Chapter 31
Maddy
Back in the hotel, I’m put into full babygirl mode, and let’s be real, I don’t hate it. I am air lifted from the elevator to the room, and Jett sits me in front of the mirror on a velvet ottoman. He scratches my scalp and I moan, then he starts working the ribbon at the back of my corset.
“Your baby cousin picked this out? Do I ever owe her…”
“Don’t worry about Britta; she very much has a reward coming her way.” I sigh, thinking about how Jett acted in the restaurant. “I think I owe your new manager.”
“Why, Baby?”
“She made reservations at that stupid restaurant only twats like Ace go to. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten to see you punch him in the face and take him down like that.
It was…” My hand finds its way down to my skirt and Jett removes it immediately before returning to the corset.
“The hottest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. ”
He watches me in the mirror, his gaze filled with heat and intention.
“I mean, you probably would’ve had to watch me knock his lights out at the premiere if we hadn’t run into them tonight.
It would have been a lot more public that way.
Baby, look at you toying with yourself. Mmm, now you like bad boys, darling? ”
I nod at warp speed as blood rushes south.
Jett shimmies the corset over my head and kneels before me to remove my Docs.
“I don’t want to be seen as an angry, violent asshole, you know I’m not.
You know I was bullied in school by blokes that looked like him, that I’d only do that in self-defence.
” More nodding from me, so he continues, “To defend your honour, Baby. You know how much you mean to me?”
He taps the mine bracelet, but I moan accidentally instead of saying yes. He pulls my fingers from my clit and licks them clean. “Another orgasm will make you pass out right now, darling. I’m not done taking care of you. Wait.”
I give my most adorable, “Yes, sir,” complete with a pout as he wraps me in the fluffy hotel robe and sets me on the bed.
This is not your average hotel bed. It’s a massive, gilded four-poster monstrosity with a hand-carved headboard and marble columns, and thick, silken red and gold fabric draped over the canopy like dripping blood.
It’s just so us that I allow myself to say it aloud and my voice doesn’t even shake.
“Can we get a bed like this for our house, Daddy?”
A deep rumble shakes his chest as he leans before me, setting different appetizers in front of my crossed legs.
“My baby talking commitment?” he says deep enough to be a moan. He palms his hardening dick, and I hate that he’s still only taken off his shoes. “You trying to distract me from feeding you?”
“No!” I laugh, “I’m starving. But … do you like the bed?”
He hums in agreement, pouring me a glass of pinot noir.
“If it can stay in one piece after what I’m about to do to you, no loud creaks or cracks, I’ll buy you this exact one, Baby.”
He pulls out his phone and snaps a photo of me with my wine and food in my, someday, fit for a queen bed.
“Thank you,” I say sweetly, and then my brain pings with info from earlier. “Hey! Why didn’t you tell me? Calvin Klein??”
He grins. “I wanted to surprise you, Baby.”
I pretend to fan myself and sip my wine, trying not to think about how wet I’d be if they let me on the set of that shoot. “You know, you used your powers again earlier.” More than once.
He looks at me strangely. “I was just giving myself hell for not using them. Like, why couldn’t I sense something fucked up was gonna happen in that stupid bougie place? I can always feel it. What do you mean?”
“Well, it was just weird,” I say as a bite of fig and goat cheese explodes across my taste buds. “I had just called Imogen mousey in my head, and a handful of minutes later, you called her, ‘Miss Mousey Mouse.’”
Jett laughs. “Oh, I can read your mind now, can I?” I nod and bite into some sort of weird quiche. “If I could do that, I would’ve used some insider information to maybe not be stuck in the friend zone for eight bloody years.”
“The thing is, Jett.” I throw a bread stick at him. “You could have just, oh, I don’t know, fucking told me!”
He huffs cutely and bites the breadstick after catching it midair. “No one can tell you anything, Baby. You must know that. Everything has to be discovered on your own.”
I roll my eyes as if he isn’t totally right.
He sets a mouthwatering pile of pasta in front of me before turning on the telly, miming the eating gesture and taping an imaginary watch gesture at me.
I sigh, eat my pasta, and look at what he put on.
It’s our steamy UK dating show that we can never pay much attention to.
Even if my man didn’t have a raging case of unmedicated ADHD, I still don’t think I’d be riveted because, let’s face it, Jett is a fucking marvel.
He’s entrancing and he’s fascinating and a million times more interesting than some bland, six-five guy built like a fridge filled with muscle milk.
Like right now, I’m about to find out if Lexie is going to pick Brendan or Brandon to share her bed tonight.
Snore. But I don’t need to be entertained by it anyway because I’m getting a really good show in front of the telly. Pacing in front of it.
Jett gives me a sly smirk and runs his fingers down his suspender straps from the shoulders, giving them a little snap in the middle, then continues sliding them down the straps painfully slowly until his fingers meet the clips.
He flips both clips at his beltline and the suspender straps go flying behind him.
My mouth hangs open and there may be drool and not from the pasta.
“Eight more bites,” he instructs. What is with this man and that number?
He slowly unbuttons his black shirt, which hides all of his tattoos, and transforms him into someone else.
He leaves the shirt unbuttoned but still on, and I sigh before making myself eat more.
He toys with the button on his pants just to torture me before finally popping it and moving the zipper down one agonizing tooth at a time.
I get so impatient that I start shoveling in bites. “Slower, and I’ll come over there.”
I chew my eighth bite carefully and am rewarded with Jett kicking his slacks off and slinking towards me. I move the food to my bedside table. “I’ll eat more after, promise.” And he chuckles softly.
“I got you one more present, Baby.”
“Jett, enough spoiling. I just need you, not anything else.”
“I’m decidedly not Jett right now, and the present is on me, so there.”
He grips the footboard of the bed so he’s only inches away. My pulse starts racing. “On you? Show me, sir, please.”
“Yesterday, I woke up missing you so badly that I pulled up our hot tub video. Fuck if we couldn’t sell that for millions. You’re so fucking perfect, Baby. I came in an instant watching us together, watching you.”
I clench my thighs together, picturing his abs coated in his sticky release while he groans my name. His abs are my third favorite body part of his after all, behind his eyes and Keane, of course.
“But like, it wasn’t enough; it only made me fixate on you more.
And my bass player hit traffic, and my sound tech overslept, and you just kept buzzin’ under my skin.
There’s a shop next door to the studio, and Sy only gets mad if I use a different artist when I'm in the States, so I thought, why not buzz you onto my skin?”
I gasp as Jett peels off his button-up and tosses it behind him.
Again, it’s a good thing I’m not standing.
He has a protective rectangle of plastic covering his left pectoral.
My brain starts screaming Jett! You can’t, that’s insane!
But that isn’t going to change the very fresh but still very permanent new ink on his chest. I stare in shock with my hands over my mouth for several seconds before planting my palms on his shoulders and zooming my eyes on the new dagger over his heart.
It’s a traditional tattoo that’s the length of his pec, with Baby appearing to be etched onto the blade that drips droplets of blood down his torso.
My fingers ghost over the ink with maybe a millimeter of space between.
“Please tell me you love it, Princess. I would’ve gotten you a heart, but I thought you might find it cheesy, or roses for my Matilda Rose, but since I already have those on my hips, I thought…”
The shaded black roses on his hips are so sexy that my eyes just go there on instinct, then flit back to his chest.
“I … I love it, sir.” Jett groans, grabbing my hand and kissing my knuckles. I don’t expect the tears to slip from my eyes.
“Happy tears? Not I’m dating a fucking idiot tears, right?”
I snort as one more falls from my eye. My lips are about to say, Crazy?
Yes! Idiot? Never! But I know he gets tired of everyone saying that, and I don’t want Jett to feel self-conscious because this is the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.
I don’t want him to think he can’t be his spontaneous self, even if it is nuts.
“You’re the complete opposite of an idiot. You’re a genius, you’re my fucking genius. I’m just in shock.”
He scrubs a hand over his face and admits, “I FaceTimed Mum and Dad in the chair right when the needle hit my skin.”
“You didn’t!” I gasp, knowing full well that he talks to my parents daily.
“Mum goes, ‘Don’t tell us you’re getting Baby’s face tattooed on your chest, Jett?’ And Dad goes, ‘That’s romantic as fuck, Jewels.’”
I laugh as he imitates their voices. “Dad would say that!” He has a tattoo of Mum on his back that desperately needs a good touch up.
“But then they saw the stencil, and they cried just like you are now. It reminded me how much they trust me with your heart. You … them … Fuck if I’m not the luckiest bloke in the world. My parents, Baby, you know they don’t really…”
“Do feelings like we do?”