15. Renée
15
RENéE
F orty-eight hours hadn’t been long enough to get to know C.T. we had sex so many times and in so many ways, but we hadn’t done much by way of pillow talk. He wasn’t into it. Did I blame him for that? No, it was part of the understanding.
I wasn’t going to be the one to breach the rules. To twist them into something they weren’t meant to be. At least not yet.
I shook my head to clear my thoughts.
No matter what, I wasn’t going to use my money, fame, and influence to change the contract now that I was totally obsessed with C.T.
Mostly, I wanted to know what those initials stood for and wanted to call him by his real name just once.
He’d given me everything sexually, but I didn’t know his name.
I sat on the deck with my hands curled around a cup of coffee. Steam rose from the rich beverage. Sunrise painted the sky in a light pink and faded white. Lines of clouds suggested the island might see rain at some point during the day.
The night before was a revelation. Who would have thought being tied to the bed and being taken from behind would make me feel so cherished and safe? Was that the point?
No, it was probably for C.T. to have a power trip in a short-term arrangement where I held all the cards.
I turned and squinted into the room. C.T. still lay on the bed, curled up on his side with his hand up under his face. He looked so innocent when he slept. So angelic.
As I sat there on the deck, sipping my morning coffee, I couldn’t help but worry over the place in my heart where C.T. had carved out a gully.
I didn’t know him. Really anything about him other than he liked to collect interesting facts and would kill on a trivia night in some bar. Nothing personal, but I wanted to know everything.
I wanted to be able to tell from the set of his shoulders, or expression in his eyes what he was thinking. I wanted to know his past, present, and be there for his future.
And that was the stupidest thing that ever happened to me.
I’d let myself get attached.
Sexually attached , I corrected myself.
Would I use any of what we’d done with future lovers? A strong maybe. I absolutely needed trust first. C.T. was such a gentle and loving soul. Something about him made me feel as if he hid as much pain as I did—that we were two of a kind. Only I had taken that pain and created an empire. He’d…whatever he’d done.
Well, at the very least he’d taken care of himself. He had good hygiene, and his teeth were perfect, so there had been regular dental visits. His clothes suggested he at least knew something about fashion, even if none of them had been designer labels.
Yes, I’d looked.
I couldn’t help myself. I was curious. Which was so out of character for me. But this man, I’d shared my body with. He knew my most intimate places, I felt I deserved to know if he wore clothes that he bought at a bargain store or brand names.
So mercenary of me. I wasn’t that way. I didn’t care. Having the best really wasn’t one of my core beliefs. I wore designer brands because it was expected of me.
But maybe…
…maybe I’d gone about things the wrong way. Perhaps I needed to return to my humble roots.
A noise came from behind me, and I turned my head. C.T. was up and moving to the bathroom. When he emerged, he came out on the deck in one of the robes and a pair of boxer briefs.
“Mmmm, is that coffee?” He ran his hand through my hair and dropped a kiss on my head as he moved by me to the room service cart.
He poured himself a cup, then went to the rail and looked up at the sky. “What do you want to do today?”
I hadn’t any idea beyond getting to know him better. I needed other memories of him to take with me into the rest of my life.
“There’s a little village with an open market we can walk to.”
“All right. I’m game.” He lifted one of the silver lids to find the pastries I’d ordered. “Oh, hey, crullers.” After snagging one up, he returned to the table and took the chair next to me.
I watched him over my cup. The fact this felt like what might have been a regular morning in any other life made me incredibly sad. This wasn’t someone else’s life; this was mine and there were complications.
So many of them.
“What do you do for a living?”
He stalled with the cruller halfway to his face. “That question isn’t allowed.”
“Why not? It’s not like I can find you with only that information. I’m just curious.” I sat back in my chair a bit. He didn’t appear to be much of a rule follower to me, so it made me wonder why he didn’t want to at least give me something.
“True.” He took a bite of the pastry and chewed, then washed it down with coffee, the whole time studying me as if he might persuade with the power of his mind to withdraw the question.
Not happening. I hadn’t created an empire to let one man intimidate me.
Finally, he brushed his hands together. “I’m in a sports-related field.”
“I guessed that much.” Not a lie. I could tell he was an athlete.
He looked surprised. “You profiled me.”
“No. Your physique and your stamina ratted you out.”
He laughed. “Still, sports as a whole is a wide field. I could be anything from a rodeo star to a PE teacher.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I would rule out the rodeo. Not enough scars for that.”
He laughed. “I didn’t know there was a quota involved.”
I brushed his comment aside. “PE teacher. Hmmm. Perhaps, but I don’t think so. I don’t get pedagogic vibes from you.”
Though he had impressed me with the amount of information he knew about the area. Still, that seemed more like he was a closet geek when it came to travel. That didn’t necessarily point to being a teacher.
“Were you always involved in sports?”
He looked off into the distance. The expression on his face closed off a bit. Pain from long-gone injuries filled his eyes. “I tried quite a few of them before settling on one. Much to the criticisms of my parents.”
Oh, I didn’t want to touch that one. I did nudge it a bit. Given my own experiences with parental units, I felt he was a kindred spirit, and we could communicate on that level.
“Mine made me feel as if excellence wasn’t quite enough. If I didn’t get straight A’s even in honors classes then I had failed. Not even an A minus was allowed.” My chest tightened at the thought of the one lone B I’d gotten in middle school.
It had taken three weeks for the marks to fade.