Chapter Thirty-Eight
Victoria
Anticipation and fear have always walked hand in hand for me. When I get excited about something, I’ve been conditioned to also be afraid of it, because so often, the fantasy only leads to disappointment. I’m used to having the things I want slip away, even if I work so damn hard for them.
Having something—someone—I want to work for me instead is a new sensation, and it’s all the more terrifying, because I’m all the more afraid of being disappointed, or God forbid, being a disappointment.
After I stuff myself with way too many calories, Asher and I take a cab back to his apartment. With every mile we travel closer to his place, my breaths quicken, and startling dichotomies of exciting fantasies and horrifying failures flash through my mind.
What if he doesn’t like what he sees when I take off my dress? What if having such limited sexual experiences means I won’t satisfy him? What if I’m not enough, yet again?
By the time he’s letting me into his penthouse, which is a study of casual, quiet luxury, I’m close to hyperventilating.
What am I doing here? What am I, specifically, doing with a man like Asher Lawrence?
There’s no way we’re compatible. He’s him—hot, rich, and insanely successful—while I’m just me.
Broke, perpetually exhausted, and a nobody.
“Make yourself at home,” Asher says. “I have a bottle of Muscat chilling in the fridge. Can I tempt you?”
My chest flutters with the thousand wings of gentle butterflies, but the flutter quickly devolves into a swarm of angry wasps as doubt begins to creep in. Mixing alcohol with nerves probably isn’t the smartest, but, “Absolutely.”
I follow him into the kitchen and lean a hip against the counter, watching as he goes through the insanely sexy ritual of removing his jacket, his cufflinks, and rolling up his sleeves.
It’s like watching porn, and the movements send a deep wave of want rolling through my core.
I want him badly, but I’m also so afraid of having him.
What if it ends up being too good, and we don’t work out? I’d be able to recover from a crash and burn following a few dates. But a crash and burn following baring my body and soul to someone—
“You look like a deer in headlights.” He opens one of the mahogany cabinets, retrieves two wine glasses, and sets them on the marble island. Then, he pulls a bottle of wine out of the fridge, and sets about popping the cork.
“I’m, uh…” how do I put it in a rational, reasonable way? “Fucking terrified.” That doesn’t sound rational or reasonable, but it’s the raw, unvarnished truth.
Asher pauses and looks up at me. His confused gaze clashes with mine. “Why?”
“Because you’re you and I’m me,” I blurt.
His brows slam down. “What the fuck does that mean?”
I shrug. “I mean… I haven’t had sex in years, and when I did, it was…
underwhelming, to say the least. I’m an intern working her ass off to make something of herself.
You’re someone who’s slept his way through half of the population of supermodels, an insanely successful person, and someone who…
is so far out of my league it’s unreal.” I glance down at my shoes—plain black flats, because I never quite learned to walk in heels.
Even they’re a representation of how far removed I am from Asher’s usual fare.
“Victoria.”
I keep my gaze plastered on the floor.
“Victoria, look at me.”
I swallow thickly and slowly look up. Asher catches my gaze and holds it.
“I disagree with you wholeheartedly, and even if everything you said were true, I don’t care.
” He rounds the counter, his stride slow, graceful, and so fluid it’s almost predatory.
I turn around to meet him face to face, and he stops in front of me.
The counter is a cool kiss at my back, and he is all warmth and heat and power at my front.
Slowly, he plants one of his hands on the counter, then the other, caging me in. I turn into the mouse caught in the cat’s trap in the span of a heartbeat, stuck in the trance of Asher’s stare.
“I’m a fuckup, sweetheart. I’ve spent the last two years stuck in stasis, not doing anything with my life or career and burying my woes in whatever warm, willing body happened to be around.
Then, you come in. You call me on my shit and force me to be a better version of myself.
You make me see what an idiot I’ve been.
You make me want to… change. Evolve. And while I couldn’t stand it at first, I don’t think I can live without it now. ”
I don’t think I can live without it now. The razor’s edge of fear and insecurity seeps out of me, replaced by the warmth of being desired. I don’t get to feel that very often, in any aspect of my life.
“Asher?”
“Hm?”
“I think I can skip the wine for now.”
A slow, knowing smile steals across his face. “Oh?”
“I’d very much appreciate it if you take me to your bedroom.”
“Mm.” One of his hands leaves the counter, slides over my waist, and trails up my back, leaving a flash of goosebumps and unbearable need in its wake.
He raises his hand and tugs the pin keeping half my hair up.
I let out a soft sigh as the prickles at my scalp recede, only to be replaced when he winds the length of my hair around his fist, using it to tilt my head back.
My sigh turns into a gasp. My hands land on his chest of their own accord. He stares at me with a wealth of desire written into every sharp, angular pane of his face.
“Do you want to have sex?” he asks softly. “Or do you want me to fuck you so thoroughly I’ll ruin you?”
Oh, God. My thighs clench, and my heart speeds. My fingers curl into the material of his white button up. “I—”
His hand tightens, prickling my scalp just a little more. Inexplicably, I like the bite of pain. It makes everything more visceral, and paints a stark contrast to the perverse gentleness of his words. “Speak up. I wouldn’t want us to have a misunderstanding.”
“I want you to fuck me.”
“Are you sure, Victoria?” He dips his head and skims his teeth up the column of my neck. “I can do gentle, sweet, and slow. What you’re asking for is different.”
“What are you offering?”
“Hard, fast, and raw.” He pulls back, meeting my eyes. “If I fuck you, you better be a good girl and listen. When I tell you to scream, you’ll scream. When I tell you to beg, you’ll beg.” He lowers his lips to my ear. “When I tell you to come, you’ll come. Hard.”
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Hearing him call me good girl just about undoes me. I love the way the praising words roll off his tongue, and I want him to call me that all night long.
“If you want me to stop, just say so, and I’ll stop. But until then… I have no intention of pushing the brakes.” His words are a challenge and a promise, wrapped in sin and tied with lust.
I want everything he’s saying. He’s awakening a part of me that I wasn’t aware existed—one that doesn’t want to be in control, or make all the hard decisions that life constantly throws my way.
“Is that what you want?” he asks.
“Yes.” My consent comes out more like a plea.
“Thank fuck.” He hoists me up into his arms and carries me off.
I don’t have the presence of mind to look around the apartment as he carts me somewhere into the depths of his lair.
All I can focus on is him. The way his long lashes flutter against his cheeks each time he blinks.
The bowed curve of his upper lip. His aristocratic nose.
His hard shoulders, his slender and even harder waist, and the hardest part of him pressed up right against me.
I’ve felt his erection before. When we kissed at the club, and when he fingered me into a puddle of hormones at the pizzeria. But now, when I know I’m moments away from feeling him inside me, the sensation lands differently. It’s frightening, incensing, and arousing all in the same breath.
I hear a door creaking open, and a moment later I’m being lowered onto a soft mattress. Asher looms over me, his gaze roaming my body, glimmering with possessiveness. A thrill travels up my spine and hardens my nipples into diamonds.
He looks like he’s about to fall on me like a ravening beast. Instead, he works open his button-down deftly and swiftly, revealing a six pack that speaks to the many hours of work he puts into honing his body.
My mouth waters as he shrugs out of his shirt and I greedily drink in his broad, taut shoulders and bulging biceps.
“Careful, or you’ll start drooling.” His voice is tinged with amusement.
I’m beyond the capabilities of speech. Instead, I respond by sitting up and reaching behind me, trying to find the elusive zipper of my dress. Asher stops that with a small shake of his head.
“That’s my job.”
He flips me to my stomach so suddenly I gasp, sinks his teeth into my neck, and rips down the zipper of my dress.