A Billionaire for Christmas - Page 46
“Harder,” she gasped.
Peyton pinched her clit and rammed into her, and the tight knot between her legs broke into pulses that flowed through her, cresting over her, and dragged her down as she sobbed.
Her arms fell, and she landed on her knees, reaching for Peyton.
His strong arms cradled her, holding her close to his broad chest. His heart thudded near her ear, and she huddled closer to him, cold and shaking.
He moved away from her. Raji clutched her knees. The drowning sensation was the same as if she had been at the bottom of a dark pit.
Somewhere a few feet away from her, Peyton whispered, swearing bitterly.
A blanket wrapped her shoulders, and she clutched it around herself even while she leaned against Peyton.
Tears flowed down her face, a release of the deep grief inside her.
Peyton held her in his arms, on his lap, and rocked Raji as she sobbed. He didn’t shush her or try to reason with her. His arms held her tightly as she cried great, wracking gasps and chokes, and he stroked her hair.
When she had let it all go, when the utter fatigue from crying had wiped her mind clean, he asked her, “Are you all right now?”
“Yeah,” she said, wiping her damp cheeks with the blanket. “Better.”
“I’ve never seen you cry before.”
“I don’t cry. Ever.”
“All right, then we won’t go there. Who was it?”
“His name was Leonard Yates.”
“What happened?”
“Massive stroke. Massive hemorrhagic stroke. On my table. Under my knife.”
“There’s no way you could have known, and he knew the risks going in.”
“Yeah, I know, and I know that hemorrhagic strokes usually are caused by weakened or malformed blood vessels, and it would have gotten him at some point, anyway, but damn. He was only forty-six. He should have gone home to his kids.”
Peyton held her for a while longer, and then he cleaned her up in the small bathroom adjoining the dungeon and dressed her, except for her panty hose. She shoved those in her purse.
“I have a hotel room for the night,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Raji sat in the passenger seat, still blissfully numb, and Peyton held her in his arms while she slept that night.Chapter Twenty-EightPeyton's MusicRaji was awakened the next morning by a woman’s voice in the other room of the hotel suite. A service lady was thanking Peyton with a high, surprised note in her voice.
Peyton regularly overtipped any staff they ran into, from car rides to room service to bellhops to baristas. If she hadn’t heard squeals of delight when someone left, she might have taken his temperature and looked down his throat to make sure he wasn’t deathly ill.
She wandered out to the living room of the hotel suite, where Peyton was pouring steaming coffee from a carafe into cups.
The scent of blessed, blessed coffee filled the air so strongly that Raji inhaled deeply and tasted the roasted aroma on her tongue.
She rubbed her eyes. The welts on her back stung, and she loved it. “What time is it?”
“Nine-thirty. Since your flight isn’t until three, I figured we could sleep in a bit.” Sunlight from the wide hotel window glistened on his blond hair, and he looked like a young, golden sun god who had somehow appeared in a hotel suite in the Southwestern US.
The couches and living room set were creamy white, while the dinette set was upholstered in pale blue canvas. Basically, it was as formal as one got in the Southwest. Peyton often booked them a hotel suite with a kitchen and several rooms as if they were playing house. It was as close as they would ever get to living together, and Raji let herself enjoy the fantasy sometimes.
She wandered over and lifted a cover off of a plate to see what was for breakfast. “Oh, good. Egg white omelet and fruit.”
Peyton sat on the other side of the table. His plate held the same. “About last night—”
She shook her head. “I got a little emo last night, but I’m back to being a cold-blooded lizard person today. We don’t need to mention it ever again.”
“—it appears that we got too rough—” he continued.
“Hey, I’m not judging. It sure looked like you liked it, too. I absolutely consented to everything that happened, if that’s what you were worried about.” She dug her fork into her omelet.
“—and the condom broke,” Peyton said.
Raji’s whole body went numb, and her lifeless fingers dropped her fork. It clattered among the other silverware like crashing traffic. “What?”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you last night, but you seemed upset.”
“I wasn’t upset. I was fine.” Her fingers couldn’t seem to grab the skittering fork.
“Dr. Andy held mandatory seminars on sexual stuff for the band. From what I understand, there are some things we can do today, but talking about it last night wasn’t imperative. So it seemed okay to wait until the light of day to discuss it more rationally.”
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