Claiming Beauty (Taking Beauty Trilogy 2)

“Excellent. Welcome to the Rasidion Hotel, Mister Carlyle and guest. I hope that you do enjoy your stay, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need anything at all.”

“Splendid,” Dalton smiled, taking the folder. “You’ve been a delight. I apologize for any inconvenience in my reservation tonight.”

“I’m just happy you managed it,” she shrugged happily. “It was canceled early this morning. You usually need to book that a month in advance, unless you’re one of our Premiere Club guests…”

“Maybe it’s my lucky day,” he smiled, and we departed off down towards the elevator. After a moment, he keyed in the top floor, and we began the ascent.

“What did you do?” I asked curiously, peering at him. “That didn’t seem like any old hotel reservation to me…”

“Tonight is meant to be special,” he casually shrugged. “I called around to see if I could land a room befitting the occasion, and it just so happened that this one was open.”

“What kind of room?”

“You’ll see,” he smiled warmly.

We rode the rest of the way in silence. After a moment, the doors pinged open, and we stepped out into a particularly extravagant hotel floor. It was as if Natalie had just decided to talk her parents into buying part of the hotel. The crown molding alone looked like it went for a premium, and the décor seemed to favor crystal.

“Whoa,” I murmured to myself as I took in my environment.

“A little better than you were expecting, isn’t it?” Dalton smugly whispered into my ear. “Just wait until you see our room…”

He led me down the hall, looking for the right place. There were only a couple of rooms up here – maybe half a dozen, maximum. I could barely keep my eyes off of how the lights bounced off of the crystal and the silver, filling the entire area with a sort of otherworldly glow.

Finally, we stopped at a door marked 4B. Grasping his keycard, he squeezed my hand and slid it down the reader alongside the doorknob.

“I just want you to know that I understand what you told me over the phone earlier,” Dalton smiled. “No promises. I get it. I didn’t do all of this to break that… so, keep that in mind when you see everything.”

I nodded hesitantly.

Dalton opened the door, motioning for me to step inside… and my jaw practically dropped straight to the floor.

Chapter 11

What I had walked into wasn’t just some decent guestroom in the middle of a nice hotel. This was the most hysterically lavish room that I’d ever been in. This was the kind of room I thought belonged in the middle of some Northern European palace, and certainly not anywhere near where I lived.

The room was decorated from top to bottom in lavish tapestries, premium antique furniture, pristine crystal décor, and lush carpeting that was soft to the very touch.

The king-sized bed that dominated the center of the main room bore a lush mattress that was probably more expensive than half of Natalie’s apartment…

A premium wine cooler, tucked away neatly into the fully featured kitchen, came stocked with ample red wine of a particularly historic vintage, at over a hundred years old.

It even came stocked with all the amenities. The luxurious, oversized bathroom hid a large hotel shower chamber, with glass walls and a stunning array of showerheads in all directions.

But perhaps the most stunning aspect of this incredible hotel room was the view. Much like the apartment I shared with my rich best friend, the far wall offered an incredible view. However, the differences were that a) the wall was a solid sheet of glass, with expensive drapes ready to draw together for privacy, and b) the view was much better, giving a jaw-dropping glance over the city, the park, and the river nearby.

“How… how did you do this?” I asked him, barely able to coherently string thoughts together, either in my head or aloud.

“I pulled a few strings,” Dalton chuckled, watching me take in my surroundings with warm and reflective affection. “I had to pay a little more for this one, but as soon as the opportunity was available… I knew I had to have it.”

“Do you do that often?” I asked slyly.

“What’s that?” He asked, setting our to-go plates of dinner into the premium refrigerator. He quickly withdrew a bottle of red wine and a pair of wine glasses from the attached wine cooler.

“Take opportunities as they arise.”

“I don’t like to let things pass by,” Dalton shrugged, setting the glasses on the counter as he began to uncork the wine. “Call me what you will, but even before the Marines… I acted on instinct. Followed my gut. It even saved my life a few times.”

“Is that so. Like when?”

Dalton went quiet, staring into space. For a moment, I thought he was thinking about how to answer the question, but then I realized that the bottle of wine was being to shake slightly…

I took it from his hand, setting it beside the glasses, and took his trembling hand in both my own.

“Dalton? Are you okay?”

He blinked a few times.

“What? Yeah. I’m fine.”

I wasn’t convinced. “Are you… sure?”

“Yeah, just a, uh, a flashback,” Dalton chuckled as he shook his head. “Lately, I’ve been having a few flashbacks to a particular moment during my time in the desert…”

“Do you want to talk about it? I asked.

He looked strained for a moment. As he resumed uncorking the bottle, he poured us a pair of glasses of wine. “I was a ground trooper in the United States Marine Corps, placed into combat zones in the Iraq War. There are things that I’ve had to do … things that I’m not necessarily proud of, and things I’ll take to my grave. But never, ever have I done something unless it was to save my life or those of others.”

I nodded carefully, taking the glass of red that he handed me.

“One particular time, there was this insurgent… I was trying to save another member of my platoon, an older Marine by the name of Darren. Darren was wounded by mortar fire. I was trying to drag him out of the rubble of a building when an enemy trooper got the jump on us… he knocked my gun away, but I managed to keep him away from it. It came down to him versus me, both reduced to our combat knives, and I was just trying to save my friend…”

“You don’t have to say any more,” I reassured him, running my hand along his. “Whatever happened out there, it doesn’t matter to me. You were saving a life. Did he make it?”

Dalton looked up.

“Yeah. He made it. He retired a couple of years later. We got him to medical, patched him up… lost a leg, but he wears that prosthetic proud now.”

“Then you did the right thing,” I told him.

He nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about kind of zoning out about that.”

“No! God, no. Don’t apologize for a thing,” I whispered, setting the glass of wine down and throwing my arms around him. “Listen, Dalton… you were in war. You had to fight for this country… and you had to save your people.”

“That’s right,” he nodded thoughtfully.

The thought of him out in the desert with a knife, protecting wounded warriors, tugged at my heartstrings… but it also made him look even tougher, ever stronger than ever.

It ignited someth

ing deep inside me.

I took him by the hand and led him towards the bed, then tried to weakly push him down.

“Oh, is that how it’s going to be then, huh?” He chuckled, amused by my reactions. “Didn’t know war stories did it for you.”

“Shut up and get into the stupid bed.”

“Yes ma’am,” he winked, kicking off his shoes and climbing backwards onto the bedding. I did the same, curling up next to him, feeling the lust begin to burn deep inside me.

I knew then that I had to have him.

Dalton pulled me up against himself, his fingers threading into my hair to pull me into a deep and passionate kiss. I submitted to his demands, returning his zealousness with my own – I tugged his bottom lip between my teeth, slid my nose across his as I slightly adjusted my positioning, and flicked his lips ever so lightly with the tip of my tongue.

He grinned into this last part, and our lips parted together to allow our wet tongues access to one another.

I loved the strength and the cunning of his tongue against mine. With the warmth and power of his broad body pressed up against me, and his fingers tenderly stroking the contours of my jaw and my throat, I lost myself in that deep, carnal kissing of ours.

There was no denying it.

This just felt so absolutely right.

I don’t recall exactly how my dress came off, but soon I was in just my bra and thong against him, tugging off his blazer and diving for the buttons to his button-up.

As I slowly revealed his abdomen, I gasped in surprise; not only was he built broad and strong, but he bore a panty-drenchingly firm six-pack under his clothes.

“You like what you see, huh?” He cockily asked, grinning confidently.

“Duh.” I shook my head, taking in his heavily sculpted build. “Good god, you’re buff.”

“Yeah, it turns out that a few years in the Marines will do that for you,” Dalton shrugged. “I was already in fairly good shape before, but all those drills and marches really helped me hone my physique…”

“You’re telling me,” I nodded. I wanted to lick the contours of his abs…