” A smile lurks on those highly chiseled lips, though he masters it in favor of righting my silky skirt over my thighs.
“One way to get a girl”s attention?” I give my head a tiny shake as though it might speed up normal function. “Though possibly a bit convoluted.”
“How so?”
Maybe this experience had the same brain-melting effect on him. I thought men who gave without the expectation of reciprocation existed only in the realms of romance novels.
“I’m just saying it doesn’t change anything.”
That enigmatic smile almost breaks free this time, though he cups his chin, using his thumb and forefinger to wipe the corners of his mouth.
My stomach flips. Not unpleasantly. “As fun as that was, I don’t date customers.”
“Let’s set fun aside for a moment, ignoring the fact I just rocked your world.”
“Fine. But should we also set aside the fact that you’re a little full of yourself?”
Or I would be, I think, as my eyes dip to his still prominent bulge.
Not that I’m complaining or anything.
Well…
Maybe?
“It’s hard not to feel good at the compliments you threw out.”
“You’re sure I wasn’t complaining?” About receiving the orgasm of my life? I give my head a shake, probably still dazed. But I’ve never liked cocky men, not since… I won’t think about him.
I curl my fingers around the edge of the desk. My shoe is still on the floor, my feet—one bare and one shod—swinging alternately back and forth.
I put an immediate stop to that.
“But I’m beginning to wonder what you think is going on here,” he says. “Because what just happened had nothing to do with your little boyfriend.”
“Can you pass me my shoe, please?” That sounded so prim.
He scoops it up, though he ignores my outstretched hand in favor of slipping it onto my foot himself. I suppose that makes me a slutty Cinderella.
“Thank you,” I say, “but I don’t have a boyfriend, little or not. And of course this had nothing to do with Tod.” I hop to the floor. “I didn’t come in here to have sex with you for—”
“The three hundred thousand he owes me?”
“How—” much? My stomach drops. What the hell has Tod gotten me into? “How are his debts my problem?” I demand, forcing my chin higher as I turn to him.
“Because he said you’d honor them.” He pushes his hands into his pockets and takes a couple of ambling steps closer.
“Tod says a lot of things that don’t make any sense.”
“That sounds like it could be a problem.”
“Yes, a him and you problem.” I shake the skirt of my dress because I find I can’t look at him and be brave.
“If coming on my face wasn’t part payment, why exactly are you here?”
Because boys will be boys. And girls will be women, I almost say.
“Because Tod has obviously gotten himself into trouble.” I straighten and flick my hair over my shoulder as I put a couple of steps between us. Hopefully without doing a solid impersonation of a newborn foal. “And I came here to… to sort this out.”
She came. Then she went on wobbling legs. Her eyeballs still rolling in her head.
“But the thing is, you can’t get blood out of a stone.”
“I’m sure you’d be surprised what I can get blood out of.” His voice sounds as dark as a grave. “But that’s beside the point.”
“Then what is the point?” I pivot to face him, my post-orgasm high quickly dissipating.
“The debt is yours, beautiful. What are you going to do about it?”
“That’s ridiculous,” I retort, attempting to stare down my nose at him. It”s no easy feat, given he’s at least six inches taller despite my heels. “I don’t have that kind of money.”
“When you own an art gallery?”
“A new gallery.” In a shipping container, I almost insert. “Like most new ventures, cash flow is a problem,” I add uneasily.
“You’re saying it would be difficult?”
“Yes.”
“But not impossible. Not for your family.”
“Is that what this is about?” My stomach sinks to my Manolo’s dupes. “Because if you think you’ll be able to extort my brother, you’re mistaken.”
“I wouldn’t be extorting him. You would.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” The words hit the air on the breath of a laugh because it would be impossible! It’s not like I could ask for a loan either, not without explaining what it’s for. Whit already thinks Tod is my pet project. He’d laugh me out of London if I asked him for a loan to bail him out.
“Given the right incentive, I’m sure you could.” Reaching out, he lightly curls a lock of my hair around his finger. Worse, my treacherous insides seem to like him doing it. “You wouldn’t like the tabloids to get a hold of this. Billionaire banker’s sister caught in an illegal gambling den? It would be terrible if someone had footage, wouldn’t it?”
My eyes fly wide before they flick around the room. “You have cameras—in here?”
“Relax,” he says, taking my face in his hands. “I kind of wish I had because that was…” His cat-like eyes are the color of dark chocolate and bitter coffee, yet they burn so bright.
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
“I guess you don’t.” His lips brush my cheek before he releases me. “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar.”
“That’s exactly what a liar would say,” I murmur, trying to swallow back my panic.
“That’s probably also true.”
“People go to prison these days for revenge porn, you know.” Rather than a warning or a threat, I just sound worried. Really worried.
Because I am.
“As they should,” he says, taking a step back. He folds his arms across his chest. “That kind of lowlife deserves to be locked up.”
Right, so, no recording of…that. Please, God. The tabloids would love to get their hands on any story that might blacken Whit.
Sex Acts Swap for Gambling Debt!
Billionaire Banker’s Sister Caught in Blows for Debt!
While I’m sure plenty women would take one look at Deveraux and decide it was a fair exchange, I’m not about to let my personal currency be ruined. I don’t want my name or my business dragged through the mud. I couldn’t bear for all that old shit to be dragged up again.
I knew it wouldn’t be long before she was up to her old tricks.
Causing trouble. Drinking. Making rash decisions…
And worse.
We can’t really blame her. Lavender has always had poor impulse control.
My mother would fuss and wring her hands, and my siblings would tsk and take the piss, all the while congratulating themselves that they knew the old Lavender would be back at some point. It was only a matter of time until I returned to my old antics.
Worse, it would bring Whit breathing down my neck.
He might pull his support. I could lose the gallery.
Panic flares hot and sharp inside me.
Take a breath. This isn’t a catastrophe. Not yet.
“People also go to prison for blackmail,” I say.
“Would that be before or after the news broke?”
I’m not going to dignify that. Or start asking about cameras again.
“Not that we need to go down either of those paths just yet. I’m sure we could come to some agreement.”
“But you just said…” Not sex. I shiver like someone is dancing on my grave. Probably the slut police because, even after all he’s said, I might still be considering it. “You mean, like a payment plan?” Hands behind my back, I childishly cross my fingers. But he’s already shaking his head.
“I want you to do something for me.”
I quirk a brow, my gaze flicking tellingly down. So maybe this is where he wants me to reciprocate. Such a pity I feel less inclined now.
“Not that.” His lips seem to fight a smile.
“Like what? Rob a bank?”
“I need a favor.”
“It’s not really a favor if it’s being extorted, is it?”
“A three-hundred-thousand kind of favor,” he says, his voice turning hard.
I fold my arms, fighting the craving to bite my fingernails. “What do you want?”
A clock ticks, then chimes, as my mind races and my stomach cramps. I could lose it all—go back to being that troubled girl again. The one with issues and attitude. Such entertaining gossip fodder.
And then he speaks, though I find I can’t trust my ears when I hear him say:
“What I want you to do is marry me.”