19. Valentina
— ? —
Valentina
Black. Floor-length. A slit up one leg that makes my heart stop. There’s a note attached in handwriting I don’t recognize:
For tonight. No arguments. - E
I have arguments. Many arguments. About the cost, about the presumption, about the way the fabric feels against my skin like liquid sin.
I wear it anyway.
When I open the motel door, Eric goes still.
His eyes start at the thin straps on my shoulders, drag down the open back, pause on the slit where my thigh flashes when I shift my weight. His jaw flexes once. He doesn’t speak for a full three seconds.
“Say something,” I mutter.
“If I say what I’m thinking,” he says, voice rough, “we won’t leave this room.”
Heat punches low in my stomach. I look away first.
“The opening-”
“I know.” He steps in, close enough that I smell his cologne and clean skin. His fingers brush the slit at my thigh as he guides me toward the car - barely there, deliberate. “You’re going to kill me in that dress.”
“Good.”
His quiet huff of laughter does nothing to cool the air between us.
“Thank you. For the dress,” I finally say.
“Thank yourself. You’re the one wearing it.”
The new restaurant sits on the top floor of a glass building downtown, still smelling faintly of paint and ambition. Valet lights sweep across the entrance. Photographers. A small red carpet. Investors. Critics. Houston money dressed in black.
The second we step out of the car, cameras lift.
Eric’s hand settles on the small of my back, his thumb tracing a slow arc over bare skin where the dress dips. He doesn’t rush. He lets them look.
“Smile,” he murmurs in my ear. “You’re supposed to be enjoying yourself.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder. The woman in the red dress at two o’clock is a gossip columnist. She’s been watching you since we walked in.”
I force my lips to curve. It probably looks more like a grimace.
He introduces me the same way every time.
“My girlfriend, Valentina.”
Not “this is Val.” Not “a friend.” Girlfriend. Clean. Public. Final.
I smile until my cheeks ache. I laugh when I’m supposed to. And the entire time I feel the slit of the dress shifting against my thigh like a secret.
Then she appears.
Tall. Blonde. Diamonds at her throat. The kind of woman who has never once doubted she belongs in rooms like this. She cuts through the crowd straight to us, smile sharp enough to draw blood.
“Eric,” she purrs. “It’s been too long. You open another restaurant and don’t call? Rude.”
“Camille.” His voice is flat. “This is Valentina.”
Camille’s gaze flicks over me. Dismissive. “How sweet. Where did you find this one?”
“None of your business.”
“Touchy.” She laughs, a brittle sound. “I remember when you used to be more fun.” Her hand lands on his arm. Lingers. “Call me sometime. We can catch up on old times.”
She drifts away. I watch her go with something hot and ugly twisting in my stomach.
“Old friend?” I ask, keeping my voice light.
“Old mistake.”
“How old?”
“Three years. One night. Never repeated.” He looks at me.
“She seems to remember it fondly.”
“She remembers my black card fondly.”
I can’t stop watching her across the room. She’s already laughing with a group of men, tossing her hair, glancing back once - just once - to make sure we notice.
His mouth curves. He knows I’m lying. He doesn’t call me on it.
“She’s very beautiful,” I hear myself say.
“Valentina.”
“No, really. Tall. Blonde. Looks like she belongs here. I can see why you-”
“Stop.”
“I’m just making conversation.”
“You’re jealous.”
The word hits too accurate, too exposed. I laugh, short and sharp. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“You haven’t looked away from her since she walked over.”
“I’m people-watching. It’s a party. You’re imagining things.”
He turns my chin with two fingers until I have no choice but to meet his eyes. They’re dark. Amused. Far too knowing.
“Does it bother you?” he asks quietly. “That she touched me.”
Yes.Yes, it bothers me.It bothers me that she knows what his mouth feels like.It bothers me that for one second I wondered if he looked at her the way he looks at me.It bothers me that I care this much when I’m not supposed to care at all.
“No,” I lie.
His mouth curves, slow and wicked. “Liar.”
“I’m an excellent liar. That’s why I’m here.”
“You’re blushing.”
“It’s hot in here.”
“It’s not.” His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth, lingering. “You’ve gone pink right here. You did the same thing when I had you in my lap against the car.”
“Eric-”
“Say her name again and pretend you don’t want to end her,” he murmurs, almost against my lips, “and I’ll believe you’re not jealous.”
I step back before I do something unforgivable in a room full of phones. My pulse is everywhere. My skin feels too tight. I hate her. I hate him for noticing. I hate myself most of all.
An hour later my nerves are scraped raw. Too many eyes. Too much perfume. Too many times Camille’s laugh floats across the room and finds him.
Eric appears at my side like he felt the shift.
“Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Away from her.” A beat. “And away from everyone else.”
He guides me through a restricted door, down a short hall, into the wine cellar.
The door shuts behind us. Temperature drops. Rows of dark bottles. Low lights. The bass of the party becomes a distant pulse. We are suddenly, dangerously alone.
I turn to say something sharp-
He backs me into the racks in one smooth step.
Bottles clink softly against my shoulders. His hands plant on the wood on either side of my head. His body doesn’t quite touch mine, but the heat of him does. The slit of my dress falls open when I shift; cool air hits bare thigh.
“You’ve been watching her all night,” he says quietly.
“I have not.”
“You have. Every time she touched my arm you looked like you wanted to commit a felony.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“Am I?” His knee nudges mine apart just enough to step closer. The hard line of his thigh presses between my legs through silk and I bite back a sound. “You’ve been wet since she put her hand on me. Haven’t you?”
“Eric-”
“Haven’t you?”
I hate him. I hate how well he reads my body. I hate that he’s right.
“This is still practice,” I whisper.
“Is it?” His mouth drops to the hinge of my jaw, not quite kissing, just breathing there. “Because I’ve been hard since you opened the motel door in this fucking dress. And watching you pretend you don’t want to claw her eyes out almost ended me.”
His hand leaves the rack and finds the slit.
Fingers trail up bare skin - slow, devastating - stopping high on my outer thigh. So close to where I’m aching that my hips twitch forward without permission.
“Tell me to stop,” he says against my throat.
I should.
My hands fist in his jacket instead.
He makes a rough sound and finally puts his mouth on me - open, hot, just beneath my ear - while his fingers slide another inch higher under the dress. His thumb strokes the crease where thigh meets hip. Once. Twice. My head falls back against the bottles. A soft, broken noise leaves me.
“Rules,” I gasp.
His laugh is dark against my skin. “You climbed into my lap in a parking lot two weeks ago and ground on my cock until I saw stars. Don’t talk to me about rules while you’re dripping for me in my own wine cellar.”
His hand moves higher.
I feel the brush of his knuckles against the soaked lace of my underwear and my whole body jolts.
“Eric-”
“Say it,” he demands, voice wrecked. “Say you hated her hands on me.”
“I hated it.”
“Say you want my hands instead.”
“I want-”
The door handle rattles.
We break apart like we’ve been burned. I shove the dress down. He turns toward the shelves, adjusting himself with a hissed curse, jaw clenched so hard I hear his teeth. I press the back of my hand to my mouth, trying to wipe the feeling of him off my skin and failing.
Marco’s voice filters through, muffled, looking for Mr. Bailey.
Eric’s eyes meet mine in the low light. Black. Starving. His chest is heaving.
“This isn’t over,” he says quietly.
“It has to be.”
“No.” He steps in one last time, cups the back of my neck, and kisses me once - hard, deep, filthy with promise - then pulls away before I can chase it. “It doesn’t.”
He opens the door. Calm. Composed. The perfect host again.
I am not composed.
I follow him back into the lights with my lipstick ruined, my underwear ruined, the slit of the dress whispering against skin still tingling from his fingers, and the sick, thrilling knowledge that every person in that room can probably see it on my face.
In the car afterward the silence is violent.
I catch my reflection in the window.
Lipstick smeared.
Thighs pressed together so hard they ache.
And somewhere between the cellar and the motel I realize my hand is on his thigh - high, possessive - and neither of us has moved it for ten full minutes.
He doesn’t speak until he parks.
“Next time you wear that dress,” he says, staring straight ahead, voice scraped raw, “I’m taking it off you myself. Rules or no rules.”
I get out before I beg him to do it now.
I don’t look back.
I already know he’s watching me walk away like a man running out of restraint.