“You’re from Barcelona? I assumed you were American.”
“I am on my mother’s side. She’s a Clifton, some old New England deal, but she met my father traveling for summer school in college. Javier and I were born here when my family was living in the States, but this is definitely my city. It’d be my honor to introduce an American to everything.”
She frowned. “I don’t want…it’s not inappropriate, is it?”
“Not at all,” he lied. If you wear something less frumpy, though, I’ll probably combust with need, but we’ll worry about that when we get there. “Think of it as me doing my part for tourism.”
Jules nodded. “We’ll see, okay? You might be exhausted by Friday.”
“Trust me. I’d still be up for you.”
She smiled tightly, and he hoped she hadn’t taken it as a double entendre. He really hadn’t meant it that way, but in retrospect, it sounded like a bad come on. “Sounds neat. Now, let me work my magic,” Jules continued, shaking out her thick red hair one more time. “When I nod, I’m recording.”
“I’ll zip it,” he said, mimicking the turning of a lock in front of his lips.
“Thanks!” she said, then gave him a brisk nod. “Hey out there all you Mistress fans! I’m coming to you live from thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean…”
***
He knew it was a mistake when he did it. Well, not a mistake. More like a terrible idea. He had a meeting in eight hours with a foreman who was barely keeping order in the factory as it was. The last thing that Xavier needed was to be looking up one Juliet Gaines, aka Mistress of Schlock, on the Internet. He should be in bed, asleep, and getting primed for his rigorous week. But he’d already gotten a front row seat to the enthusiasm of Jules’s performance and fallen for the way she seemed to transform on camera, the way she shone with an inner light. He needed to see that for himself.
His laptop was set up on his legs while he lounged in his hotel room and booted up her channel. Pressing play on a random recced video, he knew then that he was in big trouble.
Huge, actually.
While Jules might have been forthcoming about her channel, she hadn’t exactly disclosed her dress code, or the lack thereof. H
is newest valet hadn’t been kidding about the Elvira bit. She had a tight spandex dress on in a deep crimson that hugged every curve and plunged low over her breasts. Her face was coated in pale pancake makeup that made her delicate skin even more creamy and appealing, and the fake fangs drew extra attention to her ruby red lips.
Blood flooded down to his member, and Xavier was rock hard in an instant. His testicles were already drawn up against his body and heavy with need. He barely paid attention to her words as she joked and quipped about I, Frankenstein. He was too mesmerized by the way she flipped her hair in the lights, the teasing hint of her lips as she talked, and the ample curves of her cleavage.
He wanted her.
I can’t have her. Damn it! The last thing I need is to prove Javier right.
But it wouldn’t hurt anything if he fantasized, if he pushed lust-filled thoughts about Jules aside after he indulged just once. It would take the edge off, and then he’d be able to show her around the city on Friday without coming off as over the top. It really was the only sensible thing to do.
Totally.
He set the computer on his bedside table and then slipped out of bed long enough to take off his pants. Then, thinking better of it, he rummaged through the bathroom until he came back with some of the hotel’s lotion.
Leaning back on the mattress, Xavier closed his eyes and let his hand curl around his length. He pumped back and forth, letting the friction build slowly. In his mind’s eye, it wasn’t his hand that was stroking him; it wasn’t his thick fingers over his shaft but Juliet’s delicate and nimble ones, the ones with the polish that was slightly cracked earlier on the plane. It was her sweet scent of jasmine and honey that he smelled, and her soft voice that would call to him as he thrust into her.
Heat spread through his torso, a delicious caress of fire and magma working its way over his body. It encouraged him to intensify his pace, thrusting his length into his hand, pounding into it. If he ever could let himself make love to Jules, he’d go slow and seduce her the way a woman as beautiful and as lively deserved.
But now?
Now he was a prisoner of his own passion. He needed to cool his own burning desire, douse his bubbling veins with ice water and chase the heat raging through him away. He thought of her, of the way her soft red locks would feel strewn across his chest. Xavier fantasized about the softness of her breasts when he’d knead them between his hands. He craved the taste of her tongue on his own.
His testicles tightened and the heat grew into a raging forest fire over his skin. He came then, screaming her name so loud that, for a moment, Xavier feared the hotel staff would send someone to knock on his door and make sure he was okay. But no one came.
Xavier fell back onto the mattress, panting on the bed.
“Damn it. What am I doing?”
That was a fucking good question, because no matter what he’d assumed, the passion for Jules hadn’t gone away. No, it was like throwing gasoline onto a bonfire, and he was roaring for her.
And that could only lead to trouble.