“Maybe. That’s all I can give you.” She couldn’t risk her life with Johnny to love and be loved by Beau for one night. “Maybe I could love you.”
“If at any hour of this night you think you do, tell me. Promise me that.”
She should’ve laughed at the absurdity of it. Or come back with some witty response meant to deflect. But it wasn’t funny. She’d lied to him. There was no “maybe.” Her answer was yes—she could love him. Maybe part of her already did.
9
The presidential suite transported Lola to her first night with Beau when the air had been thick with sex and excess. Now the room seemed spotless. The door was already closed behind them. Lola looked to Beau, waiting.
He watched her too, his eyes suddenly and rudely penetrating as he loosened the knot of his tie. He slid it from around his neck and unbuttoned his collar. He moved behind her and lifted it over her head. “Have you been blindfolded before?” he asked, hovering it in front of her eyes.
“Once. Not seriously.” At the beginning of their relationship, she and Johnny had spontaneously stopped in an adult toy store after a night out. They hadn’t bought anything, but unexpected moments like that sometimes inspired Johnny to be more adventurous. That night, when they’d gotten home, they’d used one of her scarves. “It didn’t last long after I hit my shin on the bedpost.”
“Not with me. I won’t let anything hurt you,” Beau said as her world went black. The tie was cool and smooth on her lids, but rough where he knotted it against the back of her head. His hand slid up the nape of her neck. He grabbed her hair and kissed her under her ear. “Walk.”
She took one step.
“Until I say stop.”
She instinctively put her hands in front of her. He guided her by her hair until just her thighs were up against something smooth and cool, like wood. He never told her to stop. “What are we doing, Beau?” she asked. “Why are we here?”
He touched the skin on her lower back where her dress dipped. He slid his hands up to her exposed shoulder blades, under the beaded, crossed straps and yanked hard.
“Beau,” she gasped when they snapped.
With another jerk, he split the dress down the back. Beads scattered, and the heavy dress slumped to the floor.
“What—”
“This was always the only destination,” he said softly behind her.
He kissed her between the shoulder blades and guided the upper half of her body down with a firm hand. She folded into a mattress and realized she was bent over the footboard. “But the dress—”
“Is ruined.” He separated her feet with the toe of his shoe and something silky brushed her bare calf. He dragged it up the inside of one thigh and slid it back and forth between her legs, rubbing it over her underwear. He wrapped it around her upper thigh.
“What are you doing?” she breathed.
“Don’t force me to become a cliché by asking you to trust me.”
She bit her lip when he pulled the fabric tight.
“I’m tying you to the bed,” he said.
He moved to her other thigh.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
“Physically, yes. But I don’t think I am with being tied down.”
“That’s fine.” He ran his hand up the back of her leg and slapped the crease of her ass.
She winced. The sting resonated through her just as deliciously as it had the first night when he’d spanked her.
“Beautiful,” he said. “I do appreciate the change in attitude where your undergarments are concerned.”
She breathed from her mouth. “They aren’t anything expensive, but—”
“They’re perfect.”
He pulled her thong down so it stretched over her thighs. She could picture it, the siren-red, lacy thing that molded to her hipbones, now bunched and cutting into her skin. Beau’s fingers had barely grazed her legs.
Glass chimed against glass. The pungent smell of hard liquor hit her. “Beau…”
“Are you saying my name because you know what it does to me?”
Her unease at being blinded and bound had dissolved as she’d anticipated his touch again, but it returned now. “I’m trying to trust you.”
“But you want to know what I’m doing.”
“Yes.”
“I’m appreciating,” he said with a resigned sigh. “If I were a less decent man, I’d take a picture right now to remember you by.”
Lola’s hands dashed to the blindfold. “You—”
“Don’t take that off.” His command came so strong, she froze. “I’m not going to take your picture. I told you to trust me. A camera wouldn’t do you justice anyway.”
She replaced her hands on the comforter. “You dress me up, bring me here, then make me spread my legs for your viewing pleasure while you have a Scotch?”
“Whiskey,” he corrected.
“Scotch is whisky.”
“Touché. Except this is the American sort.”
“A technicality.”
“Technicalities are not to be overlooked.”
“Here’s a technicality—you could not be a less decent man.”
He laughed. “If you could see how beautiful you look right now, you’d understand how much I’m enjoying this.”
“I doubt it.”