Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Justin hadn’t been sure how to answer when Ivy had asked if he liked jazz.
He’d never heard it played live, and mostly he associated it with the kind of pretentious people who wouldn’t drink a glass of wine unless they could swirl it around the glass and sniff it first, then talk about how it tasted like pencil shavings and tobacco.
After thirty minutes of listening to James Jefferson play in a darkened room three feet away from Ivy Page, however, Justin decided he liked jazz just fine.
When she shifted a little in her seat and her leg touched his under the table, and she left it there, her calf pressing against his, warmth from her skin seeping into his, he decided he liked jazz a lot.
And when the band finished their set and Ivy turned to him, eyes bright and lips full in the candlelight, and thanked him for bringing her here, he decided he loved jazz.
The streetlights seemed especially glaring after the club’s intimate glow, the honking cars and trundling buses even louder than usual after the smooth, smoky music and quiet tinkling of cutlery on plates.
Unable to bear the bright lights and loud noises of the subway again, and eager to get back into the bubble that had formed around them in the club, the cocoon of quiet conversation and long looks and soft touches, Justin threw out a hand and hailed an oncoming yellow taxi.
Just like they do in the movies, he thought vaguely.
He’d have to tell Alice about it tomorrow.
He held the door open for Ivy and she scooted in, but when he climbed in after her he found that she hadn’t scooted all the way over.
She’d stayed in the middle of the backseat so that his thigh pressed up against hers, her soft coat spilling over his leg once he’d pulled the door shut behind him.
For one insane moment, he wanted to kiss her right there.
Dive his hand into her hair and take her mouth like she’d taken his this morning, slide his other hand inside that coat and resume his exploration of her shoulders, her collarbone, and what lay under her snug black dress.
Then he remembered that the driver probably didn’t need his shift interrupted by a stranger’s horniness, and he shoved his hands into his pockets. He could wait. He’d waited all day, and for quite a while before that. He could wait until they got back to the hotel.
He told himself that several times as the cab lurched through heavy traffic on its way uptown, every sudden stop causing Ivy’s thigh to rub against his, every corner pressing her hip into the side of his body.
When they passed 70th Street, Ivy looked up at him and said, “Almost there now,” in what to the driver would have sounded like a blandly reassuring tone.
The heat in her eyes was unmistakable, though, and Justin’s pulse kicked as she placed her hand on his knee and squeezed lightly.
His cock twitched in his jeans. If this was what it was like when she touched his knee through a pair of pants, what the hell would it be like when her hands were back on his bare skin?
When the taxi pulled up in front of the hotel, Justin hastily paid, and he and Ivy made their way through the lobby.
In the lift, he itched to put his hand on the small of her back again, but he didn’t trust himself not to push her up against the wall in full view of the CCTV camera if he did.
So he kept his hands in his pockets and they stood side-by-side, the air hot and tight between them.
In the rippling reflection of the door, he could see her watching as the floor numbers ticked by more slowly than he remembered them moving before.
No sound had ever been more welcome to him than the ding of the lift arriving at the sixth floor.
Outside room 661, Ivy pulled her key out of her pocket and pushed open the door, and he followed her inside, reasoning that if he’d misread her signals, she’d tell him so and send him straight through the adjoining door.
But the second the door closed behind them, her hands were on his lapels.
She pulled him against her and kissed him hard, somehow taking him by surprise even though he’d thought about virtually nothing but her mouth for the last two hours.
He stumbled slightly and braced himself against the wall, enclosing her body with his own and letting the taste of her, sweet and heady, wash over him.
Ivy’s fingers fumbled at the buttons on his coat, clumsy and urgent, and he replied by tugging at the knot at her waist. He could have untied it faster if he’d pulled his mouth away from hers, but he refused.
The fabric was soft under his fingers, luxurious and warm, and he almost felt guilty shoving it off her shoulders and letting it fall to the floor.
She finally undid the last of his buttons and returned the favor, and they stood pressed against the wall and each other, mouths hungry, their discarded coats in a woolen pool at their feet.
He broke the kiss, but only to trace his lips in a hot, urgent line down the slope of muscles at the base of her neck, where he’d touched her earlier tonight.
She whimpered and slipped one hand into his hair, her nails grazing his scalp again.
Need gathered at the base of his spine and he pressed his hardening cock against her, nipping lightly at the skin right above the neckline of her dress. She whimpered again, louder this time.
“You like that?” he asked, and looked up in time to see her nod. “What else do you like?”
There were some things he hadn’t been able to notice about Ivy Page over the last few years and weeks and days. Some things he’d need her to tell him. Or better yet, show him.
Ivy reached for the hem of his jumper and pulled, but he put his hands over her fingers and stilled them, holding them against his body until she looked up and met his eyes.
“What else do you like?” he repeated. He returned his mouth to her neck, kissing and nipping the way he already knew she liked, but keeping a firm hold on her hands. “Tell me,” he murmured against her skin. “Show me.”
He felt it in the muscles of her throat when she let out a quiet laugh, rueful, like she’d suspected he’d be as stubborn half undressed in the half dark as he was everywhere else, and she was considering arguing with him just because that’s what they did.
But he wouldn’t change his mind about this; he wanted to know what turned Ivy Page on.
If he was honest with himself, some part of him had wanted to know that for a long time.
Slowly, she shifted her fingers so that her hands were on top of his, and moved them onto her hips, which were still maddeningly covered by her dress and her tights.
For now. Justin felt the soft, giving flesh through the layers of fabric and grew harder at the thought of peeling each of them off until there was nothing left but her pale, pillowy skin.
Ivy began to guide his hands, moving one up her ribcage and the other down between her legs, and Justin lifted his head.
He wanted to watch her, wanted to know what it looked like when Ivy showed him what made her feel good and let him give it to her.
Her eyes met his from under her long, thick lashes, her lips slightly parted and her breath audible, shallow and fast. Soon, she had one of his hands splayed over her breast, her nipple hard against his palm.
The other hand she slid between her legs, then applied gentle pressure over her mound through her tights.
“I like this,” she whispered, moving her lower hand over his until the heel of his hand was making slow, tight circles right over where he knew her clit was.
She ground against him, moaning louder when his pressure met hers, and he clenched his jaw imagining how wet she was getting beneath her dress, her tights, her panties.
“Do you like this?” he asked, brushing the back of his hand against her hardened nipple, letting the knuckles slide over it lightly, teasingly. She gasped, and he did it again.
“Is that a yes?” he asked, keeping the pressure on her pussy, but withholding his other hand until she answered him.
“Yes,” she moaned, clutching at his jumper, and he went back to teasing her nipple, slowly, lazily, listening as her breath became more and more ragged and her grinding against his hand became more and more insistent.
“What about this?” he asked, and he lowered his head to suck her other nipple through her dress.
She jolted and moaned, but he held her pinned between the wall and his lower hand, which was still circling, rolling, matching the grind of her hips, which was growing faster and harder.
She was using his hand, taking what she needed, and he wanted her to come but he wanted it to go on forever.
“Fuck, yes, do that again,” she whimpered, arching her back to press more of herself into her mouth. Justin smiled against her breast, growing painfully hard as he imagined the sounds she’d make when he did this without a layer of fabric between them.
He grazed her nipple with his teeth, then flicked his tongue over the hard, straining bud and wrapped his lips around it, repeating the combination until she was swearing and panting, and he knew she was close.
Justin put his mouth back on her neck and kept playing with her breasts, pressing the heel of his other hand against her in fast, tight, unrelenting circles.
“Can you come like this? Can you come for me without taking off a single piece of clothing?” he murmured against her skin. “I think you can, Ivy. I know you want to. Let me see it.”
Justin felt one of her hands snake down his leg, and then she was palming his rigid cock through his jeans. Fierce pleasure streaked up his spine, hot and demanding.