Chapter 17 Services
SERVICES
Jack
I’d lie back on a pillow, an arm wrapped around her, and listen to her stories, her hair fanned out across my chest as I ran my fingers absently through it.
Or we’d find our way to her place in Murray Hill, and after a hard and fast session in the shower, or a long and lingering one on her ottoman, or an endlessly wet one—pun intended—in the bathtub, she’d be the one listening to my reminiscences about the early days of Joy Delivered with my sister, and how we’d proved ourselves to the venture world, giving me the luxury to carefully pick my projects.
She was easy to talk to. No surprise, though, given what she did for a living.
Maybe what was so surprising, if I only studied the surface, was how that openness extended to the bedroom.
She didn’t hold back in bed. She turned over her body to me every night, and every time I had her I found myself wanting more of her.
Wanting that sexy vulnerability I saw in her eyes.
That gorgeous desperation I felt in her body.
That dirty mouth that begged for me to fuck her to yet another release.
During the day, we’d text and email. I looked forward to her notes in between work and meetings and product launches, and the damn updates from Leo Reyes about the developer.
At the end of a long day, there was her. She was my letting go.
But every night ended the same. With a goodnight kiss at her door, at a town car, at the curb.
Like a shopkeeper slamming down the gates after midnight. That was Michelle. She had a closing time, and I understood why—protecting her heart was important to her.
Too bad my desire to knock them down was becoming very important to me.
Michelle
Ten nights of Jack Sullivan was like some kind of magic.
If the first third of these thirty nights was anything to go on, I’d be living in a bubble of bliss for the rest of the month of September and on into October.
My body seemed to be one hundred percent okay with that kind of cocoon.
My mind seemed amenable too. Because Jack was stimulating on all fronts.
I’d just finished updating him on the details of my Paris trip later next week.
My flight had been booked, my hotel reserved, and the conference organizers had even sent over a box of French chocolate to say thank you.
I’d brought them over to share, and I popped a raspberry-filled dark chocolate square in my mouth.
“Good thing I have a business trip to California that week to distract me from not being able to have you while you’re in Paris,” he said.
“Yes. Thank god. I’d hate for you to miss me.”
“Oh, I’ll miss you. Have you been to Paris before?”
I nodded as I chewed. “A few times.”
“Do you speak the language?” Jack asked and held up the bottle of wine, offering me another glass as I smoothed my skirt and adjusted the buttons on my shirt.
We were in his kitchen, his gorgeous, brick and wood kitchen in his penthouse apartment, though he admitted the shiny Miele appliances were rarely used. He was take-out all the way, he’d said.
I shook my head.
“No to French?”
“No to another glass of wine.”
“Damn. I was hoping to loosen you up enough to discuss something I want to do with you,” he said and raised his eyebrows suggestively.
I rolled my eyes in response. “You don’t need to get me drunk to discuss something you want to do to me. And to answer your question, I speak French. I studied it in school.”
He looped an arm around my waist, then whispered something in my ear in French.
“Perhaps someday,” I said suggestively in answer.
“Someday soon, I hope,” he said, squeezing my butt, then shifting gears. “What do you love most about Paris?”
“This chocolate is pretty good,” I said, then reached for another one and handed it to him. “For you.”
He took the chocolate and rolled his eyes in pleasure. “That is pretty damn good. But I know it’s not what you love most about Paris. What is?”
“That’s not a fair question,” I countered, running my fingers through my hair.
I’d have to keep a brush here, but then that also would be too intimate.
I didn’t plan to leave any evidence of all these nights with him.
Evidence led to memories, and memories led to closeness.
That’s what we both desperately needed to avoid.
True intimacy. “It’s impossible to pick one thing. ”
“I like impossible choices though,” he said, flashing me a wicked grin.
I placed a hand on his chest, moving in close. “Why?”
“Because they force people to show who they really are. I thought you’d appreciate that, being a therapist.”
“Fine. I’ll answer,” I said, counting off the potential options on my fingers.
“What I love most about Paris isn’t even in Paris.
It’s Monet’s Gardens, but that’s outside of the city.
So if we’re talking purely Paris, I might choose the food.
I might choose the museums. I might even say the cobblestoned streets, or the rich history, or the way the French don’t care if you like them.
But if you really want me to choose, my favorite thing about Paris is the beauty.
And the way the French love beauty for its own sake. ”
A smile tugged at his lips as I continued.
“I love the beauty in the every day. I love the glow from the streetlamps. I love that you’ll find a store in Montmartre that sells glass perfume bottles with gorgeous designs on them, and they’re things no one needs, but they exist solely because they’re pretty.
I saw a sapphire one once that I wanted, but the store was closed that day.
So I just stared longingly through the window.
Because that’s the other thing—even the shop windows are beautiful, and full of gorgeous displays, whether of cakes or candies or jewelry or clothes.
Doesn’t matter. The French find beauty in the magnificent and in the seemingly mundane. ”
“They do. And now I’m picturing the city perfectly, from the glass displays of a cake shop to the towering spires of Notre Dame. I love that answer. I love that you respond to beauty.”
“Why?”
“Because I do too,” he said, and raked his eyes over me in a way that made my skin heat up. The compliment was loud and clear in his gaze.
“Who are you then, Jack? What are your impossible choices?”
In an instant, his smile erased itself, as if it had been bleached away.
He said nothing for one moment that stretched into many moments, and felt far too long.
The expression in his beautiful eyes looked pained, haunted even.
In that span of silence, I sensed all the reasons why he’d come to see me in the first place.
Self-loathing, maybe even guilt was written in his eyes.
I wanted to ask him more, to try to help ease his burden.
I was tempted, even as he swallowed and looked away.
“I don’t know how to talk about them,” he said in a ragged whisper.
My heart staggered to him. “It can be hard to give voice to certain things.”
When he turned back to me, he parted his lips to speak more.
But I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready for knowing why I’d seen guilt edging in on him. I wasn’t his therapist and I wasn’t his girlfriend, and the more I knew of his inner truths, the more I put my own heart at risk.
And my heart was too fragile. It was made of glass, and could shatter if dropped.
Something else held me back too. I didn’t want to press him to share too much, too soon. Whatever he had to say, he’d say when the time was right for him. So instead, I leaned into him, brushed my lips against his, using closeness as a way to absolve him from speaking.
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “We don’t have to go there. Besides, I need to leave. I have some early appointments.”
“Okay,” he said, as if it had ten syllables, and they all tumbled awkwardly over his tongue. Then he ran his hand through my hair, and the gesture, maybe even the movement, felt sad. But I tried not to read too much into it; I had to be careful on that account.
The matter was helped by him spinning me around, so my back was flush against the edge of his counter. Like a door closing, and another one opening, he’d erased that momentary anguish, that brief hint of pain. He replaced it with raw heat as his eyes blazed at me.
“I need to give you something for the road. Stay like that,” he said harshly. He walked across his hardwood floors to the bedroom I’d come to know so well in such a short amount of time. He returned with a mischievous grin on his face and his fist closed.
“Another toy surprise?”
He nodded, and uncurled his palm, revealing a small blue vibrator.
Slim, with a wide head, this was the kind of vibrator that sent you off into a good night’s sleep.
“It’s called The Dream. I want to watch you come one more time before you go,” he said, his eyes dark, his tone that commanding one that thrilled me. Heat scorched a path through my body.
“Do everything I say,” he said, his rough voice hot on my skin.
“I will.”
“Lift your skirt,” he told me, and I did, tugging it up to my hips.
“Pull down your panties,” he said, and I pushed them down to my knees.
“Run your finger through your pussy and let me suck your finger,” he said, and I gasped, but did as instructed, sliding my finger across my wetness, then bringing it to his mouth.
He drew my finger in deeply and sucked hard, making the most satisfied sound.
His eyes floated closed as he moaned, like a chef tasting his favorite dish.
“Now spread that delicious pussy open for me,” he said as he opened his eyes, and I lowered my fingers between my legs again, gliding through the slick evidence of my desire for him, my unabated desire that had no end in sight. It was ceaseless.
“Like that?” I asked, opening myself wide for him.